They've made the games fairly inaccessible to pick-up-and-play occasional gamers like me, though. In BF1942 I could miss a month of playing and still do just fine when I went back to it, because everyone wasn't running around with nuclear briefcases they'd unlocked by gaining 30 levels while I was gone.
I don't really play all that much COD, but I guess I can see it adding to the fun there since it's a basically a straight run and gunner with smaller maps. I liked the kit idea fine in older BF games because it was a different style of game. If you wanted to switch up roles during a match you could just pick up a kit lying in the spot someone was killed, or change up while you were waiting to respawn. Everyone sort of had their own role to play, and I always thought it was good balance. The maps were huge, you could fly or drive anywhere, get into tank battles/dogfights, etc. I just don't understand why someone would think that was boring without the addition of an unlockable red dot sight or underslung grenade launcher, and can't just be satisfied with being a good medic/engineer/soldier/scout. I was never a terrific player in BF1942, but stayed around the upper half of the end of match ranking just from doing my particular "job." It still retains some of that feeling, and there are still some crazy moments, but for the most part I bought what I thought was a Battlefield game and got a COD game with larger maps.
And some of the unlocks are just flat out bullshit to begin with, like having to level up a plane to gain anti-missile flares. So they're basically asking you to die a bunch until you get something to ward off missiles. Doesn't make sense.
So I've started playing on some practice servers (ones that aren't just labeled that as a noob trap), just to level up quickly enough so that I can stand even a sliver of a chance against shit like infrared scopes and the DEATHISTATOR 5000X or whatever someone gets at level 50.
Grinding? In my Battlefield? It's more likely than you think.
