Sniping too stronk?

(totu) #1

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t find it very fun how Vaseline can drop you with one head shot no matter what. I’m fine if counter sniping works like that and against lighter guys like Proxy, but I just don’t feel like one shot kills from afar bring enjoyment to the game.

Only argument against bringing down the damage from snipers has been from players who only snipe saying: “in real life when you get shot in the face you are dead”, but I don’t have this feeling that Dirty Bomb is trying to be super realistic and then you’d imagine that all guns would drop people with one or at least two bullets to head.

I get that this comes off and whiny and butthurt, but after playing against 4 snipers who didn’t care for the objective at all and just sat at the base and sniped us (they were attacking) it really gets boring and maybe nerfing Vaseline would bring the number of “I only ever snipe”-guys down.

(LuLNope) #2

“Vaseline” haha, nice one.

Anyway, sniping is much harder than it seems and nerfing Vassili would only serve to make him unplayable. If anyone gets close to Vassili he’s got 1 shot. He either headshots you instantly, places a bodyshot and makes the fight more or less equal (taking out his sidearm takes enough time to deal him about 60-70dmg depending on weapon) or misses and loses instantly. Playing Vassili is very unforgiving becasue of that. Some maps are also not sniper friendly while most other classes are still usable on them. Also he is supposed to be a support merc and stay back, try rushing with sniper rifle if you don’t believe me. All in all it his effectiveness depends on who uses him, just like any other merc. Playing him doesn’t magically get you headshots or win you match.

(Eox) #3

“Vaseline”… I’ll definitely use this as a nickname for him now.

I’ve recently played a game on Chapel as Proxy and, well, those (or one of those) Vassilis managed to give me a very hard day. However I don’t think that a nerf should be done. The principle of a sniper weapon is simple : be good or be dead (or at least be useless). This is a weapon that is hard to master. If we nerf it so headshots can’t OHK you, there may be no reason to play with Vassili anymore.

(Cyphre) #4

With how quick TTK is in general in this game, it doesn’t seem unreasonable for a sniper to get one-shot kills if they go for the head.

Doesn’t seem hard to survive a body shot as it is.

(Reddeadcap) #5

Even slower moving classes move rather fast and heads are small, so it’d be either that particular players good reflexes or good luck, that said time to kill is everywhere, I’ve shot smaller classes point blank with a shotgun in the face multiple times and die in one or two as a Fragger, I’ve had to empty entire magazines at a proxy and other timed not even half of one, head shots are either dumb luck or someone who’s actually aiming down sights to aim for their enemies head us all in saying, still it makes me happy to see that Dirty Bomb’s hip firing makes it impossible to hit even the broad side of a barn unlike many other first person shooters in the market.

(totu) #6

See, I think that is where you are wrong. Just because you can’t pick off targets by yourself doesn’t mean you aren’t helping the team. Landing a shot on a guy carrying a objective makes for easier kill for rest of the team which is what support characters are all about in my opinion and of course they can pick off guys retreating from a bigger fight with already lowered health.

After more play I have a new complain, why is there no aim penalty for jumping with sniper rifle? In chapel you on defense there was one sniper who kept jumping over the metal fencing thing near the mounted gun right at the start and it was almost impossible to land hits on him while he just jumped and sniped us and while he too missed quite a few shots his gun does hell of a lot more damage when he hits.

Sniper just feels so out of place when you can shoot someone with a shotgun from 3 feet away and they still live and sniper can one shot you from across the map. Or when I’m landing shots from M16 on the sniper and he just shoots me in the face.

I feel like most people have taken the stand “if they are good enough to constantly land head shots then they deserve the easy kills”, but I don’t see that as fun experience. Games are suppose to be fun, right? And to have fun both sides need to experience fun and if only way to out play a sniper is to A) be a better sniper or B) blindly try to bum rush him, I don’t feel like thous are fun options. I guess I’m just old and bitter that my reaction time has fallen over the years and I can’t flick shot anymore, but in TF2 I find snipers fun both to play as and to play against and while they can one shot you it seems much rarer than in Dirty Bomb and at least you can’t land quick one shot kills right after another.

(LuLNope) #7

Heh, you can 1shot anyone with shotgun from 3 feet IF you aim for the head. Consider Vassili’s ohk as his second special ability, next to heartbeat sensor (which got nerfed so much that most of the time I don’t even use it when sniping). If you take out his ohk then taking out fragger’s nades is next, since they kill you instantly when thrown properly, and Skyhammer’s airstrike has to go. It kills you instantly when placed well too. Arty’s artillery too. You catch my drift? There’s so many instant kill ways in this game that unless you’re engy or medic, you have to have one or merc is useless (hehe, that’s why Aura is so problematic, she has both a shotty - 1shot kill if placed properly - and healing ability). At least Vassili’s headshots are extremely skills based, unlike aoe attacks.

(triteCherry) #8

You can dodge those since they have a delay and are not instant. They also have a decent amount of travel time.

(Thai-San) #9

[left][quote=“LuLNope;4876”]H If you take out his ohk then taking out fragger’s nades is next, since they kill you instantly when thrown properly, and Skyhammer’s airstrike has to go. It kills you instantly when placed well too. Arty’s artillery too. [/quote]

But those things have a visual and/or sound indication that they are coming. You can see skyhammers airstrike grenades rolling in front of your feet and even see which way the line of death is going, So if you react calm and fast you can easily avoid being killed by those things because they need a couple of seconds to trigger.
In the case of the sniper guy on the other hand you just die because the other player just happened to be watching the corner you’re going to go around and klicks on your head when you passed it. So you either have to know that he’s there and go another way to avoid his line of sight OR play totally defensive and paranoid and never really get out of cover (which isn’t the way Dirty Bomb is supposed to be played imo. It’s a fast fps, not a cover based shooter after all).[/left]

(Amerika) #10

Vassili is already pretty awful in this game much like sniping in Wolf and ET. Yes, in some situations in some areas it can be good but a lot of times he ends up being a rough class to play. If you are playing against competent people they will be moving somewhat erratically and doing lots of walljumps so getting a HS on those people is pretty rare. And even if you do knock them down it takes more shots to gib their body. So you can knock people down and then they immediately get resurrected by the nearby medic who moves so fast it’s hard to take them down. And if you do go for the gib you’re probably going to get sniped yourself either by another sniper or a soldier class ADS’ing you from across the map.

What makes Vassili actually good in some cases though isn’t when he’s sniping. It’s when he’s pushing forward and using his special to mark where you are for himself and teammates. That ability is crazy powerful when used right (rarely so far since people haven’t gotten to play enough).

Being upset at getting headshot isn’t the same thing as a class being overpowered. Yes, it sucks but it’s rare and Vassili has so many other things weighing against him.

(LuLNope) #11

Sniper bullets are leaving trails, so there actually exists visual indicator of his ‘special ability’. Sound of his shots is easily discernible too. Aimpunch that is still there messes up your aim with Vassili, once you get fired at your best bet is to run away since you have virtually 0% chance of landing a shot. Especially headshot. Even at long distance.

Fragger’s nades give you time to react only if thrown ineptly(Edit: you can cook grenades with fragger, just thought you might not know that). Placing airstrike beacon so that enemies can’t see it at first isn’t such a big deal as well, and Arty’s indicator, a few pixels wide vertical line, is stealthy enough by itself. Also nobody addressed my remark about shotguns which don’t even require you to be spot-on to deal incredible amounts of damage (ohk possible on mercs with 120 and less hp at close range).

And about Totu’s paragraph about games being fun. If you play against good player it won’t matter if he uses Vassili or different class. He will be very annoying to play against.

(eggplantSafe) #12

I think it’s more about the maps rather than about snipers instakilling. Of course, there should always be different routes to objectives and some covers, so sniper can’t see you everywhere. But, no need to nerf the sniper.

(TndY) #13

Results of playing a competitive shooter.

(eggplantSafe) #14

There should be ways to counter the snipers, but headshots should be easy kills.

The ways to counter the snipers: Good maps (having 2 or more ways to objective X), possibly adding the smoke screen grenade, arty (artillery on camping snipers), the snipers on your team, etc.

(B_Montiel) #15

Don’t worry, you’ll be able to yell about those when they’ll put the remaining mercs :smiley: …

(LuLNope) #16

The fun part is that the smoke screen guy is a sniper himself…

(xBL!NDx) #17

If you’re half decent, you won’t be moving in straight lines to be an easy headshot for a sniper

(LiNkz) #18

Okay, “Vaseline” Player here. In the maps there are usually 3-5 Really good spots for headshots where you are 80% safe, no rushers, easy covers, easy to fall back (You can argue that you can always get headshots from every position, but this is making you much more vulnerable to getting shot at from multiple angles and usually resulting your death, no expections). Good “Vaselines” will try to use these spots for easy frags ofc, it seems no fun but that’s the maps strategic layout, they hold a certain angle. I agree that sniper seems a bit out of place with OHK on HS, but every other weapon has a bonus damage on headshot too!

If you actually wanted to nerf something, do it on the mag / clip size, reload speed / shooting speed or something.

OHK as mechanic sounds boring, but how many other FPS games have it? Cs, Quake, CoD, Unreal Tournament, etc etc. It’s important to have this kind of tempo controller in the game in form of a weapon, I’m purely thinking from the competitive side of the game here anyways.

[quote=“Amerika;4988”]f you are playing against competent people they will be moving somewhat erratically and doing lots of wall jumps so getting a HS on those people is pretty rare.[/quote] <— I can’t emphasize this enough, as sniper nothing is more frustrating that actually trying to follow a persons head in fast-paced game, whenever I see someone or me hitting wall-jumping proxy a HS I get super-excited because I know it wasn’t something that everyone can do.

(appreciativeBuster) #19

Headshot should be instakill
You should have 1-20hp left if you’ve been near a healing station/med pack.

(son!) #20

The moving no scope is inaccurate which is good. jumping accuracy needs to be similar to no scope accuracy.

Moving scoped accuracy should be poor, unable to reliably hit targets at 7-15m out.

I’d like to see snipers treated the same as an MG nest. Easy to counter as they need to be posted-up to be effective, but in the right position/situation can do a lot of damage or shut down a play because someone important is insta-killed.

My problem with the merc is it does a lot of damage, is accurate, while being very mobile. I’ve seen in other FPS the way to balance high damage ‘snipers’ is make them effectively slow, or hard to use. Making them slow can be a long cool down time between shots which totally spoils DPS, or long charge time to deal OHK damage. Another route some newer games have been toying with is replacing the sniper with a high damage and high speed projectile, but that doesn’t seem to fit with this game.