Gameplay is unbalanced and contradictory (time to kill, reloads, movement speed)

To have a good understanding of the topic, I will compare my observations with the experience provided by the first Insurgency game:
There is only one type of ammo in IS compared with the original that had the option to take armour piercing ammo.
Both games proposes light and heavy armour.
Regular ammo: In the original, you would need half a magazine to take down a target with heavy armour
In IS you need a quarter magazine.
Armour piercing ammo: In the original, you would need less than 5 bullets to take down a target with heavy armour.

Thus, I always took AP ammo in the original, why take the risk?
So I understand they removed the option in IS and welcome it. why keep an option that is a requirement?
That aside, I have mixed feeling about the time to kill in IS. Being only able to do 2-3 kills per clip max makes you reload quite often. This slows the gameplay and wouldn't be a problem in the original game. But in IS players have very high movement speed, making this time to kill and the need to reload often a very frustrating experience!

If you cannot kill fast and get stuck reloading very often, the gameplay should be slow and methodical in order to have a tone of gameplay that works and flows well.
On the contrary, if players movement are very fast and explosive, the gameplay should be fast and brutal. So time to kill should be short and reloads fast in order to keep the game flowing.

But IS does a bit of both, giving us two very distinct gameplay experience that contradict each others and lessen the experience as a whole. On one hand, we have the tactical and thought out firefight, which is slow and does not allow to make bold moves. On the other hand, we have this lightning war where players need to use their incredible speed to make bold moves and get the upper hand.

I think NWI needs to understand what they want to accomplish, what is the core of Insurgency Sandstorm.
You can give us an experience that resemble the original game with a slow, tactical gameplay. This would probably please the fans and your established clientele while maybe not having good prospects on the larger market.
Or you can try this new formula of fast paced, brutal action on very short matches. That might hurt your fans and established clientele while probably having better prospects on the larger market.
But you can not do a bit of both! This will hurt everyone and should translate in poor sales after launch all across the board.

That pretty much sums up my experience with the beta...I only played the Coop. Thanks for posting this.

Agreed, slowing down the player speed even a little would not be such a huge boner killer for your competitive market you want to invest into. Competitive is in the heart not in the mechanic, so don't CS:GO yourself, you can be your very own creation! You already are, following all you different guys since even Underhell, you've always known what your aim was for insurgency.