So, I've played a couple hours on the CTE, and I'm liking a lot of the new changes. I've got a couple items that I wanted to address and/or call attention to.
Player Icons
As a radio operator, I can be inside radio distance to my commander, and not see his icon. I have to be nearly on top of him to see it.
It's not a huge deal when playing other classes, but I think it should be a little less drastic of a change here. Either make the commander visible at longer distances to observer, or maybe have it so once a player identifies a friendly, they see that icon until the other player is out of line of sight?
In real life, I can see my friend and know who he is based on a lot of visual and audio clues that the game lacks, so the removal of the HUD here doesn't add challenge as much as add confusion to a situation where we should be encouraging better teamplay.
Mosin spawn
I just don't like this, for a lot of reasons. I think the limited gear until resupply is actually a good idea, but the way it's currently done makes it a chore.
- If I join a game in progress, or I don't pick my loadout before the first spawn, then my very first spawn in game has no kit. This is bad, and should be pretty non-controversial to fix.
- As security, with the limited icons and number of enemies, I had a couple times where I shot a friendly rounding a corner because I saw the insurgent weapon and reflexively expected an insurgent to be holding it. At least giving security an M24 might help with this, but even better would be...
- The respawn kit should either be the default loadout for that class, or just an AKM/M16 and a couple mags. I like the idea that there's an additional long-term cost to dying, but especially for the gunner and demolitions class, that death also has a huge cost to the rest of the team in overall combat effectiveness. Even just spawning with limited ammo, no armor, or other less drastic but persistent debuffs would make this a lot better at adding difficulty without annoyance.
Bot counts and positioning
This is pretty good, I played about ten games and everyone seemed to agree that the number of bots, and their initial positioning, was good. I've still seen a lot of conga lines of bots running into the beaten path of my M249 getting stacked like cordwood though, and while some bots break contact and flank, a lot are still just state flipping between laser beam and brain damaged.
Roles
I think I'd rather see the number of roles reduced, than to just have 1 player for each slot. I think that it would be nice to have 1 commander, 2 observer, 2 gunner, 2 demo, and 1 marksman/advisor. The lack of resupply coupled with increased enemy presence means that we need to have more firepower to make it through, so having the ability to double machine guns and explosives would make that a lot more fair. Especially on the long range maps, we don't need to have dedicated CQC guys, and the importance of support means we really should have an extra radio man.
Resupply
There should be additional places on the map to grab magazines, or limit equipment so that magazines can be easily shared among squad mates. I've played several matches through with 40+ kills and 0 deaths, and I run out of demo after one point and spend the rest of the map thirsting for a dang resupply. This could also be offset by giving grenadiers 12 rounds for the 40mm, or having all members of the squad carry a box of ammo for the machine gun. Making this harder on people who die is reasonable, making it an experience where the player has to ration ammo on weapons that should be firing to protect the team isn't as much.