How Many Snipers?

by Kurt I suppose this is a rant more than an article. This subject annoys me immensely so my reasoning may well have gone right out of the window. The problem? Practically half your team playing sniper. This is very common on public servers where, out of 8 or so players, 3 or 4 are playing sniper. This happens especially on certain maps such as 2fort and badlands. So, what has caused this problem? Firstly, the problem has greatly increased since the netcode was improved in the 1106 patch. Now, I was massively impressed with the new netcode - it's just fantastically smooth and very impressive. However, it has also made sniping MUCH easier. Secondly, ping. More and more people are getting decent comms resulting in lower pings and vastly easier sniping. Though I normally play TFC on a 56k modem, I have played with a ping of around 50 - I could not believe how much difference this makes to sniping. It become much much easier and sniping seems to attract LPB's like wasps to a honeypot (or wasps to me - for some reason the little yellow bas*ards seem to love me - bah!) - a LPB sniper can be practically invulnerable on large maps. Thirdly, the attraction of playing sniper. It is quite a rewarding class to play, not for your team but for yourself. If their are few or none enemy snipers or you are playing on a large map you can make plenty of easy kills with relative impunity. Basically, it's easy to get lots of kills at a low cost to yourself. Finally, revenge. If you are constantly getting killed by enemy snipers, it's very tempting to change class to sniper and go all out for revenge - this results in matches becoming sniper wars with 3 or 4 snipers per team. Why is it a problem? It is a problem because the flow of the game often completely grinds to a halt. Imageine - you have 8 players, 4 of which are snipers. I have seen this many many times, I am not exaggerating. Now, each team may have a couple of engineers or defenders leaving only 2 players to attack out of 8 - the odds against those two attackers are immense. I know some of you will be extremely skilled and have no problem with these odds - fine but for a lot of us this makes it very very hard to get anywhere. TFC goes out of the window and the match becomes deathmatch with the vast majority, if not all players, either hanging around their base waiting for attackers that will never come, sniping, or taking out snipers as 3 or 4 snipers on the battlements in 2fort is a very tempting target for spammers looking for kills. In addition, it is very annoying to be killed by snipers - I can accept this if there are a couple of them but 4??? How many times on baslands has the central bridge become a mini battle between snipers - 2 or so each end - the bridge becomes impassable for most classes so you have to find an alternative route, so spend time going through the valley only to be taken out by a sniper, after 30 seconds of running, in the enemy end of the valley. This is remarkably frustrating, espicially for people like me who have to pay for their phone calls - it's a waste of time and money. Now I know that sniping is part of the game and I totally accept that. However, what I won't accept is that a game of TFC with half of each team sniping can be a good game. Maybe for the snipers it is, but for the rest of us it makes is very hard to attack and the game grinds to a halt with little or no capping. In the right situation, a sniper is a useful line of defence, cutting down the enemy attack and generally making a nuisance of themselves. However when the line of defence is 4 snipers, it becomes rediculous and annoying - it is so damn hard to take out a LPB sniper, to even avoid them on certain maps. This is something that has to be accepted with grace, but not when the LPB plays sniper on EVERY map and goes sniper no matter how many snipers they have on their team. This may seem to some sour grapes as I don't have a low ping. If I did, yes I would play sniper and revel in the ability to take out people with relative ease. However, I would NOT player sniper on practically every map and I would NOT go sniper if there were already a couple on each time. A lot of people do and I don't like it. What is the solution? Well, if you agree with me so far, you'll agree that this problem needs sorting. There is a solution and that is class limits. In my opinion, the only class that needs limiting is snipers. In the main you don't seem to see unbalanced teams particularly often, there tends to be a relatively even spplit between classes. Except for snipers. A limit of 2 seems good to me. Some of the servers I play on have this limit and I think this is very very cool - it ensures the game flows and it, in the main, stops sniper wars. Of course you still get LPB snipers mopping up - well, fair enough, it's a part of the game but the game still flows, people still cap and the fun stays. However, if this limit is not set then all you can do is ask, politely, that of the 4 snipers on your team, a couple of people change class and add to the game, not detract from it. I don't think this is an unreasonable request - you are basically asking if the snipers can make the game more fun for the rest of us and, to be fair, a lot of them understand what you are saying and change. To those I say thanks. I would implore server admins (who may hate me now because of my previous article on them - oh well) to set a class limit on snipers and see what effect this has on the game. I would virtually guarantee it will be a positive effect and this has to be a good thing right?