Sharpshooter General Utility Idea: Tracking Darts

[SuperNerd000]

So I've been playing both KF1 and KF2 for a long time, and one thing I've noticed in the second game is that the Sharpshooter is in a weird spot: it is a lone wolf who requires their team keep them in mind at all times. Even moreso than other classes, they require their team stay close and protect them from enemies, while also largely refraining from helping the Sharpshooter fight enemies. The Sharpshooter is based around doing precision damage at long range to single targets, but (without going into too much redundant detail I'm sure you're all already aware of) between all the fire, explosions, and teammates enraging or displacing enemies, either accidentally or through a misguided attempt to help, it can be very difficult to do their job between all the different factors making it harder to land their shots. In addition, unlike every other perk, they have little to no direct team utility outside of eliminating large targets: while it is a helpful thing, even their offspring with a similar role, the Gunslinger, can deal decent crowd control with their grenades and by taking certain skills, particularly Knock 'em Down at level 20. While the Sharpshooter does have two hard cc effects in the form of a high stun chance on headshots and possessing freeze grenades, these abilities are both largely intended to help the Sharpshooter line up multiple shots rather than to help their team.

I also noticed that, aside from weapons inherited from other perks, none of the Sharpshooter's weapons have an alternate fire option, so my idea is this: on the Sharpshooter's weapons, give them an alternate fire in the form of Tracking Darts that function similar to the Healing Darts of the Medic weapons that, rather than heal teammates, instead emits a beacon on enemies that temporarily marks both their target and other nearby enemies in a small area to the Sharpshooter and their team, with an additional marker that also highlights the enemies' heads as well as other weak points.

A. This will give the Sharpshooter a little bit of extra utility to the rest of their team by alerting them to the presence of enemies, as well as revealing the position of said enemies.
B. This would, hopefully, inform the team that the Sharpshooter has spotted a target and should leave said enemy to them, preventing them from accidentally making it harder for the Sharpshooter to land their shots, either by enraging them or causing them to move in unpredictable ways.
C. Make it easier for the Sharpshooter to find their targets through intense combat by highlighting the head, especially if the team has perks such as Demolitionist or Firebug who can greatly disrupt vision.
D. If more is needed, the Sharpshooter could also gain additional benefits on highlighted enemies, such as increased stun chance, though this could easily become too powerful.

While I do have a bit of a concern that it could potentially step a bit into Commando's territory of providing information to the team, I believe it could greatly improve quality of life for the Sharpshooter themselves while also making it a bit less of a self-centered perk by allowing them to work a bit more with their team rather than requiring their team work around them.

 

[OutlawStar26ep]

Sharpshooter is my favorite perk to use and I do agree that they have problems working in a team. I also would like to see them gain something that helps the team and make it easier to do their job by headshotting big zeds. But the main issue I have with the idea is that in the same time you are using to mark the target you could have just straight up killed them via headshot.

How about firing Tranquilizer darts instead. Tranquilizing a big zed would put them to sleep or slow them down for a time and either help the team take down a big zed or make it easier for you to land multiple headshots. Tranquilizer darts could also mark the target by having little bubbles floating off their head to show that they sedated/sleeping, so teammates can tell you are going after them via the special effect. It also goes along with the perk's freeze grenades and stunning skills as another way to keep the target in place to headshot them better.

 

[SuperNerd000]

I don't like the idea of tranquilizer darts for a few reasons, the main thing being is that it's ultimately another hard single-target immobilization that just self-serves the Sharpshooter and doesn't address any of the issues. The Sharpshooter can already lock down their target really well, the problem is that the rest of the team has to bend over backwards to accommodate them while the Sharpshooter doesn't really do anything in return other than killing big zeds which, while useful, don't get me wrong, other perks can do the same thing while also at least providing some other utility or support in return. While they can potentially use their freeze grenades to save allies, their main purpose is to either hold big enemies still or help the Sharpshooter get away if enemies get close to them. Tranquilizer Darts wouldn't really deal with any of these issues, since they would either wear off quickly and be resisted the same as other CC when the enemy is enraged, which would basically just make it a headshot stun without the damage and not having to aim, or it would last a long time and/or not be resisted by enraged Scrakes/Fleshpounds, making it insanely powerful when the point of the darts are to improve quality of life for the perk, not buff what the class is already good at, as I don't think the perk is bad at all at their job, just that they need a better way to work alongside their team, rather than their team having to work for them. This is why I proposed the Tracking Darts as an AoE marking ability:

A. Making the Tracking Darts emit an AoE that marks multiple enemies makes it so that the Sharpshooter is also providing more information not only relevant to themselves, as large zeds are often surrounded by mid-end zeds such as Husks or Sirens, as well as often coming alongside other large zeds, meaning that the Sharpshooter is marking their area of focus rather than just their immediate target. This allows the rest of their team to both know information about the actual battle, and much more easily keep track of what the Sharpshooter is doing, as the Sharpshooter is often standing behind the rest of their team and thus is not in their team's immediate view. It would also take no real time at all to use the darts if firing them worked the same as the Medic's healing darts, firing quickly with no recoil, so it would have largely no impact on the tempo of the perk.
B. Highlighting the enemies, as well as a more prominent highlight on their heads/other weak points, means the Sharpshooter can better track and focus on where they need to hit, as well as allow them to still see their targets in times of low-visibility, like if a map is dark or foggy, or the team has one or more Demos/Firebugs.

I apologize in advance if I come across as rude or angry at all, words have been failing me today.

 

[Azukki]

On the subject of sharpshooter having had his role undermined, zed spawning distance definitely is worth a mention. He's the long range perk, sometimes with magnified scopes that are detrimental at short range, yet zeds spawn already in short range, either sometimes or constantly, depending on the team's sightlines.

Anyways, I'm not sure the claiming altfire would be especially useful. If it makes a zed extra noticeable for teammates, you'll probably really have to beat players over the head with the message of "This means the sharpshooter has claimed this zed and you should shoot something else". Otherwise the natural reaction will surely be "Important + Enemy = Shoot this first". Which, in a different context, could be good, but not for sharp.
Maybe it would be best for sharpshooter claiming if it highlighted the zed helpfully for him, but teammates only get a checkmark centered on the zed's chest.
"✔ " (Done, don't worry about it.)

But mainly I don't like the claiming altfire throughout sharpshooter because it's a shame that sharpshooter's rifles generally lack altfires of their own, and I'd hope that isn't a pattern that they commit to continuing. Keeping the potential for interesting varied sharpshooter rifle altfires in the future could be good. (For one, toggle magnified/unmagnified sights, to adapt to short and long range) For now, we already have railgun's altfire occupied with a mode select, which is important for it, since the default mode is pretty bad.

The tranquilizer darts OutlawStar suggests could be a great special feature altfire for a sharpshooter gun, but seems misfitting as a feature to slap on all of them.

 

[SuperNerd000]

Zed spawning distance is definitely an issue, though if I remember right they've been working on fixing that, at least for bigger enemies.

The bit about it possibly backfiring and teammates' gut reaction being to focus fire on the marked enemy is a good point, though, especially at first before people are really used to it. The darts are intended to also have a small AoE that marks more than just the direct target so the Sharpshooter can also alert teammates to other enemies that need special consideration, such as a Siren if the Demo didn't take Sonic Resistant Rounds. Adding some sort of symbol to tell/remind the team the Sharpshooter is aware of them could be good, though it couldn't really be the Sharpshooter's perk symbol as putting a big crosshair on the enemy would be even worse about sending the wrong message. They could also give Sharpshooter a unique text callout in the chat if they mark a Scrake or Fleshpound saying something along the lines of 'Large zed spotted, taking it down', but in my experience most players either don't tend to pay attention to the chat window or just outright ignore it.

I will say, I honestly wish we had more callout options in general as well. The number of times I have to sit there and type to remind people to regroup compared to the first game's 'Group Up' callout is a bit annoying, and 'Follow Me' isn't quite the same thing. Not to mention, again, a lot of players don't seem to pay attention to the chat box in my experience.

I actually didn't know the Railgun had an alt-fire, which looking at it yeah, considering how long it takes to lock on as is I don't know why they bother with it when turning it off doubles the damage the weapon deals. I'll admit, Sharpshooter is about tied with Survivalist for my least played perk (both are at level 13, also a bit ironic considering it was the first perk I managed to max out in KF1 because god the welding requirement for Support took forever), and I'm not the best at the perk anyway, but I generally haven't actually had any problems with the zoom on any of the scopes on the Sharpshooter's weapons. I generally find hip-fire to work well enough in a pinch if the enemies are close enough that the scopes are a hindrance, though I've always been that one weirdo who is more accurate with hip-fire than ADS most of the time in a lot of games. And in either case, the tracking darts wouldn't have to be something as an absolute on every Sharpshooter weapon (especially if they add more multi-perk weapons for SS in the future), just something to add to at least the already existing weapons that lack an alt-fire. And maybe the Railgun if they don't want to fix the one it already has.

Also sorry my previous post wasn't there before you had replied, I only joined the forum recently so my posts need to be approved by a moderator or something before they show up.

 

[Tony]

Yeah, right now there is no reason to pick sharp over gs, ever. I think, sharp needs wraith's tactical ability from apex legends. Running through shadows (invisible movement for a short period of time, when you can't shoot, but you're invincible). Even simple invis would work though. It would be okay from the lore perspective too. A character could easily use an invis device, taken off a stalker. Also wraith has an interesting ultimate, that sets up portals for her team. That would resonate with sharp too, and make him useful for team. But that probably would be too much, lol

 

[s5yn3t]

Can you stop copy pasting same comment about how you love these weapons on multiple posts?

 

[neve12005]

I almost didnt see people going SS on servers these days. Devs were making zeds faster and deadlier last couple of years, which makes playing the game as SS really hard. Of course, he can hit very hard, but his native gameplay style and limitations makes this class almost useless for a team. Absolutely every other class will be more useful to the team. There pretty big disbalance between different classes potentials. Devs had given almost all advantages for some classes, and almost none to others. For example, a zerk can easily take out a group of small and medium zeds, or a big one. Zerk can take out a big zed even from a distance by using buzzsaw. And even if he made some mistake he can just run and recover himself. in 99% of situations, even if zerk done something wrong, he can run away and stay alive. Almost same as medic class. On the other side we have a sharpshooter, which is potent to save himself from small group of weak/medium zeds, or a big one. But if he made some mistake, like not seeing a group of crawlers coming from back=he's dead, a gorefiend started his whirling=he's dead, or just he misses headshot on a raged fp coming to him-hes 99% dead. In addition, a burden of having a big gun that is capable oneshotkill a scrake makes u almost useless for a team against most of the zeds. See the difference? In my opinion, theres a huge difference between perks abilities, and a SS needs a boost, or all other perks need to be downgraded to match him. Is there any official devs position about ss todays?