It can actually, it’s the main feature in arcade ground, enemy’s nametag will appear on the screen and the minimap as soon as one pixel of their vehicle hitbox exposed in one of your teammates screen, as soon he is somewhere 0 enemy were looking at him, the nametag and red dot disappears instantly. It’s something perfectly simple to convert and implement to rb and apply it only to scout marker.
I must say I don’t know about Arcade. I have always though that enemies would get scouted when they were almost in LOS.
But when Gaijin first introduced scouting into Ground RB, they made it so the enemy had to be in your LOS in order for you to be able to scout it, if I remember correctly. That made a lot of problems.
And people constantly scouting you in deadlock situations is incredibly annoying, too. The more time passes the more likell it gets that an enemy will eventually pick up on the scout. That’s an unjustified advantage.
I don’t think scouting should be changed in any major ways.
Yes, the marker following beyond LoS isn’t realistic in many cases, but if that really is such a problem you would also have to get rid of the marker that appears when hitting and near-missing enemy tanks.
Both of those mechanics are perfectly fine to have in a game, even if the mode is called realistic mode.
I would agree with a scouting marker duration nerf though.
Spoiler
Also, scouting is a great way to counter rats and everything that helps against flanking and ratting is fine in my book
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Realism isn’t my main concern.
In Arcade it’s easy to identify enemies, in RB it should be easier not be identified by an enemy.
In my opinion you should be able to move freely in RB and only be spotted when you are in an engagement, so if you get hit. With scouting this is gone in huge parts and Realistic plays a lot like Arcade today.
If you are scouted, almost everyone who has a shot on you will shoot at you, this limits your freedom of movement drasticly.
Scouting doesn’t just help against rat tactics, it “helps” against any sort of tactics that require the kind of freedom of movement I described and beyond that. It removes a huge portion of tactical gameplay from the game.
We already have a mode that offers gameplay without tactical depth, it’s called Arcade.
RB looking like this nowadays is just a knock off of Arcade:
Dunno what to tell you, but scouting has been around for a very long time. Matches looking like that isn’t something new.
If there are light tanks or certain SPAAs (or a ATGM Wiesel) doing its part by scouting that just is what tends to happen. At a certain point you also have UAVs, meaning that is even more likely to happen.
Not to mention that not bring able to move around freely is actually more realistic.
As a sidenote: The main reason for a situation in which half the team is scouted is the map design. Flat maps allow for easier scouting.
If you’ve played sim for any length of time you’d know that you cannot move around freely even in a mode without any Kind of markers
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I actually know the game from before that.
Not true. Scouting has been around for a long time, indeed. But it has never been used as much as today, probably because players weren’t as used to it, the removal of hullbreak made light tanks more popular and scouting went through a couple of buffs.
Just watch random YouTube videos from 2019 for example, you will see that scouting was used more rarely.
I am anti UAV drones as well for obvious reasons.
You can’t really talk about realism in that context. War Thunder maps are not the settings tank battles happen(ed) irl.
I play sims regularly, and you can move around much more freely.
Of course, you have more freedom of movement when you’re not visibly marked for everyone to see, what are we even talking about here?
Obviously the risk of getting noticed or shot by an enemy increases when you are being scouted.
This video clip shows how scouting ruins tactical gameplay.
What happened:
A T-34 pushed my position. In a 1v1 he is superior due to my lack of armor.
So I decided to use the main advantage of my tank, which is speed, to get into cover and ambush him.
What would have happened without scouting:
Either he would have made the mistake of pushing the position where I he saw me last and so he would have fallen into my trap.
Or
If he realised I wasn’t there anymore and was smart, he would have driven down the slope to avoid being too exposed. Then, with as much cover as possible, he would have been able to search me and potentially force me into a 1v1, which would have been advantageous for his T-34.
But instead:
Thanks to scouting, my attempt to use the advantages of my tank to my favor and set up a trap failed.
I could have just stayed where I was at before because he knew where I was anyways.
There was a bush between him and me, so he MG’ed into my direction, got a hit cam and killed me.
I was forced into a 1v1 through the reconnaissance and didn’t even know it since I had no idea I was scouted.
By the way, I know I could have avoided death in this particular case. But that has nothing to do with the problem I’m describing here. This is about how a potential battle between two different tanks, each with their own strengths and disadvantages, turned into a braindead brawl thanks only to scouting.
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Scouting shouldn’t be accurate. I believe Gaijin should leave the marker where the tank was last seen instead of following us like if we had a GPS tracker. Its a nice feature, but its way too accurate.
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At least that
2019 was 6 years ago.
Hullbreaks removal was in 2021, 4 years ago.
I started playing after that point and for as long as I can remember, I’ve always had two kinds of matches, ones where half the enemy team was constantly scouted and ones where seemingly nobody ever scouted.
Again, this isn’t something new, it’s been like that for at least 4 years.
More importantly however, this just dropped today
Community Update No.7: Talking About What’s Coming Soon!
Scouting through Scout UAVs
In Ground Battles right now, it’s not possible to scout enemy targets through the Scout UAV. However, many players still take advantage by switching to a Scout UAV, put a mark, return to their tank and try to scout targets using this mark. We want to make this method a normal and balanced game mechanic by making it part of the core gameplay, so we are making some changes to how it works.
We will make it so that you can now scout enemy players directly from the Scout UAV. There will also be some changes to the cooldown — when you have a Scout UAV in the air, the cooldown after a successful scout is three times as big, and the spawn point reduction for aircraft will be decreased by two times as well. However, the rewards in RP, SL and mission points have not changed.
With this change, players will be able to scout from the Scout UAV instead of needing to switch back to their tank after placing a mark in order to try and get a scout (however, this method will still be here for those who want to do it). At the same time, the scout cooldown when you have a Scout UAV in the air will be longer to balance it out, and the spawn point cost reduction of planes has decreased, but the rewards will remain the same.
So, I believe that there will be a bigger issue that will have to be dealt with first, before changes to scouting as a whole can happen.
It hasn’t been around with that intensity for more than 2 - 3 years. Again, if you don’t believe me, just watch random YouTube videos from 2019 - ~2021, you will see how much cleaner battles were.
Also, look at the battles around 9.0. In most matches the most played type of tank are light tanks, a light tank meta clearly exists, since you can get extra free scouting with them.
Light tanks hold all the cards in GRB. They’re the kings of ground rb. Fast movement, good positioning, capture points first, flat profiles and surprise shots as well as fast gun handling beat medium and heavy tanks. There are exceptions ofc, but in general fast movers are more rewarding to play.
I always woundered why light tanks got so much candy on top. Like artilly strikes, air unit spawn boni, scouting… It should be all removed off these.
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Yes, and that’s why I said they should get a high risk high reward role again. They should have to rely on their own abilities and not on mechanics like scouting, just like every other tank.
That would make it harder for unexperienced players who just go center map to play them, but if used correctly, they can have a massive impact.
Gaijin wants to get rid of the “high risk” but what still stands is the “high reward” part.
They have all that stuff because before Gaijin started this trend of spamming autocannon light vehicles and rat tanks light vehicles needed something to be more appealing, especially after the ability to repair allies was given to all vehicles instead of just light tanks and the two engineering vehicles at the time (AVRE and CEV).
The spawn cost reduction for planes isn’t unique to light vehicles, as all vehicles that have scouting also have that trait (the majority of high tier SPAA vehicles and the Wiesel 1A2 (the ATGM one) get scouting and therefore the Airstrike modification as well).
Personally I don’t have a problem with the idea behind the Airstrike modification, but it should probably be nerfed to a certain degree.
The only vehicles to not have artillery are heavy tanks and tank destroyers and I honestly don’t think that the ability to call artillery should be removed from light tanks.
What should happen is that the “Light Tank” class gets further divided, so not all light vehicles get scouting and access to UAVs. UAVs should be reserved for actual IFVs in my opinion and scouting should be reserved for actual light AFVs (and SPAA that lacks the capability to properly deal with other tanks).
Actual recon vehicles can keep both (if there even are any purpose-built recon vehicles at the ranks that get UAVs).
Examples
BMPs and Bradleys would lose scouting, but keep UAVs
Centauros and Type 16s would lose UAVs, but keep scouting
So I’m pro removing scouting in general. But even if you wanted to keep it, why these vehicles? Keep in mind the Type 16 has similar frontal protection against autocannons as the Type 74.
Another point we should discuss is the scouting marker which automatically appears when a player just shots you with any weapon. In the past it wasn’t as toxic. Nowadays even fighter planes might carry up to 3x 1000lb bombs. it is too op. If ppl want to communicate with their air players, they should set a manual map marker and write something into game chat. This MG spraying + auto marker makes you too vulnerable to air attacks. its too simplified and too low efford.
Not even talking about top tier jets or choppers. Air RB has alot to do with positioning, hiding, spotting. A simple MG burst shouldn’t be death sentence.
Very true. Gaijin have changed that. Now you don’t even have to hit the enemy anymore in order for him to be marked. It’s enough just shoot past someone. So if you want to know if there is a players behind a ridgeline you will just have to spray your MG at it and the game will mark the enemy.
As I’ve said, Gaijin tries to turn RB into a more attractive version of AB.