Loafe didn't think my last thread was serious enough (my bad loafe!), so in this post I'm going to give some suggestions for how we could improve Sniper in 6s.
Before I give my suggestions, it’s worth thinking about what is fun and/or reasonable about sniper:
- Sniper’s skill expression is high in certain respects, in particular difficult headshots, quickscopes, swinging into the open to headshot a medic, and so on. It is not really "unbalanced" to get quickscoped at close range as a Scout, for example; I don't think very many people have a problem with stuff like that.
- Sniper helps break stalemates on offense, and helps put the game in motion on defense. Having an alternative to double sacking over and over on offense, and having a defensive tool against dryfights is, at least in some situations, reasonable. You can argue that Sniper is too powerful in these situations, but that doesn't necessarily mean the option should be removed from the game.
- Sniper is crucial for the balance around last pushes, forcing the attacking team to pop through a doorway. If Sniper didn’t exist, pushing last would become easier and less skill-expressive. Last pushes are currently in a good spot balance-wise with the attacking team having, in my estimation, a 70/30 advantage against the defending team on most maps. If Sniper didn't exist, this advantage would increase to 80/20 at least, which would make holding last on disad feel really unfair. On maps like Snakewater, I could see the attacking team milking from top-right all the way to truck before popping uber if Sniper didn't exist, which definitely shouldn't be a viable strategy.
What don't people like about Sniper?
- People don't like situations where there’s little to no active counterplay to the opposing team having a Sniper. Players generally prefer "active" counterplay (bombing, spamming, exchanging, etc.) to "passive" counterplay (hiding, etc.)
- People don't like situations where the Sniper isn’t punished for making a mistake or successive mistakes. Snipers being able to whiff 5 headshots before hitting the one crucial shot that wins their team the fight is understandably annoying.
- People don't like situations where you have to gamble that the Sniper will miss in order to win the fight.
Given these reasons, here are some concrete suggestions for improving Sniper in 6s:
- Reduce the Sniper Rifle’s ammo from 25 to 10 or 5. This would force Snipers to think consciously about target selection and manage ammo over the course of a fight. It would reward having high accuracy (which takes skill) and punish rattling shots off at long range.
- Make the Sniper Marked-for-Death when the Sniper Rifle is fully charged. This would increase the effectiveness of bombing a Sniper or trying to hit him with a charged sticky. It would also decrease the amount of CS:GO style angle-holding that some Snipers do (e.g. on defense), encouraging them to unscope and scope back in to avoid taking mini-crit damage. You could even make the Mark-for-Death last for 1-2 seconds after the sniper has unscoped (like the Escape Plan) to further discourage fully charging shots.
- Make the Sniper Rifle shoot a permanent visible laser when it’s fully charged. This would allow medics to know exactly when they can and can't die to a bodyshot, and it would also help reveal a Sniper’s position to the opposing team. If Snipers tried to hide the laser by e.g. standing next to a wall, this would decrease the amount of positions they could play in. You could also test making the Sniper Rifle shoot a laser whenever a Sniper scopes in, which shounic tried in casual to relative success.
- Reduce the Sniper Rifle’s bodyshot damage by 25% (38 uncharged to 113 charged) or 50% (25 uncharged to 75 charged). Maybe the most straightforward way to nerf Sniper, decreasing bodyshot damage would increase Sniper's skill ceiling, make bombing Snipers easier, and overall make it easier to play against a Sniper.
- Increase the respawn timer if you die on Sniper (+10s or so compared to dying on another classes) This in effect reduces the round timer but only for Sniper, which avoids some of the downsides of reducing the round timer past 4 minutes. You could reduce the round timer to 3:30 to nerf offensive Sniper, but I think 4:00 is balanced and shouldn't be changed for other reasons.
- Buff substitute strategies for Sniper. Unbanning the Disciplinary Action would allow Soldiers to go for powerful whip-bombs, which might decrease the amount of Sniper played. Making Spy run 10% faster when cloaked would allow attacking teams to run a Spy instead of Sniper a little more, and so on.
- Decrease Sniper's movement speed from 100% (same as Engineer) to 93% (same as Demo) or 80% (same as Soldier). This would increase the amount of investment teams would have to put in to running a Sniper and make it harder to roll out on Sniper to defend against an imminent push.
- Punish snipers for missing. On miss, you could make Sniper slower to scope in, or make the Sniper Rifle’s charge slower for every consecutive miss, e.g. base speed for 0 misses, 10% slower after 1 miss, 20% slower after 2 misses, and so on, like a reverse Bazaar Bargain. You could also simply increase the amount of time between scopes for the Sniper Rifle; the current attack interval is 1.5s, and you could increase this to 2s or 2.5s to allow players to move freely after hearing the Sniper shoot. A meta where attentive Medics could briefly advance to the next piece of cover after hearing a Sniper shoot seems reasonable.
Obviously I don't think every single one of these should be implemented; the best is probably one big nerf like decreasing the amount of ammo in the Sniper Rifle to 5, or a combination of medium-sized nerfs. I'm also not sure if all of these suggestions would be possible to code into 6s, but some of them seem like they wouldn't be too hard (e.g. making the Rifle shoot a laser, decreasing bodyshot damage, decreasing movement speed).
Loafe didn't think my last thread was serious enough (my bad loafe!), so in this post I'm going to give some suggestions for how we could improve Sniper in 6s.
Before I give my suggestions, it’s worth thinking about what is fun and/or reasonable about sniper:
[list]
[*]Sniper’s skill expression is high in certain respects, in particular difficult headshots, quickscopes, swinging into the open to headshot a medic, and so on. It is not really "unbalanced" to get quickscoped at close range as a Scout, for example; I don't think very many people have a problem with stuff like that.
[*]Sniper helps break stalemates on offense, and helps put the game in motion on defense. Having an alternative to double sacking over and over on offense, and having a defensive tool against dryfights is, at least in some situations, reasonable. You can argue that Sniper is too powerful in these situations, but that doesn't necessarily mean the option should be removed from the game.
[*]Sniper is [i]crucial[/i] for the balance around last pushes, forcing the attacking team to pop through a doorway. If Sniper didn’t exist, pushing last would become easier and less skill-expressive. Last pushes are currently in a good spot balance-wise with the attacking team having, in my estimation, a 70/30 advantage against the defending team on most maps. If Sniper didn't exist, this advantage would increase to 80/20 [i]at least[/i], which would make holding last on disad feel really unfair. On maps like Snakewater, I could see the attacking team milking from top-right all the way to truck before popping uber if Sniper didn't exist, which definitely shouldn't be a viable strategy.
[/list]
What don't people like about Sniper?
[list]
[*]People don't like situations where there’s little to no active counterplay to the opposing team having a Sniper. Players generally prefer "active" counterplay (bombing, spamming, exchanging, etc.) to "passive" counterplay (hiding, etc.)
[*]People don't like situations where the Sniper isn’t punished for making a mistake or successive mistakes. Snipers being able to whiff 5 headshots before hitting the one crucial shot that wins their team the fight is understandably annoying.
[*]People don't like situations where you have to gamble that the Sniper will miss in order to win the fight.
[/list]
Given these reasons, here are some concrete suggestions for improving Sniper in 6s:
[olist]
[*][b]Reduce the Sniper Rifle’s ammo from 25 to 10 or 5[/b]. This would force Snipers to think consciously about target selection and manage ammo over the course of a fight. It would reward having high accuracy (which takes skill) and punish rattling shots off at long range.
[*][b]Make the Sniper Marked-for-Death when the Sniper Rifle is fully charged[/b]. This would increase the effectiveness of bombing a Sniper or trying to hit him with a charged sticky. It would also decrease the amount of CS:GO style angle-holding that some Snipers do (e.g. on defense), encouraging them to unscope and scope back in to avoid taking mini-crit damage. You could even make the Mark-for-Death last for 1-2 seconds after the sniper has unscoped (like the Escape Plan) to further discourage fully charging shots.
[*][b]Make the Sniper Rifle shoot a permanent visible laser when it’s fully charged[/b]. This would allow medics to know exactly when they can and can't die to a bodyshot, and it would also help reveal a Sniper’s position to the opposing team. If Snipers tried to hide the laser by e.g. standing next to a wall, this would decrease the amount of positions they could play in. You could also test making the Sniper Rifle shoot a laser whenever a Sniper scopes in, which shounic tried in casual to relative success.
[*][b]Reduce the Sniper Rifle’s bodyshot damage by 25% (38 uncharged to 113 charged) or 50% (25 uncharged to 75 charged)[/b]. Maybe the most straightforward way to nerf Sniper, decreasing bodyshot damage would increase Sniper's skill ceiling, make bombing Snipers easier, and overall make it easier to play against a Sniper.
[*][b]Increase the respawn timer if you die on Sniper[/b] (+10s or so compared to dying on another classes) This in effect reduces the round timer but only for Sniper, which avoids some of the downsides of reducing the round timer past 4 minutes. You could reduce the round timer to 3:30 to nerf offensive Sniper, but I think 4:00 is balanced and shouldn't be changed for other reasons.
[*][b]Buff substitute strategies for Sniper[/b]. Unbanning the Disciplinary Action would allow Soldiers to go for powerful whip-bombs, which might decrease the amount of Sniper played. Making Spy run 10% faster when cloaked would allow attacking teams to run a Spy instead of Sniper a little more, and so on.
[*][b]Decrease Sniper's movement speed from 100% (same as Engineer) to 93% (same as Demo) or 80% (same as Soldier)[/b]. This would increase the amount of investment teams would have to put in to running a Sniper and make it harder to roll out on Sniper to defend against an imminent push.
[*][b]Punish snipers for missing[/b]. On miss, you could make Sniper slower to scope in, or make the Sniper Rifle’s charge slower for every consecutive miss, e.g. base speed for 0 misses, 10% slower after 1 miss, 20% slower after 2 misses, and so on, like a reverse Bazaar Bargain. You could also simply increase the amount of time between scopes for the Sniper Rifle; the current attack interval is 1.5s, and you could increase this to 2s or 2.5s to allow players to move freely after hearing the Sniper shoot. A meta where attentive Medics could briefly advance to the next piece of cover after hearing a Sniper shoot seems reasonable.
[/olist]
Obviously I don't think every single one of these should be implemented; the best is probably one big nerf like decreasing the amount of ammo in the Sniper Rifle to 5, or a combination of medium-sized nerfs. I'm also not sure if all of these suggestions would be possible to code into 6s, but some of them seem like they wouldn't be too hard (e.g. making the Rifle shoot a laser, decreasing bodyshot damage, decreasing movement speed).
why people think they deserve to hold last after somehow fumbling into full disad on last ill never know
why people think they deserve to hold last after somehow fumbling into full disad on last ill never know
Walrexwhy people think they deserve to hold last after somehow fumbling into full disad on last ill never know
not saying that sniper is the answer to this problem (it's not) but if you couldn't feasibly hold or delay a last push, every round of tf2 would be decided at the midfight unless both meds lived or both meds died.
[quote=Walrex]why people think they deserve to hold last after somehow fumbling into full disad on last ill never know[/quote]
not saying that sniper is the answer to this problem (it's not) but if you couldn't feasibly hold or delay a last push, every round of tf2 would be decided at the midfight unless both meds lived or both meds died.
my name is jeremy, i like going on long hikes and watching pokemon content on youtube, please add me if you have a vagaina
my name is jeremy, i like going on long hikes and watching pokemon content on youtube, please add me if you have a vagaina
doing almost any of this would just make sniper so unfun that nobody would play it. plus many of these changes seem like they're coming from the perspective of someone that thinks a sniper is constantly pumping out kills when in reality most of the time a sniper misses a lot.
imo: add the classic trail for bullets, make sniper have the same "weight" as heavy so if you surf a rocket you don't go far. bullet reduction i can agree with to something like 15 and maybe reducing unscoped damage, tho not by much. otherwise most of these changes would just make nobody actually want to play the class. granted, people somehow still play spy haha. would you really pick sniper if you had a 30 second respawn time?
also disciplinary action won't be unbanned because heavy to mid.
doing almost any of this would just make sniper so unfun that nobody would play it. plus many of these changes seem like they're coming from the perspective of someone that thinks a sniper is constantly pumping out kills when in reality most of the time a sniper misses a lot.
imo: add the classic trail for bullets, make sniper have the same "weight" as heavy so if you surf a rocket you don't go far. bullet reduction i can agree with to something like 15 and maybe reducing unscoped damage, tho not by much. otherwise most of these changes would just make nobody actually want to play the class. granted, people somehow still play spy haha. would you really pick sniper if you had a 30 second respawn time?
also disciplinary action won't be unbanned because heavy to mid.
Make sniper rifle basically the rocket jumper.
In all seriousness it is silly you can 1 shot a medic or even other classes with a full charged bodyshot.
Make sniper rifle basically the rocket jumper.
In all seriousness it is silly you can 1 shot a medic or even other classes with a full charged bodyshot.
I'd agree with lowering base movement speed and ammo.
movement speed to like 90%, just below demo's 93%. base ammo to 15
sniper rifles should always have tracers on firing. I half expected this to be done after the classic was added with a decent looking tracer effect. The classic's should be punishing enough within competitive circles. The machina's is overkill unless we're considering pubbers
Lowering bodyshot damage like the hitman's heatmaker is fine imo. only really affects medics walking in fully charged snipers' sightlines though. Which is a skill issue, not a sniper issue
I'd agree with lowering base movement speed and ammo.
movement speed to like 90%, just below demo's 93%. base ammo to 15
sniper rifles should always have tracers on firing. I half expected this to be done after the classic was added with a decent looking tracer effect. The classic's should be punishing enough within competitive circles. The machina's is overkill unless we're considering pubbers
Lowering bodyshot damage like the hitman's heatmaker is fine imo. only really affects medics walking in fully charged snipers' sightlines though. Which is a skill issue, not a sniper issue
remove the charge from his gun so u can hit for 50 or 150 only and also nerf all the other defensive classes a lot
remove the charge from his gun so u can hit for 50 or 150 only and also nerf all the other defensive classes a lot
Probably wrong thread to post this but whatever .... just limit offclasses to only 1 per team at a time. You can only have A engi or A heavy or A pyro or A sniper or A spy but no multiples (I don't even know if this can be done in a config). The main reason sniper is too op is because he sits next to another offclass so he can't get punished easily for overextending. This also solves the problem with the last hold meta in EU where offclass min/max is super cancer and the people holding just sit around for 5 minutes waiting for round resets.
And before people start crying about how this would make 6s boring or less skilled. Get good at actually holding lasts and doors nerds instead of hiding in a dispencer
Probably wrong thread to post this but whatever .... just limit offclasses to only 1 per team at a time. You can only have A engi or A heavy or A pyro or A sniper or A spy but no multiples (I don't even know if this can be done in a config). The main reason sniper is too op is because he sits next to another offclass so he can't get punished easily for overextending. This also solves the problem with the last hold meta in EU where offclass min/max is super cancer and the people holding just sit around for 5 minutes waiting for round resets.
And before people start crying about how this would make 6s boring or less skilled. Get good at actually holding lasts and doors nerds instead of hiding in a dispencer
Having played against bo4r on product once I can confidently say the only reasonable thing to do with sniper is changing the class limit to 0 lol
High level snipers are insane man
Having played against bo4r on product once I can confidently say the only reasonable thing to do with sniper is changing the class limit to 0 lol
High level snipers are insane man