I'll start defining the use requirements here. You can define the problem as you see it yourself in a similar or your own matter.
DRIVER
The things a DRIVER needs to do (main jobs and sub jobs):
- Keep vehicle safe
- Plan route
- Route to battlefield (approach and entry)
- Route on battlefield (combat)
- Route from battlefield (escape and exit)
- Evade enemy fire, friendlies and obstacles
- Control speed
- Control direction
- Create appropriate firing angles for gunners
The information a DRIVER needs to do this:
- Terrain layout
- Obstacles (trees, units, rocks, ravines, walls, etc)
- Relevant distances
- Terrain gradient
- Potential cover
- Enemy locations
- Angles of own guns
The TANK COMMANDER must determine what the tankcrew should prioritise and do:
- Which enemy is attacking (Can it be ignored? Must its fire be evaded?)
- Which enemy is being attacked (what are the gunners doing)
- Which enemy should be attacked (priority)
The TANK COMMANDER needs:
- Enemy health status
- Enemy locations
- Potential cover
The two roles pretty much overlap.
The GUNNER must:
- Prioritise enemy
- Determine unit strength and TTK
- Aim for enemy('s weakspots)
- Control the turret (yaw angle)
- Control the barrel (pitch angle)
- Determine distance to enemy (targeting/leading)
- Determine height with respect to enemy (targeting/leading)
- Determine speed of enemy (leading/leading)
- Compensate for terrain (current and future angles, bumps in the road, etc)
- Control cone of fire
- Concentrate on keeping aim steady
- Determine appropriate ammo
- Reload
The view direction of the gunner can and will be up to 180 degrees to the driving direction, which means the two are mutualy exclusive. Because of the gunner role, you very often will see the vehicle come to a dead stop right before firing. This makes gameplay less dynamic and the tanks (in an incredibly volatile environment) very easy targets as they would need to accelerate to top speed time and again. This would significantly hinder the experience of tank driving. The Lightning in PS1 was a good example of this. It could be fun yes, but hilariously bad as well and especially if a unit dies fast (which so far we've seen in PS2 is the case due to wanting to up the speed of gameplay), standing still is not exactly something you wish to enforce. In fact, players will be forced to make the logistical path to the vehicle term more often as their tanks would blow up continuously.
That won't make them enjoy the game itself more, that just frustrates and slows down gameplay and would miss the point entirely.
The GUNNER role is IMO far too preoccupied with his own roles which barely overlap with the DRIVER's role. A first person view does not allow the gunner to orientate himself well as the turret's rotation speed would severely restrict their situational awareness capacity.
Which is actually why a tank has the Commander's Cupola on top of the turret, which provides a 360 view. And why even more often a commander (unless in danger), sticks out of the tank. You need to know what's going on before you can make a decision!
The tunnel (gunbarrel) vision proposed by those that want to remove third person would throw tank combat in PS2 back to the Super NES Battle Tank period. In fact, views would not have been so restricted since WWI!
Would you for instance want to attract players who have played World of Tanks, then you would immediately alienate them as they'd perceive the tank combat as a significantly sub-par and underdeveloped element of the game. THAT is a major problem. Perhaps not for infantry, but ffs, infantry gets a jetpack and C4 to instantly blow up medium battle tanks. How gimped do you want tanks to be? And how is gimped fun?
If you want to make gameplay more even for infantry, how about instead of nerfing ground vehicles (who are handicapped already in comparison to aircraft) and keep them from being played properly, you create appropriate terrain with plentiful actual cover for infantry? How about you create areas in which driving and flying is very hard due to the obstacles present?
The terrain we've seen in Alpha is very open. Even the base "interior" is open because almost every room we've seen is in direct connection to the outside. I don't think that aside from the walls, it's a very infantry friendly layout. Perhaps infantry should focus on cover and ambush friendly environments, rather than reducing the fun you can have with other units to compensate for whatever.
L O L.
Linear Mode
