Next up on the Battlefield Roots Initiative, DICE is going to seek feedback on Game mode mechanics and Communication, which includes spotting.

I'm going to post a few spotting suggestions when the time comes, and hope we can disuss them and other potential spotting improvements here in the meantime.


Problems
Currently, if spotted, you remain so for 6 seconds, regardless of whether you break Line of Sight (LoS) or an enemy is looking directly at you.

This is problematic for three reasons:

1. Maintaining a spot is tedious.
The optimal course of action, to maximize spot durations, is to continuously spot everything all the time, to ensure the full duration is apllied when LoS is broken. Additionally, enemies can lose their spot even if you are looking at them, which is unintuitive and forces unnecessary re-spotting.

2. Too much information is gained.
With a maximum movement speed (not considering the bayonet chare) of just over 6m/s (walk speed*sprint modifier, 3.4*1.775), that makes possible over 36m of movement being reported after LoS is broken. This is valuable info gained from little effort.
In duels involving spotting, either both players are spotted or only one. This makes duels either less interesting or one-sided. When both players are spotted, the potential for mind games and creative flanking disappears. No move is unexpected, which reduces tension. When only one player is spotted, the information disparity makes it too easy for the unspotted to win.
However, just reducing the spotted time would exaggerate the first issues.

3. Inconsistency.
Breaking LoS can have you unspotted in 0 to 6 seconds depending on when you were first spotted.

You see that breaking LoS is not a consistent or effective counter to spotting. It should be because spotting is an emulation of team-wide voice communication, which relies on seeing people. To fix this and above problems I suggest the following:

Make LoS maintain spots; the unspot timer starts when LoS is broken. Breaking LoS, but regaining it before the spot disappears, would reset the timer. (LoS FoV being the same as your screen FoV).

This would allow reducing the spotted time, without forcing people to (re-)spot way more.

Spotting someone once would have them remain spotted as long as you check on them every few seconds.
Spotting durations would be more consistent; you always know you will be unspotted x seconds after hiding.

As for a value, I’m thinking 3-4 seconds, down from 6.


Result:
Power of spotting is mainly reduced but also slightly increased, depending on the situation.
Spotting someone who will disappear shortly is not as powerful as before.
However, the ease of use of spotting is increased in other situations.


Additional ideas
Enemies who are in LoS could be denoted with a directional marker on the minimap. Mostly to indicate to you a teammate is looking at them, but the info provided would empower active overwatch.

When disappearing, spots could fade out over some time, at the enemies last known location, letting you know enemies were in the area. Could give players a better idea of the flow of the battle with spotting times in general going down.
Would also let you discern outlasting a spot and removing it with a smoke grenade.

Expanding the topic, it would be good to indicate on the minimap when teammates are shooting. As there is no minimap report when enemies are shooting, this would spare us from turning rapidly just to see a friendly support shooting at an enemy in the distance.


Positive effects:
Suggestion:
- Makes maintaining a spot less tedious
- Makes unspot times consistent
- Makes breaking LoS a more effective way to lose a spot
- Reduces information gained from spotting
Additional ideas:
- Lets you know which spots are about to disappear/why they disappeared
- Empowers teammates providing overwatch


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Some specific things I’d like thoughts on:
Active LoS providing directional info - too high gain for low effort? or not a big deal, but neat (that's what I think)
Disappear timer value
Impact of decreased spotting time


Note: this is intended for infantry. Not that it or some adaption could work for vehicles, I just haven’t put any thought into it at all as of now