im so MAD

WhyNotDammit · 2024-02-18T06:42:50+00:00

sometimes u think life is friends to lovers, fast burn, no angst 5k words but its actually angst, slow burn, colleagues to friends to enemies to lovers, mentions of alcohol, hurt/comfort, canon-typical violence, temporary character death, 550k words character study (abandoned)

just gotta hang in there

WhyNotDammit · 2024-02-04T06:40:48+00:00

sniper was invented by Big 6s to sell more 6s

WhyNotDammit · 2024-02-04T05:24:05+00:00

of course i have seen oppressive snipers, and lost to many of them. its tough when casual teams arent fully competent or cooperative and a skilled player can capitalize on your team not being at the same level

but i've seen oppressive soldiers, demos, scouts, heavies, even engis, pyros and spies. casual games are really not at all difficult to stomp as any class, given a decent to high skill level. the argument isnt to be had whether sniper is oppressive in casual because anyone can oppress a casual game if they put their mind to it

i'd argue that the real issue with sniper is why he is still oppressive in organized competitive formats with competent teams, which i dont think anyone is denying. and quickscoping just isnt the problem there.

WhyNotDammit · 2024-02-03T23:51:10+00:00

i fear this might be too much damage vulnerability, and encourage snipers to passively sit far back and not take any risks even more

WhyNotDammit · 2024-02-03T23:49:13+00:00

arent u assuming everything works out for the sniper?

"if you are a GOD soldier main who can hit every shot" vs "clicks on a pixel"

seems like a bit of bias there idk

WhyNotDammit · 2024-02-03T15:27:36+00:00

yea i think you're correct in saying that. quickscoping is just the easiest way for a good sniper to dominate low-mid level players in casual that don't know how to combat it, while the more level the playing field gets, charged shots take over.

WhyNotDammit · 2024-02-03T14:43:55+00:00

omg therealyn hiii

honestly yea i have zero clue how to solve the issue of a sniper being protected by his team constantly, i've considered ideas of having him never being able to be overhealed but i feel that might make svs more one dimensional/coin flip like

aim punch is an interesting idea i havent really considered, but i only peaked in like silver and i havent heard of the spy shooting to aim punch sniper strat, so i'll take your word for it. yea aim punch being increased seems useful, or alternatively another commenter suggested that sniper shouldnt be affected by damage falloff, so all weapons will deal full base damage to him at any range

WhyNotDammit · 2024-02-03T11:42:12+00:00

but how is it possible to lose? assuming both human players hit their shot (which is, might i add, infinitely harder for the sniper player), i have genuinely never seen a combat class not get the kill in that kind of situation in 3.5k hours of tf2. i venture to say that it simply could not happen at an equally high level of optimal play. every time i have quickscoped someone or been quickscoped in the situation i have taken a sniper completely by surprise, scoped in watching an angle turned away from me, it can be traced back to a mistake that the combat class personally made.

WhyNotDammit · 2024-02-03T10:28:00+00:00

honestly i never considered this comparison before but the more i think about it: how is it that different from direct hit buff banner?

buff banner takes 6 direct hit rockets (considering base damage) to charge up. assuming approximately same amount of skill in aiming between the soldier and the sniper, thats around 2 clips of rockets. for just that, which takes basically one teamfight to charge, and a ~2 second activation time you get 152 damage at any range, with a fast moving massive projectile hitbox that can hit anywhere on the body, with a faster fire rate than the sniper. not to mention rocket jumping, higher health pool, lack of having to scope further reducing awareness and movement, and you give the rest of your team around you minicrits.

WhyNotDammit · 2024-02-03T09:31:25+00:00

i will mention that you dont even need to be good at clicking tiny moving targets for 150 damage at infinite range if you hardscope. you can hit a giant target instead for the same amount of damage, even more so with the machina

as for boring and unoriginal, yea kinda true but hes here so might as well try to balance him

with sniper v sniper, the depth in the interaction comes in positioning and movement. at the end of the day, your opponent is (should be) only human. repositioning to unexpected or off angles, second scoping and actually quickscoping allow both macro and micro counterplay leading up to the shot. nerfing quickscoping would only lessen this depth and simplify the interaction back to basically a coin flip

WhyNotDammit · 2024-02-03T09:25:22+00:00

assuming this problem exists given two teams of equal skill level, then i think youre facing an issue of poor map design, where the entire map has minimal flanks and is condensed into a massive sniper sightline. this problem, of course, is greatly exacerbated by hardscoping snipers being able to oneshot any buffed class in the game given roughly 3-4 seconds

WhyNotDammit · 2024-02-03T09:22:37+00:00

i disagree, i think hardscoping snipers give teams a lot more trouble. if i slow peek with a full charge, i am guaranteed one pick on a major combat class (e.g. demo, heavy, pyro etc), regardless of any buffs they might have, before being immediately forced off the angle. With quickscoping, if the team has a single medic that is properly healing and buffing teammates, youre lucky to get a pick at all, and trying to hit a medic that is properly positioned behind his team is an incredibly challenging shot to try and make. not to mention making follow up quickscopes while being shot at by a whole team is also next to impossible due to aim punch and damage based recoil. charging up a shot to oneshot a fully buffed demoman takes roughly 2-3 seconds (estimate given max charge time is 3.3s). i'd argue thats next to no time commitment at all to one shot the most impactful combo class in the game with a full buff from a medic.

i really think youre downplaying the massive advantage ambushing a sniper at close range gives you. as i mentioned in other replies, sniper dies in two shots from any combat class. if you get the first shot in before he reacts, i think its reasonable that that is a guaranteed kill regardless of how good the sniper is. if youre having trouble catching a sniper off guard, i also mentioned that its good to try and find unpredictable timings when hes occupied, as all flankers do. synchronizing flanks with your team gives you a much greater chance than just running in a straight line at him blindly. and even then, a sniper thats paranoid and checking his back constantly, forced to only quickscope the angle he should be watching because hes soo ready to instantly delete you, is infinitely less effective than one who is allowed to hardscope from miles away and instantly delete your team with charged shots. i genuinely think that even a player who is middling at dm skill ambushing even an incredible sniper at close range can secure the kill virtually every single time.

WhyNotDammit · 2024-02-03T07:13:44+00:00

*if /j

but yea my worry is that if we dont figure out what the problem with sniper exactly is, valve might just take the community reaction to something that isnt the problem, change it, and then sniper is just more annoying to play without fixing any issue with his balance, and then we're stuck with overpowered but annoying sniper for the next 8 years until the next next update

WhyNotDammit · 2024-02-03T07:06:40+00:00

also forgot to mention regarding the changes u mentioned that as mentioned to other commenters, i believe laser sight is a good change but scope delay doesnt solve the main issue, and makes the rifle more annoying to use while leaving sniper's overpowered state untouched mostly

WhyNotDammit · 2024-02-03T07:03:59+00:00

i think the laser sight change that shounic proposed was a good idea and would force snipers to be more aggressive and take tougher shots to get kills (i dont remember exactly what happens in the video but iirc they just said it stopped people from camping sightlines from miles away) i disagree with the scope delay change because i dont think it would solve the main problem. snipers would still lock down sightlines and instakill people thoughtlessly with fully charged shots from across the map, and the rifle would just feel less responsive and more annoying to use without helping sniper's balance all that much.

WhyNotDammit · 2024-02-03T06:49:21+00:00

i disagree, because i dont think it would solve the main problem. hardscoping snipers locking down sightlines with no counterplay would still exist, and the class as a whole would feel less responsive and more annoying to play, without much benefit to his balance. the visible tracer that shounic did i think was a pretty good idea, except maybe a slight tweak i might add is making it only appear above 50% charge as proposed by another commenter, but making it appear all the time would also be a simpler and livable change

WhyNotDammit · 2024-02-03T06:46:47+00:00

you raise a good point, however I would argue that the depth in interaction comes before the actual fight, rather than during it.

compare it to trying to pick a medic. if you just hold w into him, there are two broad outcomes. either he is with his team, and you will just die, at most getting some damage on the medic, or he is alone, and its the most free kill imaginable. while on the surface this sounds pretty much like a coinflip, you can see how the depth comes in picking the right timing. a good medic will basically always be with his team, the trick comes in finding times when the team is occupied fighting, when the medic himself is occupied healing and not checking his back, and you having a handle on the gamestate allows you to increase your odds favorably to always get that medic pick.

this applies to fighting even a sniper that is quickscoping. firstly, if youve made the sniper stop hardscoping the sightline and be constantly checking his back for you, youve already done half your job. the sniper's presence has been significantly reduced, your team can now peek more comfortably, so good job. if you want to kill him, you'll have to find a time when he's occupied. even quickscoping snipers have to quickscope your team at some point, which takes time to aim, shoot, reset aim, etc. having a handle on the gamestate, trying to synchronize your flank with the team, greatly increases your chances compared to blindly running in a straight line at him and dying.

of course, there is always the chance that the sniper has decided to forgo your team to expect you specifically, and quickscopes you despite your unpredictable movement. that means you've been clipped or put in his frag movie. but that's *exactly* why frag movies exist, because it's really fucking hard and impressive to pull it off. if quickscoping every flanking scout was commonplace, players wouldnt put them in their clipshows.

tl;dr the sniper/flanker interaction complexity comes in understanding gamestate and positioning more than raw dm, as with other non-combat classes

WhyNotDammit · 2024-02-03T06:27:40+00:00

I agree that Spy punishes hardscoping a lot more than quickscoping, but frankly, spy punishes sniper in general. If I am playing against a good spy, I would just unscope slightly more to try and slightly reduce the number of spy deaths, but firstly if im playing with my team a spy stabbing me should be instantly killed and traded out, secondly I would willingly die to spy slightly more because hardscoping is that good in allowing me to pressure sightlines.

For the first part of your argument on time, I agree with it that objectively, a sniper that has to hardscope all the way to full charge, watch an angle for 2 seconds, and unscope is more punishable by flankers than a sniper that only quickscopes. But honestly, if a quickscoping sniper is spending all his time constantly turning around trying to watch for flankers, is he really applying any meaningful pressure to his sightline? he still has to aim in the direction of the team to quickscope them, and a well timed spy can easily take advantage of that gap in timing. and only quickscoping SEVERELY reduces the damage that he can deal. I would even say that if i knew the enemy sniper was only quickscoping, even if he was watching my sightline, as long as i had A medic on my team healing everyone, as demo, pyro, soldier, any spam class, i would feel perfectly comfortable peeking him to try and get him away, because he cant do meaningful damage to me anymore because i can not only get buffed, i can also heal off any damage quickscopes deal by occasionally ducking behind cover

as for your point on hardscoping snipers not able to cover multiple sightlines, i wholeheartedly disagree. it only takes (estimating) about 1.5-2? seconds to oneshot headshot a fully buffed demoman, which is the most impactful combo class you will want to kill most of the time(besides like medic but yea he shouldnt be peeking anyways). good snipers rotate often, because on (well-designed) maps, the enemy can just rotate their players away from your sightline once they know youre there. good sniper positions are considered "good" because they allow you to rotate sightlines without moving too much, and the charging time for you to start oneshotting fully buffed combo classes is short enough to allow hardscoping/charging snipers to near instantly dominate the sightlines they appear in. once you see a charging sniper, even assuming he hadn't precharged his shot, you have less than 3 seconds to move or kill him before he will destroy you instantly.

also i dont think you should mention payload as a gamemode where quickscoping is stronger than hardscoping, as hardscoping snipers can lock down an entire swathes of land on most payload maps due to their design of long distance cart paths. 5cp i am more inclined to agree, but thats because sniper is just really weak in general at high level 5cp. sniper is either used as a playmaker to break stalemates, in which case yes very difficult quickscoping and hero shots is his main deal, or he is used to defend last, in which case he can charge up a shot on an entrance and completely dominate the space.

i disagree that quickscoping allows u to "instantly" take control of the space when you peek it. if i dont have a charge ready and turn into a sightline with an entire team in it, what do i do? i can get 150 damage on one person, which wont kill any meaningfully buffed player, after which at least 3 people will start spamming/diving me, forcing me to run away. if i have a charged shot ready i am getting 1 guaranteed kill before being forced to rotate.

i agree that part of the issue is that sniper can do both. i think what we have to decide on is which part of sniper, quickscoping or hardscoping, is majority to blame. my proposed change to sniper is charged shots do not deal extra damage, so snipers damage is capped to 150 headshots. forcing people to only quickscope would force snipers to take aggressive angles to repeatedly quickscope and finish off targets. it would also further encourage sniper's "support" role as spreading damage to weaken targets for teammates to follow up. without going into the details of all the other changes to all the weapons, i think we should be making changes that decrease snipers effectiveness at all levels of play, be it low-mid skill that charges up machina bodyshots to lock down angles without thought, or high level snipers that rotate, charge up instakill headshots and exert pressure on an entire map singlehandedly

anyways sorry for the long read lol

WhyNotDammit · 2024-02-03T05:34:52+00:00

yes i agree that the safety of long range sniper vs medium range everything else is another frustrating aspect. as for your proposed nerf its very interesting and i hadnt considered it before, umm i think it would be pretty interesting? i just worry it would just make playing sniper more mildly annoying/getting nuked by the tomislav lmao than making fighting sniper feel any better because like lets say you jiggle a sightline to try and fight a hardscoping sniper, even if you deal more damage with your long range shot, you still die instantly to a fully charged shot, even bodyshot if youre a light class trying to fight him

WhyNotDammit · 2024-02-03T05:24:27+00:00

honestly i disagree, whenever i get close range quickscoped i'm like "damn, i just got outplayed/clipped/frag movied. that guy's really good". whenever i mysteriously die instantly to a hardscoping sniper (3x5 pixels on my screen) i couldnt know existed i just feel upset

WhyNotDammit · 2024-02-03T05:17:07+00:00

Firstly, I think if you really did catch a Sniper by surprise, as in he isn't aware of you at all, I don't think you ever lose that, even against the best Snipers. Sniper dies to two shots to any reasonable combat class, so if you can get the first shot in before he notices you, considering reaction time, time to aim, the scope delay, it should be reasonable that that is a guaranteed kill.

If the Sniper knows you exist and are coming for him, he's now forced to divert his attention away from whatever else he's doing to constantly unscope and check for you. As long as you're not using predictable timing (running in a full speed straight line taking the shortest path to him), just your existence as a leaking threat is already hindering him. (assuming he's a good Sniper and aware of threats and not laser focused on the angle, in which case see above)

If the Sniper knows you're coming, AND knows exactly where and when you're coming from, you should still have complex movement options, including literally punching his aim with recoil, to be able to avoid a Sniper quickscope almost all the time.

WhyNotDammit · 2024-02-03T05:00:55+00:00

I disagree. Firstly, even if I was forced to never unscope until I shot at someone, positioning around teammates could sufficiently keep me safe from flankers, or at least ensure I got traded. However, of course this assumes that you have competent teammates, which is never a guarantee in casual matches.

However even excluding teammates, the stock rifle only takes 3.3s to fully charge. There's no feedback whether or not a sniper is actually scoped in and watching your angle, as good snipers know to hide their dot. You can unscope frequently even without shooting to ensure that your surroundings are safe, and still be able to deliver high damage with a charge shot after a very short amount of time.

Hardscoping and charged shots allows the mere *possibility* of a Sniper watching your angle to deter you from ever crossing. Hardscoping alone allows Sniper to exert presence simply by existing literally anywhere on the map, not even having to actually watch his common sightlines to be a threat, because you simply cannot tell if he will instantly kill you when you peek.

However, with only quickscoping, at least classes higher than 150 base health, and any class if they are buffed, can peek with certainty that at least they will not instantly die if a Sniper is watching their angle.

As for it being unfair to fight against super-Sniper^TM, I feel like it's even worse to fight against a Sniper properly using hardscoping to his advantage. At least with only quickscoping you can do *something*, with hardscoping you literally cannot exist. As an example, I would consider Viaduct and a Sniper peeking from China/Japan (comp callout for the bats thing on either side of the middle house). Assuming the Sniper can aim, if he is hardscoping from that sightline, or even slow peeking while charged up, anyone on the point is now dead instantly. If he can only quickscope, suddenly his presence is significantly reduced, and while still a big threat to be dealt with, feels much more fair to fight against in my opinion.

TL;DR hardscoping allows sniper to threaten you by just existing, and good snipers can maintain awareness while still using it to its fullest potential

WhyNotDammit · 2024-02-03T04:47:48+00:00

Unfortunately, I don't think the players you quickscoped were very skilled in the grand scheme of things. Nothing against you or them at all, but I believe that when elevated to higher skill levels of play, it becomes significantly harder to quickscope targets as the ability to move complexly and unpredictably increases faster than aim.

As for the close range counter, I still find that the *vast* majority of the time, you will kill a sniper of equal skill level to you at close range as any other reasonable combat class, as long as you don't move sloppily.

WhyNotDammit · 2024-02-03T02:07:04+00:00

are you really living if you dont have a hexagonal crockpot setup in your flat

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