[Suggestion] Sniper feels more and more useless

To me snipers were always pretty useless here. I'm sure they are fun for ppl who like to play with themselves, get XP, and have a good K/D ratio but they do little to nothing in the way of assaulting and holding an objective or defending one really. Eventually ppl need to move closer than a few hundred yards and take a point, blow up a sunderer, take out other vehicles, etc. etc. Snipers are an annoyance at best... never heard ppl saying "OMG we HAVE to take out those snipers or we can't hold this / can't take this!"

I remember when the game was just released and the infiltrator was a popular class. We'd see dozens of them hiding behind rocks trying to get kills and shooting at each other, not contributing to anything. I also remember back in late beta when everyone complained about 1 hit-kill snipers. This class was badly thought out from the very start.

Snipers simply have no purpose in an objective based shooter. Trying to make them useful is a waste of resources.

They need to improve the infiltrator's infiltrating ability instead.

Task:
AV nest at the hilltop reinforced with few burster maxes is wiping out allied mech in 300m radius. You don't have snipers.
Go!

Wars are objective based real life shooters, last time i heard they have plenty of work for snipers.

Can't fire while moving? I can accept that... After all, the .50 is a beast to carry. Having to set up, being vulnerable while doing so? I can accept it IF after the weapon is ready, we don't have to control breathing. It only makes sense, though by now I'm confident I'd be OK even with breath control.

I'll accept all that as said, under one condition; If the RAMS and its equivalents will ALWAYS OHK, if not always then at least on Head-Shot. Shields, Nano, no matter- Guaranteed OHK, again at the very least when it's a Head-Shot. But I'd prefer shots to the body being OHK too, I can do it far more easily with even the ML-7 than with the RAMS and it's much less demanding... Not to mention that the HA class is generally more practical. See where this is going if we start comparing?

And no we're not Off-Snipers. We paid too many Certs/SC to go full on Sniper if we want. Ammo+, ETCETC and the RAMS on top. Let's be fair here. As for the arguement about Shotties... I can't even begin explaining how they can't be compared, beginning with the fact that Shotties will be MUCH better in more situations than a Sniper Rifle. It would be best if we viewed the Sniper Rifles separately from other Weapon Classes thus avoiding even more silliness.

One could argue legitimately that NW5 equipped players are still like 2 out of 6 targets so far, but that isn't saying much if it escalates to even 4 out of 6. Which it will, likely. Best to bring it up now then, it will save us a lot of (Justified) QQ on the Forums.

Sniping has its uses, but its very very situational. But the great thing is that its very good at what you need it to do. If you have an emerging tank column coming down on your base, your defenses can wear down on the tanks, when they move back to repair, snip the engineers. On the reverse side, you can snipe those repairing turrets. Sniping heavies firing rockets is another great way to help.

Basically anytime two multi-squad to platoon elements clash and come to a standstill the sniper can make a difference. Even if you only get one kill, the idea that the enemy knows there's a sniper picking them off takes some of the edge off. This makes everything they do slower and can push a slight advantage to your side.

You have to remember, you're only one person. You can expect to make a difference in a battle all by yourself, you're a cog in the great machine of things.

As far as weapons go. You can still get OHK with a bolt action. You just need to be a bit closer. And if you're with your squad, even if the enemy knows where the sniper fire is coming from, what can they do about it? Sniping isn't always about sitting in the rocks by yourself, it works great in squad moves where you can provide long range support in a fire fight. Hitting the body still does a ton of damage and makes finishing them off with LMG, SMG, or Carbines that much easier for your team.

Pretty much the only place you can't be useful as a sniper is indoors. But you can keep pressure on the outside to make it easier indoors.

Inside Biolabs.. yeah grab a SMG from a sundy. There are some cases the sniper rifle just isn't going to work. Wouldn't make sense to try and make them work here.

Thank the maker! Seriously, OHK snipers bring nothing to this game except for extreme annoyance. You want to accomplish something with infiltrator at long range - use semi-auto sniper rifle. It's just as good as it always was and is actually good at pinning down enemy infantry when used from long range. As for "punishing people for looking at the map" kind of infiltrator, PS2 would be a better game without them altogether. But since there is a number of people already owning the guns, the current situation is the best compromise.

if you flank these 4 av engies you should be able to pop their heads without jumping through the flaming hoops.
LAs don't have any problem with raining mass death on people with C4 and even taking sundie with them. Somehow nobody has any problem with that.

define a bit closer. Currently the absolute worst case scenario is 30m. Does that sound like anything remotely similar to sniping?

Great, so verything is peachy because you can at least get some assist xp playing as a class that exps pretty much exclusively on infantry due to near 0 support XP and 0 AV ability. I'm almost shivering in ecstasy.

I just use the close range bolt action, with a 4x. Most my targets are within 100 meters or less. I get the extra thrill of knowing that the person that just got sniped is one of you ****** bags that say all snipers sit 300-500 meters out somewhere on a rock. Also, I feel plenty effective, I'm consistently taking out medics and engineers. They are my priority targets over anything else is a group. I would also agree that in big fights I am able to see the results of my sniping. I can watch as I start picking off people, they become more cautious, as they become aware of my presence and other snipers. True some snipers are bad, and ineffective, but so are some HAs or LAs or anything else. As for snipers being able to help out in a team? Well I too think they need some more "teamplay." But if you are playing a more medium to close range build like me (SAS-R or equivalent) I'm right there with the squad, popping pineapples and wounding targets for the heavy pushes.

i hope you mean OHK body shots are not okay. because if you're proposing that the headshot not be a OHK i want some of what your smoking

Inf worthless? I've died SOOOO many times to snipers while repairing my Lightning its crazy.

Today i even swore I'd put my gfx on low if it happens one more time

I was going to respond to your points until I saw this. You want something to grind exp/resources with. Which is not only what this discussion isn't about, but also has very little to do with the success of a mission. Your best bet is to download a bot and let it exp for you if its that important. Stay very far away from sniping or any other specialized style of play. And definitely don't join any squads I am in. I want to group with winners, not grinders.

I agree with the OP. It was even advertised in one of the introductory videos to playing PS2 the OHK headshot bolt action sniper rifle. Eventually the game is going to turn into a grenade spam contest. Everyone ironically? will complain that the lasher has splash that can hit around corners even though now many consider it completely useless.

They are good for pushing across bridges and taking out engies behind turrets.

There are times during a fight I pick a rock in the middle the battlefield and cloak and run to it and then pick another rock cloak and get behind lines and take out the bad guys.

A good sniper gets in the right position behind lines and takes out the eng and meds and you can turn the tide to a battle

My fav thing to do is to get outside a base being attacked and move to a position that I can take out the Eng and other sniper and eng repairing tanks.

I'm personally having a ton of fun playing as a scout sniper rather than a long range sniper. Sneaking behind enemy lines and popping heads at less than 100m is getting me OHK headshots. Grant you this isn't fixing the role of long range sniper however until they start the sniper revamp this will fill that hole for me.

It only takes NW2 to protect against OHK from bolt action. You call 11 certs expensive?

a wall of text with arguments shot down with ad hominem. Cool.
Nice theory you got there but if i cared that much about grind i wouldn't be playing inf in the first place.
i don't care about resources much - all infres goes towards betties, mechres is only for flashes and air is not used at all. Certs on the other hand i like, because as a f2p player how am i supposed to keep up with the rest and buy weapons, utility toys? Up to 1860c for a bunch of temporary darts? Are you kidding me?

XP rewards flashing on your screen literally say "you are doing it right" - on the other hand if nothing appears on the screen it means "boy you suck". Too bad that in case of infs only kills really matter and most people outright claim that the class is mostly useless.

You can deny all you want but infs seeing their pathetic cert gains and a myriad of bugs plaguing them since the release, ignored by the devs, already felt like a redheaded stepchildren of PS2 even without having their primary weapon nerfed into the ground by the ongoing powercreep.
The game notoriously rewards engineers for literally every little thing they do (on top of their insane synergy in mech play) and we got jack and **** for our only somewhat useful unique class skill: hacking - and then there is no ribbon for that! Darts giving xp is a recent thing and we had to go for months without after spending up to 1860c on it - no ribbon for it either.

For the record I use sniper rifles at mid-range while cloak-storming generators and control points with a pistol, so I'm actually using the class properly and I think that's how it's supposed to be used - complete the objective without a frontal assault.

Also explains why I have, for a sniper, such an atrociously low K/D.

I feel safe saying that sniping was always amongst the least useful of the engagement skills in this game, and holding by that claim for as long as I can. The practioner survived longer than most other classes, but the soldiers that died more often had far greater contribution to the success of a conquest. They're seen as more an annoyance than a threat, even if they were exceptionally skilled at their art. Defense might fare better for the sniper's role but I don't know for certain.