I played a while last night and I must admit it was a good change. I personally think the issue isn't the recon class, but the bolt action rifles. If someone wants to play recon with a non-bolt action rifle I say let them.. but it's much easier to ban the entire class. It's an end to a means, but a rather heavy handed one.
BF4 is balanced for Run&Gun, not crouch: Bolt Action Rifles and the recon class in general is balanced such that in a run and gun server they need those one shot kill and see everything everywhere advantages to bring them up and make them par for the rest of the classes. When you slow the game down to a crouch game, suddenly the the bolt action rifles and recon are over powered for that style of game play.
The PLD is a game breaker in many ways, but it's designed to be. On servers where someone can burrow into a spot and murder freely without being seen, the PLD gives the opposing players a way to find that problem and deal with it. The PLD is basically an "in-game esp hack".. heh but it serves a purpose and can be good, even in a crouch server.
Silent_Wolf wrote (View Post):
Now, whats going to happen, when everyone starts using a shotgun, with a x6 scope and slugs. This configuration has the same effective damage as a bolt action, the same range with zero drop but it has one benefit the bolt action doesnt have, a quick cycle rate.
Uh.. Try it.
I play a lot with shotgun slug and scope and I can tell you, its simply not nearly as effective as you make out. Firstly you're making a bad assumption about the zero drop thing, there is a drop. And it's considerable. (In BF3 there wasn't one but they corrected it in BF4.)
More over, the slug does a lot less damage at range. I have slugged people at range 2 or 3 times (complete with puff of blood) and not killed them.
More over the accuracy is horrible compared to the bolt action rifles. Now admittedly I'm not the greatest shot out there.. but a slug round can vary wildly compared to the bolt action rifles.
I agree that banning a single weapon type is a slippery slope because another weapon will step up to fill its place, but I assume you it will be DMR's not shotguns.. (And no I'm not advocating banning DMRs.. They aren't one shot kills either.. )
It really seems like the majority of the people that are hating on this change play primarily recon - or so it seems from my comparing names to known play style. More over, I think making blanket threats of leaving or telling people you're going to take your ball and play somewhere else if things dont change is childish of you. Don't make ultimatum threats 'cause you're gonna lose.
Advocating change is good. Discuss it in an adult manner and try to be the change you want to see. Throwing a tantrum if you don't get your way isn't acceptable. Be an adult about it.
I personally would like to see recon allowed to stay, but implement a procon plug to remove bolt action rifles (including map pickups).