Right now the BR system as applied to players is kind of…silly…
We’ve all seen or heard of the poor BR1 fella who just wanted to enjoy his cool event/BP weapon, only to get slapped into a match against full BR5 opponents and stomped into the dirt. They might not have even realized what happened and why.
Then of course there’s “don’t use any of the new stuff you’ve unlocked until you can outfit everyone, or else you’ll be sorely outgunned!” Which is really a huge damper for any player, since they go through this grind, unlock a weapon, and then get told they should wait even longer before actually getting to use it in a real match if they don’t want to put themselves at a huge disadvantage.
So, I propose a small adjustment. Not an overhaul, just an adjustment. And it goes as such: You can bring 1 weapon 2 BRs higher than the rest of your equipment without raising your BR, or up to 2 weapons 1 BR higher. If you have 1 weapon at 3+ BRs higher, it’ll immediately raise your BR by the difference between it and your BR -2 (BR1 player equipping 1 BR5 weapon will put them at BR3, BR2 player equipping 1 BR5 weapon will put them at BR4). Vehicles remain the same, so having a BR5 vehicle would instantly put you at BR5 regardless of the rest of your squads’ loadouts. I think having a single weapon that’s 2 BRs higher is fine since it’d only be on a single soldier on a single squad, so a player could only pull it out occasionally. Yes some weapon types get a big jump from 1 BR to the next, but…eh…isn’t that part of the fun? To clarify, this is not per squad, this is accounting for your entire lineup.
So let’s say you’re a BR3 Allies player. You’ve been using the Garand, you like the Garand just like everyone else, but you just finished research on the Johnson rifle. It’s the first BR4 weapon you’ve unlocked, so you can’t bring all your squads up to BR4 equipment. Currently, unless you’re willing to uptier yourself to BR4, you basically have to wait until you’re done researching everything else you’ll need at BR4 to make a competitive loadout. Well, under this adjusted BR system you could bring up to 2 Johnson rifles with you in your lineup, and still stay at BR3. Or maybe you got a BR5 M2A1 Carbine from an event. Well now you can give it to 1 Assaulter, and still play at BR3.
It adds a little strategy since the higher BR weapons are a limited resource. Do you want to equip 2 Assaulters with more powerful weapons, or round out your squad by giving two of your specialists good semi-autos instead of bolt action rifles? Do you spread out 2 weapons between 2 squads, or put them in 1 elite squad that you save for when you really need to get down to business? Maybe you use it for something like giving your AT Gunner a more powerful AT weapon so you can better deal with uptiered tanks. Or maybe your favorite gun is in BR4 but you love playing in BR2, this’ll let you take one of them. Plus it’d make weapons feel special again, something that’s kind of missing in this current system. It’s almost like making every TT weapon into an event weapon in a way.
It’d also make pretty much all BR4 weapons much more usable since you can actually use a few without immediately getting uptiered into BR5 hell.
For anyone saying “this’ll just let fully kitted out players beat up newbies.” I mean…if you have fully kitted out squads with the best gear at their BR vs people who are still building out their squads, you’re almost certainly stomping them anyway. This wouldn’t really change that. In fact, it’d give lower level players tools to fight against higher BR players whenever they get uptiered if they have some event weapons.
