Sniper Changes?

[Not_Oliver]

I'm pretty sure the majority of us acknowledge the fact that the snipers need some change for the better. 

 

I think they need a 100% crit, but, before you say what's the point of the bows, the Lanka for example has a higher charge damage but a longer charge time while the rest of the snipers have lower charge damages/damages than the Paris Prime and Dread. 

 

Would like to hear your guys' thoughts :) 

 

 

[Siege__]

Redesign the scope mechanic. Currently with the Vectis, hitting enemies is next to impossible so I don't even bother zooming in.

 

Also, maybe an innate punchthrough. Gotta get dem 360 noscope wallbang collaterals.

Edited June 24, 2014 by Cj21forever

[DoomsDayDan]

Vectis should have actual zoom on it, a bolt action (or breech action or whatever you gun nuts say it is) is typically the last thing you'd want to be using in close quarters

[Lunamaniac]

I'd say a flat damage boost couple with the outright removal of the sniper ammo pool would be sufficient.  Having finite ammo is hardly necessary anyway considering when the Ogris and Penta exist.

[xlraistlx]

Scott already stated in a livestream that Sniper will be getting a buff. I hope for it to came along with U14 but we have no ETA on this.

[Not_Oliver]

Redesign the scope mechanic. Currently with the Vectis, hitting enemies is next to impossible so I don't even bother zooming in.

 

Also, maybe an innate punchthrough. Gotta get dem 360 noscope wallbang collaterals.

 

the Lanka has 5m punch through lol

[MDRLOz]

Scott already stated in a livestream that Sniper will be getting a buff. I hope for it to came along with U14 but we have no ETA on this.

He also said that he was focusing on helping to get Update 14 shipped and that was his priority.

 

Snipers will get some changes eventually. Just give it time. 

[OriVerda]

I always liked a ricochet effect. If you're doing stealth with a Sonar using Banshee and have silenced your Vectis then why not fire at a part of the wall in order to kill that pesky Grineer whom is looking in the direction of the door.

 

That and quadruple headshot because innate punch through.

[(PSN)Bobtm0]

I like the scopes as they are oddly enough, but want more.  Hopefully they could work scopes in like attachments work on melee weapons/frames, but obviously not being simply cosmetic changes.  It'd also be even further stellar if they could somehow let people change their zoom variation by hitting some key whilst ADSing (I'd want it tied to sprint since you can't sprint during ADS anyway).

 

Beyond that, everybody gets punch through.  Lanka gets infinite punch through, because I totally need to kill that guy on the other side of a mountain, as well as ramping up the Lanka's projectile velocity a bit more.

 

As far as finding that balance between what Bows and Snipers do... that's a bit trickier since Bows were made into the "crit weapons".  If coding would allow for it, I'd say give Snipers the ability to automatically red crit on headshots.  Keep their inherent critical hit chance right where it is, basically only reward the accurate.  Then just ramp up their base crit multiplier, I'm talking like 4.0 minimum.

 

Basically, let Snipers hit much, much harder than Bows, but only on headshots.  Bows keep "reliability" on normalized damage since they just always crit to begin with.  Additionally, most Snipers aren't silenced like Bows, so the only place where the territories merge/cross over is with the Lanka.

[DSpite]

Id like the Lanka to have a target highlighter, ie when in scope mode it can see enemies through walls, and have the ability to tell what can be punched through to and what can not.

 

Mostly because I put one together and it plays so clunky that it's reducing me to tears. It feels like such a bland weapon, when it should have some cool mechanic that while not making it OP, should make the user laugh like a lunatic whenever they are running through a level with it.

 

ie this:

[Paradoxbomb]

I think a good start would be making it so that headshot damage isn't tied to critical hits, and snipers just have an innate x4 weakspot multiplier whereas other weapons have x2-3. I suppose you could argue that 100% crit chance on headshots sorta does this, but that still leaves the issue of non-sniper weapons being able to get the same bonus on headshots as a sniper, which is terribly unbalanced (unless you're really far away, there's no reason to use a sniper when you could psuedo-snipe someone with a Soma). Making the weakspot multiplier unique to weapons rather than dependent on crits would both remove the RNG from snipers and could be used as a balancing mechanic for weapons, killing two birds with one stone.

 

Of course I think the real issue isn't with snipers themselves but with damage mods, and the fact that there's a few too many of them. Currently you can just stuff your regular old Braton with pure damage mods until it has a power to kill both the cannon fodder and even Heavy enemies in less than a second, so when an SMG can do the job of a sniper faster and more efficiently then there's simply no reason to use the sniper. If the Devs really want snipers to be viable, than we need a reason to take them over a Soma or any automatic weapon really. I'd say we either need less +damage mods so that automatic weapons can't impede on the DPH territory of snipers (which wouldn't be well received but I think is something that eventually should be done) and/or more enemies that aren't cannon fodder and actually warrant the use of accurate, high DPH weapons.

[low1991]

Scott already stated in a livestream that Sniper will be getting a buff. I hope for it to came along with U14 but we have no ETA on this.

Buff on what areas?

-Damage? problem still remains.

-Crit %/ Damage? might solve the current problem for a while.

-something else? who knows. only DE know's all.

[Sunlight-Centurion]

Id like the Lanka to have a target highlighter, ie when in scope mode it can see enemies through walls, and have the ability to tell what can be punched through to and what can not.

It would be interesting if you could engage the codex scanner on scope - allowing you to see temporarily through objects and take the shot, while also forcing the player to do a bit of preparation by ensuring their codex scanners are stocked and equipped.  

[Fubukin]

Buff the base crit chance to bow levels.

There, snipers are fixed.

[Not_Oliver]

Buff the base crit chance to bow levels.

There, snipers are fixed.

 

yup 

[Wustinhurf]

as I have posted on another forum in similar topic: I suggest Xray scope mod that allow you see through objects, thermal imaging scope mod allow you to see weak points, base high puncture so you can shoot through objects, and a base stat boost would be nice.

[DSpite]

I'm sorry, but changes to Sniper Rifles that just makes them deadlier is not what I want. Current scenario example:

 

Me and two mates, one is a sniper maniac, and always uses sniper rifles; He would try to buy one even if playing Hello Kitty Online, while the other mate currently has a Forma'd Latron Prime, I just use a Boltor Prime because nailing robots to walls JUST NEVER STOPS BEING FUNNY :)

 

Anyway, even If I stop shooting at any stage, guess how many targets my sniper friend gets to kill? Not many. Is it because he's slower? Is it because he's less accurate? Is it because of crits or procs? Nope.

 

It's a combination of game distances to mobs, our abilities to close those distances, which are almost always short to medium, combined with the fact that we can spam so many abilities to kill things, and the fact that every gun has basically a "sniper zoom" built in when aiming through iron sights, hell, we even have a MOD to add EXTRA ZOOM. Oh, also the fact that bullets don't go through team mates and we often block people shots by simply being in the damn way. Also, Penta rebounds off team mates? Priceless.

 

The only time we like our sniper mate is when we play say, a Nightmare Extermination mission with no shields, and we let him snipe all he likes. The rest of the time we Trackmania-Ninja-run through entire levels slaughtering everything too fast to allow someone to "play sniper". If we had to run a full stealth missions and only a run with ZERO detection, they might work, as the whole team might take it nice and slow, then Sniper Rifles would have a role, but we already use Bows, which also DONT need a silencer mod to be added, taking away a slot, so why bring sniper rifles again?

[BrazilianJoe]

Game needs to have almost all weapons be changed from hitscan to bullets with travel time. 

 

Only a few pistols and snipers would have hitscan weapons. 

 

Snipers also need significant punch-through and damage buff.

[Eirshy]

Um, the Lanka only has a 1.5x crit multiplier, even with guaranteed crits and no red crits the bows would have higher raw damage output.

 

Honestly the Lanka just needs buffs in general, in addition to the snipers needing a 40% crit chance.

 

 

Really, I'm not sure why they don't bump all the snipers up to a 40% base crit chance to at least stop the bleeding while they think of what they want to do to make them more useful.

 

 

 

@DSpite, Part of it's because he's running with two people who have good gear (Boltor Prime is at least on a first-name basis with the term OP, regardless of whether it actually is or not, and the Latron Prime is a very solid choice for carbine-like weapons) and can handle themselves against the current heavy units. Sniper weapons specialize in dropping whatever the highest threat is nearly instantly, but in general, nothing has that high of a threat unless you're pugging.

As for body blocking, yeah they really need to do something about it. I know it's not intentional, but it really REALLY bothers me when someone walks in front of me so they can get a better shot with their non-Sniper-type weapon and thus eat my ohko headshot that I had lined up.

As for distances, most tile sets yeah, but planetside, derelict, and void all have plenty of nice wide-open areas that work well with sniper-type weapons. There really isn't a good way to make them tactically viable in cqc simply because their paradigm isn't very good for cqc- just like extreme ranges and video game shotguns don't mix well.

 

 

 

As for the lack of crits not causing the biggest, most glaring problem...

I beg to differ:

Terms:
min = Minimum Effective Base Damage
max = Maximum Effective Base Damage
Norm = Normalized (Average) Effective Base Damage
Crit Chan = Chance of Critical
Cycle DPS = Damage Output for One Full Cycle (emptying the clip + reload time)
base = Base Damage
crit = Crit Chance Base
damx = Crit Damage Multiplier Base
FSB = First Shot Bonus (Charged/Primed Chamber effect)
PrS = Pre-Shot time cost
PoS = Post-Shot time cost
RT = Reloat Time cost
STR = Shots Till Reload replaces PoS-b
TPC = Time Per Cycle (minimum)

-b = Base value
-x = Multiplier value
-m = Modded (not a multiplier)

Mods on all weapons listed: Vital Sense (+1.2 damx-x), Point Strike (+1.5 crit-x)

Unique Mod Tags:
Ham = Hammer Shot (+60% damx)
Chrg = Charged Chamber (+0.4 FSB)
Prim = Primed Chamber (+1.0 FSB)
Fast = Fast Hands (+30% rate on RT)
Spd = Speed Trigger (+60% rate on PrS and PoS)
Shd = Shred (+30% rate on PrS and PoS; adds punch through (not listed))

Other vectis configurations (such as those using Critical Delay, as there is no downside to Crit Del on the Vectis due to it

), are genearlly suboptimal if we assume 4 slots for Serration and your elements (ignoring Split Chamber, or monolementing with Split Chamber). While PrimHam > PrimChrg in Normalized, often the higher minimum is prefered.

Each weapon was given FOUR total mods in this chart.
The other four slots are assumed to be filled with the same mods.

Note
> Before Red Crits, the Vectis beat the Bows in either Primed Chamber build.

> Minimum damage, the bows completely destroy the sniper rifles

> While the Dread has higher normalized damage, the minimum is often all you need on either bow, and the PPrime has a tenth of a second faster reload.

> Bane mods perform better than Hammer Shot in terms of damage output, however, they don't work in the Void. You know, that place where you'd really actually want the bane mods?

> DPC is a $&*&*#(%& statistic to measure for sniper weapons, however, I had to argue about this once already, so this is merely a preempt.

 

At higher levels, a non-crit is as good as a miss. You think the cqc, body blocking, and target-finding problems are bad, a non-crit is exactly the same.

[Not_Oliver]

^ this, read the whole thing and it leaves no room for discussion lol