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Sniper Rifle Rework [U18 Megathread]


[DE]Danielle
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Aye, you finally got my old ! out of hibernation. Probably will toy with things until I've unlocked Focus before I go back to hibernation (until Banshee Prime).

 

Anyways, What you got right:

- Scopes being variable and having a purpose (distance to target is a godsend for the Lanka).

- Lanka is the undisputed queen of single shot raw damage (96.875% more raw damage than the PP/Dread)

- Lanka's 10 round mag makes good use of the combo meter

 

I seriously absolutely love how hard the Lanka hits. I've dreamed of the day she'd return to her throne, but I didn't think she'd obliterate everything on her way there. The combo meter giving crit damage gives you a potential way around the split armor problem (radi build base, use the Lancers and such to get your damage high enough to pop ferrite armor users).

 

 

What you almost got right:

- Lanka's scope design. Transparency on the center reticle just needs a boost, right now it's massive and horrendously obtrusive. Lower the alpha to 10-30% from the 60-80% it's at, and you'll be golden.

 

 

What you got wrong:

- Nullifiers: Nulli-chan still only punishes weapons that are already punished by the rest of the game's design.

My suggestion is still allow sniper and bow weapons to bypass the damage cap and send the shield into negative health, with the requirement that the nullifier's shield regens the negative health before it can come back up.

 

- Armor: Builds are still defeated by Grineer's split armor even in the void

Seriously guys. Armor scaling is a problem.

 

I know you know this, my thread on it back in u8 got linked in an official sticky, and you released Corrosive Projection.

 

Damage 2.0 was an effort to solve this problem, but it managed instead to just remove the player's way around it. Sure, it also remove it from Corpus/Infested, and pushed the game's normal level scaling down to where 30 was high (the armor problems show up 35-50, depending on your build and the weapon).... but that's hiding the problem. Sweeping it under the rug, if you will.

 

Corosive Projection is an okay bandage in Raid (since you have 8 people, 4 can bring CP fairly easily), but in non-raid content, this basically means you must squad up with 4 and bring all CP if you want to go late wave. This removes all other options- while in Damage 1.0 you could solo with a limited number of options. Which is a much better deal.

 

You can kind of deal with it via Corrosive or Radiation (or, more pro-like, high Puncture weapon modded with Radiation damage), but you need both to deal with all heavy units on the Grineer faction. Even in the void, you have both Gunners and Bombards, which have Ferrite and Alloy which are weak to Corrosive and Radiation, all respectively.

 

Honestly, the simplest fix is to do something like make all Grineer heavies use Alloy or Ferrite, and all Grineer meds/lights use the other. This would allow you to spec specifically for the heavies or the meds/lights, and push the armor being too high on the heavies even longer (because a 75% amp and 75% ignore is bready gud).

 

The more "advanced" fix comes from my suggested sniper changes over yonder, in the "balancing alternatives" section:

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/436605-snipers-sniping-snipes/

 

- Reliability: Every sniper other than the Lanka is still a slot machine

The point of sniper weapons is that they are 100% skill. You hit the weakpoint, and it dies, you miss, and it doesn't.

The RNG behind the crits (and multishot to a lesser degree) means if you hit, you have to pray to RNGezus for your shot to have actually counted.

 

This is why the Lanka is the only sniper that made out with these changes. It got guaranteed crits on scope.

 

- Niche Saturation: Still competing with bows for the same basic niche (single hit raw)

See Armor for an explanation.

 

- Non-advantageous scopes: No scanner passive on the scopes to make them really good.

Self-explanatory.

 

- Useless Combo: Combo adds more damage, not reliability or utility.

The Lanka can use it since it gets guaranteed crits, however, it doesn't really help, as her problems aren't solved by more raw damage.

 

See Reliability for more info.

 

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Hip firing becoming inaccurate with damage multipliers on zoom level broke the functionality of using a sniper weapon.

 

One thing that must be changed on how Zooming works. Either let us toggle the levels of zoom by Right Click or when holding Right Click allow the Mouse Wheel to zoom in/out regardless of your keybinds.

 

My thoughts on the matter ever since you released them is that you are trying to rethink Sniper Rifles to the point of breaking their use.

Edited by KanesDeath
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While I like these added features, we still have a problem with snipers in general, they still feel...out of place. The combo counter is nice, but I feel that is something that should be used on automatic weapons.

All snipers really needed was built in punch through, and way more damage, or just a nice buff and way faster reload.

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my opinion on Sniper rework

_ ADS with maxed zoom of x8~x12 is unnecessary for warframe because we are not sniping over 100m but 40m, so i suggest adding around x2~x6 is the best for it

_ without ADS, sniper should not be so inaccurate, i dont like how you standing still and shoot the gun and the bullet just fly where ever they want to. give it back the way they used to be.

_ give all sniper with innate punch throught and at least make Lanka be the only silent sniper rifle for stealth purpose as well as giving them X-ray vision like codex scanner like everyone suggested.

_ give some low magazine sniper rifle with faster reload around 2 secs, i mean it really a pain to see 5 bullet capacity of Rubico to has 3 secs reloading, the gun is nice but it lack in every ways. even Lanka hold 10 rounds can reload around 2 secs faster than other sniper (except vectis) and still able to keep the combo counter.

_ if you going to keep combo counter, make it longer because hitting an enemies is hard enough with all these wonky ADS

_ finally, give Sniper rifle the only gun to shoot through Nullifier bubble or 100% critical damage upon headshot.

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Also, Noticed something amazing, Snipers no longer have any form of accuracy with Heavy Caliber. Prior to the update while scoped one round would stay near perfectly accurate while any projectile made by multi shot would be slightly off. Now, atleast for Vulkar, neither projectile has any form of accuracy outside 10-20 meters. Rework is looking really nice. =D

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I think this rework is a step in the right direction however snipers are still not in a perfect spot. I am going to list two changes that might fix sniper rifles for good.

 

1. Innate punch-through.

 

How sniper rifles work in-game makes them require a punch-through mod in order for them to come somewhat close to having the crowd-control that other weapons offer and it helps with their limited ammo economy. I think would be a good idea to make it so zoom levels further increase the punch-through to the point where some large parts of the terrain are able to be shot through by a sniper with a max zoom level.

 

2. Zoom highlights enemies.

 

I think the scope on snipers should be able to highlight enemies with whatever energy colour you have on your sniper rifle, almost identically to how codex scanners are able to highlight enemies. A higher zoom level would increase the distance where enemies are highlighted and enemies behind cover or large terrain would still be highlighted if your sniper rifle is able to punch-through whatever they're behind.

Edited by IronWolfKnight
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Test some weapons, which I couldn't see which combo bonus some get because it's bugged right now, it either doesn't display the combo bonus or doesn't give it at all.

 

The combo bonus is nice, however some weapons suffer a bit because the reload time makes the bonus easy to lose, because it doesn't last that long.

There's also the problem of bullets magically vanishing, and this happened before the rework. For some reason with most snipers (except with the Lanka) will have their bullets miss the target, but I don't just mean miss, I mean they vanish so they miss, this happens even at almost pointblank distance which makes it hard to be an accuracy problem (snipers should be extremely accurate to start with).

 

No innate punchthrough is something that the rework missed. Dunno why snipers still can't go through at least 1 meter, but a flamethrower can.

The Lanka, along with every charge weapon, really could use the bow fire rate bonus, considering that the mechanic is pretty much the same, I don't see why they don't have the same bonus. They actually have the reload which is more punishing than the bows drawing a new arrow every time (except the Daikyu which doesn't draw like other bows and can make it a lot slower because the first draw fails to happen).

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My problems with the rework are that the crit chance wasn't touched at all and when it comes to heavy units if you don't crit you don't get a 1 shot kill which defeats the purpose of using a sniper in a way.

 

The combo system in my experience isn't fixing the problem with damage either, either it runs out before you can get your next shot off or you lose it due to reloading, meaning unless you're rushing frantically to make "accurate" shots you can't benefit from the damage buff.

 

The sway at high zoom levels is a bit excessive not to mention sickening for some people, and honestly it's deterring me from using snipers due to not being able to "steady" by holding shift for example. Why use a sniper when i could use a latron prime that doesn't sway and kill the same enemy in 1-3 shots.

 

Now the niche that snipers had which was pinpoint accuracy is gone because it certainly wasn't their ability to 1 shot enemies, it just makes them more difficult to use, as if they weren't difficult enough to be effective with.

 

IMO they need the same treatment as shotguns in terms of damage, potentially remove crits as a factor due to the nature of no crit = no kill. Combo system needs a different set of buffs such as reload speed, fire rate, movement speed while ADS etc.

Rather than straight up damage which seems to not be helping whatsoever due the counter expiring to fast. I'm proposing that the counter doesn't expire, that way it encourages player to take their time to make an accurate shot and not lose their buff rather the rushing to get a shot in before it expires.

 

TLDR:

Snipers need more damage and crits/combo system need not to be a factor, sway needs to be toned down perhaps add hold shift to "steady".

Play style for snipers should be slow paced and should encourage taking your time with shots which means the combo counter shouldn't expire and should give different perks after an ex amount of hits, maybe 3 perks taking effect at 3, 6 and 9 hits.

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I don't know why so many are opssessed with punchthrough? Is it shooting through light cover, or do you think you'll get enemies to line up for cool ragdoll shots?

 

I'm not endgame, the sniper changes didn't change much. Hipfire feels weaker, headshots are still excessive in damage. The only change I want I either better fire rates or reload times. I want my shots to be ready when I am, not a second later. I also want the mods responsible for getting that fire rate to cost less.

 

I've said it before, Snipers are not going to be suitable for all missions or even vs all scenario's, they're good support weapons. You pick out a target that needs to be cleaned up and you take it out. The guy hanging back throwing dogs at people, take him out. The thing flying around giving shields, take that out. The weird tentacle monster, take that out.

 

You can't look at the Shot gun mods and say "I wish I was like that", each Gun type has (in theory) a general role and purpose in a group. Rifles may be a little too dominant in that regard, but Snipers have their place and it's not run and gun missions.

Edited by igniz13
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Besides the damage buff on the basic parameters of some sniper rifles - We got no additional abilities, pointless zooming, useless combo system,and horrible shaking hands.

 

I'll call this rework "Let's add a low level Heavy Caliber on all sniper rifles."

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I feel like this rework went into the wrong direction.

 

The scope sway has no place in warframe. It might be adding something to the feeling of sniping for some, but it's random nature doesn't help in any way with rewarding skilled shots. I think it should be taken out entirely.

 

The combo system. A good idea perhaps but it gives wrong thing. Snipers don't need even more damage after each shot, what I think could benefit them a lot more is faster reload if you get many consecutive hits. This would greatly reward skilled play and help with one of the major problems of snipers, the reload times. How I think it could work quite well is if you hit with all your shots in the mag than it cuts out 70% of the reload time, if you get hits with only half of your clip than it may cut out 10%. It would reset after each reload.

It would have to work a little different on vectis of course, or you could just make it not reset after each reload and instead make it count consecutive shots and after a set number of hits the bonus just stops going higher, it could be capped on lets say 80% reload speed bonus.

 

What I feel could truly give snipers their own niche is giving them all innate punchtrough and codex-scanner-like wall see through ability. This would give snipers their own special purpose while keeping them snipers instead of changing them to assault rifles or mini-grenade launchers like some suggest. This would of course be kinda cheater-ish with the way current AI reacts when his friends die, or rather how they don't react to it at all. If enemy doesn't see or hear you than you can literally pin them to a wall with a massive projectile and they won't react at all. Making enemies react to them seeing their friend suddenly dead would be a good addition and a counter measure towards "stealthing"  missions by simply killing everything through walls. 

 

So to summarize my propositions: add wall see-through to snipers along with punchtrough, expand a bit on AI, change the combo system to reload speed instead of additional damage.

 

EDIT: Also please restore the 100 accuracy when not zoomed in, thank you.

Edited by Krak_Nihilus
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I've been fiddling with the Rubico recently, here's what I got :

I think you guys may have overcomplicated

Snipers.

While I do appreciate your trying to promote marksmanship and "skillz". You guys could have just implemented guaranteed-crit-on-headshot, instead of tying it to zooming. Furthermore, hipfire accuracy got nerfed so horrendously, there's literally no reason not to use the scope all the time, on every single enemy. WF is still a horde game, being forced to zoom all the time, whilst limiting your vision is just silly. If anything, hipfire should get their accuracy back.

The combo is by far the finest addition, could use some tweaks of course but the concept is mostly tolerable and simple. So I don't see nothing wrong with it.

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This was the most disappointing part of U18 for me.

 

 

Coin-flips really need to be taken out of the equation when it comes to 'skill'(as people like to throw the word around)-based weapons. I know about multishot 2.0 and all, but right now we could either fix Split Chamber to 100% after 3 years or increase all sniper weapon damage and disallow them from equipping Split Chamber(like how certain rifle mods can only be equipped on auto rifles etc).

 

A popular recurring idea to actually reward well-placed shots was to grant a 100% critical hit for headshots(weakspot hits), and a compromise for crit-build lovers being that attached critical chance on the weapon will then roll for a red crit. Terribly sad that this wasn't implemented, in its place being a... combo? system? Really? So much for promoting discipline in shooting.

 

Like many have already said, when it comes to scopes the zoom is excessive. Lower zoom levels kindly. Another popular idea was to give the scoped mode a Codex-ish scan that reveal enemies through walls. Why wasn't this added? Instead we get... boosts for zooming in further? Was the idea to reward difficult shots done through a difficult-to-use scope? Because if so, well played. But that's still a pretty bad idea.

 

And lastly, the hipfire accuracy nerf really needs to go. One may argue that its more realistic, but I highly doubt anyone plays this game for 'realism'. What it accomplished was kicking everyone who actually did enjoy using a sniper weapon once in a while before this update right where it hurts.

 

Oh, and Nullifiers. Heeheehee. Maybe instead of listening to the "sniper weapons will never work in a horde game because reasons" bandwagon, you could be promoting the niche of being able to reliably take out high-priority targets from a distance? Just an idea. That has been echoed plenty of times if one cares to actually use the search function.

 

 

 

 

Patiently waiting for Sniper 3.0. Oh, I do believe that your balancing department will get things right. Eventually. If I didn't have faith I wouldn't be here this long.

 

But said patience is wearing thin after being disappointed twice.

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I have to admit, I just tried the new sortie sniper-only mission, figuring there would be some logic behind using a sniper weapon other than to ultimately handicap players.  DE - I love the game, but think about what I just wrote.  You created a sortie mission where you can't single shot kill the mobs without a serious sniper rifle upgrade, and they are infested, meaning they come in masses.  Creating a "frustrate our players" mission, where that is the only distinctive thing about the mission is going to do exactly that.  I can't believe I put hush on my rifle before going in with Loki - LOL, I'm thinking with 11 years in the military that I'm going to use a sniper rifle to stealth kill something.  And, yes, there are trolls out there who will say that I should have read up on the mission or compared noted with other players before going in, but I prefer to experience WF content fresh as it is rolled out.

 

OK - to avoid just being problem-focused, I think a possibly better solution would be to craft the sniper-only mission similar to a spy mission, with the focus being stealth and making that shot count.  Perhaps a series of tough to kill targets who need to be taken down within a time-frame.  There are different ways to do that (2-4 targets which require near-simultaneous kills), locked doors which enforce progression with time limits between hard targets.  Some of these could also encourage group missions and coordination, if that is another objective.

 

I appreciate your desire to make snipers relevant - I just think in this case, the UX is fundamentally flawed for this piece of an otherwise stellar update.  Please keep up the great work.

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ill agree with the rest of your post, however, Vulkar has become far more viable with the update, if only due to being able to scope in at just 2.5x, giving a 65% total damage increase with the syndicate mod with a much easier to use zoom. On top of it being buffed to just 0.1 damage short of Vectis, it is far better now, but it seems to be the only one to get any amount of buffing (that hip fire kills the damage buff Lanka got imho).

 

... I forgot it had a syndicate mod I won't lie. Thanks. 

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Ok, after testing Rubico for a while now (one forma in it, building up the next one), i have to say...

* please give me back the ability to hipfire T_T

* also i noticed that "quickscoping" sometimes causes weird projectile pathing...it hits everything, but not what you have aimed for.

* then there is the reticle, i think this should need a better indicator, like a cross around it (the one you get when you hit something), but the small dot is waaaaay too small, i have even confused it with the "ability dots" below it sometimes.

* combo system...nah, not usefull at all. snipetron and rubico cant use it because of their slow reload, and usually you want your target dead after one shot, not after building up a combo counter.

can we get something like the 100% crit chance on headshots instead? because then they would totally compete with bows, dont get me wrong, they are stronger now, but only lanka is on the "bow level" now (because of the 100% crit when zooming)

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Looking at weapons as a whole I realize we have very few 'crit' weapons, and even snipers fall off in this area. We only have what...3 or 4 weapons that can get red crits, let alone 100% crit chance.

Snipers need a whole lot more than this specialized scope addon they got. They need innate punch through, more damage, and probably their own specific class of mods, their own 'serration' and the like. Make snipers into more crit focused weapons. I mean, the dread has a base 50% chance to crit, throw on point strike and it's at 125% chance to crit, that's 100% chance to crit and 25% chance at a red crit, it's perfect. All snipers should function like this, and should have a minimum of 2.5 or 3x crit damage multiplier.

This should at least hold us over until the new weapon overhaul system comes out, the changes sparked by the Split Chamber debate among the devs. I'm still hoping that the "Weapons 2.0" system will correct the issues of "This weapon sucks for anything past level 25."

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i really wish snipers and bows had special properties vs nullifier bubbles.  this is one reason i still believe they are not as popular and more niche weapon types because slow rate of fire weapons are really weak against the bubbles, no matter how much damage they can output.

 

if they could make the bubble disappear faster some way i think they'd be a great addition to any team

Nullifier bubbles kill sniper rifles. Consistently killing heavies and high-priority targets is impossible when they're behind a regenerating bubble.

Edited by ImNotJellyAtAll
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Very underwhelming change to sniper rifles, it did nothing to promote their use; in fact, I'd say it made them even less useful than before due to the changes in accuracy/scope sway.

 

The change to accuracy when hip-firing was unnecessary. Why shouldn't I be able to hip fire my sniper rifle in a game where most of the encounters ARE close-quarter fights?

 

The scope sway is really dumb. Seriously. Why are sniper rifles the only weapons in the game to have this?

 

The combo system for kills is redundant and entirely pointless. Sniper rifles didn't need more damage, IMO.

 

The damage bonus for using higher scope values is obnoxious and superfluous in a game where 90% of the encounter happen within a 30m~ box.

 

This shouldn't even be labeled or hailed as a "sniper rework"

Edited by GideonG
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DE I was so excited when I first heard about a sniper rework a long time ago. I thought you were going to come in with a total rework and balance these guns like you did with the shotguns. I have some suggestions for a revamped sniper rework that maybe some people would like.

 

1. Innate punch through on all snipers. It doesn't even have to be a far punch through, you could just make it equal to bows.

 

2. Remove the scope wobble and restore the hip fire. Look, I understand that it might make sense for a scope to wobble in real life. This isn't real life, it's a game where rocket launchers fired in mid air have perfect accuracy. If heavy caliber isn't on the sniper then the sniper should have 100% accuracy.

 

3. Give snipers their own section of mods. The same as how shotguns have a different set of mods than regular rifles, give snipers their own mods. If you buffed the base damage of all snipers by a lot, say by several hundred damage, then you could make a whole new set of mods centered around build diversity instead of just damage mods. For example: a sniper only mod called ".50 cal" that gives an insane amount of punch through, or something like "armor piercing rounds" that ignores all armor on the first target hit, or something like "Head hunter" that gives a guaranteed crit on headshots. You could make a bunch of new mods and if they aren't centered around damage then you'll have actual build diversity.

 

4. I think this is actually the most important point. Make sniper missions. Make a mission type centered around using snipers. This could be like an overwatch type mission where you provide covering fire for a friendly npc while they run for extraction. Another example could be having a wide open battlefield with three tenno down on the ground fighting, and the last tenno in a sniper tower. You could even have some new type of enemy for these missions that is very tanky and very hard to kill, but has a weak spot that a sniper could hit.

 

5. Nullifiers. Some kind of sniper buff to deal with these. When you have to reload your gun several times to take out one guy it becomes a little ridiculous. I don't know exactly how you should go about changing this, perhaps a mod for snipers to punch through the bubble. One could argue that that's overpowered, but as it stands currently anything would be better than firing your whole mag twice into one guy.

 

Just my .02 anyway.

+1

 

also, the reward for having 12x zoom with a horribly wobbly scope being a tiny amount of crit damage or chance is useless, especially in a game where 95% of the tilesets feel cramped with anything more than about a 4x zoom. either buff crit damage by something like 100% on the first level and then 150% on the second, or pull the zoom down to 3x/8x on all snipers. (also, reducing accuracy to shotgun-like levels on hipfire in order to encourage nauseating levels of zoom with scope sway feels like a straight up nerf rather than a buff, or even a rework.)

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Nullifier bubbles kill sniper rifles. Consistently killing heavies and high-priority targets is impossible when they're behind a regenerating bubble.

thats why i made this suggestion

because its not even a sniper-only problem, the whole system is just...meh.

damage <100 set damage to 100

damage >400 set damage to 400

so even a weapon that deals just 1 damage per projectile but fires extremely fast is more effective than a weapon that deals 100k damage once every 5 seconds.

so i dont understand why we have a working, balanced version of that enemy (scrambus and comba), and a totally broken one (nullifier)

 

sadly it seems like sonicor cant penetrate the bubble anymore...that was usefull

Edited by LazerusKI
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