[Comedy] Sniping Rant (about upcoming changes)

I don't know why people are freaking out about this so much. There is already an effective max range of about 75m versus anybody but newbies with no certs. I mostly do mid range sniping with my Parallax, inside of the guaranteed 75m range, but today I did a bit of long range sniping. I counted 8 Nanoweave plinks in a row, with at least a few in a row before that before I started counting.

This is a buff. The longer the game is around, the more people get Nanoweave, and the more of a buff this is. Seriously, all the people talking about how this is taking away headshots at 300m+ must not do any long range sniping, because if they did then they would know that those headshots have already been taken away. This is just giving a few of them back.

These changes are good. They're not a nerf, they're a long-needed balancing act.

Not sure if anyone mentioned this, but judging from what the guy in the video was saying the problem is now engineers on AV Mana turrets. They register as vehicles so they render farther away than normal infantry(I've heard 600m thrown around but I don't know what the actual distance is). With the 300m cap on sniper rifles engineers on AV Mana turrets will be able to demolish vehicles at 300m+ and snipers won't be able to do a damn thing to stop them after the patch. I hope this doesn't prompt a nerf to the AV Mana turret range though, because I love that thing. "Where you going tank? Running away because you're low on life? Guess what, I can still see you from my position on top of this mountain sucka!"

So 300m is the actual render range of (normal) infantry? I've heard people say that, but I really don't have a good way to confirm other than wait for the balance pass and try to snipe people. If I can't OHK head shot them, then render range is farther than 300m...

Turret range is getting nerfed too, and yes, infantry do not render at all, ever, past 300m.

You are sort of missing the point. Right now, in a small fight the infantry render distance is ~300 M. In larger battles it can fall below 200 M. With the changes you are complaining about, you will have much better luck scoring a headshot kill than you will on live at the moment.

On live right now, you could be at 250 M right now and get a headshot kill or you could be at 70 M and they could survive. Yet you are crying foul because they are changing it so you know if you have X sniper and are at 200, 250, or 300 M you are 100% sure you will get a headshot kill. That is what is called a buff.

I'll say it again. Infantry usually stops rendering between 250 - 325 M (outside of manned turrets) so for your standard bolt action and high end bolt action this represents a universal buff to the infiltrator class because on live right now, targets can survive headshots from any tier sniper rifle as close as 70 M.

Are we talking 2 dimensional range or do they also factor height differences when they calculate render range? And if so, does the sniper rifle range calculate said height differences as well? Like say, if a sniper was on top of a 216m high tower and his target was 288m away from the base of the tower. The two dimensional range would be 288m, but the hypotenuse would be 360m(straight line from the sniper to the target, thank you high school geometry). Would the target render because the 2-dimensional displacement is only 288m? Or would they not render because the render range is based on the hypotenuse instead, which is 360m? And if the target does render, which range does the sniper rifle use? 288m or 360m?

What I mean to say is if they planned the highest level sniper rifles to be able to OHK any infantry target that renders for them, why even set the range at 300m? Why not just give it unlimited range? The fact that they even set a hard limit on the range implies that there are targets that render outside of that range that they can't OHK. Only engineers on turrets? Seems to be an odd exception to the hard limit. Unless, as the video guy says, all the developers are engineers who love AV Mana turrets(because AV mana turrets are awesome. Don't nerf their range Devs! ). I don't believe that though.

The 300m is the limitation of the rendering engine. Any infantry beyond that range disappears from view. Any infantry that is invisible, takes zero damage, even if you try to hit with AoE.

Engineers on AV turrets were an exception and were rendering at vehicle view. It was done so tankers could at least have a visible threat. The balance pass introduces a limitation to the range of AV turrets at 300m, which means that they will need to set them up at below that distance to actually hit vehicles. Which means that they will no longer be outside the infantry rendering range after the next patch.

Not sure, but I think it's just a circle around you with a 150m radius. Infinite y length.

Please enlighten me to the location of this 216m high tower.

To answer your question, no, the target would not render in that case.

This actually isn't true anymore. Infantry render distance used to be 300m (and it still is in VR Training). However, several patches ago (I think it's been a few months now) they upped the infantry render distance to, correct me if I'm wrong, 500m. You might not have noticed it, because they slowly incorporated it server by server rather than all at once. If I am remembering right, Miller and Conner were first.

You are right, though, that in larger battles it is effectively a lower distance. But also keep in mind that most long range snipers are not in big clumps of infantry, which is usually the thing that lowers your render distance. They're usually on the outskirts.

For reference: Before the render distance change, you had to stand on the edge of the cliff of The Crown to snipe people on the edge of the cliff at TI Alloys. After the change, you can now snipe from the upper level of the Crown tower straight down to the upper level of the TI Alloys spawn building (and further). Sometimes you can even hit people standing by the TI Alloys ammo tower. As long as you're not too close to a big clump of infantry, usually there's minimal pop-in / pop-out too.

Just a heads up, from the tower of the crown to the back balcony of TI is somewhere around 330-340 M (I was bored, flew out there and checked for myself) and I know I've had people drop out of render distance at Ti while standing on the roof of the building that houses A at the crown.

There were some TR camping the north warpgate of Indar (25-48 ) with no opposition, I grabbed my 12 X scope and checked it out. Anywhere from 285 to 340 M I was losing targets to render (they'd just vanish) I was able to get a few hits on manned turrets at 350+ but 1HKO's.

Not saying you can't render at 325+ it just seems unlikely from my experience.

Maybe I'm not understanding something. Sniper rifles aren't being nerfed, they're being buffed. I'm a fairly decent sniper (3,615 kills with 48% accuracy and 2,984 headshots using RAMS .50 (only been sniping a few months)) and I do run into the occasional player with Nanoweave 5 where all I get is a 'plink' and no kill. This patch is saying that they're going to guarantee a head shot kills the first time if you're within the correct range (300m for RAMS .50). And they're changing the mechanic of Nanoweave so much that they're refunding the certs (implied/explicit nerf).

It's possible I'm reading this wrong so if I am please say so. If my headshot kills are going to be guaranteed near max render range then how is this a nerf? My only real issue was hitting a BR5 with a headshot, getting the 'plink' but no kill. Do BR5's really get Nanoweave 5 or is there another way to stop the headshot kills?

On a side note, I almost always snipe from max render range. So it'll be interesting how often I fall within the 300m range. If I can still get a head shot kill with one round because they don't have Nanoweave 5 or some other high resist armor then I'll be even happier (hard to believe it gets better (unless I'm missing something serious here)). If this turns out to be the case then prepare for an avalanche of whining.

I'm interested to see how this actually plays out once the patch is done. Between this buff and the Prowler nerf I may have to switch back to being a sniper more often.

Save the flame, I've acknowledged that I could be missing something. BTW - Loved the rant, if you're right then extra kudos to you!!!

People are actually serious about sniping in this game?

I kind of disagree but this is clearly not the place for that kind of discussion and it was funny as always so thumbs up!

Whilst the majority of those kills you get are negated by a nearby medic the majority of the time.

Rarely do I see a positive contribution by a sniper 200m+ away on attack or defense.

This game is treated as a K/D simulator way too much. Guaranteed that the majority of those hiding in the hills taking pot shots would contribute far more to an attack or defense if they were 200m closer to the battle.

Cool. Just using the 216m high tower as an example because it's super easy to calculate the hypotenuse of a triangle (the example 360m distance between the sniper and the target) when you use the 3/4/5 ratio rule.