This is a ridiculously terrible comparison. Show me the assault who has prof 5 in their weapon but doesn't have any electronics or engineering skills. Snipers don't train systems hacking 5. Nor do they really train profile dampening if they've gone Calmando - a complex dampener won't bring profile down enough to evade anything but the most rudimentary scans.

A sniper isn't going to train level 5 ammo capacity if carrying proto hives. "But what if he's carrying uplinks?" An assault is almost as likely to be carrying uplinks and is likely to burn through ammo much quicker.

It has to do with what we do and do not want from snipers. Most of us simply do not want snipers more powerful and you do. What you are seeing that is so ugly is disagreement with your ideas. Call it what you want. Most of this community is fine with snipers. There are loads of games dedicated to them, go play those. Dont get mad when your ideas are rejected.

I didn't see anything concrete here, increase headshot multiplier, range, make other snipers than Thale's powerful, increase scope zoom....

Anecdotally I haven't been killed by a sniper in ages, get picked off once in a blue moon if I am careless and in open under half hp. I need to look at the numbers, but sniper use is very stable, none of the rifles or new weapons have had a meaningful impact on the use of sniper rifles, so it's a steady group of people who like to snipe apparantly, I am not even sure they venture into Tac AR or SCR at all.

Feel free to share, we have no specific hate/love with snipers, they should have a viable place on the battlefield like all of our weapons.

Hacking? Everyone who wants to use a point does hacking, most often active snipers will be found around the objectives...

Profile dampening is almost indispensable... It helps you from appearing when someone hastily passes their vision over your location. More often than not, this will save your character. :/ Scanners are pointless if you are actually sniping, they get your scan, then move away from the location. Visual ID is a much more deadly venue.

Drop uplink... Many snipers will place an uplink on a desired location, so if they are killed, they can come back to the spot quickly. Such as the top of a tower etc...

I can tell from your responses, that you don't have much awareness of the field around you... You respond quickly without even trying to think of a reason that one might use something or another.
I can also clearly tell that you have never done sniping. I can tell you that from basic to Proto, there is only 20 hp difference in damage (10 per tier) DPS is around 100-110 for snipers, while assaults have what? 300-400 DPS (can't remember accurately, but that is close), not to mention that at range, you can miss a target directly in the center of your crosshairs, that is NOT moving due to buggy projectile pathing. Also, targets that are running can literally teleport across the region your bullet enters because of server latency not registering the body between two points.
It's not uncommon to empty an entire inventory of bullets and wind up with only 4 or 5 kills tops before having to nanohive back to maximum. Assaults on the other hand can get 2 or so kills per reload, making 12-15 kills per nano very viable.

If we were to reduce all assault weapons down to the efficiency of sniper rifles, I have no doubt in my mind that you would complain almost every time you logged on, and might even possibly quit the game.

It is a fact in this game that accuracy and skill weapons do FAR LESS damage than spray and pray guns, meaning skill is being sidelined for automated fire.

Look you crying a$$ noob, all that **** you are talking about we deal with also. Bullets not registering, bad hit, detection etc, etc. The diffrence is we are boots on the ground in the fight risking life and isk, and while we are fighting we are not kneelimg down on some high tower. We are dodging enemy fire that may or may not register, side stepping grenades, strafing back and forth, looking for the other guy we dont see, trying not to get ran over by lavs, shot by tanks, or killed by some noob sniper in the redline. You are not in the fight if you are a sniper, you are a spectator that can disproportionately affect the outcome of the battle between my self and someone else with little to no risk involved. Get off the redline, get off the sniper tit, get in the fight and get good.

Well that was fun lol.

Gonna have to repost the topic with only numbers.

List proposals, and put it through to folks that actually matter when it comes to these things.

Look you crying a$$ noob, all that **** you are talking about we deal with also. Bullets not registering, bad hit, detection etc, etc. The diffrence is we are boots on the ground in the fight risking life and isk, and while we are fighting we are not kneelimg down on some high tower. We are dodging enemy fire that may or may not register, side stepping grenades, strafing back and forth, looking for the other guy we dont see, trying not to get ran over by lavs, shot by tanks, or killed by some noob sniper in the redline. You are not in the fight if you are a sniper, you are a spectator that can disproportionately affect the outcome of the battle between my self and someone else with little to no risk involved. Get off the redline, get off the sniper tit, get in the fight and get good.

Hacking? Everyone who wants to use a point does hacking, most often active snipers will be found around the objectives...

Profile dampening is almost indispensable... It helps you from appearing when someone hastily passes their vision over your location. More often than not, this will save your character. :/ Scanners are pointless if you are actually sniping, they get your scan, then move away from the location. Visual ID is a much more deadly venue.

Drop uplink... Many snipers will place an uplink on a desired location, so if they are killed, they can come back to the spot quickly. Such as the top of a tower etc...

-snip ranting and ignorant whining-

I'm tired of headshots with the Charge Sniper Rifle not killing people. Like for real. Dude gets within range on me, and I send a round into the center of his skull at literally 9,000,000 mph (14,484,096 km/h).
And the game is audacious enough to still leave him with 30% of his armor! Nlgga I just removed 30% your brain! I hit the goddamn pineal gland! Fk you!

With quality posts like this, I just can't believe this person has had 1000+ likes on the forums so far.
Not that likes matter. Guess it's just a reminder of the nature of the Internetz.

@Civil people

It should be entirely possible to get a coherent analysis of the present state of snipers together. From there, it ought to be possible to discuss this in a more reasonable fashion and get a proposal that might actually be looked at by someone who matters.

As frustrating as sniping may be to you, this started off as a rant thread and was met with similarly low quality responses. Some good started to develop out of it as a small number of people started to begin thinking with a modicum of intelligence about the problem.
It was never going to become a thread genuinely worth looking at for smart proposals about where snipers should go though.

So I suggest that if you're really concerned about the role of sniping, you should cool off and in a civilised manner put together some correct statements and build a proposal out of that.
I might do that myself.

Ranting in GD only enhances the perception of snipers as whiners and makes people think that nothing serious should be done. Come back with a decent argument presented in a manner that isn't blatantly biased and people might be more inclined to listen.

The thing with snipers is that they are only viable at long ranges (please read the rest)

Everyone keeps saying that snipers need to come out of the redline or into the fray, but it is literally suicide to do that as any rifle will do better in the heat of battle. Scrambler rifles, combat rifles, and more importantly, rail rifles (90 meter range) outperforms the sniper rifle where it's supposed to shine. I woild propose a few changes similar to what others have been saying:

-Reduce absolute range to ~200-250 meters, allowing it to outrange the orher rifles and still have a relatively long range
-increase damage only marginally (maybe 10-20 damage)
-increase headshot multiplier marginally (add about 10%)

These are only suggestions, so numbers may change

A sniper is much less likely to be found on the objective than an assault is. An assault is much more likely to want to hack that point and be in a position to do so. It's stupid, then, to assume that a sniper will want maxed out hacking skills and assaults won't.

Profile dampeners have no effect on how easily you get tagged by someone looking at you. If someone looks directly at you, puts their crosshairs on you, you are tagged on their TACnet. It doesn't matter how many profile dampeners you put on, the only thing that will save you from that effect is a cloak.

If you're using a Calmando, the only thing a complex profile dampener will save you from is a standard active scanner, or the passive scan of a heavy. If you're at the point where you're worrying about getting passively scanned by heavies you are doing something horrendously wrong.

Sure. Many assaults will also carry uplinks or another equipment item. It's hideously biased to assume that the only equipment an assault will ever use is a nanohive.

Oh boy, it's the classic 'waaah you didnt agree with evrything i belive in' response.

I can tell from your response that you are a terribly biased sniper. Just as biased as some of the people in here bitching that snipers should never be viable.
All I said was that the projected skill comparison was flawed. It was.
Despite a simple factual correction, you went off on a long rant about how I'm clearly a biased assault player.

Your assertion that you can 'clearly tell that I've never done sniping' is so wrong I almost laughed at it. I have proficiency 4 sniper rifles. I use snipers several times a week. I am aware that they are not viable.

Whining about how the damage only marginally goes up between tiers is laughable. That's exactly the case for every weapon. There is no weapon which jumps more than about 10% in damage from standard to proto.

Now, if you're going to ask why your sniper rifle isn't doing the same DPS as an assault rifle, I have a question for you.
Why doesn't a rifle do as much damage as a shotgun?
Because of the range. If shotguns did the same damage as an assault rifle despite having point blank range, it would be unbalanced.
The range of the sniper rifle is a huge advantage. Obviously. That's what it's for. What do you want, the sniper to do as much damage as a shotgun?

If you're emptying your entire inventory of bullets for 4-5 kills, you're bad. As someone who allegedly 'never snipes', I can quite easily get more than that and do so regularly.

The sniper does not instantly kill things from half a kilometre away because it's a case of risk vs reward. The ability to sit back in the redline (and like it or not, that will be done) with a sniper and instasplat players at very little risk would be broken.

If we look at Jathniel here, someone debating this in a more civilised fashion (albeit still in an overly frustrated tone) instead of exploding at people in a pathetic manner, they're trying to make sensible suggestions on how to help the sniper become viable without going straight to the other extreme of being overpowered.

I snipe somewhat regularly. I do it as a relaxing activity and rarely get bothered by enemy players as I hide in a scout suit in places that aren't the centrepiece for firefights.
I do okay with it. But I see issues. It's not quite as good as it should be. It has too few mechanics supporting it to make it an interesting role. It has bugs associated with it, normally the kind of terrible hit detection bugs that are almost prehistoric.

It would be nice to see those fixed. With Rattati making actual sensible tweaks, there could be a real chance to make some good changes to help the role.

It's frustrating to me, then, to see trash posts from people like you who don't have any real concept of anything approaching a balanced system clogging up what a thread that could otherwise be something that could be shown to Rattati to ask for some moderate buffs.

I want to see snipers helped so they're a role which is viable and interesting. Not so that they're EZmode instakill machines that you can sit in the redline with which promptly get nerfed back into the dark ages never to be touched again. A reasonable case could be made to improve them.
Being so sensitive as to go off on a rant at the slightest sign of someone not completely agreeing with all the buffs ever does not help the cause.

Tl;dr

Snipers are fine. The red line is fine.

I went 31/0 using the charge sniper rifle going solo yesterday and got a love mail from some random on my team wanting to squad up with me.

The only thing snipers need is better location outside the red line that they can defend or a module that give them an alert proximity of enemy team members within X meters.

I didnt say they disproportionately affect the out come of the game. Rather in instances they affect the outcome of a single battle between myself and some other actual warrior with reflexes and the need for hand eye coordination with the risk for his personal well being, the outcome of my goal, his stats, his isk, his pride, and you get to shoot me while low on health take his kill, cause you look for weakened armor right?

I mean thats, the profiency for the sniper and all. Now what did you risk by sitting back there, up there, or wherever and eating popcorn with your right hand on a mouse, chilling? You want to talk about being afraid to die? Why do you think your kind sets in the redline?

Fear of losing the proto gear they use? How many snipers are using adv and std level weapons? In pubs as you say why? Because you are not dynamic enough players. Pc is an ever changing meta, boots on the ground can quickly swap roles, and with that being said I have seen great snipers, ive even seen snipers in PC, pubs also.

Give Wulfgard a Thales on Manus Peaks. Put SymbioticForks ANYWHERE, Ive seen him beast on Peaks, Fracture Road, Iron Delta. With a charge no less. Watch FunkmasterWhale on Skim Junction setting up on those rings, going Ham with a forge, ewwwww.... You know the real problem here? You arent that good.... Im talking about guys consistently putting up huge numbers every game, 20 or 30 kills. Then just go look at their kdr, if they arent dying whats that say about their isk? More importantly, what does it say about you? You dont want an I win button you want a help me get a kill button.

This whole post here reflects confusion.
You seriously just complained about a sniper doing his job, providing support fire and kills, and then praised players that actually do it.

Then you throw a clueless remark at me.

My friend, I AM a sniper that was invited to ring consistently for EoN when PC was in its prime. I got my consistent 20, 30, and more kills. Then I quit playing for nearly 7 months because CCP Remnant decided to design all future maps to prevent sniper activity, instead of rebalancing the gun. Stop making this about me. Your ad hominem for lack of argument is getting old. And if you couldn't tell that the OP was a light-hearted attempt to start a discussion, then you're even more clueless than your posts reflect.

The only reason I even bother to bring this up is because I have seen CCP Rattati, really take a proactive approach in fixing this games issues. Just him saying anything about it, shows more promise than anything before. It's a damn shame he wasn't here from the beginning.