I don’t think it’s very likely that someone would just never shoot anything else but the same xeno (changing targets resets them), so the stacks would have to be re-done via actually hitting the aimed shot. Unless they can be stacked in some other way that im not aware of its incredibly unlikely you would consistently get to 3.
Even then all you have to do is bait the third one and waste it, its not particularly difficult to pretend to push and walk back, generally no different to playing vs regular sniper whatsoever.
Besides I already said stacks are the only issue of the gun in initial post.
Thats due to the above. The gun doesn’t just suddenly deal 425 damage.
I dunno if I’ve seen even 5 situations in all my hours of play where someone blocking sniper shots for you would be necessary and actually decided on whether you live or not so I don’t think it matters, especially given comparable dmg outputs.
I loaded normal ammo, flak deals next to no damage. For AMR the stun and slow are negligible to the point where they’re not worth caring about besides aimed shot stacks.
But for these - if you walk out and repeatedly get aimed shot at whether it’s amr or the regular sniper, you would have to be braindead to overextend with that in mind, your behavior doesn’t change regardless of which one’s shooting at you, you’ll stay near cover and generally not push until the sniper fucks off.
What matters is the initial surprise of this gun being there in the first place, AMR used that way just isn’t a real threat, the regular sniper rifle is considerably stronger.
Honestly the more I think about it the more you deserve to die to it if it you let it actually reach 3 stacks and still go overextend in the open. Just standard sniper preventing play rather than AMR specifically enhancing this in any way.
This is literally what you are supposed to do with the AMR. What you are encouraged to do by the existing mechanics. Denying screech is a very strong tool, you can also focus T3s, because every time you lose half of your HP you need to rest.
But the guy literally said “up to”. You cannot deal 425 dmg with normal sniper.
lol you should play the game maybe idk. If xenos get critted in the sniper view, the only thing you can possibly do is to bodyblock for them. Unless you have wardens pull.
But that’s exactly the issue with AMR. You either have to AFK until sniper gets bored and changes targets, or tank full charged shots just to immediately retreat to rest. It’s more opressive than SADAR in this regard, as you can at least dodge SADAR, screech him, pounce, kill, etc.
Its a bad mechanic, yes, but it’s not something new since it just highlights the issue of sniper not letting people play the game, just in a more bully format towards a specific player, pretty toxic.
Eh, yes but it’s a bit confusing if you just state it as if it’s a regular shot, since you would have to actively suicide to die from this, so its kind of a worthless consideration - you’re either not taking this shot or taking it next to cover just to waste ammo.
I.e entirely different from the gun dealing it on first hit, its like complaining about the other stacking rifle dealing up to X damage and killing ravs in Y shots but not mentioning you’re talking about full stacks.
They dont get critted by that too often because you don’t play risky when the sniper’s around, especially not with cases where bodyblocking a sniper bullet for them would save them (they die to PFC fire).
It’s also the issue with the regular sniper, if he chooses to just target you specifically you cannot play the game. Sure it’s less damage up front but the ttk of a normal rifle is considerably faster than ttk of amr (or worst case equal if starting from 3, haven’t tested but doubt it) so you’re equally prevented from actually doing anything.
It’s a general sniper issue as already stated. It should be changed though but doesn’t make amr particuarly broken, just unfun/toxic.
Should likely be a telegraphed ‘dmg in a line’ kinda thing that’d go through walls or whatever instead of reusing aimed shot mechanics and stacking should be disabled until someone works that in (or at least should time out but idk).
Yeah, i just find it kinda boring.
It was better before the nerf and the fix of not being able to buy spare ammo.
It had a vision before, then xenos malded about having to learn how to figth a new thing, and it was mudied. Ending in the AMR being a shell of what it was. Balance decisions that the masses scream are usually what kill fun things after all.
What vision? Can you elaborate on this? What vision was behind the AMR and why is/was it good for the game besides “needing to learn how to fight it” (aka just AFK until sniper gets bored and target someone else).
Its a high priority target/support weapon thats more and more muddelt down to be a sligthly reflavored M42A.
And how would it be better? Idunno, i never saw anything that was changed because of peer pressure end up being good. But who knows, this time it migth be diffrent. After all we got people saying that the AMR does more dmg then the M42A, a gun of wich the standart ammo does more dmg then the AMR.
Peer pressure to change something that stems from that can be surly only do good.
I actually agree with you, I don’t think that attempts to fix AMR were thought-out and put the gun in a better place.
But the thing is, AMR shouldn’t have been added in its state at the first place. I don’t know what maints were thinking, I don’t know what Kaga was thinking other than wanting to add another sniper gun. AMR was flawed from the beginning, it shared all the problems with regular sniper (getting hit offscreen with no reasonable means of anticipation generally sucks), but also introduced more. Then for whatever reason Kaga decided to buff the gun that already dealt up to 425-450 dmg by adding slow, stun, knockback, you call it, and it was merged (although it was obvious that it would not be good for the game). Only explanation I have for this is that Kaga is friends with Drathek. Or Drathek didn’t want to look “pressured”. Anyway we ended up with a ridiculous gun that could just take 45% of queen or T3 HP from off screen with each shot, which also applied multiple effects, literally not allowing the target to play.
Then Nivrak saw the obvious issues and made an improvised PR to address them. Was it a good and thought-out PR? Not, just like the initial PR. Was it a “peer pressure” PR? Yes. But it made AMR a bit less aids to play against. So we should be thankful for this. If Kaga gets their shit merged with little to no reflection, then this is a reasonable answer. Ideally, AMR just wouldn’t be merged, because the problems are deep and obvious. But it is what it is. We have cancerous PRs being fixed with bandaid PRs. It’s not good, but it’s better than pure cancer.
I don’t have that much familiarity with this matter, but half-healthing Queens and T3s from 3 screens away, as shown in the above posted video does not seem like a healthy thing. And xenos can’t really counter sniper in any traditional sense - there’s going to be a morbilion marines in front of him and he’s the last guy they’d normally get to.
But then, I’m sort of struggling with thinking what a balanced sniper spec should be? The options are really just half-healthing T3s, stuns, fire and slows. And since it’s such a safe spec it shouldn’t do what SADAR, GL or pyro does. So I’m kind of at a loss here. The only other ideas that I have are kinda mid:
Retune sniper into outright crit finish spec. Give him vision through the walls, wall piercing ammo, maybe even xeno health bar mask. Balance it out by xenos being able to fully body tank the shots for their sisters.
Mixed mags. Make snipers do the scout thing by default and alternate between incendiary, micro stun and big damage bullets by default. Maybe make it a pyro-like quick switch system?
Another design consideration is that I feel like ideally sniper should counter ravs somehow. Because it’s the all around good no counter, mostly immune to other specs xeno. GL traditionally counters praes, pyro traditionally counters crushers and scout kinda counters boilers…
Imo AMR is just a plain upgrade rather than a side grade- The immense damage (boy, when stacked…), combined with slow AND micro stun is simply huge. Regular sniper had ammo versatility, but who gives a shit about flak or fire when you can stop all warrior grabs and effectively open them up to certain death to a determined marine every time they enter screen range?
I genuinely believe it is just a better gun than the M42A. It’s like a boiler, but worse- Xenos really don’t have much capability to kill the sniper, considering they’re the most survivable (and therefore the most impactful spec, imo).
I honestly have no clue how to balance it. BYOND, being a tile based game means that any sniper-type weapon is automatically god tier. How do you counter someone you can’t see, and therefore can’t attack? You can’t.
I don’t see much of a solution outside of either giving xenos better long-range capabilities (lmao not happening), or nerfing scoped rifles further- But then you run into issues of well, snipers just feeling dogshit. I think it’s a neat idea, and it’s a shame to remove it altogether, though.
Personally, I propose buffing reflective walls so that AMR shots reflect back into marines without IFF, instafraccing 5 people in a row. The solution to overtuned marine weapons is always to redirect said marine weapons against the marines, as is tradition. More seriously though, I think builders needing more brain cells to bake reflectives into defences would be kind of sweet.
I don’t think it’s very likely that someone would just never shoot anything else but the same xeno
Yeah until you get someone who never shoot anything else but the same xeno, almost as if your ammo is best spent on something like idk the queen of the hive where it does the most damage at almost half their health in 1 bullet, I have been targeted before not even as queen, literally only me noone else, I basically had to go afk until he targeted someone else
It was initially total aids iirc, in the PRs that introduced it so it did get better.
Devs are prone to adding random features just for the sake of having more, see the disaster that is shrap which is more than likely to be merged. The funny BLU CAS missile and likely a bunch of other stuff I forgot. Oh, the PFC GL too lol
It was balanced before aimed shot duration was shortened.
See above, sufficient aimed shot warning is enough. Worst case you remove normal fire from it entirely.
It isn’t by any metric, dps output is lower and the surprise of first shot less impactful (longer aim time, unstacked dmg).
Snipers in general shouldn’t be in the game besides the spec. There isn’t a single good thing that comes from their existence besides the sniper himself having fun at the expense of others. Nor any balance reason for them to exist.
Yeah but again, regular sniper does the same thing - if he chooses to target you, you just can’t play. With AMR at least the main aids - surprise - of offscreen weapons doesn’t apply as much - eating the first shot of an AMR is almost the same as eating the sniper but it also has a longer windup and no flak aids.
Edit: before someone fixes AMR aimed shot stacks he should fix up flak first, god forbid you make AMR used less and we have to deal with more aids as a result
I don’t honestly mind the SHARP, it’s counterable, avoidable, doesn’t instakill you, and the guy who made it
PLAYS BOTH SIDES
and actively continued to do so WHILE IT WAS TM’D, identified issues with it for both sides and rebalanced accordingly.
AMR is a powertrip just from reading the PRs; I don’t know if the people who made it play both sides but I highly doubt it (or at least they certainly didn’t play xeno while it was TM’d).
I think the issue is TMs are supposed to be tests of how things actually affect the game, but too often it gets treated as something to ensure there aren’t any conflicts in the code and then instantly speedmerge something that’s completely abysmal from a balance/gameflow perspective.
and then it’s “in the game,” and we have to “improve not remove” something that never should have been added to begin with
Before we can fix the AMR I think its important to define the role of the Sniper Spec for CM. Picking a design direction for the role is key to designing the equipment it utilizes.
Is it a hunter of high value targets such as the Queen, T3s and specifically Boilers?
Is it a one shot, one kill from extreme range hunter?
Is it an opportunistic slayer, hunting crit xeno?
Is it a long range harasser with cool ammo?
Is a fancy JTAC operator with a cool gun and a sexy cloak?
As to not get too in weeds and hopefully stay remotely on task, a possible change to the AMR is to reduce its raw output and allow it to be blocked by other xeno, however I’d increase the damage against stationary targets. Maybe keep the slow but remove then stun. This would transition the AMR to hunting critical xenos and hunting boilers.
Could be that the damage scales based on how far the target is versus where they were standing when the “aimed shot” took effect, so it is intended to deal a lot of damage to stationary targets, or targets that retreat back where they were running, versus doing less damage to very mobile targets that move further from where they were aimed at.
So, a good anti-siege weapon or anti-boiler, but less effective in large, mobile, battle arenas where xenos have a lot of room to move around.
sharp is both useless and plain annoying is my point - mine spotting gameplay that punishes t1-t2s for existing because they stepped into a 5 pixel bomb concealed by 50 random debris and garbage and someone happened to be near to 100-0 them off it. Not that its particularly broken/OP from a t3 standpoint/by default.
Just a bad feature that flips between useless and cancerous.
As I mentioned previously I think the aimed shot should just be replaced by a straight-line telegraphed shot with a charge up and longer cd. Could be anti boiler (you could raise the damage alot because it would be relatively simple to sidestep) and remain useful as area denial and wall breaker even if it hits no one. Supports the niche of heavier and slower gun it’s designed as.
Pretty sure boiler acid lance code can be repurposed for this so it should’t be terribly hard.
Remove damage stacking. The AMR is an anti-materiel rifle - meaning it’s a gun meant for armored vehicles. (I know 50 BMG rounds aren’t used like this anymore, but it’s 2182 - they very well can be again or something) It doesn’t really make sense as to why the damage would increase more and more on subsequent focused hits.
The way I see the AMR - because really, it’s an anti-tank rifle with a scope - it’s a damage-focused weapon compared to the normal M42A sniper, which is more utility-focused. As it is, it seems like a weird-scoped version of the XM88 that can destroy walls and go through xenos.
On to balancing - keep the damage, tweak it higher maybe, if needed. Keep only the microstun OR the slow (not both) - but they should only be present against smaller caste xenos. (You can even remove both, just don’t remove the gun pls pls pls pls) Ultimately we’re looking for high damage, not high utility - if the M42A’s goal is to help secure kills via utility, the AMR’s goal should be to secure kills via increase in DPS.
In regards to the bullet penetration, shots that pass through walls or xenos should be less accurate and have a higher chance of missing the next target. Also, give it a mandatory bipod. Bipod will allow the sniper to fire shots normally. Firing it without bipod on the other hand should make it fly away from their hands, cause it’s just that cool.
There’s so many ways to tweak the AMR to make it not as busted or uncounterable (is that a word?) as it currently is, like tweaking the magazine size, how it’s used, even the bullet mechanics or whatnot. I personally dislike feature removal because I believe the game is better when we get cool things that sound cool and look cool, not without. And IMO, the AMR looks cool, sounds good, and it’s an anti-tank rifle. Removal of such a concept is literally 1986 and anti-fun
@Drathek can we please just unmerge this thing until it’s fixed? It’s actually ridiculous how bad it is to play against, it feels horrible and leads to some of the most needlessly punishing and consequently stagnant gameplay since the nuke was added
Just remove everything that has anything to do with “focused_fire” in the code, get rid of flak ammo slow and return the aimed shot duration to what it was, then open the pr and credit me for the idea.
It ain’t hard.
if you see a boiler standing still and looking right at you, there about to launch a ball at ya, matter of fact if you see any xenos standing still and there not a tier one, there gettin ready to use an ability
