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BmB23
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Battlefield Design Considerations

Sat Aug 22, 2015 7:09 pm

Hello, this will be my first post. I used to be a pretty active member of the infamous EAUK before it was shut down but never bothered with the exodus to MHQ/CE because other games were occupying me at the time. I love Battlefield and I love what you people are doing for what I consider to be one of the best entries in the series despite everything. I have come to some pretty strong opinions about what the game needs in order to be the best it can be. These are not demands, just thinking out loud. Some feedback on how feasible these ideas would be to implement using the modding tools at launch, and later down the line, and if it is possible at all would be great though.

First and most important is spawning. I have a saying that the difference between an unplayable mess and the best game in the series is little more than 10 seconds of respawn time. If nothing else is changed, this is the one thing I'd change. There's several problems with the way spawning works right now. A lot of them done in the name of immediacy. People spawn wherever they want, whenever they want. And the result is an unstructured, unpredictable gameplay.

BF1942 is the only game in the series to have the concept of the respawn cycle, where everyone spawns at the same time. The default spawn cycle was 15 seconds although I am an advocate of up to 30 seconds myself. I can understand not wanting to sit through a lengthy timer when you die, so some compromise obviously has to be made. But the value of the spawn cycle to the gameplay cannot be understated.

Battlefield is, at it's core, a combined arms team deathmatch game favoring territory control. The flags represent territory control in a very simple and easy to understand way. The basic gameflow should be such that both teams spawn, capture flags until a frontline is formed, and then engage in battle where they meet. One team wins the battle, captures a given flag. Everyone then respawns and the cycle continues until there are no more reinforcements left.You can have stalemates and backcapping is definitely a thing so it's a simplified model, but at it's core that is what the game is about. The spawn cycle should reflect a period of time where a battle can take place in. This way, whenever you kill an enemy, you contribute significantly to the territory control battle because that enemy is then not able to fight until the next cycle. By having the mechanic of the spawn cycle you create the gameplay (or the way the game is played) of waves of reinforcements clashing together. With short or instant spawn times, people can simply spawn right back into battle as soon as they are killed, making the impact of killing them on the flow of battle minimal. And without a spawn cycle, people are spawned in a piecemeal stream which goes against the large battles that Battlefield is known for.

Another big problem is where you can spawn. Again in Battlefield 1942 (and Battlefield 2 if I'm not misremembering) you could not spawn at contested flags. This meant that when the battle had already begun, you could not join into it without being part of the next wave from the next flag. And if you are able to spawn at contested flags, the game basically turns into spawncamping simulator 2011. You all know the deal, you're sitting at an enemy flag waiting for them to spawn so you can shoot them. You spawn into a flag to try and fight the enemy off but they are too fast and knife you from behind. This is not fun. The interesting part of the map should be what happens between flags, not sitting in spawn at them.

Squad spawning only adds to the problem. When you are able to spawn on your teammates you disrupt the flow of the spawn cycle waves. Again you all know the deal. You have just killed three people in a squad and as you are about to kill the fourth, all three of the previous pop right out of his ass and kill you. It basically makes pushing back a squad virtually impossible and again negates the value of killing enemies and leads to unfun stalemates. I can perfectly well understand the need to spawn near your friends, and I'm not saying that should be done away with. In fact I don't have a good solution to the problem. But it is a problem none the less. Squad leader spawning mitigates the problem, and also encourages squad cohesion. Limiting the ability to spawn while in combat also would help tremendously, similar to limiting spawning at contested flags. The only problem is properly detecting when a squad member is in combat since the current method used in BF4 seems flawed at best.

Spawn beacons also are problematic because they allow spawning behind the enemy lines at will. Especially indoors where spawns are instant. Unfortunately not all maps can count on parachute drops being viable. I suppose you could limit spawning when enemies are even near. The concept of the squad leaders spawn marker in 2142 was interesting and definitely a solution to squad leaders only hiding away, but I'm not sure it has translated well to a recon gadget. As a concept, it is an alternative to leader spawning, not a class-specific gadget. Squad leaders spawning on squad members has replaced its role. And in practice it is only used for camping anyway.

I'd also like to go off on a tangent and address safe spawns in the same breath. It's important that a team always has a way to spawn that is safe, in order to allow them to have a chance to fight off being blocked into their uncap. 2142 managed this well by providing the shielded areas inside the titans that enemies could not reach. Allowing players defending here to be prepared when going out into the battle. BF3 does fairly well by having uncaps be out of bounds, but it is still possible to be bombed, strafed, sniped and mortared on spawn in most uncaps. There should be some kind of bunker, barracks or other shielded location where you can spawn without fear of dying immediately to such an onslaught. In general it shouldn't be possible to shoot at the (infantry) spawn as a matter of course. It is silly that server owners have to have scripts or rules to protect against this when it could easily be part of the games map design ethos.

More to come...

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BmB23
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Tickets

Sat Aug 22, 2015 9:42 pm

The way tickets work is the next most important thing in my opinion. Currently, tickets function as a kind of permission slip to die rather than a ticket to be able to spawn. The consequence of this is that matches end abruptly, often in the middle of the action, rather than coming to an exciting, and possibly game changing conclusion and giving closure. You are instead left frustrated that you couldn't stop that guy right in front of you or blow up that last tank because it just ended right there. Whether this is by design or an unintended consequence of wanting to keep matches short I don't know.

When you die, a ticket is subtracted, and it is added back when you are revived. This is how the ticket count can go to 0 suddenly by a random kill. Instead tickets should be function more like they did before. I have to be honest I am not 100% clear on the exact mechanics of tickets in BF1942 and BF2, but I do know that it would not allow you to spawn if doing so would end the game. That allowed matches to come down to smaller amounts of players facing off, with death being final. The most exciting matches could come down to two players if chance willed it. It was exciting, it was fulfilling and it gave the end of a game a significantly different feel to the beginning and middle of a game.

It also allowed people to extend games for a long time by hiding from a dominating force. This should obviously be addressed. I just don't think the current solution of ending them abruptly is a good answer to what is in fairness a rare occurrence. Because of this I don't know if either model for tickets and end game conditions is actually the right one. Innovation is needed.

You want a model that allows exciting endings between fewer players, potentially a single player could make the difference. But also one that ends a hopeless situation as fast as possible and doesn't waste anyones time when the game is already thrown. Obviously killing the last enemy should end any game. But alone this leads to the problem of hiding in a big way.

The basic intuition for spawn tickets is that when you spawn, one is subtracted. This should be the basis of any sensible model of tickets. But when using this model the game cannot end merely at zero tickets, as that is simply when people can no longer spawn.

Should the game end when all flags are captured in addition to zero tickets? As long as there are tickets left, there is still hope. As long as flags are still held there is still hope, but in combination there is pretty much no way out. It uses two of the strongest indicators of team dominance and team failure together to end the game. You could still have somewhat abrupt endings but not ones where there was any doubt of the victor anyway. It doesn't allow anyone to hide but it does theoretically allow the winning team to avoid capturing a flag in order to extend the match instead. If 0 tickets alone is not a game ender you could in theory have the defenders hiding and the attackers not capturing the last flag indefinitely.

Should it instead trigger a kind of sudden death timer? (Was this in 1942? Been a while.) Urging people to recapture a flag or have the game end. This would definitely keep hiding periods shorter, but not completely solve the problem. Should 0 tickets alone trigger a timer? Should all flags captured trigger a timer regardless of ticket count? Or is ticket bleed sufficient in that situation? I like the idea of using ticket bleed because it very organically fits within the existing ruleset. Ticket bleed not only serves to simulate routing the enemy forces, and making flag captures very valuable, but also functions as a good way to to end games where one team dominates. A special ticket bleed rate for when all flags are captured could end games very rapidly. (Pretty sure this one was in 1942 but it was fairly slow at times.) Perhaps the timer could be activated by 0 tickets being under bleed and the amount of bleed could determine the timers duration. If there was still hope of holding off the other team the timer could be long, or be stopped completely. If not, it would be short and the match end quickly. But I don't really like timers. Timers are too arbitrary for my tastes, even if it may be necessary.

In the end I also have no clear answer for this one. It really needs experimentation to see what works and what doesn't. I'm partial to the "flag capture + 0 tickets or last enemy dead" model as it ends quickly in the case of one team dominating, but also allows close matches to come to a head. The theoretical stalemate is so unlikely I'm not sure it will actually be a problem. While the losers may want to hide, no winning team will want to avoid capturing flags for long.

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AlexEe
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Re: Battlefield Design Considerations

Sat Aug 22, 2015 11:03 pm

that's too much input for me right now, but i agree with most of your points. I will review your post tomorrow morning in more detail and hope to write down some of my own. :)

Edit #1: I will edit this post accordingly.
Add me on Steam: click | My Origin ID: AlexEe77

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BmB23
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Class Balance

Sat Aug 22, 2015 11:05 pm

Class balance is not as important as the first two, but still has an important role in the game. That said, I don't have too many objections to the BF3 classes. Still, I feel like there's room for improvement.

There has been many variations on the classes throughout the various iterations of Battlefield. But I think the classic five classes of BF1942 were ultimately the best. I'll expand on that.

Desert Combat and later BF2 tried to add to the roster and add more modern roles, which makes sense given the setting. But I think they ended up with too much role overlap and not a lot of balance. For example, the Assault had a grenade launcher and not much else. Due to the large amount of spread on Assault's weapons the Special Forces class was essentially a superior rifleman in most cases. Neither Antitank or Engineer were much good in antitank duties. Meanwhile the engineer could both excel in close quarters with the shotgun and could repair vehicles and had the vehicle repair buff, starting an ugly trend of the universally useful Engineer. SF often was the best choice due to having the best rifle and C4, unless you were going for the range of the sniper. And as will be a consistent problem, the medic was a good, if not better, rifleman in addition to being able to revive others and self-heal. The newly introduced support became the medics weird cousin, only far less useful because really how many people live long enough to run out of ammo without medics? The role of the Assault in accomplishing any task is unclear.

2142 went in exactly the opposite direction and tried to simplify, recognizing the problems with the BF2 roster. I think they went a bit too far. AT and Engineer duties were collected under the Engineer, which isn't too bad really since they both had antitank weapons. Medic and Assault were merged into one class, solving the problem of the OP medic by getting rid of Assault entirely. Recon merges the Snipers rifle with the SF's C4, and adds other sneaky gadgets, effectively branding Recon the gadget guy for future installments. Support having a better gun essentially became the new Assault.

The 2142 formula didn't see much change in Bad Company 2. Assault(support) and Medic had their names and primary weapons swapped for some reason. Making the Medic the best gunner once again. With a lot of customization introduced and some weapons being classless each class was so flexible as to be interchangeable. Which means you choose Engineer 80% of the time because rockets were very powerful.

In BF3 and 4 the Medic was given the Assaults weapon again. Support makes a return as Medics's weird cousin with a significantly less useful gun and drop. But he is given a new designation as demolitions guy, gaining overlap with both Engineer and Recon, making him the most derivative class of all time. In BF4 he is even given guns that are basically assault rifles. Customization has ballooned to a point where you wonder why there are even classes anymore. (And indeed in Battlefront they ditch the concept entirely.)

Not saying that BF1942 was perfect, but it did have the most sensible classes with very clearly defined roles. Assault had the best gun, being in fact the only class with machineguns. Although the trend of the OP Medic was established by virtue of the very accurate SMG he was given. Every other class was special purpose. Recon being long range, Engineer being demolitions and repair guy with a somewhat useful but not very powerful semiautomatic rifle, Antitank having only a bazooka and a pistol and Medic of course being the healer. In short, you picked Assault to kill infantry, and you picked another class to do anything else. There was basically no overlap, forcing you into a specific role. This made picking the right class very important.

The lack of customization also had the benefit of making it very clear what a given player was all about and what to expect from them, where judging at a glance the capabilities of a given player in modern Battlefield is basically guesswork. In modern Battlefield you are also discouraged from picking up another kit because you have yours set up how you like it and really don't want another persons kit that you know nothing about. Whereas in 1942 picking up a kit to fit the situation was a matter of course.

The most important teamplay aspect of Battlefield is being the right class at the right time at the right place. Without clear class roles and the need to support each other to cover class deficiencies this concept all but evaporates. This also establishes the problem that picking up kits from fallen comrades or enemies is the only way to switch your role without respawning. I think it would be prudent to include some way to change your loadout without wasting a ticket. If this should be at all flags or only select flags is up for debate but I think it's important to provide for, as switching classes to adapt to the situation at hand is so core to the gameplay. You definitely don't want to invalidate the worth of resupplying or healing in the field either.

There's several routes to take here. One is following Battlefront and abolishing classes altogether. Recognizing that mutually exclusive weapon slots effectively defines your class. For example, having assault rifles, rocket launchers and sniper rifles all take up the same primary slot essentially serves the same purpose as choosing between Recon, Assault and Engineer. The other is to try and define classes in terms of their specific role similar to how 1942 did it.. And the third is to make every class be "Assault, but...." similar to how it is done now. You would do this by freeing all or most primary weapons to be classless and making only the secondary and gadgets be class specific. Except in cases such as recon where long range rifles are obviously class specific.

Again I don't have a clear answer for which model is best. Or how to solve the kit pickup problem without crippling customization which admittedly is pretty cool. One thing I will say is that battle pickups are a profoundly bad idea. Trying to add arena shooter concepts to a class based team shooter.

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BmB23
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Re: Class Balance

Sun Aug 23, 2015 2:53 am

Because the class post was just getting too damn long, here's one suggestion for how to modify the existing BF3 classes in a separate post. Because a lot of Battlefield is built around reasonable but simplistic facsimiles of real combat. Such as using corner airspeed, territory control, reinforcements and routing etc. It seems fitting to attempt to make the classes a reasonable facsimile of the group dynamics in modern militaries.

The Assault would keep its role of main killing guy. But lose the medic ability as it confusing to have two classes in one. And devalues teamwork. He retains the underslung weapons and assault rifles, but gains exclusive rights to powerful close combat shotguns, and an extra grenade. Essentially he now fulfills the grenadier role but also gains a few extra tools to try and avoid the BF2 situation. The Medic in contrast needs to break the pattern of being OP and be given less powerful weapons such as PDWs. Reviving and healing is powerful enough already. The Support would fill much the same role as he does now, but lose access to explosives. Instead, the LMGs should be made more powerful, in a game like Battlefield "suppression" is useless, nobody cares about a blurry screen. But if the weapon is actually powerful people care. To avoid Support being better than Assault, LMGs need a big nerf to their run and gun potential. More like in reality the machine gunner is the most dangerous guy in the group, but only when set up properly. The Engineer loses launchers, and instead gains the Supports explosives. He should be carrying medium strength weapons like carbines to make up for his lack of firepower. Repairing is still incredibly useful. Could possibly add an explosive remover gadget like in 2142. Anti-Tank returns and gains the Engineers launchers and mines. He needs less powerful weapons like the Medic because launchers are very powerful themselves. Could see the return of "anti-infantry" launchers like the BC2 carl gustav? Finally, the Recon stays much like he is, but also loses explosives, putting those in the sole care of the Engineer. This makes him a dedicated spotter and marksman.

The end result is six classes that have less role overlap, less confusion about what they actually do, and hopefully more balance in how they actually play. The Assault and Engineer have basically split their dual responsibilities into new classes while the Support and Recon give their redundant specials to the Engineer. As for content, the new classes could simply use the existing Assault visuals.

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RobbingHood
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Re: Battlefield Design Considerations

Sun Aug 23, 2015 12:32 pm

Woah you really spent some time thinking this through, right? :P
Good input.

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BmB23
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Re: Battlefield Design Considerations

Sun Aug 23, 2015 12:37 pm

Well, years and years of playing does leave some time for thought. :P And I enjoy analyzing games this way. I still have some topics I'd like to cover I'll write the up when I can think a bit more clearly. I honestly didn't think it would get this long winded though. I thought I'd maybe have a paragraph per topic but it's turning out much longer than that.

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BmB23
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Squads & Commanders

Wed Aug 26, 2015 7:45 pm

This is probably going to be somewhat controversial. Notorious DICE liar Patrick Bach said in an interview with Game Informer that
One of the biggest problems with Commander was that only two people could use it. Some people liked it but most people didn’t care, they just cared that someone gave them an order or that their squad could play together having fun on their own more or less. Then the more hardcore people went into the Commander mode and learned how to use that. You could argue it was a great feature, but looking at the numbers you could also say that no one uses it. We tried in Bad Company 2 to give that to the players, so you could issue orders to your squad, and you could use gadgets like the UAV that only the commander could use earlier – giving the power back to the players so everyone could use it.

He also went on to claim that Rush was not a "tunnel game" (then heavily promoting a literal tunnel map for BF3) and that they would "never charge for Battlefield maps" and later flip flopped on the commander issue when BF4 was about to come out and closer to home also claimed that "modding is a dying trend" something that this site is a disproof of.

But essentially I agree with him here. Commander in Battlefield 2 was a useless position in anything but the most well organized clan matches. You simply have one guy lying under a truck in the uncap, watching the map to give orders nobody wants to follow, spamming the everliving shit out of the spot function to the point where the noise alone drowns out any useful information there may have been and occasionally is able to kill people remotely at the touch of a button. It simply is uninteresting to most players. And for those players that do want a command structure, nothing stops them from having an informal one. They probably already have a teamspeak or mumble server set up with slots for everyone in a given command structure and are willing to obey on the honor system, not some poorly enforced game system. In Battlefield 4 it really is not much better, except a completely disembodied player now takes the mantle. The basic functions are the same, spam spot, give orders nobody cares about, and send missiles or gunships remotely to kill people.

Squads suffer from a similar problem. Very few people really are invested in squad play. You can drive the lone wolf to the trough but you cannot make them follow an order. In games since Battlefield 2 carrots have been dangled on sticks to attempt to make people play as a squad, first by automatically adding people to squads, then by giving them more spawn points, more points for squad actions etc. etc. This is completely the wrong way to go about it and in reality decreases squad play by detracting from the intrinsic value of being in a squad, which is that you have a squad to back you up. And also by polluting the squads with people who are uninterested in squad play. So those who are interested in squad play cannot find a public squad that is equally as interested, only private squads have this privilege. But with most of the squads being filled by autosquad, even private squads can have troubles organizing.

In fact I'd say the opposite approach should be taken, and squads should be disincentivized from lone wolfing + free spawn points + extra points. One system I'd propose is to limit spawning for squad members to squad spawn points only. This way, when you are in a squad you must be 100% committed to following that squad, or else leave it to go do your own thing.

And although the squad leader is a relatively exclusive position, I do think it's essential to have one person who is able to decide where to go and what to do without squabble. If a squad leader is poor people will simply leave the squad. And people can join the squad leaders that they trust to do a good job. It should also be essential that people can join as a squad, rather than having to haphazardly organize it once in a server. Why this function doesn't exist in Battlelog yet is beyond me, although the autosquad join is reasonable. Especially for a mode such as Squad Deathmatch, not being able to join as a squad and play against other squads that have organized this way is a damn shame. I would also suggest that the invite function returns, although with the modification that only people who are interested in being invited be able to receive such invites. This creates the dynamic of leaders and followers being able to get together easily. Other systems could work as well, as long as they recognize this fundamental need.

I will say again that I think the primary form of teamplay in Battlefield is being the right class at the right place at the right time. The role of the lone wolf has been dismissed by a lot of players. When really it is the herd mentality that is the primary and the most important form of teamplay that is in Battlefield. As is well known, Squads were not present in Battlefield 1942 or Vietnam and the game was fine without them.

To me, the important function of a squad is to give a way for smaller groups of friends to stay together in a larger game, which admittedly could be quite difficult in these older games. But Desert Combat and later BF2 both seemed to push in the direction of "more realism" with BF2 pushing for things like advanced communications, special moves, shorter kill times, more realistic stats and this commander/squads command structure. And while it can be fun to be in this smaller more focused experience of the squad, it is to me counter to the feeling of being a small part of a large battle. BF2 tried to be Rainbow Six more than it tried to be Battlefield. Project Reality is really the inevitable outcome of this direction. I know BF2 is almost universally revered but I think it made quite a few mistakes such as this one that puts it near the bottom of my list of good Battlefield games. Tho I will admit when it did work I had a lot of fun with it. Squads should not be removed, but remade.

There is also the issue of the size of squads. The 4 player limit was heavily criticized for being too small. But the reality is that not every group of friends is exactly 4 or 5 people. Some are 2, some are 3, some are 6, and some are more than 8. What is the proper limit here? Would too large squads have a negative effect on the game flow? The possibility that an unlimited number of squads with an unlimited number of players each would be fine should be entertained. There could be 16 squads of 2, or one squad of 32. But I'm not sure it is right to do.

The role of squads is in my opinion not central to Battlefields gameplay, and Commander has almost no good place in what has been adequately described as the "comic book version of WW2". Or perhaps these days one could call it the "graphic novel version of WW3".

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BmB23
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Vehicle Balance & General Combat

Wed Aug 26, 2015 9:26 pm

Slightly less contentious is the actual combat mechanics. I think they pretty much nailed it from day one in BF3, imbalanced weapons like UMP-45 and USAS frag aside. Although I also feel it was made somehow different in BF4 in a way that isn't good, I can't quite put my finger on it. It feels too fast paced somehow. But as I can't describe it well enough I'll let it be for now.

The major standout problems for me are in the vehicles. Some of them are simply too powerful. But in BF2 and DC before it, vehicles were much worse. So you could say the situation has definitely improved. Most of the time If you were not in a vehicle, you were basically dead already. But even though the situation has improved a lot since then, most of the disproportionately high scorers in the game still tend to specialize in one type of vehicle. Of course they attribute that to skill but I'm not sure that's entirely right. The opinion of these vehicle users seems to weigh a lot with DICE, as I am told that a fix for the infamous "suicide chairs" was not only released, but also retracted again after air players complained about the nerf. This seems to be definitely a set of voices that should be ignored for the sake of the game.

The obvious vehicle to criticize is the jet. It stands alone at the top of the foodchain, able to kill almost every other type of vehicle and enemy with very few threats to itself. It is able to evade lock on weapons, pop flares or ECM indefinitely while recovering far beyond the edges of the map, and generally only takes one run to kill any given target. The only real threats are a superior pilot, a vastly superior helicopter pilot, or a skilled MAA driver. Its gun is too precise against infantry, while I remember in the beta shooting at infantry from longer ranges was a bit of an exercise in futility unless they were grouped, that seemed like a good idea but I guess jet players complained that away too. The jet's primary targets are other air vehicles and tanks. Attacking infantry shouldn't be high on their priorities. It also seems the rocket pods are simply too accurate at range, with jets getting kills with them from across the map or very high altitude.

Being able to fully recover from damage just by flying away also messes with the balance, as smaller hits will not add up, making them even more invulnerable. Overall auto-heal is a bad idea, as it also devalues the role of the medic quite a bit. And the engineer simply becomes someone who in large numbers is able to completely offset any amount of damage.

The attack helicopter suffers from much the same issues. Only being threatened by jets, superior heli pilots, and MAA. The range is also a problem in general. You often see attack helicopters sitting high and away from the action and getting many kills outside of the range of any potential counter.

The thing about lock on weapons is that they are pretty boring, either you are able to hit a target or you aren't. Or in other words, if a missile can be dodged it will be dodged, and if it can't be dodged... well, it won't be. I'm not a top tier pilot myself but even I am able to fairly consistently outmaneuver missiles that I can't flare away. Someone who is better than me would be able to never be hit by a missile. And this is the exact situation you see. Now, in BF4 this was "fixed" by giving missiles a very high turn rate. But that kind of kludge doesn't sit well with me. Flares don't make the situation much better, if you are able to use flares to evade being hit, a decent pilot will stay out of range until they are recharged and pop them again and again and again, never being under any real threat. The end result is that these vehicles can hang around basically forever, never being under any real threat, and kill everyone else with impunity.

I really don't have a great solution to lock on weapons. One solution could be to make it so that certain angles of attack are more difficult to evade than others. For example in real life I understand that the most dangerous direction to be attacked from is directly from the side, as modern missiles will predict your path and get a bead on you no matter which way you turn. And the least dangerous being from behind as you are able to turn into the missile and have it overshoot you. This could be simplified so that attacks from the front are undodgeable and attacks from the rear are as dodgeable as they are now. An alert stinger user could easily take out an attacking jet if he knew it was coming then, but an expert pilot would then know to avoid flying directly at problem areas. Another solution could be to embrace that lock ons will always hit, as they do in BF4, and a third would be to do away with them entirely, as was the case all the way back in DC. The issue of unlimited flares I don't know how to deal with well either. With such a reliable evasion button it seems like even one missile hit should be critical to offset it somewhat.

The other major issue is, ironically, the MAA. On the ground it is not only able to take down enemy air as it should, it is also able to go toe to toe with all kinds of tanks and infantry. While killing infantry seems reasonable, it being able to do significant amounts of damage to a tank seems daft. It is in my experience able to kill a tank with sustained fire in just over the time it takes for a tank to kill it back. Miss one shell as a tank driver and you're already dead. But It shouldn't even be a contest. Tanks should be the hard counter to the MAA. It also seems to have slightly too much range. An MAA parked near the edge of the map has an unreasonable reach on jets even far on their own side. The MAA I feel should be a more local threat to air. In BF1942 an equally skilled anti air gunner and pilot would cancel each other out exactly. The pilot would die from the last flak shell and the gunner would die from the bomb. This seems like a delicate balance that should be remembered. Although it could be argued that AA should simply demolish air. But in that case a range nerf is definitely needed.

And overall infantry simply lacks tools to combat vehicles. Engineers can lay mines and use rockets or stingers. C4 is quite potent and of course the SOFLAM/Javelin combo is always deadly. But outside of these special instruments there isn't a whole lot that an average infantryman can do against vehicles they face. Compare this to BF1942 again, where any given Assault or Scout could kill a tank from full health, if they managed to get perfect hits with all five of their grenades. This is probably a bit extreme, and realistically a frag grenade isn't going to do any damage to tank armour. But then realistically a frag grenade has a range of tens of meters not a small puff of death. Perhaps one could make a special anti-tank grenade and give it a smaller blast radius but have it do reasonable damage to tanks. It wouldn't be as extreme as in 1942 but it would still enable infantry to do some damage. Tanks certainly face many threats on the battlefield, but they are also very powerful. And I think that such a powerful weapon needs to be offset somewhat, even the lowliest player needs some kind of a chance against it.

Similarly with jets and helicopters, in BF1942 one was able to take them down with just small arms fire. A pilot that got too adventurous would face a hail of bullets. Realistically planes and helicopters are not armored heavily enough to withstand these kind of attacks, as such armor would simply be too heavy. "Durable" planes like the A-10 only have a lot of redundant systems and some armor around the cockpit. The same thing as with tanks I think should apply here. A concerted effort from many players to shoot at a pilot who goes too low should be a legitimate threat. Anti-material rifles like the M98 should do considerably more damage than other weapons. Bringing the weapon into its proper role.

Going back to tanks, having the gunner be enclosed perfectly safely I think is also over powered. BF2 did many things wrong but I think they did this thing right, a gunner was exposed but they were able to duck back into the turret to be safe. A tank that is able to watch several directions from infantry is simply too powerful without being vulnerable in some way. Exposing the gunner was a good way to deal with it. The ducking maneuver was a great way for the gunners seat to not be another suicide chair like it was in the first game.

The spawn time is also significant, especially for air vehicles. Just like for players, the reward for taking out a potent enemy like a tank or a jet, the reward should be that it's out of your hair for a while. So I propose that the standard spawn time for these types of vehicles be increased. If it is able to spawn back right away as in "fast vehicle" servers you are bogged down with dealing with a powerful vehicle only for it to be right back in a matter of seconds. It also allows people to simply get right back in the same vehicle after they died, rather than taking them first come first serve.

I also believe that having vehicles available as spawn points is a mistake. The obvious idea here is that they wanted to get rid of queues at the airfield. But in practice they simply moved those queues into the spawn screen instead which isn't an improvement. In maps like Kharg this is even used as an excuse to have parts of the uncap base be unreachable from the spawn such as the RU airfield.

Finally, I'd like to see the sprint from prone maneuver return. It was in the alpha and I felt it added quite a bit to the game, as it enabled you to quickly get away from a bad situation. Giving players a good tool to use to recover. Right now getting up while under fire is pretty much suicide because of how slow it is. And eventually you'll be hit with splash damage.

I'd also like to discuss whether vehicle spawns should even be a thing but that will have to wait.

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