I think in the entire time since Oshur got released, I’ve had but 3 fights in the water. It covers large sections of the map. Will underwater bases or construction happen under the seas? So much wonderful water mass but not much to do. I saw the relics and structures was in awe at the beauty but alas not a single battle on the high seas.
Its a useless feature designed solely to generate hype. Which is a recurring theme with the devs currently. They design something that has a limited gameplay effect and then the feature/mechanic is not used anymore. Designing underwater fights would only be worth the trouble if they made it far more central to the game and redesigned some other continents to make use of it. Imagine some bases located underneath the ice on Esamir, and having some places to enter the water? You could use caves to create underwater air bubbles so vehicles could also surface and fight. It should not be present everywhere and it should be carefully crafted to enhance the local experience, which means we need a new devteam since they can at best make something look nice but are atrocious at proper design choices. Although that should all be put on the backburner until they fix the dozens of gameplay imbalances and bugs. The devs are already supposedly working on the system of "one update to fix bugs and balance and one to add something for hype". That is still easily possible if they focus solely on balance issues by adding mechanics, features and equipment as part of the balance. A bunch of new nanite costing utilities for infantry to balance out their weakness against vehicles and aircraft? New G2A weapons? Vehicles getting a free slot for an ability/weapon to protect themselves against aircraft? New objectives to complete a base capture? New secondary objectives to push through a base? There's tons of things they can add that would generate some hype. After all they tried to hype us with an SMG that fires class-specific underbarrel grenades, so it shouldnt be too hard to create hype with an actual impactful addition to the game.
The biggest gripe I have is that you move so slow, and with most class abilities disabled. Most ground vehicles sinking with the more vulnerable ones floating save for the Magrider doesn't help.
I think it's a necessary mechanic if you're going to have a water based map. That said, absolutely nothing about fighting in water sounds fun to me: Having no weapons that work at all! um, no. Having slow, diminished, or otherwise oddly behaving weapons that do work. um, no. Having those same weapons put you at a disadvantage on the other 90% of the map. Um, no. Moving slower - um, hell no. The players it draws are **** players too. They are willing ignore the actual game occurring on the land and skies so they can choose situationally specific vehicles and loadouts to crap on the non-dedicated players in those arenas. It draws cheese lords.
