Natural said:
As Thrax mentioned... the power of the laser rifle is a direct factor of the speed of players. In T1 where players could move at great speeds, defensive snipers could often only get one snipe opportunity on an escaping capper--a difficult one at that. T2 was slower.
I believe the sniper rifle should stay, but it should be carefully looked at for balancing in beta. Perhaps the sniper rifle could be a little less variable...require full energy to fire, then cause a small delay before energy begins to replenish. It can easily be tweaked for balance.
That was true in base, however, does not apply to classic. IMO, the players seem smaller and seem to move faster in classic than in t1; this is largely because of the very smooth terrain and strong disc jump. The reason I mention that is because there are still people playing classic that can hit with rediculous accuracy percentages and can be effective doing nothing but sitting on a hill sniping. The generally high visibility is one of the things that causes this but what I really think is happening is people's connections have just gotten better. The average ping now is FAR lower than it was in the hay-day of T1.
I know there are sniper rifles in just about every fps but one of the big reasons they work well is because player movement isn't as predictable as in tribes. In most others a person strafes back and forth on the ground popping in and out of sight making it quite hard to get a good lead on them. In tribes they move in close to a straight line making such hitscan weapons very easy to use. It's an important gameplay difference... more than just the weapon's statistics define its effectiveness, just like high visibility maps make sniping more effective and very smooth maps make HO stronger.
It's important for me to note, I'm not saying the rifle should go, I just think it would be a good idea for the devs to be very open to adjusting the ballancing of the rifle in beta. They said they've added ammo but I'm not sure that will make much of a difference, if someone hits half of their ammo in shots they're still probably being effective. What would make a difference is a small travel time to add complexity to the leading and make longer shots harder, they might have said that was in, not sure. Personally though, I like the idea of a charge up by holding the mouse down type shot; the idea behind sniping is that it's a carefully planned, accurate, long range shot--this adds to that idea. Now a days it's used lots as just a quick easy way to put damage on someone even at short range.
The biggest thing that I think will define the effectiveness of the rifle is the mapping style. From what we've seen so far it looks like on a number of the maps it will play a small role and on a few play a large role. That's alright, I just hope the same thing that happened in T2 doesn't happen again: mappers that don't understand the gameplay enough to think about what their map design is doing to it.
In short, sitting on top of a hill sniping should not be an effective position unless there's a large skill discrepancy (at which point another position would still be better). Peeps should have to join the action.
