Cal Predine
StarKnight Security
37
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Posted - 2012.10.11 17:22:00 -
[1] - Quote
Now clearly, this thread has veered off track...
OP's point was that Sniper rifle hit detection isn't always working properly - and I agree.
I disagree that it's working fine and has been totally fixed for Assault Rifles. That's simply not true. There's plenty still to be fixed there...
I can't, and therefore won't, comment for weapons I don't frequently use.
On the matter of sniper-hate, I certainly recognise the value of a good sniper, and I'm always glad to have one or two on my side. The problem arises in the many matches utterly dominated by snipers sitting in the mountains farming kills. Farming kills is all well and good in Ambush - kills are the measure of victory after all, but in Skirmish games? Who's going forward to take control points? One or two unsupported infantrymen, that's who. There's a reason the bulk and backbone of any army is the regular infantryman, and like it or not, you need more of them than you need snipers. But instead, you end up with the mountains lined with snipers refusing to make a tactical advance on the objective, while one or two infantry do all the advancing to try and win the game for their team, and therefore suffer all the dying on behalf of their team. No wonder they're annoyed at the snipers! This invariably leads to a WWI style standoff with a bunch of artillery, long-ranged personal weapons and no-one leaving their trenches. That doesn't sound like the type of game I want to play...
I'm sure I'm not breaking any confidences to point out that a (half-decent) sniper will pretty much always achieve a higher K/D ratio than a regular infantryman (for those still fixated on such measures), they have fewer oportunities to engage the enemy than an infantryman, but they face far fewer threats. But snipers are simply less useful than a regular infantryman. I'm only half-decent as a sniper myself, but when the lag gets so bad that I'm getting owned as a GroPo, I switch to sniper for a bit and just you watch how that boosts my morale as the kills rack up. *This* is why we're over-run with snipers - the "I'll just rack up kills" mentality, "someone else will spawn in the (infantry/ anti armour/ whatever the team *really* needs) role"
It's probably worth mentioning here the derogatory and moronic term "camping". A forward observer in an Observation Post, a decent sniper hidden away in a vantage point, even a bunch of infantry lying in ambush are tactically clever moves. "Camping" is a term used by sore losers who have fallen to a tactically superior enemy (no problem - happens to everyone) but can't bring themselves to see that what happened was actually clever and learn from it (no excuse for that). I'd like to see Dust evolve into an ever more tactically clever game, not a bunch off headlong-charging bunny-hopping loons, and certainly not two lines of rifles facing each other across a valley.
So yeah, play a sniper every now and then, serve your team, play it smart, stay hidden, use cover, but be don't kid yourself that it centres around you - you're in a support role, nothing more. And be ready to step up when what your team-mates *really* need to win the match isn't yet another scope-starer. If the guy to your left and right are also snipers, maybe you (yes you) should be the one to make the difference? |