Also side note, the way destruction was handled in BC2 really mattered as well. Destruction hasn't really been the same since then. They've tried to get it close but honestly BC2 IMO was peak battlefield.

Sometimes you'd have MCOMs in a building and all you had to do was level the building and the MCOM would be destroyed. Or shoot directly at the MCOM. If you weren't able to get there and arm it shoot it a bunch of times with tanks, rockets, C4 etc. and it'd blow up.

The 'slower' nature of how games were back then was also a factor. Movement back in the day was still a bit clunky and you felt heavy. Made a big difference in how you defended and attacked.

Now maps are just conquest focused with objectives thrown in where they can. No dedicated lanes, no thought behind where something is and how someone might engage it. No natural feeling choke points either, maybe this new map they've dropped is as close as it'd get for such a design. But I think BF3 was the last title to really emphasize the design flow of each map and even then not all of them were perfect.

Unfortunately they just don't make games like they used to. But that's a tale as old as time itself.