Face the facts: BF3 and FH2 cater to two different crowds. What Natty says is probably true for the former. Most likely not true for the latter.
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BF2 vanilla can has unlockz? I played that bunny-hopping supersoldier-fest all of five minutes before ragequitting and loading FH2, and never looked back.
Let's say: would any of you play IL-2 if you had to "unlock" turbocharger, methanol injection, cannons, rear view mirrors, everything? Sure as heck, at least I wouldn't. Well, the consolified travesty "IL-2 Birds of Prey" has a single-player "campaign" mode where you get more advanced planes as the war goes on, but even that still does not throw you right in the beginning into the middle of a full Geschwader of Me262's with most of your own gear disabled.
Now, getting bling-bling, not very advantageous but otherwise groovy equipment, virtual medals, getting to brag about your stats, that kind of "unlocks" I wholeheartedly approve. Getting something that gives you an unfair advantage? No.
If I play an online shooter with, I won't frakking want to lose because some aspie has sunk 1000+ hours into it and has mad gear, I want to lose because he has better skillz, it does not matter if he has sunk 1 or 10 or 1000 hours to acquire that skill. Funnily enough, both the above mentioned Counter-Strike (well, at least in the form I played it ages ago) and my other currently favourite online shooter (or mod) besides FH2, MechWarrior: Living Legends, have players start from scratch every time and earning their equipment through skill. Once they have proved their skill in the round, then they can get the mad gear to roflstomp everyone, which they deserve by then. (MWLL goes even further and does not allow you to retain any gear between maps!)
Right now, the "unlock" system(s) in COD and COD wannabes is about as fun as a MMO (which I avoid like plague) where level 80 grinders with all the best and exclusive items just wait to pounce on unsuspecting noobs, and that would be the entire content: no PvE, no dungeons, just that. At the very least any FPS trying a "persistent" system should have "tiers" (which MMO's reportedly have) - you would encounter players with similar level/gear/amount of perks/whatever.
Another example: I last played Elite about 20 years ago. Well, that game is strictly single-player, but it does have the "persistent stats" - your ship is intentionally crippled at the start and you must earn better equipment in RPG style. However, the enemies you are likely to encounter at the start are also very poorly equipped (unless you intentionally jump into an Anarchy system or glitch yourself into Witchspace to fight the Thargoids). In the present time, I found Oolite, an excellent remake. Now, while my skills were back after a few hours, my equipment was of course not. Fortunately, the other "players" (ie. AI-controlled ships) had not levelled up in the meanwhile and started out as poorly equipped - only skill mattered. However, if this had been a "persistent unlock" multiplayer game with no "tiers", everyone would have had military laser, military shield, energy bombs, and whatnot and pwn3d me to Riedquat and back.
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I won't even try to start to argue about "design", ie. making every game and map a "ghost train" or "rail shooter". At least the rail shooters of the 80's & early 90's (Operation Wolf, Operation Thunderbolt, and the like) didn't even pretend that they would have offered freedom of movement. I think the middle ground in "design" where I would like to stand on is somewhere between CODification and "sandbox". But whenever someone mentions weasel words like "channeling" I get nerd RAEG. I am addicted to FH2, yes, but I would still like to have much more FREEDOM! in many of its maps. However, since I'm not fond of the strict role-playing aspects of PR, I will keep on fueling my FH2 addiction and daydream about the day when most of OOB areas are opened for tactical movement. But Lords of Kobol forbid if retarded CODifications like "coaxial MG is now an unlock" are ever introduced into FH2. (But by the power of Grayskull, even in that case, I won't ever get into RO/RO2: I'm not that desperate.)
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tl;dr: Please alert me when there is a mod for FH3 that unlocks EVERYTHING, removes "wanker panting" (thanks to a certain Finnish game journalist for this term) regeneration especially from vehicles, allows as many players as the engine will support (128 at least, maybe even more?) on a proper PC (unlike on memory-impaired consoles), actually gives useful ordnance to the jets, makes infantry die horribly when hit with a 30mm cannon, allows to run the game without starting Origin to launch a website from which to launch the game, etc.