Sniper rifle trail

Cuross · 2012-06-06, 10:43 AM

Okay, so I have an issue with nearly all shooters and tracer fire. As if hit indicators aren't enough, unnecessary tracer fire gives away your position nearly all the time. I have a special issue with sniper rifles and this trail they cause. Yes, snipers can be annoying, but snipers have a purpose: to scout, to remain hidden, and to take opportunities. So anyone who's been playing the game, is there any hint of a sniper rifle's "tracer" round? Wondering because it's already been said that it'll take two good hits from a sniper (once for shields and once for headshot) to kill, so I think that the tracer is going to be unnecessary, especially given the fact that if a sniper drains your shields, your first thought should probably be "Oh, *expletive*! Hide hide hide!" and not "Now where is that camping *expletive*?"

Or am I the only one who has this issue? I feel that a sniper should be unseen and unkown, and I wouldn't feel the least bit annoyed that a sniper got the better of me.

SpcFarlen · 2012-06-06, 10:47 AM

Originally Posted by Cuross

Okay, so I have an issue with nearly all shooters and tracer fire. As if hit indicators aren't enough, unnecessary tracer fire gives away your position nearly all the time. I have a special issue with sniper rifles and this trail they cause. Yes, snipers can be annoying, but snipers have a purpose: to scout, to remain hidden, and to take opportunities. So anyone who's been playing the game, is there any hint of a sniper rifle's "tracer" round? Wondering because it's already been said that it'll take two good hits from a sniper (once for shields and once for headshot) to kill, so I think that the tracer is going to be unnecessary, especially given the fact that if a sniper drains your shields, your first thought should probably be "Oh, *expletive*! Hide hide hide!" and not "Now where is that camping *expletive*?"

Or am I the only one who has this issue? I feel that a sniper should be unseen and unkown, and I wouldn't feel the least bit annoyed that a sniper got the better of me.

If you kill your target you remain unseen. Trails act as a negative reinforcement to bad aim in that way. You remain unseen, wait for the right moment, get the kill then leave your position if compromised.

Also during the livestream there were one shot head shots. Again unsure if that was just for demo, or not.

Sabot · 2012-06-06, 10:49 AM

I have the same problem.. I hate that every round is a tracer round in a machinegun or carbine. Snipers don't use em for obvious reasons... muzzle flashes/small smoke and/or dust clouds, louds bangs in the distance... these things are enough of a give away for sniper rifles imo.

Redshift · 2012-06-06, 10:50 AM

i imagine it depends on the weapon.
Probably the sniper rifle we saw with a trail was a very powerful one. We saw a smaller semi auto one without tracers too

NewSith · 2012-06-06, 10:51 AM

There was a tracer in the Day1 PS2E3, but it went in a very straight line without drop, so it's safe to assume that it wasn't a tracer, but a VS pewpewshot instead.

Bullet rifles don't get those obvious tracers even at night.

And, hell, afterall as one the best Werner snipers, I tell you, PS1 sniping was fine even with 0.7 sec tracers.

ArcIyte · 2012-06-06, 10:51 AM

boo hoo

Planetside 1 had many fun outdoor battles because snipers were largely irrelevant. Sadly, to draw in all the x420xVASILIZAITSEVx360noscopex crowd like yourself, sniping will probably be similar to BF3 and CoD (IE: ruining rifle-range fights at all times)

The harder it is to snipe the better the game will be

/drops mic

bjorntju1 · 2012-06-06, 10:55 AM

Originally Posted by ArcIyte

The harder it is to snipe the better the game will be

/drops mic

Exactly.

I hope that when snipers fire, a big ''LOOK AT ME, HERE AM I'' sign pops up above their head with fireworks and stuff. I hate snipers.

NewSith · 2012-06-06, 10:56 AM

Originally Posted by bjorntju1

I hope that when snipers fire, a big I AM HERE sign pops up above their head with fireworks and stuff. I hate snipers.

Hell, I love those who hate snipers (in computer games, because IRL it's a different story

).

Sabot · 2012-06-06, 10:57 AM

Originally Posted by ArcIyte

boo hoo

Planetside 1 had many fun outdoor battles because snipers were largely irrelevant. Sadly, to draw in all the x420xVASILIZAITSEVx360noscopex crowd like yourself, sniping will probably be similar to BF3 and CoD (IE: ruining rifle-range fights at all times)

Says the guy flaunting his K/D in the sig.... Seriosuly, why make one option of playing useless just because you don't enjoy it or know how to play it/counter it. ES fighters are very specilized as well... better make them irrelevant so not to ruin game play for infantry...

Cuross · 2012-06-06, 11:00 AM

Well, I was a fairly decent sniper in PS1 myself, but my issue was that I would have a great spot, get the kill, but because of that tracer his buddies would ground pound the area before I had a chance to get to better cover. I would prefer if maybe instead of a tracer line there was a new hit indicator? Just a different color line showing you the direction of incoming fire? Well, that would make your screen all colorful in a firefight and jumbled. Maybe a 20 or 30% chance to fire a tracer round instead? Haha.

Originally Posted by ArcIyte

boo hoo

Planetside 1 had many fun outdoor battles because snipers were largely irrelevant. Sadly, to draw in all the x420xVASILIZAITSEVx360noscopex crowd like yourself, sniping will probably be similar to BF3 and CoD (IE: ruining rifle-range fights at all times)

And the what the what crowd? Like myself? I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I fall under that kind of category, besides, snipers aren't ruining anything, they're just doing their jobs like "rifle-range" soldiers are doing theirs. Not to mention, I don't know if we were playing the same planetside, but good snipers were never irrelevant. Especially given how much more difficult sniping was in PS1 compared to other games.

diLLa · 2012-06-06, 11:01 AM

Originally Posted by ArcIyte

boo hoo

Planetside 1 had many fun outdoor battles because snipers were largely irrelevant. Sadly, to draw in all the x420xVASILIZAITSEVx360noscopex crowd like yourself, sniping will probably be similar to BF3 and CoD (IE: ruining rifle-range fights at all times)

The harder it is to snipe the better the game will be

/drops mic

Well, if you keep trying to battle snipers with shotguns, then indeed, enjoy rifle range fights.

bjorntju1 · 2012-06-06, 11:02 AM

Also a nice article as on why I hate snipers:

In our multiplayer FPS games, players tend to die a lot. Death is one of the great feedback mechanisms we have in the game, helping you evaluate your own skill versus that of your opponents, and the viability of the tactics being employed by each of you. Being hopeless optimists, we'd like your deaths to be positive experiences. When we started working on TF2, 22 years ago, we decided to examine the things that affected how players felt about their deaths in TFC. Our starting theory was that, for death to be a positive experience, players had to feel like they could have avoided dying if they'd done something different. We found two factors that seemed to be important in light of that theory

The first was whether or not you understand what killed you. If you don't know what killed you, that death is failing in providing you the feedback it's supposed to, and you won't be able to figure out what you could have done differently. Unsurprisingly, we saw that these deaths were highly aggravating to players, and in sufficient number caused new players to stop playing entirely. Trying to reduce the number of these deaths in TF2 was done through a variety of changes. It was one of the reasons why we chose to remove the hand-held grenades that each class had in TFC, which were one of the primary causes of these deaths. It was one of several goals that led to the creation of the freezecam.

The second was whether you felt you were actually engaged with the person who killed you. Dying to someone you weren't engaged with, especially when you were already engaged with someone else, was aggravating. Even worse was dying to someone who you couldn't have engaged with, even if you chose to. In that case, you're very unlikely to believe you could have done anything differently to survive.

In particular, the second seemed to be the root cause of the hatred of Snipers. You're often killed by them while you're engaged with an enemy in the foreground, and most of the time the Sniper is so far away it feels like you couldn't have dealt with him even if you didn't have enemies nearby. In fact, the Sniper's goal is to create that relationship: he specifically wants to fight enemies outside their engagement range, because that's his primary advantage.

http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=2477

(funnily enough, TF2 is the only game where I don't get annoyed by snipers)

When I get killed by a sniper I get frustrated because you just can't do something about it. I can't kill him directly because I have an assault rifle and that is not really the gun you want to use to kill somebody a km away. It is easy to say that you need to jump in a fighter and fly over to him to kill him. But why? Why should I go far out of my way to get into a fighter, just to kill one person? I don't want do do that. What if i want to have a fun experience just fighting as infantry taking over a base It isn't fun when you are engaged with multiple people, to get killed by a sniper a km away.

Snipers should not be OSOK on most classes, maybe headshots can OSOK on the lighter armored classes. Snipers need to have tracer rounds so everyone can see where he shot from. This way atleast he has to change his position.

BUT IN REAL LIFE SNIPER DONT HAVE TRACER ROUNDS.

Yes, But this isn't real life.

diLLa · 2012-06-06, 11:04 AM

Originally Posted by bjorntju1

Also a nice article as on why I hate snipers:

http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=2477

It's hardly relevant though, because in a game where tanks and aircraft can 1 shot you in similar non-reactionable fashion, nerfing the sniper into uselessness seems pretty stupid.

Gandhi · 2012-06-06, 11:04 AM

I think it forces snipers to stay on the move, which is good in my opinion. You can still remain hidden, you can still scout and you can still take opportunities, you just can't do all 3 of those things at the same time without moving around.

What I don't want is for people to sit off on a hill somewhere totally stationary taking pot shots at people who are too busy with the local fighting to worry about locating some punk sniper 300m away. That kind of gameplay tends to remove the sniper from what's actually going on, so that he's playing in his own little world completely oblivious to anything but his own kill count. You can see the effects of this in any BF3 match, especially Conquest. It's not constructive gameplay for an objective based shooter like this.

wasdie · 2012-06-06, 11:08 AM

Snipers need to have a gameplay mechanic that keeps them on the move and makes them target only the more important targets that are on the battlefield. This will turn them into more of a recon/assassin role rather than just an infantry killer.

Right now in modern FPSs, snipers can dominate infantry fights. I don't want that to happen here. The trail of the tracer will make sure that snipers don't stay stationary for to long and it will make them pick their targets a bit more wisely. A good balance.

I don't want every other solider on the battlefield to be carrying a scoped rifle. That would just be no fun.