Is the online game play really that bad??

It was REALLY buggy at first but they've fixed almost every issue with their series of patches on the game. The only issue I have with the game now is that my kits don't save sometimes when I switch map packs and play on a server that's meant for a different
map pack.

You can change gadgets left to right by changing which slot theyre in, network smoothing is lag compensation set it to 0

Only fools rush in, armor is direct fire support

Online mode is awesome but it doesn't keep campaign save data.

It was semi-bad at first. I rarely have ANY issues when playing online. It's really a solid good time!