800 damage Bolt Actions have damage drop off....WTF

Man, this game would be something entirely different if the weapons were based in reality, logic, or sense. Leave your brain at the door and get your guns on.

The 2 games' mechanics are different.
TTK and Flinch. So let's say a sniper in PS1 gets shot, not disturbed in the slightest, and he can still pull off a shot.
A sniper in PS2, he gets shot once and it's game over. His sights severely jerk and with the low TTK his taken out within moments.

Keep that in mind.

bolt actions don't need more breath really, it's the semi-autos that got the short end of the stick. When you need 3 bullets to kill, the last one was often happening in full swing.

lol no. With NW2 they survive at 75m for tier1 and tier2 rifles, tier3 is about 100m (should be impossible). NW5 substracts about 25m from that (~25-30% of effective OHK range goes out the window). NW2 is where NW5 should be according to advertised numbers.



look at the difference between current NW5 and its advertised value. ~75 -> ~50, ~100 -> ~75

I hope they do improve the value of semi-autos as they require more skill to be successful with as far as I'm concerned. Though I guess it's sort of the same story with shotguns. Semi Auto < Bolt/Pump Action. The future is inferior to the past in this game for some reason.

that's a tough nut to crack. Infs have resilience of a paper tissue so they prefer not to leave traces in the first place, which is not possible with semi-autos which tell the victim direction and give a chance to escape. Blowing the cover is asking for trouble, that's why so many opt for OHKs. Semi-autos also require much more time to kill the enemy than the rapid "fire, cloak, reposition" combo possible with bolt actions. Being still for a second or 2 greatly increases risk of being countersniped.
Semi autos are only viable in teamplay when you have a lot of meatshield diverting attention from you, in such scenarios semi autos are more flexible because you can fire liberally, take potshots with minimal risk and finish wounded enemies. Lonewolfing? Only bolt action for "never know what hit'em" playstyle.

Good point

Um I'm not sure what you're actually complaining about because I sat at 150m early yesterday and got 15 headshots in a row. No misses and no problems doing OHK's. So I honestly thing you're entirely wrong about people running NW especially since the tank spam has drastically increased as well as the addition of the Harasser. I think people are still using Flak and my killing streak yesterday kinda proves that they're still going Flak over NW.

The only spots they might be running NW are in Biolabs or at the Crown but I haven't been in more than two Crown fights in over a month. Biolabs are wrought with explosions due to RL's, Fracture's, Ravens, C4, and AP mines so I highly doubt people are choosing NW over Flak there.

balancing a whole category of weapons and the class that uses said weapons by default around the amount of HE spam is wrong. HE spam = snipers good because flak, no HE spam = snipers bad because nanoweave? That is a problem, because a paradigm shift in metagame can throw sniper rifles to garbage bin. I don't think other weapons are affected to such a degree by what amounts to mood swings. Going by the numbers only NW5 should protect against OHK, and that's only sometimes, at longer distances.

that's because real life has no rendering distance or balancing issues...

snipers are negligible in a great scheme of things, so i don't see too many balance issues. The rifles are already blessed with hardcore sway and it's not like hitscan AWP in CounterStrike at all. Besides sniper weapons are artificially pushed by bugged nanoweave into ranges where flexible full-auto bullethoses retain their pinpoint accuracy. Starter NC weapon must be below 50m to score a OHK against fully decked out char. Fail due to insufficient dmg caused by the intersection of brutal dmg dropoff and bugzorness of NW and you will be sprayed down faster than you can say 'oh ****' - that's insane.
Engineers can snipe stuff at 700m with AV turret no sweat but you can't snipe them if they are further than 75m? it doesn't make any sense, sniper rifles are exactly for that purpose.

so.... sniper rifles got nerfed or have been this way since release?

I was making a comment in response to another's about how sniper's rifles are in real life... I said nothing specific and wasn't commenting about how balance should be in this game or if it was perfect... so I don't really understand what your response has to to with my quoted post

it could be this way from the start, who knows. Even if that's the case, there were factors that concealed the problem:
- hardcore HE spam - liberators, lolpods, prowlers, you name it - flak was the most useful mod
- people were busy farming certs for other things than high rank nanoweave

Now the consecutive HE nerfs and ongoing power creep made the problem surface. Flak is not as useful as it used to be and people farmed enough certs - now a big part of playerbase has access to high levels of NW and actually uses NW.
The problem will become worse with time because more and more people will have NW5 and in case of sniper rifles you can't make them passively better. There is no mod that improves real life dmg unlike in case of bullethoses which get ammo variants, tight CoF and whatnot. Your only way to counter the effect is to get closer but keep in mind you are against people who were able to mod their weapons to work at greater spectrum of ranges thanks to tightened CoF, so the sniper's main advantage of substantial airgap goes out the window.

Then there is an issue with NW, it's bugzored and gives more hp than advertised which amounts to a substantial unintended nerf of sniper rifles.

Yeah, because PS1 had sway and drop and travel time and enemies moved in the exact same way and PS2 is clearly a direct copy of PS1 so the same completely applies.

Stupidest justification I've heard in a long time, you do not deserve to be involved in balance discussions.

That is worse than I thought.
SOE really needs to fix this,
Sniper rifles are pretty much useless now.

True as that may be, its always the snipers fault if he lost a long range fight to a non-hacking player without a SR. Not only does the opponent's weapon require multiple hits to dish any significant damage, the sniper rifles allow for strafing and weaving while maintaining excellent accuracy and dishing out enough damage to win in two shots to the body.

The ones that lose would have lost anywhere else, since they probably stayed still while uncloaked and hesitated to fire; best to keep taking estimated shots.

Oh, and the sniper sway has been made insanely predictable. Scope will always start by going up and to the left. It's like having no sway at all.

Any gun but shotguns can outsnipe a sniper when he's been detected. Just burst fire. And the sniper won't be able to pull off a shot with the insane jerking. Not to mention the TTK.

One question: Do you play infiltrator much? If so, you would know that a detected sniper has no chance at all. And it's not like it's easy to get a headshot on a moving target as well.

useless no (they are fine in few popular scenarios eg killwhoring in towers from under air platforms etc), but annoying as hell in general? Certainly, especially weaker models. NW pisses all over them, there is no way to describe it differently. Tier3 rifle is pretty much mandatory if you want anything resembling reliability.

check these videos out:
this one is SAS-R - pretty much low zoom version of NC14 Bolt Driver

it gives 'ridiculous' a whole new meaning, seriously. I can't even comprehend how this is even possible even with broken NW (weaksauce headshot multiplier or what?).

this one pits TR rifles against NW2 and NW5

just look how insanely close you have to be to score OHK with entry level rifle (around 4:50), Rams .50 is not stellar either.

Nonsense. The question of whether you snipe falls on you. I've won many fights after detection even in ranges that would hardly be considered ideal. It's no different from playing NC back when flinch was high. Duck and weave till they miss, then return fire.

If you're still aiming for headshots even after they've spotted you, it's no wonder you get outgunned.

By getting a headshot on a moving target, I meant the initial shot. If they spot you, and get a hit on you, you have to run or you're finished. Ducking and weaving through an LMG's 50-100 round clip is nigh impossible. And while they're reloading, they'll probably just run around erratically to make sure you don't score a hit.

And this isn't what this thread is discussing. It's the extremely ******** drop-off on sniper rifles. Just look at the above videos.