Cause some little bastard at SOE sat down with a calculator and a bunch of numbers, ran some meta-analysis regression curve thing, and figured out that the average person only holds still for X seconds. They then set the average time it takes for a sniper to account for sight sway and line up a shot and made it equal to X. The result: The bazillion times I have lined up a sweet shot only to have the little bugger I am targeting twitch and move as I pull the trigger. Statistics suck!
tbh, between the sniper rifles having sway and no other class having it.... the sniper having life threatening asthma or lung cancer and can only hold breath for a few seconds.... the tracer rounds (this is the future lol?)....SOE needs to fix something. I even find the bullet velocity even on the highest velocity sniper rifles to be very lackluster. This is obviously the future one way or another, they should be more like railguns... not slower velocity rounds then weapons we have in 2012. I would be perfectly happy with having the sway and the only lung cancer asthmatic class, if the highest velocity sniper rifles were at the VERY least such a high velocity (for ALL factions) that it made it to the target so close to instant, that the time would be barely perceivable, and I am talking at max render distance. Even the sniper rifles in BF3 have like 2-3x the velocity
Holding your breath is a misconception in that you're not holding a breath of air but you're actually exhaling and holding with your lungs empty, which lessens the tiny muscle tremors that might throw off a long range shot when firing. You can't hold that as long as a lung full of air. This is the only game I've see that actually got that fact and doesn't let you hold for a whole ten seconds. It translates awkwardly to a game but such is the price to pay for the ability to kill with one bullet.
yes but it lasts for only three seconds which unless your an expert player and instantly get the target in the crosshairs without being slightly off it doesn't give your enough time to line up for the headshot. The only way I can achieve it is to get very close to the target, which means I can be easily killed. It is also poor for the semi-auto rifes since you can't snap off a couple of rounds and take down a target with some chest shots because you start to waver by the time of the second shot.
As long I can remember it was a passive exhale and then breath hold. Most sway punishment comes to Semi-Auto users, especially with high magnification scopes. On bolt action it is only annoying if you have too high magnification scope and narrow field of view (shorter range as usual). Some kind of passive skill for certification would be nice allowing for longer breath hold ~ 0.2 sec / rank.
Don't confuse statistics with psychology, which is the abortion of an application of statistics.. gone terribly wrong. Statistics is just a subset of mathematics. Statistical inference is to statistics what engineering/physics is to mathematics. It's like hating mathematicians for the A-Bomb.
You shouldn't really need 3 seconds, let alone more than that. Yeah it would be more convinient but hardly necessary. And you don't need to be an expert player to do it. A big thing I've noticed with planetside 2 is that habits you pick up from the big name FPS games in the past several years don't work here or just make things harder. This is a key example. You can hold your breath, then aim. You have to get your target zeroed and then and only then, hold your breath for the final finite adjustment. Don't press shift at all until you're ready to fire. Aim normally with the sway, then just before you fire, press it and slide the crosshairs over the target as it steadies. It shouldn't take more than a second, let alone three. Once you adapt how you're sniping to the shorter steady time, it becomes second nature. These days I rarely have the timer run down on me, and then it's usually when I'm trying to line up on a sprinting target, and I'm far from an expert player. This is my first time seriously playing a sniper in any game in well over ten years, and skillwise I'm probably just north of decent. It doesn't take a pro, just accepting that you have to adapt to the game rather than wanting the game adapt to you, after that it's just a matter of time and practice.
