How i feel about the sniper changes

Unfortunately, these statistics don't actually display the range you were sniping from. That's what I'm looking for, run and gun oriented players who are actually trying out long ranged sniping...not close range.

Furthermore, the kill to death ratio isn't important...your time to kill is.

Death isn't the penalty, the time it takes for you to respawn as a run and gun oriented player is the penalty. What do you lose by dying? You lose time...time that you could have spent gaining experience.

For a sniper, who has a far less chance of getting killed, our time sinks are built into the actual system of sniping itself. So, our equivalent to a death is wasting time. It's the experience gain that shows if you're killing efficiency is on par with that of your run and gun efficiency, not your kill to death ratio.

These are why videos are important.

Unless you're at long range killing targets with as much speed as you would while running and gunning...you're not being a successful long ranged sniper, you're just keeping your death ratio low. That's a given, you're a sniper...our death rates are low.

That doesn't mean we're successful though, that all boils down to how well we're managing our time.

Going to try and keep this short since a lot has already been written about it.

YuukikunVS: You talked a lot about K/D ratio and have about 5 or 6 hours in to it. That doesn't making sniping easy, that makes it a good couple of nights. There's now way to verify HOW you got those kills other than they were with the XM98. KD overall is not meaningful, not even to a sniper.

I think folks need to separate the issue of sniping ranges vs their personal feelings on the usefulness of a (long range) sniper. It's unfortunate that maybe they haven't run into enough good ones or they just don't understand the value one provides. To me it's as puzzling as saying a medic is no use since revived people just die again away. Sometimes what you do is made possible by the things other people do - sometimes it doesn't matter. All I know is when my squad or outfit says "Go do Canno things" they trust that I am going to benefit them - or I suck and they want me out of the way.

Either way.

150m is nothing. I can do that with a 7x scope, 10 and 12 would be zero use. I can headshot targets at 150m with a 7x and not use hold breath. Stepping outside of that 150m makes it WORSE than the current NW situation, at least now I have a shot at killing someone (they may be wearing flak).

For brevity sake, I'll recap what I said in Mustarde's thread. Give more options, not less. Have short/medium and long range rifles with limited scope choices. Short can use 4, 6 and 7 (or whatever) (but not higher) and long can use 10 and 12 (but nothing lower). Each multiplier extends the one shot head shot kill range at the cost of increasing certs and situational usefulness. A rams50 with a 12x isn't going to be much use at close range (for many reasons), but would be more lethal farther out - again, for example.

On the other side, give NW a cert line that protects the head against either sniping or close combat. Anti-sniping brings in the effective range, close combat doesn't help at all. Quick example: Sniper has Rams50 and 12x, they can OSHK from 450m. However the enemy has fully certed NW anti-sniper and it brings the range in to 375 - but the sniper has no way to know this... plink. Same goes for close range (lower X scope).

Just throwing numbers out there to give the general idea.

You pretty much answered your own question. I think its more of a switch in positions between the current "best" snipers and the new ones to come

You can consider it a scam or you can consider the game is expanding. Its giving you more choices
The new snipers will most likely come with large drawbacks. Its similar between the M77-B and the RAMS-50
If the M77 was released first you'd call it a scam for releasing the RAMS

99% of the bases your faction attacks, there's a sunderer deployed at a good distance to snipe the attacked ennmy. If you get a kd of 10+ with 1 kill / minute, that means 10 mins and you can easily get a scythe every 10 minutes, or a flash/ harasser with only a few certs spent in the cooldown reduction. And what you are saying about having to "walk more" doesn't require the least bit of skill. Any br1 joining the game learns how to press "w" in the tutorial.

Your post just shows how low skill you need to be a sniper, you even say it yourself. ''That's a given, you're a sniper...our death rates are low.'' And btw, maybe you didn't play close range infantry, but you die alot more, which means you got to run back every single time you die. I had a K/D of 1 and got kd of 10 with sniper right? that means i have to run 10 times when you have to run 1 time. You run about 200 meters from a spawn or sunderer at max. While with most bases we have to run over 50m and sometimes even 100 meters just to find someone to shoot because we don't have the high ground vision that snipers do. Making it 500m to 1000m for the same amount of kills, and this while eating vehicle shelling, lib shelling, esf lolpodding, which a decent infil won't ever have to eat to reach their sniping point.

well to be honest tier3 rifles were a bit scammy. There was no hard data on their actual parameters and we could only judge them by the official article claiming they are brutal head harversters that can be stopped only by HA shields. Personally i was not amused discovering they still have the same min_dmg but a bit further and they do next to nothing to solve the problem of increasing frequency of non-lethal headshots.

what about omnipresent medics? They raise you from the death in 1s. Once the critical mass of people gathers in one place there is no need to respawn in sunderer, you have everything you need on the spot. Ammo is there, rezzing is there, you are back in the action faster than you can scratch your balls, while sniper still has to leg it every single time because there is no medic near him.

I want to make this perfectly clear before I continue.

Death is not what's important.

1. You don't lose credits if you die.
2. You don't lose experience if you die.
3. You just lose time, and that is all you lose through death.

Lost time is the punishment within this game, time that you could have used to acquire further experience points through killing, capturing points, so on and so forth. For a run and gun oriented player, death is the primary cause of lost time.

With long ranged snipers having a decreased risk of death, the balance comes into play through incorporated time sinks within the entire system.

1. We have smaller magazine sizes.
2. We have to re-chamber a round after every shot.
3. We are limited by a scope stabilization system that has a few second cooldown upon use.
4. We have to locate a adequate position that overlooks a significant portion of the battlefield but won't leave us open to counter-sniping.
5. We have to, and this is our primary time sink, wait for you to hold still and provide us with a means to kill you. If you move so much as a single step in the wrong direction, you can blow our shot and cost us a significant portion of time. To make up for all the time sinks incorporated into sniping, we HAVE to nail that headshot or we are being inefficient. If we hit you in the gut, that's a failure...you'll run off and get patched up and that time and bullet was wasted.

This is how we are balanced, and if our time to kill ratio drastically exceeds a run and gun oriented player's kill to death ratio...you balance sniping by working with the time sinks. We have the SAME EXACT punishment you do for failing at what we do, a loss of time that would have been spent progressing in the game. It is the same exact repercussion for failure...it's just delivered in a different way because of the different playing style.

Our time to kill equates to your kill to death ratio. Your time sink is death, ours is literally built into everything we do...and that's not factoring in counter-sniping and the times we do actually die.

With that said,

Pick up a bolt-action sniper rifle and go long range sniping. It doesn't matter how many deaths you haven't suffered...if you aren't gaining as much experience within the same amount of time that you would as a run and gun oriented player...you're a terrible sniper.

Time to kill = Kill to Death.

If I've managed to obtain 8k experience in a half hour as a sniper and a run and gun oriented player obtained 20k within the same period of time, does it really matter that I only died once or twice and they died several times throughout the duration? No. They are still doing better than I am, just because I didn't die as much doesn't mean that I am superior...they obtained more experience while I fell behind.

All you run and gun oriented players are using death as a badge of pride and under some misconstrued notion that it's the punishment for doing things wrong. It's not...the time you lost is, and we lose time too.

Just in different ways.

Now, the way to balance long ranged sniping is to look at the communal whole of long ranged sniping statistics and see if the experience gain per a specified amount of time is on par with that of your run and gun oriented players.

1. If it's generally the same, then long ranged sniping is balanced.
2. If it's under par, then long ranged sniping is underpowered.
3. If it's above the efficiency of your run and gun oriented players...it's overpowered.

IF it's overpowered, you then increase the time sinks incorporated into the system. You make the re-chambering duration longer, you decrease the magazine size, you increase the scope stabilization cooldown, etc.

You don't force a long ranged weapon into close combat situations where it's obsolete in comparison to the weapons of that area.

On another note,

You really can't compare run and gun oriented gameplay to sniping in terms of which is more challenging because they are both challenging.

- Run and gun oriented players have to have superior twitch response times and general awareness of their surroundings to avoid death.

- Long ranged snipers have to have pinpoint accuracy at any range and the intelligence required to know when to strike and when to hold back so that they are not wasting ammunition, potentially giving themselves away, and ultimately falling into our own time sinks.

If you believe it's easy, try it.

- When you do, don't sit there and think to yourself, "I haven't died yet, this is so easy."

- Instead, think to yourself: "Am I making as much experience as I would if I was run and gunning? Am I actually helping my faction out with the targets I'm going after?"

It doesn't matter how many times you die, what matters is how efficiently you are using your time. THAT is what a good sniper is, an individual who utilizes their time in the most efficient manner possible. Otherwise, by wasting time, we HAVE basically died...because we receive the same punishment that you do for death.

Side Note:

I run SMG more than I do snipe, simply because my framerate issues don't permit me to properly snipe in Planetside 2. I get more kills through SMG play than I do sniping. Try nailing those perfect headshots when your framerate periodically tanks. I was hoping to go back to sniping when I got a new PC and the optimization updates came into effect.

So, truth be told...I run and gun more in PS2 than I do snipe, and I'm better at it because run and gunning with the SMG doesn't require as great a framerate as sniping does.

I don't know the first thing about sniping, I don't personally enjoy sniping, nor am I good at it, but there is something I do know, and that is I like the idea of sniping. I like the idea that there is a class within the game that is not a run and gun **** show like the other classes. It takes time, precision, skill to take shots at the distance that most people do. The ones that are good at it should not be punished because we see their way of playing as inferior, cheap, easy, or stupid, because its not. Sniping adds variety. Personally I don't get mad when I am sniped. Usually I am cloaked running like a madman so I am genuinely impressed, and it has happened.

There is no such thing as fair in war, or in Planetside. Someone always shot first, and you never had a chance.

The have long range sniping in this game. The difference is you snipe from stealth instead of extemere long range. This is a way more powerful version of the sniper. As you can fight at a closer range where you are more likely to kill targets faster.

Being able to line up shots without the enemy seeing you is VERY powerful.

Yea, and it's called Engineer.

By people I meant infil specifically tehehehe. Aren't AV manas camera guided anyway?

It requires patience, not skill. The skill you need is firing a dart to make sure no one gets close and wait for a stationary target.
Try to kill a HA in a face to face fight using a short range semi-auto sniper rifle like the KSR-35 or a semi-auto scout rifle like the HSR-1. THAT requires skill.

Your argument is basically debasing the people who are affected by this game change, with "the fact" that they know nothing of the game. Oh you BR 100s, you know everything, always

After going through most of the counter-arguments in most of the sniper threads, I frankly wish they do implement this crap just so I can quit and move on.