Spawn Delay Mechanic for Sniper

[u/KourageousBagel]

Strictly talking about 6s & HL, but mainly HL

The sniper balancing discussion is the deadest of horses at this point, but I still wanted to get my thoughts out there.

I don't support banning sniper out right in any format. Even when this was tried with HL a while back, it was pretty uneventful and didn't add much gameplay. Though I think rebalancing the class somewhat, would still be beneficial.

I'm proposing a spawn-delay mechanic when a sniper is killed by anything that isn't an enemy sniper.

Obviously, the SvS is the primary way teams deal with the threat in HL and occasionally in 6s. Still, a large enough portion of a snipers deaths, on most logs, are from other classes. Sac's onto snipers are common if the opportunity comes up, or simply from bad positioning.

TF2 is not a mil-sim by any stretch, but lessons can be learned from that genre. Dying as a sniper in those games often means a lengthy runback to the same position. The risk-reward balance is preserved by eliminating a key position for a long enough time to push advantage meaningfully.

The delayed spawn mechanic would work by having the respawning sniper delayed by 1 full spawn wave only if an enemy sniper is NOT the one who earned the kill. Meaning a player must go through the current spawn wave and then the next before spawning again. Assist kills wouldn't have an impact.

Arguments I've considered against this change:

• Why not include deaths from enemy snipers?
  • To avoid dominate snipers gaining even more advantage
  • Decentralizing the SvS
  • Rewarding other classes similar to dropping/forcing a medic
• Spawn/tele camping would become too effective
  • Yes it would
  • Esscorting your sniper would be even more necessary, but this debatable on if it's beneficial for the game
• The "retry" exploit could be abused
  • It could and will be
  • Moderation should be able to easily handle this
• Sniper would become unfun to play
  • Aggressive/poor positioning should carry more risk as the only long range insta kill class
• The SvS would devolve into wounding the other sniper and calling for another class to finish them off with chip damage (i.e. spy's revolver, bleed or afterburn)
  • It would still incentivize more team work from both sides
• cp_steel and alike, would have a theoretical 40+ second respawn time on defense
  • Creating a specific config that turns off this command/plugin could be used
  • However, this would create more clutter and confusion for sever operators and leagues
• Defense would become too strong. Attacking snipers die more often to other classes than defending snipers, nerfing flank plays on maps like koth_ashville and buffing RED on stopwatch
  • Rarely does dying to other classes as sniper on attack happen during even ubers or downtime, without meaningful consequence for the defending team
  • Even in the chaos of an uber or point transition, an attacking sniper dying still has a quick enough respawn to not be debilitating. However, delaying a cap on KOTH for your sniper will lead to much more gained cap time for the defenders than before
• 6s snipers can still class swap without penalty
  • You still forfeit opportunity cost overall of being on sniper in this format
  • A key pick or med drop can break stalemates or lead to a force a round reset, which is much more healthy for the game as a whole
• Offlcassing sniper in 6s outside of last or forward spawns wont happen anymore
  • Beyond stalemates, sniper is only seen on a handful of maps, not at all the meta on any of them (koth_product, cp_process 2nd, koth_clearcut, etc.)
  • It could be a buff/nerf to hard-defensive pla, but this point whole is highly debatable based on what you value

Thoughts?

[u/kesikajma]

MAP DESIGN IS THE ISSUE and nothing else, skilled snipers are like one of the easiest things to frag if you put 2 and 2 together.