Sniping is still the least risky of all playstyles. Maybe more risky than before but good, you all should have tons of isk saved up from hardly ever dying. I'm not a sniper per se, but I have proto rifles and its just a situational as the other barely ever die styles of play from before. When I'm in an ads, some matches I can fly around with impunity, some matches I can't enter the combat zone without eating ****. Sniping is kind of the same, some matches I can snipe away while eating chips with my off hand(I use kbm for sniping, forging, and tanks) and some matches every Tom **** and Harry balls is out to countersnipe me. It just means you have to have more variety in your sniping if you want to stay in the mix.

You lost me at "you all should have tons of isk saved up from hardly ever dying"

To be a good sniper you had to run full proto in the past.

1 death cost me 87k? +dropship to get to a good sniping location 30k? (recall time is too high gives away position ditch the drop ship)

2 deaths meant I made zero ISK. (sniping the lowest war point role there is)

(between suicides, and eventually pissing people off enough to come get me.. making money from public matches wasn't easy if I was running full proto, the same as it is for anyone else.)

ISK is no longer a limiting factor in Dust 514. (especially for veteran players)

It's not a matter of ISK. It's the matter of skill it takes for one sniper to kill another. Which currently is ZERO.

Imagine if all light weapon engagements were determined by who saw who first? Would that be fun?

Again sniper vs sniper TTK "gun game" is non existent.

I don't often respond like this. But you're stupid. How did you come up with that response from symbs original post?

Edit: before anyone starts getting their knickers in a twist let me support symbs. In very simple terms, sniping has been turned into 'i headshot you, you headshot me'. Or 'I one shot you, you one shot me'. CCP went too far with the damage increases and the ridiculous headshot multipliers. They reduced and simplified the sniping role, instead of building on it's tactical usefulness.

I know the FG sound is worse, but you're not scoped in and unable to see your surroundings so you can turn your volume down with no loss of combat awareness. Scoped in with a Sniper Rifle, you need to hear what's going on around you (unless you're totally fine with an ADS coming up behind you and blasting you to bits)

Low kill count games are't my thing, I try my best every game, I bring my best every game. Suicide sniping with reduced damage (not full proto) and a paper thin suit that lets anything destroy me on contact just isn't my thing either. I feel I've wasted my time if I can't average 20 kills a game in full proto. Especially against teams running advanced or militia gear. 20 kills is a great number against a team wearing prototype. Anyway, 8-15 kills on random targets of no important is just wasting time. I can't do it.

I hide behind my proto and my try hard proto team.

Real glad they listened to player input. It's definitely best to listen to those that whine the most. And it's great that they've ignored how the range nerf has helped redline snipers.

What makes you think a Sniper is OP if there isn't another "light weapon" that can reach them? You're trolling at this point, either that or mentally deficient.

Stopped reading during the headshot complaints.

Um, that was the tradeoff for the range. It does massive damage if you manage to shoot a head. It's still a skill shot, and gun game thing. Why anyone should be able to tank a headshot from a sniper rifle in any game is beyond me.

Stopped reading during the headshot complaints.

Um, that was the tradeoff for the range. It does massive damage if you manage to shoot a head. It's still a skill shot, and gun game thing. Why anyone should be able to tank a headshot from a sniper rifle in any game is beyond me.

Joel, is it possible to get a plasma cannon headshot??

Snipers have screwed this game for long enough, and same for scouts.

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.