Kevall Longstride
DUST University
Ivy League
1713
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Posted - 2014.10.02 09:52:00 -
[1] - Quote
Welcome back Aeon.
The sniper rebalance was born from the fact that as a weapon class, they remained the only weapon to have not been touched in anyway since the game launch. With the sidearm and rifles rebalancing also being done in delta (fairly successfully from the feedback we've got) it would've been somewhat remiss to not look at the snipers as well.
There was some serious map and range analysis with the snipers, something that hadn't been done in that level of detail for quite a while. Well known and successful snipers were polled an questioned as to their favourite snipe points and tactics. A large number of such points and tactics had nothing to do redlining either.
What was found is that on some of the maps the power projection of snipers from these favoured snipe points was, put simply, excessive.
Now, as you, me and virtually everyone else has pointed out, this is more to do with poor map design than anything else but any changes required to fix that will need to be part of a client patch rather than server side. Believe me, such map changes are going to be top of the list if such a chance comes.
So a reduction in sniper range was thought, a decent compromise. It forces snipers to come more into the battlefield and give non snipers a chance to counter them with something other than another Thale. To compensate for the range nerf, they were all given a fairly hefty damage increase to keep in line with the increases ehp of suits since the games launch and given a significant headshot multiplier to reward skilful play.
Were the changes perfect? Of course not, they were a product of unfortunate compromise. Were they needed? Absolutely. There isn't another class of weapon in the game that was so dominated by one particular varient of that class ie the Thale, than snipers. We need a broader range of varient use than was being seen before delta, in all weapon classes and it's my belief that simply looking at the kill feed in a match post delta, will tell you that delta has achieved that.
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