I know that Battlefield 2042 is somewhat of a black sheep in the franchise, but I think that it’s “Portal” servers is one of the best additions.
Portal allows people to spin up their own servers with custom rule sets, scenarios and maps and weapons from across the BF franchise. For example, this video from JackFrags shows a match that plays entirely different from the fast paced and much higher TTK vanilla BF2042.
With BF2042 on sale, I would encourage people to give it a shot, if not just for the Portal servers. There are some genuinely awesome experiences to be had there and it can only get better with more players.
Someday I still have to try this on Game Pass, but I might not even be the target market for the other Battlefield games. The instant death from long distance snipers and zero squad play tends to reduce my interest.
I feel you on getting insta-sniped. The squad play thing unfortunately seems like a problem in a lot of games these days. People just seem less interested in using in game voice chat in general.
There’s games where squad play comes naturally through mechanics, even if some players don’t like voice. Apex gives people a LOT of ping options, and Deep Rock Galactic mostly lets people be independent except for traversal tools - which have great use for the team.
Ideally, I think a Battlefield game would have frequent reviving between squad members, a spotting system, and a lot of ammo sharing, but those mechanics don’t end up being very relevant to the game’s lone wolf desperados shooting through large groups with their all-unlocks LMGs.