Feedback on Spotting for Higby

[Canaris]

as others have said the line of sight spotting we have now is fine and works well, the only thing I find strange is that they coded it so enemies can hear you when spotting, it should be faction private.

[Kerrec]

I've put in several hundred hours into BF3, and I spot reflexively. I've had many situations in PS2 where I'm trying to position myself behind some enemies that don't know I'm there so I can take out a medic first, or get by something I can use as cover before I open fire. Yet I stupidly and automatically spot them, alerting them to their danger. Spotting has a drawback, and I wholeheartedly approve of that. I've also been in situations where I'm pinned or being pursued by something I can't handle on my own, like a MAX. They already know I'm there, so my character yelling out "Enemy MAX spotted" is irrelevant. But by doing so, friendly forces, not necessarily in my squad or platoon, can get me out of a bad predicament. So spotting has its uses.

What I don't like, is vehicles being able to spot from far away and ligthing up a whole bunch of doritos so they can use their long range/large splash damage weapons to farm. Spotting from long range, especially in a vehicle, overpowers them.

What I would change:

1) Implement a minimum range to be able to spot.
2) Give some class, or all classes, the ability to cert into a tree that increases this minimum range, if they want it. This cert tree would not apply while in a vehicle. Maybe give Infiltrators new scopes that allow them the ability to spot over very long distances.
3) I like the idea above that enemies can only be spotted at night by people ADS with NV/Thermal scopes.
4) I also like the idea that the whole ability to spot is linked to a facility that can be denied to my enemies.

In my eyes, this would vastly improve the HE vehicle spam problem. When a vehicle doesn't even know WHERE to shoot because he can't just spam Q, then a large portion of the air game can be balanced without nerfing weapons or AA vs. Air balance. Libs especially would become precision tools for organized play, instead of farming platforms.

[Legolas]

If makes the game less fun for me, turning PS2 into a game of "shoot the red triangles".

It feel like a poor man's radar hack.

[typhaon]

Spotting is fine - like others have said, just kill the audio that your enemy can hear.

[DaPope]

Originally Posted by SGTalon

I would love to increase the capabilities of the 3D spotting system through Certs.

How about a cert that gives up shield generator for the ability to jam or trick the enemy HUD. Each level removes one more item, Range, Health, the Dorito color, the whole Dorito, and Stealth to Infrared.

Conversely, you can have a Cert that Counters this skill tree. SO if you are really interested in combatting the whole 3D spot thing you can invest in it with a trade off from your armor levels.

SO please before deciding to remove features from the game that actually contribute to the great gameplay, think about both sides.

I really hate that so many people think that the solution to a perceived problem is remove it!!

Outstanding post!

Personally for me any game that doesn't have a system of spotting enemies is severly handicapped. It allows such a great amount of coordination and communication. The individual can now highlight targets for the entire population. It is also a great way for infantry to be able to highlight armor and get support.

This is one of the best tools in the game and something I think will have a major negitive impact if removed.

In the previous posts I think people made some great points about adding Certs that would enhance your spotting and certs that could be use to counter spotting.

[Towe]

Imo 2 sec cooldown and its fixed...

[Aaron]

Originally Posted by basti

Its broken, completly.

Im just running around, always pressing Q. There is no downside, no reason not to spam Q all the time.

Yup, pretty much this. I Q spam ridges and use it for night vision when I can't see enemies. Just press Q and I've put a tacking beacon on them. Needs a major change or needs to go.

[Chaff]

To those that accept it or even like it - I essentially concur.

To those that don't, I am sorry. I see it as a necessary evil. Like the guy who has photoned his own empire sundy by mistake. Without doritos, we'd be shooting in the dark. Or, we'd spend an inordinate amount of time getting close enough to "see" someones uni.
Without spotting, a high percentage of us would be shooting the wrong empire far too often. THAT would NOT be better gameplay.
I like the guys idea to add certs to counter getting dorito'd.

[Kerrec]

Originally Posted by Chaff

To those that accept it or even like it - I essentially concur.

To those that don't, I am sorry. I see it as a necessary evil. Like the guy who has photoned his own empire sundy by mistake. Without doritos, we'd be shooting in the dark. Or, we'd spend an inordinate amount of time getting close enough to "see" someones uni.
Without spotting, a high percentage of us would be shooting the wrong empire far too often. THAT would NOT be better gameplay.
I like the guys idea to add certs to counter getting dorito'd.

Should always be able to see your factions soldiers on the field. That makes sense. That way you can be sure that if it moves and isn't friendly, it's an enemy.

The thing is, if you're way up in the sky and can't SEE an enemy, spotting in a general area shouldn't light him up and establish a target for you to shoot at. In that respect, spotting is game breaking.

[SGTalon]

Originally Posted by typhaon

Spotting is fine - like others have said, just kill the audio that your enemy can hear.

The audio is the tradeoff for teh spotting ability. Everything has a trade off in PS2 by design. You want something that has a desired effect, you have to give something else up. I think it is a good way to balance it. Sure you can put target information on a guy but now people know you are right in that room where you were hiding.

I don't really see a need to change it from the way it is.

[Chaff]

Why cant a guy in air share intel to, or from, the ground ? PS2 takes place in the future. Shared intel-communication would seem to be a no-brainer. Eventually, we must learn to duck-and-cover quicker. Air gets easily spotted. WHen infantry is spotted, they have the tools to share that info. ALL three empires have the SAME ABILITY. We're all spotting each other. How can this be imbalanced ?
When air moves in for easy kills, it's time to look to nearest terminal to pull or equip some sort of AA counter(s). If the opposing forces numbers are too large to overcome - sucks for you. Sometimes we pown, Sometimes we get powned.

[Soothsayer]

Spotting is good. Eliminating the call out that enemies can hear would not be good, that's one of the main balances against it being totally without risk.

I use it against enemies but I also use it to identify whether something is friendly.

I don't think Sunrock is just aggressively spouting off, he's made valid points.

I'd say if you wanted to make spotting have a cost you could have the spotter get the dorito as well. Reciprocity. I dunno though, maybe not such a great idea.

[BlaxicanX]

Some of the exaggerating going on in this thread is ridiculous.

It's so incredibly easy to fix spotting that it being removed is just a knee-jerk reaction.

How to fix spotting

1. In order to spot a target, the target must take up X% of the spotter's cross-hairs. That way, the further away an object is, the harder it is to spot. It also means that you can't spot objects you can't see. Since vehicles are much bigger than infantry, it also means that they would be easier to spot from a distance, which is logical.

How hard is this to implement? Shouldn't be too difficult. I'm no expert in programming, but an example of the trigger would be "Is target filling 30% of retical? Yes, spot. No, don't spot."

2. Make it so that the only people (and vehicles) who can spot during the night-cycle are people using NV scopes (must be ADS in order to spot with one) and people with flash-lights. It's night, it's darkness. This should be the prime opportunity go sneaking around and such. When it's night time I want to feel like someone might pop out at any moment.

How hard is this to implement?Not hard at all. The only difficult aspect I guess would be that you should be able to spot as normal indoors, since there's lighting. In that case, I guess that the same coding that prevents Sunderers from deploying within X distance from other sunderers or buildings could be used so that you can spot targets so long as they're within X distance of a light-source (or building, for simplicity).

3. Remove all the extra information you get from spotting, and have the dorito break if you lose LoS to the spotted object. There's no logical reason for why you can tell how many people are inside a sunderer just by looking at it. Similarly, its health bar shouldn't pop up unless you're aiming directly at it with your targeting reticule. When an object is spotted, only the dorito above it's head should be displayed, and the type/class should be called out.

The dorito should follow the target as it moves, for the sake of simplicity (if the dorito only hovered over where the object was last seem, you'd run into the problem of there being 50 dorito's in the air after 12 people spot the same guy), but that marker should disappear or simply not appear to anyone who doesn't have, or loses, direct LoS to the spotted target.

How hard is this to implement? Not hard at all.

4. Tanks (Sunderers count under this category) can only spot other vehicles, infantry and aircraft can spot everything. Aircraft spamming the spot function is already solved by solution #1 above- they'll be moving too fast, and will be too far away most of the time, to be able to spot infantry reliably, but should have no problem with spotting vehicles, which makes sense. Aircraft are designed to provide overwatch, so while they may not be able to spot as well as infantry, they shouldn't be gimped entirely. For tanks, there is no reason for them to be able to spot infantry. You already have infantry on the ground to spot and fight infantry, tanks are supposed to rely on infantry for situational awareness, and focus primarily on bombarding enemy positions and destroying other tanks. Preventing tanks from being able to spot infantry creates a more balanced synergy between them and infantry, forcing the tank to rely on infantry to spot threats and the like.

How hard is this to implement into the game? Not very hard at all.

- - - - -

So there you have it. Four (relatively) simple solutions toward making the spot-function balanced, but still useful.

[Flisher]

Here are some fact before I give my opinion:
-Highly unreliable Reason #1: pressing Q on a target wont spot it most of the time anyway
-Highly unreliable Reason #2: pressing Q on a target to far to display is HP usually don't work.
-Easily abusable/explotable for macroer
-Impractical for most person to use with the default binding
-Can spot or still see spot trough smoke!

My opinion? I beleive spotting should be ingame, but the current state make it unreliable and impractical.

Possible solution:
Class specific?
Vehicule specific (option on certains guns, ie: support spotter sundy...)
Tool specific (Binocular with scalable zoom) (grenade replacement, etc)
Visible when holding it (remember what holding Q did in the tech test, it was following the target while making a big circle around it for the user who did it...)

[coconut]

I like how the game does spotting, but two points should be improved:
1. [BUG?] If I have something in my sights, I should be able to spot it. Too often, when playing as an infiltrator with a high magnification scope, nothing happens when I press Q while aiming at a vehicle that's filling a significant part of my scope.
2. [OP] You shouldn't be able to light up an entire hill side or rock by aiming in the general direction and pressing Q. Spotting should not give new information to the spotter, it should be used solely for communicating known enemy positions to the rest of the team.

A specific equipment (a scanner) could be introduced to be able to reveal enemy positions without aiming precisely. Variants of this device would exist for ESFs and infiltrators (replacing the dart gun).