I get it. Teamkillers were a huge problem in any hardcore game mode. Probably the biggest problem. But forcing ricochet on every hardcore game mode destroys what hardcore was even created to be in the first place.

Hardcore mode was created to be a more lifelike combat experience that forced players to more accurately take into account the consequences of their actions. The key differences it used to accomplish this were to increase the bullet damage to more closely mimic real life bullet damage, remove the heads up display and to implement firendly fire. While the increased bullet damage and lack of a hud remain features of hardcore, and still do make the consequences of gameplay choices more profound than in regular game modes, the key feature of hardcore was certainly friendly fire.

Of course, the gameplay mechanic most ripe for abuse is also most certainly friendly fire. Richochet is not the answer to this problem.  No matter what you do in a hardcore ricochet game, you cannot kill another teammate, except (bizarrely) by letting that teammate shoot at you. By forcing ricochet, IW has completely removed the gameplay mechanic it was trying to fix, making it impossible to exploit, while still punishing players for actions that would have exploited the mechanic in the past, but now cannot.

This isn't even hardcore mode anymore, it's something completely different, and it punishes you for playing it.

Furthermore it creates more problems where previously they didn't exist. If a teammate gets killed somehow by one of your bouncing bettys or claymores, you die instead, even though you had no control over the situation at all. This leads to you randomly dying at any point on the map because of a chance "death" of your teammate even though you didn't actually "kill" him, and only for the reason that you were the one who happened to put that claymore or betty on the gound.

In gamemodes like search and destroy, where you only have one life, ricochet makes a lot more sense, as teamkills in this instance aren't really punishable by a three strikes policy or a timed respawn policy, since it only takes one instance of teamkilling to ruin the match. In most other gamemodes, its a different scenario, and thus it demands a different approach to moderation.