You forced him to disengage from the general fight until his cooldowns were up again. That's the whole point of PvPing: Not the KBs, per se, but making sure they can never control the battlefield. Whether he's cowering in the corner sucking his thumb or running back from the graveyard makes no difference except to your epeen.Originally Posted by Boris
Which mostly works because BF3 maps are notably smaller than the older BFs, and that is why I really listed the older BFs as being sniper-friendly games. One reason I love BC2 and BF3 is that the game is optimized for mid to close range combat (which I think your wall of text and bragging was saying), which is really what I prefer.
Oh yeah, another "old school" game where snipers dominated: Mechwarrior 4. I never did 3 online (did 3 HAVE online?) but in 4, the snipers really have the advantage in most situations.
Not quite - unless you mean "earliest" in literal sense, like e1m1. Secrets in Doom2 often create new connections, adding more loops to a level - for example backpack teleporters in map03, blue armor teleporter in map02, super shotgun secret and teleporter secret in map04, or extra path from exit in map06. Infamous keycarded doors are ubiquitous in DooM2, and there's usually no single path anymore when everyone starts with all keys - for example map05. Half-life is a lot more linear, but DooM maps are often arena-like.
Diablo3 is not PvE or PvP, it is PvAH. -- Tei
Hmm. It's a decent offensive class, but it's also rather effective making it's own way, offering support (knockbacks, dousing fires, spy-checking, etc) and a few other odd-jobs that I think it's a less offensive class than the Heavy or Soldier. Not because it's particularly less useful on offense but just because it can do so many other useful things than lead a push that a good Pyro won't necessarily be on the front lines as often as a good Heavy.
The flare gun is very useful, but it's not a weapon for pushing through a choke-point--I wouldn't say it's a good example of why a Pyro is a more offensive class.
You also say "highly skilled," which implies above average to me. An average Pyro is not as effective at offensive maneuvers as an average Heavy or Soldier. Most of the classes are flexible enough that you can do pretty much any task if you're good enough. I've seen offensive Engineers, lone-wolf Heavies, front-line spies. A highly skilled player can do whatever they want. A good soldier knows how to handle a Pyro who uses an air-blast properly (usually resulting in some rather interesting, rather short duels with lots of collateral damage). A Pyro can't to much against a Demoknight of equal caliber. Speaking of Demoknights, the flexibility the loadouts give a player with lots of items ... it's somewhat mind-boggling. Every class effectively has a ton of sub-classes now and spreads a much wider net than in the vanilla game. There really aren't many limits. The classes have different mechanical roles, but their strategic roles are really, really flexible.
Which makes the kind of analysis you and I are doing pretty subjective and dependent on play style. This isn't a game that can be broken down very easily anymore. There are too may variables.
I think of [the Internet] as a grisly raw steak laid out on a porcelain benchtop in the sun, covered in chocolate hazelnut sauce. In the background plays Stardust’s Music Sounds Better With You. There’s lots of fog. --tomeoftom
Yes, there are some maps that are wide open, others that have a lot of paths. But there are still plenty of opportunities for campers (what mostly helped was that DOOM's guns didn't favor camping). It is really just logic:
Remember all those times an enemy appeared behind you without teleporting (because the door into a room is in the middle of a wall)? That is also a great spot for a camper. Ambushes were VERY popular in DOOM (and Duke), and even if you know it is coming, the enemy is still likely to get a free hit in. Combine that with a human who can react, and you get a good opportunity.
This is definitely not what i remember about the Pyro (in response to Hypernetic). From what i recall he's completely helpless to heavies, scouts and demos spamming stickies. Soldiers less so because of reflect but there is a optimal distance where you are pretty helpless - too little time for you to reflect, too much time for you to guess an anticipatory reflect. In fact since pyros can't engage at basically anything farther than point blank you're always running into the fray, taking rockets from various directions. No way you can reflect them all. Other classes at least engage at a safer distance or have evasive abilities.
Basically from what i recall he's really useless. Only thing he's good at is spy checking.
Huh? Pyro pretty much hard counters demo knight. Airblast them back when they charge then set them on fire and axetinguish them. Easy peasy.
But yeah, Pyros are very good at area denial, support, and defense as well. I just hate the stigma that pyros are "hurr durr wm1 nubs". Yeah, there are people who play pyro like that, but there are people who play poorly at every class.
As for the last point, I agree and that is part of the beauty of TF2.
The amusing part is that the Pyro was considered significantly underpowered and difficult to excel in back when TF2 was still relatively new... which was in part because there was a but that allowed the player to outrun their own flames, effectively shortening the range of the Flamethrower significantly. It wasn't until the Pyro update and the many tweaks to the Flamethrower that it was considered a noob class.
He has a point though, by the time you have puffed, flared and reached axe range there's a reasonable chance that the heavy has shot you to death. Or other members of his team have surrounded you. You could use two or three puffs to launch the heavy higher, but then you're burning a bunch of your own ammo to kill one bad dude, which doesn't strike me as very efficient.
You could make that same argument for any class vs heavy.
True, true, but other classes can at least stick at a distance vs heavy or any other class they can catch in an ambush.
Last edited by cosmicolor; 17-07-2012 at 03:13 PM.
I wasn't responding to you so you can list whatever you like, I was replying to the topic of the thread. The game is hardly optimised for anything, as your dismissive reply quite rightly said the maps just aren't as big so long range combat doesn't happen, that's not a deliberate design choice to stop snipers, it's a deliberate design choice so that Call of Duty players don't get bored of moving from objective to objective.
Also there's a difference between bragging and using anecdotal experience to illustrate a point. I'm truly sorry I made you feel inadequate, I didn't mean to offend, but those examples I gave are nothing special. I'll stop writing now for fear of tiring your little eyes.
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okay...
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There are large maps in BF3. Gulf of Oman. Operation Firestorm. Caspian Border.
And they did deliberately make design decisions to stop snipers. Visible scope reflections. Vision blur from incoming fire. Points granted for suppressive fire.
Oh yeah, they did, I'm just saying the map size wasn't one of those decisions to limit long-range combat. I've read (woah, check me out, using my eyes to read words) interviews with the devs that say they made the maps smaller because new players to the game don't want to spend ages running around between objectives, which is why on the large maps you usually have three objectives close together that are an equal distance from each uncap but then one objective close to the uncap as well, so most of the action happens in the middle of the maps. In BC2 at least the objectives were often in a line, like in Atacama Desert, so the fight was more like a front line that moved to and from uncaps, if you get what I mean? Also if I may be pedantic (this is the internet, after all), the features you listed aren't to 'stop' snipers, they are to balance them.
Firestorm, Caspian and Kharg, the biggest maps in the vanilla game, aren't as big as some in BC2 nor BF2 (of course), and they're the largest three out of the default nine, everything else is smaller. The B2K maps are from BF2 so they're not really indicative of where DICE were taking BF3 in my opinion, but then Armoured Kill is going to reverse all that again by including the single largest map ever featured in a Battlefield game. However, there's only one that they're showing off about (Bandar Desert), the other three maps might all be smaller than the largest BF2 maps again.
Oops, I've said too much, wouldn't want this waist-high fence of text getting any larger.
I didn't mean "stop them" as in "stop them from existing," but "stop them from being unbalanced and destructive to teamplay."
Yeah, there's a lot of stupid tiny maps like Metro and they're way too CoD for me - "oh look, I can machine-gun a bottleneck for 20 minutes straight, herp derp" - but at the same rate I appreciated the "three objectives within walking distance on large maps" thing because god knows I've had idiots who'd snatch jeeps and run away from me in BF2 and BC2.
And while I know the next update will include a lot of large tank maps (and I love tanks), I refuse to pay the kind of money they're asking for glorified mappacks. So bleh. Anyway, we're digressing.
I do believe we are so I'll just say 'I greatly concur'.
Here's my take, snipers are point of diversity in the game, so are spies, so is a tank, so is a helicopter, so is Natural selections onos or Team fortress' Pyro, remove any one of them and you are making a mistake unless you carefully consider the makeup of the whole game.
Some peoples game of TF2 is ruined by spies undermining their autopiloting play, being forced to think outside the box doesn't suit some people. I cant say i have any sympathy. Snipers are an extreme case in some games like counterstrike where literally the ways to handle them are limited, not like say in bf2/3 where a sniper has a dozen counters, but even in cs snipers can be handled without resorting to sniping, smoke and a few automatic weapons (and some crouching) can completely undermine a snipers default behaviour, and after that, if you get out played you got out played.
Might i suggest if the balance and flow of a game doesnt suit you that you play something else, there are lots of choices.
I'm failing to writing a blog, specifically about playing games the wrong way
http://playingitwrong.wordpress.com/
I seem to remember it being difficult to deal with Demoknights. Maybe I'm just not good enough or maybe there have been some modifications to the shield perks since I last played Pyro consistently. At the very least, they're stronger in melee and shields reduce fire damage. Also at least one of them reduces explosive damage which means they can try to blow you up at close range without as much risk.
I completely understand the last bit. When the game first came out, Pyro was my main class and I took pride in knowing when to use my airblast properly, when the shotgun needed to come out, and so forth. I got a little abuse from time to time just for doing my job well ... it was always tempting to write back "Yeah? What button are you pressing, bub? Mouse 5?"
I think a lot of the reaction you're describing comes from a gut-reaction upset with the results of play rather than with the player themselves. People don't like being sniped from all the way across the map without warning, people don't like desperately running for a med-cabinet only to die by inches before they get there.
Which isn't to say the class is perfect or that it shouldn't be criticized. But I don't see as many people complaining about bad heavies or soldiers. There's something about the way the class operates that bothers some players at an irrational level, before any analysis kicks in. That's what I see, at least.
I think of [the Internet] as a grisly raw steak laid out on a porcelain benchtop in the sun, covered in chocolate hazelnut sauce. In the background plays Stardust’s Music Sounds Better With You. There’s lots of fog. --tomeoftom
Yes, people get mad when they die to a "cheap death". Pyros, spies, and snipers are all "cheap" in that regards. Snipers and spies because of one hit kills and pyros because of after burn.
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