First of all, let me say that I don’t care if they nerf it or not before release. If it’s not as bad as it seems, great. If it is, I’ll have it in one of my loadouts so I can use it too.
But I think to get a good feel of how it’s going to effect multiplayer would be to look at Ghost Recon Future Soldier.
GRFS has a new system in the game focused around ‘intel’. There are numerous different ways to gather intel on the enemy, and when you have intel they are ‘detected’ for you to see as a red silhouette even through walls and across the map, very similar to how Promethian Vision shows enemies.
Some of the various ways to detect enemies include:
-The engineer class’s sensor grenades, once thrown detect anyone within their radius.
-The engineer class’s UAV equipment, where he flies a tiny drone around and detects any players in it’s line of sight
-The scout class’s OTR scanner attachment they can equip to a weapon, when aimed at an opponent detects them for a few seconds
-A camera that any class can use and place in an area that will detect enemies within it’s range and line of sight
-Tazing people with the stun gun or stun claymores and then going up to the incapacitated player and ‘data hacking’ them, gaining intel on their whole team (detecting them) which lasts for about a minute
There are a couple other things that cause you to be detected, but you get the idea. There are also counters to being detected, and whenever you’re being ‘detected’ it notifies you what kind of device is doing it so you know how to counter it. If it’s a sensor grenade, you typically just get out of the radius. A UAV, shoot it down. (they’re weak) If a teammate got data hacked, you’re kinda screwed. Engineers also get an equipment called the jammer, which they can place and anyone in it’s radius is protected from any kind of detection. But there are counters to the Jammer too.
This in my opinion creates a kind of rock paper scissors gameplay. My biggest issue with it is when I’m playing alone. It’s frustrating and sometimes there’s not much you can do when you constantly have to deal with teammates constantly getting data hacked (and it is very common), little toy planes spotting you, having to retreat because someone threw a sensor grenade in the area, etc.
But the difference between the games is that there currently doesn’t seem to be a counter to Promethian Vision, and from what we’ve seen it’s likely to be a very common ability and far easier to use than any kind of method of intel in GRFS. Yes I’m aware it’s not the final product yet and they’re continuing to tweak it, I’m just addressing what we’ve seen since there’s a lot of discussion on it.
So my recommendation is if you want to get an idea what promethian vision might play like, maybe try Ghost Recon Future Soldier (though I wouldn’t recommend buying the game with how many online problems it has). Or better yet, watch videos of some gameplay on youtube.
Here’s a decent video that shows enemies detected a lot. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nwyogb73y4g