First off, I'm not making this thread to whine, or cry, or complain. I'm doing it at the suggestion of one of the Devs. If they hadn't told me to 'make sure I'm vocal about this' I probably wouldn't bother. So with that, let's begin. Nanoweave Yes, it's another thread about Nanoweave vs. BASRs. If you don't like it you can go somewhere else. One of the biggest reasons people like to give in favor of Nanoweave is that it's been the same since launch. Well, considering that this was not known until recently I don't buy that argument. In fact, Nanoweave has not been the same since launch. While the HP values it provides may not have changed, the description certainly has. Let's get back into that mentality we all had in the first few months the game was out. Remember how explosive splash damage had a huge radius? Remember how mines could tear multiple players apart at once while appearing almost completely invisible? Remember how liberators bombing the crap out of infantry was about the most frustrating thing in the game because they didn't even have to hit you to OHK you? Remember how one MBT could pin an entire squad down in their spawn room? Yeah, you do. And if you don't then just know this; It was hell. The Vehicle Apocalypse Back then there was only one way to combat that hell as we all waited for the nerfs that we knew were coming that would make the game playable again as Infantry. We used Flack Armor. It let us survive one extra mine, let us stand a little longer through a MBT explosive barrage, let us run a little further from those damn bombing liberators and ESFs. It was all we could do to survive in the incredibly hostile environment unbalanced anti-infantry vehicles and explosives created. There was no question in anyone's mind that FA was the only way to go, especially considering how useless the other suit slot upgrades where by comparison. After all, what was the point in carrying extra ammo, grenades, rockets and utility items when you didn't live long enough to run low on ammo? And that Nanoweave upgrade cost 1261 certs for only a 25% HP boost. That was a lot of certs back then! Especially because those MBT/ESF/Lib/Lightning pulling kill farmers were getting all the certs, and anyone on the other side of them... Well, they didn't get so many certs. Anyway, my point is that Nanoweave was too expensive and offered almost no protection against the issues at the time, whereas FA helped a lot of people survive the vehicle onslaught and minefield that the game was in those days. Then, all of a sudden, the nerf struck. Suddenly mines didn't one shot you anymore. Tanks had to actually hit you with their shot to kill you outright. Liberators couldn't mindlessly bomb battlegrounds! ESFs couldn't go on strafing runs that killed 10 players per magazine! Oh joy! Oh rapture! We could leave the spawn rooms! It was safe to go outside! The nightmare was over! A New Era Dawns It was the dawn of a new day for Planetside 2, and there was much rejoicing. VS and NC Light Assaults danced together in the streets. TR Heavies looked to clear skies and breathed in the sweet smell of...oppression, I guess. Medics tended to their wounded with a smile, safe in the knowledge that never again need they fear being vaporized the moment they stepped out from behind that curtain of shimmeringlight that protected the huddling masses from the roaring cannon fire of OPed vehicles. There was just one little question on everyone's mind, "Now that explosives aren't such a huge pain in the ***, what's the best suit slot upgrade to go with?" No one really knew the answer. Nanoweave was still extremely expensive and after all the mental scarring most soldiers suffered in the field, many were reluctant to relinquish their FA in favor of something that only gave a 25% HP increase at the highest level, which cost an astronomical 1000 certs to obtain. In the wake of the Vehicle Apocalypse, what any given soldier used in their suit slot was a matter of personal preference. There was no clear 'best' upgrade anymore. But of course, no one knew that the true value of Nanoweave was double what the game told us it was. And how could we have known? Sniper Zero and the Fall of the Bolt Action Then came Sniper Zero; The first poor SoB to line up the perfect long distance headshot only to be greeted by a hollow 'THUNK' instead of a kill, and watch in horror as his target escaped. "Hm," he pondered. "I must have missed. I'll get that HA next shot." But that next shot came and went with the same results. Again and again until his only recourse was to come to the forums and make the fateful mistake of bringing it to our attention that certain levels of Nanoweave were capable of preventing BASRs from one shotting infantry. The great mathematical minds amongst us eagerly began working on the formula for how such a thing could be possible, and using their third grade math skills, they figured out that 25% of 500 was 125! So if the total effective health points of someone with Nanoweave 5 was 1125, and bolt actions did a minimum of 550 damage at range times 2 for the headshot multiplier, why that meant-.. Sweet merciful GOD that meant headshots would leave the wearer with a whole 25 HP! But oh, it was so expensive, so only the top Battle Rank players could afford it at the time, and that was generally okay with snipers. After all, there were only like 5 BR 100 players in the world, and if they encountered someone with enough EHP to keep them from one shotting their targets, they just assumed that they must be missing the head. All was pleasant for a while. Classes were fairly well balanced, vehicles were fun to play and fight again, and the only problems with the game were crippling lag, an average framerate of 5, and chronic disconnects. It was a veritable Golden Age, because although our hardware couldn't run the game, we had a fighting chance as infantry again. One day, the forums were set all aflutter with news of increased passive cert gain, service ribbons and alerts. "Could it be?" said the n00bs. "I'll have thousands of disposable certs like the BR 100 players?" And that was exactly what happened. Certs began flying around faster than Superman, and even the meekest of players soon realized that they had enough certs to try new things. Like Nanoweave armor, the mythical and elusive passive buff that would prevent those sneaky snipers from killing them with headshots. Meanwhile, the snipers sat upon their lofty perches, hidden away at the bases of trees or on the tops of hills, chipping away at the enemy forces with headshot after headshot until-... What's this? That headshot didn't kill that guy. No matter. Must have been a mistake. Oh, that one didn't kill either! Well, maybe he had Nanoweave 5. Hold on, that one didn't kill either! What's going on here!? The Nanoweave Investigation Snipers flocked en mass to the forums and to youtube, seeking some explanation as to why they suddenly began to draw in a sucking motion upon the rear ends of their foes. The former claims that Nanoweave 5 could stop a bolt action shot from killing its target had not been forgotten, and so Nanoweave Armor became the target of extensive research. Initially, using the same third grade mathematical formula applied some months before, the same conclusion was reached that Nanoweave 5 did indeed prevent headshot OHKs from taking place, but a few brave scientists dug deeper and discovered an astonishing and horrific truth. Nanoweave was bugged! The health it actually gave was double what the description said it would be! Suddenly it was made public knowledge that to survive a bolt action shot to the head, all one had to do was run around wearing Nanoweave 2, and further ranks meant that you could survive with more health and force the sniper to come to you to get a kill. Suddenly, that faithful Flack Armor was dropped faster than a two ton brick in favor of cheap Nanoweave so that engineers could AV snipe with their turrets, Medics could be lazy on the battlefield and stand still, and heavies didn't have to worry about putting their shield up when they stopped to take a lock-on shot at a passing ESF. Even snipers could survive shots from other snipers! Thus was the beginning of the widespread scrapping of all bolt action sniper rifles, and the tears of former snipers as they buckled under the torment that losing their ability to perform their sniping duty inflicted. Still, they waited in the shadows, lurking with scout rifles that felt alien to their hands - hands trained to hold the weight of a bolt action - for any sign that a bug fix for the Nanoweave problem was incoming, only to have whatever hope they managed to hold onto swept away. "It's not a Bug, it's a Feature" Game Update 10 came early in June, and it was the biggest middle finger the developers had ever given to the Infiltrator. With the change of the description of Nanoweave Armor to correctly reflect its actual values, the weak state of BASRs was solidified as an indirect result of an intended feature. Those who waited for good news were crushed, once and for all, beneath the uncaring and unforgiving heel of the Devs, who allowed this senseless slaughter of an entire class to go on unheeded and unmarked. Now, the sniper is a rare species bordering on extinction, and many who would have once considered themselves masters have fallen into despair and ruin. But hope, though faint, still remains. The Infiltrator update remains the sole light at the end of a long, dark tunnel, though with each passing month it moves further away. The silence of the Devs may be deafening, the road to regaining the sniper's former glory may be a long one, and fortune may continue to turn her back on the sniper, but even still there are those who remain and try. They try to work within the confines of the game as is. They try to snipe from a mere 50 meters from their targets, even though nearly every other weapon in the game is more effective at that range. They try to get those headshot kills even though there's like an 80% chance that it'll only tickle their target and give their location away. They keep trying through all the pain, death and plummeting K/D ratings to prove that the sniper will not die lying down. Though they may fail hard, and fail often fighting a deck stacked against them, they still try. To all those who keep our art of assassination alive; we salute you. Okay so I may have gone overboard with this topic, but after being serious about it for so long it felt good to be sarcastic and have a little fun. TL;DR Nanoweave was underestimated for a long time because of the incorrect description on it and people really liked their flack armor, so it went unused until people started noticing that they weren't dying to sniper headshots anymore. Therefore, Nanoweave has not been the same since launch in the minds of the players and if it had the correct stats displayed all along it would have been used more in the past. Essentially what this means is that the devs couldn't have known until now how it would negatively impact the sniper community and if this had been realized months earlier we might have seen a fix by now.
What situations are we talking about here? I get how this can be an inconvenience but this sounds like it's game breaking which I don't think it is.
We're talking about sniping at ranges greater than 75 meters. The odds of meeting a target with at least NW2 are very high considering it only costs 11 certs to obtain, and at ranges greater than 75 meters no bolt action rifle is capable of one shot killing a player with NW2 or greater.
Well, are you trying to snipe stationary targets? Are they moving? If they are, you'll most likely have to hit them twice anyway which isn't that hard to pull off. Frankly, I can see how the enemy surviving a head shot at close range would be game breaking but over long range? I'd just hit him again.
Headshotting moving targets isn't all that hard and I do pull it off from time to time, but most of the stationary targets I go for have Nanoweave of some rank and my headshot simply doesn't kill them. If you have a friend who has NW4 or 5 I'd recommend asking him to stand still, then take a shot at him from 75 meters away (100 if you have the high end BASRs, 80 if you use a suppressor) and see what happens. It certainly isn't because we're all missing, we're just outmatched mathematically.
To reply to your edit, if you're using a lower end BASR with a suppressor and you happen to be shooting at the head of a non-infiltrator wearing NW5, you have to be within about 30 meters for that headshot to kill. I'm not sure of the exact range, but you have to be close enough for your weapon to do 625*2 damage, which is really not that far. Subtract about 20 meters for the suppressor and you're left with a wildly ineffective weapon.
Well, I guess I don't notice the nanoweave because i very rarely snipe over long ranges anymore. I'm mostly close quarter sniping now. This is what I consider long range sniping by the way. The footage is quite old though.
nice timeline, that's exactly how it went to visualize the sad state of OHK at the corner of Nanoweave Ave. and Suppressor Str. 75m/50m are not sniping ranges (just show yourself to some HA and wait to see what his LMG is going to do with your sorry ***) and 50m/30m are outright ridiculous. because he was dumbfounded and rightfully so. "BOLT ******* ACTION RIFLE CANT KILL AT 30M. WTF IS THIS."
graph that is? i made it myself but don't feel like logging in to google docs to get the url so i just go to the last page of gameplay bugs forum thread about Nanoweave (convenient because that forum is sorted by score so the thread stays in one place near the top of the 1st page) and there is my post that links to my another post that has the graph. 2nd one is the one you want, 'Copy image link', voila!
Thumbs up for OP, if only for the effort he put into this. When I first learned of this somewhere around the "Nanoweave investigation" stage, I was infuriated. How in their right minds, could SoE allow a 61 point cert, to completely kill the very OHK concept that a sniper represents. My suggestion is still: Make it harder to snipe by adding more bulletdrop, and increase the headshot multiplier for BASR only, so Nanoweave won't prevent a BASR headshot from killing you. The thought behind this is high skill -> high reward, opposed to the low skill -> high reward and high skill -> low reward crap we've been having since release. In no way should we get our OHK for free, there should be a degree of practice and skill involved for anyone who wants to do this. But neither should one simple cert totally prevent you from being killed from about anything this game throws at you. (including having your brains blown out of your skull, because you stood still too long)
believe it or not i dont run into people using nw that often its happened a few times but i still can headshot someone for 200m mind you i use the parallax. but i still see the problem in this and its needs to be resolved.
Unfortunately, sniping is a pure numbers game right now. Skill has been replaced by varying equations that follow the pattern of 'to do the necessary (x) damage to kill a player with rank (n) nanoweave, you must be within (r) meters of your target.' But that isn't all, probability also comes into play. Not every player out there is running around with nanoweave armor, and some players only use NW1, which will not protect against OHKs at any range. NW2 is where the protection begins, and considering the 11 cert investment cost the odds that you will run into someone with at least that rank is very high. Similarly, the odds of winning the lottery are astronomically low, but people still manage to win it on occasion. In this scenario, you and the few other players like you who claim to have no problem sniping at long range are the lottery winners. By sheer luck alone, you manage to consistently run into players using NW1 or no nanoweave at all. It isn't impossible, just like winning the lottery isn't impossible, but it is highly improbable and it's a safe bet that if you aren't having trouble sniping that just means that there a bunch of us left who are. For every one person who wins the lottery, there are millions who don't.
I can't even remember the last time I was one shotted by a sniper. And I use flak armour. Seems to me that infiltrators are somewhat of a dying breed.
i wont deny that there are alot of snipers out there having trouble and me just being plane lucky but i will say i do have an abseen amount of luck some days but just becuase i am lucky and have not run into alot of people using nw the trade off is i am not the best shot. same as if you are a great shot means theres a good chance you'll run into some1 using nw. that is sometimes how it works though mostly its just luck in some cases.
Come on Ztiller. Regardless of your stance on Nanoweave countering Bolt Actions you've already been provided ample proof that it does in fact counter OHKs at longer ranges. Quit pretending that this problem is a product of poor aim and argue your point from a different position. Saying "people need to have better aim" makes you look like you're purposefully ignoring the facts.
