Why Sniping Bad

[Akbaro]

I have always had a very intense grudge against clickers  snipers playing this game. Their implementation is ass and always has been, and yet it was somehow even fucking worse in Renegade where from what I have heard, and have played myself, in that game, all guns except sniper rifles are hot garbage. It is definitely not as bad here, in that regard.

I feel like Renegade X may have patched a huge issue with infantry gameplay from the first game in that pretty much every gun has a place and can be used to effect, but to me, snipers kind of represent almost the lowest common denominator of gameplay possible, like barely an armhair above AFK repping, (no dissing AFK reppers) and shooting into a poor infantry area with an arty indefinitely (which to me, sucks for similar reasons to sniping).

I really enjoy the infantry combat in this game and think that under specific conditions it flows and plays super well and is super addictive and satisfying. Sound effects, the floatiness, the variety of gameplay and characters, the crates, there is so much to go on about why I like it so much with a huge exception to sniping.

They seem out of place. Infantry gameplay is really fast paced and intense, and then you've got sniping, which is moving along at a crawling pace, with your eyeballs sucked down a really really forgiving scope waiting for someone to peak corners and then click. There is quite a lot of corner camping in this game, but infantry pathways are usually a hive of activity until the moment a decent sniper player comes along, and then you get to witness the would-be intense combat wither to hiding behind pillars and rocks constantly, because everyone knows that at any moment you could have your head taken off with very, very low effort. This is shitty gameplay. Renegade X already has mad base camping every match, and this same principle can then be extended to infantry areas aswell? Nice. Sitting around, not shooting anyone, not doing anything cool, just waiting for that clicker to fuck off and get bored basically.

The ability to hitscan someone from incredible distances makes killing cheap as fuck and undeserved to be frank. Its like a free kill card. Most guns in this game have really limited range and then you have these semi automatic hitscan snipers that can click people from any range, and do decent high-damage body shots and instant headshots at that?

And also, whats with the animations? If these snipers are aiming through a scope on their enormous fucking anti material rifles, can their model... reflect that please? Thats a serious suggestion right there. At present it only seems to change once the rifle has already been fired, which isnt very helpful.

The cracking shot was an excellent addition (sniper shots used to be almost dead silent in this game), but I think this whole wait-and-see combat area denial gameplay would be a lot better with some accurate visual information about what the sniper holding everything up is doing. Groups of snipers lined up next to eachother with their massive guns being held down like they are on ceremonial duty looks hilarious.

 

Guaranteed a game of Resevoir looking like this has a dead af infantry path.

Renegade X has chosen a really weird way to balance snipers: if you look at other floaty FPS games, youll see that semi auto hitscan snipers tend to do moderate amounts of damage because they arent exactly difficult to use. You click someone when they are in front of the cursor. Renegade X has made it so that heavy snipers are hitscan, do lots of damage, but are delegated to camping long hallways and ridges (almost like an actual sniper), which is in complete confliction with what the rest of the infantry play as. Snipers feel strangely grounded.

Its probably controversial, but I feel like a good way to make snipers fit better with the game would be to lighten them up a bit. Reduce the damage, increase their speed and tighten the no-scope, make it so that Snipers are more encouraged to play the game in a way that doesn't make it shit for everyone. That or introduce a less controversial velocity drop, like in Firestorm. That works okay.

The addition of a delay to the railgun and ion cannon was an amazing and simple way to balance the guns without making them hopeless. They scream "this is an anti tank weapon" to you, but dont fail to reward you when you do score a hit on a player.

Please share your thoughts below : )

[roweboat]

honestly, of all the "snipers are destroying this game" topics... this is actually one of the most civil and well thought out posts on them.

I agree snipers in the state they've always been... has always felt out of place. Simply put a a great sniper player is nearly untouchable. Their play style doesn't mesh well with Command & Conquer mode honestly.

The question is, if they were nerfed, how much would that throw the balance of other units. It's a very tricky balancing act.

 

I think the most chaotic change that was made to havoc/sakura over the years.. was it beta 3? To turn them into infiltration units and give them more c4...

 

Yeah that didn't last long 

[Sailarc]

I don't rule out that some people use sniper guns just to kill. At least one of the reasons why I use the sniper gun is that it can efficiently kill the engineers behind the enemy tanks from the side of the battlefield...

Another reason is that I think most EU players have not experienced it. When you play the game with 250+ ping, the sniper is relatively easy to kill enemies (short TTK), Driving with high "ping" is disastrous, especially for high speed vehs(eg. recon bike)

Edited September 5, 2022 by Sailarc
eg.gif

[Blender]

On 9/4/2022 at 9:29 PM, roweboat said:

honestly

Are you sure you're being honest?

[Handepsilon]

Quote

And also, whats with the animations? If these snipers are aiming through a scope on their enormous fucking anti material rifles, can their model... reflect that please? Thats a serious suggestion right there. At present it only seems to change once the rifle has already been fired, which isnt very helpful.

I think we tried to have this at least in the internal closed alpha, but I dunno if we've ever added it to Renegade X (I think we have?). Even if we did though, the whole replication issue that makes this so inconsistent is a pain to deal with. We'll try to get around this, somehow

The detailed explanation of said issue might be far too complicated, but it bogs down to this : Your weapons only exist in the server and your own client, and completely absent to anyone else.

[Calvin]

On 9/5/2022 at 7:06 AM, Sailarc said:

I don't rule out that some people use sniper guns just to kill. At least one of the reasons why I use the sniper gun is that it can efficiently kill the engineers behind the enemy tanks from the side of the battlefield...

Another reason is that I think most EU players have not experienced it. When you play the game with 250+ ping, the sniper is relatively easy to kill enemies (short TTK), Driving with high "ping" is disastrous, especially for high speed vehs(eg. recon bike)

I usually snipe for this reason too, except field because of the fun sniping combat you can have in the tunnels. When they don't sit in the back of their base which most snipers do nowadays, they can be extremely useful at taking back the field, Reservoir for example if those snipers actually moved out and played properly, the reps on field would have had a bad time. Which would likely result NOD to take the field and eventually win. I was on the enemy team though that match 

I think the snipers are fine, it's just the playstyle that some people have makes it extremely annoying to play against, hardscoping one point, sitting far away in the tunnel on Field for example. But to change snipers because of people playing like this is a bit much. However i do agree with the fact that it's super annoying and making it so that snipers cant get away with sitting at one spot anymore hardscoping all game would be nice.

[Blender]

14 hours ago, poi said:

 likely result NOD to take the field and eventually win.

It's Nod not NOD. Unlike GDI Nod is not an acronym.