Returning player, what happened with snipers?

Im not here to have a moan, just curious really as i don't recall them being so "effective" have there been major sniper changes ive missed?

I came back a month ago after a year or two off, been a planetside player from the ps1 beta...

Probably exacerbated by being an engi main, but i seem to be getting a lot of frustrating sniper deaths. One hit kills while sprinting and strafing, and there seems to always be one waiting if you pause for a split second to place a mine or w/e

I generally try out the class/weapon that strikes me as "a bit off" so played a bit of infil and as far as i could tell the scope sway and bullet drop of old seems to have been reduced massively making it far easier to play

What are peoples feelings on the state of snipers? I was surprised to not see much about it here and on reddit

I think snipers definitely have a place, but there seem a lot about. A shame as a lot of great out-of-base infantry fights ive been in recently seem to die out very quickly when the sniping starts in earnest

IDK but snipers are possibly more common than they used to be and some of their rifles have been buffed. For example, the VS Phaseshift is rated very highly now and all SASRs have reduced recoil plus access to a ballistic computer which eliminates scope sway. There is also an implant that helps you hold your breath longer and which shows how much health a target has left (Target Focus).

There are also some other decent implants for infils that might have tempted more people to run that class, or it might just be one of those passing things. I had a phase of regularly getting sniped but nowadays my main causes of death are Tank HESH rounds, often fired into rooms, and C4 thrown as a 'nade (also inside rooms).

The sniper class is cheesy and low risk compared to others and you have easy to get implants to help you:

-ammo printer gives unlimited ammo
-target focus lets you hold breath for longer periods
-sweeper hud gives distance from the target

So all you have to do is find a spot and look for targets. For example if there is a big battle around Ti Alloys you can snipe from the Crown: go outside cloak, scan, locate, fire, take cover, rinse and repeat.

Long story short, SASRs where buffed with reduced recoil and a new attachment that remove the scope sway when using 6x scopes and higher. It is also free from the get-go for TR and VS Infil's starter sniper, so it helped narrowing the gap between them and the NC's Boltdriver.

Also 2 new NS weapons, NSX Tomoe and NSX Daimyo. NSX Tomoe is an automatic scout rifle and NSX Daimyo a semi-auto sniper. Both are build around the low damage-high headshot multiplier idea, and overall low recoil for the Tomoe, so they are good for those head-hunters.

Some of the new implants are quite useful when paired together. As an exemple, i saw a video of an Infil going full melee with his knife, while using Carapace + Vampire implant, and he took quite a shooting before going down.

Id say the game changer is implants. I also notice there are a lot more Infiltrators around.
I wouldnt however say..

We are very easy to kill lol

If you think you can just sit atop a ridge and rain hell, im sorry but thats not the case. Snipers cant stay in one spot. Its constant moving, cloaking, scanning. If you stay in the same spot after firing then you will die. simple.
Lining up headshots for kills is also difficult. Most players are constantly on the move and landing a headshot or having the patience to wait for a moment where they stop for a split second is quite painful.

I mostly counter snipe, clearing the way for my team. Getting into a countersnipe battle with an experienced sniper is a whole lot of fun. Very intense because you dont know if they are on that hill 200m away cloaked in the same spot you last saw them, or they moved 50m to the left and are lining you up as you desperately try to find them. Or maybe theyve gotten sick of you and are standing right behind you......

Love the snipe

Agreed... CQC sniping is by far the most satisfying thing ever . And snipers really do help your team with recon and clearing out noobs who stand still

I think it's mostly okay right now.

Annoying when it's just a bunch of idiots spamming randomly though. Good snipers are very dangerous and very frustrating, but also very rare.

They're not worst OHK thing out there at the best and worst of times anyways.

Close quarters sniping got a big boost thanks to the Daimyo, essentially letting snipers spam 3-4 OHK shots instead of the 1 that they got from bolts.

The more i think about it, the more difficult a thing i realise it is....

I like that there is a sniper class, but it seems quite like dedicated counter snipers are the only real counter. What else does a clued up sniper fear?

Another class can run into the hills an gun you down sure, but its pretty low reward and high risk. In my experience if a sniper sees you coming their odds are really not that bad up close. Its easy to get taken out with a commisioner or pointblank sniper round when they have motion detection and can cloak and flank you

I like the idea of a coolheaded teamplay sniper keeping their counterparts in check, taking out priority targets etc.. but in reality on the other side of the scope are there not just a lot of people trying to play effectively a different game, totally removed from sniping by their guns effective range and invisable opponants?

Fwiw cqc snipers and smg/stalker infils seem fine to me and im not reffering to them at all

I played PS1 way back.. one of the few things I can recall is being shot by snipers constantly. Spawn, sniped, spawn, sniped, spawn, run around, sniped. haha

I don't nearly die as much in PS2 to them.. I'm not sure why. I do a fair amount of long range (RAMS 50) sniping myself. When I'm on a roll I can OHK people in full sprint from 300+m out. It isn't a cheat you just have to get a feel for bullet drop, sway, and anticipating enemy movement. But getting all that right isn't very often. What is often is me playing anti-sniper sniper.. mostly with an SMG close quarters in the back. That or sometimes as LA since it is easy to scale hilly terrain quickly and surprise a sniper who is focused down range (and not watching minimap with detector thingies out).

Snipers fear other snipers and HESH rounds.

That is the other way I snipe people.. long distance with HESH rounds from my lightning tank. Once you get the knack you can can knock people down from loooong range and the splash helps even if you don't get a direct hit.

I havent tried HESH since i came back, putting HE on a tank was strictly for comedy value last time i played

Is smoke working at all, im suprised no one seems to use it? Iirc there was some way of setting graphics to not render it in the past?

Sounds like the answer for me is "if you can't beat em, join em" i have been meaning to try out the stalker cloak

I'm going to try not to rehash what everyone else has said regarding this class as its been covered pretty well already

If you are killed by a sniper, one of three things has happened:
A) You were at fault. Either you weren't moving enough, or were on your turret for too long, or maybe you peeked your head over that rock too many times, it doesn't matter. Smarter gameplay could have prevented your death.
B) You were unlucky. This happens. In a game this large with this many people sometimes you just get nailed by something you could have done nothing about. This is not limited to snipers, though. Aircraft, C4, Tank Shells, and even friendly vehicles are frequent culprits as well.
C) The sniper knew what they were doing and shot your head off. Which is no different than being killed by any skilled player.

Yes CQC sniping is my bread and butter. Anywhere between 30-200m

Pretty much nothing except long range artillery and stalkers. I fear stalkers the most. Would rather play against a heavy.

As you said, if youre on the ball you can see anyone coming to get you. You can lay anti personel mines behind you for additional safety. Once you hear 1 of them go off its sidearm and cloak. You know exactly where those mines are and you flank it.

I prefer to keep an eye out and lay down mines and move alot. Motion spotters help too but they will pretty much give it away that there is a sniper near it.

I could talk about this all day lol

The class went wrong. Sniper rifles are heavy weapon, should be used by HA rather than Scout. The weapon should be strong enough to 1 hit kill, but they are heavy by all means. This will solve all balance issue for Sniper Rifles. PS2 is so unique on this setting, not even like PS1

Did you just say HA should have sniper rifles?

Ummm. no.

Heck no it wouldn't.
As it was said, outside of counter sniping, snipers are countered by long range artillery strike and flanking. And you want to give Sniper Rifles to a class that can shield against both ? Also, remember that Inflitrators have 100 shield less than other classes, which mean HESH can oneshot them in a bigger radius. To put in context, indirect damage alone from HEAT or AP canon of a Prowler can two-shot an Infiltrator, while other infantry classes require at least on direct hit. See now ?

Giving Sniper Rifles to HA would render artillery strikes and flanking much less effective (a skilled HA with shield and a Commissioner can outgun a LA), turning PlanetSide into SniperSide.

Sniper should've either been a separate class like the Devs were originally thinking, or they should've given sniper rifles to Engies.

Cloak + an OHK weapon that can out-range every other infantry weapon in the game is a broken combo. IMO the fix now would be to have the Infil auto-decloak if they're carrying a sniper rifle in their hand. Or maybe just the BASR. Maybe then SASRs would see some use.

To the OP, aside from what's already been mentioned, here are a couple of other things that have contributed to the increase in sniper deadliness:

• CQC BASRs had their scope sway completely removed a few years back but it took a while for many people to use them. In the last 1 1/2 years they've become really popular and you don't see the other BASRs used nearly as much as before.
• The skill level of the playerbase in general has increased, so the general skill level of snipers has increased.
• Players have gotten better at constantly being on the move when outdoors, so a sniper's prey has gotten harder to kill. So, potential prey showing any sign of vulnerability (like standing still, even briefly) is quickly jumped on by the snipers that are out there
• Vehicle Thermals no longer highlight infantry. So one of the biggest predators of snipers (vehicles) no longer bother doing as much sniper hunting due to the Thermals change and instead focus their attention more on bases where infantry concentrations are higher. This means snipers have become more bold/careless, and more aggressive.
• The Combined Arms Initiative (CAI) chased away a lot of the vet dedicated vehicle players, meaning even fewer vehicles are hunting snipers and snipers have gotten even more aggressive.

I'm sorry, I'm confused. Invisible Bolt Action snipers are frustrating so the solution is instead to replace their weapons with ones that fire faster, do only slightly less damage, are easier for new players to use, and carry more ammunition? Oh! and make counter sniping with a bolt action more difficult. That will certainly be less frustrating.

If skill is improving across the board the gap between the shooter and the target is unchanged, which already does not help your argument because: no change != more deadly
Furthermore the skill floor for not getting sniped is far lower than it is for hitting those shots, meaning the status quo actually worsens for a sniper. This is exacerbated as the distance increases to the point where luck is almost as large a factor as skill.

YES
Are people are finally realizing that movement is the counter to snipers? Holy crap, I never thought I'd see the da - oh wait, you're trying to say this somehow makes snipers more dangerous?
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...That's like someone working on a 1000-piece puzzle, then after 4 hours of work getting down to the last piece and instead of finishing, they throw it out a window and set the bloody house on fire.

Changing Thermals to Threat Detection has had a negligible impact on the ability of vehicles to kill infiltrators, since they couldn't see cloaked infiltrators anyways. In fact it may have even improved it, now that fewer gunners are running an optic that the cloak is completely invisible to.

A lot of your points don't seem to be well thought out and some even directly contradict your argument. For what it's worth though, I wouldn't mind seeing another class getting sniper access, if for no other reason than for people to see how "easy" it is.

The difference in knowledge between the sniper and the target play a big role in the perception of deadliness as well. My first shot might pop the melon of that guy 200m away while he's zigging and jumping. That's the guy that's going to send me the profanity filled message and accuse me of cheating. What he didn't see is the handful of (much easier) shots that I missed on other targets before I got lucky and sent him to the respawn chamber.

Yep.

I have landed some shots that were so lucky even i couldnt believe them lol
Could only imagine what the other guy was thinking..