I will say that I do miss the commander aspect, but at the same time I don't know that most of the maps really fit the same model as they did in BF2. A lot more of the maps are closer together or even city maps. And things like dropping supplies and vehicles would be harder to do in these maps and the kits are so different that I don't know that it is necessary. So really it comes down to having someone tell you what to do and where to go and it was rare to find a commander that actually did that even in BF2.
So what did they do? They replaced it with better squad play. As you rank up, you gain abilities that massively boost your squad members. And the whole platoon concept and being able to directly join the game with your friends is pretty freakin cool. I think they also realized that most people that are playing with others are doing it over Mumble or some other avenue and the additional VOIP traffic over the game itself was maybe a performance hit.
The interface has improved with recent updates and overall I think it's better than BF2 by a long shot. I think the gameplay is vastly different from BF2 and there are actually more game modes to choose from. My only issue lately is that it seems like every server is stacked with almost exclusively high ranked players which means the competition is pretty fierce. There are less noobs to fuck with so the chance of dying more often goes up considerably. I still think it's a better game than BF2.