Why Change SOFLAM if Tracer Dart was the issue

Agreed, and the amount of time the target is marked is super low...

It is hard to get a shot off in time unless you are specifically working with a crew on this which is VERY hard to do in pubs.

By the time you get line of sight, the target is no longer marked.


Why give recon soflam and tracer dart?

Why not give another class (Assault) Tracer dart, and Recon SOFLAM. This would mean more people would use it. 

And increase the rewards for hitting vehicles with SOFLAM & Tracers. 

I think DICE's almost knee-* reaction was hevaily influenced by Stodeh's very vocal complaining. Stodeh made a public video of his playtesting and was repeatedly saying javelin and Rao were OP. He was acting like it was an absurd change and would ruin the game. But this was a coordinated effort by high-skill players in a squad with him and Jackfrags and others on comms actively communicate the locks and positions. And we have no idea what the enemy skill gap was.

Real lobbies with random players doesn't happen like this at all. I can't imagine DICE was doing this change simply from the data. It was too quick to decide.

EDIT: DICE's profanity filter in forums is getting as bad as in-game.

There are just so many unaware players in the game who do not take advantage though. There are countless rounds where I go the entire round designating targets only to have zero players ever fire at them.

I think I played a CQ128 round with you yesterday on Discarded? Does your player card have all three heavy tanks T1 on it? Apologies if this wasn't you. But this person was absolutely dominant with a few of us attempting to take them down. Obviously a high-skill tanker. They dominated the entire game and we lost heavily because of it.

I have 2 of the 3 tanks T1's (almost done with TOR). And I can say that many rounds I'm able to go on very long killstreaks, even with moderate opposition. I think this nerf was too far now that there are far fewer players on the map without AT.

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@rop81 wrote:

So the patch notes stated Javelin will not lock to tracer dart unless you gain line of sight. Ok thats fine but now why is the SOFLAM changed to line of sight as well? 

Not too many people run with rockets anymore and hardly anyone designates.

So the infantry have to expose themselves to destroy vehicles.

One fix should be to allow Tanks and attack choppers/Little birds to designate targets and shoot themselves as they did in prior battlefield 3 and 4.

We had designators on second seats before, why not add the soflam to the tank second or third seat along with the Tank guided shell. Also the attack chopper gunner would get the air to ground while the pilot designated i.e forcing  both players to do teamwork.

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Because anything that increases pilot mortality is grossly unfair

I mean they were talking about the tracer dart line of sight on the patch notes, not the SOFLAM.

Man I wish the Javelin and SOFLAM would just work as they did in BF4.

Now we're stuck in this odd situation where few people run with javelins, fewer people run with darts and even fewer people can find ammo for their javelin rockets after the recent big classes patch. Add a mandatory line of sight mechanic to that to even get lockon... ugh.

And I havent spoken yet of the flares and APS.

I wonder what DICE telemetry data is telling the developers...

I never see the SOFLAM anymore 

Before last patch I used Rao and tracer dart in the hope that someone could use this and lock on to target. Often I exposed myself and got killed trying and no one took the shot. Now they have reduced the time tracer dart work so waste of time and effort to use this. Now I use soflam - that also spots people and target both vehicles and choppers making all able to lock on - both javelins and recoils (they also could that with tracer dart btw).

Javelin is not worth it - the time it take to lock and shoot vs the time you are exposed to snipers is not worth it. I use recoils all the time - fast up from cover - shoot and then reload behind cover and not getting hit by sniper. Often lucky to hit choppers also. The javelin and stinger should be long range hit weapons but stingers is useless because of the flare reload time. Flare reload time vs stinger lock vs fly time is not ok if still in air and straight line of sight. 

Did they also nerf the javelin damage ? Did 3 javelins on a tank one day and that one was still driving - the time to reload / time to lock should not be equal in damage to the recoils !!

But still all in all - this game is way way more fun now than before all of this - so those things above is minor things - the feel of game is fun now !