Weekly Class Debrief - Recon

As I've written more than once, in Battlefield 6, the Recon class is the most useless thing in the entire game. If it weren't for its reconnaissance equipment, which is useful at longer ranges (in conquest), no one would use it. This class is for players focused solely on getting easy kills and building their camping stats—who do nothing in normal gameplay except sit in one place.

This class completely lost its value when you shrunk the maps to the point where you can snipe enemies from any high vantage point. Try doing that in Battlefield 3 or 4; without skill and well-chosen equipment, you won't accomplish much at long range—unless you want to run around the battlefield like a rabbit with C4.

1. Scout decoys still fall through the ground on cliffs and stairs.

2. The animation for placing scout decoys still takes a million years, and the game often prevents you from placing them on flat surfaces.

3. The gadget that destroys other gadgets is now almost useless after the range was nerfed from 50 to 15. Make the range for ground targets 30 (claymores, mines) and for air targets 50 (drones, RPG grenades).

4. Aimpunch is ruining aggressive sniping and the game as a whole. When you're hit, you're slowed down, your reticle shakes, and bullets fly out of your weapon instead of from the center of the screen like in previous games. This forces you to play at a distance. VERY IMPORTANT: Remove sweet spots for sniper rifles, reduce bullet velocity for all sniper rifle barrels, increase bullet drop, increase the cost of flat ammo, remove aimpunch (slowdown and camera shake) when shooting at you, remove barrel inertia when moving, jumping, and sliding. Bullets should once again fly from the center of the screen, regardless of aiming.

5. Flare for DMR that kills with two bullets.

6. Reduce Claymore damage range by half.

P.S. (Smoke for everyone, and let no one leave unhappy. The effect of a small first aid kit on the Assault Trooper's syringe.)

As benitto said, decoys are incredibly broken even though they're probably the best recon gadget.  DGMK is broken, it's not nerfed, 15m is 100% useless, it's broken.  

"Aimpunch" is a good thing.  In older titles this was a part of regular suppression, and it was the counter to snipers having dominance at range.  Even if you can't really kill them, you can make it way more difficult for them to land hits.  At least in older titles, now in BF6 you pretty much just don't challenge a sniper at all ever or you abuse CoD movement mechanics to avoid fire.  Bad change, bring back real suppression.

All the nerfs benitto offers to make sniping more difficult I completely agree with.  It's a sniper fest out here, and snipers are one of the reasons the larger maps in BF6 just feel terrible to play.  Increase barrel inertia however, because it's stupid that a dude with a 10x scope can just do acrobatics while still holding perfect aim.  Flail that scope around just like would happen in real life too, I'd like to meet the man who can hold dead center walking across uneven terrain with a 10x scope.  Most people wouldn't be able to do it with a 2x scope.

Flare for DMR that kills with two bullets... what?  The 8.6?  The SVDM?  The 8.6 sucks, but the SVDM is pretty good.  Dunno what this means.

Claymore damage is fine, if anything increase the range that it can be triggered.  Sick of people running past it because it has a 1m range.

Other ideas

Forward recon need more forward oriented gadgets.  The DGMK used to fit this role until it was broken, along with claymores, but that's not really any option at all.  The decoys are ok at close, but not great.  Their native gadget the sensor seems designed to be a forward gadget, but since the sniper is usually far back it's practically worthless.  C4 is super niche, and great when it's great and just takes up a spot when you don't.  Technically, this is fine, because it's the risk/reward trade in effect here that we don't see enough of in this game.

Again, the passives need a rework, just as any other class.  As with my post for assault, I can only really remember a scant few passives, and for snipers I know they get ohko headshots and can spot gadgets within a certain range.  That's 4 other passives that I can't even name because they're so pointless.  Again, remove the unlock procedure to get them, and just make them an always on passive.  

If sweet spots are going to exist, then so do overly large and obvious lens flares.  If the sweet spot can be removed, then I'd say the flare should be toned down AND removed for anything under 5x or so.  Forward sniping with the SV and no scope is actually a lot of fun but it's insanely restricted because of the scope options, IE none if you don't want a "shoot me now!" flare every time you look at someone.

I also recommend severely lowering the flare with the designator.  That thing is just a giant red target every time you even think about using it, and it's more of a detriment because the entire planet can see that thing and immediately start firing everything they have at it.  

Most DMRs need ROF buffs, and recoil increased.  The point of a DMR should be that it has viability at range but can still at least hold it's own at close.  Currently they feel like sub-par sniper rifles because they just can't keep up, minus GRT and LMR.  People really sleep on the LMR too, but it also needs an ammo capacity buff.  Every other DMR sucks against real snipers, and sucks against regular full auto weapons.  

All in all

Fix the dummies.  Man I hate how broken they are.

You seem to have misunderstood my point about suppression. I advocate removing it from the game altogether; it's a garbage mechanic. In a competitive shooter, it shouldn't interfere with your aim and visibility (the game already has visibility issues). Countering sniper fire against you needs to be balanced differently. The beta's mobility and the sniper damage curve rebalance would have helped with this. Suppression NEVER helped against a sniper shooting at you with а long range, but it ruins the game for everyone with any weapon, especially single-shots (revolvers, shotguns on Slugs, DMRs).

Aiming inertia while moving is unnecessary. (All this talk about real life is irrelevant.) FIRST AND FOREMOST, this is an ARCADE SHOOTER. After the mistaken mobility nerf after the beta, it's very difficult to survive once you're under fire. You can't pick an enemy from around a corner without jumping and sliding because (low speed, aim-punch, guns with 300ms TTK, visual crap).

I know you can't slide with 60kg armor. I know the weapon shakes when running. I know accuracy is less when running and jumping. But this is an arcade shooter. For fans of the above-mentioned MECHANICS, I invite you to play Tarkov.

My point is that the problems with snipers partly arose after the nerf to the beta's movement.

Aggressive play is beautiful, spectacular, and attracts fans and streamers.

ABOUT DMR

I know exactly why they're bad at close range, and we don't have something like the SVD from BF4. For the same reasons, the Saiga sucks here. The reason is the recoil mechanics here... in BF4, 3, and 1, after firing a single-shot weapon, the sight would flip up and then INSTANTLY drop back with a slight aftershock. (Go to BF4 and try shooting a revolver with a scope.) But here in BF6, when you fire, the sight flips up and then drops back down SO **bleep** SLOWLY. Because of this, you lose sight of the enemy while firing. This ruins iron sight shooting, DMRs, shotguns on Slugs, and the entire pistol class. By the way, the inertia of the sight in motion also ruins the DMR at close range

PS: Reduce the iron sight cost for DMRs and sniper rifles to 0.

My go-to class. It's in my veins to flank in escalation matches with SMGs, PLD and C4. I laser paint everything that moves, it's your time engineers to annihilate designated targets 😂. To buff recon to more acceptable levels of utility, you could do these:

1. Smoke grenades added to grenade slot.
2. Buff C4. Three sticks of it should destroy any vehicle from full health. Maximum inventory should still remain at 5. Throw distance and handling speed are reasonably good, feels like Bad Company 2 ones. Battlefield 3 and 4 ones were awful in handling. Nobody in their right mind want to see 🙈 them be that clumsy.
3. Bring in zipline gadget from Battlefield 2 Special forces expansion for recon kit.

Regarding the C4s, yes and no. There's no need to increase the number of C4s, it's too much.

But their throw and flight speeds need to be increased; they're so wooden right now. Plus, they're still terrible at hitting corners when thrown from around a corner. In 2042, and in earlier games in general, they were much more responsive.

The spec ops training path should have it's signature weapon be Carbines, with buffs to suppressors, C4 capacity and stealth overall. This would give the training path more purpose. 

A few remarks on the sniping side of recon (and understanding recon is not just the sniping class, I regularly play spec op myself):

I really feel most snipers are not encouraged enough to support the team. A good sniper is mobile, they don't just find a perch and stay there. They ensure they are always covering a useful area: either an obj that is being assaulted or defended, or the lane between two opposing objs. And they are willing to throw their body alongside the team on an obj despite being heavily unfavored in CQC. 

But the game does not pushes for this style of gameplay. For one thing, it's more risky than staying in a safe spot: moving to a better position means the risk of meeting someone with a big gun along the way... And the game still heavily favors kdr over other actions when it comes to scoring, so staying put and sniping random targets can feel genuinely rewarding, especially considering how easy sniping is in this iteration. The game tells you you are contributing, so why do any different? 

So how can you design in a way that pushes players along a better path? For me, it is not necessarily about changes to the class itself, but more about making the better play more rewarding across the board. Make offensive and defensive kills earn more points than they do now while lowering the reward for the random ones outside of objs; show only or at least emphasize offensive and defensive kills in the scoreboards rather than the overall one; make captured flags the first stat in the scoreboard rather than the last, and heck, make it bold or a flashy color. And have kills made from HQ count for nil: no points, no stats. They're still kills (there are times when shooting from HQ is alas a necessity), but provide no rewards. 

This would apply to everyone, but I do think the effect would be stronger on the "lone wolf" aspect of the sniping recon. They should be on their own, but they should be looking where their squamates are and be rewarded when they give a helping hand.  

Assault have assault rifle buff
Support have LMG buff
Engineer have SMG buff
Recon only has Sniper Rifle buff which is useless for half of the training paths (there are only 2)
Spec Ops training path does not benefit from Sniper Rifle buff, but both training paths in the other classes can benefit from their weapon proficiencies.
Having Carbine or DMR proficiency is an option, but I like the other poster's idea better: suppressor proficiency. Either a minimap range reduction/removal, or no bullet tracers when using a suppressor. That sounds fun and thematic.

Since the footstep sounds were increased, on top of the nerf to the stealth tactics perk in the same patch, I have had people locate me via footsteps when while crouched or crouch running in quiet areas like a house in Eastwood. 😐

Instead of the mine or the anti-drone gun that was nerfed, I now use the Laser Designator as my second spec-ops gadget. It spots well like a drone and has thermal with zoom levels, and you can place it facing a flank to auto-spot anyone who enters (a bit like Valkyrie cameras in R6Siege). Painting is useful even if engineers don't make use of it, since it 3D tracks the vehicle so you can avoid it or plan your C4 run.

C4 is very hazardous to use. Because of the reinforced armour perk, I have to plant 4 on the vehicle to be sure of a kill. In this fast paced game, five seconds of planting and the slow trigger pull can only be done on clueless vehicles. In previous games only 2 sufficed, so I wouldn't mind seeing 3 destroy a vehicle no matter what perks it has.

Recon snipers should have aim punch when shot scoped-in.