Massive Nerf to Vehicle Radar

[almalino]

Soon announced:
- You need to have 3 people manning Sunderer to be able to spawn on it.
- You need to stay 1 meter close to ammo box to make it supply ammo to friendlies.
- You need to stay on top of spawn beacon to make it function as a spawn beacon.
- You need be around 2 meters around bouncing betty to make it trigger on enemies.

Reasoning:
Now it is effortles XP, kills etc grinding. Not ACCEPTABLE!!!

etc, etc, etc. Just kidding. I liked the old radar. I will survive without it but I will miss it.
I also think it was not abused and was not overused. But for some reason or another SOE decided to get rid of it.

[Momember]

As someone who abused this on my flash I'm glad they removed it. The radar on my lightening with anti inf, infra-red and min reload time however is still viable

[Rolfski]

Originally Posted by Varsam

The "reward" is exactly the same as it was before - free maphax. The only difference now is that it actually take effort.

Nope, the reward went from getting kills/XP in fun fights while you could just leave you Flash parked, to absolutely zero reward and even worse, you're forced out of the fight now because driving an unstealthy Flash in the open is officially suicide. This is just plain bad game design.

Originally Posted by Snipefrag

Or they are trying to make infiltrators more useful, their support capabilities are already under utilized. This change is part of carving out a niche for Infiltrators on the battlefield that doesn't just involve sneaking around with an SMG or sniping people.

Well, if that's the case what's the role of the new radar Flash then? I seriously can't think of a scenario now where I would drive around in this coffin besides getting from point A to B. It has become useless overnight.

[Carbon Copied]

I think as a trade off they should have changed the scout radar to ping enemy anti tank mines to bring it into more of a scout vehicle; detects enemies / mines whilst being driven then when you hop off the inf's are there to assist in enemy personnel detection with the darts.

[Varsam]

Originally Posted by Rolfski

Nope, the reward went from getting kills/XP in fun fights while you could just leave you Flash parked, to absolutely zero reward and even worse, you're forced out of the fight now because driving an unstealthy Flash in the open is officially suicide. This is just plain bad game design.

The reward is still there - for your team. People are just pissy about it now because they can't take advantage of it themselves, and THEY get nothing out of it, which sucks.

But that's not bad game design, that's balancing. Bad game design was making a risk-free no-cost map hack available to everyone for months, and then taking it away after everyone got used to it.

[typhaon]

Having a vehicle that you have to just go sit on in a dark corner to make use of its radar isn't good game design... duh... that's probably the worst game design.

^Nobody would be having fun doing that.

And the reason being - you simply can't drive an unstealthed flash around on the battlefield and expect to live more than half a second.

It's true - some organized outfits might have people willing to sacrifice their fun by going off and sitting in the dark corner - but you could tie any number of similarly powerful benefits to similarly unfun gameplay and that would still be true... Wouldn't make any of it good design.

I could see putting scout radar on a harasser and requiring it to be driven... though since it is very powerful, you'd need to have it as an option in the same slot as composite armor.

You could still play a harasser and be effective, but you wouldn't be able to maraud through enemy lines as easily - you'd have to play more of a perimeter role.

I really think some people are getting their undies in a bunch over nothing. I didn't see people saying it was absurd to make changes to the scout radar... just that the changes made were absurd.

2 different things.

[Rolfski]

Originally Posted by Varsam

The reward is still there - for your team. People are just pissy about it now because they can't take advantage of it themselves, and THEY get nothing out of it, which sucks.

But that's not bad game design, that's balancing. Bad game design was making a risk-free no-cost map hack available to everyone for months, and then taking it away after everyone got used to it.

That's incredibly bad game design actually. If you do not reward people for offering themselves up and staying on top of a well-hidden Flash that doesn't see them any participation in the fight, you're likely going to have trouble getting people volunteering for it.

Reward is everything when you want players to perform certain actions in a game and right now, sitting idle on top of a Flash has become the most unrewarded thing to do in this game overnight for 99% of the player base.

[Dragonskin]

Originally Posted by SternLX

Whoa. someone who gets it. Mr Dragonskin up here who thinks he knows best for everyone could learn a thing or two.

Sorry, didn't realize you fell into the crowd that needed rewards every time you fart and cough in a game. You know Infiltrators went a very long time without any reward for their radar darts at all.

So not only are you crying that you need to stay with your vehicle, but now you are upset that you don't get some minor exp while doing it... like that exp would ever make up for the fact that you aren't actually killing targets or capping points. 1 point cap... just switching the node from enemy faction to ally is worth 3 enemies killed while revealed by radar. 1 enemy killed is worth 6 enemies killed while reveled by radar at the absolute best... you would have to have 40-50 enemies revealed by radar and killed to even come close to equalling 1 high threat target kill.

So do you really understand what you are crying over?

[Fenrys]

Originally Posted by Momember

As someone who abused this on my flash I'm glad they removed it. The radar on my lightening with anti inf, infra-red and min reload time however is still viable

The fix feels quick and dirty, but I'm also glad they changed it.

Before the change, you could park a Radar Flash someplace then get back into your Smoke/Fire Supp. Lightning. You now need to give something up to get the same effect.

Originally Posted by Rolfski

Reward is everything when you want players to perform certain actions in a game and right now, sitting idle on top of a Flash has become the most unrewarded thing to do in this game overnight for 99% of the player base.

Less people using it means bigger psychological rewards for the players who do. IMO, watching the map turn purple is its own reward, and successfully herding cats by showing them where the mice are hiding feels like taking pressure off of me to personally stamp out every fire and fix every compromised generator. I love watching the dots and thinking, "yeah that red dot is totally screwed" when it gets rushed by XP hungry blue dots.