...to receive active scan results.


Let's be honest,regardless of what snipers say,sniper rifles are OP.
They will claim that 3 shots is too many.

Well,i believe such a godly weapon should have drawbacks.
There are 0 drawbacks currently,regardless of what snipers say,we face-to-face infantry know the truth.

Why should such a cowardly play style be rewarded for a frontline mercs job?
Getting the perks of a scan for easy kills all while the merc that scanned can die in combat.

There is 0 defense for easymode OHK potential weapons.

This would negate any potential scan results from any form of active scanner,even if the sniper is the one doing the scan.

I'm with Aeon on this one. As it currently stands the issue with sniper rifles isn't their killing potential, its the fact that once equipped they don't do enough to support the team or even squad. Snipers are too independent. Additionally their risk reward ratio is all messed up thanks to their ability to hide in the redline.

Snipers need to be forced out of the redline to increase their risk but then given more team focused ways to earn rewards. Nerfing their weapon and/or their ability to see targets does nothing towards either of these ends.

I'm with Aeon on this one. As it currently stands the issue with sniper rifles isn't their killing potential, its the fact that once equipped they don't do enough to support the team or even squad. Snipers are too independent. Additionally their risk reward ratio is all messed up thanks to their ability to hide in the redline.

Snipers need to be forced out of the redline to increase their risk but then given more team focused ways to earn rewards. Nerfing their weapon and/or their ability to see targets does nothing towards either of these ends.

Force Reduction a la Fear.[/u]

This is what makes me, as a sniper, a valuable team asset and force multiplier. As for removing a sniper? Get over yourself and come find me in a scout suit...or heavy suit as one dude did (that ended badly for me...). Will you get less kills? Yup - you're looking for me instead of fighting. Will I die? Almost certainly - I'm a sniper with all dmg mods. No tank. My best defense up close is that wickedly OP...smg. Oops. So you could argue snipers help a team a fourth way - forcing the enemy team to dedicate a player, maybe more, to anti-sniping / sniper hunting.


Point I'm making? We support teams a hell of a lot more than that idiot running into the bunker gun blazing and wasting a clone and maybe denting one guy's shields. Play a sniper and you'll discover you're that guardian angel nobody knows exists except when you get a kill - assists aren't listed accept when YOU die and you invariably assume the guy you just killed at 0% shields was fighting one of your bros a moment ago...not 'sniped' down to size to help you.

Your welcome.
Now please post on the forums about a real problem - I recommend equipment's unreal saturation and spam rates due to ease of fitting and utility.
(20 Uplinks in one room? Schweet! I just got 100 WP for one grenade! Woo!)

Problem is that, while all valid points, is hard to put into a point system. Which creates the illusion you are not being very productive and prevents people from being able to easily recognize good snipers from bad ones.

[quote=Texs Red]
Listing who captures an object could also help - I do take points at times because only I defended it against those two capture-spamming scouts, then retook it. This shows the guy getting sniper kills is also contributing other ways. This particularly happens a lot in 5-point skirmishes where I and maybe one other sniper or scout protect an outlying point while the main body of the team slugs it out in the interior buildings and their capture points (where I can't help a lot).

Another problem too, is lack to EWAR. Which I could see a sniper having great value in.

Imagine this:

A minmatar sniper with his precision rifle spots an enemy heavy moving across a field. He pulls out his Target Painter equipment and tags the enemy, now he and his team mates can see the outline of said heavy through walls for a minute. Should anyone else kill the target he gets 25 WP - EWAR assist, but he wants to kill so he takes his shot and wounds him. His squad moves in and finishes the job so he gets 25 WP + 25 WP kill assist.

OR

A Caldari scout sniper is pinned down by an enemy heavy with a sniper rifle. The first shot almost killed him but he managed to duck behind cover. He knows he can't go head-on with the enemy sniper having his location in his sights so he needs to reposition himself. Pulling out his ECM jammer, quickly pops out, and jams the heavy's sensors so he can no longer see the blue and red IFF chevrons above other players. The scout then slinks over to a new corner of the building where the heavy will be unlikely to tell the scout from the shadow of the building and begins to put round after round into the confused heavy. The heavy has to much eHP though and retreats but, without the ability to tell friend from foe, runs into allied blue berries who finish the job. 25 WP - EWAR assist + 25 WP kill assist.

Doesn't solve the fear factor problem but at least its something right?

Listing who captures an object could also help - I do take points at times because only I defended it against those two capture-spamming scouts, then retook it. This shows the guy getting sniper kills is also contributing other ways. This particularly happens a lot in 5-point skirmishes where I and maybe one other sniper or scout protect an outlying point while the main body of the team slugs it out in the interior buildings and their capture points (where I can't help a lot).

Adding incentives is nice but I get the impression most people (some snipers included) don't actually understand the role CCP has fashioned and how well balanced it actually is. You're not going to wrack up kills and WP as a sniper unless the enemy team is too stupid/lazy to hunt you down and, again, too stupid/lazy to be aware of their environment.

That said - snipers don't kill pad (try it yourself - to get a wealth of targets means you're in range of someone's combat rifle OR the enemy team is idiotically sitting still in the wide open). Snipers control the field, mostly by fear ironically. Here's how I work as a sniper for my team:

1) I find a place to hide out - I don't redline because my aim is not good over 200m usually. What's more, most redline spots that hide you can't see around capture points...so no utility for the team. Lastly, anti-snipers look at the red-line for scouts that are speed-hacking...and find you. Sitting. Very. Still. Not good for your health.

2) My job is three-fold:

A) Kill people (force reduction) - no different from frontline, less risk but far more difficult to accomplish with lower target saturation and much more difficult target hits. Significant SP and arguably isk is needed for an effective sniper setup to consistently net kills, not assists. Head shots are rare - stand still and I might get it. All snipers complain about hit detection and such...that's for another thread.

B) Wound people (force reduction) - it takes me one hit on good days for a scout, two to three for a medium, and I almost never kill a heavy. That said, EVEN WITHOUT A KILL that dude I hit is weakened and running into my team, making him easier to kill. Assist for me (yay!) and the team has an easier time holding ground. Do you want to fight a heavy with or without shields? Yeah - I thought so.

C) FEAR FACTOR (and why I love sniping) - what do you do when you get hit and nobody is in sight? "ERMERGURD! SNIPER!" and you run for cover. I don't get a kill if you're semi-quick and you live. But what does that mean for my team? You didn't run into battle...so you didn't hurt them, and now four guys storming my team just became three. If I'm lucky you run around like a fool and I get a kill - usually I don't. But what does happen is you're alone when my team cleans up the guys YOU were supposed to support but ran away instead. Then they find you, alone, 50% shields or less...who is the coward now?

Force Reduction a la Fear.

This is what makes me, as a sniper, a valuable team asset and force multiplier. As for removing a sniper? Get over yourself and come find me in a scout suit...or heavy suit as one dude did (that ended badly for me...). Will you get less kills? Yup - you're looking for me instead of fighting. Will I die? Almost certainly - I'm a sniper with all dmg mods. No tank. My best defense up close is that wickedly OP...smg. Oops. So you could argue snipers help a team a fourth way - forcing the enemy team to dedicate a player, maybe more, to anti-sniping / sniper hunting.


Point I'm making? We support teams a hell of a lot more than that idiot running into the bunker gun blazing and wasting a clone and maybe denting one guy's shields. Play a sniper and you'll discover you're that guardian angel nobody knows exists except when you get a kill - assists aren't listed accept when YOU die and you invariably assume the guy you just killed at 0% shields was fighting one of your bros a moment ago...not 'sniped' down to size to help you.

Your welcome.
Now please post on the forums about a real problem - I recommend equipment's unreal saturation and spam rates due to ease of fitting and utility.
(20 Uplinks in one room? Schweet! I just got 100 WP for one grenade! Woo!)

I'm sorry to say that all three of the things you have listed as your role are performed better by other play styles. Every other class is better at killing (force reduction), injuring, and creating fear (I'm a hell of a lot more scared by the sound of a shotgun than I am by the sound of a sniper rifle). Heck, I'd venture to say that I am rarely even worried about snipers even if they hit me. They don't dissuade me from going anywhere since they are unlikely to kill me as I move about erratically. Even calling out targets and noticing troop movements is a role better carried out by others. An active scanner is much more informative than someone gibbering at me since I can see it with my own eyes both through walls and on my radar. Currently snipers have no role.

That being said I'd like to see snipers have an actually useful role on the battlefield. I'd love it if snipers could mark targets for their squad when ADSing (just for an example) or get some bonus to using specialized equipment (radar jammars, drop-uplink interuption field generators, etc...).

As it stands, regardless of how much you protest, even the best snipers in the game (which you are not one of) are little more than an annoyance to other players are far from a major asset to their team.

...

...

...

That is a fair question. How can we make snipers an asset in their core role while still making it fun for all the other classes. Snipers in real life aren't designed to be fair or let their enemies have fun. This is why we occasionally see players calling the sniper rifle UP; they want a realistic one shot one kill weapon. The down side of this, which you hinted at is that making snipers more powerful would also make it much less fun for every other class.

Others have proposed increasing sniper rifle damade but giving their rounds travel time bullet drop and windage affects. I would have no problem with this at all. A one hit kill sniper rifle that was a challenge to hit with would seem to be more fun for snipers anyway. The only downside is that CCP has already said they have no intention of adding more realistic weapons physics to the game, citing something about hardware constraints. I'm not a programmer so I'm not going to take up the challenge of battling with the devs on that one.

Personally I think adding a constant sway that can only be stopped by holding your mercs breath, an action which would use up stamina, along with increased damage and lengthened reload times would increase the snipers utility at long range killing while still allowing for other pkayers to have a good time.

In both of these cases snipers should light up on the radar of players in a certain radius when they fire. Those guns are loud after all. I feel like there should be skills/equipment to help counter this effect to some extent though.

Additionally I feel that the snipers need to have an increased risk. It is all fine to shoot people from far away but that distance itself should be the only barrier to people attacking you (or height should you get onto a building). The artifical redline stopping players from flanking and killing snipers has got to go. I know it is there to protect spawns. I was there when MCC camping was a very real thing (REs tossed from the MCC netted me many a kill in those matches where my team got redlined) so I'm not proposing a removal of the redline. It would simply be better for everyone if there was more of a reason to not stay in it such not recieving WP or kills while in the redline or a timer that forces you to move out or face clone termination.

I do realize that neither of the weapon modification solutions does anything for increasing the snipers usefulness in high level games. I'll have to think more on that one since you don't like the idea of making the sniper have the additional role of ewar deployment specialist.

I find it somewhat amusing that everyone on the forums complains that snipers don't benefit anything to the team and you're sitting here wanting to neuter them of the ability to help out their team.

I would except a constant sway or slightly minimalized one if your skilled into the sway reduction. If it incorporated a breathing mechanic that used up stamina. I suggested in previous sniper related threads of using deployable cameras to expand their intel capabilities. Concerning the other poster who mentioned the role of the sniper I can agree with you that the sniper has some already defined roles on the field but they can be further enhanced and accentuated to make the sniper a wanted or even necessary asset in higher tier combat.

Moving onto sniper rifle optimization damage wise a head shot bonus increase to the current multiplier would be a good start. Having variable scope zoom on the rifle and of course render/hit detection fixes would help. I would also suggest a reduction to the aiming dot since it can be very large in comparison to our targets which makes it light up when the target is actually not hitable (of course if variable scope zoom is brought in this will be a non issue).

Finally more assets to be able to use as both regular infantry and specialized snipers such as

-Binoculars to find targets (also has built in variable zoom)

-New modules to extend our ammo size similar to vehicles

-Deployable cameras (probably will be handled with personal drones once they make an appearance)

-Deployable small turrets

-Single target long range precision painter (could just be incorporated into the binoculars)

-Smoke bomb

-Frag grenade (scramble visuals, stronger versions can be used the same way against vehicles)

-Poisonous rounds that sap both shield and armor steadily (stronger versions do ithis for a longer duration). Can equipped them to an equipment slot, only have access to 6 and can fire them once chosen on the weapons wheel. Can also be fired from any weapon, these rounds do not cause immediate death nor do they have a high dps when they initially hit targets or stick to targets.

...to receive active scan results.


Let's be honest,regardless of what snipers say,sniper rifles are OP.
They will claim that 3 shots is too many.

Well,i believe such a godly weapon should have drawbacks.
There are 0 drawbacks currently,regardless of what snipers say,we face-to-face infantry know the truth.

Why should such a cowardly play style be rewarded for a frontline mercs job?
Getting the perks of a scan for easy kills all while the merc that scanned can die in combat.

There is 0 defense for easymode OHK potential weapons.

This would negate any potential scan results from any form of active scanner,even if the sniper is the one doing the scan.

This is a very good discussion, but I would like to add that most of these comments are for long-distance snipers and should not universally be applied to all instances of the weapon's usage. particularly discussions of damage and sway.

I'm saying this because there is another danger lurking in the dark... a scout, using primarily knives, and carrying a tactical sniper rifle. You do not want this user to have the weapons/tools you have described.

Another item to consider is new players (poor blueb's) that commonly start as a sniper and move onto the field as they gain experience. They may not be doing much now, but it's a gentle place in harsh world... I commonly play with a player that was a 1/5/0 sniper until she became a 1000+WP/game logibro. If it wasn't for the introduction period (sniping), the advancement and investment (most equipment 3+) may not have been possible.

This is a great discussion, I'm just trying to add a perspective from a "designated marksman" style user. I actually love redline snipers because the maps allow me to get great headshots on them while they look right over me (sorry ;)

edit: If we really wanted to make the presence of snipers benefit known to our team, we could consider giving them a specialized secondary weapon to launch a smoke canister. This could mark enemies, provide cover, and make the sniper's activity more pronounced to the team. You could then give a commission/bonus/whatever to WP earned by other players in the vicinity of the smoke-effect.

Pick up a sniper rifle and shoot back if it's so easy.