You not liking running around "like an idiot" whenever you have to run across open ground is not the snipers fault. I, technically is CCP's for not having more cover on the maps

3) Covering Fire/Pinning: We already are, see points 1, and 2.

4) Remote Hacking Assist: I'm leery on this idea. If it could only be used for assisting a hack, and initiating one

5) Off-Map Support: My understanding is that this is going to be done by the person filling the furture "Commander Role".

I actually don't disagree with a lot of your points OTHER than reducing damage, that just doesn't make sense.
The whole game is already geared 99% to front line players so reducing our damage ability completely negates snipers as a whole

Snipers are annoying and deadly? woah. who would have thought. That's just like real life military snipers. Which is the point.

It's not the point, really. I don't care if real life military snipers are like this. War sucks in real life, it's not something any sane person should enjoy participating in. That goes for being shot at by a real life sniper (or being a real life sniper).

We're talking about a game here, which should be fun. Realism plays a role, but not at the expense of more important things like fun, balance, depth of gameplay.

More options for snipers would be awesome... but telling a sniper that he is useless just because he isn't an Assault/AR? Get real.

Oh yes, that's totally what I said.

No issue

They can get kills, but are useless in getting objectives. What is the issue, you can be good at one thing but not all things.

2. They are useless -- or more accurately, they are not as useful as other roles. Let's say as a sniper you average 15 kills, 0 deaths. Let's say as an assault you also average 15 kills, 15 deaths. So, as an assault, you contribute just as much to kills in the game. But you have the added advantage of being actually able to capture points and installations. That is more useful. This is true of assaults, heavies, on-the-ground scouts, and logistics (where a logistic's lack of kills is made up for by his ability to cap objectives, give ammo, repair, revive) -- they all seem more useful than snipers.

Both have their roles in a fight. Trying to compare them is like apples and oranges.

I rarely say this, but i think you re completely and utterly wrong.

to prove my point, i literally just finished a skirmish on manus peak with 31/ 0, sniping of course. That means that over the course of a 20 minute game, i bought my team over 5 minutes worth of time in respawns at least, as every kill has to wait to respawn, and then he ll respawn back at a position potentially a few hundred metres from where he was shot.

Not only did i buy that time, i pissed off most of the team and killed the majority of the enemy snipers i could find, preventing them from doing the same to our team. AND in the event that we cant control the objectives, i killed over 1/5 of their team for the clone war...

I'm an average sniper.

Ive spec'ed over 1.3mil sp in snipers and i still dont get one hit kills on everyone, yet you want me to do LESS damage?
Bullet mechanics is all that is needed to sift the good snipers from the bad.

Cover fire doesnt particularly work here, people are very naive and dont always realise i just missed their face, and carry on blundering forward anyway.

Snipers are not for taking out vehicles, they are anti infantry, change class to AV.
Remote hacking? well why doesnt everyone on the field engage in remote hacking, hell we wont even have to deploy, jsut sit in the MCC with a laptop...

HAVING SAID THAT, i definitely would like to engage painter and spotter roles for snipers, if we cant shoot it, at least warn others about it, like tanks and lavs who are moving to fast to pin the driver, but this was covered in at least one other thread ive seen and i supported it then.

Thanks for reading.
Criticise as necessary.

What confuses me, is why you want a sniper to have non-lethal pinning fire that warns that it's coming, the very concept defeats the purpose of Pinning Fire. Pinning Fire PINS you behind cover, because you can't move or you would be killed.

rather than killing enemies outright, snipers could fit a fast firing gun that alerts the enemy that they're being fired at, and sends them a message of "Don't go out there carelessly!". Not so easy to kill outright due to the warning it gives, it might nonetheless be useful at influencing the direction of movement of an enemy player, as well as wear down their shield/armour

Snipers are, and always will be, all about killing. For you to say snipers should be 'less about killing', is like saying you want to declaw and defang a lion because you want a cat to cuddle with and it would be more fun. lol

The trick is for the sniper to MAKE himself useful to his team.

to prove my point, i literally just finished a skirmish on manus peak with 31/ 0, sniping of course

i pissed off most of the team

Cover fire doesnt particularly work here, people are very naive and dont always realise i just missed their face, and carry on blundering forward anyway.

Remote hacking? well why doesnt everyone on the field engage in remote hacking, hell we wont even have to deploy, jsut sit in the MCC with a laptopGǪ

And this is one of the most important facts about snipers, the first of the two points I presented in my opening post. Snipers are annoying. They don't make the game more fun for non-snipers. They make it *less* fun. But for some strange reason most people can't seem to realise that this is a game design problem. It is. And you saying this just tells me that something needs to be done

Lol, "manus peak". Sniper's heaven. Do you get 31/0 every game? How's your score on any map but manus peak? Really, your deaths don't matter, except that it's lighter on *your* wallet. As far as your kills count goes, what's your performance like most games? Here's the situation: my experience is that the top killers in any game I play are *almost never* the snipers. Just because you had a good game on a map that's particularly suitable for snipers does not mean that the sniper is therefore balanced, or powerful enough, or as useful in general as other roles.

Yes, I want you to do less damage. But I want you to be buffed in other ways so that overall you are better than your current state.

As someone who is often the victim of sniper fire

* Remote Hacking Assist - equipment item (or sidearm) that allows a sniper to assist another player in hacking an objective. Possible justification -- they are relaying the signal from the hacker to the MCC, increasing the computational power available to complete the hack

I'm not sure what role this statement plays in your overall argument. This is true to some extent of any player fulfilling any role in a team sport/game.

Anyway, thanks (really) for the interesting post.

Heavies are annoying to me when im playing as assault, but that doesnt mean i simply nerf or remove them.

Why do we cater to your needs? i find sniping fun

Manus peak is the map where snipers are expected to be at their best, why would i quote data from a close range map with loads of buildings in the way, a place where even i know its not worth sniping.

Those other roles/abilities you suggested are... cute, I suppose, but honestly don't interest me very much. They would be things I'd do only passively, if at all.

Personally, I'd leave our damage alone, give us the ability to increase our clip capacity, give us limited visual cloaking at high levels, fix the mirco-adjusting when scoping, and throw a dozen or more pillboxes and crow's nests in every level. No sway, no bullet drop, no profile highlight when we fire.

I'm not suggesting either of these things, so your response is not relevant to any point I made. I want the role of "sitting in a secluded spot on the map, with great vision, and ability to do damage to enemy infantry from a long way away" to be buffed. And I don't want them removed.

You shouldn't cater to just Winsaucerer's needs. Same goes for you. We shouldn't cater to just Lykos Pyro's needs. That is why I tried to give arguments that don't depend on us favouring either you and me. To claim that I am just asking for CCP to "make the game Winsaucerer wants, just because it's Winsaucerer" is to ignore the arguments I present.

As for your claim that the majority of my suggestions would make it "even more of a clusterfuck" -- I just disagree. You gave no reason to think this is true, so I see no reason to suggest that it is false. Let the reader decide for themselves.

Why? Because that reveals that snipers are in general underpowered. I can play my scout fit well on most maps. But are you saying you can only play sniper well on manus peak? So sniper is of a more limited use than other roles, thus supporting my argument. This information is relevant to me making the case that snipers are underpowered.

Hey 2100 :) It is surprising to me that snipers (yourself included) are disagreeing.

The thing is, as I said in my second point, I think snipers are underpowered. As you said, as soon as people start getting better defences, and there's more cover, it's going to be even harder for you guys. I'm actually arguing for a BUFF. It's just that I'm not arguing for a *damage* buff. Why is it that CCP thinks that we need more cover? If their reason is that sniper fire is annoying, then this seems to me a tacit admission that there is a gameplay problem. Increasing sniper damage will only return us to the point where CCP thought we needed more cover. Increasing damage is not the solution, nor is increasing cover.

As for me - snipers rarely kill me now. I can take one full hit from most snipers (on that scout shotty build you see me on most of the time!) when full and barely have my armour touched, and then I get plenty of time to avoid further hits while my shield regens and I return to cover.

When I said snipers are "useless", I was being provocative, and immediately clarified that I think they are less useful than other roles. I offered arguments for this which I think still remain virtually untouched.

Unless you guys playing snipers think that your game should be "to get the most kills on the map and do nothing else", I don't see why you would disagree with me. Is that what you think snipers should be? The best killers on the map?

you re suggesting damage lowering for snipers = nerf, so yes it is relevant. -1 to your argument.

Snipers provide a lot of intangibles that are not readily observed from the battlefield. I really do urge you to play one for a while before passing a judgement on the class mechanic.

I can't, for two reasons:
1. Because of point (1) in my original post
2. Don't have the skillpoints spare to invest, to try it really properly

I really do urge you to play one for a while before passing a judgement on the class mechanic.

2100, given my latest posts (including my agreement that maybe they don't need a damage nerf -- and my suggestion that they be buffed in non-damage areas), do you still disagree with me on any substantial point?

Edit: also, bedtime!

In my opionion all sniper rifles need a blanket 50% increase in price. Sniper role is the only class were you can avoid death and isk attrition. Its not fair that everyone else can lose more isk than they earn. Snipers are incentivising isk grinding making it a class for people trying to avoid death.

Ugh. This attitude is everything that is wrong with the current way sniper role works, and the worst direction you could take it. You're only interested in getting kills, and that is the problem. You are clearly not someone with the right attitude that I think I could persuade, so I'm not even going to try.

It's not the point, really. I don't care if real life military snipers are like this. War sucks in real life, it's not something any sane person should enjoy participating in. That goes for being shot at by a real life sniper (or being a real life sniper).

We're talking about a game here, which should be fun. Realism plays a role, but not at the expense of more important things like fun, balance, depth of gameplay.

Jathniel, it sounds like you have a very good attitude towards the role of a sniper. The proposal I have been making has been precisely along the lines of *buffing* the very kinds of things you say you do. So while your post sounds like it's a response/counter to mine, I really don't think it is. I think we are perhaps on the same pageGǪunless you think snipers are useful and balanced enough anyway, and don't need improving.

Just a few nitpicks amongst the majority agreement:


I didn't actually suggest "non-lethal pinning fire that warns that it's coming". What I said was:


Maybe it was not as obvious as I first thought, but what I had hoped was the implied message here is that if the enemy decides to brave your fire anyway, he should die. So this was not at all intended to be a non-lethal alternative. The difference with this proposal compared to what snipers can already do is that the location (not the source) of fire is more obvious (and, in the suggestion, perhaps some form of aoe).



So long as we use the word "sniper", you are of course right :) But I am suggesting that the role of "sitting in a secluded spot on the map, with great vision, and ability to do damage to enemy infantry from a long way away" should be changed from "sniper" (killer), to something more.

Really, I don't know why you disagree with me. You've gone to great lengths to suggest you already do all these non-killing roles, which I am suggesting should get buffed. But then you end with "Snipers are, and always will be, all about killing". That last comment just doesn't fit with the preceding parts of your post, most of which I agree with. Your post was about how you do so much more than just killing, and then you finish with "Snipers are [GǪ] all about killing". I agree with the first part of your post, and not this closing comment.



I'm not sure what role this statement plays in your overall argument. This is true to some extent of any player fulfilling any role in a team sport/game.

Anyway, thanks (really) for the interesting post.

Eve online is one of the most brutal and unforgiving games you can play. I don't see Dust becoming any different. Go play COD or BF3.. They're plenty nerfed so extremely casual players such as yourself can have a "fun" time skipping through an extremely forgiving marshmallow fest.

For the rest of us, "fun" is having an actual challenge. And that means emulating exactly what war conditions in an eve world on the ground would be like. Extremely deadly and unforgiving. That, to me, is a real game.

Also, I'm snowboarding all this week, but when i get back i will make sure to look for you and snipe you into a conniption fit :D

The power of a sniper is in his ability to KILL. Period. That's all we can do. This point may seem to be in contradiction with the rest of my post but it isn't. Why? Because everything I mentioned requires "situational awareness" AND the ability to kill.

I have been playing EVE for years, and love its brutal and unforgiving nature. I've been on the side of being harsh and unforgiving to victims, as well as being the victim of such acts. I have, overall, come out well on top. But it's not the realism that makes it brutal and unforgiving, nor is it what makes EVE fun. Realism != brutal and unforgiving, nor does Realism = Good Gameplay. For example, in EVE, you can:
* Upload your mind to a new body, near instantly (I happen to think this is impossible in our world)
* Warp faster than the speed of light
* Accelerate in space only up to an arbitrary speed limit (much less than the speed of light)
* Warp through planets! (thankfully the game now gives a wormhole-looking effect to make it more believable)
* Near-instant communication from one end of the galaxy to another
* Blueprints (copies) that are somehow destroyed in the process so that you can't remember how to make the item again

And so on (I'm sure there's many other examples). Do I care about this lack of realism? No. Because it's not realism itself that makes the great game of EVE Online. Realism is just nice to have in conjunction with other things. EVE is its own world with its own laws, so the facts about our world don't always have to be represented in EVEGǪsame goes for Dust. Don't take realism at the expense of more important things.

Oh, and now I note more carefully that you say I am an "extremely casual player"GǪso I realise you're just being silly and I shouldn't have bothered to respond. But I've already written the above, so there you go.

For the rest of us, "fun" is having an actual challenge. And that means emulating exactly what war conditions in an eve world on the ground would be like. Extremely deadly and unforgiving. That, to me, is a real game.

Regarding the comment on snipers being useless, as I pointed out to 2100, I was being provocative and immediately clarified what I meant :) That is, I think other roles are (as a general rule) more useful than snipers.

I have no doubt that you and other snipers have helped a game at critical points with that well timed and aimed kill, and saved my hide too. But that's not really the point -- anyone can kill other players and save a friend or a point. The question is, is that killing that you are doing valuable enough that you wouldn't be more useful overall doing some other role? Eg, maybe driving another tank around, or playing a heavy, or shotgun scout to cap points.

I want your non-killing roles to be buffed, and if it turns out that on balance a similarly equipped+skilled sniper can't kill a similarly equipped+skilled infantry guy on the ground in two or three shots (or whatever we think is appropriately balanced), then damage buffed too. But I think that perhaps the way that a sniper kills needs to be looked at.



Technically, it is a contradiction. If you say "All a sniper can do is kill", and then you list other non-killing things a sniper can do (such as spotting enemies), you have contradicted yourself. The thing is, I agree with your original post talking about all the roles in addition to killing that a sniper plays. I think that those need buffing. And a sniper should certainly be able to kill.

I fear two scenarios long term in this game:
a) Snipers are too weak at killing and do nothing else -- they're nothing more than a nuisance, hearing that ping on the ground near you, and then an occasional hit that wipes out your shield before you get to coverGǪwasted slot on the team
b) Snipers are too strong at killing and do nothing else -- they are a nuisance that can kill you with impunity if you step out into the open for more than a few secondsGǪdestroying the fun of the game for the non-snipers

I want something in between this. The ability to kill another player in two or three hits or whatever is balanced, but also other useful powers when not killing that are considered very useful to the team.

CCP is a build ahead of you. This build, they said they were going to change all sniper rifles so they need to be charged.
Check the patch notes

CCP is a build ahead of you. This build, they said they were going to change all sniper rifles so they need to be charged.
Check the patch notes

I really hope this isn't true, because if it is, that's it for me. Done with Dust.

The charge sniper rifle feature did not make it into the Chromosome update. We are planning more variations for the sniper rifle so expect more variations in the fire mode of sniper rifles in future updates.

Hate to quote myself...

In Eve, snipers wouldn't be hamstrung foam pellet launching social butterflies. They'd be hardened killers that could do more than they can now.

I'll expect your follow up NERF sniper post when you are all of a sudden dying a lot more from sniper fire than you are now.

As an aside, I have no idea why you are in a position where you get sniped so much you had to post this, but you might want to post int he training section about how not to get wasted by snipers so much. I don;t get sniped that often, so you must be doing something wrong. Just a possibility :)

I'm asking for a sniper buff. As I've said many times.

I'm not getting sniped much. I'm not getting killed by much at all. Snipers rarely kill me one hit, and unless I'm on Manus Peak they almost never kill me. Snipers are underpowered once you get some defences.

My point right from the original post has been:
1. Snipers are annoying
2. Snipers are underpowered

Neither of those is a case of me dying frequently to snipers.

I think that the sniper's killing power should be reduced

Yes, really. TheEnd762, I've been as clear as I think I can be about these things.

So you claim you want them buffed, but you want their killing power reduced. That is the definition of a contradiction. You may revise to say you want them to have other things to do, more capabilities, but reducing their killing power is a nerf any way you try to spin it.

Damage nerfed, other things buffed, for a net result of: buff!

The maths:
Small nerf in one area + bigger buffs in other areas = net buff.

-1 for your response!

However, 2100 may be right that no damage nerf is required because of how the game will change as people get better defences and more cover is added.

I think snipers should be invisible and have a shield that can absorb at least one round from everything in the game without going down. So, they can hide behind the rocks until whatever is shooting at them gets bored and moves on. I think the cost of the suit is too high because sometimes they lose one. I think sniper drop suits should have two side arm slots so they can carry a pistol and a small handheld nuclear weapon that one shots all tanks and any equiptment on the field. But, to maintain balance it should have a cool down timer of at least 2 minutes so you can only use it a couple of times per round. I don't think snipers should ever show up on the radar or with line of site detection, because it's the future and their suits should have better dampening abilities. I think sniper should have two equipment slots so they can carry nano hives and drop links. That way they never have to be exposed. Since they are using futuristic rail guns, I don't think they should have any range limitations or bullet drop. I think snipers should have robotic arms that way they can sprint and ads at the same time with no sway. I think that snipers should have sensors built into their helmets that make a beeping noise that gets faster as people approach them so no one can sneak up behind them. It's not fair to let people get behind them unless you boost the armor by at least one hundred. I've also noticed that their are some points on the map that they can't reach with their 10 ft verticle. So, I was thinking that maybe they could have a special module that summons a magical unicorn that can help them get to better vantage points. Oh, and also as the unicorn flys over everyone it melts them with rainbow acid. I also think that when snipers shoot someone and it doesn't 1 hit kill them. It should at least slow them down by 80%. I would also like suggest heat seeking and armor piercing rounds. I mean why can't a mini rail gun disable a jeep or blow the treads off a tank so it can't move. I would also like to see a long range piece of hacking equiptment that can hack and take control of enemy installations from a distance. I'm not talking from the red line or anything, but something realistic like 300 yards. Oh and lastly I would like to see some sort of team barrier or at least a drop link lock. I notice that sometimes they get seen because some stupid ar guy or heavy uses their drop and gives away their position.

I admit, I've asked for some of those things.
Namely, a heavy rifle that can damage vehicles, and a cloaking device that eliminates line-of-sight detection.

I like the pocket nuke idea. That's da bomb. All puns intended. lol

1. They are really annoying -- there is absolutely nothing fun about running along, then suddenly dying for no apparent reason at all.

It's not the point, really. I don't care if real life military snipers are like this. War sucks in real life, it's not something any sane person should enjoy participating in. That goes for being shot at by a real life sniper (or being a real life sniper).

We're talking about a game here, which should be fun. Realism plays a role, but not at the expense of more important things like fun, balance, depth of gameplay.