DUST Search - Better motivation for snipers

Quil Evrything wrote:

Okay, so you do actually have some grasp of it.

So in that case, seems like you should be in favour of things to encourage them "suppressing a point for capture", etc.
that benefit squad objectives.

Your suggestion about win vs loss rewards, does not specifically encourage snipers to help out a squad. All it does, is encourage them to kill more people.

Your complaints about "sometimes I get too many snipers on my squad", is a problem with poor squad leadership, not game mechanics. In those cases, the leader simply says, "too many snipers in this squad. change your fit, or be booted from the squad."
It's no different from a squad leader who has a team full of heavies/dropship pilots/whocares.
It's up to the squad leader to tell his team, "This doesnt work. Some of you guys MUST change fit"

Currently, a squad leader has no "carrot" for a good sniper to want to follow. If he says "help us or I boot you from the squad", sniper says, "okay i dont care, my rewards dont change either way".
CCP needs to give snipers a motivation to participate as part of a squad.

yeah, there are top level snipers who go 20/0 blah blah, who it wont make any difference to. I'm not talking about those guys. I'm talking about the majority of new to middling snipers in the game, who would then make more WP working together as part of a squad, rather than lone wolfing it.


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Mobius Kaethis Molon Labe. RISE of LEGION 710	Posted - 2013.09.08 17:17:00 - [1] - Quote How would that motivate snipers to help? They would still just sit in the red line poking away at people. The only differece would be that they would get more wp for their squad mates hacking. I don't see the point. I you are actually interested in making snipers participate in the game in a meaningful way you need to limit ho many sniper fits can be on a single team. As it stands we often end up in games where half our team is sniping. The number of sniper fits should be limited to two per team at a time. Yes I realize this would ruin the whole sandbox but it would force people to actually play the game. An alternative, and this is a much more serious suggestion, is to make the rewards for loosing battles much much lower. I'm talking 1/10 the current sp/isk payout for a loss. This would force players to realize that their tactics do have a major impact on the function of their team and their overall ability to play the game. Many arguments have been started about this before but the simple truth is that we need to hit some players with the punishment stick so they realize that there is in fact winning in this game and that hiding and padding their KDR does nothing for them.
Mobius Kaethis Molon Labe. RISE of LEGION 710	Posted - 2013.09.08 17:22:00 - [2] - Quote On a separate note I have started charging snipers to snipe when there are a lot of them on my team. If my team is loosing because there are too many snipers I will have my squad each choose a sniper to stand in front of. We then message said snipers that the fee for sniping is 1 million isk and we will move once the monies are received. Not only is this satisfying since I get to punish them for making it impossible to do anything successful except snipe, but I also get millions of isk and fun hate mail. I'll post some examples to the hate mail collection thread later today. It is oh so much fun and I would encourage others to do the same. Remember, extortion is an important part of New Eden and now it is an option for you. You're welcome.
Mobius Kaethis Molon Labe. RISE of LEGION 713	Posted - 2013.09.08 19:24:00 - [3] - Quote Quil Evrything wrote: Mobius Kaethis wrote: How would that motivate snipers to help? They would still just sit in the red line poking away at people. The only differece would be that they would get more wp for their squad mates hacking. I don't see the point. Your problem, is that you dont see how snipers can benefit a squad, ever. This just means that you don't understand good battle tactics. Umm did I say that? You a certainly deriving a lot of information about my personal opinions from a few lines of text. No, I do indeed see snipers having a potentially valuable role on the battlefield. That role is extremely limited though. I have played with many good snipers but have found that the only team support roles that a sniper can truly perform in this game is suppressing targets near a point or taking out AV. These are rather small roles on the battle field. While snipers can do other things like suppress enemy movement, harass key targets, and even disrupt reinforcements, those roles are better performed by other classes. As it currently stands a sniper, who is doing anything other than suppressing a point for capture or defense purposes or dealing with forge gunners is effectively one fewer fighting person on the battlefield. With this as an understanding it is clear that too many snipers on the battlefield is a major detriment to the team as a whole. Furthermore, snipers you typically encourter in matches are in no way concerned with winning, taking objectives, or holding them. All they care about is their KDR. I spend a lot of time squadding up with people outside my corp looking for potential recruits and I have encountered numerous individuals who have clearly stated the aforementioned statement to be true. One group was even so blatent as to tell me that there was no such thing as winning in the game (they just wanted to get 2 kills then hid for the rest of the battle), to which I pointed out the obvious victory/defeat screen that appears at the end of evey match. My statment that giving rewards to snipers for the squad mates hacking will do nothing to encourage their engagement is merely a sythsis of these observations. Now I realize that you are perhaps a bit insulted by all of this. Perhaps you are a sniper yourself. Remember, I have no problem with snipers. I do, like you, have an issue with snipers who do nothing to further the team's success in a match. As I have previously stated I also have problems with whole squads worth of people sniping. I am not going to make any grandiose claims that sniping is ruining the game or that no one should snipe. That would be stupid. What I am going to say though is that snipers need to feel motivated to take actions that actually promote the winning of matches rather than just padding their KDR. I don't care if you can kill without dying if you can't actually support the rest of your team getting that big victory screen at the end of the match. My second suggestion, that loosing a match result in a much smaller sp/isk reward, would do just that.
Mobius Kaethis Molon Labe. RISE of LEGION 714	Posted - 2013.09.08 20:21:00 - [4] - Quote Quil Evrything wrote: Okay, so you do actually have some grasp of it. So in that case, seems like you should be in favour of things to encourage them "suppressing a point for capture", etc. that benefit squad objectives. Your suggestion about win vs loss rewards, does not specifically encourage snipers to help out a squad. All it does, is encourage them to kill more people. Your complaints about "sometimes I get too many snipers on my squad", is a problem with poor squad leadership, not game mechanics. In those cases, the leader simply says, "too many snipers in this squad. change your fit, or be booted from the squad." It's no different from a squad leader who has a team full of heavies/dropship pilots/whocares. It's up to the squad leader to tell his team, "This doesnt work. Some of you guys MUST change fit" Currently, a squad leader has no "carrot" for a good sniper to want to follow. If he says "help us or I boot you from the squad", sniper says, "okay i dont care, my rewards dont change either way". CCP needs to give snipers a motivation to participate as part of a squad. yeah, there are top level snipers who go 20/0 blah blah, who it wont make any difference to. I'm not talking about those guys. I'm talking about the majority of new to middling snipers in the game, who would then make more WP working together as part of a squad, rather than lone wolfing it. Once again you are putting words into my mouth and making assumptions about me. I don't have an issue with too many snipers in my squad. When I run squads we rarely have a sniper. The exception is when I'm recruiting but once again I'm not squad lead in these cases so it really isn't a reflection on my leadership. What I said is that there are frequently too many snipers on a given team. As I sated earlier, giving a bonus for hacking to the whole squad does nothing to encourage sniper participation. Snipers, especially the middling snipers, are typically disinterested in helping out their squad. They snipe because they feel like they can't compete in other roles, or because they see KDR as the be all and end all of FPS success. By following my suggestion of drastically limiting post match rewards for losing they will notice that when they are sniping in non-productive ways they loose more frequently which in turn leads to uselessly small payouts. Their SP development being hindered by their teams poor performance will push them to either try sniping in different ways which do help their team win (sometimes that is killing but typically not) or try a different role that allows them to have a more meaningful impact on a matches outcome. It is my intent to kill the my KDR was the highest so I won mentality that we are all guilty of succumbing to, and this will only happen if winning is highly incentivized over loosing.
Mobius Kaethis Molon Labe. RISE of LEGION 720	Posted - 2013.09.09 01:40:00 - [5] - Quote Bojo The Mighty wrote: Quil Evrything wrote: but that motivates the one or two snipers, at the expense of being able to give more dynamic squad orders. in my opinion, that's not a win. btw, having the whole squad get rewarded for an objective capture, also benefits more than just snipers. It also benefits other people doing "support" type roles. LAV ferrying, for example? Man joins squad, AFKs, makes WP for nothing. The problem is that it rewards lack of involvement because you are merely in squad. Someone could just goof off and make reward WP. So what if they make a little WP? We can't reward AFK at all, it's principle. Thank you Bojo. That is what I have been trying to say. Clearly I'm not able to express myself well today.
Mobius Kaethis Molon Labe. RISE of LEGION 731	Posted - 2013.09.10 05:04:00 - [6] - Quote The sniper marking system you guys has proposed is a great idea since it adds utility to a role that is currently rather lacking in it. The marking would have to be team level tough or it would be too limited. I think it should also result in a sniper getting assist points if a target is marked 3 to 5 second prior to them taking damage from a blue. +20 wp perhaps? This still fails to solve the problem of too many snipers on that battlefield. There has got to be a better way to discourage that since the low loss of suits snipers typically incure is just too tempting for many players. I'd like some mechanic added where firing weapons lights you up on radar for an amount of time proportional to the damage a single shot from your gun will do. So if a forge will light you up 5 sec then a short laser burst (1 charge) will only light you up for .1 sec. The sniper rifle, with a higher per shot damage than most other light weapons would incure a significant radar penalty. This radar penalty per. shot plus the ability to mark targets will add utility to snipers and the weapon radar penalty would add a bit more danger to the role. Overall this would seem to have a balancing effect since it increase both the risk and reward sides of the risk/reward formula. It could also reduce the number of snipers in a single match since going sniper would only be usefull with a full friendly team and shooting frequently reduces the likelyhood of the sniper surviving the match without loosing suits.