It's more skill based

Fuck it, wall of text time because I'm getting tired of the black and white discussion surrounding this mechanic.

The 'fact' that 3d spotting was less skilled is very debatable despite the black and white thinking of people who decry 3d spotting without actually giving the mechanic more thought than 'dorito bad'.

Spotting is a core part of the Battlefield experience and has been in the series in some fashion since Battlefield: Vietnam. The older games only had 2d spotting sure, but it was a very important mechanic and good players used the hell out of it.

Is being able to see well an objective skill? That one is hard to quantify because as far as I'm aware one doesn't really get 'better' at being able to see. It's hard to argue one way or another but vision is a complicated thing. The Frostbite engine sure has a lot of visual clutter though that makes seeing well really hard sometimes.

I definitely wouldn't call sitting prone in the dark with an MMG and waiting for someone to cross into your line of vision 'skill' based gameplay. I wouldn't call being blinded by the games graphics and visual clutter as something that leans towards rewarding skill either. People here seem to think it's the most compelling and skill based game play ever conceived probably because they're all very average players. The majority of good players in my experience range from indifferent about the 'removal' of 3d spotting to laughing about how people claim that it was removed while still seeing tons of it.

I have always been convinced people who call 3d spotting a crutch are just blaming game mechanics for their own shortcomings. It's not me that was outplayed it was that damn dorito that got me killed.

Things that are skill based I could see an argument for are map knowledge and 'situational awareness' Depending on audio and being able to know where people are is a skill. None of these things weren't important with 3d spotting though. 3d spotting was a design tool used to fix a legitimate problem, that being how the hell do you get 32 players to communicate effectively when most of them won't know callouts and most people don't use VoIP anyway. No one wants to have 32 players all screaming callouts on VoiP at the same time either. I never felt I had to be 'more' aware than in the older games, in fact I feel like I can be comfortable being less aware because I don't' have to process nearly as much information. If I get killed by an MMG camper or someone I would never have been able to see at all because of the games graphics I just write it off as unavoidable.

Spotting was just another tool in my belt that I could use and it was a meaningful way for players to communicate important information. It is an easy way to feel that you were part of a huge team that was actively communicating with game mechanics. Again was it perfect? No. Did it need to be removed like it was? No. Not that it is removed in BFV with all the spotting I see, of which there is a lot.

3d spotting actually makes the game more challenging to me. In Battlefield V flanking is so brain dead easy and the people I kill on the way can't reliably communicate that information to their team. Text chat is often ignored or turned off by most players. I get behind players in BFV with such regularity that getting tons of kills on a flank has just become the norm. I have a much harder time and have to be so much more aware of being noticed in the older games that I find it a far more challenging experience. To me, being aware of being spotted and having to adjust to that, knowing i have to stay out of sight for at a few seconds was just part of my game sense. In a way that is it's own skill.