F2P shooters will always be infested with cheaters.

THAT'S RIGHT SCOTTY! WE BETTER RAMP UP OUR JOKES SO THEY LAND ON THE MONEY, JUST LIKE OUR CONTESTANTS!

Then what you're looking for is roughly Squad.

Made by a team that originated as the mod developers behind Project Reality for BF2.

Currently though, it is going through a bit of an awkward phase as they are trying to transition from UE4 to UE5... but the UE4 version is still pretty solid.

Squad has less of an arcady gameplay style to it than BF proper, more milsim or milsim lite, the gameplay systems themselves reward and revolve more around being in a squad...

...fancier kit loadouts are limited for a whole team, takes multiple people to fully operate a tank or IFV, you actually have to be a pilot or crewman class to fly or drive something more conplex than basically a truck, lower TTK as weapon damages are more realistic, but also more fleshed out medical system...

... there are more gamemodes, many of which revolve much more around logistics and setting u0 and defending FOBs, you got AAS which roughly simulates a frontline by preventing the sort of willy nilly flag backcapping from BF games... flags are grouped together in sort of layers, and you can't capture any flag thats more than one layer away from the layer your team currently has...

Whole lotta gameplay tweaks, vehicles tend to respawn more slowly and players respawn more slowly, but anyway yeah, its a sort of hypothetical roughly modern era war setting, tons of factions.

Also I think there is a Starwars themed mod for it lol, there's ww2 mods for it, etc.

...

EDIT: As strongarm mentions, Hell Let Loose and the Arma series are also good choices, I am just biased because I was once part of the Project Reality team, way way back, hehehe.

Have you tried the milsims like Hell Let Loose, Squad or the Arma series?

They definitely play differently, but once you get into the groove I find them more rewarding.

It definitely doesn't play like fortnite, that's for sure.

It's not meant to be a superior battlefield btw. It just has old battlefield team members making it, so things like the gunplay, destruction, class structure and game balance are similar in style (though not 1-1)

The setting is that you're playing in a video game, so things aren't realistic, that's for sure. It's not supposed to be though. The issue with the crazy skins in CoD is that they're portraying themselves as a "hardcore realistic military shooter", but then you have the American Dad characters running around.

The Finals being not realistic allows them to do so much, from level design to mechanics. It does not play like Battlefield at all, but it does have better destruction than it's ever had. The gameplay is that of a fast paced movement shooter, and it's very cerebral, with a lot of ways to outplay your enemy and use them and the environment to your advantage. Even without the reaction time and skill of some people, you can play smarter and win.

Thanks for the recommendation, Mr. The Finals

Embark has made a statement I think in 7.6 or 7.5 patch notes, that even though they will not make a native version of The Finals on Linux, they still make sure this game will work on Linux, even once they switch anti-cheats.

On Discord (I know I know yuck) they said they've been cooperating with Codeweavers since Season 5, iirc as consulting to prevent making changes which would break the game on Linux.

There were two updates (iirc 5.12 and 6.9) which did break the game, but those got fixed within 24 hours.

IIRC it broke for like a week maybe for me since they added Linux support, but it's been very solid on Linux for me. Give it another shot. It'll probably work.