The Ranged rifle is getting cut; some players are rejoicing, others are grieving. The replacement rifle will be a shotgun and again some are rejoicing and others are grieving even more. First consider why the ranged rifle is getting removed; The whole idea of a scout is to scout for enemy units. Preferably from behind the enemy lines near the enemy base, so that he can warn the team about impending attacks. At the moment he kind of suck at this, even though he is the only unit with binoculars. The second role of the scout is as a saboteur of targets-of-opportunity which works reasonably well, except when you reach the enemy base because everything you sabotage will be repaired in no time rendering 15 minutes of painstaking sneaking mostly useless. The Ranged rifle, cause of rage, cursing and not to mention the "scunt" nickname, has many an effect on players. It acts as a magnet for inexperienced players because they like the AWM in CS. Also in the big picture of a game, getting 20 kills with the Ranged rifle does little to help your team win unless you can pick off those pesky engineers which are reviving. The ranged rifle also cause most scout players (except the experienced ones) to stay in one area the entire game. Be it a rooftop in Glycencity, the bridge area in Slaughtered or just behind the rest of the team in a chokepoint map. They lay there, hidden, picking off a couple engineers half a mile away. The engineers will respawn and finish building their stuff. What did you just do, you stalled a few engineers for half a minute at most. A waste of time in the end. So the devs' finally gave in and decided to remove the Ranged rifle in an attempt to force Scout players to do what the Scout is meant to do; to infiltrate, spy and sabotage. So far so good. But removing the ranged rifle also carries with it some problems; it makes you more visible because you have to kill up front, face to face with the enemy. Not a big deal you say, except it removes a lot of the stealth advantage the scout had. In empires 2.0 you could successfully kill an enemy with one shot without giving away your location, even if you were behind enemy lines. In 2.12 this is no longer possible. Shooting someone up front always gives away your position, and when the enemy is dead he will look around to see where you are hiding. Usually this leads to them spawning nearby to hunt for you, only this time they have your location pinned down. "Game over man, game over!" So what do we do? Suggestion 1: Make the hide skill for the scout permanent (as in always having the hide ability, not as in having it active all the time). Without hide, the scout could not even be called a scout. Try infiltrating the enemy territory without the hide skill, close to impossible. The scout is a specialist unit, trained for a specific type of mission, so let him be special. Also behind enemy lines it is not easy to farm points for a second skill. Suggestion 2: Dead players should not be able to see Scouts. This will increase the survivability of scouts behind the enemy lines. Removal of the ranged rifle removes a lot of stealth (i e, invisible kill from a distance). Players you currently kill as a scout will look around to spot you when they are dead so they can enact their revenge when they spawn. If they could not see from where you were shooting you might be able to get away from that isolated barracks you just sabotaged, even though your nemesis will spawn at the location again. The only option now it to shoot your way out, and it's not like you have a lot of ammo. Suggestion 3: Activating the hide skill should disable any targeting diamond the enemy team has placed on you. Suggestion 4: The commander should not be able to give targets using a selected scout. If a scout has made it to the enemy base, the commander should not be able to put targeting diamonds on the enemy with the help of the Scout. Suggestion 5: The binoculars should be able to put targeting diamonds on all enemy units within the view cone up to a distance of 100 meters. Old targets are removed when the binoculars are used again. It would also identify enemy structures on the mini map using the new 2.22 icons. The targeting diamonds are placed when pressing attack1, simply looking though the binoculars would give the same effect as an engineer camera. Suggestion 6: Give the scout 8 grenade slots per default instead of 2 without requiring ammo upgrade skill. The scout should not have to farm 10-20 points before being useful. He should be useful from the start by using the binoculars behind enemy lines and sabotaging buildings. Killing enemy soldiers should be done only in self defense. He should be good at short range CQC when cornered and leave medium/long range fragging to the riflemen/grenadiers. With 8 sticky stun bombs he could do some damage to enemy APC's as well. (2-3 sticky stun bombs on the back of an APC will already destroy it right now). Suggestion 7: Engineers should not be able to repair a sabotaged building back to 100% unless 30 -60 seconds has passed since it was sabotaged. This would make VF/Rax sabotage in the enemy base much more useful than it currently is, preventing insta-repair. Repair would still work, but only up to 50% of full building health. Suggestion 8: "Sabotaging" the enemy commander should bring up a list of all that he has researched and what he is currently researching so that your team can counter. The scout would of course need to radio this in manually using team chat or voice chat. Alternatively this could be tied to a scout "calculator" with a single ammo count to prevent repeated usage. Perhaps it could have another use as well, like disabling the spawn ability of one enemy APC. In the end the scout should not be a front line solder fighting alongside riflemen and grenadiers. He should not be a top scorer on the team getting lots of kills. He should be useful with infiltration and sabotage whilst excelling in extreme close combat (something i hope the shotgun will provide). It should be fun but challenging to be a scout. People with little patience should stay clear of the selecting the scout class.
I agree. The scout does not get any good weapons, so he needs abilities. I think all of yours are decent.
I think the scout shouldn't have a hide SKILL, but a hide TOOL. So he can't use weapons while sneaking... make make the binoculars hide him or something, so he can zoom, target and observe while being cloaked...
Excellent thread with excellent points. The scout is an underutilised resource and ppl hate it because atm it is an easy way to get frags and still avoid confrontation ( a noobs fave). This suggestion should be seriously considered to "energise" the scout. pld zynaps
Give the NF scout some heal abilitys and stuff Remove the scout from be and give the be rifleman those skills
Yes i considered that already, in the end it does not really matter if its the CV or radar. The reason I listed the CV instead of the radar was because it is usually a bit more challenging to sneak up to the CV (you are more visible laying flat on the ground) than going inside the radar or against a crate next to it (99% invisibility, touching 3 walls)
I've always personally seen the hide skill as some kind of cloaking device the scout carries with him and not some skill he learnt in military training. However if the hide skill is made permanent (removed from skill selection) it would define the role of a scout more clearly. At the moment, if you select a Scout without hide skill (slash) cloaking device, what is he but a weaker version of a rifleman? He would not be able to fulfill his role at all without the hide skill. Make hide something the scout always have to separate him from the other classes. He is useless without it anyways. It would also make it possible to have hide + silencer at the very beginning.
Hide is probably the worst skill a scout can get, if your not picking up enhanced senses and accuracy for your first upgrades your doing it wrong
Why not? If you've made it to the enemy base (so that you and the commander can see their stuff), you should be able to take advantage of that. Rather than this, I think the sabotage effects should be changed to be more useful and effective (I made a suggestion to this effect a while ago). For example, I can't tell you the number of times I've heard new players say the sab effect on the radar affects enemy research (wrong, but the most logical assumption) rather than cause you to see enemy vehicles.
You mean, people not playing as you want them to are doing it wrong? Hide is a helluva fun in such big open multiplayer games.
I think hes getting at he doesn't want his team to be useless and lose because everyone he is playing with are fucktards who think being scout crawling across the map hidden is useful.
The basic idea that the scout needs to be fixed is good, but this vision of the scout is terrible. Th scout should be encouraged to stick with their team -- not on top of them, but just a little ahead of them. Empires should be all about teamplay. Sneaking into the enemy base when everyone else is somewhere else is a terrible strategy. It is not a good gameplay mechanic. It discourages teamwork, and it goes against everything else implemented in Empires. It shouldn't be encouraged. No effort should be made to make it better; in fact, once other options are made, it should be made worse. Scouts should not see it as an option. Scouts are hated -- and the scoped rifle was removed -- because they weren't working with their team. Scouts who crawl on their bellies into the enemy base instead of directly helping the rest of your team with objectives elsewhere are just as bad as scouts who spend all their time sniping. This is something that absolutely must be stressed. Sneaking into the enemy base to sabotage their structures when nobody else is anywhere nearby is a fail-strategy. It does very little to help your team. Even with your suggestions, it would still do very little to help your team. It encourages scouts to go off on their own, which is something that absolutely should not be encouraged. Scouts should generally be encouraged to stay near a squad or a group of their teammates -- not directly in with them, but just a little ahead of them, weakening defenses and buildings directly ahead of an assault. Scouts should never be encouraged to run all the way to the enemy base while the actual fighting is on the other side of the map. As I said, infiltrating enemy territory is simply not a good mechanic. With that said, I would argue that one of the main problems with hide at the moment is that it encourages scouts to crawl around. Crawling is generally useless in Empires, unless you're a rifleman or something who is racking up dozens of kills while doing it. Crawling extended distances on large Empires maps is absolutely terrible. Even if the scout could accomplish amazing things when they get someplace, it's pointless if they have to crawl -- the Gren or Engineer can run up and actually kill buildings. Hide does not provide such a good bonus to counterbalance that, and wouldn't even with your changes. Scouts need to be able to hide while at least walking and possibly even running, and should not benefit from crouching, hiding, or sticking near walls -- all of those go against the overall way Empires is built. This will require a drastic overhaul of hide to balance it in other ways. (I suggest making visibility based on the number of nearby opponents and closeness to an enemy radar / sensor equipment instead, with limited 'hide ammo' or a 'camo device' or some such thing they have to use.) Basically, a scout already has the penalty of having to actually walk up to a turret to disable it when engineers or grenadiers can easily destroy it for good from outside its range. Making the scout crawl up to the turret to accomplish even less than the grenadier or engineer can do almost instantly at a distance is just kicking them in the teeth. Let them run while hiding. The worst part about the current hide skill, though, is that it makes it impossible for scouts to work effectively as part of a squad, because they move at such a slow speed if they want to use what should be their most iconic ability. Scouts need to be able to use hide, stealth, or whatever when running; without that, they're never going to be able to function effectively as part of a team. Scouts shouldn't be that far behind enemy lines. And overall, the whole concept of what you have the scout doing here is stupid and pointless -- if you find an outlying enemy rax, you can go engineer or grenadier and actually kill it. Why would we want to encourage someone to go scout and dick around with sabotage? This isn't so bad, but again, you're aiming at the wrong target. The scout shouldn't be running around on his own. He's a scout, not a covert-op or spy. Empires gameplay doesn't really support covert-ops or spies. I don't see the purpose of this. If you want to nerf comm-granted wallhacks as a whole, say so; but the scout is the one place where it is legitimate for the comm to give them, much moreso than with any other class. If you want to remove comm-granted wallhacks, remove them everywhere else but here first. Obviously, I think this is a good idea (although I don't see the purpose of removing the old targets when the binoculars are used again -- it just makes it fiddly to find that perfectly-aimed target. Make it time-based instead.) Again, I don't think the scout should be that far ahead of his team. I don't think Empires really benefits from having a 'lone wolf' class. The scout's grenades back this up -- pay attention to them. For the most part, they are best when you have teammates nearby to take advantage of them. The scout is meant to stick with their squad and the rest of their team. Not directly on top of them, but they shouldn't be a lone wolf. Lone wolves suck. They shouldn't be encouraged. Pointless. 30-60 seconds still isn't that useful. All this is is annoying. It encourages scouts to crawl on their bellies into an empty base and sabotage the buildings, which is a stupid and useless strategy that goes against teamwork or cooperation. God, no. See the above. How does this encourage teamwork? How does this encourage scouts to stick with their teammates rather than going off as a damn useless lone wolf? Disagree. Scouts should be the front-line soldier -- they should be the front line. They should stay directly ahead of the riflemen and grenadiers -- not too far ahead, but not too close, either. Their abilities should provide targets to their nearby teammates, while warning them of threats. They should be able to weaken or neutralize some threats as well -- disabling turrets and sensors, weakening buildings and walls, shutting down tanks briefly with scout stickies, defusing mines, and so on. Having a scout moving just ahead of your main forces should provide a significant benefit to them in several ways. The scout's abilities (mainly through hide, but also perhaps through protection from mines, turrets, and perhaps even splash damage) should let them survive better at the far front than other classes. This actually is the general shape of what the scout has now; it's just that their current abilities suck too much, and they don't have enough protection. Take defusal away from grenadiers and give it to scouts -- grenadiers are mostly a long-range class and have enough to do already, while defusal is the ultimate front-line ability. Make defusal capable of defusing many mines at once in a small area. Let scouts move quickly while hiding in some fashion and make hide an innate skill, so they can rush turret-farms and move with a group. Possibly give scouts enhanced senses as an innate ability as well. Give scouts some sort of ability that can destroy walls. Improve binoculars like you said. This alone probably won't save them, but I think it would be a very good start.
The thing about this thread is that there are 2 somewhat like it on the second page of the suggestions Hide fails. Dig In, Radar Stealth and Hide The main problem is that the ideas quickly disappear off the top few suggestion threads and fall into obscurity. Although i do beleive that the devs should show some a large amount of discretion of what ideas from the community they decide to put in the game, they should at least consider all of them... if only for a few seconds The scout does need to be changed in order for it to no longer be the "useless" class.
Give the scout a calculater with a charge and hide uses that "energy" You can use hide in any stance but you have to hold said device so you cant shot and be invisible. Hide should imo 90% invisible and have a nice water shader If you want you could give the rifleman a (terrible) thermo vision to counter that.
When I pick the scout class I don't do it because I want to engage in a firefight with the enemy. I do it because I want to "Scout"... as in get to the enemy side of the map and sabotage refineries, turrets, vehicle factories and maybe e-build a ninjarax. If I want to fight head on with the enemy I'll pick the man for the job; the rifleman Surely this is what the Scout class should be all about?
I think you guys really have no idea of how real-life equivalents of scouts work. Sneaking into the enemy base at night and fucking everything over IS their modus operandi, in case you don't know. And that actually works really well with the Empires scouts right now. It's just that people think "herpa derp I want to kill everything as scout lol" and fail.
If you stick just a little bit ahead of the rest of the team what would your objectives be? Engage enemy soldiers? Sabotage turrets? Usually in Empires battles are fought at two different front lines. Staying a bit in front of your team while they push is incredibly hard because you will be facing multiple enemies and turrets on your own. You will be trapped between firing lines. The turrets you can sabotage, but you cannot engage the 10+ enemy soldiers coming you way. If you do, both them and the surviving turrets will unload everything they have at you. As an example; Ever tried scouting ahead and sabotaging turrets at the crossroads choke points? It's very difficult no matter how good you are with using the hide skill because of the amount of players running around. At most you can manage to take down 2-3 turrets (out of 15) before you are spotted. Making the hide skill work while running would go a bit a alleviate this but then you have to make it possible to use your weapons while staying hidden as well. This in turn would the ultimate player magnet and half the team would consist of scouts instead of riflemen. In the off chance you are scouting ahead of your squad and come across an unguarded turret farm / barracks it will most likely be destroyed by grenadiers and engineers before your sabotage skill becomes useful. Sure I have sometimes swam across the water in slaughtered only to camp with my back against the enemy walls waiting to shoot engineers in the back when they come to build turrets. However that is of limited use. Once you die (which you will because they can see you when they are dead and they will make you a priority) you have to respawn and make your way ahead of the team again. I understand your frustration with lone wolf scouts going about their own business instead of staying with the team but I don't see how the scout can be improved into a front line unit the way you suggest. Staying alone 50 meters in front of your team weakening defenses as they engage the enemy is suicide unless you have some very powerful weaponry. Always on hide skill won't help a single bit with keeping you alive in that situation. While sneaking into the enemy base has limited use, having a Scout in the enemy vehicle factory or barracks just when your team is about to launch an attack can be quite valuable. The usefulness in sabotaging all unguarded refineries in enemy territory should also not be underestimated. Crawling hidden scouts are only a hindrance for the team if there are too many of them, beacuse as you said, they are slow and cannot be used as a 'push' unit at the front lines. Nerfing the ranged rifle has already taken care of the problem with too many scouts (most of the time). I expect the introduction of the shotgun will lower the amount of scouts per team even more. However having two lone wolf scouts in a team of 20 players is not necessarily bad for team play. Team play is much more then sticking together fighting side by side. Having a scout at the enemy base with improved binoculars capable of giving multiple target diamonds could do wonders in warning the team for an impending tank rush. Generally those places will be overrun with enemies, and if they are not then we can just let the grenadiers and engineers deal with them instead. But this would make the Scout totally useless. If they are overrun with enemies you would have to be 100% invisible to get close without being seen. In fact I can argue, that the only reason it is possible right now to get close to enemy structures without being seen is thanks to the slowness of crawling. I suggested this because it would make my following suggestion (improved binoculars) more useful. What is the point of having improved binoculars to target enemy units when the commander can do it? That was the reasonin i suggested removal of commander attack orders when a scout is selected. On more open maps like mvalley, isle, glycencity and duststorm the use of smoke grenades and concussion grenades is as useless as they come. Smoke and concussion is good on maps with tight spaces like citymaps, but that's about it. However even on those maps a stick stun if far more useable. Sticky stun is also very useful when used on the enemy commander just before your team attacks. Not so pointless if done 15 seconds before your tanks reach the base. In fact that is probably more team work right there then simply sticking with your squad the whole time. And the whole point of it is to be annoying, after all there's a reason for why you can sabotage other things than turrets? However the reason for sabotage is mostly gone when applied to a VF or barracks because spawning units will have them repaired 5 seconds later. This will happen, especially under your vision of the scout as a unit preparing for an assault by weakening defences. Having the enemy have to wait 30 seconds before they can repair back to 100% can go a long way in aiding your team if used at the right time. The last suggestion I made about being able to see enemy commander research was not part of my original vision. Just something extra i threw in at the end You have fair points in what you say and I guess our disagreement stems in our vision of the role we see for the scout. Your Scout is a short range front line support unit compared to mine which is a covert ops recon and sabotage unit.
The reason there was a lot of fucktards crawling around the map as hidden scouts was in large thanks to the ranged rifle. What I am suggesting is a unit that's piss poor at killing enemies at a range or medium distances. This alone will deter a lot of players from going Scout. This on the other hand needs to be balanced with better stealth survival abilities. I am well aware of the problems with lots of scouts on a team. I've been in 2.0 games where there would be 10 scout snipers on the team which is of course useless and no doubt made us loose. My suggestions, of which none is really radical (better binoculars, a few more grenades, innate hide skill), would improve the situation for the few players who still want to be a Scout once the ranged rifle is gone.
