I’ve had several encounters where the first warning there was even a sniper on the field was when it shot through the horde in my face, the targeting beam lost amid the teeming masses of bodies, and down/killed me.
TL;DR as the title says, it needs an announcement, such as the sound of the sniper cranking up the charge on his gun a few seconds before he begins actively taking aim at the players. Probably easier than a reworking of the AI so it doesn’t just blaze shots through the meatgrinder at a certain threshold, anyways.
Not the shot sound, a ‘special announcement’ sound. Like the Netter has a net sound for when she’s about to fire, but she also has that cackling when she enters the fray/hunt mode.
The sniper fire shot is fine and good, but if you’re in a bigger throng (think Heresy/Damnation, particularly on High Intensity), the initial warm up a quarter second before fire gets eaten up by all the other audio outputs, it seems.
It’s less about a warning for the shot, and more about a warning there ‘a sniper exists’. It’d give the player a moment to essentially disengage from the horde and shift out of an obvious lane of fire, particularly since being in the thick of big hordes does a number on your mobility to begin with. So you combine that with essentially no warning, it feels like a cheap and unwarranted death on the game’s part.
One of the characters on the team will call out: sniper!
This makes sense, as a stealthy sniper himself probably wouldn’t yell: yo-hoo sniper on the field, watch out rejects!
There’s also a big ass laser pointer.
Even if you miss these two, there’s a sound and an animation on the laser when it’s time to dodge.
I’ve been shot several times with no sound warning and instantly on walking into the snipers line of fire. Specials can be a bit buggy and don’t give signals 100% of the time. They can snap shot you the moment they spawn if the conditions are right.
As was said, the sniper will at times fire with no warning, not to mention the fact that it can continue to fire at you even at point blank. Give it a better heads up/fix the issues with it not properly displaying its laser, possibly give it a minimum range so approaching it in melee doesn’t just equal it shotgunning you 4 meters away before kicking you in the face and running off at Sanic Spede.
Not even touching on how the snipers are super broken with some of the shots they ‘hit’ with the crummy servers.
Agreed, but I would love to see it being early, so the announcement comes, 30 secs to a min later the sniper shows up, I really love the sniper specials, but it is annoying when you get obliterated in an instant because the scene is too messy to notice the laser beam.
2 visual cues and 2 audio cues, 1 when a teammate sees it, 1 when he shoots.
Sometimes a sniper can surprise you, like all specials can sometimes do and should.
Bomber / Gunner / Sniper resistance curios are here to help manage what you feel is best for you.
I don’t have a problem with snipers except for the fact that their first shot seems to be excessively quick sometimes, unreliably, compared to follow up shots. And like in the video posted above, if you happen to drop down a ledge without knowing there is a sniper ( and sometimes there is 0 tell there is one ) you will get blasted. Can’t dodge mid air.
This pretty much shows perfectly my main issue with the sniper.
There’s times where the red laser, their biggest tell, is practically invisible. I had to run that video frame by frame to see the red line, it was only visible for a few frames, several of those being just a dot and not a line.
There also was no “Sniper!” shout, which I’ve only ever seen that voice line come out after I’ve noticed the red laser before, so that’s likely the trigger for the voiceline.
These 2 factors, combined with the issue of dealing with a horde at the same time really exacerbate the issue.
I honestly don’t even think they need to make the voiceline trigger earlier or more consistently if they make the laser more visible. Whether that be making the laser thicker, a different color, or just making the sniper aim at an opening a player is approaching so that they can see a sniper is waiting before turning a corner.
A very easy change that would bring the sniper in line with other specials. Everyone else does a sound when they spawn, so why shouldn’t sniper? And if you really wanna follow the “stealthy specialist approach” then just make it a quiet lasgun charging sound that plays one time only - when a sniper spawns. This is much easier than re-coding them to take longer with their first shot. Easiest change ever that will balance the special better and remove unneeded frustration.
Eshin assassins are supposed to be one of the scariest things ever because you never see them coming. They are so adept at their job. Did not stop them from giving you a nice “hey, I’m gonna getcha!” warning in vermintide.
