Yeah css is still ahead in gunplay, but they made these wonky floaty running animations that make it hard to read if someone is changing direction or not, and the headshot animation is less immediate too.
It's still better than everything else but cs as you said, but it's a step back nonetheless.
Sometimes realism just has to take a backseat to gameplay.
CSS kind of forgot that, and most other shooters never came to that realisation in the first place.
If you can't tell within 2 frames that you killed someone, then start over.
If you can't tell wether you hit someone or not JUST based from weapon behavior (for all the recoil and spread cs has, it's impressive that you can always tell when you play it right) then you should also be looking at your priorities as a dev.
The thing is, other developers have just given up on chasing that rare combination of netcode, feedback, animation and hit detection and weapon behaviour.
Games like sofII back in the day still tried, failed miserably and looked bad in comparison.
Now they just take the realism angle and forgo gameplay as a priority alltogether.
Dice was never good at gunplay (sorry edited, wrong word) to begin with, as long as conquest is as good as in 1942 I can live with it, but I still dream of one day getting proper feedback and gunplay in a bf game.
For me bf 3 is going to hinge on vehicle physics and sandbox gameplay or a lack thereof.
For infantry only shooters it's unforgivable though.