The image you bring to mind is of a lone sniper blindly rushing to the front lines to hurl jars of urine that do no actual damage on impact at his enemies and then die a horrible horrible death. The correct image is of a sniper with team mates, and likely one who is using ambush tactics (grate on 2fort anyone? The battlements as enemies rush by beneath him?).
Um...what's a sniper doing above the grate on 2Fort? Not his job of shooting people, that's for sure. I can see its use on the battlements, but frankly, 2Fort is such a spamfest that the time it takes you to switch weapons and actually hit the person under you, someone has already either sniped you from afar or rocket/sticky-jumped to the battlements.
The problem is that you're taking one aspect out of the whole being of the sniper and then trying to make the idea stand on its own. I have news for you: it won't. No unlock will. No weapon will. I don't know if anyone's realized this but the reason TF2 works is that all the weapons suck. They are terrible and impractical, and the only reason that works so well in this game is that the enemy's in the same boat as you. If you try to take any single weapon in the game and see how good it is, you will be disappointed. The rocket launcher fires missiles that are too slow; the Pyro's flamethrower does not have enough range; the medic's needlegun doesn't do enough damage; the minigun cannot move fast enough; Sentry Guns have too slow a response time. There's tons of examples.
While I thank you for
presuming how I'm approaching the weapon updates, I can assure you that you've missed the mark. Weapons in updates are supposed to be as equally appealing as their former counterpart, yet through different means. The first update, the medic one, failed in this (which Valve has freely admitted...it was a product of it being the very first update): the blutsaugher is clearly better than the needler, while the ubersaw is clearly better than the bonesaw. Following this update, Valve made more of an effort to create weapons that weren't "upgrades", but rather, "side-grades".
So, and let me make this clear for you, because you seem to like to presume, when I analyze the weapons offered to the sniper, I don't see "side-grades", I see "down-grades". What I am attempting to do is analyze the effectiveness of the new weapons in differing scenarios, and trying to measure whether or not the original weapons would merely achieve a similar, or perhaps better, effect. What I have found, in my opinion, are 2 new weapons (the shield, but more importantly, this Jarate) that offer no benefit in a situation that an SMG or Kukri could not already have done.
Perhaps the clearest example that I have given is the situation I illustrated for you previously:
"If I do see a spy, I pull out the kukri and kill them (hopefully). What I don't do is pull out a jar of piss, splash it on them, deactivate their disguise, and then hit them. What's the point of that? If I get close enough to splash jarate on them, why the hell wouldn't I just hit them? Moreover, its not like I'm limited with my kukri swings, so I can just hit anyone that I expect might be a spy. With Jarate, I have to potentially waste a "weapon" with a very long cool-down on someone who may or may not be a spy."
So far then, the only thing that Jarate offers me, that I as a sniper don't already possess, is the ability to put out fires for my teammates. Oh, and 35% damage modifier on a single target for a short period of time. And all at the expense of close-range weaponry/defensive capabilities. Wow, what a deal. Here's another scenario for you: If I'm a sniper on Warpath, aiming down from the ridge to the middle cap, why would I run across the bridge, toward enemy fire, to splash a heavy with Jarate? Why wouldn't I have stayed on the ridge, let my shot charge up, and take the heavy out of the picture altogether? You argue that Jarate would need to be used in ambush locations. Where? On Dustbowl? On Well? On Granary? Where exactly, as a sniper, would I ambush an opponent? And I have a better question for you: why the hell, if I'm a sniper, would I even want to ambush someone at close range? Maybe...maybe if Jarate wasn't a single target modifier it would be more useful, but as it stands now it does NOTHING (outside of putting out flames...which is just gimmicky) that the Sniper's other close-range weapons couldn't do better.
This is akin to a spy trying a full frontal attack on the enemy base, dieing, and then complaining that the spy class needs more health. :blink: When the strategy doesn't work it does not mean that the weapon needs to be fixed, it means that the strategy needs to be altered. Jarate is not a combat weapon, but it does fulfill Valve's promise.
Wait, so by me arguing that the updates go against the basic form of both a close-range and long-range sniper, I'm somehow creating a situation similar to one arguing that spies should rush enemies headlong? What exactly do you envision the role of snipers to be? I can stand on a ridge, and headshot 5 enemies running to a point. Alternatively, I could rush down from the ridge, splash one enemy, and then rush back up the ridge and start firing. Which is better?
Ok, let's examine it through a different scenario, i.e. your proposed ambush method (I find it interesting how you say a new strategy must be employed, yet then proceed to offer up not a single example of said strategy). Actually, I see why you didn't provide an example. I can't think of one either. Simply put, I am at a loss to think where a sniper can sit to ambush incoming people with a jar of piss, especially when simply shooting at them would offer more practical results.
They said they wanted the sniper to get closer to his enemies, as usually frustration amounts when players are killed without never having the chance to prevent their deaths. This does not mean that the sniper needs to become a Pyro, or a soldier, or any other quite obviously mid to close quarters combat classes.Valve is meeting its goals, you just can't see it yet. They wanted to get the Sniper closer, but that doesn't necessarily translate to offensive.[/I
Riiight. You've figured it out: Valve wants to take the one class that's supposed to be really far away while inflicting damage, and bring him really close in to the enemy. Not to actually attack the enemy, mind you, but stand there with a status weapon that, in itself, inflicts zero damage. Brilliant.
So, this update is basically an opportunity for other classes to feel better about being killed by the sniper? I don't like the fact that demos can kill me with two pipes, but does that mean that on their next update, the pipe bomb can be replaced with a weapon that does 1/3 of the damage, but reloads twice as fast? "Wow", some will say, "it reloads twice as fast!!" "But wait", I say, "how does that even matter when your output has been so drastically reduced?" "Who cares", they'll reply, "Valve said they were tired of people dying so easily to pipebombs, and they've provided a solution". Yay.
Valve is meeting its goals, you just can't see it yet.
You're right about the first part. Valve is certainly meeting its goal of appeasing classes upset that they couldn't get a shot at the sniper (a class whose whole purpose is to achieve that feeling). Yet, and this is the important part, there's a difference between meeting goals, and meeting goals that are actually worthwhile.
