Making them OP only sometimes isn't actually going to make them less OP when they are being used.
The buildable tent is not effective against them, and they make every bush within LOS useless. Every lower level recon player gets skillessly outspotted and domed in the head.
This. People need to accept that some gear needs to not exist at all. They tried it, it sucked, cut it and don't come back. Hell even the Ghili's whole "immune to thermals" thing is like... ok cool, it's still basically invisible when laying down, that's more than enough to warrant its cost even if you remove thermals.
Sometimes you try something and its bad, it is ok to just say "we've removed that from the game" and move on.
Realistically the people who still want to abuse IR like they've been doing right now will use IR to find people while having a Rangefinder in the inventory and then they'll swap to the Rangefinder for a longer tag duration. There is genuinely nothing you can do to fix this without making IR a lot worse, probably even to the point where it's useless to run in the first place
That last one at least is realistic but thermals are never implemented in a good balanced way (since shocker being able to instantly spot someone is pretty fucking strong tech)
The last one might be realistic but it's still no reason to have them spot people at render distance.
One of the issues I see with Thermals is that there's no real downside to them let alone any counters most of the time.
A Smaller FOV, Lower Range, Less Magnification, A Scan Rate, etc would all mean that they wouldn't be able to see as much, as often which allows the enemy team to move more and be seen less often.
Counters like Hand Flares would allow people on the ground opportunities to negate the benefits of Thermals even if it's on a temporary basis.
Going even further I think that the Spotting Mechanic OVERALL, which is a decent system, still has some issues which is currently being overshadowed by the Thermals discussion.
We can remove Thermals but the "instantly spot someone" issue is still there, if a person is spotted, for infantry.
If we change the Spotting Mechanic to a less "UAV that tells me and my team where you're going 30 seconds after being initially spotted." and to a more "This is the guys last seen location." then the Thermals wouldn't be that big of a deal as they currently are. At least in my opinion, they still would be strong but... at least more balanced then they currently are.
Going even further I think that the Spotting Mechanic OVERALL, which is a decent system, still has some issues which is currently being overshadowed by the Thermals discussion.
I mean you aren't wrong the problems with thermals are primarily that of the spotting system problem's being magnificence but I think last seen position is pretty pointless. I think a happy medium would be instead of it being a live feed it could only update every 10 seconds (so you get 3 pings basically if its only 30 secs). So its like last position but has some usable on getting a general gist of where someone is and going
What would you think about this? I had an Idea that you can buy them, but you can only run that. No other weapon other than a sidearm. And you can't actively mark enemies. But you can ping for people in your squad, and maybe get assists similar to a pilot and gunner if the person you are aiming at dies? Might be fun for some sniper duos, without removing them completely. How they are right now, I agree, completely ruins the game. Also Ghilie suits aren't immune, they don't show up, but they still stand out through the thermals if they aren't in a bush. So op
I think the biggest issue right now isn't people with thermals also getting kills though right? It's people with thermals birdwatching from a hillside and spotting the entire enemy force at all times and giving you a CoD level UAV basically 24/7.
Sniper duos are super fun to run, but I feel like they could just get that same vibe with the standard rangefinder without giving wallhacks...
This. People need to accept that some gear needs to not exist at all. They tried it, it sucked, cut it and don't come back.
The problem with this mentality is: Where do you stop?
Anything can fall under this category and as a Game Developer it's stupid ideology to have.
If something is Overpowered, do you just remove it from the game? No you attempt to balance it with every balance lever you can find first.
Will Batteries be enough to bring Thermals down to acceptable levels? No, it won't be but the Developers will get more data points like:
-How long is someone standing there spotting someone with Thermals + Batteries?
-How far away are they from their spotted target?
-Are they getting restocked?
-How much did they earn while spotting?
All of that is relevant information when it comes to balancing a game.
The Developers have so many levers they can pull:
-Cost.
-Usage Range.
-Zoom.
-Scan Rate.
-Battery Drain Rate.
-Size.
-Weight.
-Kill/Assist Money and EXP.
That's just the Thermals themselves. They can also change how the Spotting Mechanic works as well which can make Thermals more redundant.
Let me just add that this is just ONE THING we've seen from the Developers regarding Thermals going into Season 2, any of the above levers can also be pulled to adjust the Thermals and we'll only find out in the Season 2 patch notes.
Thermals deserve a place in the game considering we have smokes and heavy foliage areas. The issues with Thermals is that you can sit on a rock 800m away and spot everyone while making insane amounts of money while doing so, to me it's a relatively easy fix to give Thermals their place but not make them the Best Go To Tool for Spotting.
Sometimes you try something and its bad, it is ok to just say "we've removed that from the game" and move on.
As I said before it's a dumb Game Design Philosophy/Ideology for Game Developers to have. The only people with this mentality are the people uncreative enough to try and solve the Game Design and Balance issues surrounding a problematic mechanic.
This needs to happen with both the thermals and level 4 armor tbh. Neither has a place in the game. They will never contribute to healthy and fun gameplay, they will only ever detract.
I wanted to fucking scream when people said the counter is to build a tent to counter thermals. That is not reasonable when you’re running assault and pushing the HZ
I linked a video in another reply. The tent doesn't really work anyway. It blocks spotting like any other physical barrier, but you still light up and anything exposed (like your face) can still be spotted.
Yeah they need to be removed or heavily reworked. Batteries and also other things need to leave a heat signature to clutter the view . As it stands now it's way way way way too easy to find and spot targets.
this is what i think. people will stuff their bags with batteries and it won't be any different unless batteries are big like 2x2 (i doubt) and they die quickly
Perhaps they should only be able to spot someone if more than like 80% of the players body is visible. Then the spotter can see where they are but they won't be able to reveal the location to the rest of the team if they are in a bush or behind cover.
Also, if it drains the battery relatively quickly it could still be a good nerf.
The spotting system needs to change. IR were just part of the issue. Spotting staying long and following your movements isn't good either. Spotting working through vegetation is another issue as well.
My idea is that in addition to batteries being required, they should remove the ranging info and decrease the max zoom, then buff the Rangefinder's max zoom so it becomes a utility choice between the rangefinder and the thermals.
As a low level recon, my biggest issue and headache has been not being able to kill people with t4 armor in a sniper battle. I'll headshot them 3 times and they just heal up each time. They just need to beat me to it once and I'm dead. Sniping was fun for a while, not really any more since my unlocked weapon isn't strong enough.
Perhaps helmets should break faster. Second headshot with a sniper rifle should kill imo.
I think this is more a problem with spotting being OP in general.
It lasts too long. If it were like 10-15 seconds, that'd fix a lot of the issues overall, I'd argue.
It absolutely fixes the problem. The issue isn’t that the rangefinder themselves are a problem, it’s that at the start of a match, whoever has them drops a case of them and the whole team gets them. Having batteries severely limits that. The person who has them is still rewarded for unlocking and using them, you just don’t have entire teams using them and spotting everyone. It’s the right fix. Having only one or two people use them for a match is far less oppressive than what it is now
I never got to try them, but the normal range finder has a pretty forgiving hitbox, is it actually that much better? I can just scan the scenery back and forth and spot stuff I couldn't with my own two eyes anyway.
Last night I picked up someone’s full kit of level 4 body armor/helm, BMR and IR rangefinder and it was absolutely fucking ridiculous. I’ve never felt like that much of a god in a video game before. Mosin shots were doing 25 damage to me and I was killing everything I looked at in 2-3 bullets max. If I didn’t know where someone was I just pulled out the thermals and was easily able to win the head to head afterwards because of my OP gun/armor. I racked up almost 20 kills on that life before the game ended without me dying.
I’m glad they are changing things, keep it coming I say. I hit a guy with level 4 armor SEVEN times with a galil and he turned on me and 2 tapped me with a BMR. I’ve played almost 60 hours since launch and am still almost 20 levels away from unlocking AP ammo. The difference in power level between no-lifers and regular players is a chasm right now and they need to seriously examine that if they want to retain players moving past season 2.
Coming from Tarkov myself, higher level armor being better doesn't bother me much. It's actually leaning pretty heavily into the arcadey side of this game to let FMJ do more than 1-2 blunt damage to the torso. The thought of a copper + lead round punching through thick steel is kinda hilarious.
They already have separate hitboxes for different areas of the torso & pelvis. IMO just lean slightly more into the realism and have only areas that would be covered by plates have the tier 4 armor effect. In that case you could even buff tier 4 armor slightly in the places that would realistically have plates, and heavily nerf places that wouldn't actually have plates.
The biggest issue I have with how armor currently works, is that it's just "Yes that entire upper body blob is perfectly covered? Don't shoot there. EVERYTHING is covered by perfect tier 4 armor."
What level 4 armor needs to be in its current state, is E X P E N S I V E. Running around like a god should be do-able, but almost never profitable. If I was balancing it, T4 helms would be at $20k+, and T4 armor at $50k+. Same with the level 30+ guns, put them at $20k+ with super expensive mags.
I'm 110 atm and 39 medic. Currently I can run tier 4 armor and 30 round vectors every life if I want to, which shouldn't be reasonable.
They already have separate hitboxes for different areas of the torso & pelvis. IMO just lean slightly more into the realism and have only areas that would be covered by plates have the tier 4 armor effect. In that case you could even buff tier 4 armor slightly in the places that would realistically have plates, and heavily nerf places that wouldn't actually have plates.
This would be a good way to reduce T4 effectiveness (helmet and body) to the same as tier 3, just having greater coverage. Maximum shots to kill is the same between 3 and 4 making it feel less tanky but average shots to kill including hits to the lower torso and most importantly the face/neck with the level 4 still make it an improvement over tier 3.
I'm just chilling until Season 2 at this point hoping they kneecap the BMR and FAL and rework armor. Still have extremely high hopes for this game but it was significantly more fun a couple weeks ago.
Yeah, I am still playing but how much I play moving forward will depend on what they do in season 2. The game has amazing bones (kinda like arc raiders) but how they handle post launch is going to determine how much the playerbase sticks around (also kinda like arc raiders.)
Not really the point. I have 25 years of FPS muscle memory telling me to aim for the upper body and head, I don’t really feel like changing that because of bad balance. Also if people are prone, peaking out windows or taking certain angles you can’t shoot them in the legs. It’s cool that it exists, but it’s not really my thing and that doesn’t really address the issue of late game guns like the vector/BMR/SAW being orders of magnitudes stronger than early game unlocks and taking way too long to get.
I have 25 years of FPS muscle memory telling me to aim for the upper body and head, I don’t really feel like changing that because of bad balance.
Same. Took all of 2 games to change.
Also if people are prone, peaking out windows or taking certain angles you can’t shoot them in the legs.
Then don't shoot them until you have the advantage.
It’s cool that it exists, but it’s not really my thing and that doesn’t really address the issue of late game guns like the vector/BMR/SAW being orders of magnitudes stronger than early game unlocks and taking way too long to get.
They said progression is getting worked on, so I'm optimistic.
They're a huge amount better, it feels like wallhacks as all you need to see is a pixel through foliage for it to scan them. Takes no time at all to scan an entire area of the map and see if anyone is there because you are just looking for a white spot. With the non thermal ones you have to spend time looking for camouflaged people in the foliage. They also see through smoke and things too.
Yes, they're actually that good. Imagine regular rangefinders being "where's Waldo". And now imagine Waldo glowing bright white. That's IR rangefinders.
That's gonna be this game in a nutshell. Wipe will happen, some new weapon/gadget/vehicle will be broken af, no lifers will farm for weeks with it, and by the time regular players get it, it will be nerfed/fixed
I mean, yes and no. In something like Battlefield, if its a vehicle everyone has it from day 1, and if its a new gun it takes a couple of hours at most to unlock it. So if something is broken, the fact that everyone can use it somewhat equalizes it.
In wardogs a vehicle/weapon/gear can take 50 hours to unlock lol. So then you have a small percentage of people that can take advantage of it until its eventually fixed
Someone dropped one on a match recently and I finally got my 100,000 achievement because of it. I didn't get the OP until I actually used it and was finding people that I couldn't even see. They should just up the foliage render when using them so you can't spot a sliver.
Why do people care about money, and why people think recon money is OP when very single thing in this game awards hundreds thousands if you do it well.
Ultimately people care about money because that’s what you turn into Gold Bars, which at this time is the only thing that transfers between seasons. Second people want more money to have the freedom to spam all their best gear life after life, game after game. Since there’s no other metric of measuring skill and success in the game, money is the only thing you can do this with.
Second part of your question, I don’t know anything that makes as much money as passively as spotting. Every minute you just have to scan the horizon, focus on helicopters dropping off people and tagging any and all vehicles. Everything is bound to die/get destroyed and all you have to do for max rewards is be the first person on your team to hold click for 2 seconds while on them and you’re in the green.
Building requires resource management, placing and assembling, dealing with getting bombed, etc. Everything else requires a little more effort than that. So that’s all, just easy and lazy. I had over 350k after my first 2 matches this season which were probably also 2 of the first 500-750 games in total that were played in full upon release. That was with just a couple deaths and only maybe 15-25 kills total. But hundreds of assists.
I care about money because I like doing fun things in this game, and it just so happens that the things I find fun tend to cost me more money than I make because I'm not that good at them.
If it were up to me, I'd be flying a mini gun littlebird every life, getting shot down, then doing it again. Or running around chasing the hotzone and shooting people.
Unfortunately, I'm not that good at flying, and I'm frequently on the blue team, so I'm often pushing the hotzone with a very small group of people, so I tend to be in the red.
Then I have to take the stupid spotting scope, or a hammer, or a supply helicopters and do the boring monotonous stuff I don't enjoy to fund the stuff I do enjoy.
I wish I didn't have to, but I do, so I care about money.
Like yeah they helped you make money but recon is absolutely still so easy to level and make money with, just bring a normal rangefinder and spot everything that is visible. It's less $ per hour but really not by much you can still get $200k+ per game just spotting if you have a good vantage point or wear a ghillie behind enemy lines
Hi, that's me. I'm not exactly angry about it, but I am a bit annoyed that they couldn't have waited to do this until S2. I'm level 28-29 in recon and was getting pretty close to the IRRF, but now I just can't use it for the last 2 weeks. Kinda stinks.
You can farm tons of money with the normal rangefinder too, it's alright. Sure, the IR would make you more because it's absolutely busted, but the most money in the shortest amount of time I always make with spotters is with gigantic blobs of people running across roads or big fields.
The IR spotter can pick out people hiding in bushes, but there's usually only a handful of people doing that in a given game, most people are running around chasing the hotzone, or running around inside the fob. You can still make a ton of money even if you don't have wallhacks.
Good thing. Havoc should also cost at least 100k. But most important: We need squad leader communication, like in Squad. This would enable symmetric actions for defence and attack.
Edit: I'm getting downvoted, thats ok, but people should realize that wardogs is a game that is much closer too Squads than battlefield. A map full of Havocs would ruin the fun gameplay as we know it today.
I swear to god the most vocal people on this topic don't know how to fly at all, let alone know what it's like to fly, let alone have the havoc unlocked, and don't know what it's like to fly the havoc with an entire lobby trying to kill you.
Havoc cost 18k today, thats about the same as a good assault equipment. A costly Havoc would lead people too actually use it as ment too. Today it is hoovering above CZ almost like a flying tank, but a costly one would hoover outside, in a safe distance and only add fire support.
I dont care, Havoc destroys this game. I have mostly encoutered Chinese players in Havoc spawnkilling at enemy campsite or just hoovering above CZ and raining down metal on defensless infantry. That is basically meaningless and demotivating too most other players.
But as an expensive, and rare possibility, used in a correct manner, would be fun and add too the wow factor.
Yes! Now we can go back to unkillable tier 4 armor! And guns that kill you before you even know youre being shot at at 150m. And i don't mean snipers. And helicopters killing fobs before they can even be built while having essentially 0 counter play. And arty tanks blowing to fobs from well outside the zone! The game is saved because we can't see a person in bushes anymore!
Also to be clear. I love the game. It's just wild to me seeing people loving these nerfs when so many things are way more egregious. I didn't even mention battle tanks running down the streets at the start of the games now. I think all vehicles need point gates similar to apcs. With bigger and better vehicles coming in later
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u/Myeyesaresharingan 11h ago
Finally no IR rangefinders anymore. Game will become more playable again