Okay, time for my 2 cents. When I initially heard that we were banning recon from the crouch server, my initial reaction was heck no! I thought I'd give it a try and read the thread on the forums. No that I have sometime to think about it, my initial reaction was correct. So now instead of recon and rifles is support and DMR's, it ends up being the same. What we have done is used a butchers knife to cut off our arm for a splinter in a finger. This changes nothing. In fact I think it hurs the game since eliminating the recon class, eliminates all of their perks and more importantly gadgets. The one thing I have always had an issue with in the battlefield series is the absolute terrible spawns. Getting rid of recon also eliminated the one gadget to help correct that. Overall this is a poor decision that it seems to me was made by a small cliche and not the clan as a whole. I will continue to play for a few more days, if it doesn't change, I will find other servers to play on.
Sabre256
I think the problem that people had was that the damage model of the sniper rifle is maxed out at 100-110 and at range (long-range) it drops to 59+.
Since hardcore health is set to 60, that makes the sniper rifle a one shot kill almost at any range (note two sniper rifles damage at 100+ at ANY range).
If the sniper rifle was only 50 damage (anything <60), I don't think people would have an issue and we would certainly not see snipers dominate the CROUCH small map server.
Three problems with the sniper weapon on a Crouch Server.
1. The small maps make the sniper rifles the ONLY ONE-SHOT kill weapon at range.
2. It's a crouch sever, making acquiring targets fairly easy.
3. There are no vehicles to eliminate snipers.
The server quickly became dominated by sniper one-shot CQB game play. For the first few weeks it was almost all snipers. I watched how many times I was killed and it was well over 75% by snipers.
The custom game play of small maps, crouch, and no vehicles makes the sniper rifle the only real primary weapon choice in hardcore.
DMRs, Shotguns with Slugs, and other primary weapons are still not one-shot kills on the smaller map.