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Battlefield 4 brings back spotting; press RB or Q with an enemy in your sights and he's spotted for your whole team to see. Spotting wins games! It also comes very cheap, it doesn't really slow you down or cost you anything. So I tend to spam spot a lot.

Does spotting have a cooldown and if so, what is it? Is there anything from preventing me from spotting 60 times a second? If there's a cooldown is it different after a successful spot vs a failed spot? Is there any way to measure the cooldown precisely? I've tried testing it various ways and can't really figure it out; it kind of feels to me like maybe there's a 1s cooldown only after a successful spot.

Battlefield 3 is generally assumed to have a spotting cooldown although I've never seen a source for exactly how long it was. The StackExchange discussion and this other one both mention BF3 made a noise if you try to spot during the cooldown. I don't think that noise is in BF4.

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  • The noise is in BF4, but I can only verify that on the PS4.
    – Whitish Mink
    Commented Feb 24, 2014 at 20:36
  • @BenSloboda I've never noticed it, although I have observed that spamming it doesn't seem to work. I feel like 1 spot/sec is about the rate at which you can do it, so no need to tire out your finger spotting.
    – turbo
    Commented Feb 24, 2014 at 21:51
  • Maybe this is just for PC, but I have personally noticed a small cool down period for spotting. Sometimes I'll be attempting to spot someone and it just refuses to work (I too, am a furious spotter). I believe it varies from time to time but I could be wrong.
    – Dan
    Commented Feb 25, 2014 at 16:02
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    There's definitely some kind of cooldown, but I've noticed being able to spam it quite a bit (2-3 times a second) for a few seconds and then being unable to spot at all for quite a while, so it seems like there's some kind of intelligent anti-spam.
    – 3ventic
    Commented Mar 5, 2014 at 16:40
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    I think there is no cooldown if your spot results in a successful spot. From a MAV, I've spotted 3-4 people (with 3-4 Q presses) in succession without issue.
    – Garrison Neely
    Commented Mar 6, 2014 at 16:09

2 Answers 2

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one spot a second /5 spots per 5 seconds. overheat lasts 5 seconds that is since bad company 2 i think. So one spot each second if faster than 5 sec cooldown. The only think they was messing around in the BF4 is the spotting range and accuracy, in BF4 you have to look directly to an enemy in order to use the spotting. Hope that helps.

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  • Thanks for the reply. Do you have a definitive source for that info? The 5 second cooldown in BC2 is all sourced at this blog post which appears to just be a guess.
    – Nelson
    Commented Mar 12, 2014 at 16:53
  • And it is testet guesses :) i have and play battlefield bad company 2, battlefield 3 and battlefield 4. The last one is on heavy tune up desk and gets alot of the patches tu balance stuff so it may change a bit but the thing is taht battlefield 3 was easyer to spot not looking directly to the enemy. It was more "near spot" :) And wisely used was like a wallhack :) In battlefield 4 they do tweked it and it auto spot enemies if you look directly in to them about 4 sec. the beeps when overspamming Q button is likely if you hit more than 1 hit in a sec. And does not work for atleast 4-5sec.
    – Andrius Lukminas
    Commented Mar 14, 2014 at 10:20
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Spotting in BF4 differs in game mode. There are also perks which wil unspot you faster. As I see it when an enemy walks in the open he will be spotted for a longer period of time. Probably it depends on visual contact of other team members which can see a spotted enemy. When an enemy is spotted but dives behind cover and no one can see him anymore he is unspotted faster than when he walks in the open.

To me that sounds really logical. Its not realistic if you can track an enemy even though no one on your team has visual contact. In hardcore you don't even have a indicator. However spotted enemies appear on the map.

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