Tldr: fed up long range sniper tries out CQC and loves it. Ok so I'm an old gamer, I'm in my 40's and to many (esp my wife) I'm too old to be playing these games and I should just stick to walking our dog and playing golf, but that buzz from killing an enemy, the adrenalin of coming out the better side of a 1v1 fight and the rush of facing imminent death but somehow surviving never leaves. I've played so many different types of FPS over the years and 95% of the time it's been as a sniper, a class that's usually hated, known for being a selfish solo playing class (no one cares that you can be an excellent area denial class or that you usually have a good view of how the battle is turning and so can advise) but for me the sniper class was always fun, something that many players will never understand, the challenge of finding a good vantage point, the gut feeling to move when you've out stayed your welcome and finding a new spot not to mention the love of hitting headshots. So when PS2 came out I was very excited, I'd been sniping in Battfield 4 for ages and was getting a tad bored. PS2 offered this massive landscape with loads of 3d terrain to use and plentiful enemies, perfect for long range sniping, and don't get me wrong for the most part (once they increased the rendering issues) it was great, but slowly bit by bit I started to realise our class was unloved by the devs, if you watch any of the SOE team play they do not seem to play as snipers (I've always wondered how any decisions can be seriously made about a class that isn't played to an equal of the others) so when I heard of the upcoming distance changes where anyone above 150m will have the equivalent to NW5 automatically when shot at I nearly gave up, I know to some this is a buff but I for one want to play long range, I don't want to have to be dictated to in the way I play and I'd hate seeing someone at 200m heading to cap, or flanking my team, knowing not only that I can't stop him or them with a very well placed bullet but I'm going to have to risk giving my position away more often by using more shots or ignore them. So the main answer to this is to adapt, I'm no fan of mid range sniping, so that leaves CQC, something I've never really done in my youth let alone at this grand age, I watch the videos of infil CQC and I know I'm not going to pull that off (although I'm aware I'm watching their best runs and these players are above average and thankfully not everyone I come across will be like them) so I decided to start a new character for this adventure, I've played both VS and TR loads and had a NC I created ages ago but didn't play much after testing out their guns, so with a few Certs to start with and spending a little cash on the Cyclone SMG I started to try to emulate the youtube hero's, safe in the knowledge that every time I'm owned its because I'm not fully certed The 1st thing that was obvious is that I'm going to die a lot, I wasn't getting these 7 easy kill streaks running around a building like I'd been watching, for me there always seemed to be a Max waiting for me, every Heavy could turn slowly and take his time whilst I'd be hitting everything but him to then die to him with embarrassment. Even other stealthers seemed to react a lot quicker. But I'd committed to learning this playstyle and slowly I got better, I stopped pretending I was Rambo in every situation and my aim and response times greatly improved, I still bump into Maxes and make mistakes often enough, but quite often I can get a good run with 4-6 kills in a base before dieing and most importantly I'm loving it, it really is fun, and frustrating, but it's a rush, my avg KDR is close to 3 (yes it's not important but in these early days of learning the class it's a good indication of how I'm improving) and I've been doing this for 5 days now, I've even had a handful of whispers some good and some hating on stealthed SMG usage. I would love to see some real footage of other SMG infs, uncut over an hour or so, so I get to see their bad runs and mistakes as I'm sure even the best players must have those days where they seem to have little luck when they leave the spawn room and if you've managed to read all the ramblings from this old timer, give yourself a pat on the back
What a wonderful read, and well put together Despite not having the same amount of fine aged life experience as you, I can empathise with your situation. I've recently gone from longrange sniping to a slightly confusing mix of mid ranged sniping and CQC. And admittedly I also quite like it. I will miss landing those headshots from far away though :') ...
I am renown in my outfit for hunting down and ambushing maxes... Im starting to wisen up, and listen for their mecho footsteps before rounding the corner and making an attempt on robot life but it happens all the time to me. Last night was a particularly bad night and i ended up with like a 2.2 ish KDR from like 4, after being beaten down by tanks, ambushing several maxes, and making questionable choices on my part though the night. At one point i thought it was an excellent idea to try and spiderman flank multiple enemies by walking on the side of a cliff, with no cover, using a sniper rifle to assault them while they were camped down using a defensive tower. One misplaced shot resulted in a firing squad on the side of the cliff and gravity was not my friend. Poor choices get me killed allot, especially when tired in real life. ill conceived plans, tanks, maxes, ESF with radar, all fantastic ways to get yourself killed. Pancakes are also fun to make from time to time.
Oh god. That would be terrible. I think when I started playing Planetside 2 originally I was like a 0.54 KDR. I was bad at everything imaginable. If you can believe it, my fiancee had originally told me to go play infiltrator "because it was the easiest class." I will never let him live that down
Koolaid and Beaver are both great players. I tend to watch them both from time to time...stalk...watch...either or.
A solid pair of depends, some mountain dew and heart pills on standby and it doesn't matter how old you are! Seriously though, 40 is not really that old.
lol very nice! some better run than me even. And that's saying much...trust me. Though I a lot of times, recently especially, my...no our runs get a bit messy. Sure we may have nc/tr to farm...but what happens when there is no TR....? no NC....? what to shoot then? well.....
Well, I might not be what your looking towards, I'm a BR 51 who plays infiltrator only (well, not when im flying my scythe...). If i compare myself to most youtubers, i seem to get those runs quite frequently ennough. I got auraxium on our 3 "automatic" infiltrator weapons. Since my internet could only uphold a crappy quality stream, I'll offer you to come run with me if you're ever interested. Otherwise, I'm having my own experience with sniping (just bought the parallax), and to be honest, it does feel the same as you switching to cqc. Not all the time, but when i get those headshots, and hold 4-5 peoples by myself, killing them multiple times, I do feel awesome. Still working on it though. Have fun!
@ OP Glad you find something to enjoy. Recently switched from the 4x tripe chevron scope to the 3.4x red dot on my bolt action sniper and had a nice run. My aim isn't very good but i still ambushed and got several OHK's within 40m on some oblivious enemies. After they pushed our tower i got 2 kills per life-ish just jumping down to ground level and head shotting people running to the tower and hiding from the side. It's pretty fun and I hope to get better at it. (I run a suppressor of course).
I too have recently started messing around with a CQB Inf, though I didn't do a lot of sniping prior to, mostly support. Get my a$$ handed to me regularly, but also catch the occasional guy or gal slippin. It's not boring that's for damn sure! Good luck to you, and good post!
Sad story but smg infiltrating is, at least for me, easier than sniping, and earns me more kills and certs per hour. I like the "Assassin"-feeling of it, but i enjoy sniping more. With an smg it feels like I only need to position well to kill 1-2 enemies at once, rinse and repeat. With a sniper rifle I, if I mess up that headshot, it's often death. Dat guy... Also: There's a reason I sometimes look at darkelfdruids killboard. Always makes me giggle when I notice he tk'ed one of his friends recently. Not so much when I get tk'ed by another TR who just decided he doesn't need to avoid driving over that one, lonely infiltrator in that vast empty area in his tank or harasser. l2drive
Welcome to the class. It is fun to play, even poorly. There will always be one great streak or fun kill that will happen every time you play. (Spam Recon Darts in multiple directions. Now that enemies can see them, you do not just want to have a single dart out anymore.)
Quick update: So yesterday I joined a squad for a few hours which lead to joining an outfit, and omg all that time I wasted solo sniping, this is just soo much fun, yeah I die a lot more but I'm still killing more than dying and I feel like I'm achieving goals and having a blast in the big organised fights, I've often read that joining an outfit made a better game, well they were right, I do miss long range sniping sometimes but im now a big fan of CQC
I started out this game on both my vs and nc accounts with a .3 kdr. Getting those to positive took pretty much this entire year with the infiltrator. I remember you did also mention that you were playing on a bad computer setup. I run this game on a laptop and thanks to the optimizations that have happened over the year, I can now play at something better than 20fps. Haha, welcome to squad play, my fellow infiltrator.
