.50 BMG AM rifles....should they bring them back in BF3?

There is a stigma that follows the .50 anti material rifles in games such as BF, FPS games in general.

The question is, should DICE listen to the community and bring back the .50? I really don't see a point considering the .338 Lapua Magnum can do just about anything the .50 can, minus the fact as an AM round it's not quite as effective.

It wouldn't really matter since the .50 would require you to hit your target twice regardless if it's a body shot for balancing' sake.

So what you get, if they were to bring back the M95 for example, would be a slower firing slower reloading M98B with the same magazine capacity and similar over all performance both ballistics wise and damage wise. Why?

Sure it's cool to use a rifle such as that, unless it had other qualities that the M98B does not have currently, such as damaging light armor and aircraft perhaps, or an even flatter trajectory that the M98B (Which would be ridiculous considering how little drop the M98B has as is) and perhaps proprietary optics that make engaging infantry with the rifle more of a challenge (Thicker cross hairs like they did back in BF2 made it more difficult to gauge where to hold with the sights)

Thoughts?

Scopes are the same across the classes, so no thicker crosshairs. Making it not an OHK will make all the useless snipers cry, making it an OHK will make all the real players cry. If the cons outweight the good, the only people who will use it are people who aren't going to hit light vehicles in the first place.

There's going to be one guy who brings up the subject of dinnerplates and that never ends well.

Balancing the damn thing would be ludicrous, it's not coming in a form that the community want's if at all. The babies want power, which is impossible to balance, seeing as the only power it can possibly have is OHK instead of 2HK. Everything else will be irrelevant to the guys on the edge of the map attempting to have a no-contribution contest.

The only weapon that comes close to what they want is the Zeller, and that's a whole other thing. It was the only ranged weapon that could destroy explosives, whereas all BAs in BF3 can destroy explosives. It could OHK light armor in the chest, but there are no armor choices in BF3.

If they do bring it back, it's going to be slightly worse (loading times, "unwieldlyness", or far better (damage) than, the M98B.

there isn't much point. to balance it they would have to make it almost identical to the M98B, which defeats the point in having it in the first place.

Precisely my point, there is nothing it can do that the M98B currently can do better IMO. UNLESS they made it semi automatic, THEN I can see where the butt hurt is going to come into play.

In terms of velocity the .338 Lapua Magnum beats it if I recall, what are they going to do? Make it do a tiny bit more damage? The M98 already does what 3/4 of your health anyway.

I honestly don't see the point.

if they made it semi-auto, they would either have to dump the damage making it yet another weak SA, or dump the fire-rate so that its pretty much at BA speed.

It wouldn't really affect me, but then again I don't snipe often. Never understood the hard-on some people have for a .50 cal.

It's a big dick syndrome. It's whats protrayed as "bad ass", that's why people want it. Semi auto I can imagine it having a slightly faster rate than a BA, but having a tremendous amount of recoil making follow up shots harder to make, hip fire would have to suck too in order to keep it from being spammed.

The balancing on this thing would be a logistical nightmare.

Make it identical stat-wsie to the M98, but give it the ability to disable light vehicles with one shot through the engine block? I don't even play BF anymore so I dunno.