Team Fortress 2 Sniper Update – Why People Hate Em’

 

Valve updated the Team Fortress 2 blog with new info on the Sniper Update. Robin Walker explains players frustration with the Sniper class and how they plan to counter that in the update. Well yeah, I hate snipers! And I quote:

 

• The second was whether you felt you were actually engaged with the person who killed you. Dying to someone you weren't engaged with, especially when you were already engaged with someone else, was aggravating. Even worse was dying to someone who you couldn't have engaged with, even if you chose to. In that case, you're very unlikely to believe you could have done anything differently to survive.

In particular, the second seemed to be the root cause of the hatred of Snipers. You're often killed by them while you're engaged with an enemy in the foreground, and most of the time the Sniper is so far away it feels like you couldn't have dealt with him even if you didn't have enemies nearby. In fact, the Sniper's goal is to create that relationship: he specifically wants to fight enemies outside their engagement range, because that's his primary advantage.

Which brings us back to the Sniper Rifle unlockable. In an effort to reduce some of the aggravation that other players feel towards the Sniper, we chose the goal of designing an unlockable that encouraged the Sniper to get a little closer to his target. We want him to give up some of his primary advantage in return for something else, so that enemies he kills feel like they were engaged with them, and feel like they could have survived if they'd just managed to fight a little better.

 

Interesting. So an unlockable that will force snipers to get closer to their targets. Maybe some sort of dart rifle?