The scout already has its niche to fill, it just doesn't do it that well. The scout is also a necessary stalemate-breaker element and a useful pathfinder...it's just that it needs to be improved.
New approach, i want to see what troubles people about the current scout first, then we should agree on the scout problems in order to find good solutions to them. Of course other ideas that change everything (like no classes or who knows what else) are always welcome. I'm only talking about the problems. A scout with smg and hide can really help, but out of all scouts maybe 1 actually helps while the rest does nothing constructive. Why do they do stuff that is (almost) useless whilethey could be helping a lot, even as scouts. It's about these scouts doing nothing that i will be talking. What i think are the scout's core problems: 1) The scout is VERY slow. Crouching towards the enemy base takes a VERY long time, and on average (if scouts even get there) they will only sabotage 1 building before getting killed. Now that doesn't even mean anything, because it will get repaired very quickly. Vehicles and infantry that get build/spawn in sabbed building will just heal/repair themselves and nothing changes. The time it takes to repair a vehicle + vf is a lot less than it is to crouch all the way up to the enemy base, standing still cause someone's there, again crouching towards enemy base, get killed, spawn, and try again this time proned hoping going to their vf proned and even slower then before will get you there ... etc. Half damage to buildings would be effective if that building happened to be under attack. But then you have to be at that exact building when allies start attacking it, which means you had to waste time getting there proned/crouched, waiting for someone to come attack the base. People won't go wait in base "hoping" it gets attacked soon. They should be out there fighting to breach enemy defenses to make sure EVERYONE can get to the enemy base. If a base is already under attack, going scout to sabotage it is useless cause you would've done a lot more damage as a grenadier amongst the people attacking the base. In fact your friends might be killed by the time you get in that base. 2) I think the !current! scout rifle is bad: imo any weapon that can do one shot kills across hundreds of meters in a game where you could be walking a very long time can never make the game more fun. In fact i think using the scout rifle is only fun to some people because they take pleasure in knowing that their target will be irritated when he gets killed after walking for 30 seconds with no chance to defend himself. Also this means that, again, the scout will be all on its own, only helping a little while annoying the other half of the players (the enemy). Their snipers will be annoying your half of the players. What i consider to be smaller problems: 1) Grenades or not worth much. Smoke grenades are not efficient on big commander maps, only in cities and there they get used wrong half the time. Concussion nades disable enemy turrets, but also blind your own people. And they will get repaired very quickly unless an engineer unbuilds them or a rifleman puts a sticky on it, and if there's a grenadier close by you do not even need it to be disabled. Stun stickies rarely get used, because scouts get killed in an instant (rifleman has his rifle + armor to survive a bit longer). And trying to hide untill a vehicle passed by never worked for me. With huge maps they don't even come close, and when your try to run after them you get killed right after you lost hide. Since scouts often are alone, blinding a turret for a few seconds or overheating a vehicle (if they even manage to do that) will only help them to get 40m further. The price for this is that the enemy knows he's there, so it's useless to the scout himself. Since a scout never is with his team, even his nades are useless. So sure you have 3 types of grenades to pick from, but you can only use one at a time, and they will not make you pick the scout class. To a scout these nades are worth less than my mother, and i'd have to pay to get rid of her. 2) The binoculars ... I would love to have usefull binoculars in the game. At the moment spotting someone using the f menu is faster than switching to binocs, zoom in, click, zoom out and switch weapons again. As a scout i just use the spot function of the f menu, not the binoculars. Sure the binocs can see further, but only artillery can shoot further than players can spot enemies with the f meny. True, tanks in general can sometimes shoot further as well, but since missiles and most cannons have no damage radius and missiles spread out, they can't be sure if they hit anything even with the skill. So tank drivers will drive closer and shoot targets that they see, leaving the arty tank to be the only thing in the game for whom the scout binocs are usefull. And not even that much, cause any player that gets close enough to spot a building can put it on the minimap. Conclusion: - The scout is slow, very slow when used wrong. - The scout rifle is the easiest way for scouts to do something fun, but it's not good (enough) for the team and irritating for the enemy. - The scout will not be with his teammates, he will be fighting alone. This would be good (or not bad) if he wouldn't be alone every single second of the game not helping his team. - So whatever you do as a scout, people won't like you and/or you'll get bored pretty quickly. Why go scout? Having a scout with smg or shotgun with hide close by would at least do something (though i'd still prefer one of the other 3 classes). Most scouts though go sniping or try to accomplish selfappointed and useless missions, and you won't be seeing them anymore, unless when you spot them doing nothing from a distance. I think we need to discourage somehow that scouts go waste time. They are good enough when used right. Sabotaging can be very usefull (turrets close by in a chokepoint or street like in the trailer). Hide can be very usefull when used to hide for a while and suprise infantry close by in fire fights. Not when used to crawl for half the map to do nothing. What do you guys think is wrong with it? Let's discuss and agree on something that we can then use as basis to fix it.
I suggested that the scout should be able to hide while running around, it simply stops the stamina bar from increasing. perhaps in that mode the scout would also loose stamina when shot, like the digin skill does. the purpose of this is to allow scouts to get past turrets or up to a turret farm without it taking so long, as getting to the enemy front line only to sabotage a turret is just too risky and weak currently. i recommend sabotage doing 60 or 75% damage instead of 50%, given that other classes can destroy structures completely and in most situations two of engy/gren is better at destoying structures than an engy or gren + scout combo. i've ALWAYS said that sabotage should stop players changing class in the sabotaged building, because being able to do so makes it far too easy for the first person that comes along to switch to engy to repair the damage. I totally agree silk, the binoculars are rather useless at the moment. -remove the "request artilliary" sound -as many targets as you like, as quickly as you like, so you can click every object in a base in only a few seconds. this alone would give it a big advantage over the F menu style of spotting. -I would like to see it increase the max viewable distance significantly for the scout when you are zoomed in, so scouts with a squad can actually see what is ahead of the squad. ------------------------------------------------- I'm shocked and disgusted by people saying that the scout should be simply deleted- shows a complete lack of imagination and ability to tackle a problem.
People who play the support class. Please describe the problem that the BF2 devs had. I'm not suggesting it be removed, rather, moved. It currently doesn't have a niche that is not already fulfilled by another class, if it does, please describe it.
I already did. Feel free to disagree with me, but a scout is a useful tool in disabling enemy fortifications and infiltration (more commonly seen on infantry maps). I have a view that the scout should really be a class that, if you have a base with regular fortifications (turrets, walls etc), the scout should be able to take down the turrets easily, take out a couple of guys who are the emergency team, and allow a team to storm the enemy base. The scout should really be a 'linchpin' - e.g "we're waiting on the scout to take down the turrets, and give us the signal", well...summat like that anyway. The scout shouldn't be able to take hardly any damage in 1 on 1 combat, but should be able to 'remove' people from the equation, silently and quickly. Currently...it just doesn't get used like that often, and you need to be good to make good use of the class. I had a couple thoughts reading through your post: 1) Sabouteur lock - saboutaged buildings can only be de-sabou'd by scouts. This makes them immediately more essential...whether it'll be done by quickly switching to scout or not..well... This also makes it a lot better for them to be saboutaging buildings out in the field - things like cyc's refs would be saboutage and forget...with a scout or two on the other team checking the refs from time to time. Also defending their buildings because they're needed for once. 2) Scout can run and crouch while hiding...but should be detectable by cameras while doing so. - Not sure if this is a good idea, or just leading to ambushes...but something like this should be looked at. OR We could instead have a "radar hide" to avoid turrets and radars/cameras, but would not act as regular hide - i.e. visible to infantry. So you could have a new hide split into 2 parts - hide (invisibility to infantry) and radar jammer (invisibility to buildings). Possibly the scout is only able to choose one of those, so that they can be anti-infantry but wary of turrets/camera's, or anti-building and wary only of infantry. 3) Remove Heat Stickies and make Concussion grenades overheat vehicles for just 1 or 2 seconds. Reduce the amount of concussion nades you can carry, but leave the throwing arc the same. Heat stickies are useful in only niche situations, as are concussions, together however they may prove more useful. 4) The scout rifle should not be a scoped weapon. I'm thinking now it should be more like COD1's rifles without a scope - do a lot of damage (around 70-90 health per shot), but it's all aim and accuracy and a slow rof...which it already has. But the real reason it doesn't need to be a scoped weapon, is like silk said, you don't need that much distance on it. Scouts already have the binocs which should help to sight troops, and would be used a lot more if there wasn't a scope on the gun...if you give that sniper rifle iron sights and a high damage, it would make it more fun, and much more skillful...and probably less irritating. 5) This is not a real suggestion just a thought, but it's possible that the mortar and seismic grenade effectiveness versus turrets could be reduced slightly to accentuate a scouts anti-turret role. These are just things that popped into my head, but I think if you modify them a bit they could be workable and helpful. *At least give some thought to #1 please*
I don't think scouts should be able to run and remain hidden, or we'd have an invisible force ruining empires. Scouts being able to run would help to make them less slowly when sabotaging bases, but ruin infantry fights. Hide should be with the word sais: hiding, not running. I have to admit i have yet to think of a way to make scouts and sabotaging more fast paced, but i don't think hiding while running would work.
No, I didn't think that'd work, that's why I have the big OR there...but even both of those ideas are pretty bad.
when running you're a massive target and very obvious. it certainly wouldn't fool any human player, even at medium or long range. we could also make it so that the "degree" of being hidden was less. another option would be to make turrets never target scouts, say that they have electical evasion as standard. I think that would be fairly fun too.
Just give scouts a tool that cloaks them, it would always work when moving crouched, drains energy at normal rate when walking, and drains energy fast when running, so it's best to crouch when possible, walk when needed, and run when going from cover to cover. Using your weapon, in any other way then meleeing or throwing grenades, would also drain energy. When crouched, you will recover energy, so you can perform stealthy kills. Just give him a special weapon that can make him kill enemies faster, ie, the shotgun. Now just try to mold this idea into something that promotes teamplay.
talking of the scout, i just need to put down some thoughts about the current scout that i've been recently cultivating. if you gave scouts the most useful teamwork skills in the world, made it so putting them in a squad could be a game winner, but kept the scout rifle in: some players will still not use the skills and sit back and snipe. One game yesterday i played had about four scouts on each team, and perhaps 5 engineers. given the scout rifle, players will snipe, and be generally less useful than if they were other classes. however, why do they snipe? because they hate empires, have the evil gene, and want to ruin the game? It's because sniping is actually really very fun. for me, it's one of the most fun parts of the mod. Call me a noob, but I find that nothing gives me so much of a kick as zooming into the back of a guys head and spraying his brains out through his face. I really don't mind fighting snipers either. I used to think that the sniper could be kept because by buffing other areas of the class, new players would join the game more than just snipe, but i don't believe that true any more. If the scout rifle is left in the game, you will get snipers. BUT, I think for many people, sniping is the most fun and enjoyable part of the mod. That's a dilemma, because fun is the ultimate goal of the game, right? It's like in team fortress 2: the majority of snipers won't help the team, won't lead the team to victory or push the team back, or even get as many kills as if they were other classes... but sometimes you don't care about the win, you just want to have fun. this isn't an arguement for or against, just some ideas.
This problem with this niche is that it is harmful to the team if 1/4 of the players go scout. Ideally, 1/4 of the player should be able to go scout and be beneficial to the team.
I like that idea a lot. It would make it possible to walk, do short sprints, also melee and throwing nades would not make you lose hide and you could jump over obstacles and remain hidden. Because it drains energy you have to use it wisely and it won't be overpowered. But perhaps make shooting weapons (pistol, shotgun) not drain energy, but have it just lift the cloak immediately. I don't think they should be able to fire a few burst and remain hidden cause they had enough energy left to take someone out, but i also do not want them to lose all energy because they have to kill 1 person that stands in their way. So i think shooting should temporarily (till a few seconds after you stopped shooting) but immediately interrupt the cloak, but leave the amount of energy be. The ability to melee someone and remain hidden will be good enough, and it would make the melee skill usefull for once. It would already help teamplay quite a bit. I can imagine that our squad is under attack, and i as scout go around the enemy soldiers (cause i can sprint now) using some trees as cover, throw a concussion nade while getting behind them, and after it went of melee one of them, switch to shotgun and start shooting the others. You would not be able to do this on your own (at least not as easily), cause if players are not distracted by enemies, they will spot any scout that is walking or sprinting and kill him (you wouldn't be touching any wall AND you'd be moving). But when some riflemen are covering you, this is certainly doable. Also it would make it possible to hit vehicles with the sticky nades, if you can do a short sprint and remain hidden. Since you can kill and survive enemies on short distances, knowing that the players in your squad distract the enemy and cover you and that the engineer in your squad can revive you, will make you stay with your squad instead of going halfway across the map. If the scout rifle remains in the game but gets nerfed somehow, players that want to go solo and use the rifle can still do so, but because it's nerfed and close combat is improved a lot, most scouts will stay with their squads/team and use sabotage for turrets/buildings close by only. They would be part of the action, and i think killing someone with melee with the melee skill in the middle of a fight is at least as fun as using the scout rifle, certainly when it gets nerfed. If not grab to shotgun and blast them to pieces. I like it. I was against sprinting scouts, but this way they can mainly only do this when they have backup which is good. I also think it fixes the melee skill not being usefull, it improves the usefulness of the grenades, the scout would get more skills, he would be able to walk to a turret to sabotaging instead of crouching to it saving everyone who's waiting for him a lot of time, and it feels like the missing piece in fire fights.
I agree, Solo's idea should be explored. You're right. But the classes already don't work that way - you'll want most of your people to be engineers, a large amount to be grenadiers and a few to be riflemen. Riflemen are anti-infantry, and they are generally used for anti-engineer/grenadier protection. In a squad you'll want 2-3 engineers, 1 grenadier and 1 riflemen - at least on public, that would be perfect (in actual fact you could already have 2 engies, 1 gren, 1 rifle and 1 scout with no problems). I suppose the kicker here is that only the engy class can build at a decent speed, and as Empires revolves around buildings, you'll always want most of your team to be engy. Even if you take pretty much everything away from the engineer except build, you'd still want a lot of engies around, it's just that they'd become a niche class that would probably become switched out from after building is complete. Er..so my point was the classes already aren't at a 1/4 each ratio, so while aiming to get scout to fill 25% of the team is good, but expecting that to actually happen is not.
a lot of good ideas here. to add to the mix : sabotage is useless currently (ok, 90% useless except on turrets) it really needs a 'buff', ie: drop immediate damage to 25-30% (stead of 50%) and increase the DoT from 1 hp/s to something like 2.5 or 3hp a second. No buildings ever die from sabotage unless the team and their comm is completely clueless. Also the function disabling is a nice idea and may work a lot better to aid sabotage (no class changing in rax when sabbed)
I think if you increase DoT, immediate damage can remain and vice versa. I'd prefer sabotaging just having a bigger impact like function disabling as you said. The radar is about fine. Sabotaging it should pause research and show their units on the minimap. No class changing in rax would also be nice to prevent people from switching to engy and repair everything. The armory should simply not work at all (but allow for class switching cause something has to or a team loses when no engy is alive when you start sabbing things). Half income for refineries is good enough cause they often are a distance away and less likely to be repaired quickly. Not sure about the vf. Maybe the med and heavy chassis would not be listed in the build list anymore so they have to fight with light tanks untill it gets repaired. I don't know about this. I somewhat agree, but i do see if differently. I think, if you ignore the scout, all classes are used quite decently. But true i think the grenadier is not effective enough against vehicles in late game but i consider that to be a specific class problem. Making the rpg upgrade research cost less and giving it a bit more damage would probably fix that. But it's true that squadmembers often want 2 engineers in their team. The problem is the engineer is the only support unit. If he dies, no one can take over his duties. No revive, no ammo supply, no healing, no one building those 10 unbuild turrets that the comm dropped, etc. So people don't need 2 engineers, they only need one, but they really need that one, so they want a backup engineer. As long as both are alive they just get in eachothers way trying to inflict some damage while sharing their duties. In most cases if you'd know the engineer will stay alive, you'd rather have a second rifleman or grenadier backing you up. But you don't and he's too important to risk being left without an engineer. Engineers are not really used more than other classes though. I'm often in a squad with no engineers. I very often hear people say "noob scouts go engy now!". While that means sometimes you can't find anyone to build something, supply ammo or revive you, i do think it means that the engineer class is good as it is. Maybe the scout class can fill in the blanks there. If the scout could also do one or two of the engineer only duties (for example healing and/or ammo), the scout would be, together with the changes to hide, a real teamplayer and other players will benefit from it and get less irritated by having no support. The problem is the scout has no tool he can use to do stuff. And i can't imagine how scouts healing people or supplying ammo would work.
You say that Silk but you have to think this through: (posted from another thread) Maybe i'm wrong, I always did kinda think healing could be given away. But in point of fact, that's probably the smallest thing the engy can do, and imo anyway, the only thing that can really be reassigned. Revive is just too important, and ammo will be scouts either giving ammo to themselves, or you just won't see boxes around. Maybe if you give scouts healing and make the upgrade available to scouts only, it could work.
this whole "energy" thing... i really like it. The scout wouldn't just fill a niche but would be damn fun to use too. I also like the idea of buffing sabotage: personally i'd leave the DOT as it is, but increase the initial damage to drop the health of the target to 25%. that way, a rambo scout does little extra harm, but is a lot lot more useful when working with a squad. another idea to float is the scout being a "field medic": by pressing E on an ally he can gradually heal him up to 60% of his health. it's no substitute for a real medic, but would help the squad. importantly though, it would keep scouts together with team mates, instead of wandering around. edit: in other words; keep the engy as support, just allow two classes to heal.
There's the problem. The classes are imbalanced because having 1/4 scouts hurts your team, but having 1/4 of any other class is fine. In fact, it's even fine to have 3/4 engineers simply because they are so useful. Classes are useless if there is no class diversity. Otherwise, what is the point of using classes? Right now, the game essentially revolves around the engineer; he can construct buildings, heal infantry, repair tanks, place ammo and fight at close range. Scouts, on the other hand, don't have such a wide ability set. This is why I'm pushing to move healing and ammo dropping from the engineer to the scout. It would balance the classes and create more teamwork, since you can't rely on engineers to do everything.
