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.

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.