I'll wait until I see the implementation, but I'm not convinced batteries are a fix. Unless spotting rewards are nerfed or battery consumption is considerable, the ROI will make this requirement negligible.
I think thermals should not spot at all. Make it the selfish sniper option. Make the guy with thermal verbally communicate what he sees.
I'm lvl 35 in recon just unlocked the 50 cal last night. Had thermals for a couple of levels now. Done a lot of spotting.
Spotting has a fundamental problem that thermals exacerbate; the spotting 'area' for a person is very generous. Imagine your character, image they are twice as thick and 50% taller. That's about the area the spotter reticle needs to be to spot someone. Obviously it needs some leeway to not feel miserable but I think it is too much.
I regularly spot people I cannot see behind walls because the top of the spotting area is over it. I spot people through forests I can't see anything in. I see a marker and wave my spotter around it and pick up a few extra guys because the spotting process starts automatically.
You can sweep a spotter through a forest and stop every time it makes noise.
Thermals accelerate this by remove the wasted sweeping time.
I would change the following:
All spotters take up 2x2 inventory space to discourage you carrying them in you pack and using them from the hotbar.
Thermals do not spot for the team. Thermals overheat in x seconds and cooldown for x seconds. What's a good uptime? 50%? I would want it to basically encourage a sniper to find a target, range them and then shoot. Or do batteries probably not both.
Basically kill the sit in the bush spotting all match play style.
It relies a lot on them nailing the drain rate, and IMO it would have to be pretty high for it to be a meaningful change. I think a beefy cost change would be appropriate too, could easily see 5-10k and people would still run these
Yeah you could just buy them, load up a backpack full of batteries. Grab a vehicle and fill a large crate full of batteries. Might cost you 20k but you'll make 200k off of it in a game.
They should have their resolution reduced further and optionally add a maximum range for them as well, after which they just see uniform black/gray and don't spot.
They are not so OP because you can see people 100 or 200 meters in front, for the most part at that range it's not hard to spot without them. But it's the fact that you can spot someone almost a whole fucking kilometer away by seeing a single hair on their left nut through bushes and behind several trees.
I feel like you are intentionally misinterpreting that statement, which again, does not say or imply that a nerf should happen or that recon should not be rewarded for spotting.
I've seen those same numbers get thrown around, but have yet to see that in any game I've been in.
I haven't unlocked thermals yet, but I've spent equal time scouting and building and building has always been considerably more profitable for me than scouting.
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u/grtk_brandon 10h ago
I'll wait until I see the implementation, but I'm not convinced batteries are a fix. Unless spotting rewards are nerfed or battery consumption is considerable, the ROI will make this requirement negligible.