Team Fortress 2 and snipers
- Thread starter IRaithI
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The Sydney Sleeper can charge much like the normal sniper rifle, to a maximum of 150 damage. It charges a little faster. It cannot headshot.
With the default rifle, an uncharged headshot does 150 damage. A charged headshot does 450.
The immunity to headshots in "Sniper Duels" is largely void, since in order to become immune to headshots you have to have the rifle that cannot headshot. Therefore, two Snipers with the full set can't headshot each other anyway, removing any necessity for headshot protection. Furthermore, a good Sniper with the default rifle will still own a headshot immune Sniper since he simply has to score a charged bodyshot faster than the SS-armed Sniper, who given that he is using the SS, is probably not as skilled.
After the first week, outside of the 2Fort Sniper duels, I've yet to see many good Snipers using the Sydney Sleeper, let alone the full set bonus.
-TL;DR-
The SS does more damage than the default rifle in the hands of a newbie, but much less in the hands of a pro. It gives newbies something to learn with (and thanks to the Jarate effect, help their team) before progressing to the more difficult and thus more powerful (default) Sniper Rifle.
Good snipers will still beat bad Snipers, they just have to aim a few pixels lower when they see the full SS set.
With the default rifle, an uncharged headshot does 150 damage. A charged headshot does 450.
The immunity to headshots in "Sniper Duels" is largely void, since in order to become immune to headshots you have to have the rifle that cannot headshot. Therefore, two Snipers with the full set can't headshot each other anyway, removing any necessity for headshot protection. Furthermore, a good Sniper with the default rifle will still own a headshot immune Sniper since he simply has to score a charged bodyshot faster than the SS-armed Sniper, who given that he is using the SS, is probably not as skilled.
After the first week, outside of the 2Fort Sniper duels, I've yet to see many good Snipers using the Sydney Sleeper, let alone the full set bonus.
-TL;DR-
The SS does more damage than the default rifle in the hands of a newbie, but much less in the hands of a pro. It gives newbies something to learn with (and thanks to the Jarate effect, help their team) before progressing to the more difficult and thus more powerful (default) Sniper Rifle.
Good snipers will still beat bad Snipers, they just have to aim a few pixels lower when they see the full SS set.
ok, as a sniper i take my kills where i can get them but thanks to the new weps my abilities have been somewhat made redundant. I am no longer able to pull off the headshots I became known for thanks to buffs, catches and so-called 'fairness'. I literally cannot last 10 seconds without a scout using invinciblity, running up to me and blowing my head off. Which is why I stopped playing. imo, the weapons should've been left the way they were. It was fair, it was balanced and it was fun.
And lets be honest, the sniper got one of the worst parts of the deal.
And lets be honest, the sniper got one of the worst parts of the deal.
No. No, you can't. Thus argument fail.IRaithI said:
The Croc-O-Style loses you back protection, gives you a little extra health, means you can't headshot or be headshotted and it's actually slower to fully charge than a normal sniper.
That and you can't kill a Heavy from a bodyshot unless he's already been damaged.
The Master Snipers out there are mad with good reason.
Valve complicated something reletively simple that they had mastered.
When you just wanna pwn everything, a noob sniper with the full crock set can be annoying, expecially when backed by a medic.
On the other hand it involves the sniper in the "Team" aspect of the game where-as before it was much less existant. The syndney sleeper is much better suited for support players.
For headshot purists, this is kind of like the "Win and win well" phillosophy that the british army had. I side with those who say adapt and survive.
Valve complicated something reletively simple that they had mastered.
When you just wanna pwn everything, a noob sniper with the full crock set can be annoying, expecially when backed by a medic.
On the other hand it involves the sniper in the "Team" aspect of the game where-as before it was much less existant. The syndney sleeper is much better suited for support players.
For headshot purists, this is kind of like the "Win and win well" phillosophy that the british army had. I side with those who say adapt and survive.
Yes, but he has to wear the whole set. That means extra weakness to fire from the knife, and no jarate to put himself out because the secondary slot is taken up by that shield. (My flaregun thanks you, Croc kit.) And since the new rifle goes well with the SMG, it means that combination can't work either.JourneyThroughHell said:
While I think that greater skill levels should be rewarded and hardscoping should not be encouraged, getting a headshot with a tf2 sniper has never been that hard anyway and frankly, sniper fights had been reduced to who could click the fastest. Since you use a mouse you could pretty much turn all the way around and headshot someone in half a second anyway if you had to. Now, if you are getting owned by a sniper because they can headshot you so much, you can just go body shot and stand a chance. It puts more diversity in snipers because you need some snipers to body shot the enemy snipers and some to headshot the other people.
I don't hate snipers for the rifles... I hate them for their jars of piss.
Being that I mostly play spy, I'm usually never in a position where I would get shot by a sniper.
So the rifles really don't bother me, heck if a snipers wearing then no headshot set, that's even better for me!
No jars of piss, no shooting back with an smg, 3 pistol shots and hes down or a quick knife to the back of the face.
Oh... while on the topic of new annoying items... I hate that god damned milk...
Being that I mostly play spy, I'm usually never in a position where I would get shot by a sniper.
So the rifles really don't bother me, heck if a snipers wearing then no headshot set, that's even better for me!
No jars of piss, no shooting back with an smg, 3 pistol shots and hes down or a quick knife to the back of the face.
Oh... while on the topic of new annoying items... I hate that god damned milk...
Because maybe you just really like to play as a Sniper, but are not yet good at it and need practice. It's a game, no reason to take it super seriously.IRaithI said:
Fact is, a newbie Sniper can still be a useful asset to his team when you give him a Sydney Sleeper, more so than with a regular rifle. And with it he can get some nice sniping experience and become better with the regular rifle as well.
There's that, and as I already said, there's CQB. Take the second stage of Pipeline, with the tunnel. It's extremely busy there and quite a ***** to get a decent headshot there, as you're right inbetween your teammates without a proper vantage point with people running around everywhere. In that case I find that using the SS I am contributing a lot more to my team than with a regular rifle.
Why shouldn't hardscoping be encouraged? This is TF2 and not MW2. Sniper rifles are meant for this in TF2(the charge meter speaks loudly to that). Of course, quickscoping without using the charge is possible as well, but not as effective.Escape_Artist said:
Err, at max (non-crit) it does about 160 damage.
So no soldier or demoman need be afraid.
It all evens out.
So no soldier or demoman need be afraid.
It all evens out.
The new gear does what any gear does: open up a class to a different style of playing. I've actually noticed me being killed less by snipers since the update, since headshots aren't instakill.
The thing we should all be complaining about: What trading has done to the chat window and voice chat. Seriously, it's so damn annoying seeing/listening to people spamming messages about "I have Item A and want Item B" or "Anyone have a spare key?"
Kill trading immediately.
The thing we should all be complaining about: What trading has done to the chat window and voice chat. Seriously, it's so damn annoying seeing/listening to people spamming messages about "I have Item A and want Item B" or "Anyone have a spare key?"
Kill trading immediately.
I can't speak to the skill levels of the other people in this thread, but coming in as a fairly serious TF2 player who used to play Sniper as main (currently Soldiering full-time):
As stated by various others, the OP is completely wrong on one point - the Sydney Sleeper's damage is identical to that of the original Sniper Rifle. This renders it almost completely useless for a good sniper, because a good Team Fortress 2 Sniper is defined by one thing - the ability to consistently execute quickscope headshots, which deal 150 damage each, cannot be dodged, and have no range-based damage falloff.
Part of the reason the quickscope headshot is prioritized to this level is that the time spent scoped is something on the order of a quarter-second, meaning you suffer almost no hit to your mobility and have very little to fear from spies and other snipers, and dramatically less to fear from anyone else if you're fighting closer to the front lines.
The Sydney Sleeper is completely useless if you do not stay scoped for at least 2 seconds - preferably 4, given that you do negligible direct damage on anything less than a 75% charged bodyshot. This makes you a significantly easier target for attacks by every other class and will either dramatically reduce your longevity relative to simply practicing with the regular rifle, or have almost no effect because the other team have bigger things to worry about. Which of these it winds up being will depend largely on how good your aim is.
Furthermore, a single enemy being afflicted with 8 seconds of minicrits at long range is not THAT significant - the way it modifies damage falloff means that if the player dies, it's fairly probable that he would died anyway, and if he wouldn't have, he still probably would have had to retreat for a significant length of time. He's likely to survive either way if a medic is close enough to prevent him from dying in the absence of the mini-crit effect, so it's essentially a moot point (thrown Jarate is somewhat different here, because it costs almost no time or mobility, can hit multiple enemies and around corners, with at-best medium range, and can put out fires; I'm also led to believe that it lasts longer than that from the Sleeper, but I could be wrong on that point).*
The Sleeper is a good choice exclusively for those snipers who cannot aim reliably enough to be legitimate threats with the original Sniper Rifle, and even then, the difference is never going to be THAT much more than what they'd've observed going for full-charged bodyshots with the original rifle and managing to headshot the occasional Heavy, which has the added bonus of helping them practice with the regular rifle and work towards becoming more useful.
*Bolded because, inevitably, the mini-crits will at some point make a huge difference and enable a team to win entirely because a bad sniper picked something other than the Sniper Rifle. However, my experience thus far has been that the range over which Sleeper snipers can safely charge and fire is not one in which I'm in danger of being killed even with the mini-crits.
EDIT:
I would like to include one point I forgot, and that's that the Sleeper has penetration. This doesn't significantly change my point, because it's pretty rare for people to stay lined up long enough for it to make a difference (and even then, you could get 2-4 quickscope headshots off in the time it takes to charge to full), but it does add another element of separation.
---
Now for the opinion point:
I'm honestly not a huge fan of weapons that exist exclusively to make newbie players feel good. This isn't because I'm against newbie players or want them to stop playing - it's because, generally speaking, this weapon will be a permanent crutch and prevent these people from ever actually having to learn how to play at a higher level. Consequently, their fun in the long run will generally be hurt by the weapon's inclusion, because the same good players who were dominating them originally will continue to dominate them until they start making an effort to become good. I recognize that not everyone wants to put in the effort it takes to become good, but given how little fun they'll likely be having if they're playing against people who ARE good, I don't see that it's that much of a choice - if you're going to put yourself through the negative emotions involved with repeatedly getting your ass kicked by someone with more skill at the game, you owe it to yourself to try to reach a similar level of competence so you can reduce the presence of said emotions.
But that might just be me.
As stated by various others, the OP is completely wrong on one point - the Sydney Sleeper's damage is identical to that of the original Sniper Rifle. This renders it almost completely useless for a good sniper, because a good Team Fortress 2 Sniper is defined by one thing - the ability to consistently execute quickscope headshots, which deal 150 damage each, cannot be dodged, and have no range-based damage falloff.
Part of the reason the quickscope headshot is prioritized to this level is that the time spent scoped is something on the order of a quarter-second, meaning you suffer almost no hit to your mobility and have very little to fear from spies and other snipers, and dramatically less to fear from anyone else if you're fighting closer to the front lines.
The Sydney Sleeper is completely useless if you do not stay scoped for at least 2 seconds - preferably 4, given that you do negligible direct damage on anything less than a 75% charged bodyshot. This makes you a significantly easier target for attacks by every other class and will either dramatically reduce your longevity relative to simply practicing with the regular rifle, or have almost no effect because the other team have bigger things to worry about. Which of these it winds up being will depend largely on how good your aim is.
Furthermore, a single enemy being afflicted with 8 seconds of minicrits at long range is not THAT significant - the way it modifies damage falloff means that if the player dies, it's fairly probable that he would died anyway, and if he wouldn't have, he still probably would have had to retreat for a significant length of time. He's likely to survive either way if a medic is close enough to prevent him from dying in the absence of the mini-crit effect, so it's essentially a moot point (thrown Jarate is somewhat different here, because it costs almost no time or mobility, can hit multiple enemies and around corners, with at-best medium range, and can put out fires; I'm also led to believe that it lasts longer than that from the Sleeper, but I could be wrong on that point).*
The Sleeper is a good choice exclusively for those snipers who cannot aim reliably enough to be legitimate threats with the original Sniper Rifle, and even then, the difference is never going to be THAT much more than what they'd've observed going for full-charged bodyshots with the original rifle and managing to headshot the occasional Heavy, which has the added bonus of helping them practice with the regular rifle and work towards becoming more useful.
*Bolded because, inevitably, the mini-crits will at some point make a huge difference and enable a team to win entirely because a bad sniper picked something other than the Sniper Rifle. However, my experience thus far has been that the range over which Sleeper snipers can safely charge and fire is not one in which I'm in danger of being killed even with the mini-crits.
EDIT:
I would like to include one point I forgot, and that's that the Sleeper has penetration. This doesn't significantly change my point, because it's pretty rare for people to stay lined up long enough for it to make a difference (and even then, you could get 2-4 quickscope headshots off in the time it takes to charge to full), but it does add another element of separation.
---
Now for the opinion point:
I'm honestly not a huge fan of weapons that exist exclusively to make newbie players feel good. This isn't because I'm against newbie players or want them to stop playing - it's because, generally speaking, this weapon will be a permanent crutch and prevent these people from ever actually having to learn how to play at a higher level. Consequently, their fun in the long run will generally be hurt by the weapon's inclusion, because the same good players who were dominating them originally will continue to dominate them until they start making an effort to become good. I recognize that not everyone wants to put in the effort it takes to become good, but given how little fun they'll likely be having if they're playing against people who ARE good, I don't see that it's that much of a choice - if you're going to put yourself through the negative emotions involved with repeatedly getting your ass kicked by someone with more skill at the game, you owe it to yourself to try to reach a similar level of competence so you can reduce the presence of said emotions.
But that might just be me.