Pretty much all maps come down to who has vehicles alive and who doesn't. Sadly even since Beta, most players don't take on the role of keeping vehicles alive or killing them. The result is a few players who spend their entire EC experience doing just that. Sure that can be enjoyable, but if that is the only thing you ever get to do in EC......well that gets quite stale. Current meta for how to defend a vehicle. Eurotruck simulator, as all other methods have proven to not garauntee survive-ability of the vehicle. A player must literally spend the entire match driving around or the vehicle gets destroyed. "But you can defend the vehicle"....against a tank? Lascannon? Double melta? Deffcannon? who are you kidding, you are just a minor distraction and the end result is the vehicle dead anyway before or after you are. A change needed to be made years ago and it never happened. Vehicles should be an assist for completing objectives not a requirement. /end complaint
Every attack being 100% dependent on any single factor is not a sound design. In EC every single attack is, for the most part, 100% dependent on vehicles. The dire need for alternative methods of spawning with squad mates in EC will become crystal clear with the new "infantry only" map. It's going to be more of a free for all, lone wolf map because squad spawning is going to be next to impossible. Don't believe me? Try playing BF1 or BF4 not spawning on the squad leader, not spawning on a squad vehicle and not using spawn beacons. By the time you spawn from an objective and get to where your squad mates are located either you're dead or they're all dead 9/10 times.
Or just make driving transports finally rewarding, like we're asking for last year and a half.... New map isn't dependent on transports at all, but its just one map, not new game direction.
I described this problem as "Whack-a-Rhino" because that's what EC's gameplay design is which comes as a result of only having a limited amount of respawn types (Base or Rhino). What doesn't help is how generally distant bases are, there's often a lot of ground to cover between bases which turns the Rhino into a dependency. I suggested a while ago as @Njord-Halfhand pointed out that squad leaders need to act as mobile respawn points like in BF. I think there's a few options here to fix this boring Whack-a-Rhino shit: Take the Squad approach. In that game Squad Leaders are critical directors of the team. The SL's can place down fixed respawn points which have a limited amount of uses and a significant cooldown, and can be destroyed by the enemy. They also can't be placed within a large distance of enemy squad-placed spawn points. In EC I can see it take the form of an item like a teleport homer for the SL to take in order to do this. Take the BF approach. You can spawn on any squad member provided they're not under fire, and that's pretty much it. I can foresee adding an enemy proximity limitation to this, so you can't spawn on a fellow squad member when in close proximity to the enemy. Whether or not you should only be able to spawn on the squad leader or any member, I'm not sure. There need to be some huge caveats though, including lots of counter-abuse mechanics, eg 'if you can't fit you can't spawn' which would prevent spawning in many dumb locations.
Fun is really subjective term, what is fun for you may not be fun for someone else and vice versa. There is plenty of people enjoying driving vehicles, giving them reward for it would give them actual incentive.
They are actually sort of working on that with the new map. It has No vehicles. So if this map takes off and does well we can probably expect to see some changes to how the vehicles work.
Well you cant que up to specific maps.......so not like they'll have data to support what people prefer. Also, no one said we don't want any vehicles. Just that it isn't so critical to victory as it is now.
Think I said this in another thread, but be good if you could get mini-objectives you could spawn in on, that were a fair distance from points, but not a super far distance, so a transports still better to use, but it's not crippling without them. I'd say have them be not free at the start, so you can't attack a point from all sides immediately and rush down things super quickly, but have to spend time actually getting it instead of say, assaulting a point, so can then be a debate of whether you try rush in and take the point, or get the mini-objectives early for a more sustainable fight. Also avoid the issues that would occur with spawning in on squad mates/whatever else, such as having to setup a counter to spawning in on jump assaults (if you could) and to prevent games becoming instead of 'Where's transport', more 'wheres the guy who's lodged his body into a corner somewhere no one can see spawning guys in', and whatever else that could happen.
