If the whole point of the mode is bomb delivery then I would rather it was just a variation on rush. A mode they actually have a little experience with. What's they have done with that airdrop mode will not satisfy very many people and its for lots of reasons. Everytime I see anybody play offense on that mode, the frustration at what is happening is obvious immediately.
Honestly: What's the difference? The bomb indicator was there in BF4's Obliteration because you could put the bomb in a vehicle or jet and arm within 2 minutes of it "reset"ing/spawning. That's why it was like that in BF4. BF4's variant of it is basically Conquest (A/B/C points) with Rush (Arm A/B/C with the bomb).
Operations was trying to merge the two again in BF1, but did it poorly. Because instead of "arm these objectives and if taken you are 1-3 toward the goal/win" it became "cap these flags, but you need both to push forward a la Rush. However with the series' idiotic fanbase, they'll cap flags thinking it's Conquest and not go for the other or swarm toward the other and not defend the one the defense retakes to where it becomes spawn rape a la Rush. Oh and the Arty truck is absolutely worthless and whoever spawns in it needs to be put on the
rack for not helping their team." Not a
bad fusing of the two, but IMO Obliteration's "chaos" was the key component on trying to fuse the two because Rush has a few problems. Which I'll get to in a minute.
Rush has also become a niche mode in Battlefield but its about a billion times better and more strategic than that airdrop mode.
I agree with you it's better than the Operations mode. But Obliteration? It's a toss up for both as my favorite mode in the series. I like Conquest, but it's no Rush/Obliteration for me.
Parachuting off Damavand Peak is about 1000x more exciting than what they delivered in airdrop.
Yeah, but that map was ass on anything non-Rush, let's be honest.
Now then: Rush has been (IMO, but I'm a die-hard Rush fan, so it's VERY VERY VERY VERY tough to appease me) shit since BF3. They took a few good steps toward fixing the problem that the mode had in Bad Company 1 AND 2 (objective harm, team-objective-harm in BC1 was removed in 2 to where both team and non-team objective harm was removed in 3). But also regressed because you couldn't blow certain areas out for better or worse. Grand Bazaar Objective B's "hell-room" first-set was never fixed. If you camp across from the MCOM and prone/clip into the wall, you can avoid most of the grenade spam coming from BOTH directions. This problem wasn't fixed necessarily in 4, but they removed the "prone-clip" with the "push yourself away from the wall" if you were clipping system. So it meant holding rooms was a bit harder, but also tougher for attackers.
BF1 tried to fix this "hell room" defense that the mode had for ages by randomizing the locations each time the map was loaded (sometimes they were to the left, sometimes to the right) which I thought was a good idea, but it didn't fix the fundamental issue with Rush: There was "lanes" and so long as your team (if you have like 16 folks playing Rush that know what they're doing on the same side compared to pub games) was on the ball, it was nearly impossible to attack even with the random-ization.
Which is where Obliteration sort-of solved the problem because instead of camping 2 sets and watching 3 lanes, you had to traverse around the map with the bomb and keep a few folks on your team back or spawning at the uncap to try to stop the arm/go for the defuse compared to Rush.
But that's an aside:
The main problem with Rush is that most of the cover is nearly not able to be destroyed (mostly for the defenses sake) but that makes attacking harder because you can't "punch through" the defense at times. And map design. They don't really design maps with "Rush" in mind anymore. They sort-of fixed this with the randomization system in BF1 but it wasn't enough (IMO) to actually "fix" the mode, which just soured a bunch of hard-core Rush fans like me.
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The major problem with the Operations mode compared to 1's is that--Actually, I've lost my train of thought on that. Give me a minute.... Yeah, the beta's Operation mode was 2 days. Which is okay, because Operations in 1 was like that but but it wasn't on the same map, it was different. The problem is 1) the 3/4 loss issue and 2) I
agree in this case that the bomb shouldn't be 100% seen by the defense to try to make them "paranoid" on keeping some folks at the objective sites (but reducing the objectives to 2 or 3 instead of 4). But also 3) the foritfication system for better or worse also hinders attacks because you can be a well-meaning teammate, but if you remove the "hole" someone just created to try to get through by repairing it back up, you can't get the bomb anywhere fast enough compared to Obliteration where even an ATV could reach a bomb site (though this is countered hard by the Javelin/SOFLAM lock-system/combo).
With BF1's variant on the idea: You're basically infantry only with no fire-support of a vehicle that can "make the bomb less squishy" which is the problem with the "100% seen" system.
If that makes sense. Since I totally lost my train of thought.
Honestly though, if they were going to do Rush and Conquest together: Shock Operations was be near the "perfect" mix of the two. You still have Operations (BF1 variant)'s "cap these flags to push up" but it limits the game to like 32-42 players (like Rush) and thereby less "chaos" on trying to cap the flags and you have 1-2 attacks on the map before it moves to the next map. I feel if they were going to do Shock Operations here, making the bomb the "first attack" and thereby if you succeed to get 2-3 of the 4 sites armed, you get a tank or something to help you out in the cap flags, or something like that.
but really, if they dropped the bomb arming segment of Operations and just made it Obliteration-only-mode, it'd be better off.