Seems like you hear a lot of people say they are glad being able to spot enemies is gone because it was “easy mode”. Yet we also hear (on these forums) that it is almost impossible to see enemies on BF V maps. I think DICE attempted to fix that issue, but wasn’t spotting better?
Someone (JFrags) did a video where he laid down on Devastation
and watched (without engaging the enemy) while enemy players ran right past him without seeing him. This wouldn’t be such an issue if spotting were brought back.
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Note: I know in a perfect world, everyone would wear a headset and communicate with voice (ie: “there is a scout/recon on top of the shed at Flag C”) but we know this isn’t the case, and with console, comms are limited to your squad only, whereas on PC, one can communicate via text, to the whole TEAM (I think even enemies can see everything typed). Plus, on console, the time it would take to type something would be useless. This is why spotting, in my opinion, is necessary in future BF games.
What are your thoughts on these conflicting ideas? “I can’t see anyone in BF V!!” or “Spotting was easy-mode, glad it’s gone.”
Even without spotting in previous games it was easier to see character models against the environments.
It is different in BFV because there’s been changes to how the game is rendered. Even if everyone in your squad had a head set it wouldn’t make much difference, as illustrated by the jackfrags video.
Spotting is a good solution for a “normal mode” but I’m not sure it would work in BFV or go down well since there audience playing it are used to the game being a certain way after all these months.
If they introduced a “Normal mode” with spotting would enough people play it? Who knows?
I never really had an issue with visibility but appreciate lots of other people did so it needed attention.
My two cents on spotting is that removing spotting was the best move they made and I was very sceptical before bfv released. I was surprised by how much more I enjoyed it and am now totally converted.
Imo, less spotting the better. The icon that comes up when you press spotting button is enough. About the visibility, all I’ve seen people complaining about is just blending in which is the whole point of uniforms. So I don’t have a problem with that either.
All it takes is one flare. Then JackFrags would’ve been spotted on both the minimap and in 3D space. Use flares.
When I go back to BF1, I miss the ability to spot a position. If I see someone go behind cover, I can’t spot them there, and I can’t notify my teammates that there is a threat.
On bf1 spotting was (at least initially) was merged so you had to be very accurate where you were trying to spot, along with having a cool down. It seemed a lot more fair than the bf4 spot spam design.
But BF1 also provided the players with the visual tools to help locate enemies via highly visible tracers, excellent sound design, better visibility, bright muzzle flashes etc.
It was a mistake in BFV to reduce those tools for players while also reducing visibility.
Even after 2 visibility patches I still get killed by people who were completely in my field of view with 20-30m. The only thing I’ve been able to do is switch from my 4k monitor down to my 1080p which helps a LOT. But it’s irritating to have to do that since BF is intended to be a graphically beautiful game.
I can see people okay in BFV at this point, always largely could except for specific points on maps. I still want 3D spotting back because it makes teams less mindless. Taking away spotting certainly hasn’t helped the zerg problem that emerged in BF1, it’s frigging worse then ever.
The teamplay in BFV is absolutely terrible, and the near total inability to communicate information outside of the (smaller) squads is a factor in that. The still completely broken sound and damage direction indictators of course don’t help that either.
Meanwhile flanking… any advantage no spotting has for that has been rendered irrelevant by chronically poor map design and poor vehicle mechanics (why are 3 towed weapons in my uncap but the game wont spawn a transport? ect…). Flanking on foot takes so long it’s basically not a useful use of time on most maps.
Basically nerfing spotting on it’s own might not be world ending for teamplay, but no spotting plus all the other changes has just made the game dumber, and people play it dumber then ever as a result. Everything DICE had done for years to mitigate the basic problems of a 64 player shooter was reversed and replaced with nothing. The game is more team death match then ever, and I think it no surprise that this goes badly.
The next game needs to throw a lot of this stuff out, bring a lot of stuff back, starting with bigger squads, and certainly, I would be open to other entirely new ideas, but I never see any suggested.
I don’t think the lack of spotting has much to do with the visibility issues in BFV. You can play BF1 with no HUD and have no issues with visibility outside of certain dynamic weather situations or areas with lots of dust or smoke in the environment. Visibility can be improved dramatically while also leaving spotting as it is now in BFV. There’s far too much environmental detail; rubble, rocks, trees, grass, bushes, snow, etc and the lighting makes it difficult to see as well compared to previous games.
I can see where you are coming from (pun intended) like “How can I spot someone if I cannot see them in the first place?”
But, on the other hand, maybe you cannot see them, but perhaps someone else did and spotted them, so instead of not seeing them laying there in the rubble, this time you see them because someone communicated that to you.
So wile these may seem like different issues, they are loosely connected.
Personally I don’t care either way it goes, spotting is great for kill farming no spotting is great for flanking and kill farming. As I have said many times I have zero issue with visibility on a 60" 4k TV with a pro. I hooked up my standard ps4 to same TV and it was terrible though, so won’t be trying that again.
There are benefits with both systems (spotting) but it just doesn’t seem to me like a lot of people think that way.
I don’t have too many issues with visibility now for the most part (don’t have a 4K TV). There are some map areas which catch me out still, where I just can’t see the enemy at all, but that could be my eyes. It is a much talked about topic though and I have some friends with Xbox X consoles and 4K TVs who do seem to find visibility to be poor.
This is what I was meaning by Marmite though - some people hate the spotting system in V and some love it, and some hate the visibility while others feel it’s fine. Maybe it was a poor analogy.
As previously said, it was easier to make out enemies from the terrain even without spotting in past titles.
I think it would be worth if when the private servers come around they add an option to return Q spotting as a custom option (aka not default).
This could serve as a good experiment to get data from as well as to see how people feel about it
I liked the old spotting system more to be honest. I know that the dots above enemies head made the game look way more casual however it made the game fun as well, especially since spotting really had an impact. In Battlefield 5 I rarely see allied players spotting anything. Spotting has almost completely disappeared from the game and I think that is a big loss since spotting used to be the most important aspect in terms of teamwork. Battlefield 5 is the game players are least dependent on teamwork in my opinion. Also the dot above the head was often quite helpful in areas where visibility was quite limited. So in my opinion there is definitely a cohesion between visibility and spotting. Nowadays every player does their own thing, spotting was at least some kind of teamplay.
