RE: Player Firefox asked this question in the Barracks Forum ealier this week. There was a lively discussion about the pro's and con's of such a thing but basically it boils down how much information is too much and what does it take away from the game rather than what does it add to the game.

Say you are stalking an enemy infantryman and he is stalking you. A battle of wits and skill is going down between the two of you. You find yourself a great position to avoid giving away your presence, but somebody sees you just as you dissappear into your concealment. They call on their LMG buddy over the hill to come up and spray down the bushline while they wait for you to run out of your hiding place.

Using your head, and working around behind them, 2 possibilities transpire.

1. they spray and spray and spray, but they don't get you because you have moved out while concealed and are no longer where they are hosing down the bushline. They wouldn't know this because there are no kill messages if they get you. With live kill messages they know they haven't got you, and you're still alive (and lurking) because the kill message hasn't popped up to mark your untimely death.

2. they spray and spray and spray, and they get you even though you are concealed and they can't see you. They know they got you because the kill message tells them you died. Without a kill message, they can't be sure if they can't see you. This will have a negative effect on their over effectiveness against you, we call this the "fog of war" and the game is better for it, tactically speaking.

Imagine you have a squad of guys getting ready to stage an attack or defense (ambush maybe?) on an enemy force. They don't know you are there. If they kill just one of you by sheer luck or guesswork, they can hose down your position (the kill message having given away the presence of at least one of your group) and see how many more "hiding" enemy (you) they can score. When the kill messages stop coming they can figure they probably got all of you, and your threat to them is now taken non-existant.

So no, we don't want to take away from your game all the combat skills and tactical things that live kill messages would destroy. We will probably still use kill mesages during intermissions as they are a good training tool to use and then take the lessons into the next campaign with you. This is a big part of why we have intermissions in the first place.

They are kind of like practice for the real thing.