Commander Mode just became God Mode in Battlefield 4.
Last night on Flood Zone I got killed by cruise missiles twice in a very short span and I wasn't even up on the rooftops. As a matter of fact, the second time I was in the water just outside of Charlie. Butthurt, I jumped into the commander chair.
I quickly found that they made a few big changes:
1. Cruise missiles regenerate more quickly than before
2. When the opposing commander launches a cruise missile, you used to be able to see the path and target on the map. No more. Now you see which side of the map the missile is inbound from with a direction arrow next to the cruise missile icon. The target is no longer marked which means you have to guess where it's going to land
3. You can still knock down cruise missiles with an EMP drone but you pretty much have to deploy your EMP drone right over the target.
4. When the cruise missile enters the EMP cloud, it begins taking damage. The only way to knock it down with EMP is if the cruise missile enters the EMP cloud and descends within the EMP cloud. If the cruise missile enters and exits the EMP cloud, it'll take damage but not be destroyed
5. The EMP drone seems to be more powerful, blinding your view of both your and your opponent's players in the EMP cloud
6. The network hack tool is still there but seems to take longer to regenerate
7. It seems like the network hack isn't guaranteed to work all the time, as it did before. There were times when I was knocked offline right away and there were other times where I was given a warning that the other commander was trying to hack my firewall, but nothing ever happened
The long and the short of it is they've made the commander much more of a factor on maps that are (probably not coincidentally) typically dominated by rooftop snipers. Good luck running your rooftop sniper rackets with an enemy commander online. The commander vs. commander gameplay is far more dynamic and very tense. I tell you what though... you really need someone running commander if there's another commander dropping telephone poles on your ass. It's high-time you jump into the driver's seat...