One way to make snipers snipers

[ImagineMyNickname]

So I just got an idea how to make snipers more sniper-y. 

But first, let's think. Shotgun buff was meant to make shotguns more powerful at close range, right? So why don't we apply the same logic to a possible sniper buff? And I'm not talking about simple damage buff, because it would be too... easy and not really balanced. 360 no scopes would be a usual case in the game. This isn't how sniper rifles work.

So my idea is: Increase the sniper damage over distance. Meaning: The more projectile flies through the world, the more damage it deals. Yes, it may be OP with Ivara on this state. But make it scale as a projectile goes AWAY from the shooter. So Ivaras can't just spin the bullet until it deal the capped damage. 

This way, snipers be ideal for taking down priority targets(like Ancients(hate those guys)) from afar.

Will this work?

[Recel]

It will limit snipers even more, actually.

There are too few tilesets where you could make use of range, which already shifts the favour towards any other weapon even if we don't look at the other issues with snipers in the game. Making the damage dependent on range will just mean snipers will be only effective in certain tiles. Not even tile sets. Just tiles. Further reducing their usability.

[ImagineMyNickname]

Even if there will be, let's say 50% output damage increase for every 10-20 meters traveled? Should this still be an issue? 

I understand that the use of snipers will be limited, but we can't just make it too situational. There's a lot of tiles about this size. And 50% bonus should be great enough. Even if do it 25-30%, the bonus will be noticeable. 

[radastir]

To make snipers snipers there have to be more big and open rooms.

[Autongnosis]

Ok so, a common misconception carried over to this topic.

Snipers do not need more damage.

They already have enough. What Snipers need is some QoL buff to make them less crippingly clunky to use on smaller tilesets which ae the large majority.

What i would do (not all together, these are some ideas thrown together):

• relod speed reduction across the board
• removing hip fire accuracy penalty
• giving them innate punchthrough
• giving the the bow effect (enemies is thrown back and everyone hit by the enemy gets full damage)
• reworking zoom to have a first, common zoom level that's around the same magnification as the other guns in the game

[ArXinity]

15 hours ago, Autongnosis said:

removing hip fire accuracy penalty

especially this. I never fully understood what was the point of reducing accuracy in the first place

[thekurama13]

15 hours ago, Autongnosis said:

Ok so, a common misconception carried over to this topic.

Snipers do not need more damage.

They already have enough. What Snipers need is some QoL buff to make them less crippingly clunky to use on smaller tilesets which ae the large majority.

What i would do (not all together, these are some ideas thrown together):

• relod speed reduction across the board
• removing hip fire accuracy penalty
• giving them innate punchthrough
• giving the the bow effect (enemies is thrown back and everyone hit by the enemy gets full damage)
• reworking zoom to have a first, common zoom level that's around the same magnification as the other guns in the game

dont give them the bow effect because thats a bow special. But everything else plus more time on combo timer

[(PSN)Nyxn607]

I would just like to see more open tile sets with good sniping spots.  Imagine taking Ivara or Loki into a forest type map with tree stands or caves that she could just sit in and pick off enemies 1 by 1.  Of course there would be a place to snip from in different locations on the map in order to force your to move ... occasionally.

If people would rather see a more active sniper that has to move around about once every 3 kills ... make a map littered with buildings full of holes.  This way enemies could hit you through the buildings if you don't keep moving, yet you still have sniping spots to utilize.

[Recel]

The biggest problem snipers suffer from is that they can't fulfil their role.

Snipers are high powered, extremely accurate, slow firing weapons that are meant to take down priority targets. But when there are a wide variety of other weapons that can dispatch those targets faster and easier than the whole concept of the weapon falls flat.
You can increase the damage in any fashion, but the point where other weapons start to lose their ability to take down heavy targets is at such high levels the weapon would still not be a really viable choice.

You can give it faster reload, faster fire rate and all that, but at some point it just stops being a sniper rifle at that point and becomes something akin to a Latron with a scope. Which might work, but in my opinion, wouldn't be a real fix.

Unless the weapon damage and enemy scaling gets a mayor overhaul the concept of a sniper rifle just falls short if you only look at it damage and "up time" wise. So I think in the games current state the only path for the weapon to go is utility. It needs something that is much needed for a group and isn't simply raw damage.

 

I'm sure everyone read the anti-nullifier argument. But that kind of utility isn't what the weapon needs. Not only it circumvents the entire point of an enemy (even though nullifiers fulfil too many roles as is), but it makes the weapon an extremely niche tool that you only want to bring with you against a single type of enemy.
Snipers need something that works on a more broad scale, like going by the definition, against heavy units/eximuses. Something that not only deals with those threats efficiently, but faster and more reliably than other non-sniper weapons.

Sadly, in the current state of the game, I can't think of a single thing snipers could excel at against these units, considering these enemies die in a fraction of a second from just a few bullets/pellets/explosives until rather high levels.

All in all, I think snipers, as a weapon class, aren't truly suffering from slow reload, the inability to deal with masses efficiently, damage, range or fire rate, but the balance of the game overall. So I'm crossing my fingers for Damage 3.0 and hope for the best.

[Naftal]

On 6/27/2016 at 1:57 AM, Autongnosis said:

Ok so, a common misconception carried over to this topic.

Snipers do not need more damage.

They already have enough. What Snipers need is some QoL buff to make them less crippingly clunky to use on smaller tilesets which ae the large majority.

What i would do (not all together, these are some ideas thrown together):

• relod speed reduction across the board
• removing hip fire accuracy penalty
• giving them innate punchthrough
• giving the the bow effect (enemies is thrown back and everyone hit by the enemy gets full damage)
• reworking zoom to have a first, common zoom level that's around the same magnification as the other guns in the game

This would all be fine but what would you do for bows then?

After the sniper "buff", bows got the hipfire downsides as well and are now forced to use sniper gameplay. Currently Lanka is the most powerful sniper AND bow. If snipers are buffed further, there's even less reason to use a bow.

[Autongnosis]

Bows get better crit chance and better sustained fire ability, which is still interesting. I don't think Snipers would completely outclass bows either way. Also do mind that i agree with what thekurama said, the bow effect should remain bow exclusve. Bows (or better, shortbows) would be more for run and gun and skirmissh styles, while snipers would perform more as the daikyu. I can see a daikyu prime working more like a sniper rifle with travel time tbh.

As for the hipfire penalty, yeah i forgot about it - well if snipers need to have one, let's use that one which makes sense and nt what we have now that makes shots go out of the barret at 60° angle missing Ancients at 3m range.

[LuckyCharm]

There's always going to be a problem with snipers in warframe anyway given the large number of enemies vs clipsize, and the lack of vantage points and close quarter fighting. Perhaps the best thing for snipers to get would actually be larger ammo pools given the insane pool sizes of the assault rifles. (you tell me what's heavier.. 1000 soma bullets or 50ish sniper rounds)  not to mention that most times you actually need to pick up ammo as you go through missions with snipers if you kill all things with JUST the sniper, as opposed to rifles which you can clear missions with just what they start with. 

I would say give some of the other buffs, but that would kind of negate some weapons like the grinlock and the latrons if snipers do most of what they do but do it better. I would like to see longer kill chains though without needing to mod for that

[Hochstepanzerjager]

Ok, before DE can fix the issue with these weapons, we have got to fix our vocabulary concerning said weapons and their fucntion, as so DE can understand what these weapons are actually supposed to do at these ranges. They are not sniper rifles, I repeat, they are not sniper rifles. They may look like one, but they aren't. With the ranges we have in the game, what we actually have is DMR's, or Designated Marksmen Rifles, with a lowered ammo capacity. DMR's are generally not expected to make shots past 300 -500m, which is much shorter than the actual sniper rifles can (a good number can go out to 2000m).

 

So instead of calling them sniper rifles, call them DMR's, because that's what they really are. DMR's are capable of firing much like a standard rifle in a sustained fire mode, but have optics on them for shooting somewhat distant targets in semiauto. The funny thing is DE already has the answer sitting in front of them on how a DMR might work - the Buzzlok. Scope in for single shot, standard mode gives you auto fire. Now, as the Buzzlok works currently, it tags the target through the use of a secondary fire button and sends all rounds towards the tag. It's a simple concept really - remove the secondary fire action and make it inherent to scoping in, kicking in when you right click. Think of it like taking a Tiburon and putting a Vectis scope on it, but it fires as a Latron when you scope in.

 

Now I can already hear some people saying "well that weapon would be OP, no one would use any other weapon!" Well, you can balance it by making it it's normal fire somewhat wild, limit it's normal fire to burst instead of auto, the reload is somewhat slow compared to other weapons, it has reduced damage in normal fire mode, it has slow projectile speed, you have to wait for the animation of the scope coming online to finish before shooting - there are tons of ways to balance such a weapon. One only has to be imaginative...

 

Well, that's my .02 cents on it.

Edited June 29, 2016 by Hochstepanzerjager

[TaylorsContraction]

There is not always going to be a problem with sniping rifles. They were good before, I posted screenshots at how good they could perform under all circumstances before they were updated. The only problem they had was they'd fall off once enemy scaling reached a certain point. All weapons eventually fall off. Most snipers complained about one thing, that they fell off before bows did. All we ever asked for was a buff to make them on par with bows but how? Can't just give them red crits because that was a bow thing. People made millions of suggestions and what we got was 2 features that aren't bad. Bonus damage on zoom, for the heavy targets we're more than willing to quick scope in order to get that oomph. The second thing was the combo which is also fine but the combo should NOT rely on zoom. It already relies on accuracy and that limiting enough. There is no need for the hit combo to require zoom.

Lastly as has already been mentioned the hip fire accuracy loss absolutely must go. This kills the weapon class entirely. DE finally gave us what sniping rifles needed, and at the same time took away their viability with the hip fire acc.

Coming from someone who always used sniping rifles and is desperately trying to still use them, the two changes I propose is all they need to be amazing weapons.

Sniping rifles have always been a niche weapon and too many people not willing to master them like op always make ridiculous suggestions that would only ruin the weapon class. They're all range single line boom sticks.

[Inarticulate]

The role of a sniper rifle is to be able to take down priority targets from long range.

First off, sniper rifles in Warframe are inconsistent. The Vectis Prime with Point Strike and Argon Scope (96.25% critical chance) doesn't even reach 100% critical chance. 90% multishot is a dice roll to deal half damage 10% of the time.

Sniper rifles are incapable of quickly taking down the highest-priority non-boss target in the game, the Nullifier, by virtue of the fact that the Nullifier's shield requires a minimum number of hits to destroy.

Sniper rifles in Warframe are completely incapable of making the most of their greatest asset, their ability to zoom, due to the fact that most tiles are small and filled with obstructions.

What sniper rifles need is to be able to perform their role and to differentiate themselves from bows, and there are many things that can be done to address these issues, some of which are significantly larger in scope than others:

• Give sniper rifles a new multishot mod with 100% multishot or change Split Chamber to be 100% multishot at max rank. Yes, I know 100 is not divisible by 6.
• Give sniper rifles a guaranteed critical hit when hitting a weak point. This can be achieved in several ways:
  • Round the critical chance when hitting a weak point up to the nearest 100%.
  • Set a minimum critical chance when hitting a weak point of 100%.
  • Add a flat 100% critical chance when hitting a weak point.
• Give sniper rifles a unique interaction with Nullifier shields. This can be made aim-dependent, such as complete penetration if the bullet hits the Nullifier shield surface at an 85-degree angle or higher (basically, a direct hit on the Nullifier itself), but regular behavior otherwise.
• Create tiles with larger open areas with fewer large obstructions. Sniper towers would be wonderful, too, preferably with an enemy sniper spawn point on top.
• Get rid of the hip-fire accuracy penalty.