The Worst Attachment Yet - THE FLASHLIGHT

One question -

If attachments are going to be THIS expensive: Why give people the most useless attachment: The Flashlight.

Incapable of blinding people, incapable of illuminating dark areas, capable of giving your position away to everyone.

Its a very useful attachment, it shows me where to shoot for free cert points. The only difficult part is getting your enemy to equip it.

The only use i found for it was on a shotgun during the night.

Besides from that it is probably more of a disatvantage.

To make bad players easier to kill.

But really, I don't know.

Blinding people with it is an excellent idea.

maybe its somekind of buyable hardcore mode?

Please use the all of the lights that you have...

Hell no, keep that BF3 garbage away from this game. What would come next, suppression and scope glint?

Yes the game clearly needs more......Flashlight.

The flashlight may not be so bad if nights were actually dark, and when you switched the Flashlight off (which you can do) it STAYED off. It turns back on if you switch weapons, and it seems to turn back on when you reload or throw grenades sometimes.

Im a bit colorblind, and i have a super hard time seeing Vanu at night. Their purple/grey armor blends right into the color of night for me. So using a flashlight to illuminate them even just a little bit at night is quite helpful. (I also have trouble seeing NC players, but its not as bad as VS at night time.)

I don't want to see the Flashlight be able to be used to blind people, its incredibly annoying and with such a fast TTK, if you have a flashlight, and your opponent does not. You'll probably win 99% of the time because he cant get his crossheir onto you.

Just make the flashlight brighter, longer ranged, and stay off when its selected to be off.

Lower its cert cost, since the Laser Sight actually gives your weapon a tangible bonus. And increase IRNV scope cost, so that the Flashlight is more common for night fighting than IRNV, since IRNV eclipses the flashlight once its purchased.

Have you tried the Flashlight yet? I've had it numerous times during the beta, not during launch and it didn't illuminate anything for me.

Tbh - The "blinding" aspect doesn't have to be like a super 100% total blind, however it wouldn't be unwelcomed.

Reason why I find the blinding aspect "acceptable" for PlanetSide2, is because of the sheer size of the game. It MAY help you in CQC, but in the mid-long range quarters, you're screwed. On top of that, it just screams "kill me" to all enemy vehicles.

This would act somewhat similar to the SCATMAX for the NC - Where the NC MAX is basically spec'd for CQC and will destroy anything in that radius, but get screwed over from mid-long range.

Just bought a flashlight for the luls and it's not even working

No, no it's not.

I havent used the flashlight since Beta really. But, as someone who is colorblind, it actually DOES help me see VS at close range at night. I seriously cannot see VS at all at night, even when they move. Last night on Amerish i was an Infil with a Semi-Auto Scout Rifle (Its actually not THAT bad, it kills in 3 shots) And i got the drop on a VS light assault i was stalking. He was facing away from me, so i got close to make sure i got all the shots to hit. I fired the first shot, it hit him, then he moved a little and i think he stopped moving. But even just a little movement made me compleatly lose him because his Purple/Grey blended with the color of night. I fired a good 3-4 more shots at where i thought he moved to, but he mowed me down. He didnt take cover, he simply shuffled to the side. If i had a flashlight, i would have seen him, even though its beam is only like 5 feet infront of you.

While a rather embarassing death on my part, i really couldnt see him at all. The flashlight needs to me MUCH brighter if its going to be worth equipping a big SHOOT ME light.

Im stull hesitant to add any kind of blinding aspect to it, though. It will make the flashlight one of those Certs everyone in CQC NEEDS to have, since in CQC the laser pointer wouldnt be near as valuable as the ability to hinder your opponents vision. And the flashlight CAN be switched off, so it really would be no hinderance to the person at night because they can flick it off, then flick it back on when they need to blind someone.

It doesnt have to blind, but could reduce distance you can see, effectively ruining night vision.

Of course it would need to have a friendly fire effect too for that to be fair.

But in military ops, when you are going out at night, you often sit in a red lit room or space first, to quickly adjust your night vision, only takes a little white light to ruin it

Not to sound like a jerk - But have you adjusted your Brightness for this issue? I've known many people who have visual issues ingame and usually turning up the Brightness a few would fix it.

Heh, yeah. This is hardly DayZ where you can't see your hand in front of your face. All the flash light does is give your position away... Oh wait, that's true for DayZ as well.

I still wish the Flashlight did have some practtical use outside of just being a "flashlight"..

Perhaps it should have the mechanic of revealing infiltrators when it is directly flashed in their direction within something like 50m or something.. IDK.. Since we don't have darklight anymore but of course infiltrators aren't 100% invisible anymore either..

I don't use the attachment at all.. Just a thought.

Haha, I used to think that the flashlights in BF3 made no sense and then I found a measly 4-5in. flashlight that costs about $50. It's so bright you can't use it to read anything because it washes out the lettering. It does exactly this if you shine it in your face.

Hopefully SOE in the future will add a mega-city continent (ala Mega-city 1 or Coruscant) with lots of building to building fighting with intermittent blackouts or just a very dark night.