Viability of 2x > scopes

Ditching a scope, even the 1x Reflex on the SAW was one of the better decisions I've made. Ironsights are so much easier to use at pretty much all ranges compared to the scopes.

The main problem is proportionality of movement to compensate for recoil.

A person with a firearm moves exactly so much to compensate recoil every time no matter what "scope" is being used. There is no variation, recoil is exactly the same for every matching round used.

In this game, each magnification setting is a very large increase in the amount of hand motion needed to keep the weapon on target.

The second problem is the lack of understanding how a weapon is to be properly zeroed. Each scope variation lacks this setting. Why can I not zero my own scope to fight at different ranges?

Why get interested or involved in a virtual combat game when one has never lived and breathed weapons?

Firearms in this game are high fantasy. They in no way reflect anything I have in my safe nor anything I have ever handled. Cone of Fire and Bloom, really?

Absurd fantasies about how firearms function. Ammunition in the future seems to be highly defective to be firing in any direction but directly on the zero point.

That's just a video game thing in general. Pretty much any shooter is like that.

Although extremely rare, I've seen it handled properly before. In the game "Tremulous", you could get a minigun. It had no bloom or anything like that, but it kicked up a storm when you tried to fire it. If you had a steady hand and could control the recoil, it was surprisingly accurate, but if you didn't handle the recoil very well, you'd miss constantly.

You should definitely try to work on your burst-firing and recoil compensation a bit. You don't need to burst that slowly for one - the gun will reset to 0 CoF a fair bit more quickly than that. I believe I've heard it called "quick-bursting," firing with only slight pauses just long enough to reset the CoF that ultimately is almost the same as firing full-auto. Also, you should be able to keep the gun more or less perfectly still vertically with the 3.4x, and again I'd just really suggest practicing target shooting in VR until you've got the downward pull just right and can maintain it consistently. Once you've got both of those down, you can practice combining the two so you can adjust your recoil compensation with your pauses in between bursts.

I don't really understand your argument. At first you say that the non-straightforward recoil modifier makes sense to balance weapons, then you say that it doesn't matter because player skill will overide the extra effects and that the real range limiter is horizontal recoil?

Theoretically, I could experimentally find the recoil modifier and adjust my sensitivity accordingly. I would just have to record my settings and change it every time I want to use a different optic. That isn't fun. That's tedious. Why should I have to change my mouse-moving habits for the same weapon because my optics are different?

In regards to limiting a weapon's effective range: random horizontal recoil is used to do this, and is seen in such weapons as the Carv. One can't compensate for that regardless of optics, so I don't see the issue there (I think we are in agreeance here?).

It's one thing to not be a realistic game. It is completely another to be completely illogical. Maybe every enemy should die when I shoot the sky? After all, the game isn't realistic.

When I first got into PS2 I tried out the 3.4x scope on a few weapons and found the same thing OP said to be true: it was like shooting during an earthquake.

Now Ive come to the conclusion that if not using a true sniper rifle, 2x scope is plenty enough to hit distant targets. In fact, IMO, a 2x scope is the most versatile scope in the game - its not terrible at CQC and pretty decent for ranged targets. I use one on everything from the Gauss SAW to the Warden now. I do have a 1x IRNV and 1x Reflex scope too, but those are only used in certain circumstances.

I used to use the SAW [since that was the weapon brought up] with just iron sights to counteract effectiveness of flinch. Now I use 2x scope because people somewhere along the way learned the hide all but their head behind hills and rocks. The recoil isn't that big even with the HV ammo and without the compensator.

Anything higher than 2x is useless in most cases. I don't even like the reflex sights since the dot is so bloated and actually prefer the ironsights for most of my guns.

Well, a lot of people don't know how to deal with vertical recoil optimally. Not making the vertical recoil proportional ensures players have to hone their recoil compensation skills to use the scope to good effect. And even for most people who do become practiced in it, the vertical recoil is always going to be a challenge to counteract (I didn't mean to imply that the vertical recoil becomes a complete non-issue with practice; rather, you can minimize it significantly, and I myself have hardly mastered this effort). It acts as both an increased barrier of entry and an inhibitor to effective use of the scope that I think is probably wise.

As far as adjusting your mouse sensitivity to make it an easier task, I actually tried that with my mouse's DPI buttons to raise my sensitivity above my normal settings, but ultimately it just made putting my reticule precisely on target more difficult, and every slight twitch affected my aim noticeably (and it somehow didn't really make it easier to compensate for the vertical recoil). In particular it made it harder for me to transition seamlessly from bursting to plinking as I need slow movements for the latter that I wasn't able to do very easily. Perhaps some others would have a different experience here, but based on my own attempts, I don't think most people would find just upping their sensitivity a bunch to be a cure-all while using high magnification scopes.

Don't get me wrong, if they did make vertical recoil proportional to the magnification, I wouldn't throw a fit since it'd do me more good than harm. If they want to make my playstyles easier for me, then so be it. But I can't help thinking making the long range options on assault weapons more accessible could be bad for the game in the long run.

So basically you're saying that people should try and tame the ridiculous recoil that high-magnification scopes give you, just for the sake of taming it? Why does there need to be a barrier of entry? Why do we need to have lots of skill to use them?

This guy said it best:

I'll use 1x optics because I'm TR and my factions motto is "Our iron sights are sh*t, inaccurate and take up so much of your screen that you are forced to spray and pray until you get enough certs for a 1x RDS".

Other than that I agree we think OP entirely.

I'll tell you how they did it wrong, and it's quite simple really: SOE has some of the WORST programmers and designers in the industry. I do not mean any offense to these people personally, but it's just so obvious that they're not at the level of competency as other developers in their profession.

I've never seen such a terrible graphics engine or such abysmal FPS mechanics. It's really disheartening, too, because PlanetSide deserves so much more than this.

3.4x scope on my Elidion works great

The graphics in this game are very impressive, in my opinion. Their lighting system really stands out above all other lighting systems used in games today. It makes everything look beautiful. It's unoptimized, but that doesn't mean the graphics themselves are bad.

I think they need to be somewhat exclusive because the improvements in target acquisition and all that comes with that are powerful on automatic weapons, enough that I could see it marginalizing sniper rifles among players that aren't great shots with them (which is probably most players) if it was made that much more accessible, and possibly have other unhealthy effects that are hard to predict.

But I want to stress that I don't think you need lots of skill to use them. I'm not a great player or a fantastic shot. I simply recognized the advantages that the magnification brought, knew there were people out there who had recoil compensation down to an art, and realized that overcoming the recoil issue on the high magnification scopes was entirely doable - it was just down to me. So I tried to train myself to adapt to it and found reasonable success. If I did not feel that the ability to control the recoil was within any capable player's grasp, then I would agree with the argument in here all the way.

The TMG with a 3.4x sight is nice at time. The no bloom first shot makes it pretty usable as a sniper and I can take down people at range with it. Mostly I use it to harass people, not to get kills. Like shooting at snipers will often make them cloak and run away which means I just saved a friendly or two. Same for heavies who are shooting rockets. Land a couple of bullets and they need to hide and find a new spot to fire from which gives friendly armour a couple of extra seconds to live.

3.4x Laser Dot is nice for mid range weapons. I use it for scout, battle and assault rifles. The 2x VS scope is kind of ugly and hard to see actually, so I'll often use 3.4 often if I need some zoom.

I do fine with the LACO 3.4 on my Gauss SAW. I've killed from the tops of cliffs as enemies tried desperately to zig-zag their way out of their predetermined death. For close quarters I prefer the 2X reflex but by default I use the 3.4.

I think it really depends on the persons mouse settings. I play on low mouse sensitivity and if I use a scope 3.4 or greater my mouse will be off the pad after 15 shots of the saw.

Something that is ironic for me is that the higher scopes are actually more suitable at close range than long range for me due to the recoil haha.

Regarding the saw I've used the iron sight/nv/1x reflex/2x reflex for about 1000kills each and prefer the 1x reflex the most due to recoil control. I would of also went with the iron sight but at night its just bad imo (especially if you play on high graphics, the lighting make it so hard to see stuff) which is why I tend to use the 1x/2x reflex. I've been experimenting with the 3.4 lact eye scope recently to see if it improves my hs ratio. So far it seems about the same, but the heads are so much easier to see compared to the 1x/2x.