The changes to bolt-action rifles in Stalingrad (damage and sounds) were great. It’s such a fun experience to play a game where most people, friend or foe, are equipped with them (plus no semi-autos and explosive pack spam).
Bolt-action game-play is one of the things this game does best. And WW2 was still fought mostly with bolt-actions. I wish they remained the core weapon used by most soldiers in the squads in-game, even in high levels, supplemented by stuff like artillery, vehicles, mortars, flamethrowers, MG positions etc. That way, the game would feel more realistic and historically-accurate (a true ww2 experience). It would also be more challenging, skill-based and fun.
Instead of having everyone running around spamming semi-autos, have squads composed mostly of bolt-action riflemen performing tactical objectives & occupying positions in the map (and trying dislodge the enemy from theirs), and having confrontations at a certain range, rather than the current chaotic fast-paced close-quarters combat and bunny-hopping that is just not realistic. These bolt-action riflemen squads would have the occasional squad automatic weapon, like 1 or 2 guys with SMGS, or a MG, or even semi-autos like the AVS-36 and FG-42, supporting them.
I think semi-autos being available to all rifle troops, in the same manner as bolt-actions are, harms the game experience (especially when you come upon guns like the FG-42 later on and have squads 100% equipped with automatic weapons, like 4 MP43s and 3 FG-42s, which is just outrageously OP & unbalanced). Bolt-actions should be available as a standard weapons to all classes, but semi-autos limited to 2-3 per squad at max. Semi-autos in the Soviet, German and Italian/British armies were used only by a handful of more veteran soldiers anyway, the vast majority of Enlisted personnel being equipped with bolt-actions even as late as 1945.
A great way to portray this would be to limit semi-autos and automatic rifles to the riflemen class only, meaning engineers, radio operators and other non-frontline classes that fill-up most squads would have to stick to bolt-actions, balancing the game & forcing people to use them even at higher levels.
Doing this wouldn’t require drastic changes to the game and to people’s squad set-ups. People will still be able to equip as many semi-autos as they wish, as long as they pick the proper soldier class for them. As for the US army & their M1 garand standard rifle, non-frontline troops were, historically, often equipped with M1 carbines anyway, a weapon from a different class (a PDW - personal defense weapon - rather than a semiauto rifle), a gun that could be made to remain available to engineers, etc. (something which would also help bring back usefulness to a weapon that is, currently, completely useless in-game since you can always equip a better and more powerful semiauto, instead).
Thanks for reading.