One-Shot Kills: only snipers can be OSK'd

[IceyCold]

I understand that, but the role of snipers are not just infantry support in the role of pinning enemies.

Snipers are a force multiplier, meaning that the job of the sniper is more often than not to kill enemies quickly before they are able to inflict casualties upon allied troops. This is not something we really saw much of in Planetside as it took 2 snipers to kill 1 soldier before he could open up on allied troops. The role of the sniper was relegated to cleanup and light suppression. I personally saw snipers as a nuisance in Planetside nothing more. If I was hit by a sniper I simply moved into cover, healed fully, and then shot at his allies from behind cover that I knew he could not shoot at me through.

I do not have a problem with one shot kills as long as there is skill required to it. Beta will be the best way to see how it all works out.

[Wahooo]

Originally Posted by Kalbuth

Random in the sense : "it's difficult to achieve, but out of the 10+ snipers targetting you, 1 will headshot". Not really random per se, just showing that being difficult is no justification of being OSOK, because of numbers.

Do headshots matter in this case anyway? 10 snipers with only a few targets? Those targets will be getting hit by 2 or more snipers already which is instant death, headshot or not.

[FIREk]

Originally Posted by Kalbuth

Random in the sense : "it's difficult to achieve, but out of the 10+ snipers targetting you, 1 will headshot". Not really random per se, just showing that being difficult is no justification of being OSOK, because of numbers.

Let's crank it up to 10000+, just to make shit serious. Yeah, 10000+ snipers will definitely be the core of every battlefield...

Even if there were 10 snipers on a ridge, or whatever, why would the all be aiming at the same player (unless it's an extremely egocentric player)?
Would all have enough skill to even perform a headshot at long range with non-trivial bullet ballistics?
Even if this were, ridiculously, the case, those 10 snipers would be rolled by one Liberator or air-to-ground Mosquito.
Or suppressed to oblivion by the other side's 5 snipers, then, while they're preoccupied with regenerating their shields, they would get raped by a handful of cloakers, starting with their medic.

Have you forgotten how much stuff can be done in PlanetSide? The new cert system will allow everyone to have access to any basic thing. If snipers are pissing off base defenders, one of them will pull an air vehicle and curb-stomp them within 30 seconds. Or at least suppress them long enogh to allow regular grunts to close in and face-blast them at their terms.

Most importantly, PS2 is a competitive game and sometimes you will get killed by a superior player, or any player in a superior position at the moment. What are you guys shitting bricks about, again?

[Kalbuth]

Why getting so nervous? We'll see in beta Hope you'll get your so precious OSOK

[FIREk]

Originally Posted by Kalbuth

Why getting so nervous? We'll see in beta Hope you'll get your so precious OSOK

I'll be running around with a shotgun, so I may not get them myself (unless up-close face-shots will have such massive damage). I appreciate how difficult it is to shoot a sniper rifle properly in BFBC2 (a game with bullet ballistics similar/identical to what we can expect from PS2) and trust that snipers will get what they deserve for displaying skill.

[Captain B]

I'm going to lick your face, FIREk. Just saying.

[Traak]

Originally Posted by FIREk

and trust that snipers will get what they deserve for displaying skill.

Yeah, a stab in the back of the head from ticked-off counter-sniper cloakers with melee booster.

[Raka Maru]

Originally Posted by Traak

Yeah, a stab in the back of the head from ticked-off counter-sniper cloakers with melee booster.

That's the spirit!

[FIREk]

Originally Posted by Traak

Yeah, a stab in the back of the head from ticked-off counter-sniper cloakers with melee booster.

That's the spirit indeed.
Since snipers spend a lot of time viewing the battlefield through a scope, their field of view is tiny most of the time, meaning they aren't well aware of their surroundings. They also tend to stay more or less in one place.
This, along with having no AA weapons (and most likely wearing only light armor) in PS2, makes snipers all but defenseless against their two natural predators: the pilot and the cloaker.
Finally, the additional difficulty of accurately firing a ballistic weapon at long range should make snipers both balanced against other classes, and relatively unpopular when compared to using vehicles, MAXes or more versatile infantry classes.
And thus the problem, that was never a problem, solves itself.

[Lunarchild]

Originally Posted by Traak

Yeah, a stab in the back of the head from ticked-off counter-sniper cloakers with melee booster.

For once in this thread, I totally agree with you

[I SandRock]

Yea headshot sniping takes more skill when you are actually trying to pull it off.

But:
- More often than not in FPS games with headshots I find myself headshotting players automatically, not intentionally. - This is not due to my own skill but due to luck

- Aimbotting becomes a bigger problem

- Why does it have to be 1 shot. Why not 99% damage. APB's heavy hitting sniper rifle did 99% damage and you could still 1 shot a lot of players who were already under fire or who fell of a height / just got out of a fight etc.

- What about alternate rewarding of headshot skill shots. Like the vision of the player you shot becomes blurred and his movement is slowed for a few seconds. This way you have a higher chance of hitting him with the second shot.

I don't think it adds that much more skill to the game, but does add a lot more luck to the game. I personally hate it when I die from random headshots. And I don't feel particularly good when I see a person die in 1 shot from me because I happen to get a headshot -_-
And... ok maybe this is my own failed perception. But I often find people who hide behind cover and only stick their head out to fire actually die quicker because all you can aim for is their head and you automatically actually do that. I know theoretically if they weren't behind cover you could still do exactly that, though maybe when people are behind cover they move less, but to me it seems that whenever I see an enemy stick his head out from behind cover he gets 1 shotted almost instantly. Which kind of negates the idea of cover. I always stand to the SIDE of cover objects to not expose my head only because of that

I think in practice when people see only the head they'll actually aim for it more easy than when they see an enemy out in the open and just try to shoot them as quick as possible....

[FIREk]

Originally Posted by I SandRock

- More often than not in FPS games with headshots I find myself headshotting players automatically, not intentionally. - This is not due to my own skill but due to luck

You can't really headshot someone by accident, with a sniper rifle, at long range, with BFBC2-style ballistics. Not even once every 10 shots.
Just to clarify, are we talking random sniping headshots here, or random assault rifle/SMG headshots? The latter won't insta-kill in PS2.

Originally Posted by I SandRock

- Aimbotting becomes a bigger problem

Cheat protection aside, if someone sets their aimbot to do headshots all the time, he's a moron. It makes it all the simpler to flag him for closer inspection, and then ban him.

Originally Posted by I SandRock

- Why does it have to be 1 shot. Why not 99% damage. APB's heavy hitting sniper rifle did 99% damage and you could still 1 shot a lot of players who were already under fire or who fell of a height / just got out of a fight etc.

Now, I wouldn't call the HVR a "sniper rifle", with no real zoom and a 100m range, insta-hitting bullets etc... :P

Originally Posted by I SandRock

- What about alternate rewarding of headshot skill shots. Like the vision of the player you shot becomes blurred and his movement is slowed for a few seconds. This way you have a higher chance of hitting him with the second shot.

The blackout+slowdown is a pretty cool idea, if they added a "dazed, unsteady walk while holding your face" animation to depict this.
On the other hand, nothing pisses FPS players more than MMO-like mechanics. Snare, freeze, stun... FPS players want to be in control all the time. Think APB and its retarded less-than-lethal weapons, stunning and arresting.
A slowdown is nowhere near as nerve-shredding as a stun and longer respawn time, but it might end up pissing people off more than an instant death. If you're barely moving and half-blind, most of the time you're dead anyway. Why prolong it?
It's definitely worth thinking about, though.

[Krowe]

Usually I only get headshots in BFBC2 after I've already shot them a couple times, but that might be in part to the fact that I aim for the chest.

[FIREk]

This is what long-range sniping will most likely look like in PS2. In BF3, however, body shots seem to one-shot infantry, which will almost certainly not be the case in PS2.

Watch in HD and notice how many of his kills are headshots (crosshair icon and bonus points) and how many are body shots. Headshots will be bloody hard to do, and quite unlikely to come out of luck alone.

[Captain B]

Is that Vandal Hearts 2 music??

Anyway, it looks like the bullet's a rocket, and has some considerable girth (that's what she said). It almost feels like a grenade launcher without the splash looking at how it operates.