Beyond the Wire is a solid game with room for improvement.
The Second World War is now boring and worn out, because even if something new appears - it is always the Western Front 1944/1945 from the point of view of the Western Allies or the Eastern Front after Stalingrad from the point of view of the Russians. And a small BFV War story does not change this trend. Unused, on the other hand, is the First World War. BF 1 was quite ok, but more of a modern shooter with a WW1 skin.
Beyond the Wire on the other hand creates a different feeling compared to modern or WW2 themed shooters. It pretty much feels like a slaughterhouse - you assault either a bottleneck or a hard to defend position and die, respawn, attack die - and so on.
Nevertheless, it feels not necissarily bad, as succesfully coordinated attacks that result in a point being captured or even the match being won are very satisfying.
But there's room for improvement. To create a really immersive WW1 feeling, there must be more people running around an dying. And the respawns take too long and are too far away from where the action is, so you mostly run alone or with one or two mates.
WW1 became sadly famous for its wave attacks, in which hundrets and thousands of soldiers ran into the machine gun fire of the enemy side. My proposal would be, that each player in a squad has 4 to 5 ai team mates, based on which class they select. If you die, you can select one of this ai partners until all of them are dead and you have to respawn in the trench.
This would result in more intense combat situations with an immersive amount of soldiers. The respawn system in the first instance could work similar to Arma 3, where you have a list of ais marked as "playable" in your group with the role assigned in brackets where you can select one ai from the list and continue.
This way, you could also add more historic accuracy in terms of uniforms and weapons. Playing in a specific unit skin wouldn't alienate single players from the others as there would be 6 units dressed the same way. On the other hand, the devs could distribute weapons and gear more accurate. A German smg squad would have to MP-18 riflemen, two soldiers carrying ammunition and one or two regular riflemen. This also would allow players to play the weapon they want as even "special" weapons like submachineguns would be "balanced" by ai mates.
Of course this would require some work, but solve Beyond the Wire's vicious circle: right now, there are too few players, so matches don't feel immersive, what results in less people playing the game. With improvements as descibed above, even a match with 10 players would have 50 "humans" involved, what would result in immersion. And matches with 50 players would have 250 "humans". Games like "Battle Cry of Freedom" prove it's possible.
For my personal taste, I would love to see a third person option. Games like Arma 3 prove it only makes a realistic shooter better, and this way one could also enjoy seeing the own character. I would also love to see graphical improvements, even though the current graphics are already well done.
Full server matches are fun, yet they only come together very rarely.
