Hot take: Last ICO Tweak Update was a partial regression and failed to buff MGs

I don't think many people will agree with me and that's okay. I just wanna see if anyone else feels this way or if it's just my perception.

I feel like engagements have become a lot more first shot wins. Even when I'm able to return fire if I am caught off guard, instead of the infamous ICO battles, it now just feels like Tom and Jerry and I'm motherfuckin Jerry fighting for my life.

In those situations, my shots are never able to fire accurately (ie the bottom two notches can never get close enough to be reasonably effective), and the aim punch is insane. Meanwhile the guy shooting at me seems completely unaffected by my return fire regardless of volume or accuracy, and recieves what appears to be a minor inconvenience in aim punch.

I don't think the issue is related to the tweaks making it easier for them to do this, but the lack of apparrent reciprocation from my return fire. Shooting at me or landing a first shot shouldn't result in my complete inability to fight back effectively. In fact, the levels of suppression by a single rifle is also ridiculous.

I have also noticed a steep increase in random one taps (ie some guy 250m away sees me, stops sprinting for a couple seconds, aims and drops me) and a steep, steep decline in firefights.

I think I've put in a couple hundred matches in this round of tweaks, and I honestly can't remember a recent proper firefight. It seems like everything just wraps up in a few seconds like pre-ICO.

However in pre-ICO, I wasn't slow as fuck, so even though it was less exciting to quick wipe like that, you could get back into the fight pretty quick anyways.

The machine gun buffs were also far, far too weak. Machine guns and heavy auto riflemans are still absolute dogshit. Playing with the PKM, MG3, M249 SAW and M240 (Incl. Minimi and Maximi) and QBJ is just walking and running around slow as fuck, trying to find a place to bipod and then wrestling map terrain to do it, and then getting shot in the head.

Machine gunners in most matches are limited to similar usefulness outputs as Marksman (I would actually argue marksman is far more useful now).

In this state of game, currently as a nonSL, the most viable loadouts don't inlcude 1/3rd of the available options, and if you want a sick machinegun, you have to suffer in several ways.

I think the state of ICO could be better served by a reduction in accuracy at range when coming out of a sprint/walk/at low stamina, and a decreased intensity of ICO effects in 1v1 engagements. As well as an actual, proper buff to machine guns and heavy auto riflemen, that genuinely allows them to be used effectively without a bipod.

There is no reason that a man holding a doorway with a PKM should lose a 25 meter fight from a guy with a rifle, because after their first few shots, their gun start going diagonally into the corner of the room they are in.