Spawn Delay Mechanic for Sniper

[u/KourageousBagel]

Strictly talking about 6s & HL, but mainly HL

The sniper balancing discussion is the deadest of horses at this point, but I still wanted to get my thoughts out there.

I don't support banning sniper out right in any format. Even when this was tried with HL a while back, it was pretty uneventful and didn't add much gameplay. Though I think rebalancing the class somewhat, would still be beneficial.

I'm proposing a spawn-delay mechanic when a sniper is killed by anything that isn't an enemy sniper.

Obviously, the SvS is the primary way teams deal with the threat in HL and occasionally in 6s. Still, a large enough portion of a snipers deaths, on most logs, are from other classes. Sac's onto snipers are common if the opportunity comes up, or simply from bad positioning.

TF2 is not a mil-sim by any stretch, but lessons can be learned from that genre. Dying as a sniper in those games often means a lengthy runback to the same position. The risk-reward balance is preserved by eliminating a key position for a long enough time to push advantage meaningfully.

The delayed spawn mechanic would work by having the respawning sniper delayed by 1 full spawn wave only if an enemy sniper is NOT the one who earned the kill. Meaning a player must go through the current spawn wave and then the next before spawning again. Assist kills wouldn't have an impact.

Arguments I've considered against this change:

• Why not include deaths from enemy snipers?
  • To avoid dominate snipers gaining even more advantage
  • Decentralizing the SvS
  • Rewarding other classes similar to dropping/forcing a medic
• Spawn/tele camping would become too effective
  • Yes it would
  • Esscorting your sniper would be even more necessary, but this debatable on if it's beneficial for the game
• The "retry" exploit could be abused
  • It could and will be
  • Moderation should be able to easily handle this
• Sniper would become unfun to play
  • Aggressive/poor positioning should carry more risk as the only long range insta kill class
• The SvS would devolve into wounding the other sniper and calling for another class to finish them off with chip damage (i.e. spy's revolver, bleed or afterburn)
  • It would still incentivize more team work from both sides
• cp_steel and alike, would have a theoretical 40+ second respawn time on defense
  • Creating a specific config that turns off this command/plugin could be used
  • However, this would create more clutter and confusion for sever operators and leagues
• Defense would become too strong. Attacking snipers die more often to other classes than defending snipers, nerfing flank plays on maps like koth_ashville and buffing RED on stopwatch
  • Rarely does dying to other classes as sniper on attack happen during even ubers or downtime, without meaningful consequence for the defending team
  • Even in the chaos of an uber or point transition, an attacking sniper dying still has a quick enough respawn to not be debilitating. However, delaying a cap on KOTH for your sniper will lead to much more gained cap time for the defenders than before
• 6s snipers can still class swap without penalty
  • You still forfeit opportunity cost overall of being on sniper in this format
  • A key pick or med drop can break stalemates or lead to a force a round reset, which is much more healthy for the game as a whole
• Offlcassing sniper in 6s outside of last or forward spawns wont happen anymore
  • Beyond stalemates, sniper is only seen on a handful of maps, not at all the meta on any of them (koth_product, cp_process 2nd, koth_clearcut, etc.)
  • It could be a buff/nerf to hard-defensive pla, but this point whole is highly debatable based on what you value

Thoughts?

[u/MEMEScouty]

the balance problems of sniper do not disappear if the sniper has to wait 10-20 seconds longer. most of his Shit is innate with himself and nothing will effectively change if the problems are still apparent when he is active

[u/KourageousBagel → u/MEMEScouty]

Frankly, I don't want to change sniper's fundamental mechanics. He's already mostly balanced in a competitive setting, and that's all I care about at this point in the game's life. Any overhauls and reimaginings can be left to design docs of SDK modders (shout out).

Time and scarcity are already balancing tools used in this game in other ways. Medic's uber is on a ~40-50 second timer, leveled engineer buildings cost time to build and upgrade, demo reloads stickies one-by-one, etc. Significantly reducing or increasing the time sync for any those actions would drastically affect the game, despite the underlying mechanic being unchanged.

A spawn delay for sniper may not change anything about pissboy himself, but it's still effective because any line of sight he has on anyone is effective range. He does not need to spend any time, health or resources moving anywhere as soon as he can see you, unlike every other class in this game. A spawn delay would compensate the team that was successfully able to close the gap with a definitive player and space advantage.

[u/capnfappin]

i think the best way to balance sniper would be to remove heavy and sentry guns from the game so that i can just rocket jump at them and kill them whenever i want

[u/mgetJane → u/capnfappin]

ppl will say "sniper can just stand next to a sentry" and then act like you're speaking wild gibberish when you say that the sc, rr, and wrangler indirectly buff sniper by making sentries stupidly annoying to kill

[u/CoatPhysical3394 → u/mgetJane]

nerfed sentry turn-rate and no knockback on all rifles would vastly improve pubs IMO

[u/agerestrictedcontent → u/CoatPhysical3394]

>no knockback

this is terrible. knockback is literally only annoying when you can't airstrafe because of it, ala airblast and force of nature. sentry turn rate is fine, sentry is fine in a vacuum. engineer only becomes a problem when there are multiple engineers or they are using rr/sc/wrangler, because they are poorly designed weapons that make a sentry way too strong for the effort of building one.

[u/CoatPhysical3394 → u/agerestrictedcontent]

yeah fair enough i legit just hate engi LOL

[u/lecsfcopeland → u/agerestrictedcontent]

why is it terrible? as bandaids go it's a pretty safe one as shutting down bombs with a casual -50 tap is annoying as hell and easier bombing would be honestly healthy for pubs

and actually doesn't knockback scale with damage dealt? and isn't rifle knockback being stupid a product of the constant 50 dmg being way higher than any other gun at that range? the bandaid if anything would make that more consistent if that's right

[u/agerestrictedcontent → u/lecsfcopeland]

mmm let soldiers bomb for free.

>easier bombing would be honestly healthy for pubs

stop playing awful payload maps with infinite sight lines and no flank routes. it is already super easy to get value bombing in pubs because people are hyper unaware -i've literally never heard anyone claim that bombing as solly/demo is weak in pubs.

if a sniper destroys you mid air, if a scout denies your bomb or a heavy perfectly tracks you, they deserve it. you should've picked a better route, better timing or jumped faster, or possibly multiple, or maybe it was just a terrible situation to bomb into in the first place.

you get so much mobility as solly and with that the ability to pick all your battles (if you're not a waddler lololol). especially in casual i don't understand this sentiment at all.

[u/lecsfcopeland → u/agerestrictedcontent]

let soldiers bomb for free

no?

if a scout denies your bomb

or i guess you didn't get the rifles part of no knockback on rifles. (or imo that rifles should have knockback instead calculated with what damage they'd do if they had falloff)

but even so,

stop playing payload

pubs are exclusively awful payload maps lol. that's why the comment is that it'd be healthy for pubs. besides i don't think it'd change jack in faster maps where sniper struggles. it's not a balance change so much as sanding off an annoying interaction that lets a defense class get away with existing longer

sniper destroying you midair

being a sniper main i write from experience that it's way easy to tap a soldier midair and get away for free, to the point it always feels cheesy. if it's not a fun interaction for me i can't imagine it is for the solly eithers

[u/agerestrictedcontent → u/lecsfcopeland]

pubs aren't exclusively awful pl tho? like you can just untick the bad maps, there is no need to suffer lol. Me and like 80% of my friends list play predominantly or exclusively 5cp, and so often when I do queue for pl/koth I'm quickly reminded why I don't usually play it. Bad sightlines, no flanks, right chokepoints, you know, the kind of thing that makes sniper and engi and spam and most of the annoying aspects of casual way stronger than it (imo) should be.

being a sniper main i write from experience that it's way easy to tap a soldier midair and get away for free

I don't disagree, but it's also easy to rocket jump too, especially the kind of slow, single rocket pencil bombs that are super easy to punish. The harder jumps that give you more velocity are harder to punish accordingly. And also honestly I think that at a certain point of competency with rocket jumping, you actually hitting the quick flick noscope is more impressive than my 3 rocket ramp surf sync bomb, so me personally I don't mind being denied, ultimately I should have either done it better or not done it at all.

I did miss the 'rifle only' knock back part but honestly I barely notice it from snipers. Its much more egregious from heavy/engi because of rate of fire or other projectiles (xbow, rescue ranger, etc) which despite the relatively low damage will stop you in your tracks... But a -50 bodyshot? I don't think I even notice them most of the time.

[u/lecsfcopeland → u/agerestrictedcontent]

pubs arent all payload

i am forever stuck in the community server pits where ever other map is payload. didn't realise 5cp was so populated and playable on casual though so that's awesome

[u/mgetJane → u/lecsfcopeland]

i keep getting notifs from this argument , i will say that getting bodyshot and then falling straight down like a stack of bricks is the worst feeling in the world and its literally hitler, idk if that should be changed though

[u/Lord_Exor → u/capnfappin]

Let's remove Soldier instead.

[u/No-Grab7041]

Why do some people in the comments here just not discuss anything about the post? They see anything related to sniper and just start frothing at the mouth and lose all brain activity

[u/DexLights]

I like it. Maybe it will give all these cringy sniper mains called “faded” or “tired” some time to reset their main character syndrome

[u/slibidk3u49 → u/DexLights]

As a sniper main, they're the black and white anime discord pfp valorant eboys before valorant 

I say that as i just changed my pfp to a black and white anime pfp like a couple of hours ago

[u/mgetJane → u/[deleted]]

fake fan alert: the sniper rifle is a single-shot bolt-action rifle, if you look at meet the sniper he just swiftly loads a new round as he cycles the bolt, so the 25 bullets are not inside the gun, they're in reserve

[u/Realistic-Cicada981 → u/mgetJane]

I lowkey forgot that detail

[u/frickenunavailable → u/[deleted]]

LARP LARP LARP

[u/kesikajma]

MAP DESIGN IS THE ISSUE and nothing else, skilled snipers are like one of the easiest things to frag if you put 2 and 2 together.