Breakin Stuff..

Sniper vs Sniper (gun game) is a thing. Welcome to Dust 514 for the past several years.

You want instant gratification? Dust 514 may not be the game for you!

(when someone is really far away from you and not moving, but you wish to interact with said player.. guess what you have to do?)

Snipers have been nerfed time after time since launch. Can you not acknowledge this?

The role has now been reduced and simplified into something less than it was before.

600m range was about the only thing that separated a sniper rifle from a forge gun.

TBH since you were the guy spearheading sniper rifle changes.

How many kills do you have from sniping? You know first hand knowledge on the subject. (just guess)

edit: How many kills in the current build post sniper rifle changes?

edit: I'm not trying to antagonize you so much as to get a grip on your experience level concerning the changes you had implemented.

The base damage increase isn't really noticeable.

The guy who took the lead on snipers isn't even a sniper.. (or an active player)

Can you imagine the uproar if a popular role such as Scouts / Heavies / Tanks was handled by someone with no intimate knowledge of those roles? I feel entitled to be upset, about the changes and the guy who suggested them.

I try to avoid sniping in the red line, there are drop ship only accessible locations in highly contested areas I would much rather frequent. Even from these locations however, enemy red line snipers with the new range nerf are immune. They're just too far away.

I told Judge Rham that a range reduction would promote red line sniping instead of fixing it. I bet on the wrong horse however. I needed to be emailing the guy with 7,000 kills instead. What the ****.

Now, to the real heart of the matter:

1. Headshot bonus has effectively killed the existence for tiered sniper rifle skills; if a militia sniper can OHK all but a tanked-out heavy, what's the point in using anything stronger?

2. Almost all of the complaining about snipers essentially breaks down to how ridiculous the Thales was in comparison to all other variants; a well-placed Thales user was immune to everything except a fellow Thales user...who probably wasn't going to risk their own to try and hunt the other one down.

3. The damage bonus offered to Caldari Commandos only encourages the brick-tanked sniper that requires a headshot to kill; otherwise, you're just wasting bullets.

4. The recent changes made to map sockets (i.e. Manus Peak) further reduce the ability of a sniper to actively contribute to his side by playing point defense. Changes were made previously to make nodes less easy to target into, but the new map types have decided to enclose most everything inside of a building, leaving snipers with little else to do aside from try and pick off targets as they run across the map.

Solutions:

1. Reduce the headshot bonus. Implement actual differences between the sniper tiers/types.
Tactical variant--weakest, but with the best zoom, giving you the best chance to land a headshot. High RoF but small clip.
Standard variant--stronger than tactical and with better range, but slower RoF and less powerful zoom
Specialist variant--damage between tactical and standard, but with the furthest range and weakest zoom
Charge variant--highest damage, largest clip but with slowest RoF and shortest range. The Thales would be a faster-charging version
Give them a range of 425, 450, 475 and 400, respectively.

2. See above. The Thales was so overpowered that it killed an entire style of play.

3. Tough one to fix thanks to the inherent damage bonus given to commandos. However, the reduction to headshot bonuses would make it feasible to get close enough to counter.

4. Snipers need to be given the ability to scout and "mark" the opponent on an individual basis. One player at a time could be "tagged" and highlighted on the Tacnet--regardless of profile--with investment in the sniper class resulting in an increased duration of the tag. Snipers would then be rewarded with intel kill assist WP if the target is killed while tagged. This would eliminate the need for the bullet trails to give away a sniper's position as they can be tagged up to 500 meters away, further than any SR can reach. This would allow for a team to coordinate a counter strategy to neutralize the sniper.

My main complaint, other than the ones I already agree with from Symb's post, is CCP deliberately shitting on the Charged SR over favoritism. There was no reason that the most difficult to learn and use SR variant had to get a clip reduction AND major range reduction all for the sake of having the highest headshot multiplier. If you land a shot, you had to charge at least half a shot to do a follow-up shot if they don't die. With that, there's a reduction in damage, as opposed to a fully charged second shot. Coupled with its low RoF, smart targets don't stay still but move to cover. You do understand that, with the small base damage of most other SR variants, outside the Thale's, the Charged was the only real viable SR for both pub and PC play, correct? Anything else practically tickled targets, or, in the case of the tactical, was used for countersniping, especially if the targets were brick tanking. No other role than the sniper has to stack 3 damage mods, use a Calmando, and use a proto variant of their weapon of choice to compete. THAT's the main reason why you only saw this SR variant used. Now, you've defined other sniper variant uses, but at the same time sort of negated the Charged SR's headshot bonus, as a basic SR has a high enough multiplier to take out most suits (from what I've read). GG CCP. I've only logged on twice since 1.8 and 1.9 went live, mainly cause there's no point right now. Other than that, it's been collecting DUST.

Saw this, decided to chime in.

THERE WAS AN ANTI-MATERIAL SNIPER RIFLE IN DUST?!

Can we have something like it back? Not really full-on damage, but say, 50% efficiency on vehicles for the sniper rifles?

Given the slow rate of fire/charge-up time on the charged version, would it be fair to give it the largest clip size? Maybe 8-10 shots? Seems like a reasonable trade-off to me...