I personally don't like trading my early picks unless it's for something absolutely fucking stupid. There's only 42 players that will be kept, so having 5+ keeper worthy players on your roster does no good if you can't offload them. Which is why I'm wondering wtf Staggs is doing unless he has a...
At least we got Operation Firestorm, one of my favorites from BF3. I think that and Tehran Highway were my favs from BF3.
Battlefield is the one franchise I don't mind them re-using maps for
I never saw the appeal of Bubba, always thought he was just a try hard loud mouth. Caveat -- this is when he was on 98 Rock in Tampa in the 90s, never kept up with him past that.
Dedicated servers with admins and whatnot also help. Also a server browser. You know, stuff that Valve mastered 25 years ago with Half-Life. Probably other games before that but HL was the first shooter I really played online.