What is the point of bolt action then? Advantages in sniping in general: Damage is higher by either x2 to x3 a normal bullet. + Higher zoom values. + Pos: +2 Disadvantages when sniping in general: Scope sway (Slightly eliminated by holding breath) - Holding still for shots. - Velocity similar to an LMG. - Flinch when shot, can't aim by that point. - Effective range is 75m*. Most cases damage is dropped by 100 at that point. - Tracers are larger than others. - Shots are "loud." - Silencing a sniper drastically increases bullet drop and further reduces damage. - Anything past 100m and there's a 0.5+ second error in aiming. - Neg.:-9 Common rule of thumb: Always be moving. - Use cover. - Flank when possible. ~ ~ Neg: -2 Common advantages of infiltrator: Completely invisible 75m+ when cloaked. + Can use darts to scout out areas. + Pos: +2 Common disadvantages as infiltrator: Fairly visible within 40m when moving. - Fairly visible within 25m when not moving. - Shield if slightly lower by 100. - Neg: -3 Advantages of bolt action: Can get a one hit kill within 50m with headshot up to a nanoweave 3 enemy. + Can be used a shot + knife combo at point blank range. Pos: +2 Disadvantages of a bolt action: Missed shots are a death sentence. (If you within 75m* of a target.) - Body shots will "scare" enemies away. - Un-scoping for the next shot. - Enemy can easily pepper spray and serpentine from shots within 50m. - Can not negate sway with moving mouse. - Neg: -5 Advantages of a semi-auto SR: More forgiving with error shots. + Do not have to scope out. + You can put out 4-5 rounds before holding breath clocks out. + Can be used as a make shift shotgun. + Can sometimes put someone down faster before they react. + Moving you scope (with mouse) negates sway. + Pos: +6Disadvantages or semi-auto SR: People with lower latency to server can react quicker to multiple shots. - Is not possible to one hit kill. - Forty to fifteen meters is a dead zone. - Neg: -3 The usual argument is that you picking high value targets to stop enemy buffer that are engineers, medics, and other snipers... Except these classes follow the first rule of thumb which is Always be moving except this is not the case with infiltrators with snipers. And the rebuttal to this is I get kills and I can show you, and the chances are you're right and you are getting kills but only against non-moving targets which are either either AFK or poorly skilled fps players. But look I took down this guy on a turret that was sitting on a deployable turret. Great no argument here except that's the only redeeming feature of snipers. The argument here is that the negatives of bolt action sniping completely outweighs the advantages to it and there is no real practical use for it as the semi-autos is generally better. Bolt action sniping is not properly rewarding players for skilled shots. The only reason I see people even use the thing is for nostalgia purposes. What was said in FNO was that the reason it was not a one shot kill was to "give people a chance to react". That completely defeats the purpose of the bolt action. There's easy fix, Must: Increase the effective range of the sniper. By adding an extra 50 to 75m to the current range. And/Or: Slightly boosting the damage. And/Or: Increase velocity overall by adding 100m/s.
As much as I hate getting picked off, I agree with this. At the point where it takes any skill to get a head shot, you can't kill anyone wearing max nanoweave. Even though the rams 50 has a max damage that reaches out 100m, I am almost always sniping from about 300 meters away, and its soul crushing to land that perfect shot, just to see the guy still standing.
You realize on FNO, Maggie was just giving her own personal opinion right? Not sharing a design guideline. One shots are in the game, so the point is moot, they're even adding new rifles that are supposedly going to be more capable of doing so. You might not like how OHKs work, but that is how they function in this game. The more pressure and risk you expose yourself to the more likely you are to get them. And retaining the same power with half the risks is pretty unjustifiable, you might as well spend your time shooting from a spawn room. See, other games have defined level boundaries to limit that kind of action in, often saturated with cover and large obstructions to further reign it in. There is rarely a time where a sniper is able to take down enemies without being exposed to the immediate threat of being killed by pre-emptive or return fire. This isn't the case in Planetside 2. The lack of boundaries and mostly open terrain would make it a sniper's paradise if not for the players that choose nanoweave impacting the reliability of long range OHK headshots. The farther out you are, the less frequent the OHKs, and that's simply the cost of operating there. But even at the longest ranges, not everyone wears it and you CAN still score OHKs on those not using it. The game presents you with a choice: security, or kill reliability. Could the range be pushed out a bit? Absolutely, and I hope it does if the new bolt action doesn't open up the field a bit. Should you be able to OHK a NW5 user from +100m out? Probably not. Also a few issues with the positives and negatives: --Missed bolt-action shots are a death sentence if you're standing in the middle of an field and not moving between shots. But this is hardly something exclusive to an infiltrator or it's weaponry, and even the most basic cover or exploitation of terrain will prevent this. --They're adding an attachment so you don't have to un-scope between shots, and to be honest it's not a terrible downside to begin with considering the average sniper scope reduces peripheral vision to a ridiculous degree as well as hiding one's mini-map. I foresee many people tunnel-visioning down their scopes to their detriment as many SA users tend to. --The OHK ranges are incorrect. For the example given of NW3 the 750 damage rifles OHK within 68m and the 800 damage rifles do it within 92m. For NW5 (absolute worst case 1000 cert scenario) it's 50m and 73m respectively. --The velocity negative point is also incorrect. For a .5 second error in aiming at 100m the velocity would have to be 200m/s. But they're 550 to 650m/s. That's .18 seconds for the bullet to travel 100m for the 550 and .15 on the 650. For any such delay to be possible something would have to reduce the bullet speed by more than half of it's total, and nothing in the game will do that. And for a practical reference on these time frames, the average person takes .1-.06 seconds to blink. -- This 'sway negation' in moving the mouse can be done on any rifle with sway, as they use they same exact sway rates and patterns. There is absolutely no reason to think you can only do this with semi-autos and not bolt-actions when they are quite literally using the same mechanic and is something I do regularly.
The pos/neg are rounded assumptions and in no way do I support ONK nanoweave 5, I just don't think the ranges and velocity are right for bolt actions. Like I bolded near end of the original post, the game doesn't reward skilled shots for players and I'm talking head-shot at long distances. And you are right, one person in FNO doesn't support the whole dev's thought on how the gun should work, but she herself is a developer and when she goes on FNO she represents herself as a dev and she will give out responses from what the dev team have discussed in the past. Considering the working bolt action we have now clearly majority of the devs also think the same way Luperza does about the gun.
I wouldn't mind a form of ammunition that reversed the damage to distance mechanic - not much damage at close range, high damage at far range. Rewards difficult shots while making easy shots not as rewarding.
i have a bad feeling that she expresses the official point of view. Few weeks ago she replied to the thread in the gameplay bugs forum that she pinged devs some time earlier about the bolt actions and that she didn't get feedback yet and now she's having an elaborate opinion out of the blue? so how would you justify existence of av mana turrets and lockon launchers with 500m+ operating range, 10 times the sniping? And i remind you that at the release there was no nanoweave nonsense and infiltrators still sucked *** because shuffling is not a rocket science. there are many places where the cover is scarce or nonexistent, swaths of esamir, northern indar. Enemy group takes some hill and has perfect view in every direction. I did that many times (standing in the middle of a field and praying for them to look the other way). 50m on old esamir was *nothing* and i sported suppressor then for extra pleasure :/ absolute worst case scenario involves suppressor. ~31/~50
But if she expressed the official point of view, then the OHKs never would have been possible from any range from launch. Keep in mind she played PS1 where kill times were significantly longer. And IIRC that was her same opinion given when asked a question about pump-action shotguns some time ago. There is no real evidence that the nanoweave this was an unintended bug. It's likely that people just didn't notice it early on due to a lot of circumstances (people still saving to buy other weapons and flak being a much higher priority for one) and there are even threads if the forum archives go that far back with us trying to figure out what was causing the survivals from back before GU01, so this wasn't something that just showed up one day. Things as ridiculous as 'Maybe the biolab health regeneration bonus is ticking before the sever tells the client they got head-shotted?' I myself used to think it was a fluke until more people started having enough certs to pick up ranks 3-4 at their leisure around GUs 02 and 03. The devs likely just didn't foresee the problem being as widespread as it is, so they're probably trying a new rifle developed with 20/20 hindsight to see if that can resolve some issues before they begin considering a complete overhaul. Because these are AV weapon, it's a tool for an entirely different aspect of the game. Anything related to the vehicle game functions on a larger scale, even infantry options. Bigger targets, faster speeds, faster projectiles, larger ranges. Look at AV and vehicle weapon numbers, they always function on a larger range scale. The damage numbers on a basilisk for example don't even begin to have drop until ~200m out. And they're actively working to reign in the lock-on rockets. And other than hitting a flash or ESF with a dumbfire, there are no reliably obtained OHK scenarios here. The only way you can really draw a direct line between these weapons and a sniper rifle is in their AI capacity, and that's not exactly a clean line to draw. The Lock-ons are a moot point because they can't lock on to infantry, and the Engineer's AV turret isn't exactly an optimal AI tool with a long refire and the necessity to remain in place guiding the projectile in. And realistically nobody is reliably hitting infantry at these longer ranges. If it truly caused a significant AI imbalance, it would have gotten the Phoenix treatment to make it crap against infantry, as that took less than a week of complaints to be fixed. Back to the actual AV game though, they did say on this Thursday's command center, they are changing how the game handle's projectiles in a way that will make it easier to trace the AI turret's rockets (specifically mentioned) back to it's source for retaliation, and make strikers no longer able to clip through terrain (also mentioned), and their past revealed plans on the issue involved shortening the missile chase range, requiring a maintained lock during it's flight, but speeding up the missile a bit. So it's hard to hold sniper rifles up to the standards for a weapon designed for a completely different aspect of the game, and are actively in the process of being reigned in. Yeah, a miss at those ranges is hardly a death sentence, that's all I'm saying. Personally I <3 Esamir sniping. I was doing the same thing the other day, but there was a lot of terrain exploitation. The crest of a hill was my best friend for a while as I was taking shots as the enemy kill-roys. Can't wait for Hossin. Esamir haze with Forested Amerish cover. This is true, but I think far to many people are using them unnecessarily, as they're only really useful within 40m to begin with. Both shots are audible from roughly the same ranges. It might hide the muzzle flash but never the tracer. So the only clear cut benefit is not being pinged on the radar, which only occurs for targets within 40m. When you look at it mechanically, the actual usefulness here is incredibly narrow and typically centered around base and tower fights that aren't generally at long ranges to begin with and filled with people using compensators that ping out to 80m, and probably gal-dropping into an enemy base. Most people I see operating with a suppressor are almost always far enough back to maintain that 40m bubble, saddling themselves with the additional penalty with no real benefit other than maybe a placebo effect.
You can argue that initial advertised values were supposed to offer immunity at longer ranges with NW5, no problem, but the actual state of the game was a 100% bug. Why? Because it's impossible to explain the situation with 'the bonus applies to both hp and shield, their description was just ****** and ambiguous' - NW bonus was applied twice to the HP portion. that's not a solution with 20/20 hindsight, that's a money grab disguised as a solution. There are FOUR rifles already and it's not like changes to damage curves are unheard of. Saron changed completely how many times already? The problem: these things are not in vacuum. Sniper is a natural counter to high value high threat squishy targets (or at least is supposed to be, i imagine). Who would that be in this game? Maybe AV engies and HA tubers? It's hard to accept 50m of effective range for sniper when his supposed food is able to sit 500m from the frontline in almost perfect safety. 450m of legwork to close the gap is rtarded. Sure, they don't have to be the same range, but the order of magnitude would be nice. there is this circle of life: mech > sniper > AV infantry > mech Imo it looks perfectly legit... but it doesn't work because sniper role is UP in this puzzle. This is my biggest gripe with this game and i have a hard time to make myself play. Not because of BASR headshots, they are just a symptom of a wider problem. I simply HATE when something insults my sense of logic. I imagined this game will be somewhat realistic, gritty and brutal (but not exactly ARMA x), but i see it's an arcade shooter where snipers are not allowed to hurt the feelz of self described pro players, where full auto is king, where logistics dont matter and the best way to win is to zerg with lots of whack-a-mole medics. It's Quake but with outfits so people can pretend they are more mature and serious.
Maggie really REALLY discredits herself in FNO 41. FNO Ep. 41 1:22:20 Especially in an FPS? Lets list all of the FPSs where BAHS don't OHK. Oh ok, short list just PS and PS2. Even ******* Halo has sniper rifle OHK headshots and it isn't even a bolt action.
Or the description was simply wrong and reflected a state from early development with the mechanic remaining uncharged from release. But you probably won't consider that possibility because it doesn't favor your position. First off, blind cynicism like doesn't exactly make you sound like a rational person. Never mind that most players buy their weapons with certs, and likely have a good amount saved up for the infiltrator pass, and that a higher end rifle has been something that has been asked for here as well as in the idea and suggestion section for MONTHS by various posters. But actually consider the situation for a minute before going off on a tear. What is the easier solution? Adding a new rifle with a better capability against defensive certs, and balanced for that purpose? Or doing a blanket rework of an entire classification of weapon, completely invalidating cert investments made by other classes, as well as infiltrators, which will likely require further 'under the hood' work to find another means of balance? Of course it doesn't exist in a vacuum, but you're looking at this in an extremely narrowed perspective. There's no direct, 'circle of life' but more of a web that involves snipers, infantry, all manner of vehicles, max suits, and aircraft, and how their rule sets interact. The sniper is not a one-man army solution to all problems outside of conventional weapon ranges. Is it realistic? Not terribly, but last I check reality has some balance issues, and we're playing a game that, as many do, opts to step back from mechanics that mirror reality for the sake of balance. Engagement go two ways. If you can harm them, they have a chance to harm you back, even if it's not the most optimal means of doing so. That's considered balance, no one-sided tactics. The AV turret can shoot a few hundred meters away, but at that range they're only a real threat to tanks, and often having a harder time of it than this little back and forth would suggest due tot he limitations of the weapon. But at those range, the tanks can hit them back, not to mention aircraft which can quickly move in to kill. Yes, if you can close the distance infantry and snipers can take them out too, but, given the scale of the maps, at those ranges, they're generally the problem of the larger scale vehicle game unless you'd like to pull a wraith flash and go on a trip, but suddenly at that range they have a decent chance to use the turret, or hope off it to fight back. Without out the same level restrictions to place hard limits on range, sniping is currently the only thing in the game that violates that model, being entirely a one-sided tactic at longer ranges. That mechanic is in the game right now. The difference here is that it's targets are infantry, with the average class not able to have much impact beyond ~50m, they'd have to close a significant gap before they stand any reasonable chance of retaliation. The only thing disallows it to function with impunity like this is that some targets opt for nanoweave. Those that don't use it are still OHK-able from any range, that forces the sniper to narrow that game if they want to be effective against such target, allowing a reasonable chance of retaliation. That's a balanced engagement.
Well that's ********. When you snipe, you WANT to know if you're going to kill your target. I will NEVER EVER TRY TO HEADSHOT a target I know will survive because it could give away my position Now what ? Are you supposed to flip a coin every time you shoot a guy because he POSSIBLY COULD HAVE NANOWEAVE ? Bodyshots aren't even reliable since it can take 2 OR 3 shots to kill someone.
She is a game designer of PS2, her personal opinion holds weight. The giant green pulsing lasers on claymores or the flashing lights on AP mines, or the giant eyesore AT mines, 3d spotting mines, and mini-map spotting mines. Have you ever wondered what could justify these things? It certainly isn't stats like number of kills. And this is telling to how the designers are designing not by the reality of it all, but by personal knee-jerk reactions. If the devs were at all interested in balancing an AT mine for example, they would start tracking: How long each mine remained deployed before being exploded. What percentage are detonated by small arms fire. If the mines were shot by FF. (I'm constantly blowing up friendly mines with my sniper rifle cause you have to be really close to IFF them) Of the mines that destroy vehicles, how long they remained deployed before detonation. (can be used to determine whether they were run over like mines are intended to be used, or j|had engy) If they were to track the performance of AT mines, I think they would find that the only AT mines that are destroying vehicles are largely still from j|had engies. The percentage of vehicles being destroyed by actually running over a mine is probably embarrassingly low. I think we both know there isn't a design guideline at SOE that says the percentage of vehicles destroyed by running over AT mines should be embarrassingly low. This is a very long way of saying that Maggy's personal opinion is a big deal. They aren't designing by whether or not something is performing its intended role.
Actually she's not a current designer, she's in a community position now. And even if she was, an individual designers opinion doesn't change the game because they not actually 'in charge' of what they work on, but rather follow design documents that come down form above. That would be like thinking a soldier's comments have as much validity as the orders from an officer.
Maybe but the difference is that people acted on the advertised number, and from their point of view it was a buggy behavior. citation needed. I need a quote that was +1ed, not flamed into oblivion by others in following posts. I didn't see that enthusiasm in the recent thread about the possibility of new rifles coming. No **** i grew cynical but it's not blind. I burned orders of magnitude more brainpower on it than your average forum user. It used to be arguing about if 100m is an ok threshold, now we are down to 50 and even 30 and you still have to justify it's not ok for sniper rifles to cream their pants at SMG ranges. Numbers, 'common sense' - doesn't matter. All you hear is smug 'good because i *feel* it's good, snipers are filthy campers and are worthless anyway', for months. Is that rational? Anybody would get bitter that the game is shaped by idiots. Increase the falloff distance by 25-50m so the thresholds kick in further - solved. Or increase min_dmg to achieve the same. The problem with BASRs is not that it doesn't work at 100000m, but that it doesn't really work when you are already within a spraying distance of HA. Sniper rifle works up to 50-75, HAs spraygun up to 75-100 or whatever. Releasing new weapon is not easier solution. Fury nerf? Saron reworks? These where brutal changes, not a nudge here or there that would be enough to make bolt actions more viable. Sure, there is not a single circle, more like graph of these. That was only a clearcut example. Either way it's a classic game design, eg in medieval RTSes you have cavalry > archers > pikemen > cavalry. Let's look at it from another angle. Name one thing a sniper is supposed to do with his rifle well to the point of instilling fear that would give him place in any circle of life. I hope there is such a thing because he gave up an awful lot in order to snipe. Tank drivers have a severe anti-LA paranoia, air has an anti-lockon/airmax one, infantrymen think 'oh ****' when they see mech/MAXes. Who has anti-sniper paranoia? Nobody, especially with NW5. Funny how that doesn't work in case of INF. If it's not infantry you are straight up SoL. Scout ESF with now permanent maphack? Harasser that closes your airgap in 2 seconds and repeatedly tries to run you over because blasting you with fury/marauder is not humiliating enough? Why do we assume that in case of a sniper every class has to be able to do something to retaliate, but there is no such rule for tanks or air? That's an interesting exception, considering sniper's narrow utility and impact on the play (no AV/AA, pathetic against MAX) while everything else is an insane force mutliplier. All that 'combined arms' talk and when it comes to a guy in a pajama with an oversized rifle it goes out the window. On the other hand 50m can be closed on foot in what, 5 seconds? That's 2 failed sniper attempts and now you can knife him, but if you are not that adventurous it's 1 failed attempt and kill with full auto.
Maggie Krohn is not a game developer anymore, she USED to be, and at that time, headshots were OHK. She's now working with community relations. Her opinions on game balance are as relevant as T-Ray's. (No dissing on any of them, I like them)
This is exactly why the devs DO NOT post on the forums as often as they do about that stuff. Whenever they say anything people will just take quips of what they say, over analyze it and them doom say or whine and that's why they generally only post on the forum when they're professionally discussing something. They can get away with having PERSONAL OPINIONS when they arn't speaking via an official out let for releasing that kind of information. If you want FNO to basically turn into patch notes and kill the personality people bring to it (or any other media) then you need to stop these crusades over paraphrased sentences. I know I may sound like a fanboy or like i'm white knighting, but I clearly am not, as she states "That's just how I feel about it. That's my personal opinion" within the same string of dialogue in which you pulled your little quip from. tl;dr: you're entitled to discuss and expression your opinion to people, but so are the devs. Stop taking things out of context and trying to raze houses over some one's opinion on the internet. If you're mad, don't post it on the forum in the height of your rage. Type something and then don't send it. Get anger management? I have no comment on OSK bolt actions since I don't snipe much, only commenting on your texas sharp shooter fallacying.
When in beta was that? They were never OHK in all the time i've played ps2. Back in tech test..? And wasn't that just weapon design? (fairly sure it was)
