Since the open beta, I have been feeling that the infantry play of BF1 feels like CoD. Today I was thinking about it again, and decided to fire up BF3, BF4 and BF1 to find out why. In the end I believe I have found the reason: action delay, namely 1. sprint out time, 2. ADS time, 3. crouch time.
First, I have found that you cannot shoot immediately when you are sprinting in BF3 and BF4. There is a slight delay. On the contrary, in BF1 it is almost immediate. There is a delay in BF1 too, but it is so small that I think it is several times lower than that of BF3 and BF4. I think this is also a reason why a lot of people and I are frustrated with the Automatico trench meta. The penalty to sprinting everywhere and Automatico-ing everyone is too small.
Second, the ADS-in time BF3 is 0.264, plus 0.333 ADS-out time for RDS/Kobra, which is what 99.9% of infantry players are running with. In BF4, they speed that up to 0.18/0.27, as per
here. And in BF1, they further speed that up to 0.133 for ADS in. This is CoD level ADS time, and might even be faster than a lot of CoD weapons with reduced ADS perk. I don't have much to add here, other than that this trend follows the same line as above that favors run-and-gun, twitchy infantry play.
Third, crouch animation is significantly faster in BF4 and BF1 compared to BF3. You can do a crouch/stand-up at around 2 per second in BF3, but at least double that in BF4/BF1. If you do not believe me you can try spamming the crouch button in BF4 and BF1; your screen is going to shake faster than a shake weight. This also confirms my general feeling that BF4 animations are a lot more jittery than BF3.
What are you guys' opinion on this? Personally, even setting aside the other questionable changes/additions to the franchise, this trend is very off-putting to me. BF3 infantry play has this magic where weapons kill fast, infantry move fast, but a lot of actions have delays to them. Not only do they look more realistic, less jittery, but also it adds a tactical layer where you have to decide what you do next. If every action can be performed in a negligible amount of time, twitch reaction is going to dominate, and personally I do not find that very fun or deep.
Finally, do you think BF2018 is going to continue on this twitchy run-and-gun trend? Discuss.