You better hold onto your head, mate

Merely hours ago team leader Robin Walker posted a blog entry outlining, but not filling in, the sniper rifle unlockables function. To oversimplify, the unlock will get snipers shooting from a closer distance than normally found, by reducing effectiveness of long range firing, and promoting closer fights.

A game model already in place to promote this within most classes is the idea of fall-off damage, where the damage a shot does decreases as the distance between gun and enemy increases. This is most clear with a rocket launcher for example, as you can clearly see a rocket travel over time. A close rocket will do ~100 damage, whilst a rocket with equivalent accuracy that has moved over a great distance can have an average around 60-40, depending solely on distance travelled, if the shots strike full on.

This model is currently not applying to many weapons, including criticals, the medigun, the sniper rifle, pipe grenades, and sticky grenades that have set for 5 seconds. Falloff damage was once removed from the Flamethrowers on the pyro updates release, but along with the +50hp bonus on the backburner, it was found to be too effective, and was nerfed again.

What the real system could be is yet to be confirmed, but it would seem the general idea is to promote snipers who are close to the enemy, or allow snipers to survive close to the enemy, whilst also reducing effectiveness from long range. Another possibility could be allowing scoped snipers to move at normal speed, granting the ability to dodge normally whilst shooting at targets, but this solution would greatly increase the difficulty of killing snipers who were far away.

“Imperial » PlayerThirtyTwo-AA-: sounds like it could fit my style 😀
Imperial » PlayerThirtyTwo-AA-: I don’t like playing the camping sniper role :3”

Other parts of the blog have been criticised by some members of the steamforums community, saying that it outlines contradictions within current game mechanics, and ones that Valve have said they are against. There are another set of players who hold hope that this means the Sandman could be being changed by Valve, and that this news could be them admitting that they made a mistake. The sandman is the only unlock that is disallowed by most major leagues within Team Fortress competitive play.

A later post on the same date tells players they can check out the newest version of the mini-game Gang Garrison.

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