On the Subject of the Sniper Cannon

If you want Sniper to behave like Rail Gun, maybe it should be a 2 slot item with a buff?

 

Actually, I’m quite objective about balance. And given that sniper is one of only two weapons I’ve managed to get to t2 Epic, I have a vested interest in it not being nerfed.


I believe it can be argued that sniper is objectively unbalaced, evidenced by its overuse, and by comparing and contrasting its advantages with similar (comparable) alternatives.

However, it is indeed, also, my subjective opinion that sniper isn’t a ‘fun’ aspect of the game. It’s certainly not fun for the people on the receiving end, who have to contend with huge crits out of nowhere, which are difficult to avoid. And I don’t believe it’s especially fun for users, unless you derive enjoyment solely from winning rather than playing.

At the moment running sniper is barely even a choice, as if you choose not to use it, people will still use it against you. So you’ll be going into every fight with a disadvantage: taking early damage that you can’t return. Sniping begets more sniping, and the metagame devolves, from an action packed dogfight, into a shallow WWI style trench battle, where both sides are forced to hide and snipe across a desolate no-mans’ land.

This opinion, while a personal preference, is not born out of bias. I do not wish for a more strategic and action packed game because I believe it will advantage me. It’s just desirable for its own sake.

 

Long range crits are ok. It is after all a sniper, and that is what makes it unique. It’s the close range 2000+ crit that annoy me

 

Getting access to more data for the snapshots would be cool - But I can also understand why devs are reluctant to give it to us, and I doubt its for privacy reasons (accounts and items are technically Rovio property anyway).
The problem with giving out stats is that people like me will look at it and use it to draw our own subjective conclusions. My parameters will be different from those of the devs, and when they balance upon their parameters it will look 'wrong' to anyone who disagrees with their premise.

For instance, I think lategame balance is much more important than low level balance so I would focus on the dominance of speeders (at the expense of fx the green boat) at that level. Devs might think mk3 balance matters more for their buisnessplan and perform balance changes based upon that. Give too much access to data and you have an even worse shitstorm everytime you make a change.

 

You all have got it wrong it's not criting someone who is near you is the problem
( You get same dmg from BC and ec )
If there is any problem with sniper it is that a enemy who is far away from you whom you can't even see (but he can see you because his teammates can see you) hits you with 1500 dmg and you can't even hit back.
And to fix this just reduce the projectile rate of sniper when you fire it from faraway so it requires some leading like railgun.
Any reduction to crit chance will make sniper a worthless weapon and you guys certainly plan to make it that (like frost blaster/launcher was made useless)
Reducing crit chance will make it worthless for f2p player because we already can crit upto 3.75( max perks equipped) shots out of 10 and reducing it to 2 shots out of 10 will make it worthless for us.

 

I don’t think you can compare sniper to frost. Frost is a unique dynamic in the game, like mines, you might not necessarily like it, but it’s absence leaves the game shallower.

Sniper is just one (out of about six) point damage weapons, just with broken range and crit chance, you could remove entirely from the game, and nothing of value would be lost.

 

I have used and tried both RG and sniper and my current setup is excanon( slowest projectile in game) and sniper ( highest projectile in game whopping 52 even RG which has 22.2 sec of cooldown has 40 projectile speed and RG requires leading at full range )
Reason why sniper is easy to use at range because it doesn't requires leading of shots thats why shooter use it.
Crit chances are not that great if you were a full time user of sniper you would know that a lot times when you need crits to save your life you don't get them because chances are low.
And yes I have been following your every thread about sniper and that crit drawing that you drew quite a while back it was a terrible idea then its a terrible idea now imho.
And there is nothing like balancing a weapon according to leagues because of the state of the matchmaking the nightmare peeps will be matched against 3k infamy people and you want to give people who already have advantage over us more advantage.
Every weapons i.e long range either has low dmg like lrm or requires leading like RG

 

A weapon which is the best against speeder
A weapon which provides much needed long range
A weapon that is one slot with decent dmg and currently used by a majority of the player base yeah removing it from game will not lead to losing of anything valuable

 

Carronade is the best against speeder (but sniper is the most used one against us)

 

I’m talking about valuable as a game mechanism. Obviously, it’s valuable to players if they’ve invested in it, and it is the only thing propping thier infamy up.

BC, ExC, Carronade, Mines, Flare, Tesla Bolt, Frost, are all good against speeders, and could be made better if speeders need balancing. Many are also one slot and do decent damage.

Railgun can wreck things at extreme range (if that’s really needed), and does it in a much more balanced way.

Sniper doesn’t add anything to the game that isn’t already there. All it does is subtract from the game, when everyone chooses sniper over the alternatives.

 

That’s the risk of scouting. You wanna see the unfriends early, you take the risk of being hit by sniper/RG, simple as that, because people are waiting for scouting speeders at the beginning of the game. If you do not have a Tesla shield or a nitro to protect yourself, or your hp can’t afford to be crit by a sniper, you should consider not doing scouting, or at least do it with extreme care and always find cover.

I have an ex-guildmate, a F2P mk5 speeder running double T4 rare blast cannons, who stopped scouting and approach unfriends smartly, made it to nightmare last season at Captain level 33. My point is, you should know your strength and weakness and approach the game with different strategies.

And regarding the railgun-like mechanism on sniper crit chance, that’s a very bad idea. Capping the crit chance at 35-40%, and move one of the +25% crit damage talents to a higher bhurt level (maybe level 24 or higher) will make sniper more balance at mid-game and not affecting the end-game much, since sniper in Ace 1 and nightmare when doesn’t crit is basically useless. My T4 rare sniper damage is 426 with 35% crit chance, when it doesn’t crit, and taking defense point into account, I hit around 400 with 2/3 of my shots, and hit 1000 with 1/3 of my shots. That’s no where near OP.

 

Carronade is best in 1v 1agaisnt most ships except maybe defender correct but sniper is best against speeder beacuse you can hit a running speeder with it rarely miss the shots because of high projectile and can hit speeder who are at a distance from you

 

What I mentioned is not in context with scouting or anything like that it's just a problem echoed by many players (that enemies are able to hit them when one of Thier enemies sees them so whole enemy team can see them
And the enemy team can hit( crit) them while being in shadows themselves.
I only said make this thing hard to pull off.
Secondly all of your other pts are just what I have said in post so why do you need to repost what I just said?

 

Sniper is not the best against speeder because we are low, fast and not easy to hit, you need an arc weapon to hit a speeder and sniper has almost no arch, so it is the best weapon for almost any ship but because of the range and damage output

 

EC has the slowest projectile in the game good luck on hitting a skilled speeder with that at range.
BC has a little better projectile speed but the range is lower.
Mine only good if speeder steps on it.
Flare again slow projectile and short range.
Sniper is well thought weapon which provides range high projectile a good combo for hitting speeders at a range so yes it add much value to the game not subtract from it.

 

Sniper has a arc agreed it lot lower than the BC and ex canon a lot of times waves comes b/w the shot but it's high projectile speed and range makes it way better than shot range carronade thats why it has found a lot of use in killing speeders over the carronade.

 

But it is the endgame where sniper is ridiculous. 40 % or more crit chance and 2000+ dmg. Base dmg something like 600-700.
The crit scaling would be a good and not an overkill nerf, because wouldn’t affect any certain level of the game differently imo.

 

I agree that under such situation (unfriends see you but you don’t see them) any ship is susceptible to sniper hit, but most of the time it’s speeders who are in range of being sniped more than the other ships
As for my comment on how to balance the sniper, i was only stating my opinion (and those points were mentioned by others before) after reading so many suggestions. You only said about reducing sniper projectile speed didn’t you? What exactly did I repost that was posted by you?

 

All this the essence is same
And I am on the side of not nerfing sniper in case you didn't get it
( Except maybe a small speed reduction because of what other player want not me.
I am perfectly fine by the way it is)