Pixel Hunter, on 12 September 2022 - 02:42 PM, said:
I would say the core balance comes down to the average player, not extremely skilled players or anecdotal instances where brawling overcomes the meta of long range sniping or laser vomit. It stands to reason that if we tend to see a playstyle that is the more common (long range poking) it is most likely superior.
The popularity of sniping (or rather, "sniping") has nothing to do with sniping being superior. Not in Puglandia. "Sniping" is popular because it
feels safe. You're a thousand miles away from the fight, almost nothing on the enemy team can effectively hurt you. The fact that you, for the most part, cannot effectively hurt the enemy doesn't matter, because occasionally you get a good whack in, and also the game's hit indication gives the same feedback from a full damage AC/20 whack as it does from an extreme range PPC poke that only dealt half a point of damage. "Snipers" get to hang back, operate slower than the rest of the game, fire with impunity, and when the enemy wins the power play at the front line and hunts down the "sniper", the sniper will blame their team for not doing the team's job instead of blaming themselves for contributing d@#$-all nada
bupkis from the back line.
The way MWO works, mechanically, means that players often don't feel like their own misplays contributed to their team's loss unless they die early. Bad brawlers die first; bad snipers die last. Bad brawlers
know they failed their team, however much they holler about "THANKS FOR NOT PUSHING JERKS"; bad snipers think they've been doing well the whole time and their team failed
them. If only the team had held strong, they would've won! And when the team manages to beat the odds and win, the bad sniper doesn't ever realize their piddling contributions to the fight were effectively meaningless and they had no impact on the victory. All they know is they won, they did damage, and they barely
took damage, so they
must have done something right!
The game actively, psychological trains that sort of Timidity into people. Void Angel wrote an absolutely phenomenal treatise on it nearly ten years ago now, called
Timidity Is Not a Tactic. Frankly I consider it a seminal work on MWO and it should really be a must read for all new players, especially since it perfectly explains this idea that the game psychologically conditions selfish, self-preserving plays over aggressive, risky, but game-winning plays. Those exact same factors explain the preponderance of "snipers" in Puglandia, while meanwhile the people who play more powerful mid to short-range sluggers are less common but
far more impactful on a game. After all, how many matches can you remember where the fight came down to one guy on one of the teams finally ballsing up and pushing in to start laying people the f@#$ down with some massive brawly murder loadout, scoring five kills as they mow throw a bunch of weakened "snipers" like a mortar blast?
Sniping feels safer than brawling, people want to feel safe, so they snipe. But it sure doesn't win games the way a well-timed brawl in well chosen ground does.