A nerf to Autosnipers

[Woozu]

I want to suggest nerfing the autosniper's damage by 20%.

I think the weapon is way too op in its vanilla state for zombiemod. If I ever see people on the server complain about a weapon, then its exclusively the autosniper and barely any other gun. In fact, if you check the latest messages on hlstats and filter for 'auto', the first page that spans of a time-window of one-week, already has roughly 30 visible complaints about the gun out of 50 messages. Terms like 'autonoob' are so common on the server, it's not even unique even though it's a clear complaint about the gun and its power.


If you compare it to the other snipers, it has pretty much the same damage as the scout, but on top of that the weapon is fully automatic with a 30 bullet magazine. The AWP deals the most damage but the 40/160 damage it deals more dont make it compete with the way the autosnipers play. Below a little table of the estimated damages these weapons deal from around medium range without armor, 'B' standing for "bodyshot" and 'HS' for "headshot":


-----------Scout-------------------AWP--------------------SG550(ct-side)---------G3SG1(t-side)

-----------B---HS----------------B----HS----------------------B----HS----------------B---HS

----------70---280--------------110---440-------------------69----274--------------77---310



In normal 5v5 play this weapon isn't used much actually and there is a few reasons why. The first being that everybody has 100 hp in a classic game of cs, which gives the autosniper user 2 scenarios, they either headshot or they hit 2 bodyshots. Stationary the weapon is pretty good unless you get one-tap skill-diffed by a rifle or an AWP. If you are in movement this is pretty fatal since you have to stop walking to be accurate, zoom in and then land 2 shots or a headshot, giving a rifle or an AWP enough time to kill you since they one-shot. Thats why in a classic game the AWP is the prefered choice, because its ability to one-shot is much more essential and beneficial.
The second reason why this weapon is not often played in classic cs is because of the economic aspect that isn't a part of zm. At $4450 and $5000 cash, the weapon costs multiple rounds of money to buy, with the AWP being the better option anyway.

However, the 2 reasons why the weapon is not used in a normal game of cs fully disappear in zm. You dont have to worry about your economics and what guns to buy, you always have $16,000 cash and can buy the weapon everytime. And if we look at the earlier elaborated 1st reason, the situation is completely different in zm since the autosniper player is not entering a gunfight, all the zombies have are knives. In normal play, you barely get to shoot 3 bullets with the autosniper if you fight against another player because either your enemy already dies, or you do before them, but in zm you get to use the full extend of the weapon's fully automatic, 30 bullet magazine and its incredible accuracy. And the way most people play the weapon is simply camping in a spot and shooting the zombies close, far or literally from across the map where they are trying to infect another spot or are simply trying to run somewhere else.


I dont think the weapon should be removed because it is pretty cool and used by many. However, i dont see a reason as to why this weapon should have the same damage as a scout when it functions more like a rifle, but has way higher damage and accuracy than a rifle and also comes with a scope to shoot zombies from literally anywhere. The weapon simply has the highest dps in the server regardless of range. But nerfing the weapon's damage by 20% would atleast make the weapon a bit less op, since it weakens the knockback on zombies a bit and also makes zombies stay alive more, from close and far range and makes it more fair for other weapons.

If you use the estimated damage stats i provided, this would mean 55/220 on the SG550 and 61/246 on the G3SG1, which is still significantly higher than every other rifle in the game and still contains its advantages in the scope and accuracy.

thanks for reading and for a hopefully reasonable consideration

 

[capseN]

I want to suggest nerfing the autosniper's damage by 20%.

I think the weapon is way too op in its vanilla state for zombiemod. If I ever see people on the server complain about a weapon, then its exclusively the autosniper and barely any other gun. In fact, if you check the latest messages on hlstats and filter for 'auto', the first page that spans of a time-window of one-week, already has roughly 30 visible complaints about the gun out of 50 messages. Terms like 'autonoob' are so common on the server, it's not even unique even though it's a clear complaint about the gun and its power.


If you compare it to the other snipers, it has pretty much the same damage as the scout, but on top of that the weapon is fully automatic with a 30 bullet magazine. The AWP deals the most damage but the 40/160 damage it deals more dont make it compete with the way the autosnipers play. Below a little table of the estimated damages these weapons deal from around medium range without armor, 'B' standing for "bodyshot" and 'HS' for "headshot":


-----------Scout-------------------AWP--------------------SG550(ct-side)---------G3SG1(t-side)

-----------B---HS----------------B----HS----------------------B----HS----------------B---HS

----------70---280--------------110---440-------------------69----274--------------77---310



In normal 5v5 play this weapon isn't used much actually and there is a few reasons why. The first being that everybody has 100 hp in a classic game of cs, which gives the autosniper user 2 scenarios, they either headshot or they hit 2 bodyshots. Stationary the weapon is pretty good unless you get one-tap skill-diffed by a rifle or an AWP. If you are in movement this is pretty fatal since you have to stop walking to be accurate, zoom in and then land 2 shots or a headshot, giving a rifle or an AWP enough time to kill you since they one-shot. Thats why in a classic game the AWP is the prefered choice, because its ability to one-shot is much more essential and beneficial.
The second reason why this weapon is not often played in classic cs is because of the economic aspect that isn't a part of zm. At $4450 and $5000 cash, the weapon costs multiple rounds of money to buy, with the AWP being the better option anyway.

However, the 2 reasons why the weapon is not used in a normal game of cs fully disappear in zm. You dont have to worry about your economics and what guns to buy, you always have $16,000 cash and can buy the weapon everytime. And if we look at the earlier elaborated 1st reason, the situation is completely different in zm since the autosniper player is not entering a gunfight, all the zombies have are knives. In normal play, you barely get to shoot 3 bullets with the autosniper if you fight against another player because either your enemy already dies, or you do before them, but in zm you get to use the full extend of the weapon's fully automatic, 30 bullet magazine and its incredible accuracy. And the way most people play the weapon is simply camping in a spot and shooting the zombies close, far or literally from across the map where they are trying to infect another spot or are simply trying to run somewhere else.


I dont think the weapon should be removed because it is pretty cool and used by many. However, i dont see a reason as to why this weapon should have the same damage as a scout when it functions more like a rifle, but has way higher damage and accuracy than a rifle and also comes with a scope to shoot zombies from literally anywhere. The weapon simply has the highest dps in the server regardless of range. But nerfing the weapon's damage by 20% would atleast make the weapon a bit less op, since it weakens the knockback on zombies a bit and also makes zombies stay alive more, from close and far range and makes it more fair for other weapons.

If you use the estimated damage stats i provided, this would mean 55/220 on the SG550 and 61/246 on the G3SG1, which is still significantly higher than every other rifle in the game and still contains its advantages in the scope and accuracy.

thanks for reading and for a hopefully reasonable consideration

The meta of the guns is based on 3 factors.
1. Dmg per mag - it means how much dmg u can do with a single mag, thats why guns with high mag are preferred, cause u need 3,3k dmg to kill zombie
2. Reload speed - this is the second important aspect, cause u are vulnarable in the time of reload or u have to rely on teammates.
If u combined those aspects thats why the guns like sg550, machinegun, and tmp are meta.
How ever there is one more aspect
3. Sustainability - only one shotgun on the server is self sustained (m3)
Thus the most overpowered gun is actually m3. Also the way new point system works also promote constant dps in a round over kills. Which is why m3 gets constantly more score now than autosniper. Cause even tho its easier to kill theoretically with auto, they lack map movement and lose dps.

I dont see a point in nerfing autos. Cause the autos are not problem. The devastating potential in autos is never used cause no true rly good player uses it regurarly. Most of auto players are rly bad players aimwise and they cant even put to use the gun, even the “better” auto users are not that good. I see the reasoning behind the nerf but i dont see a point in nerfing the gun when the potential of the abuse its not used at all. U will just lose players.

 

[Woozu]

No major disagreement on the 3 factors you provided on how/why some guns are meta and some aren't in zm.

Thus the most overpowered gun is actually m3. Also the way new point system works also promote constant dps in a round over kills. Which is why m3 gets constantly more score now than autosniper. Cause even tho its easier to kill theoretically with auto, they lack map movement and lose dps.

However, it seems we have different understandings on the game itself, as you mention the in-game score and the recent assist-system that changes how frags are distributed. It's plausible that most m3 users might get more frags on tab, since they have a weapon that is more usable in movement/hunting than the autosnipers, that way they have more opportunities to deal damage and get points (depending on the map).
But I'm not really talking about frags in the scoreboard, which probably is the way you play the game and hence thought about this in this way. I'm talking about the game's 'round-win conditions' for humans and zombies. For humans being: surviving until the clock hits 0:00; or killing all zombies, and for zombies being to infect all humans. In that regard, most maps are severely ct-sided because of autosnipers being able to rule over massive areas on the map.

I dont see a point in nerfing autos. Cause the autos are not problem. The devastating potential in autos is never used cause no true rly good player uses it regurarly. Most of auto players are rly bad players aimwise and they cant even put to use the gun, even the “better” auto users are not that good. I see the reasoning behind the nerf but i dont see a point in nerfing the gun when the potential of the abuse its not used at all. U will just lose players.

And this is where i have to disagree, i think they are a big problem and are the reason most maps are ct-sided. Their range, accuracy and damage allows them to obstruct zombies from attacking other camping spots within rooms badly and are almost the sole reason 'zombie-corner-trapping' is a phenomenon on the server. I don't think the way the weapon is right now makes zm fun, because it genuinely discourages attacking spots as a zombie, something i sometimes see only 40% of the zombie team doing, the other fraction being afk in the 'safe-rooms' or making zombie trains. And that for good reason if there is 25 people sitting on top of a spot, 1200 units away and just spam you down from that far without even being in range for the zombies.

The m3 might be the better 'top-score' weapon, but I think more than 80% of the server doesnt really have that as a game objective and instead actually cares about the round wins as a team, for which the autosniper geniunely is op for, since they dont need to move and have range instead of the m3 that sets players at risk. I'm not sure what makes the server lose more players, nerfing the damage of the autosnipers by 20%, which still makes them out do every other weapon and still a usable weapon, and in return slightly betters zombie gameplay, or having it stay like this and have, what i think is an unhappy playerbase complaining in chat.

 

[ღ Zicke ღ]

Well, i see it the same way as capsen.

There are a lot of players who really enjoy using the auto-sniper if they notice that it has been nerfed and deals little damage, they might leave the server and that’s not what we want.

Admittedly there are many players who can't handle it properly at all, even though it's actually simple, with this weapon it is.

I’ve often read players complaining about the weapon myself, but every player uses the weapon they want no one can say otherwise.





But i think the awp should be banned on the "Clouds" map instead, because the boost you get with that weapon on that map is just too extreme.

The reason the zombies fly around like that on this map is entirely due to the ground surface, it’s not exactly flat, you know it’s 95% hilly. (the camper spots are flat)

Sometimes it also happens that the zombies land right on the camper spot thanks to the boost and i don't like that at all.