Glaring flaws prevent this game from achieving greatness.
First and foremost, the game has zero mic support. Forget voice communication, unless if you're with a few close friends on Teamspeak. No real excuse for this, there is no point in releasing an objective based squad FPS game without voice chat. This alone is why I won't be buying the game.
After you die and are at the spawn screen, you can't type or send messages.
At the spawn screen, once you wait out the time for spawn locations to become selectable (5 seconds usually), once selected, you have to wait like 10 seconds to spawn. Stupid. Why not just show the same ol' vanila 15 second respawn timer rather than covering it up with some cheap animations that just serves to eat up CPU cycles?
Another gripe is the sniper rifles. I mean, they're semi-auto, no reload between shots, and their recoil is non-existent. Sniper-noobs just hang out all throughout the round chain-firing this thing and it gets phucking annoying - blam blam blam blam blam blam blam blam. It should be impossible to maintain any sort of accuracy firing it like that. If the weapon had limited rounds, then fine, but it has like 10 shots per clip. Also the total and complete imbeciles who use it, hiding away atop their mighty hiding spots chain-gunning their sniper rifles, and the shots can clearly be seen from where they're coming from, streaking like shooting stars! LOL!!! All in all, I guess it doesn't matter, it's not like they hit anything on account of the game's ballistic system sucking, more on that later. Also the startup logo shows a guy holding a sniper rifle with a look of frustration on his face that I think says, "OMFG boomboomboomboomboom I can't hit SCHIT!!!!" /Havoc meleed you to death, pwned NOOB.
The game has a unique class system. You pick a main class, then a subclass. It gives a bit more room for flexibility and customization. Even though this system is new to FPSs, it's just halfway new. You're still locked into the rock-paper-scissors gameplay where you're equipped to handle specific situations and not so much anything else of any real significance. Ofcourse teamwork comes into play here, that is if anyone's around to back you up, also assuming they're properly equipped to, and also taking in account that your team is a hivemind able to trade information with eachother through thought alone. Basically, the game's design is far too dynamic with it's anything-can-happen nature to work with it's rock-paper-scissors class system. If it had a system where you can totally customize your character through a persistent unlock system, like Planetside, then yes, I can see it working and having a nice niche for itself.
One bit that I thought deserved its' own paragraph is this - there are no medics in the game. That's borderlined retarded. The game is based on covering alot of ground, securing waypoints over huge sprawling maps, and there's no medics? It only takes one enemy tank and an ill-equipped team to handle it for the frontline to be pushed back to main spawn. I've seen it happen many times, especially for the Western Coalition, and it begs the question WHY.
Switching weapons is archaic. You can't bind keys to your weapons, so if you're in a situation when you need it, right then and there...you'll have to scroll through the slow weapon-switching animations to get to the one you want. The common one for me is needing C4 for approaching vehicles. It's laughable, really. Imagine playing Quake or Unreal Tournament with such a system. Sure, the games are different concepts, but the principal is still the same. You're dead.
The developers obviously aren't ballistics experts, neither am I, but I can say this - the bullets in this game move slower than grandma walking through the intersection. If you shoot one round at the ground at your feet, it's noticeable that the bullet travel-time is on the slow side. That impact should be seemingly instantaneous. When it comes to firing on an enemy that isn't coming straight at you or standing still, expect to miss alot, add in the bunny hopping and expect to reload. It also doesn't help that the weapons are wildly inaccurate and weak, weak in that it can take up to 8 direct shots to the chest to drop someone. And no, it's not ping. Snipers? Lol, I just pretend they're not even shooting at me.
The first time I played, I was Redstar on the GNAW map. Awesome map. Nine times out of ten, Redstar seemed to win. I then decided to switch teams and give the Western Coalition a try since I wanted to play them for a change, but mainly because they always lost and I wanted to see if I could influence a win, cuz I pwn at FPS. That's when I found that the Redstar faction is clearly more adaptable than the Western Coalition, even though the backstory claims that the Western Coalition are technologically superior to the Redstar. Within the community of the game, it's been accepted that what side you play determines the difficulty that you'll experience - Redstar for easy, Western Coalition for hard. Those who play Redstar exclusively are looked down upon. Say what????
The maps are big and well designed. Most of the time though it feels that there's no room for infantry. When it comes to advancing the frontline, you have to rely on your teammates in vehicles (which are obscenely weak) to spearhead the approach, then hold and defend it. Sadly, great in theory, but in practice most people whore the vehicles and (attempt to) get kills instead rather than advancing the frontline, then the determining factor in frontline advancement depends on which side is whoring less. Those on foot who brave the advancement will most likely be meeting the barrel of a tank (or as many as three!!!), happy to send them back to spawn. Vehicles win the game, and infantry is fodder for securing waypoints. I find that in order to secure my place in a fight, I use the anti-vehicle main kit with the EMP sub kit. Extremely effective for defending the objectives from vehicles as well as capturing them, and I've held/captured the objective while influencing victories with this combo many times, especially for the Western Coalition. As for against infantry, with practice it's possible to be viable with the rocket launcher or the pistol, although the rocket launcher requires practice as it has the blast radius of a firecracker and no splash damage. I prefer to melee as it is a sorely underestimated ability; closing the gap between me and an enemy using whatever cover possible, then rush them for pure pwnage, especially retarded spam-snipers.
It could've been a great game, but these negatives can be a bit much sometimes. The Frontline concept is very cool and innovative, still, the games mechanics do not fill its' big shoes. A change in some of the combat design fundamentals (fully-customizable class system could've addressed many issues) may have made this an online FPS that stood out from the crowd.
On a personal note, despite the game's flaws, I still enjoy it as much as Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142, and I'll continue to play it.