Arkena Wyrnspire
Turalyon 514
Turalyon Alliance
3179
   |
Posted - 2013.09.13 22:05:00 -
[1] - Quote
Yeah, because redline sniping provides such useful overwatch.
When I've tried sniping on the new maps, I had much more success when I actually went past the redline. But, see, that means you have to risk yourself. I know that's hard for you, being a sniper, but it does so much more for you than whining on the forums. |
Arkena Wyrnspire
Turalyon 514
Turalyon Alliance
3203
|
Posted - 2013.09.14 16:38:00 -
[3] - Quote
Jathniel wrote:Arkena Wyrnspire wrote:
Now your OP is much more constructive, I'm going to also be more constructive. Long post cooking now.
I appreciate you may be frustrated with what I posted earlier, but redline sniping is a terrible part of the game and I have genuinely had some success on the new maps sniping by going in. Looking at your suggested sites though, I agree with them.
I think there are more problems with the sniper class as a whole, though. I'll add a long post to this thread shortly.
Forgive my frustration, it just irritates me that folks know it's broken for snipers, but then act like it isn't just because they hate the role. There are indeed many problems with the sniper role mostly centered on the weapon imo. The sniper rifle weapon itself was balanced for the Codex build, but nothing today remotely resembles Codex.
Yeah. It's annoying - everybody gets this towards what they play at some point. It's just part of the vitriol of the forums.
I think you're quite correct in saying that some of the problems are with the sniper rifle.
Quote:
The sway in ADS was meant to regulate quick-scoping at closer range, it also enforces a mandatory settling time to line up and fire a 100% steadied shot; just wiggling your big toe causes you to seizure and throws the sway haywire again, penalizing you for the slightest possible movement. This feature is a big problem at engagement ranges of 100-150m, where a lot of snipers are finding themselves in the new maps (it's either get close, or be useless. Non-sniper players don't mind this. It makes snipers easier to kill, which is all they care about, but building a map and balancing can't be done with just their viewpoint in mind.)
Closing in on a sniper is not difficult at this point, and a player needs to only be at 80-100m to knock a sniper out in a flash. At that point, you find sniper's finding it more reasonable to pick up a utility weapon. The 100m range belongs to utility weapons, not sniper rifles.
The weapons have small clips, and longer reload times compared to their utility weapon counterparts, and as it stands right now, doing what's necessary to use a sniper rifle as fire support in a match usually gets you killed in the heat of battle. Blending in with the environment is not reliable due to prevalence of active scanners, and even at the edge of utility weapon range, the dps from an AR or Scrambler rifle at the edge of their effective (not absolute) range is still generally fast enough to put a sniper down before he can get off a 2nd round.
I wish I could share footage... maybe I'll go and purchase an input capture box today. I keep putting it off.
In addition to elevated or complex structures on the new maps at key postiions. I also propose only 2 changes to the sniper rifle itself:
- Eliminate sway penalty for movement while crouched.
This has little bearing on Overwatch Snipers, but this will enable Fire Support Snipers to be more useful than fodder, since it will allow them to move back and forth from behind cover, without totally losing their aim constantly.
- Eliminate sway penalty when NOT moving while standing.
Again, Fire Support Snipers benefit from this. This will allow snipers to stop in the middle of a fight, and take a quick shot at someone with zero sway, but if they try to strafe, they will instantly lose their aim.
Decent suggestions. I fully agree with the first one - that's quite reasonable.
The second one has a small problem - The scope sway was to prevent quickscoping. Standing still, just for a moment, would make quickscoping entirely possible with this implemented. I'd suggest that instead, it's a reduction in scope sway.
The main thing I'd like to discuss with you though is the actual role of the sniper. What should it be? Currently, it's a weakish long ranged slayer class that is often found being used to minimise risk.
Previously, a sniper could tag enemies on the TACNET so they appeared on the radar. With the advent of 1.4 and the removal of shared squad vision, this is no longer possible. That's significantly diminished the overwatch role - Calling out targets to your squad is a pain to describe compared to putting a dot on their radar in the exact spot. Also, the overwatch sniper cannot do much for the entire team anymore - You can't really call things out vocally for the team, as that either consistently disrupts an organised team's comms, or in the case of a pubmatch, is simply not doable as not everybody is on comms.
So the overwatch role has been marginalised, really. There's very little it can do.
One solution I'd suggest is adding a 'tagging' ability to the sniper rifle. I'm not sure on the specifics or what button it would use, but essentially it'd be pressing a button to highlight a target in your scope on the radar for your entire team. If that target is subsequently killed, you get a kill assist.
In terms of 'Fire support' snipers, a lot of the problems with that role comes down to damage concerns and scaling.
In pubmatches, a high end sniper can be a fearsome thing - A Thale's or Charge rifle will OHKO a lot of the suits typically running around in a pubmatch. Unfortunately, as you scale up the tiers, HP increases significantly but damage does not. The prototype rifles become less effective against prototype suits than standard rifles were against standard suits. In some ways, this needs to be the case - otherwise a prototype tactical rifle would just go around instakilling a ton of suits in pubmatches, which isn't desirable. At the same time, in more competitive matches, that renders them much less useful as people tend to be able to shrug off that fire.
I'm not really sure what the solution is for this. Perhaps tiericide, but that's a huge thing and there are many pros and cons to it that extend beyond just this issue.
-Out of characters-  |