Black Op Snipers to be Tuned Up?
Bashandslash.com had a good article about the topic as well as some information about possible changes in the future:
Treyarch developer David 'Vahn' Vonderhaar has been catching an earful from Black Ops snipers. Folks have been complaining ever since the "Quick Scoping" functionality was muted, others say that Snipers just aren't getting the frags they should in this game because they just don't have the "damage" numbers set right.
From my experience, the Sniper was the king of the battlefield in early CoD, up until CoD4 released. CoD4 and subsequent CoDs have effectively made the sniper less of a gun and consequently opened the game up to what it's designers intended: a run'n'gun shootemup -- not a campfest. <!--more-->
Perhaps things have gone too far? Shooting a sniper in CoD2 was a pleasant experience. The sway was just right and the hit-damage seemed fair. In CoD4, my biggest complaint was that it was too hard to hit all the quickly moving targets. In efforts to get back to CoD2-style sniping, Promod for CoD4, amped up the sniper rifles and applied the CS-like "awp-fix" to them. In Promod, sniping again became the glamor CoD class. Unfortunately what is good for snipers is horrible for the rest of us and a great way to empty a Promod pub is to have one or two awesome snipers come by for a round or two (I'm talking to you Rob-Wiz).
In CoD:WW, stock sniping became somewhat popular given the huge maps which made it unreasonable for an SMG'er to sneak up and bayonet you in the ass. The result was that CoD:WW became somewhat campy.
In both MW2 and now in BO, snipers are far less effective given the size of the maps and the player speeds.
I dropped my SMG yesterday and tried my hand at BO sniping, the result is the following list of thoughts:
Personally, after my experience with the guns, I would have said that the gun damage needs increasing. Then I looked at Dan Kierson's damage numbers for the Dragunov, the WA2000 and the L96:
Shockingly, the numbers indicate the guns are one-shot killers (1.5 multipliers above the midriff). I can't remember to many one-shot kills, even with the L96.
Speaking with really good snipers out there, they don't think anything needs changing - but that's unsurprising, these guys are really, really good at sniping. For example, BASH Promod pubber and competitive player Breezy replied "not easy, but not extremely hard", to a question about gun difficulty.
So what if anything is wrong with the guns? For me, I go back to the registration issue. CoD has never had good "reg" and with all the performance issues on PC, I don't expect it to be any better with this version. I will wait for a "Promod" BO to come out to dumb down the graphics and help the reg...for now, others, including Vahn himself have been thinking about helping out the sniper:
See full thread here
So what are your thoughts on the sniper class? Its been commented that maps are not sniper friendly anyway, so would this make any difference? Do you think Treyarch are going about seeing to changes the correct way? Is there really no place for snipers any longer in Call of Duty? Do you think there was really little to no camping in any of the other newer CoD games?
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Treyarch developer David 'Vahn' Vonderhaar has been catching an earful from Black Ops snipers. Folks have been complaining ever since the "Quick Scoping" functionality was muted, others say that Snipers just aren't getting the frags they should in this game because they just don't have the "damage" numbers set right.
From my experience, the Sniper was the king of the battlefield in early CoD, up until CoD4 released. CoD4 and subsequent CoDs have effectively made the sniper less of a gun and consequently opened the game up to what it's designers intended: a run'n'gun shootemup -- not a campfest. <!--more-->
Perhaps things have gone too far? Shooting a sniper in CoD2 was a pleasant experience. The sway was just right and the hit-damage seemed fair. In CoD4, my biggest complaint was that it was too hard to hit all the quickly moving targets. In efforts to get back to CoD2-style sniping, Promod for CoD4, amped up the sniper rifles and applied the CS-like "awp-fix" to them. In Promod, sniping again became the glamor CoD class. Unfortunately what is good for snipers is horrible for the rest of us and a great way to empty a Promod pub is to have one or two awesome snipers come by for a round or two (I'm talking to you Rob-Wiz).
In CoD:WW, stock sniping became somewhat popular given the huge maps which made it unreasonable for an SMG'er to sneak up and bayonet you in the ass. The result was that CoD:WW became somewhat campy.
In both MW2 and now in BO, snipers are far less effective given the size of the maps and the player speeds.
I dropped my SMG yesterday and tried my hand at BO sniping, the result is the following list of thoughts:
- The poor registration in servers makes the gun accuracy feel random. The lack of accuracy due to the poor reg means that often times you need more than one shot to get a frag - you rarely get a clean kill though assists are high.
- The lethargic ADS response, the poor (absent?) no-scope accuracy, high kick and pathetic secondary weapon power in the pistols (oh Deagle, where hast thou gone!) means that you are dead if the enemy gets to within thirty feet of you.
- The lethargic ADS response, the poor (absent?) no-scope accuracy, high kick and pathetic secondary weapon power in the pistols (oh Deagle, where hast thou gone!) means that you are dead if the enemy gets to within thirty feet of you.
Personally, after my experience with the guns, I would have said that the gun damage needs increasing. Then I looked at Dan Kierson's damage numbers for the Dragunov, the WA2000 and the L96:
Shockingly, the numbers indicate the guns are one-shot killers (1.5 multipliers above the midriff). I can't remember to many one-shot kills, even with the L96.
Speaking with really good snipers out there, they don't think anything needs changing - but that's unsurprising, these guys are really, really good at sniping. For example, BASH Promod pubber and competitive player Breezy replied "not easy, but not extremely hard", to a question about gun difficulty.
So what if anything is wrong with the guns? For me, I go back to the registration issue. CoD has never had good "reg" and with all the performance issues on PC, I don't expect it to be any better with this version. I will wait for a "Promod" BO to come out to dumb down the graphics and help the reg...for now, others, including Vahn himself have been thinking about helping out the sniper:
Hello-
I'm just going to be honest with you.
I don't like talking about the Snipers rifles and what we are going to do or not do. You see, for every reasonable person wishing to engage in a civil dialog, I get an earful from dozens or hundreds more who are unbelievable rude.
However, by far, this is the most common question people ask me about. We said (and I promised) that we would work hard to maintain a dialog with you about the game. So, despite the many ugly replies sure to follow, here I am.
First off, no matter what we do, the hardest core members Quick Scoping community will likely never be completely satisfied. The most common request I get is "...nobody complained how it was in Call of Duty 4 or World at War... make it like that." The people who say that must continue to not believe me when I tell you that we had it like "4 and World at War" a similar number of players were not very happy about it. Why do you think we changed it in the first place?
This is the update you have been asking about. Yes. We will probably make small tweaks to sniper rifles.
(1) We are evaluating the damage and hit box multipliers. Especially, if the weapon is suppressed.
(2) We are moving what many of you refer to as the "sniper rifle patch" into tunables we can adjust easier so that we can do some real-time experimentation
Anything we do is going to be carefully deliberated. Personally, I'm eager to get onto the business of "live tuning" the game, but not if it pushes the pendulum too far in a direction we don't want the game to go.
It will come. But, it will come really slowly (for many of you).
Finally, the sniper tuning conversation starts and stops with you. Act responsible. Get updates and a conversation. Some self-policing will go a long way. Act immature, get nothing.
David 'Vahn' Vonderhaar
UPDATE 1:
I've read the first 22 pages this morning. I appreciate the efforts many of you have made to keep the thread civil, which is why I am still reading. This thread is about sniper rifling tuning. Off topic posts get skipped entirely even if they are indirectly related. For example, the tuning of other weapons.
I'm just going to be honest with you.
I don't like talking about the Snipers rifles and what we are going to do or not do. You see, for every reasonable person wishing to engage in a civil dialog, I get an earful from dozens or hundreds more who are unbelievable rude.
However, by far, this is the most common question people ask me about. We said (and I promised) that we would work hard to maintain a dialog with you about the game. So, despite the many ugly replies sure to follow, here I am.
First off, no matter what we do, the hardest core members Quick Scoping community will likely never be completely satisfied. The most common request I get is "...nobody complained how it was in Call of Duty 4 or World at War... make it like that." The people who say that must continue to not believe me when I tell you that we had it like "4 and World at War" a similar number of players were not very happy about it. Why do you think we changed it in the first place?
This is the update you have been asking about. Yes. We will probably make small tweaks to sniper rifles.
(1) We are evaluating the damage and hit box multipliers. Especially, if the weapon is suppressed.
(2) We are moving what many of you refer to as the "sniper rifle patch" into tunables we can adjust easier so that we can do some real-time experimentation
Anything we do is going to be carefully deliberated. Personally, I'm eager to get onto the business of "live tuning" the game, but not if it pushes the pendulum too far in a direction we don't want the game to go.
It will come. But, it will come really slowly (for many of you).
Finally, the sniper tuning conversation starts and stops with you. Act responsible. Get updates and a conversation. Some self-policing will go a long way. Act immature, get nothing.
David 'Vahn' Vonderhaar
UPDATE 1:
I've read the first 22 pages this morning. I appreciate the efforts many of you have made to keep the thread civil, which is why I am still reading. This thread is about sniper rifling tuning. Off topic posts get skipped entirely even if they are indirectly related. For example, the tuning of other weapons.
See full thread here
So what are your thoughts on the sniper class? Its been commented that maps are not sniper friendly anyway, so would this make any difference? Do you think Treyarch are going about seeing to changes the correct way? Is there really no place for snipers any longer in Call of Duty? Do you think there was really little to no camping in any of the other newer CoD games?
Source
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