DICE: Battlefield 3 has spotting
But Dolphin Diving is disallowed.
Battlefield 3 will feature spotting, developer DICE has confirmed.
Spotting allows gamers to pin-point the location of enemies for the rest of their team. Once spotted, a soldier has a red triangle above his head and is singled-out on the game's mini-map.
Battlefield 3 senior gameplay designer Alan Kertz confirmed the feature via Twitter.
"Yes, there will be spotting," Kertz confirmed.
"2D spotting is a minimum," he added. "I want a form of 3D spotting that avoids, 'There, behind the tree.' 'What tree?'"
"I want a balanced 3D spot that works for a whole team."
"It's still early," he assured another enquirer, "there's still plenty to do, and it's not like I'm going to forget about spotting, or the issues it creates.
"Spotted enemies could have a bomb dropped on them by an orbital space cannon for all I've decided right now."
For Kertz, spotting evokes 'man on a hill picking out enemies for his long-range squad' teamplay that he's keen to encourage.
Kertz went on to assure that while soldiers can go prone in Battlefield 3 - i.e. lie on their stomachs - there will be absolutely no lying down while in mid-air. This is a technique called 'Dolphin Diving' and "is out", wrote Kertz - "Period."
Other differences between BF3 and Bad Company 2 include flyable jets and 64-player battles (on PC), as revealed already. The two games aren't directly related, which means features like the grappling hook and zip-line have been dropped.
There will be a knife, though, as well as dog-tags, although what purpose the latter serves Kertz wouldn't say.
Battlefield 3 will also have friendly fire, plus the bullet drop system from Bad Company 2. "Doesn't work the same as BC2 though, it's a much deeper system," Kertz explained.
DICE is leaving the Special Ops focus for the Medal of Honor series. Kertz wouldn't be drawn on anti-cheat features.
Kertz went on to confirm Iranian capital Tehran as one of the game's major locations. Shops outed this city alongside Paris and New York for Battlefield 3.
As with Battlefield: Bad Company 2, EA is betting big with Battlefield 3 - particularly in relation to the genre-dominating Call of Duty series. EA has already declared itself the most likely breeding ground for the next "Great FPS" - a title held by Infinity Ward and Modern Warfare 2, apparently.
Taking that fight one-step further, Kertz tweeted: "You don't kill COD by trying to be COD. You kill COD by making a better shooter."