Noop-Ni wrote:
Snipers as a group tend to have low amounts of kills per minute, and low flag points per minute. They're really not helping the team that much.
That sounds reasonable but two things: first, snipers' stats have to be looked at carefully, bearing in mind they primarily use a single-shot rifle with a limited ammo load; second, snipers' primary role/function is one of
sniping and again, their stats should be looked at appropriately.
And I've said this before, and no doubt a sniper will have the chance to make the same point again many times: on the right map, without snipers to counter the snipers on the other team, your team stands a much better chance of losing than if you had even just a couple, as long as they're okay.
In a full 64-player server six, maybe eight snipers isn't too much and won't generally drag a team down, as long as they're decent enough. Sure it looks bad if you see five of them camping on one crane but throughout the course of the round their influence can't be discounted, unless they aren't killing anything (or getting an appropriate number of kill assists). However, even in this sort of round by staying alive for long periods and not giving up an easy ticket to the other side by getting fragged every minute
they are still helping the team, compared to some nub ground-pounding as assault or support who ends the game 6-20 or something.
Noop-Ni wrote:
They're really not helping the team that much.
That's a judgement call on your part and one no individual can really make with certainty; we each bring our own biases to this sort of thing whether we acknowledge it or not. Even the two commanders can't see everything going on all over the battlefield so without studying the Battlerecorder file to look at what went on we really can't make a proper assessment of whether they did or did not, but a decent sniper, who got maybe 20 kills and only died four times only gave up those four tickets. And while getting those 20 kills he might have protected a couple of flags, stopped a flag cap halfway through etc... all the stuff that's impossible to really take into account.
It's possible for the right guy in the right place to make the difference between the team winning or losing. Anyone can be that guy at the right place at the right time and I've done it as sniper.
Noop-Ni wrote:
...but the majority really aren't that effective, from what I see.
Effectiveness is a loaded argumentative chip. A very good illustration of this is the
great chopper and plane pilots; some of whom, on the right map, can greatly help (even virtually guarantee) their team wins because of their contribution. For the round they'll tend to have excellent KDRs when they're in their chosen vehicle, very high kills outright, limited team points and of course no flag caps or assists to speak of. Generally speaking it's unquestionable that they are effective in helping their team win, which could be argued to be the point of the game, right?
But look at the stats of many great pilots and surprisingly some don't have incredible WLRs, which you'd kinda expect due to their influence.
And if you look at merely good pilots it'll be common that they don't assure wins. Take Sharqi where an MEC pilot/gunner team that hogged the vehicle the whole game got the highest kills for the gunner (and often then the highest team points for the pilot), close to or the least number of deaths for the two of them and hence the automatic assumption would be this: most tickets taken, least tickets lost to the team = a win for MEC. But I've been in countless games where the chopper pair scored exactly like this but their team didn't win.