Please change the high caliber sniper rifles.

Never had such an issue an I was a heavy Sniper player in NC on my Server. Not seen your issue, I would say you just missed an actually had body shots.

You're not supposed to snipe in this game, that's why they gave infiltrators SMGs. Believe me, I love sniper rifles and the high risk / reward of using bolt actions at short-mid range, and the accomplishment of nailing a headshot on a sprinting target at 600m. But it's just not an archetype supported by Planetside 2, and you have to accept it.

First of all, snipers are impotent on the battlefield. If you take 20-40 seconds cloaking, acquiring a target, holding your breath, lining up that shot, uncloaking, and firing to take somebody out at long range (and they have not bought 2 ranks of Nanoweave to survive the headshot), some medic will just pick them in up 3 seconds. Barring that, they'll respawn at the Sunderer in 5.

I'm no slouch with the sniper rifles and I used them a lot up until the headshot changes a couple patches ago, and I think 20-40 seconds is realistic--I average about 0.5 kills per minute whenever I snipe long range, and I'm sure a few people do more and most people do less. Sniping simply has no effect on the battlefield, it's not efficient enough when it comes to kills per second. At close or mid range with a real weapon, you could have taken out 3-5 guys in the same 20-40 seconds, reloaded, and be on your way to new targets already.

If respawn times were less spammy, or there weren't mobile spawn points, or if this was a round-based shooter closer to CounterStrike, it'd be a different story. Sniping is based on attrition and taking out critical targets (permanently), and that is something that works in those sorts of games. But this isn't that sort of game (which is fine), so sniping simply doesn't fill any useful role.

And this isn't even counting that snipers don't OHK most folks anymore at any range beyond "small room." If you want to snipe nowadays and actually have your headshots net you kills, you have to work at less than 30-75m. At those ranges, an assault rifle, LMG, or even certain carbines can drop somebody in a fraction of a second anyway.

Buy an SMG and do some actual damage, forget about the sniper rifles. They're just there to make CoD and Battlefield transfers feel like the weapon selection is "complete."

This needs to change. Bolt action headshot should be oneshot!

one of the partial solutions i've seen: sniper headshot = impossible to revive. 2 medics not able to outheal/outrevive the dmg done by a sniper = suddenly there is much more utility to be found when the enemy force pushes far from their sundie and counts on medics. And yes, the game is way too respawn happy :/
Some kind of utility tailored against maxes and mech (not hard, now it's approx 0) would be nice too.

here is a fat design fail though
1. f2p BR1 player
2. starting NC loadout - nc14 bolt driver
3. ???
4. SMG... i mean profit!

#3 must be something along the lines of: pull 3k certs out of your *** (class tools/suit slot/misc/smg+mods). If we had an access to a crappy dirt cheap smg entry level model right off the bat it would be a different story.
No other class has to drag its collective *** through the glass and live coals to get anywhere.

I use the RAMS .50 and I would say about 95% of my head shots end in a kill. I don't use a suppressor either.

Yeah well, I have to be within 100m to get reliable headshots... That's not long range at all...
A lot of automatic weapons shoot you from that range.. Passed that, there's no point... At least on the server I play on. You can get 8 headshots and 1 might give you a kill.. Mostly from other infiltrators... Useless Parallax..

70-80% of my headshots end with them living...

Well i got Auraxium with 3 sniperrifles i agree that boltaction headshots should be instakills against all but heavy... BUT i still do alot of good as a sniper (and if theres a medic there hes the first ill drop, or i use dead body as bait and hes the 2nd to drop) if they zig-zag a bit while healing it will save there ***** maybe 20% of the time, i fire fast and shot 2-3 shots before they revive and one of them is a headshot more often than not... (can make a snipermovie and show how i often take whole groups out at range)

when did you farm those medals? I had the bright idea of farming the remaining kills with nc14 just recently (and planned to slowly farm other weapons) and boy is this a chore, i grinded to a halt because i simply log out out of frustration. I am few dozen kills away and simply can't force myself to do it.

If you farmed a medal with tier1, then with tier2 then with tier3 as soon as they were released you simply have no idea. Now that NW is officially awesome and takes a dump on 3 lesser models of BASRs starting from 30m in the worst case scenario, forget it. We are talking about sneaking up intimately close on people who have tons of health, extended mags, pinpoint accuracy in their 10bullet/sec boomsticks all while you are a single unsuccessful HS away from being dead. You have more chance killing people by suicide-bumrushing them: cloak, run up close and try pistol/BASR-knifing them or dropping the mines under their feet.

The only scenario in which the BASR weapons remain unconditionally viable is tower killwhoring from under air platforms or from the roof because targets are within close range OHK. Unfortunately for me such convenient stalls with plenty of targets looking the other way just waiting to be reaped happen in the very center of big battles which cause my fps goes to ****. Jitter and lag make aiming for heads really painful.

Well i started playing in november and almost only sniped(saving CR to buy other stuff i used stock rifle first to aurax then bought xm-98 and used to aurax just recently decided to fork up the 1000 for the Parallax (2 months or so) and although i spend maybe 10% of my time sniping with it, i racked up auraxium pretty fast... (use the commisioner as backup) Big cert fiesta was when new ESRL's came out when all heavies stod still and you could HS them and then BS them or HS them again when they where stuck reloading....

Nowadays i still use it mostly to take out AV turrets (but also to take out heavies with shoulder launchers to support my armor units they are so kill-horny you easy get the 2 hs needed to bag them) Also love to outsnipe enemy snipers easy kills (95% of the time)

True i dont use my trusty old friends as much anymore, but they earned me alot of the Certs i invested in other stuff...

lol @ the thought of not being able to OHK everything as being useless...

so you did it in a more or less proper order (props for using semi-auto for so long, most people switched to bolt actions right of the bat) and the news about NW didn't catch with your pants down. I was somewhere halfway to auraxium with NC14 and switched to longshot as soon as i had certs (i think SMGs were released like 2 weeks later). Longshot was a fine weapon to use, but my switch to NC14 for a medal simply happened too late, well after the substantial transition from flak to nw began after big HE nerfs.
At this point in time going back to the earlier, less powerful models is a disaster. Their slightly faster RoF is nothing compared to huge and i mean HUGE drawbacks (harder aim due to lower speed/bigger drop and pathetic OHK range).

i wonder why pump actions dont get the same treatment. Some people already consider them too situational for general use, if they lost OHK on body shot nobody would use them over auto-shotties. Guess what - bolt action rifles are the "pump-actions of the long range", as much specialized but with much harder aiming and way slower fire rate. If they don't OHK reliably, they offer absolutely no benefit over semi-autos that would offset their drawbacks.

For those who try to say that snipers are useless, don't impact the fight, go get an SMG, etc etc... I welcome you to come find me and my band of merry men on the Mattherson server. You will quickly see the folly of that myth, which gets perpetuated repeatedly on these boards. It amuses me to see such blithering nonsense get repeated as we disable AA batteries, eliminate lancer nests, and send maxes hiding behind their spawn shields.

Go watch the video I posted on page 3 of this thread. That is the problem with nanoweave. I wasn't camping 300m in safe territory padding my KDR. I was balls deep in enemy platoons, tryin to disable the AV spam so my guys could safely get a sunderer up to quartz ridge. And 6 headshots were "nanoweaved". There was no skill in countering me, just fitting nanoweave.

Increasing the headshot multiplier fixes this issue without making body shots or bolt actions OP (reducing damage falloff would be a bad change IMO). As I said before, infiltrators pay a steep price for the ability to use sniper rifles - either change the price we pay (get rid of sway, reduce/eliminate unscoping to rechamber) or do what makes sense and increase the HS multiplier.

NW is already prevalent and only increases with cert inflation as more players max out their classes. It's a huge problem. And I say this as someone who can safely say I know a thing or two about the infiltrator class, weapons and mechanics in this game.

I don't silence it and yes, I may have stated the incorrect range of 150m. I guess what I meant to say is I never stay outside 150m. I'm always at least within this distance with the majority of the time trying to get in the 75m range. I don't enjoy hearing the dink sound from enemies with NW but it doesn't really bother me that much since I'm always moving forward trying to get closer in the 75m range regardless.

I agree that the price paid to completely counter a 1000 cert weapon is very unfair. When looking at NW this way, I completely agree that something should be changed. It's ridiculous that it only cost 10 certs to negate the OHK capabilities of a 1000 cert weapon, which is the primary reason to use these weapons. I agree that increasing the HS multiplier is the ideal route.

Pretty much nobody stays outside 150m because it's a playstyle with an extremely low returns and you will die of boredom. It might be ok from time to time (let's do something different) but it makes no sense as a primary tactic
I guess my beef with this whole deal comes from
- too short OHK ranges by default on all rifles
- drastically reduced usefulness of 3 lesser BASR rifles against widespread higher ranks of nanoweave
- harsh suppressor penalty

point 2 and 3 destroy any illusion of choice that different weapons and mods are supposed offer. The most powerful rifle should be the gold standard but other weapons should be plenty fine for the job. As it stands, tier3 becomes a so-so baseline and other models become a junkyard material. Easier aiming vs not showing at the minimap - another example of "not really a choice", given the direction the things are going. Suppressor range penalty is over-the-top ridiculous given the rest of the sniping related puzzle, as if dealing with drop and crippled muzzle velocity alone was not enough.

I agree that there's no excuse for the most expensive BARs to be as crippled as they are right now. The OHK range needs to be increased on them. The suppressor range and bullet drop is also a joke which is why I don't even bother. You're right: SOE should definitely look into adjusting both considering that they are suppose to be the gold standard of BARs.

the saddest joke of all is that the devs give exactly 0 thought to the interactions between things and the 1st and the 2nd order consequences of the numbers they pull out their collective ***.
Is it really that hard to test what happens when you pit a weapon with its strongest counter in the worst case scenario?
"hmm, let's see what happens with the sniper rifle when we add suppressor and pit it against highest NW... hmm, that can't be right, 50m for top-tier and 30m for everything else... that doesn't pass the smell test". This should be done on day 1.
They have all the data necessary to make educated design choices, while we, the playerbase, have to painfully test **** by trial-and-error and fill the gaps with lots of guesswork.

This is purely subjective garbage. It sounds like the same thing from those who simply haven't found out how to be effective at sniping. The medic in that scenario can and will be taken out by an attentive sniper. If anything, that first kill is simply to draw out the medic. I'm typically sniping from 200m as that's just where I have the most fun and enjoyment. (And why I don't run with a suppressor 99% of the time.) Medics are always the first targets I'll take out. Sniping is also situational in its usefulness. Like what Mustarde mentioned above, keeping the AV toned down for his team to get a Sunderer to the base. In my case, I love sniping against infantry attacking a base, specifically on Esamir where there's a lot of terrain to cover. It helps push them back a little while my team pushes forward.

I know how to be effective at sniping--at least as effective as sniping generally can be. I just have realized that I can be way more effective (for just about every purpose) sticking with my team and using an SMG. And even more effective if I change to another class, though I generally don't.

If you need to suppress AV across a no-man's-land, you're better off cloaking in with a Flash or dropping in with Ejection Seats and using your SMG for some CQC work. Not only will you take out 3x or 4x (or, in the case of most people who have trouble sniping at long range because of the learning curve, probably a lot more) as many HAs in the same amount of time, but they'll be more disrupted and paranoid from the experience.

I still snipe a lot. But it's a choice to do the thing that is fun and I enjoy, and I am fully aware that it is probably the least effective way to help my team. If I'm running with my outfit and we actually need to get something done, I'll probably switch to a real weapon.