I found mine when piloting the trench fighter. After four hours of non-stop action (just now) it's like I've seen it all. Death. Destruction. Incredible sacrifice. Speaking of the latter - the guy sits in the middle of the D flag, on empire's edge, by the wall, in the corner. It's the flag at a ruined castle facing the sea, middle of the map, hottest area. For 5 minutes I spawned on this dude, like 10 times, he just sits. I spawn on him, 10 enemies run around looking at us. I kill one, two or three and insta-die. The dude sits, sometimes moving in small steps left or right, taking pot shots with LMG once in a while. I spawn again. And again, taking over 20 people with me in the aftermath, but the flag stays 100% red. Futile, of course. The only sane explanation I came up with is that that was David Copperfield himself, otherwise it would be that half the enemy team was blind, while the other half - deaf.
As for death and destruction, my observation is this: most of my rounds flow in a very peculiar fashion, where majority of players are running around without any system to it. Snipers assume positions, which they came up while day-dreaming in school and rarely move, supports are studying couple grades higher, so they find best possible spots for launching mortars, suicidal assaults die usually within seconds after spawning. Medics seem to be the bright spot of the whole bunch, keeping their distance and moving to where the action is, so that they can heal and revive. Personally, I blame two things - map design and shooting mechanics. Niche specialization and lack of universality resulted in everyone minding their own business, as each unique snowflake has his own and very special range of engagement now, so, you know, the last thing you should do is work together with someone else, who is probably a sniper anyway. So, this merry bunch gets spread around vast maps, where flags are so far from each other there is no hope of self-organizing an attack force, with notable exception of argonne forest, where blunt ideas of operation locker/metro came to life again.
And while I am bored by locker, metro and argonne, there is no denying that the self-organizing gameplay they provide is but an extreme demonstration of how true battlefield should work. It should work by itself, driven by harmonic map design and weapon choices that inspire people to work together in small and large groups. Allowing squads to move from any flag to most flags through cover, natural and man-made is something that should be embedded in the map design at this stage. Dragon pass type of map simply doesn't work and ends in frustration for everyone, even the AA driver.
Is anyone else lucky to find the peace of mind in bf1? And what are Your observations and thoughts on the flow of the team play in bf1?