Concept Toughts: Sniper Rifles

[Agentnewbie]

Hello everyone, my name is Agentnewbie and today I want to discuss with you some weapons. Sniper rifles in particular.

Lets start with concept of whole category of sniper rifles.

A sniper rifle in real world is a man-portable, high precision, shoulder-fired rifle, for military or law enforcement use, designed to ensure more accurate shooting at longer ranges than other small arms. A typical sniper rifle is built for high levels of accuracy, fitted with a telescopic sight and chambered for a military centerfire cartridge. The military role of a sniper is basically "shoot from the points where enemy couldn't reach/see you and eliminate enemy as fast as you can, mostly by targeting vital points (heart/brain) with no room for mistake"

So, keywords here is

- Effective

- Extremely long range

- No room for mistake

In gaming, snipers are a whole separate category of players, which can boast with accuracy, fast reaction and tactical thinking (mostly). Sniper rifles in gaming are weapons that took from real world concept of "no room for mistake" and made it rewarding, guaranteeing a successful elimination of your enemy, if you target his vital points e.g. "shoot them in their head". But in most shooters, there is one moment, that separates game from real world - distance. You see, sniper rifles in real world (especially greater caliber ones) created for distance, that can exceed 1000 m. Very, very few games can boast maps of this scale because various reasons (balance, engine, design etc.) and sniper rifles logically speaking, must not be dominant in this games. However, snipers are still persist in all games with this kind of weapon. Why? First of all, because it is still effective - in most games, headshot from the sniper rifle will guarantee you a kill, no matter the distance is, or what defense enemy is using. Besides that sniper rifles usually have 100% accuracy when aiming down sight (thou it have largest cone of fire when shooting "from the hip"). Second reason - high skill floor and ceiling - because you mostly have only one try to shoot the enemy, before he sees/reaches you or will move out of your sight, sniper must have a good reaction time and head tracking, which in most games means - if you good at sniping, you have excellent skills in this game, and most of sniper players are often rightfully(?) boast about it.  And last but not least reason - because it is satisfying to use. Any sniper player will tell you, that feeling, when you land headshot, after headshot, after headshot can't be replaced with anything, be it assault rifle, shotgun or rocket launcher. 

Keywords in this are:

- High skill floor and ceiling 

- 100% Accuracy when aiming down sight

- Satisfying

- Rewarding

So, what about Warframe?

Lets run down a whole concept of sniper rifles and compare it to Warframe. (Lanka, yet, aside)

- Effective - NO, sniper rifles here are things that deal damage to a single target. In reality of Warframe, there is always HORDES OF ENEMIES ruining down at you and shooting (maybe even in your head). It won't be such a problem, if there they had high rate of fire or faster reload time, but...then it won't be sniper riffle right? Besides, there is very few rooms, when you can actually put a good use to their scope mode.

- High skill floor and ceiling - YES, in Warframe, when there is ALWAYS something try to shoot/incinerate/bite or blow you up there is very little room for attempt aiming for someone's head/other vital point (hello, infested). Add to that all parkour stuff, blindingly-shiny effects, and you get it - it is very hard to aim at someone's head here (if you not playing Frost/ slowing Nova or something like that).

- 100% Accuracy - NO, its not a factor here because of modding system.

- Rewarding - NO, not by a long shot (ba-dum-tss). There is many, I repeat, MANY other weapons, that stat-wise are superior that sniper rifle and kill much more and much higher level  enemies with one shot (yes, I am looking at you, tonkor-simulor users). Even Lex Prime, SECONDARY WEAPON, do the job of sniping powerful enemies MUCH better, than Vulcar or Vectis. And there is also such enemies, like Nulls and Arctic Eximuses...

- Satisfying - NO, why something, that cant kill even a potato, will satisfy me?

So, as you see, at current state, there is NO REASON why I should use any sniper rifle in the current state with the exception of Lanka. Why Lanka? Because it is not really standard sniper riffle and stands aside from others, both stat-wise (it has the biggest single bullet damage in the game, if you count crit) and mechanically (charging attacks, innate piercing, slow bullet travel compared to other sniper rifles). It is interesting and pretty powerful weapon, but it not clearly can be considered as "sniper rifle", more like "sniper laboratory weapon".

What can DE do about it?

Well... Many things. First of all, they need to start think about "what purpose will this weapon serve?". Sniper rifles design in Warframe with all it's model screams - this is "assasination" weapon. And by "assasination" I mean "removing highest threat from the enemy group". Who we have as the highest threat among factions?

Grineer:

- Heavy Gunners

- Hyekka Masters 

- Bombards

- Napalms

Corpus:

- Techs

- Snipers (pretty ironical , isn't it?)

- Nullifiers

- Scrambus

Infested:

- Ancients (all three types)

- Juggernauts

And of course - Eximuses

As you see, highest threats are the targets, that can put you down in a blink of an eye if you don't (and sometimes even if you do) pay them attention. But there is a problem here - most of them have else high armor and health, or surrounded by shield or they just hiding somewhere in backlines, maybe under the shields of others (5+ snipers under Null's shield = scary).

Possible solutions:

 1. Weapon category passive. This type of solution is mentioned by many people from time to time, but DE for some reason don't want or simply technically can't implement it (which is unlikely). Passives, that will give this kind of weapon a second life in my opinion is either one or combination of :

- Greatly increased headshot multiplier (around 5x to 10x)

- Ignoring armor on headshot

- Ignoring Nulls and Arctic Bubbles (for obvious reasons)

2. Weapon specific passive. Second solution is my most preferred and at some point it is better than whole category one, because it is gives unique touch to each weapon (so you don't just feel that A rifle just have more ammo/damage than B rifle => it is better) but, I believe, it will be harder for DE to implement it. This method can use same passives as previous.

3. Mods. DE's favorite thing, but they always forget that there is some MANDATORY mods, replacing which will reduce weapon to trash, that not even worth recycle. BUT if they combine a sniper-special mod with a, let's say, Serration (even with stat drop) and made them analogs (like prime versions, where you can't fit both), it will be MUCH more diverse and overall better. 

Thoughts on Current solutions:

- Zoom bonuses - fully not logical thing, because it is FORCES players to fully zoom out their scope to reach better results.

   -Better solution - accuracy always 100% when scoped (as it is in all games). All accuracy debuff mods (such as Heavy Caliber) will increase kickback instead.

- Headshot combo - well, cant say nothing bad about it, except it is very hard in this game to maintain it but... All I can say to myself is "git gud scrub". Good job on that one, DE.

To round up this is I must say that I don't expect big changes in this weapon category any time soon, but I hold the hope that someday, someone from development team will actually see this and maybe it will start a chain reaction in his mind, that will lead to even better design gameplay and solutions that I even expected. 

 

If you still reading this and agree or disagree with me, or have you own thoughts of this theme - feel free to share your opinion down below.

 

TL;DR - Sniper gameplay needs to be reworked. Put some guts in it, DE!

[DeadScream]

I'm fond of the 2nd suggestion, about weapon specific passive. 

Here are some ideas that could be split between weapons : 

• When scoped, priority targets are highlightened in a specific colour to help the player to find them and kill them fast.
• When scoped, weak spots glow stronger to help the player to reach the best damage output as possible (if Sonar is active, the weak spot only glows harder if it actually takes more damage than the sonar'd zone) 
• Punch-through
• Anti-Eximus prototype - this one's passive is meant to disrupt the effects of eximus units when you hit a target which is less than 5m away from said Eximus. 
• Anti-horde Sniper rifle - Combined with a high status chance, this sniper rifle triggers improved status effects when it performs headshots : any successful status headshot will deal x2 damage (on top of the crit multiplier) ; single target effects are applied to 3m AoE, AoE effects get improved duration.

[Heckzu]

To be honest, it doesn't make much sense to have sniper rifles in Warframe or any other game that doesn't feature large scale maps due to the nature of sniping. Snipers have to exert patience and skill to do their job, neither of which the majority of Warframe's player base has or utilizes. Warframe's tiles are also too small for proper sniper rifle use on top of there being too many enemies for a sniper to be able to hold on its own.

Designated Marksman Rifles (DMRs) make much more sense to use than sniper rifles in Warframe since they feature long range capabilities while still having sufficient ammo and fire rate to provide cover fire or eliminate larger amounts of targets as opposed to a sniper rifle.

 

[Jackviator]

I like the thought of each weapon having its own perks and unique quirks, but also believe that there should be at least some traits that are shared across all of them, namely:

Innate punch-through without the need of a mod to help with groups of enemies, which I think is an acceptable compromise to help it both counter high-priority targets and groups. It takes skill to line up group shots and besides, if bows and arrows can have innate punch-through, why not high-power/caliber rifles? (Also the community has kinda been asking for this for like 1-2 years now. Just thought I'd mention that)

No scope sway. None. It doesn't add anything to the gameplay, and tbh it doesn't even make sense that my cyborg magic space ninja suddenly acquires Parkinson's disease if scoped in. (I dunno if that's what you (OP) meant when discussing 100% accuracy, but if not, then it should be kept in mind too).

No hipfire accuracy debuff. This also doesn't add anything to the gameplay, except making it hard to counter enemies that get too close without switching to a secondary or melee. It's like firing a shotgun with massive spread and only a single pellet.

I honestly don't even know why they added it in the first place. None of the other marksman rifles like the Grinlok and Latron have this problem, so why should snipers?

Edited November 22, 2016 by Jackviator

[Callback]

Piercing null and eximus is a must.  Having a means to deal with these priority targets.

 

Other than that, add a mod akin to acid shells.  Sniper only.  Triggers on headshot kill dealing puncture damage to enemies around it based on its max health and shields.

 

That would turn picking off priority targets into also a way to thin the crowd.

[(PSN)Silverback73]

Two words to make them relevant (mod):. Headshot Lethality.

It needs to happen.

Edited November 24, 2016 by (PS4)Silverback73

[VonDodo]

First of all they need more innate punchthrough.

Some doesn't even had any.

[painterman]

With the riven mods we can now "fix" the problem most snipers have with damage: insconsistency due to not 100%+ crit chance, making your shots deal betewn base dmg( around 2k in most cases, even more) and 5-8 times that amount. That its a huge diference, and 62% of the time is not enough, and not even counting headshots. Argon scope is good, but almost not good enogh.

The mayor problem they have, even over the dmg inconsistency is nullifiers, artic and ancient healers: they are units, that one way or another are heavy protected, and can protect large crows of enemys, and dont forguet that nullifiers need a minimun amount of shots before their shield is broken(big F*** you to slow firerate weapons, not only snipers) and that artic eximus shields dont recibe critical dmg(F*** over again slow firerate weapons with not enough base dmg and the crit weapons, even more if they have slow firerate).The healers are leser problem, but still present.

Not gona discus anything related to armor, in my opinion armor in general is broken and should be reworked, so nothing related to armor ignore. Headshot lethal (a la cover lethality) its kinda ok, crit headshots already do well abobe standar enemy health(including sorties), but not gona opose it. 

The punchthrough theme is a delicate one, currently only corpus snipers have it, its a trait, and what makes that weapons special, i dont think all snipers should have innate punchthru, the mods are here to fix that( even more with rivens, another discusion). Maybe more special features to snipers could be aded, like a scaner-like heat vision scope, or explothing enemys, a great solution as seen with the recent mods, and a great point of scaling dmg on weapons(the right way to go if you ask me).

On the current state of scopes: the hipfire acurracy should be reverted, its stupid and even more with warframe: horde simulation. Scope efects are from really nice(lanka-rubico) to meh at best(rest, really? extra 5-20% dmg, compared to the others this are SH****) and the combo window it really nice, it allows you to ramp even more absurd dmg, and reward you for your skill. On top of that, if you dont like the visual efects, you just can disable scopes.

PS: Screen wobble its not necesary, not real, why snipers have it and no other weapons? it should be removed, too anoying making painfull to scope futher than 5x, making zoom lv more than that useless.

 

Edited November 24, 2016 by painterman

[Othergrunty]

This may sound weird, but i would simply drop the name "sniper rifle" as their own weapon category, replace it with "heavy rifle" and in a way turn them into a long range counterparts to shotguns. The title sniper rifle could be retained in the description of the weapons, but mostly refering to how they are used by the faction producing them or suggesting the most usefull tactic to use them with.

Without the title sniper rifle, DE would have more freedom in how they design the gameplay of the weapon category, as the need to make them feel like sniper rifles from traditional military shooters or movies would be gone. Similar it would remove any problem with why grenade launchers, rocket launchers, bows, etc. use "sniper ammo" since "heavy ammo" sounds more universal.

As for making them counterparts to the shotguns.

The idea behind shotguns and sniper rifles in video games are fairly similar. To deliver a massiv punch (one hit or two hit kills) in their respective distances. Infact i recall some players who in the original Call of Duty actualy used the bolt action rifles (same gun as the snipers but minus the scope) on short distance like a makeshift shotgun. Of course lacking the (often comical) large spread they were more unforgiving, requiring good reaction times, but the idea "short distance+massive damage" was fitting enough to try.

For sniper rifles in Warframe. I would suggest, besides the title change, having a minimal distance in which their damage is reduced (like 5 or less meters infront) to 50/75% damage, have a standard range (5 to 40 meters away from your) on which they do 100% damage and then have an optimal range (40+ meters) on which they do up to 150% of their damage. Alternative use this system for crit chance. Which should come with removing the scope level damage bonus and the inaccurancy when quick firing, as such a gimicks have no place in Warframe.

Of course a straight increase of the damage of snipers would still be necessary, but by comparing them to shotguns we would have a good DPS example they could be compared with.

Other changes could of course include the suggestions many have allready made like natural punch through, ignoring protective fields of enemies (nullifiers, snow globes, energy fields), more damage or armor ignoring on head or weak point shots or maybe even applying debuffs.

Though these could for balance sake be tied into the above suggested optimal range system. Like punch through being stronger on optimal range than on standard range.

However the scope giving a certain bonus could still be used, but shouldn't be essential. Like instead of zoom level giving damage boost, using the scope while hitting an enemy could soften them up for shots of team mates. Essentialy adding a team support element.

 

Edited November 25, 2016 by Othergrunty

[helghastgunner]

+ more crit chance (35-40%) 

Massively reduced scope sway or remove

Remove hipfire penalty

A relook at magazine vs reload speed 

Remove the combo meter.. Its not helping them