satcygunta
Villore Sec Ops
Gallente Federation
2
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Posted - 2012.08.25 10:04:00 -
[1] - Quote
As someone who gets sniped a lot, I understand the need for a tweak to the game mechanics. However, I would hate to see realism simply sacrificed at the altar of game balance. And as a sniper, I must protest the idea of taking away the sniper's key advantage - stealth.
On a real battlefield, the sniper's whole role is to place one well-aimed projectile exactly where it needs to go. One at a time, s/he brings down targets of high value with minimal loss of manpower and equipment. Ensuring specific kills requires total concentration on a single target, making the sniper vulnerable to surprise attacks from a different direction. In order to shore up this vulnerability, snipers MUST rely on stealth, and often, teammates to cover them while they work.
That's the reality. As for the game, let's look at the options again.
Bullet travel time: I haven't done any calculations, but I'm pretty sure this is basically covered by network lag anyway.
Bullet drop due to gravity: See earlier post about 4.4mm. I reject this option on realism grounds.
Reduced damage: This is a railgun sniper-rifle. Its whole job is to take down targets in as few shots possible. The less aiming required by the sniper, the better. If I were a galactic super-corp, I wouldn't send snipers out into the field with anything I didn't think could one-hit kill most anything else they'd see out there. Perhaps more expensive rifles should be more effective than cheaper ones, but I'm afraid you're going to have to expect some significant ratio of one-hit kills. It's how the sniper operates.
Bright tracer lines: No, no, a thousand times no. This breaks my suspension of disbelief and undermines the point of the sniper class. Rail guns do not paint glowing lines in the air (not even if the atmosphere of the planet is a highly volatile chemical - like, oh, say, oxygen). If they did, snipers would not use them precisely because they would give away their position. If there must be a way to locate snipers, there should be some module or piece of equipment to do it. The sniper should not be required by the game mechanic to give away their own position.
Aim-sway: Here's where I'd most support a change. Ensuring steady aim and a clear shot are the sniper's biggest challenges. It makes sense to make it difficult to place a target in your sights. Now, it is the future, and technology is awesome, but technology for steadying a sniper's aim is bound to be sophisticated. So an expensive skillbook that takes time to train could at least make those annoying one-hit kills a little less common; particularly the ones the 24-hour n00bs inflict.
Speaking of special equipment, though, why not do that? Why not have a sensor that can be deployed which eventually locates snipers on the map? It can look for players that stay still for too long. Or how about a deployable shield that is weak or ineffective against close-range weapons but repels sniper fire great?
Don't nerf the sniper any more than is necessary to bring it in line with realism. Make a better counter to it, as a galactic supercorporation would! |
satcygunta
Villore Sec Ops
Gallente Federation
2
|
Posted - 2012.08.25 23:44:00 -
[2] - Quote
Fivetimes Infinity wrote:Well, I wanted to respond to your post at-length but the forum thought I was using too many quotes, so I'll be more succinct. Probably better for everyone this way.
First, I'd like to say that I don't believe "realism" when dealing with clearly science fiction material is a valid reason for this to be any particular way.
...
So, in short, I'd really like it if you could rewrite your opposition to my suggestions without referring to "realism", or the notion of how snipers "should be", or other points along those lines. Do you really believe snipers are fine from a purely gameplay perspective? Do you think their power is in-line with their ease-of-use? Do they make the game more enjoyable for people overall?
Give me a moment here, because I have to argue at least some of my case from the standpoint of realism. It's part of the game to me. I don't play Dust because I just want to run around and shoot people. If I did, Call of Duty or Halo or Tremulous or any number of other FPSs would do just fine. I play Dust to immerse myself in another world. It has a story. Rather importantly to me, it attempts to be slightly harder sci-fi than average.
Part of the Eve universe is that there are mercenaries running around on the ground fighting over territory on behalf of the mega-enterprises that rule the galaxy. If you blithely remove snipers (or marksmen, thanks Shiro Mokuzan for the correction) from the picture, part of me goes, "Why has nobody been smart enough to put a marksman on that hill over there?" It breaks my suspension of disbelief, which to me is every bit as important to the experience as game balance.
I'm just as annoyed as anyone else when I die without warning or explanation and see my name to the right of some sniper rifle. But if that suddenly went away, a little voice in my head would start asking, "Why does this never happen?" It's part of the reality of the game. Same thing goes for the kind of nerfs being discussed. I'd wonder why nobody bothered to build a better rifle.
Now, it sounds from your questions that I may not have been clear about something. I do not think the game is currently balanced, and I acknowledge that it is too easy to be a sniper right now. I agree that the game would benefit from a decrease in the frequency of sudden, unexplained (except for kill announcements) deaths. The purpose of my post was to urge that care be taken when restoring balance.
I'd rather see a piece of equipment, requiring training to use and CPU and PG to install, that paints HUD-style indicators when a rail-gun is fired rather than some cheezy tracer effect visible to everybody. I'd like to see a counter-sniper class arise, rather than simply twisting game mechanics with some hand-wave excuse for those of us who give a damn about setting and background. And I was serious about aim-wave. It works in other games, and it could work here too. |