Let's talk specialists and immersion
Well, not really because specialists kill literally any attempt at immersion. Not because of their abilities, but because of the fact that they're clones. So I'm playing Falck, get killed by Falck, ...
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I think one - overlooked; I don't recall seeing anyone comment on it - issue with the new gadgets is that without "clone" characters, it would be very difficult to work out what a player can do in terms of specialisation.
In Battle Royale and small-scale Hero Shooters, this isn't so much of an issue as in BR you don't often encounter 40+ other players within a 100m diameter circle, and Hero Shooters like Overwatch are on a much smaller scale. It doesn't help that the character balance is such that seeing a Dozer is rather uncommon while seeing a McKay is like having smelly breath in the morning.
I do wonder how the players would deal with having fewer clues about the "abilities" of a player if they couldn't immediately identify it through the character appearance. While the solution DICE arrived at is obviously lacking in terms of muh immershun, it's often useful. See a Boris? Look for a drone. See a Falck? Ask for healing. See an Angel? Get your armour and full resupply. See a generic soldier? Yeah...
@filthy_vegans wrote:I do wonder how the players would deal with having fewer clues about the "abilities" of a player if they couldn't immediately identify it through the character appearance.
Considering this can already be an issue with some characters given similar body times and some of the cosmetics that are a touch more generic at range, I don't think it's a huge problem.
Easy solution, even if they have to keep the core of the specialist system - De-emphasize the hell outta specialist abilities so that needing to identify specific specialists to know how to counter them isn't a thing to begin with. But that's also been my proposal for the specialist system overall since I don't see it being any better received if the keep the current direction, and don't see how they can ever hope to achieve any kind of "balance" given how impactful specialist skills can be on the battlefield and how it's impossible to predict/balance around the expectation that players will be frequently swapping specialists or even using their abilities (vs. just playing Angel and feeding themselves ammo/armor as if everyone else doesn't exist).
But I guess we may have to wait another month to hear about what DICE has been thinking of for the specialist system. Still can't believe they're a month late on their own self-imposed deadline to kick that off, and without a pee.
