Snipers

(murka) #61

same bug

I have to emphasize on reading comprehension. Both are part of the “shoot and scope/unscope at the same time” bug, one is just an extension.

(shirosae) #62

No; the problem isn’t that I don’t understand what you wrote, it’s that I don’t agree with what you wrote.

The rapid chambering thing uses the quickscope thing to function, yes.
The quickscope bug doesn’t use the rapid chambering thing to function.

One is, as you say, an extension of the other.

If I changed the game mechanics so the sniper recharged like the railgun does, quickscoping would still work, but the rapid chamber thing wouldn’t. You can use both bugs together, but they’re not the same thing.

Even if they were the same bug, the rapid chambering thing is not what Gorker was arguing against, although it won’t surprise me if he now pretends that it was.

(tokamak) #63

I didn’t knew the rapid chambering existed until you said it. In some sense it’s even worse than the quickscope as, like you kindly pointed out, only the sniper rifle and not the railgun benefits from it.

(kamikazee) #64

Tokamak, the more I’m reading this, the more I start recalling the arcticles on Sirlin.net titled “playing to win”. Don’t take any offense at the fact that I point you at this site, I know the old articles didn’t always have a friendly tone. It is still an interesting read though, and may let you reconsider what you call an exploit and what not.

Seems they also host some articles about MP game balance. Could be good read, when I have the time…

(Exedore) #65

Sirlin is a smart guy, I really enjoyed his talk at GDC. Even though he specializes in fighters, I found pretty much all of the concepts translated to other competitive games. I still have the handout on my desk!

(tokamak) #66

That’s some excellent stuff, but he mainly talks about the meta-game, which is fascinating indeed. Thanks for the link, though I’m not really sure how this applies to the exploit-issue. Maybe I still miss a few articles.

His site shows why multiplayer is so much better than singleplayer. Playing against people with character and emotions, who are in a way readable and therefore predictable is so much more rewarding than playing against bots that either do random or repetitive actions.

(xXHugDangerXx) #67

[QUOTE=kamikazee;197996]Tokamak, the more I’m reading this, the more I start recalling the arcticles on Sirlin.net titled “playing to win”. Don’t take any offense at the fact that I point you at this site, I know the old articles didn’t always have a friendly tone. It is still an interesting read though, and may let you reconsider what you call an exploit and what not.

Seems they also host some articles about MP game balance. Could be good read, when I have the time…[/QUOTE]

From what I see the bulk of this article only really apply’s to comp play, he even says that at some points.
People tend to quote this article when ever someone complains about exploits/ spawn camping, I play for fun and have never really cared about the win, of course other people can do what they want…but this article shouldn’t be referenced or quoted as an example in “soft gaming” etiquette.

(tokamak) #68
(kamikazee) #69

[QUOTE=xXHugDangerXx;198033]From what I see the bulk of this article only really apply’s to comp play, he even says that at some points.
People tend to quote this article when ever someone complains about exploits/ spawn camping, I play for fun and have never really cared about the win, of course other people can do what they want…but this article shouldn’t be referenced or quoted as an example in “soft gaming” etiquette.[/QUOTE]Then he must have cut out some part which was present in the original articles.
In one of them, he did point out that you can’t always play to win, but still should try to set the bar high.

Anyway, I’ll have to read the book form some day.

(jazevec) #70

I think there are two kinds of snipers - those who play to maximize their safety, and those who play to maximize damage dealt and help team.

The first kind is hill humper, a pack animal with predictable behaviour. They kill you once in a while and you learn to avoid them, but they’re still annoying and random. They create an illusion of having an useful player on your team.

The second kind is scary, actually advances covering his team and actually moves. If you go to his last position to have revenge you find he’s long gone. This kind of sniper will die more often, but is much more disruptive.

I think that railgun-like trails or very heavy smoke are a necessity if sniper is to be added to a multiplayer game AT ALL. In real life and military, snipers have a tough time and are suplement to regular soldiers. Once their position is known, a squad or a chopper can be sent to hunt them down. And there’s cover.

Now games are usually fought on maps which have hard borders and you often can’t surround sniper or surprise him from behind. Your team often doesn’t have resources to take care of a discovered sniper, or (ET:QW) it’s not cost effective to kill them. Or the thing that works best is another sniper, which also sucks.
To summarize, games are not real life and what works there has lots of problems in games. It doesn’t matter that individual sniper kill doesn’t matter much because you can learn to avoid them. The point is, snipers degenerate the game ! You walk somewhere and suddenly BAM, random death. Saying sniping takes some skill is a fallacy. It doesn’t matter. Spawncamping can also take skill. Also rushing in RTS games. But these things commonly remove strategy from games. If you add something to a game it can substract from it.

You know, there was some wisdom* in giving Mauser (sniper rifle) to Soldier in RTCW. Typical sniper player is a sociopath, often far away from his team. So a sociopath class should get it. W:ET and ET:QW made a mistake by giving sniper rifles to classes which have good team interactions. The end result is that snipers get a lot of equipment they don’t care about (radar, explosives, smoke grenade etc) and are harassed by their teammates to do X or Y. That’s bad game design - designing by flavour rather by gameplay.

  • probably unintentional
(tokamak) #71

There’s a third sniper, the one that tries to maximise it’s assets and works on the targets that matter instead of merely trying to raise his bodycount.

I agree with that. It’s compensated a bit with the excellent silenced machine pistol though. But yeah, a soldier should not only be seen as the big man with the big gun, he should be seen as a weapons specialist.