Sniper round scaling effectiveness.

[exLupo]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

Design flaws are only flaws if they are terrible for gameplay. Fix it if its terrible. Prefixing it in case it might be terrible is the wrong way to go about it.

Agreed. What you have to weigh is the potential for a problem with the current design versus how kludgy the proposed fix to that problem is.

Bad sniping: CS AWPfest - I don't think many modern FPSers enjoy that.
Good counter: TF2 "charge" meter - Probably a direct response to AWP.

Personally, I think the proposal in this thread amounts to a Sniper Deadzone and I'm not a fan. It would feel bizarre. Charge/settle/breath systems impose a period of shot set-up which is natural for the tool but low exit velocity is almost purely artifice.

Whichever way their design falls, if there's an issue I hope it gets found and cut out in in beta. Making those kinds of changes in live rarely go well.

[CutterJohn]

Agreed, a charge or breath system would be preferable, and I'm not against them. The reverse damage scaling just seems forced.

Making something difficult to use close range = great
Making it just plain work less effectively = weird

I hope other weapons are the same, though in reverse. The damage degradation with range was far too high in PS1, as were the base CoFs.

[Peacemaker]

Totally agree. Damage deg suuuucked in PS1.

[Sirisian]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

Agreed, a charge or breath system would be preferable, and I'm not against them. The reverse damage scaling just seems forced.

Making something difficult to use close range = great
Making it just plain work less effectively = weird

How is it weird? It's just making the sniper a specialized weapon. Having the damage scale to 100% at a certain range can be explain hundreds of ways (as previously done in this thread a la the NTU charge as the bullet travels through the air gaining power).

The point isn't making it difficult to use at close range. It's more about making it not a viable weapon for CQB. I'm all for specializing weapons for their intended use.

[exLupo]

This thread has presented two different options on solving the CQB dilemma.
1) Dead zone. Damage ramping via range.
2) Firing delay. Charge/breath/settle.

The former is mostly artifice. It'll feel weird to people who expect bullets to do full damage out of the barrel. The latter is more in line with what people expect from a sniper rifle.

There are other options but I don't really see a need for anything but option 2. It's realistic and makes quickscoping impossible. Let the rifle fire hip-shots but use the variable crit system to make it a non-crit weapon without the in-scope pre-fire time.

[CutterJohn]

There are other options but I don't really see a need for anything but option 2. It's realistic and makes quickscoping impossible. Let the rifle fire hip-shots but use the variable crit system to make it a non-crit weapon without the in-scope pre-fire time.

Yeah, something like the.. spiker? The ancient pistol thing that shot discoballs. That would be an ideal mechanic for sniper rifle, only say its a gauss rifle instead of some magic plasma tech.

Full charge = 2shots to body, 1 shot to head. 1-2s charge. whatever a decent rof is

no charge is something like like the HSR. Minimal bonus to headshots, but decent enough, if not stellar, ttk, while wasting the snipers more limited pool of ammo.

Now its a weapon that can be used up close in a fight if its whats in your hands.

[krnasaur]

Now this is the future, who says they have to follow standard weapon design. The sniper round can be a specially designed round with an accelerating bullet (it gets faster even after it leaves the barrel). They had a pistol like this in WW2(or was it WW1? not 100% sure). At close range the bullet would bounce off of a person, but at long range it was deadly. It gun's design ended up failing because of how useless it was a close range combined it was only a single shot per reload.

This would better convey that the gun is better at long ranges, IMO. Sway/breathing and charging do prevent "Quickscoping" but they dont really prevent people camping a hallway with a sniper rifle waiting for someone to turn the corner.

EDIT: changed wording around

[CutterJohn]

Originally Posted by krnasaur

Sway/breathing and charging do prevent "Quickscoping" but they dont really prevent people camping a hallway with a sniper rifle waiting for someone to turn the corner.

Why does that need to be prevented?

[exLupo]

Originally Posted by krnasaur

They had a pistol like this in WW2(or was it WW1? not 100% sure). At close range the bullet would bounce off of a person, but at long range it was deadly. It gun's design ended up failing because of how useless it was a close range combined it was only a single shot per reload.

Gyrojet. Not only were they relatively ineffective up close, their maximum velocity at range topped out at about half the muzzle velocity of conventional rifles. The power of the handgun version was about 50% more than a .45. That sounds impressive but it isn't. A .45 is about 400 ft-lbs so the Gyrojet, at full speed, is 600 ft-lbs. A .50 is 1500. 2.5 times the Gyrojet without the need to produce complicated projectiles. This is only exacerbated by rifles where the top speed for the Gyrojet remains the same, around 1250 ft/s, whereas the muzzle velocity of anti-materiel rifles (judging by the size of the bolt driver cartridge) is 2800 ft/s. Gyrojets are interesting but the reality about their limitations means that they lose out to conventional weapons when calibers increase.

Sway/breathing and charging do prevent "Quickscoping" but they dont really prevent people camping a hallway with a sniper rifle waiting for someone to turn the corner.

I'm not sure that snipers in a long hall are a bad thing. You get one shot. A MA at the end of the hallway would still get the first shot and the full length of the hallway against anyone charging without having to give up any accuracy for movement.

[Sirisian]

Originally Posted by exLupo

I'm not sure that snipers in a long hall are a bad thing. You get one shot. A MA at the end of the hallway would still get the first shot and the full length of the hallway against anyone charging without having to give up any accuracy for movement.

We have headshots to "worry" about remember. If all you need to do is charge I could see people taking advantage of this in long hallways to aim at head level. Actually that seems like a viable strategy. Yeah I don't really care anymore which way. The gaining power over distance or the breath/charge before shot are fine with me.

The reason I can see the charge working well is that if we still have the normal CoF mechanism people are going to start charging as their reticule goes down and time it so they shoot right as it hits 100% accuracy. It sounds like it goes perfect with the normal PS sniping system.

[GTGD]

This combined with no more crosshair for an unzoomed sniper would be great. Less idiots using snipers as super shotguns.

[CutterJohn]

Snipers are rarely used as super shotguns, since they suck at the job if they aren't one hit body shots. Too low of a rate of fire. The lack of crosshairs is an option of course, but a silly one, and I'd just put my little piece of plastic back on the screen like I do in BF2/BC2 to be able to use the sniper rifles/rocket launchers more effectively while unscoped.


The only games that have an issue with close range shotgun style use of snipers are those that allow one hit body shots and have pinpoint accuracy while running around.

[Talek Krell]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

The lack of crosshairs is an option of course, but a silly one, and I'd just put my little piece of plastic back on the screen like I do in BF2/BC2 to be able to use the sniper rifles/rocket launchers more effectively while unscoped.

Why do they never set it up so that the rifle doesn't always shoot at the same place when you're not using ironsights? The fact that everybody uses those little stickies, and that worse yet it actually works always makes me facepalm a bit.