Let's have a mature discussion about the Sniper and Balance.

Still a bit too early and too small a sample size in my opinion. Need to see what the actual effects of sniper vs. no sniper entails in a good bit of games with quality opponents, both on the getting sniped and sniping sides.

Very easy to mask "balance" in the noise at this point.

You know if everyone agreed that it is way too early to consider changes we wouldn't need to discuss every odd day.

I've been saying for quite some time that as long as no changes are warranted there shouldn't be any, and even then the issue isn't trivial (but that's another matter).

Yet you see people like tinygod running around foaming yelling "THIS IS OP, THAT IS OP" and that really doesn't help (I'll acknowledge that he tried to keep it down lately, that's it)

So if anyone would just state "We'll wait to see how it evolves" it would be a better world already.

While this post is very logical in some sense, there are just some huge fallacies that make it less credible. For example, you try to defend the Sniper by saying the Support wins 9.9/10 in an up close battle? That is BS, a sniper is safe and being at close range in general is not safe. Support gets destroyed by grapples and alot of the time you have time to grapple/charge before a second shot can even go off. The allusions you made to the other classes is also full of fallacy. The gunner is the closest to OP yet he is hard countered by Snipers and can be countered by Assaults, Sins, and Support (heavily dependent on range)? The difference between sniper and gunner is that, Sniper has the potential to have 0 counters. It all depends on the players accuracy.

You can make any bad class look over powered with some nice wordplay and some over exaggerated facts. An example, you claim that it's our fault that we stand in open area and complain about getting sniped. How about you explain to me a map in this game that doesn't heavily benefit a Sniper? The way this game is designed, it would only make sense for the maps to be 90% open area. What about the Tank? You said he can kill any class at close range besides Gunner, ya that may be true on a 1v1 situation but when does that ever happen?

Also, saying "Play to your **** strengths and avoid your weaknesses!" is ridiculous. If half of the classes truly need to avoid all confrontation with one class then clearly there is an issue there.

It is very easy to cause perceived balance issues by just being a better player, which sniper reinforces when you come across one that can do well.

Other classes require a bit of observable work to get a kill in general. For sniper, this background effort is completely hidden. This will just further complaints.

This mirrors initial assassin complaints pretty good, though at least assassin has a warning (however brief) at least.

Even TF2 has a warning with the laser dot. MNC ... nothing.

Good point, after playing TF2 sniper for god knows how long, looking at MNC Sniper is just painful. The Sniper is borderline OP in that game too but at least you have to work for you kills and there are many more consequences to your actions. MNC Sniper just feels like some horribly OP TF2 sniper with a better SMG. I know it seems kinda pointless to bring another game into the discussion but the classes are very similar in how they operate so I feel like it fits. The reason the Sniper isn't op in TF2 is because you can't kill any big class without charging the rifle first. Therefore there is room for mistakes, mistakes that don't exist in MNC. Also missing a shot has some consequences as well.

Providence, clearly you didn't understand what I meant. Please explain to me how an Aimbot Sniper can have any counters? The two classes that "counter" the Sniper can get the exact same treatment as the other classes depending on how accurate that Sniper is at the time. The only reason Assaults and Sin's "counter" a Sniper is because chances are you won't find a Sniper who can headshot them at any time. However when a good Sniper is in his prime, he can make short work out of both and it definitely won't seem that they counter him at all.

Not only that, but as it is now, people think the Sniper is OP. Imagine in 4 months when those snipers are now twice as good at consistently getting headshots. How much time will it take for Snipers to be unstoppable?

Yes, let's balance the game around cheaters. Even the best snipers in TF2 can not reliably headshot the best scouts and still have hard time getting a pick on a good medic. It's the same in MNC, good sniper is not going to reliably headshot any assault that knows what they're doing. Everyone who have said let's wait and balance around the competitive play is right.

You didn't read my post carefully enough. And you are simply wrong, good Snipers CAN kill medics consistently, the reason it doesn't happen as often is because the maps aren't nearly as open and tehre is a big red/blue dot to warn you. There are many paths you can take outside of the Sniper's point of view. Not in MNC.

Deal with you or with your class ? Before you leave earth on an ego trip know that you may be good, but what makes you difficult to deal with is the class you play. It requires a little bit of honesty here. This is true for Sniper more than for any other class. Exceptions only confirm the rule.

It looks like you speak about quantum physics application in the Large Hadron Collider - let's wait to see how it works. To give you a closer example, in World of Warcraft you need to wait, analyse: there are 10 races, 10 classes, litteraly hundreds of skills, matchups and combinations possible. We're nowhere that complication with MNC, it's really imaginable that some people have apprehended the whole game already and have a valid opinion.

Especially because Snipers were questionable on Xbox version...everything escalated since PC Sniper took the reigns.

No, they can't. You are simply wrong. Any good sniper will hide the dot. Any good medic can avoid sniper LOS easily. You must only play with bad players. There are only 2-3 paths into any area of any map similar to MNC. You have no clue about high level TF2 and it seems your understanding of MNC is even lower. Snipers will get better so will other classes. If you get headshot, it's your own fault. Unlike TF2, you can safely peak from cover. "Oh, there's a sniper, I should be careful." Sniper bullets can't bend, this isn't Wanted. In every map, you can go from moneyball to moneyball without getting headshot by sniper, even on grenade iii. Learn the map, learn the sniper blind spots, there are many.

Sigmars just for reference, I can do that with any class on a pub but every decent player should be able (support excluded because I consider it very, very boring).

This is not a valid argument. Everything is viable in pubs with large skill disparity. Everything. In almost every game too. This is pretty universal.

It took a fairly long time for TF2 to stabilize with a much larger community and many more dedicated players. MNC certainly does not have the complexity of TF2, but they are broadly comparable, enough for these sorts of discussions.

MNC has roughly 3-4 teams out there that appear to be actually viable. Unfortunately they are spread across continents so getting them to play is not really going to work that well.

This is a huge difference from TF2 where you had at least ten or twenty times the player base to build information on as well as a fairly healthy competitive community. MNC has neither. Uber certainly can balance for pubs, and given the outcry I'd expect them to cave to pressure even though I'm not completely convinced that the sniper needs the major changes that most people are clamoring for. Minor changes, probably. Major certainly not yet. However, the competitive comments are likely never going to be accounted for because there is not enough of a community to create a fairly agreed upon consensus for where the expected power levels should lie.

Extending to WoW, you have an order of magnitude at least more players relative to TF2 digging at the system to find the effective combos.

That's why classes should be balanced around high level play. Before you guys cry about, "oh, but most people play in pub so game should be balanced around that!" Like grimbar said, any decent player will dominate in pub with any class.

No, you guys just all assert that you're good players, more often.
Your entire lines of argument so far have actually been "No you guys are just bad. Get better" "See I'm skilled, so I don't have that issue"

I can assure you I've played with a number of anti-Snipers in this thread, and they're great players too. You can't assume anything.

In fact the most skilled person defending the Sniper, is a Sniper main. Interesting.

Skill floors mean nothing to balance. See my hammer post.

Are we assuming that both players are at really high skill levels?
Because it would appear that you may have forgotten Quickscoping in your calculations.
It could potentially make the match up for Close Range into about 50%-50%.

Depends, which class has the drop?
I'm assuming neither as it's unbiased?
I'd say between two peak players, the Sniper would come out on top a little more than the Support, possibly even far more.

Kinda interesting that you somehow manage to forget quickscoping.
It's almost as if you're trying to balance to low skill environments.
Read the hammer post.

Did you really just say that?
Hilarious.

"People know how to avoid close range but they don't understand they need to avoid long range".

Perhaps the volume of the map covered by long range is a touch larger than the volume covered by short range?
Maybe, the Support puts himself in far more danger in close combat, than the Sniper does at long range?
Maybe you can outrange a close range opponent, while... you can't outrange the most ranged class in the game?

Avoiding long range is far more difficult due to the volumetric difference, and more often than not, a well placed Sniper can cover a large amount of the important map area - where, if your team seriously does just do their best to avoid his LOS, you're forced into your base, and away from important objectives like the Annihilator.
One interesting thing about the volumetric difference between long range and short range is that, as the distance gets further away, you need to move more before you are out of his area of influence.

More often than not, Snipers can cover every route leading to them, or at least keep a good eye on them.
(Seriously, the amount of times I see someone saying "Sneak up on him"? The maps make it easy seeing approaching threats, and even then you can trap 3 routes easily if necessary.)

Honestly, if this is what you've been posting, I'm not surprised people are ignoring your posts.
Should be pretty damn obvious that avoiding long range is in no way equal to avoiding close range.

That's actually kinda funny, because I can often do this and come out with a quickscoped head shot and full health.

Really? I think we both know they'd still be fine.
Why?
Let me help you out.

Play to your **** strengths. Gunners are arguably the closest class to overpowered in this game. Highest DPS by far, second highest health, high spike and AoE damage, ability to arch mortars from cover, one of the strongest grapples+throw in the game, 360 degree huge radius damage+stun+knockback (1024 units. Same as the support's shotgun's reach). They wreck players and turrets like nobody's business at close and long range, and they're more than a little competent at destroying bots. You think juiced assassins are a problem? A single Gunner juice will wipe your entire base, turrets and players together, of the map regardless of how much crap and what level you have. If you play it properly, Gunner is a catastrophe with legs. Get a good support to escort you, and you'll easily make up for 4 enemy players with ease. Leaving a gunner near your exposed moneyball for more than a second usually guarantees a loss, and so help you god if they have juice...

Tank chews through bots like nothing, and can wreck anything but a Gunner at close range without sweating. And I mean 99% guarantee of a kill if you don't mess up. Against a Gunner it comes down to the best player. The Tank also has the second best long range engagement weapon, a weapon only bested by the Sniper's own rifle. 149 damage, same fire rate as the sniper, 0.01 spread. It's also the class with the highest health.

Support can single handedly shut down an entire area against anything short of a full team attack. It's also the pillar of both a good defence and a good attack. A good support tilts the balance of a match with ease.

Assassin can pick her own battles and move between enemy ranks at will. It can one hit kill all but one class (Tank). It wrecks bots faster than any other class except the Tank, it's the fastest class in the game, and the fastest at gaining, and easier to hold, juice with.

Go ahead, prove me wrong.

Yeah, if you want to leave - go ahead. You're not saying anything of value.
Feel victorious if you'd like, pretend you won.
Give that e-peen a good old stroke.

But honestly, there's nothing even remotely useful in your posts.

-> Assuming static Sniper.

Street Fighter is iterative balance, I am very sure that they would not be as useful if Capcom started new IP - that said, I'm not saying that competitive players *cannot* be good at balancing. I'm saying that generally, an actual designer who has worked on previous games is better to work with than someone completely unqualified aside from the fact that they know how to play a game.

arQon is more known as a Quake modder who created a great competitive mod. He's not "Just some player" he has design experience.

Also, League of Legends is interesting because right now I understand that a wide amount of the community, and the "moba" community in general thinks it is incredibly unbalanced. Perhaps not so much as HoN (whose balance issues are making them revert entire patches) - but yeah, LoL isn't great on the balance front.

It's starting to, I think.

But fair enough, I don't mind postponing the inevitable.

Yes, because it's not like every single damn suggestion I've made to nerf the Sniper has compensated for his loss of bot killing.
Far out.

If this is honest to god a real non-trolling post then I found your problem: You're a terrible player. You are, honest to god, and being as factual and non-abrasive as I can while stating this, a dreadfully bad player. Easily one of the worst in this game. Or at least the most clueless.

Here's how to NEVER be grappled again, EVER: JUMP! I NEVER get grappled while shotgunning. EVER. Just keep hitting that spacebar and they can't grapple you unless lag screws you over, but that's not a balance issue, that's lag.

Once we account for that, 2 Shotgun rounds takes down a sniper, even with gold endorsement. Two. Even without any endorsements as a Support that's a match you can't lose if you wanna claim equal skill levels. If you lose that match up, it's your fault, exclusively. If you lose that more than once in a bluemoon either against a really lucky, or a sniper far, far above your skill level, then it's entirely down to you. You need 2 shots.

You want some statistic to make it abundantly obvious that there is no way in hell for you to lose that matchup?

Ok. First, no endorsements whatsoever.

Sniper - 300 health
Support - 600 health (passive lvl 2)

At that range, the Sniper itself will be good for nothing, so, it's SMG vs. Shotgun:

SMG - 39 dmg / 0.1 fireint = 390 DPS
Shotgun - 405 dmg per shot / 1.0 fireint = 405 DPS

Starting to see a problem here? Both higher health AND higher dps. In fact, without armor it's a one hit kill. So it's instant.

Final kill time assuming neither misses a single shot:

SMG vs. Support - 1.538 seconds.
Shotgun Vs. Sniper - Instant. It's a one hit kill. The first shot that comes out means you're kissing the respawn screen.

But whatever, nobody runs default sniper anyways. Most common and arguably best setups for either side accounted for. This means Sniper with gold RoF and Silver Armor, and Support with gold RoF. Keep in mind the support could tilt this even further by wearing silver armor as well, or if the sniper isn't wearing silver armor at all. So, new figures:

Sniper - 500 Health
Support - 600 Health (Passive lvl 2)

Weapons:

SMG - 39 dmg / (0.1 x 0.7) = 0.07 fireint = 557 DPS
Shotgun - 405 dmg per shot / 0.7 fireint = 581 DPS

Starting to see that problem all over again? And, again, we're STILL not accounting for silver armor for the support (which would throw his HP up to 800), so this is really an unfair battle, but whatever:

Final kill time:

SMG Vs. Support - 1.07 seconds
Shotgun Vs. Sniper - 0.86 seconds

IF we consider Silver armor for the support too, then it's just sad...

SMG Vs. Support - 1.43 seconds...

Even then these numbers are facetious, since we have to remove the first shot fired. First shot doesn't suffer from fire interval does it? No, it does not. We also forgot to account for reloads... Wooo... That's gonna hurt the Sniper, cause, you see, the sniper only carries 10 bullets in his SMG. At 39 damage per pop, that's 390 damage in one clip. We gotta factor in one reload in between that. Shotgun only needs 2 shots, and it carries 8 rounds... No reload needed there. Ok then, let's re-do the math with all of these things accounted for (except the support armor, we'll throw the Sniper that bone).

So, the equation we'll be using is:

[((Enemy's health)-(1 bullet of damage))/((damage per shot)/(fireint))]+(Reload - if needed) = Time to kill the opponent.

So we have the enemy's health - the initial bullet fired divided by the damage per second + reload if needed.

Let's see SMG vs. Support:
[(600-39)/(39/0.07)]+1
(561/557)+1
2.00

However, this equation doesn't work for Support, since the shotgun is a high impact low fire rate weapon, and not a DPS weapon (like the sniper):

Shotgun vs. Sniper:
[(500-407)/(407/0.7)]+0
93/581
0.16

While I assure you the difference is brutal (I've checked before), it's not 0.16 seconds. So, instead, we have to think for a second (unusual for you, I know):

407 damage are done with the first shot. No refire needs be calculated for that. So:

500-407 = 93

93 health left. It takes one more shot. Meaning, 1 re-fire period: 0.7

Kill time - 0.7 seconds.

0.7 seconds vs. 2 full seconds. Wanna factor in the silver armor just for laughs? Let's do it. Let's be crazy.

Let's see SMG vs. Support:
[(800-39)/(39/0.07)]+1
(761/557)+1
2.366

...Yeah, that didn't get any better did it?

That's assuming equal skill, that nobody misses body shots (which is quite easy to accomplish at that distance, and considering we're talking about body shots), and that the Support's firebase isn't covering him (which it should be), and that the sniper doesn't waste time trying something stupid like try to use grapples, ice traps or Flak (which will fail at that distance and turn the sniper into a free money shot for the enemy support).

If you consistently lose to snipers at that distance you are rubbish as support.

See what I mean? I posted this before... If this is your honest belief you are absolutely, beyond any repair, completely hopeless as gunner. Gunner will cut through ANYYYYYYYYYYYYY class facing him within shotgun range within half a second. How does this logic even work for you? In what world can you even consider that Sniper beats Support at close range... But Support beats Gunner at that same range? According to that logic, Sniper beats Gunner at close range... Are you absolutely clueless?

Standard build for good Gunners involves Gold armor and Silver RoF. That leaves you at 1000 health and 1700 DPS. How in the world do you factor that a 600/800 health 580 dps class can beat that? Do you realize how fast that dual minigun goes through 800 health? 0.47 seconds! Shotgun's refire with gold RoF is 0.7 seconds. I can chew through 2 Supports before I take a second shot, which the Gunner CAN TANK.

That's not even accounting for Slam, or the fact that the Gunner is possibly the only class that can absolutely trash your firebase no matter how many people are healing it. And not even accounting for range, which as we've established, Support loses at range to everyone.

And I'm not even going on about how a Gunner vs. Assault can go from "even battle" to "completely trashing the assault" based solely on weather the Gunner can avoid the bomb or not. If that bomb doesn't hit or the Gunner isn't already at an health handicap, the Assault either uses his charge to piss off, or he is dead before he hits that trigger.

And what advantage do sins have against Gunners? Their front grapple can't one hit them with gold armor. Only the back grapple. The Gunner's grapple WILL one hit kill them at lvl 3, simply ring them out at lvl 2. Meanwhile they have to content with a jetpack that makes an aware Gunner near impossible to grapple, a slam that covers the same radius as the Support's shotgun's range and spells doom for anyone caught in it (between the damage, knockback and stun - which is visible through cloak, it's game over unless you get lucky), and a 2 hit kill large AoE weapon he can use to shell the whole battlefield. Not to mention they have absolutely no chance to outdamage his minigun, so that one's completely off the table.

Also, Gunner isn't hard countered by the Sniper. Just because you don't know how to deal with it, doesn't mean there isn't a way. I'll say it again - Mortars. Learn to ******* love them. Sniper is the Gunner's counter. But it's not a game over.

You have absolutely no idea what the **** you're talking about. I understand advanced quantum physics better than you understand this ****, and I never even read a book on the subject. THIS is exactly why we keep saying it's only the poor players that complain and moan all the time about balance issues that don't exist. You don't see someone who knows the game complaining about it. You don't. It's not a coincidence!

I am done with this subject, because it's been said a million times by now. It's been proven both logically, empirically, statistically, and... pretty much any ******* way I can think of. The balance is fine. It's you! Learn the game, or keep dying. Your choice.

Really? Let's run through a list of your, and other's anti-nerf arguments.

1. It's balanced because it's balanced.
2. It's balanced because Uber made the game.
3. If it was imbalanced, Uber would have fixed it by now, thus it isn't.
4. You're bad.
5. All the players supporting the Sniper are good, which means it's balanced.
6. All the classes have different roles, thus it's balanced.
7. Every class has a way to kill other player, thus it's balanced.
8. Just hit him with ricochet grenades!
9. Just avoid his LOS!
10. Just sneak around him. Every map has multiple routes and Snipers have no way of checking them every so often to be safe. Wait what's an Ice Trap?
11. Players will never learn to effectively Quickscope!
12. On the Xbox it was balanced!
13. Why balance at high level play? Sniper isn't OP in pubs.
14. Snipers are hard so they deserve to be more powerful than the other classes.
15. All Snipers just stand in scope, it's easy to kill them!
16. X class can kill the Sniper. See? Look at these damage calculations. Thus the Sniper is balanced.
17. The game is balanced thus the Sniper is balanced.
18. If you nerf the Sniper he won't be able to kill bots!
19. If you nerf the Sniper, Gunners will become overpowered!
20. They nerfed the quickscoping on TF2, and now the Sniper is rare in comp play. Thus he is underpowered. Thus the nerf was bad.
21. But other shooters aren't like MNC!
22. I played against good players with Sniper and I didn't kill them. Thus balanced.
23. If Sniper was OP, bad players would be owning good players!
24. If the Sniper was OP, it would be common knowledge by now.
25. Currently Snipers are playing at the top of their game. They won't get any better!
26. A nerf to clip size OBVIOUSLY balances the Sniper Rifle's newfound aiming capacity.
27. They nerfed the Gunner, now he sucks. They shouldn't nerf anything else.
28. I don't mind a nerf to the Sniper class, but don't change how powerful it is, make it harder!
29. You can't quickscope in close combat!
30. You can't quickscope in long range combat!
31. You can't quickscope in mid range combat!
32. Other classes have ranged weapons. Thus balanced.
33. l2play.
34. If you nerf the Sniper Rifle, the Sniper will be unusable!
35. If you nerf the Sniper, I'll quit!
36. If you nerf the Sniper, it won't do anything! I'll still be able to get kills! Ha!
37. You just want your class to be the most powerful!
38. Imbalance is a part of the game. Deal with it.
39. You're not Scathis, you don't have the qualifications to propose change!
40. *fingers in ears* Lalalalalalala!
41. Are you the bets player in the world? No! Therefore you don't have the qualifications to propose a nerf!
42. Well, it might be an issue in the future... but... it's not an issue now... right?
43. I've said it a MILLION TIMES. It's BALANCED. How many times do I have to tell you?!
44. Yeah, but that's just ONE Sniper dominant map! Oh... that one too yes... oh, and I suppose that one as well.
45. /anecdote.
46. Your anecdotes don't mean anything! You suck!
47. It was on Steel Peel eh? Steel Peel is an imbalanced map. Sniper is fine.
48. SNIPER IS FINE.
49. I hope they remove the Sniper from the game, then I'll be able to say that you ruined the game!
50. You'll raise the skill floor! That's bad!

This is all I have heard from your camp at all.
Please point out which of these points actually proves anything?

I was trying to figure out how to say this and you did it far better than I could.

The fact that we're at the point of banal and obviously specious cliches really says something about this discussion.

We actually played one game together about an hour ago on Steel Peel. As i was on the opposing team, I could judge your play (if i may). You ended with a KD ratio of about 25 to 5 or so, which I consider pretty good and you made your 20 first kills with 0 deaths - even better. Somehow, nobody on our pub team could or would try to take you out at first. While you werent the most static Sniper I met, you definetly camped one of the comfy base exits - a Sniper classic. I tried to have a closer look a few times, but it was just stupid to try. I got headshot once, I lost precious time for my team trying to walk around and lessening pressure on bots, I was taken out by an Assassin half way,
the other time an Assault challenged me.

What is my point ? You were more than safe in all that rush and you could just enjoy fragging with very little disturbance. All those people who give advice on how to apprach the Sniper speak as if NOTHING ELSE is going on around. All those suggestions on how to counter the Sniper go to hell, really, they do not work well, they take too much time and they are not fun at all. I don't believe we sucked, because we won at the end (for reference there was anothe a/a guy with you). The pleasure of playing was diminished no matter what. Like I said, you may be a skilled Sniper, but its not your oponents lack of skill which makes you hard to kill.

Both lack of Snipers' exposure to direct fight by design combined with such steady and precise weapon which covers huge areas make it unbalanced. Sniper capitalizes on the fact that he does not die so often if played in retreat - which is meant to be. He barely has to look behind too. If he dies, he's back at his optimal position within 3 seconds of spawn. Players skill cannot balance that fact out.

Prepare for him/someone else to reply with "AND WHERE WAS YOUR TEAM HUH?"