The non-inclusion of VOIP in BF3 is a big letdown, I agree with that. Commanders would be a nice, but not really necessary. The rest of your post is just trollshit. You are arguing that BF1942 is better than BF3 because it got better reviews 10 years ago compared to BF3 today? Really? That's like saying Doom is better than Half Life 2 because it got better reviews in 1994 compared to HL2's reviews in 2004.
You have either never played the original BF1942, or merely have a ridiculously skewed nostalgic memory of it.
I dunno, I think there are many valid points of criticism against BF3 that have nothing to do with trolling. I did in fact have a lot more fun in BF2 (non jet maps, the air rape was insane and made ground worthless) and BF1942 because strategy was a major factor in winning.
The most fun I have in BF3 is on Caspian, Firestorm, or Kharg, when you have two good teams and a tight fight to the finish (admittedly rare, usually it's a blowout). The pacing is even pretty good on those maps.
With the AK expansion, which I so eagerly awaited, I'm just baffled. The pacing is all wrong thanks to the hyper cartoon speed of the tank destroyers, so there really is zero strategy other than run around like a tasmanian devil and kill as much as you can. Lost a flag across the map? No problem, at 100mph you can be there in seconds. That is, if your team isn't getting blown out and you can't make it 10 feet without being blown apart by 20-30 spawncamping enemies with a clear view into your spawn. Killed a vehicle? Killed 4 or 5? Doesn't matter, there are a million vehicles, and most moron server operators have instant respawn vehicles and quick life respawn, so whomever you just killed has already respawned, hopped back in that same vehicle, and in 5 seconds will warp across the map to swarm you again.
I think the criticism that they're trying to make this a big Call of Duty game is pretty legit.
Imho it could all be fixed (not even for everyone, but let people customize more server settings) by the following :
(1)- Slow down Tank Destroyers and give them the feeling of their actual 36,000 pounds. To compensate, give them some more powerful 2nd-seat weapons, but still make their armor weak. Putting the AA chain cannon on there as a secondary would be pretty badass, say at 75% of the power of the normal AA tanks. As is, they are far too fast. I saw one outrunning a helicopter on the desert map, which was kind of hilarious, but just retarded in the end.
(2)- Make being killed mean something. Offer server operators the chance to run limited spawn servers. I don't mean as related to tickets. I mean if you get killed X times as set (I would play the one life servers personally), you're out for the rest of the round. Or on servers with 2 or 3 total spawns per players wait a decent amount of time before respawning (I think 45 seconds would be a fair time). How many times have you killed 2 or 3 members of the same squad, and be fighting the last guy, only to have all of the assholes you just killed spawn back yet again and finally kill you. Ludicrous.
(3)- Make losing a vehicle mean something. Similar to above, let server operators set a limited number of each vehicle type. I think a single spawn for each air vehicle, 2 spawns for each major land vehicle (tank, tank destroyer, aa tank, arty), and 3 spawns for minor ground vehicles (jeeps, atvs, etc). And set the respawn times for vehicles to be quite long. As a team you'd have to work much harder to utilize and protect vehicles. They would be quite powerful of course, but also extremely rewarding to destroy and remove from the battlefield. This would be a great change to 'big whoop, instant respawn, instantly jump back into the same vehicle' as it usually is now.
(4)- Return spawn points to including the squad commander only. Being able to spawn on any squadmate is lame and really lessens squad dynamics considerably.
(5)- Scramble teams based on skill rating and KDR whenever a team wins by more than 33% of tickets. I realize that the skill rating metric is kind of poorly implemented, but it's better than nothing. Then lock the teams to prevent statwhores from piling onto one team. This would obviously make getting a bunch of your buddies on the same side more difficult, but the biggest problem in the game currently imho is the constant whoring that occurs with so many players only wanting to play on dominating teams. I've seriously seen more than a few matches where the winning team loses less than TEN tickets. Of course what happens is the losing team has players drop left and right, and the only players you see that stay are low ranking guys who end the match with 1-33 and such. I try to stick with my team, but often in situations like this I'll just sit in the stationary AA and try to stop at least some of the spawn rape from jets/helis. That thing needs a SERIOUS buff by the way, on Firestorm the other day I shot down a heli from the US side right in my spawn, the guy jumped out and was running across the runway to one of our jets. I kept the thing on his head and unloaded a full 4 seconds of rounds into him, and he wasn't fazed in the slightest. He got right in the jet and took off while the gun was cooling off. We're talking a gun that fires thousands of large rounds per minute, it should have ripped him in half easily. But I may as well have been shooting spitwads at him.
Given that my proposals would merely be options, it could give a place for the true hardcore crowd to go to avoid the CoD-style spam that dominates so many servers. As it stands, I have the most fun with 20-24 players total on large maps, where single-handedly killing a squad and a couple vehicles actually means you can move up on a flag or defend one. It's still not perfect of course because they can nearly instantly respawn and be back at the same spot, but it's better than the nearly infinite spam that occurs with the current settings in 64 player servers.