I snipe... and I die...

Seriously... Drop your ass into a scout suit and try sniping sometime... you'll find out how hard it is to get out of harms way fast enough to actually get a few kills in.

When doing objective based maps I will set up where I can watch 1 or more objectives and pick off the guys who wander up alone to hack things.

In this game, Snipers/Scouts also provide you with eyes on the battle field. Every time we zoom in and sight someone, they show up on your radar as one of those red chevrons... if no one's looking, you aren't fed that precious intel.

Recon/Scout/Sniping is tactical support. Sure some of us get decent KD (mine only hovers around 2.0 KDR.. but I run and hack a lot) but I can tell you in a squad that communicates they appreciate being able to call for Accurate fire and have a bullet whiz over their shoulder and take out that heavy bastard that just won't die.

A lot of the advice they give here in this thread is useful.. If you don't want to catch a bullet, then follow their advice... I'll repost my list here, I'm sure other's have covered it as well:

• Don't run in a predictable path - stop short, strafe, jump, and duck....if you run straight, I plot ahead of you, and wait for you to run into my crosshair to send the round.
• Use Cover - Duck under rocks, Buildings, Pipes, vehicles.... it won't always protect you... some of us don't always go for the high perches... but it will save you on some of the maps.
• Counter Snipe - Load up the default scout build, and look for the guy that shot you... even if you don't one-shot them... a bullet to the face of a sniper usually gets us moving...
• Use the Assault Rifle(AR) - damn thing is accurate and has killed me many times, even at a decent distance
• Listen - you can hear the bang of a sniper rifle in your area, only thing that has a slow single report.
• Work as a Team - Teams of moving people are hard to pick off... with the weaker Sniper Rifles you don't get too many one shot kills... and trading out with a heavy on taking damage runs us out of ammo
• Talk to your Snipers - We often have a good idea of how the battle is going, where the hot-spots are and we like to be useful...

Right now we are in the first few days of this round of testing. There are a lot of bugs and glitches that people are working through. A lot of folks are grinding up SP and ISK to move on to what they really want to do.

Give it a couple of weekends and the sniper frenzy should simmer down as people branch out into their specializations. Then people will ***** about the important stuff... like unkillable tanks...and Dropship Whores on Towers... ;)

Bottom line... if you're not having fun, try switching to a different set up, or a different character with different skill sets...

These large maps do give snipers an advantage, but still sniping is hard. especially at the longer ranges. I've lined up so many shots perfectly and they still miss most of the time. But I still have some learning to do. Not sure how the mechanics work just yet.

Yeah, sniping is harder than people give credit for...if you look up this thread people are arguing in both directions about sniping.. I see several "sniping is so EZ an lame, I got so many killz" kinds of posts, then others say "snipers don't contribute anything" which would mean that snipers don't get many kills... you guys can duke it out with each other on whose derisiveness wins.

What I'm looking at is when/if hit detection is ever fixed.. you can be assured that the number of people dying by sniper shot will increase. Because a server-flunked hit has a lot more impact on snipers than any other class in the game. They fire in high powered singles. Half the people who are ranting about poor accuracy with their guns are also ranting against snipers now...

Its like two self-opposing arguments in one topic.