I agree with you. Honestly, I dislike the entire concept of "unlocking" anything that affects gameplay in a competitive multiplayer game. All of these "progression" mechanics were imported from RPGs, where increased stats compensate for the fact that there's no other way to tell the difference between a seasoned master and a complete newbie telling the game to "attack."

Hell, people played fun games with no "progression" for decades. You didn't have to "give me a reason" to play Quake. I did it because it was fucking fun. I think it's pathetic that people need a Skinner box attached to a game to keep playing it.

That said, BF4's unlocks are pretty inoffensive. If you play a class, you will unlock everything for that class within a couple hours. Vehicles can be harder, but only because it can be hard to get time in the more desirable vehicles, and it's obviously hard to beat some multi-thousand-hour Little Bird god in a duel if you're just trying to unlock shit.

I still think it's the best shooter that can reasonably still be considered "modern" in 2017. It looks fucking great, all things considered. It plays amazingly (like CS:GO-caliber netcode, which was a massive fucking achievement for DICE LA, and especially amazing given how bad the game was at launch). It goes on sale for basically nothing, periodically. There are still 10k+ people playing it most of the time. It's the best balance of "alive" and "good" that you're likely to find if you don't want to play CS for whatever reason.