I've been sniping for a long time in this game. Perhaps... too long. PU02 made some slight but very annoying changes to how we scope our rifles. They affect higher zoom scopes more, but when you carefully look at each rifle, including the close range BASR's and SASR's, the scope animation was lengthened and you go from hipfire to scoped mouse sensitivity at the start of this animation. As you rechamber or unscope, you go to hipfire mouse sensitivity. The result? I have literally been unable to re-learn these weapons. What was (I presume) either a bug or was intended to prevent quickscoping has killed my ability to snipe effectively. And after the holiday break worth of frustration, I think I can articulate why. But before I do that, let me just say, I am open to the possibility that I may have just ingrained so much "muscle memory" that it will take longer for me to unlearn. Sure, that's possible. But here's what these changes have done to me. 1. Accuracy: The awkward shifting of sensitivity during this animation means in order to track a moving target, you need to move your mouse at two different velocities while scoping, while your visual field changes at different moments from your sensitivity. This is what I tried to re-learn and practice with... and let me tell you, I simply was NOT able to reliably keep the crosshairs on a moving target while scoping. Killing stationary targets remain trivial, but good luck if the target is moving like 80% of players in Planetside are. 2. Vulnerability: I've always criticized semi-auto weapons for requiring the user to ADS for several seconds while putting their rounds down-range. With bolt actions, you scope up and fire your shot within an instant, and keep moving while rechambering. The issue of accuracy plays right into vulnerability, as I found myself forced to stand still longer to adjust the crosshairs and fire the shot. Even the additional fractions of a second that the scoping animation takes adds to the amount of time you spend lining up and taking the shot. I'm getting countersniped by other good infiltrators much easier now, and am taking a substantial amount of damage trying to line up and fire and get back to cover. Battles that used to be a sniper paradise for me are now frustrating deaths and grinding kills, until I give up and pull a fury flash or tank and kill everyone. I've tried and tried over the last few weeks, and you simply cannot "shoot and scoot" with these new scope mechanics. I was often fond of jumping while rechambering the next round and then quickly aiming for another shot when under fire. Also near-impossible. Again, on stationary targets... you still get easy kills. It's everyone else that is moving or is close by that this becomes a problem. 3. Drag-shots: A strange effect of these animation changes is that you can no longer drag-shot. A drag shot is where you see a moving target and you move your mouse in a linear (usually diagonal) vector that will eventually intersect with the target's head. Then instead of relying on precision mouse movement, you are just focusing on timing your shot to line up with that intersection of your scope over that target. (someone please help me out and post a good video of drag-shots). The problem is that when you do this now, the rechamber sensitivity goes to hipfire before the scope unzooms. The result? At the end of your drag-shot you now are looking 30-60 degrees off your target. Even if you don't use this method of aiming, simply having your mouse move during the shooting and rechambering will cause this to happen, and require yet more aiming adjustments to re-acquire the target. This is all so disruptive to quality weapon behavior and performance that I can't help but think it was a bug, or at least implemented so poorly that it will get adjusted or fixed. I literally have given up on using the M77-B, SR-7 and RAMS.50... weapons that I have thousands and thousands of kills with, and know how to use well. No one around me seems as upset about this, so I don't know if it's just me, if I'm going crazy, if I can't adapt, or what... perhaps it is because most of my sniping was on moving targets at relatively close ranges instead of very long range sniping on stationary targets. I've resorted to using the TSAR-42 (close range BASR) because the animation and sensitivity issues are less noticeable, however even without sway, I'm nowhere near as effective as I used to be. Oddly enough, the auto scout rifles are becoming my default weapon of choice, or I just run an SMG or switch classes. So please, fellow infiltrators - tell me... how has your post PU02 sniping experience been? Have you felt the change in how the rifles feel or handle? Has your performance taken a hit? Are you doing better than ever? I'm willing to make noise on this issue until I'm blue in the face, but not if I'm the only one having problems. I need to know where the rest of you stand.
One thing that throws me off is that it feels like hold breath takes time to fully remove sway. Like, maybe half a second before I'm fully stable. I've never really done shoot and scoot or drag-shots. I don't know what they did, but they should probably just roll it back.
run.....kneel down...cloak...scope.... The whole animation from kneel to scope is slow as hell... (edit Scoping in is slow as hell) wtf atm I also find my shots not hitting any dam thing sometimes even when the target is standing still... (its like I got a youtube vid playing in the backround when its not) =P Gameplay speeds up like I got packet loss or something.... Been fooking around in my sundy lately due to this...
1. Noticed delay on stabilizing the "hold breath". I can live with that. 2. As for CQC - I never quick scope, always wait to scope to load. Im bypassing this by scoping in the estimated direction. By if the target switch direction - anything can happen. So its kinda - wanna back to old to be persistent with my abilities.
The patch for me only required me to go back to relying on my pistol like I used to, before I was as good with the parallax as I am now. I think you were affected by this change so much more than I was because you use the SR-7 while I use the parallax. Even before the change, the parallax could never be relied on for CQC. It was viable for a shot or two, but the re-chamber time meant it just couldn't be sustained. I think you reached a point with the SR-7 though, where you could sustainably operate at whatever range you needed to and the pistol was more of a panic weapon. That re-chamber and reload speed, I think, gave you enough room so that you could get comfortable with things like drag shots and quick scopes and the update pretty much took all that and threw it out the window. I think this scope change is to close range sniping what nanoweave was to long range sniping. One end of the spectrum was completely screwed by it, people in the middle had to adapt quite a bit but could still manage, and people at the other end were completely unaffected. I usually operate somewhere in the middle, so while both nanoweave and this change mean I have had to make adjustments, the fundamentals still work for me. I hope the whole sniper community realizes the negative effects of this change, because I think one of the problems with the nanoweave disagreements were some people just weren't too affected by it and therefore didn't understand the problem. As of right now I think it is a broken and buggy mechanic. If it was an intentional change I think SOE needs to rework it so that it is more consistent and manageable, and if not I hope it can be fixed soon so that it doesn't get placed on the backburner.
Honestly, my general stance on most any change is, "learn to adapt." No matter how inconvenient something might be, to try and understand the reasoning for it and adjust your play accordingly. This has been one of the few cases in a long career of gaming that I just simply can't seem to do that. I'm not a big BSAR user. But the scoped Semi's took the same hit. My Gauss SPR has been in my primary loadout for a solid year now until these recent weeks where the new scope-up transition makes using the weapon go beyond annoying and inconvenient to flat out feeling too awkward to want to use anymore. I feel like I now have no reason to use the Gauss SPR over the Impetus, that a choice that was situational now because blatant and obvious, as it simply 'feels' better to use now. Never mind the removal of scope sway. There's not even an issue of kill ranges, unlike the bolt actions. So really it shouldn't effect me negatively, and yet I'm still disheartened that the optimal solution due to this change is to box up my Gauss SPR and run with the impetus in all circumstances. I hope that, for whatever reason they did this, bug or intentional, they'll either fix it quickly or re-evaluate it as a solution to whatever problem they were trying to fix wit it.
For me the change was jarring as well. Although I think I've got the hang of it now, I don't feel that I am up to the level I was at before the update. I think the change that really hit home most is the short delay, added right after you fire a round, that prevents you from moving your screen. That alone has made everything seem somewhat... off. I've always preferred the RAMS over the other BAS, especially now after PU02, so that has not changed for me. I still seem to be able to quick snipe without much problem(other than that delay). Overall, I think it will just take time for long time snipers in general to adjust to the changes. The update didn't kill sniping for me, just made it a bit more difficult.
Soap, an Infiltrators Rhyme: One day CuteBeaver was sniping The next day little beaver was griping. How hard could this be! It can't just be me! To the forums she went to start typing. She remembered all the fun times she shot people, and was reported for crimes. Yet now when she scopes Her hands feel like soap Missing targets by dozens and dimes. The closer CuteBeaver did get The soapyness felt even more wet. With cute little tears She kept aiming at rears Her enemies did not break a sweat. Yes I am affected by this. I don't feel confident using the Parallax/XM98 like i used to. I only use it for longer ranges now and deal with the ghost for closer assassination styles as its less soapy. I really hope this is a bug which is fixed soon. I tested this pretty extensively Jan 3rd. In my opinion Parallax is manageable at range for the most part. Its the drag shots and the stuff we do under pressure up close which is majorly affected. I'v tried messing with my sensitivities to decrease the effect. Doesn't really solve anything other then forcing me to adapt to the new settings on top of the unpredictable soap.
Agree with a lot of the OP, the drag shots I particularly have noticed. However, considering we are still in the first week of 2014 and things like the NS7-PDW reload animation are STILL not fixed, I feel it's still to early to make real noise about this until it's a confirmed 'feature'. Still hope the lack of inclusion about any of this in the patch notes and the rather messy weeks we had after PU2 with stability and little children with a twitter and a bot net mean it's something they simply haven't got round to fixing yet.
My cat agrees with this. Got to hate it. For me, it's especially the stabilization of holding breath thou.
Scoping feels like dragging your mouse through mud suddenly, with an annoying delay of hold breath and the feeling that the bullets are behaving strangely different than before. In addition it happens way more often that I see those bullets hit the head of the target and do no damage. This problem was present before but now got really annoying. I find myself more often in close combat or auto-scout killing enemys than sniping after the last update.
The scope-changes almost forces snipers to stay far away. Unless you want to go for boring long range sniping, the only option right now is to use the TSAR/SAS/Ghost. BTW: Could we get some low magnification scopes for the SR7/V10/LA80?! Why do we need 3 BASRs for long range engagements but only one for close-mid range?
Is it just me or Did some scopes got misaligned too ? X10 on my XM98 seems to have an offest to the right that is hard to compensate...
I was never interested in playing sniper (Tanks are my favourite), but the last few days I made a pure Sniper toon. So I'm not affected by any change in the past. It was really easy to adjust my playstyle (from tank to sniper) as it is completely different and I had to learn it from scratch. I think the problem of your "generation" of snipers is that you didn't really play a "Sniper". Most (not all) Snipers play their toon in a range of 100-200m to the possible targets, even closer and being part of a zerg within the angle of the attack direction. So you are pretty much forced to react quickly using the scoping mechanics that also other Ego-Shooters offer. With that playstyle you are better suited with an Auto-Scout-Rifle or SMG and a 2-4x scope. Personally I play completely different, so I'm able to take my time to choose my targets. I don't need to react extremely quick, I can wait and I have the patience to do it. So your problems with scoping is not existing for me. In other games (16 vs. 16 ******** ego shooting minigames) you'd call me a "camper" , but in my age I deserve tactics and a playstyle that ain't that stressy as yours and in PS it's a valid playstyle and you still need a lil bit brain so you don't get slaughtered and countersniped every few shots (learned that the hard way at the beginning of my sniper carrer). So maybe you are better suited to adjust your complete playstyle instead of only the scoping style?
Thats probably the "safe-spawn" timer that prevents that freshly spawned toons get killed before they can move (at Sunderer)
Yep, just noticed that on my TR toon yesterday, also noticed an extreme bullet drop, misalined to the right. But cant remember which scope I equipped on him
Most times neither a sunderer or spawn-point was near the enemy. I think it is the server cheating me and the char is already somewhere else and not on the place I see him.
