I just went 34/0 the match before a came back to these forums because all I had to do is quickscope everyone who came up the hill after me, they are OP.

FAR too many threads where folks at the top of the game (in whatever area) show up and post as if they somehow represent a proper balance point. If you are a top ranked player you are not average and AVERAGE is where proper balance needs to focus.
Things are only broken or imbalanced if anyone can pick it up and do better than the game wide average of other classes/methods. Or put another way something is OP'ed when the AVERAGE player can use it to dominate outside of it's proper battlefield role.


If you're a sniper and you're completely pro going 50-0, and there's a total first month noob who's a sniper going 0-50 the KDR for the class (not the player, the player doesn't matter) is 1:1
Now obviously that's a simplistic example but the point remains that it is the GAME WIDE average which counts not the specific experiences or performance of any handful of players.

Posting feedback on your experiences, especially with the details explaining why is of value in a beta. Posting conclusions regarding balance with such an infinitesimal piece of the data... well that's, shall we say, less useful.

My 0.02 ISK
Cross

ps ~ you can't be said to have "only two levels" of skills related to sniping if you've picked up any of the more general crossover skills such as Weaponry, or any of the other broad skills that apply to sniping. You've gained ranks towards the your effective use of a given battlefield role for every skill rank of any kind that applies (i.e. is active/having an effect) to that role (whatever it may be) not just for those skills which happen to contain the name of that role in their title.

You just reinforced my point. The map is sniper friendly. You can't do that on some of the other maps. Some yes, some no. That's balance. You can't base your opinions on one map.

Hey Zan,

First, thanks for the response, and second I actually didn't mean to call you out specifically it's just the trend has been pretty notable to me lately.

Now on to the meat of the subject :)

More base value sway while standing doesn't bother me in the least, partly because it does nothing to hinder the main roles of the sniper (either classic sniper or overwatch/scout support) but would set it off farther from the other combat roles (i.e. less run-n-gun). Sway between shots I think should be a matter of the gun in question, with higher Meta gear having a lower ~comparative~ base value. This would give incentive to upgrade and would also fit with world narrative since the skills required for proto gear already reduce sway thus skill and gun would enhance each other (for the serious sniper only).
Bullet drop I honestly can't say what I think of in regards to balance as I feel I have inadequate exposure to really form a perspective on it. Adding time between trigger pull and impact seems fine but again it seems like something that should scale with gear, some of these projectiles are moving so quickly that they would be effectively instant but that doesn't mean all of them are, or should be.

I'm curious as to your context when you say it didn't take you long to get where you are. Approximately how many hours would you say you've put into beta? How much of that has been sniper? How many skill points do you have invested in skills that effect the sniper role? How much ISK do you think you lost learning to play sniper? How many other roles did you try out before picking up sniping? <--- None of this is meant to 'challenge' but rather to provide context, after all someone who's on day one picking up a sniper rifle isn't going to be in the same boat as someone who's decided to take up sniping after playing for a month or two as an Assault guy (just for one example).

In the same note as the above how are you arriving at the conclusion that anyone can do what you do?

In closing I'll just reiterate that I hope you respond again because I'm very interested in the answers to the above and also that I agree with you having snipers shooting from the hip becoming standard practice (rather than the occasional mistake/act of desperation) isn't something I'd want to see the game become either. I just want to make sure things are kept in context so that any concerns raised are compared to the average player experience rather than a specific instance or outlier.