DUST Search - New Blog: Keeping the Sniper Relevant

hgghyujh wrote:

Scar Scrilla wrote:

Teilka Darkmist wrote:

Arkena Wyrnspire wrote:

I would feel more sympathy for snipers if 99% of them weren't in the redline.

Personally, I have no objection to more damage if you have things such as bullet drop, target leading, scope sway, etc. Because as it stands presently you can sit miles off with a perfectly still scope, point, and click. It's not massively effective, though it can do some damage, unless you're using a Thale's but there is no risk or skill involved in it.

If that were changed, I think the sniper would be in a more satisfying place.
Right now, though, snipers having much more damage would result in even more matches becoming a contest of redline faggotry.

I agree that redline snipers should all be killed, but saying it's 99% is exaggerating it far too much. Personally when I'm sniping I'm more often found nearer the opposing teams redline than my own.

Bullet drop and target leading are negated by the speed of the bullets. They travel at around 2 kilometers a second. The couple of hundred meters they have to travel are such a small fraction of a second that the target doesn't have chance to move far enough for leading to matter and there's not enough time for drop to be significant.

We already have scope sway, unless you're crouched and therefore bracing the rifle, which would at worst reduce sway at best eliminate it. Personally I think a sniper should go prone rather than crouch, but I since that would affect only players with a single type of weapon I can understand why they haven't added it, there's more important things to work on first.

Also the hit detection on a sniper rifle is appalling. I can have my scope lined up on the head of a target, have it turn red even and then have the system decide I completely missed and there be no damage to my target.

Snipers don't need increased damage, we need better hit detection and a frakking zoom on at least advanced and prototype scopes. Ever tried to hit something that's considerably smaller than what you have to use to aim?

+1 for scope/zoom

It's ridiculous that u have plasma weapons, forge guns, shielded dropsuits and all sorts of futuristic stuff but no zoomable scope on a sniper rifle.

its the button layout it doesn't support it, and now I'm gonna be a **** and say thats one of my big problems with games made for console to many compromises need to be made on controls.

When I play as a sniper, I'm more likely to be nearer to the opponents redline than my own.


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Teilka Darkmist 19	Posted - 2014.01.20 23:02:00 - [1] - Quote Arkena Wyrnspire wrote: I would feel more sympathy for snipers if 99% of them weren't in the redline. Personally, I have no objection to more damage if you have things such as bullet drop, target leading, scope sway, etc. Because as it stands presently you can sit miles off with a perfectly still scope, point, and click. It's not massively effective, though it can do some damage, unless you're using a Thale's but there is no risk or skill involved in it. If that were changed, I think the sniper would be in a more satisfying place. Right now, though, snipers having much more damage would result in even more matches becoming a contest of redline faggotry. I agree that redline snipers should all be killed, but saying it's 99% is exaggerating it far too much. Personally when I'm sniping I'm more often found nearer the opposing teams redline than my own. Bullet drop and target leading are negated by the speed of the bullets. They travel at around 2 kilometers a second. The couple of hundred meters they have to travel are such a small fraction of a second that the target doesn't have chance to move far enough for leading to matter and there's not enough time for drop to be significant. We already have scope sway, unless you're crouched and therefore bracing the rifle, which would at worst reduce sway at best eliminate it. Personally I think a sniper should go prone rather than crouch, but I since that would affect only players with a single type of weapon I can understand why they haven't added it, there's more important things to work on first. Also the hit detection on a sniper rifle is appalling. I can have my scope lined up on the head of a target, have it turn red even and then have the system decide I completely missed and there be no damage to my target. Snipers don't need increased damage, we need better hit detection and a frakking zoom on at least advanced and prototype scopes. Ever tried to hit something that's considerably smaller than what you have to use to aim? 'You can only post every 5 minutes because your account is less than 2 days old' - This gets old VERY quickly.
Teilka Darkmist 21	Posted - 2014.01.20 23:42:00 - [2] - Quote Arkena Wyrnspire wrote: 99% of snipers ARE behind the redline. And hit detection and rendering isn't a valid excuse for wanting a buff for a class - just ask for the bugs fixed. If you think that without the bugs sniping would be any more than point and click you're bigging yourself up far too much. Not in any match I've played in they're not. Hit detection and rendering are the main things that snipers are calling for again and again along with variable zoom scopes, which is just realistic considering current day snipers have that availability and this is thousands of years in the future. Sniping is more than point and click even now, and not just because of the bugs. You have to decide where to set up on the battlefield for best effect in support of your team. You then have to not only keep watch of where your target zone is, you have to keep checking around yourself for people sneaking up on you because whilst you're aiming and shooting, you're forced to be stationary unlike with any other weapon choice in the game. Move and you're pretty much guaranteed to miss. The slow rate of fire means you're probably only going to get one shot at your target which means that you either have to shoot centre mass when there's someone who can take advantage of the target's shields going down, or you have to headshot to have any hope of bringing the target down. Add in that most of the maps only give you the smallest of windows onto where the majority of the action actually takes place and that you're lucky if you get more than a split second's warning that a target is going to go past a place where you can actually hit them and it becomes even harder to be effective. Then, your sniper rifle is only effective at long range so you have to spend at least some of your sp on a secondary weapon reducing your possible effectiveness with your primary weapon even further. Next, as you're busy searching for targets and being stationary, you're not getting WP for taking objectives or healing or through dropping nanohives or drop uplinks. We're not asking for ccp to make us tank killers or to let us massacre the opposing team from across the map with rapid fire, we're asking for things that make us effective in the role we've chosen to play. Hit detection so that when we are aimed at a target it hits is the biggest one. Scopes with a zoom (my suggestion would be starting at advanced rifles you get a basic zoom and prototypes you get an improved zoom of some type) so that the centre dot doesn't obscure the entire target and you can actually aim accurately, rendering so we can actually see the targets that are in range. A bonus to headshot damage isn't essential if we can get these first things but it would make sense because this is a piece of metal travelling at thousands of meters per second. If it hits your head, the force alone should be enough to snap your neck, even without penetration. Those of us who are actually good snipers know that we're a support role primarily. We just want ccp to give us the tools to do our job properly. The redline snipers will stop doing it when they find it's not profitable for them. They're all about k/d ratio. Improving snipers messes that up as one of our most important functions is counter sniping. If I can see an enemy sniper behind the redline, they're likely to be my first target and at worst they'll be forced to move, in which case I'll keep finding them, at best I'll kill them and they'll quickly get to know that hanging out behind the redline isn't risk free. 'You can only post every 5 minutes because your account is less than 2 days old' - This gets old VERY quickly.
Teilka Darkmist 21	Posted - 2014.01.20 23:53:00 - [3] - Quote Oswald Rehnquist wrote: Arkena Wyrnspire wrote: Himiko Kuronaga wrote: Rails do not have bullet drop. If they did, they would not be rails. The sniper rifle is a rail. Bullet drop on the PRECISION RIFLE would make sense. Eh? A railgun uses electromagnetic fields to propel its projectile. It is still a projectile based weapon. It is firing a solid chunk of matter that is affected by gravity and takes time to travel. Technically everything has a drop rate even light This might be an unpopular suggestion, but I'd like a weapon class in the 100-300 range with stronger stopping power. CCP obviously made a point with point of view blocks, recent map designs that they want their snipers to be mobile (there are still a few spots you can camp). But a class of long range rifles which are closer to the battle which would require more roaming and kiting tactics, that don't have to be proto with full damage mods or officer status to be remoately effective would be nice. Either a new weapon class or a rebranding of the sniper rifle. I think a high damage, low rate of fire, medium range rifle is a good idea. Especially on the maps we have right now. It would add what is essentially a marksman class. It would be in addition to the sniper class and complementary in a way, the snipers would be about area denial a lot more and the marksman would be more about pinpoint accuracy at closer ranges, like a close support as you're trying to take a building with an uplink inside for example, covering the AR/LR/RR members of the team. i say specifically a low rate of fire as that would balance the higher damage. 'You can only post every 5 minutes because your account is less than 2 days old' - This gets old VERY quickly.
Teilka Darkmist 21	Posted - 2014.01.21 00:08:00 - [4] - Quote Krom Ganesh wrote: @At Arkena distance to hypothetical target = 200 meters travel time of flechette = (200m) / (2500m/s) = 0.12s Acceleration due to gravity of Earth* =9.81m/s^2 Distance bullet has dropped = 0.5 * 9.81 * 0.12^2 = 0.031m (1.22 inches) *Assuming the planets we fight on have the same gravity as Earth Bullet drop isn't really worth it. Travel time is though. You have a good point about travel time, now that I've seen the maths, I admit my comment about leading being irrelevant was a mistaken conclusion. But if they put leading in before hit detection, rendering and scope zooms, they'll have completely broken the sniper class. We won't be able to hit anything, never mind kill them. 'You can only post every 5 minutes because your account is less than 2 days old' - This gets old VERY quickly.
Teilka Darkmist 31	Posted - 2014.01.22 00:37:00 - [5] - Quote hgghyujh wrote: Scar Scrilla wrote: Teilka Darkmist wrote: Arkena Wyrnspire wrote: I would feel more sympathy for snipers if 99% of them weren't in the redline. Personally, I have no objection to more damage if you have things such as bullet drop, target leading, scope sway, etc. Because as it stands presently you can sit miles off with a perfectly still scope, point, and click. It's not massively effective, though it can do some damage, unless you're using a Thale's but there is no risk or skill involved in it. If that were changed, I think the sniper would be in a more satisfying place. Right now, though, snipers having much more damage would result in even more matches becoming a contest of redline faggotry. I agree that redline snipers should all be killed, but saying it's 99% is exaggerating it far too much. Personally when I'm sniping I'm more often found nearer the opposing teams redline than my own. Bullet drop and target leading are negated by the speed of the bullets. They travel at around 2 kilometers a second. The couple of hundred meters they have to travel are such a small fraction of a second that the target doesn't have chance to move far enough for leading to matter and there's not enough time for drop to be significant. We already have scope sway, unless you're crouched and therefore bracing the rifle, which would at worst reduce sway at best eliminate it. Personally I think a sniper should go prone rather than crouch, but I since that would affect only players with a single type of weapon I can understand why they haven't added it, there's more important things to work on first. Also the hit detection on a sniper rifle is appalling. I can have my scope lined up on the head of a target, have it turn red even and then have the system decide I completely missed and there be no damage to my target. Snipers don't need increased damage, we need better hit detection and a frakking zoom on at least advanced and prototype scopes. Ever tried to hit something that's considerably smaller than what you have to use to aim? +1 for scope/zoom It's ridiculous that u have plasma weapons, forge guns, shielded dropsuits and all sorts of futuristic stuff but no zoomable scope on a sniper rifle. its the button layout it doesn't support it, and now I'm gonna be a **** and say thats one of my big problems with games made for console to many compromises need to be made on controls. Isn't R3 still free? I could be wrong but I don't remember ever using it for anything in Dust. When I play as a sniper, I'm more likely to be nearer to the opponents redline than my own.
Teilka Darkmist 31	Posted - 2014.01.22 00:46:00 - [6] - Quote Asha Starwind wrote: Questions: Are we fighting on earth? What makes all the other weapons so special that they aren't affected by bullet drop, with their final muzzle velocities significantly lower than that of a railgun? No, we're not fighting on Earth. In fact Earth is in an entire other galaxy to the worlds we're fighting on. I get what you actually mean though. It's a not unreasonable assumption that all the planets have roughly the same gravitational force to Earth. I don't think we know enough about the muzzle velocities of weapons that aren't rails or lasers to speculate whether bullet drop should effect them inside their effective ranges. When I play as a sniper, I'm more likely to be nearer to the opponents redline than my own.
Teilka Darkmist 31	Posted - 2014.01.22 00:53:00 - [7] - Quote Krom Ganesh wrote: Teilka Darkmist wrote: Isn't R3 still free? I could be wrong but I don't remember ever using it for anything in Dust. Of course you haven't used it. It's the melee button. How about when ADSing with a sniper rifle, L3 becomes a switch zoom level button? That's what shooters normally do, I believe. Right, of course it is. I have actually used it it turns out. To destroy enemy nanohives and avoid wasting ammo. When I play as a sniper, I'm more likely to be nearer to the opponents redline than my own.
Teilka Darkmist 31	Posted - 2014.01.22 01:04:00 - [8] - Quote Rez Montinegro wrote: Hey Guys, Saw this thread and became interested. I am new to the game, and am not a casual shooter kind of guy. I am transitioning from Battlefield 3 on PS3 and was interested in sniping/piloting here. The dynamics of the game are obviously completely different, As for sniping the sway is intense for the first few seconds but then it settles down quite a bit and the lack of bullet drop makes head shoting a bit easier however there are times I wish bullet drop was in this game for example when people are crouched behind certain objects with drop you can occasionally sneak the shot in there. Because of Battlefield (and playing to win not focus on KDR) I am a tactical sniper. I look for targets and call them out, spot, issue warnings, designate (which i don't think exists here?), and over all "that eye in the sky, with a gun". Good snipers do not sit entirely outside of range, but tend to hang back or at least be in the rear/center of the moving force or a nicely defended vantage point. I would say a good sniper is as much about surveillance as it is sniping. A lot of the time i will even just weaken targets from a distance to make it easier for the ground forces to mop up. Anyway that said that's my play style as a sniper. Can anyone point me towards a build? I don't want to waste my points on something I do not need. I am also interested in piloting, will these builds conflict? should I have a separate character for both? There are quite a few threads where bullet drop is discussed. One even has the maths to show that it's so negligible with the speed the projectiles are going and the range anywhere on the map is, that it's not really worth them coding it in. Not for the Sniper rifle at least. Your play style sounds a lot like what I personally think a good sniper should be in this game, you're right that designating targets doesn't really happen in this game, hopefully at least marking where they are when they've been spotted through a scope gets added at some point, but that's up to CCP. I don't think it's unreasonable that if you can see their name and eHP bars in the scope, your rifle could add their position to the tactical net. As to builds, I'm not the one to advise you. I spent more than a few SP trying out a few play styles, combine that with RL meaning that I haven't been able to log in much at all until recently and you get someone who has to play about with fittings to get something that works. When I play as a sniper, I'm more likely to be nearer to the opponents redline than my own.
Teilka Darkmist 34	Posted - 2014.01.22 07:38:00 - [9] - Quote VEXation Gunn wrote: snipers are nothing but the trash of dust. I am glad all the new maps are making it harder for snipers to exist. Nothing like hiding in the redline in proto suits with 3 damage mods and 800+ehp. There is no excuse you lot are a bunch of ****. Get rid of redline to start so its easier to hunt down the ** that like * ** in their **** daily. Not all of us do that, I personally can't use any proto suits or complex damage mods (which is what you're actually referring to here) and there's no way in hell I'm going to make a fit using the 3 thales I've somehow managed to salvage. Plus, as I've said, time and again (so much I've made it my signature), I never hide in the redline. Even when I get proto suits (light, scout most likely) if I use them, I'll be out on the battlefield hunting, not hung back behind the redline where I see fewer enemies anyway, much less are able to aim and shoot in time. Do not lump me in with the relative few who do. I have seen a response from a CCP dev in one of the many redline threads that states outright they have a fix in the works, if I weren't getting ready to go to work as I typed this, I'd spend the time to find it and link it here. Or you could just go to the search, use the advanced options to find posts by devs and search for redline. The redline is there so that the opposing team can't sweep over the battlefield them just spawncamp the MCC. It's supposed to give the opposing team a chance, however small, to make a comeback. Snipers should be a usefull part of the entire team. Our speciality is damage from a distance, that's what snipers do. With that we can hunt other snipers, take out targets of opportunity and assist with aerial denial. If you're trying to hack an uplink, for example, having a sniper that can cover you on overwatch could be the difference between taking the objective (and you getting 100 war points, not us) and you dying to enemy fire. You likely haven't seen many snipers complaining that the rest of the classes are getting the majority of the WP's in a match whilst we're usually in the bottom third or so of the table if all we do is snipe. Most of us also have fits where we can and do come in close when necessary. Why not quit your moaning, make a fairly basic sniper fit and go shoot at the redline snipers on the opposing team if you're that personally offended by them, if sniping is supposedly so easy (an argument I've seen again and again) and you're that personally offended by them. They won't stay in the redline long with protosuits and weapons if they realise they're actually still vulnerable there. You don't see anywhere near as many people complaining about the medium an heavy all proto fits stomping anyone who doesn't have them in the centre of the battlefield racking up kdr's that a redline sniper could only dream of achieving. You also don't see as many anti-tankherd threads as there are 'remove the redline' and 'nerf the snipers' threads. Tl:dr if you're so upset about redline snipers, build a sniper fit and shoot them back and quit spreading your hatred and misinformation here in the forums. We're not all redline snipers, stop flat out lying and saying we are. Snipers have a valuable and unique role on the battlefield, you'd be worse off if we weren't there. When I play as a sniper, I'm more likely to be nearer to the opponents redline than my own.