A Sniper's Ruminations [Problems/Suggestions]

Silent call-outs would be delightful. I have no idea why we have to scream them all the time.

So a statement and then a few things I'm confused on.

Asking for a weapon that is a OSK against any target at any range isn't balanced. Yes skill factors in, but so does risk. And sitting 300m away potshoting infantry involves nearly zero risk. Putting a shotgun into someone's chest, dropping a c4 at maxes feet involves risk, so the OSK. Limited risk, limited reward. Skill is not the only decider to balance.

When you're asking for a 'sniper' cert line I'm not quite sure what you're asking for. Light assault doesn't get a cert line that makes their guns better, they get a cert line that makes their jump jets better. Medics get a line that help them heal better. HA gets a line that makes them absorb damage better. Infiltrators (not snipers) get a cert line that lets them infiltrate better using their cloaks. Nobody gets a cert line to make them shoot better.

On the AV thing, sure I agree with you. Give the infiltrators c4 it seems to line up fine to their class description and involves sabotage. Also would make the hacking more important to let you resupply behind enemy lines. Although a well timed AV turret hack by an infiltrator can cause huge devastation.

Silent call outs? Sure. Sneaking people tend not to be shouters.

More rifle variety? Sure but I'd say that for every class and still no OSK weapons.

But fundamentally you're right. There is no sniper class and that's for the best. Infiltrate, damage from behind the lines, cause chaos and make it so the enemy never feels safe. You're far more than just a sniper. Just as a medic is better if they're a full time healer but that rifle shouldn't be forgotten and neither the c4 in the head. An engineer that only drives vehicles is just as ineffective as the one that only builds turrets or drops mines. All the classes have versatility.

Frozen,

I guess i should reevaluate what I'm trying to convey. I agree that no weapon should OSK, but at the same time I feel certs should open up several pathways that suit the players play style. I personally like to stay at a distance and pick off my foes and spending certs to accommodate this would be nice. C4 for inf's would be a great way to exact revenge on all the tanks I have hid from in the past. Best of luck on the battlefield.

Regards,

-Headshots

if you want to eliminate OHKs, you'd have to get rid of directional dmg indicators and tracers first because some sniping playstyles depend on OHK to stay alive longer that 15s (close/midrange behind the front line)

Shut the f up max suit. You hide in your 10 inch armor all day. You don't get a say

And this is the heart of the problem. Noobs want to run-and-gun with ugly-*** autonoobtubes instead of being slow, patient and tactical. They call it PTFO, when it's actually Run Around in Circles-Spray-Pray-Die-Rinse-Repeat

a OHK NS BASR. my dream...

An headshot should at least disorient the opponent.

yeah dip**** try looking at my most played class. light assault.

you have proved nothing but cry about how you want a easy class easier.

OHK headshots? Hell no. But I like the idea of BASRs not displaying directional damage indicators. That would actually provide a tactical use for snipers instead of them being the e-penor polishers they tend to be. It wouldn't increase their kill rate greatly (good thing, as it's low risk and contributes little to the team) but would allow them to sow further disarray and chaos in enemy lines. It wouldn't make the shot invisible, but it would make it harder to find a good sniper.

As for the argument that infils take out priority targets and need a buff? Nope. I can do the same job with my medic, in close. In fact I do, and I have a better range of targets.

I gotta agree with all of what the OP said, I would be interested to say the least in a sniper cert line. Granted, the jury is still out on OHK headshots (some think we want to buff our K/D in an objective based game. If I wanted a good K/D I'd play COD or TF2 Snipers). I honestly try to pick out top priority targets such as Medics, Engineers with turrets or pocket repairing a max, enemy snipers who have pinned friendlies, and *insert other high priority target*. Needless to say it is a bit frustrating when I see a medic who is ressing and healing teammates take the headshot, quickly heal up, and then go right back to his job. Except now he drops, ducks, and dodges all the time.

I could see a HS with a BASR giving a minor concussion grenade effects (bullet enters brain...come on), or perhaps a delayed respawn timer. I'm just spit balling here.

Although I thought HS had slightly wonky hitboxes, I just thought it was the bullet drop, but there are times when I know I hit them in the head.

Anyways great critique and post OP. Keep up the good work!

Well as the OP mentioned.
The biggest problem with snipers is: They are nearly useless.

Doesn't matter if you make a 72323527636327/0 K/D if you don't take the base.

With the addition of Phoenix and Strikers, they have won a new, yet very very limited, role. Snipping Phoenixs/striker users.

But is a class that still need some love. My opinions are.


For snipers:
Remove the breath system or give certs to extend/reload faster it. it's just ridiculous the fact that a fururistic sniper can't hold his breath more than 1 secs.
Add some damage to the Bold action rifle, at the point someone who got shoot in the chest will be in VERY CRITICAL stat, and in the head will kill over shield nano and any other thing you could imagine.
Nerf the damage up close. So it does MORE damage from farther distance. not allowing the "fast scope ********"

By the way.

at 38:00.
The sniper rifle's bullets are so fast that if the target is close it does less "damage" than a target far away.

@Infiltrator
Add a new device, that could be equipped in the reccon detector slot, that could "Jam" enemy radar in the area.
Since we are at it why not give 3~4 models of jamming devices? Like one who make eng/medic tool don't work. One that register the "corpse" of someone so it can't be revived. Maybe a tool ala TF's spy device to jam vehicles over time.
Of courses we need to be able to destroy these devices, aside from the revive denier.

Overall, Make infiltrator more usefull. Make it a chaos creator instead of one "i appear i kill i disappear". Make them help in the battle

Frozen,

The only purpose of the BASR rifles is they can OHK any target from any range. The fact that they sometimes cannot do that is a design flaw. This is because unlike when you're a medic or engineer or whatever, snapping off headshots is literally all a sniper can do. We have no other tricks. We serve no other purpose.

You seem to think that removing the nanoweave Get Out Of Jail Free card would make the weapon imbalanced. I suggest perhaps you take a look at the leaderboard and look at what people are using these days to rack up fast kills. I think you'll find that most of the games top killers tend to use ESFs, MAXes, or gun from harassers and so forth. Snipers will never be kill factories except for a tiny fraternity, because reliably getting headshots is simply too hard. Accounting for player movement and distance is more difficult than a lot of people realize, which is why you see SO many low-BR snipers. They don't know better, or they think wow, a OHK rifle and I can turn invisible? OP! They learn quickly that it isn't the case.

A sniper who just parks themselves somewhere and lazily fires at targets all day is a dead man. Every shot you take lights a tracer to your position. Every missed shot is someone clued into your position. Cycling your cloak and moving around is vital for a sniper's survival and ability to engage reliably; twitch skill plays a lot into it, only in this case you're talking about having to twitch your crosshair into a space that in some cases may only be a pixel wide, because at 300m missing a headshot means no kill. It's not easy.

I'd be perfectly fine with Nano5 shrugging off headshots. It's 1000 certs for Nano5 and my gun was 1000 certs as well. That's fair play. But anything less than Nano5 shouldn't be enough for a headshot.

As for the cert trees, as a medic you can buff not just your med tool, but also make yourself hardier in combat, or cert into C-4, or buff your ambient heal, or any number of ways to grow your character and get better at healing. Engis can get better as their turrets, at their resupply, at repairing. All snipers serve to do is shoot, and there are a number of unique issues with shooting; scope sway and breath holding and cycling the chamber. We don't get certs for any of that crap, because sniping was lazily implemented.

If you hit someone in the head and that person doesn't die, at least it should disorient him/her.

No, the purpose of the BASR is to do maximum damage per shot at the cost of rate of fire. To increase the chance of a OHK, not guarantee it. And I'm not implying that a 300m headshot is in any way an easy shot. Just that the balance isn't completely dependent on skill, but also on risk.

Yes a infiltrator who is remains stationary will die. But who will die first? The HA behind the same cover at 50m, the engy behind their AI turret at 100m or a infiltrator in the same small area at 300m? Sniping involves far less risk than nearly any other role.

It never costs as many certs to defend an attack than it does to create it. I can defeat a max whose spent thousands of certs building their max with a 200 cert brick of c-4. I can deter a fully loaded ESF with a 500 cert left arm burster on my otherwise naked max. I can deter a MBT with a 250 cert skep launcher.

You keep on referring to sniper as a class and that sniper class is lazily implemented. There is no sniper class in PS2 because the sniper role isn't team orientated and is nearly useless in most games. In other FPS's you can pretty easily tell which team will win just by looking at the roster. The team with more snipers will lose. I've seen plenty of servers that when the third team member goes sniper it becomes completely acceptable to TK snipers to get them to switch. Any game with a respawn mechanic makes snipers a distraction at best.

The infiltrator class needs more variety yes. More ways to cause chaos, interfere with deployments and distract the enemy. That doesn't even vaguely imply getting a OHK BASR.

"The only purpose of the BASR is to OSK"

Uhm, I'd say the purpose of the BASR is to deliver insane amounts of damage per shot with the longest practical, effective range of any infantry weapon in the game. Also has good synergy with the infiltrator cloak since you can cloak while you rechamber the next round or reload, being practically invisible outside the short moments when you blink in to fire the weapon - as opposed to the semi auto rifle that forces you to stay visible for longer periods since several shots in a row are needed to down a target.

'insane amounts of damage' should make a pudding of the brain.
Pump action to the face deals insane amounts of damage and is not nullified at its intended range. Who would use PAS, a one trick pony, if it didn't instagib reliably on bodyshot? There are many people who consider them inferior to autoshotties even with instagib because they are too slow, too situational and too punishing on failure. Guess what, BASRs are the same.
Bolt actions are the very definition of 'situational' and on top of the 'qualities' they share with pump actions they are blessed with pretty much every possible artificial mechanic in the book to limit their utility. Now they suck at their only job due to the passive and the fact they lose a third of their nominal damage before reaching their intended range. TTK being anywhere between 0 and infinity due to the undetectable passive is pretty much a pure crapshoot.

Just started playing again after a couple months. I've been getting headshots when i hit them in the head. I use the LA80. I even had a little streak going with my silenced sassy at close ranges yesterday. I haven't really had a problem with that, but as you've said that doesn't really make the infiltrator able to change the battlefield much.

Vehicle hacking would do much for the class. The cases in which I've affected the battlefield the most usually involve shooting engineers repairing their vehicles. This can do some damage to an enemy but really only if you have teammates around to blow it up afterwards. Otherwise they'll just respawn, hop in their plane/tank and take off, or in a terrible turn of events try to hunt you down. Miss a headshot on a pilot with nv certed and you should probably find another place to hide. But to shoot that engineer, hack his vehicle and then parade around in disguise would be a game changer.

I think they've talked about this but it should be in already. I'm hoping this is what they mean when they say "new abilities" in the roadmap for infiltrator class update. My idea of how it would work is that you would be disguised as that faction until you either shoot, kill someone, get out, or declare yourself (which essentially would be raising your factions flag). Even your own faction would think you were an enemy. Hacking a deployed sunderer would really influence a battle, suddenly enemy troops are pouring out of the spawn point your team has been using. You would be unable to hack occupied vehicles obviously but it would really make the infiltrator a much more capable class. Give it a few certifications.

I'd really hope there are not any technical issues that bar this from happening. If this were in it would give infiltrators a great tool and add some taste back into a stale class.

Everything this man said and more. The BASRs are handicapped at their intended range, in their intended sphere. They are useless everywhere else and in every other situation; why should they not excel where they are supposed to? Why are they gimped even in their own little world?

Pump-shotties would be utterly useless if someone could survive a point-blank shot. Hell, almost nobody uses those anymore anyway. Some, including myself, use them to justify the purchase, but if all weapons were free, you bet I'd be using the semi-auto.