About time to talk about snipers

[(XBOX)DomTheKilleur]

For sniper combo counter I was thinking, what if we still keep the combo even when we stop aiming but lose it if we miss a shot? That would reward patient shooters who want to maintain the combo. Outside of that definitely give them innate punch through like bows and yeah, everything else I agree. 

@[DE]SteveCould snipers get another look please? They need to be made into the true long ranger monsters they should be!

Edited May 30, 2017 by (XB1)DomTheKilleur

[-CM-NineFingers]

5 hours ago, (Xbox One)DomTheKilleur said:

For sniper combo counter I was thinking, what if we still keep the combo even when we stop aiming but lose it if we miss a shot? That would reward patient shooters who want to maintain the combo. Outside of that definitely give them innate punch through like bows and yeah, everything else I agree. 

@[DE]SteveCould snipers get another look please? They need to be made into the true long ranger monsters they should be!

Multishot is actually the biggest problem with the combo counter, if your first bullet kills and your second hits thin air, it's a miss, and you lose the counter. that's why I suggested removing a certain amount of shots instead of all them.

[TaylorsContraction]

Warframes most likely do not breathe with human like lungs.  There are many different forms of oxygen intake,  but given a warframe's performance up to the garbo sniper rework,  it's safe to say that there is no lung expansion / contraction when a warframe is breathing. The scope away is a gimmick that needs to go because it's contrary to the ***** lore.  I'd appreciate them getting rid of the hip fire accuracy loss while at it.

I prefer  op's suggestion to have one static zoom in bonus but I don't agree that it should be affected by range to target.

For the combo counter I don't think it should be wiped if you stop zooming,  but i agree that the counter should only accrue for shots taken while zoomed in.  I would rather it move away from being duration based entirely and be only affected by hit /miss. I don't even know what the concern is with doing so,  no one has 100% accuracy,  just look at people's profiles.  Eventually we'll miss.

[Bizzaro21]

19 hours ago, -CM-Limbo said:

As someone else said, we must face that bows in warframe are basically railguns. They are not accelerated by a string, but with some mumbo jumbo laser space magic. Snipers however, are not, and they should never act lke bows. They are different weapons, in design and utility, and they need to fill a different role. the bow is for low to medium range, fast to aim, forgiving if you miss (can you use it at longer range? sure, if you guess the arrow drop and enemy movement). Snipers are for mid-long range, mostly hitscan hard hitting weapons that are clunky to use at close quarters.

It's ok for bows to have lots of penetration, but snipers should have at max 50cm of punch thru to not step on bows, and add the damage multiplier on headshots because that's what you should be doing with them.

i guess we'll just have to agree to disagree there, if bows dont fit bows, but rail guns, then they need fixing themselves, not keeping nsipers down for their sake, even logically, a sniper should punc through stuff, and should outperform a bow, the only thing close to a railgun in warframe i opticor, and that thing doesnt even have penetration on it....

1m punch through for snipers should be nice, so i dont have to waste a slot i could have used for much needed damage on penetration, however, if snipers get a damage buff, not just headshot multiplier, I would be for giving them low punch thru, regardless of the logic behind it

[VonDodo]

Well there are rivens now (i got a nice one with crit% damage and punchthrough :)  )

Btw snipers are useless as long as i can put all mods for an Ivara artemis bow build on a vectis :|

 

We need some missions to make snipers useful rather than changing the sniper themselves

[-CM-NineFingers]

4 hours ago, VonDodo said:

Well there are rivens now (i got a nice one with crit% damage and punchthrough :)  )

Btw snipers are useless as long as i can put all mods for an Ivara artemis bow build on a vectis :|

 

We need some missions to make snipers useful rather than changing the sniper themselves

Rivens give more relevancy to less used weapons, that's true. But it still doesn't make snipers be well designed. I, for one, use rivens on my vectis and vulkar, but I also use them on my azima and amprex. While they make azima and amprex be good, that's because the mechanics of those weapons are well designed, and  the core mechanics of snipers are not affected. Yeah, better damage and such, but how snipers work are still flawed.

I honestly don't see what you try to say with your 2nd argument. 

I would love me a sniper centered mission tho, but it's just not worth it, and won' t be played that much. Snipers need to be looked at again.

[VonDodo]

20 hours ago, -CM-Limbo said:

Rivens give more relevancy to less used weapons, that's true. But it still doesn't make snipers be well designed. I, for one, use rivens on my vectis and vulkar, but I also use them on my azima and amprex. While they make azima and amprex be good, that's because the mechanics of those weapons are well designed, and  the core mechanics of snipers are not affected. Yeah, better damage and such, but how snipers work are still flawed.

I honestly don't see what you try to say with your 2nd argument. 

I would love me a sniper centered mission tho, but it's just not worth it, and won' t be played that much. Snipers need to be looked at again.

Forcing sniper use doesn t work. While a mission requiring to shoot distant enemies would give snipers a purpose.

They are not badly designed, simply mission design makes them useless.

[-CM-NineFingers]

6 hours ago, VonDodo said:

• Forcing sniper use doesn t work. While a mission requiring to shoot distant enemies would give snipers a purpose.
• They are not badly designed, simply mission design makes them useless.

• How is that not forcing to use snipers? the distance should be pretty big for -spread shotguns not to do the job, and that would make projectile weapons not useful due to travel time. you would either end with a mission most weapons can do effortlessly (most weapons are highly acurate), making using snipers there just a flavour choice like in any other mission, or making snipers the only viable possibility, since bow drop and travel time would make them less useful. What's the point in having a mission on that you will shoot distant enemies if any weapon except a bunch of them can do the job?
• snipers are weapons used for slow, accurate shots. having a system that rewards shooting fast and resets the counter in missed shots is a flaw. snipers being the ONLY weapon that makes warframe's arms tremble is a flaw (I guess the opticor weights way less than a vulkar!). forcing you to use a maxed scope regardless of distance to get the full potential of the weapon is a flaw. And there's more.

Edited June 1, 2017 by -CM-Limbo

[nameomnz]

Using sniper in warframe is almost like Sniper Elite:Nazi zombie you know. the only different being their zombies move slow and can be easily take out unless It's kamikaze which is the equivalent of those unit that like to charge at us. Also gunfire from enemy is heavily pressuring especailly in high-level mission.

They could have trade off those realism in game for the sniper to be far more usable.

 

[DSpite]

Snipers needed unique mechanics, DE tried, and I think missed the mark. What might of happened was they they thought they had now made them very powerful with the multipliers and tried to compensate with shake and whatnot, but they forgot about how situational those weapons are in this game.

I love using a Velocitus in Archwing ... as long as I also have 3 other players because then I can act as support to other points on the map on Interception or thin out waves by picking them off as they spawn 500m+ away.

What the heck am I supposed to do with a Sniper rifle in a normal game?

Half the time the tile is too small, or I have to walk up to a door in order to shoot the enemies on the other side, and I'm point blank with them. I can't even back away because the door shuts and then I can't shoot. The rest of the time, the entire team is Trackmania racing to objectives anyway, and I can't exactly stop, aim and shoot at something in the distance because by the time I take the shot, I'm 250m behind the team, and I can't catch up with them.

The problem is that they are "not very fun to use", and THAT is the main crime here. I laugh like a manic using my Sonicor and watching enemies enter low earth orbit, and I get ZERO entertainment from Snipers UNLESS I play Solo.

 

 

 

 

[-CM-NineFingers]

10 hours ago, DSpite said:

Snipers needed unique mechanics, DE tried, and I think missed the mark. What might of happened was they they thought they had now made them very powerful with the multipliers and tried to compensate with shake and whatnot, but they forgot about how situational those weapons are in this game.

I love using a Velocitus in Archwing ... as long as I also have 3 other players because then I can act as support to other points on the map on Interception or thin out waves by picking them off as they spawn 500m+ away.

What the heck am I supposed to do with a Sniper rifle in a normal game?

Half the time the tile is too small, or I have to walk up to a door in order to shoot the enemies on the other side, and I'm point blank with them. I can't even back away because the door shuts and then I can't shoot. The rest of the time, the entire team is Trackmania racing to objectives anyway, and I can't exactly stop, aim and shoot at something in the distance because by the time I take the shot, I'm 250m behind the team, and I can't catch up with them.

The problem is that they are "not very fun to use", and THAT is the main crime here. I laugh like a manic using my Sonicor and watching enemies enter low earth orbit, and I get ZERO entertainment from Snipers UNLESS I play Solo.

 

 

 

 

I completely agree. I find snipers a lot of fun, vulkar is my second most used weapon, but the fun they bring is often shadowed by how counter-intuitive they are, and the damage doesn't compensate.

[Ikusias]

About sniper reticule sway:

. DE ripped that off from the old Metal Gear Solid, only there the player had options to reduce it with consumables and proper sniping posture, things that Warframe ignores...

Sniper rifles should have recoil, not sway tis would make much more sense

On 30/5/2017 at 6:31 AM, (Xbox One)DomTheKilleur said:

For sniper combo counter I was thinking, what if we still keep the combo even when we stop aiming but lose it if we miss a shot? That would reward patient shooters who want to maintain the combo. Outside of that definitely give them innate punch through like bows and yeah, everything else I agree. 

@[DE]SteveCould snipers get another look please? They need to be made into the true long ranger monsters they should be!

also notice the beast of a rifle here isn't a "sniper" rifle but a "anti-material" rifle i.e. something to punch holes trough walls, veicles and armored targets and it downs target with one shot unlike our scrappy toys

[DSpite]

I put together a Vectis Prime and forgot it has no punch-through, and fired a handful of shots through at a PANE OF GLASS and wasn't hitting anything on the other side.

It's really really hard to feel "immersion", when a weapon that has slow firing speed, low and rare ammo count, needs to zoom to do damage and sways while doing so, <add other annoying mechanics here> and takes up my PRIMARY weapon slot, then also basically makes combat very impractical for no decent reasons.

The high end Snipers you get in Far Cry 4 for example, THOSE feel like damn sniper rifles. Ours just feel like "slow rifles". Does not make it any easier to swallow when there's the Ferrox, and now the Zenith from a 500 days login, which can apparently see through walls and apparently has INFINITE punch-through.

I hope to <insert your deity of choice here> that the Zenith was a "test weapon" so they could move the mechanics over to Sniper Rifles.

 

 

Edited June 4, 2017 by DSpite

[Colyeses]

On ‎31‎-‎5‎-‎2017 at 9:33 AM, VonDodo said:

Well there are rivens now (i got a nice one with crit% damage and punchthrough :)  )

Btw snipers are useless as long as i can put all mods for an Ivara artemis bow build on a vectis :|

 

We need some missions to make snipers useful rather than changing the sniper themselves

We need both.

The problem is that the game doesn't really give any reason for anyone to pick a sniper. There's no mechanism in play that punishes rapidfire/AoE more than it does sniper weaponry. We do have one that does the reverse though, in the form of the nullifier.

There's no enemy in the game that goes down faster from getting sniped than from getting barraged or blown up. This makes snipers effectively plain terrible versions of rapidfire weaponry. Yes, you could get a kill with every shot, or you can get a kill with every two shots and fire twenty bullets per second. When you go up against a large wave of enemies, which is what the bulk of the game is, the second weapon will massively outperform the first.

We need priority targets that are resistant to 'lawn mower' weapons. Specifically, we need enemies that reduce incoming damage by flat quantities, and can thus only be destroyed by excessive burst. Imagine an enemy that reduces incoming damage by a flat 75. A soma dealing 100 per bullet would then deal 25 per bullet. A Vectis dealing 1000 per bullet would then deal 925 per bullet. Meaning the Soma would need 37 shots to match up to a single Vectis shot on that particular enemy. This would give single target burst a reason to exist.

I think this would improve team dynamics as well. For example, introducing a 'horned healer ancient' to higher level infestation missions. Their damage mitigation aura makes them priority targets, and if they have flat armors, it would force players using 'lawn mower' weapons to get help from someone carrying a burst weapon. I think this would give snipers a much more valid position in the game.

[-CM-NineFingers]

On 2017-6-4 at 10:47 AM, Colyeses said:

We need priority targets that are resistant to 'lawn mower' weapons. Specifically, we need enemies that reduce incoming damage by flat quantities, and can thus only be destroyed by excessive burst. Imagine an enemy that reduces incoming damage by a flat 75. A soma dealing 100 per bullet would then deal 25 per bullet. A Vectis dealing 1000 per bullet would then deal 925 per bullet. Meaning the Soma would need 37 shots to match up to a single Vectis shot on that particular enemy. This would give single target burst a reason to exist.

I think this would improve team dynamics as well. For example, introducing a 'horned healer ancient' to higher level infestation missions. Their damage mitigation aura makes them priority targets, and if they have flat armors, it would force players using 'lawn mower' weapons to get help from someone carrying a burst weapon. I think this would give snipers a much more valid position in the game.

I like this idea, I like this idea a lot. it gives a good reason to use snipers, launchers and the forgotten opticor. But so many weapons give high amounts of damage without the drawbacks of snipers. People would just use lex, ferrox... even a normal akstiletto p deals 1k damage per shot while being auto, an amprex can deal 20k per shot in AoE. The flat armor should be very high for the snipers to be useful. This looks pretty situational, but is still a nice idea.

[Autongnosis]

I like all of your suggestion save for two minor things:

- i think snipers do not really nee a higher damage multi on headshots, since damage is th one thing snipers do not lack. Having innate punchthrough would imo be better.

- i think combo reset should not happen when you stop aiming, but when you do not hit stuff for 6-10s or something. 

[-CM-NineFingers]

6 minutes ago, Autongnosis said:

I like all of your suggestion save for two minor things:

- i think snipers do not really nee a higher damage multi on headshots, since damage is th one thing snipers do not lack. Having innate punchthrough would imo be better.

- i think combo reset should not happen when you stop aiming, but when you do not hit stuff for 6-10s or something. 

Punch through would be very good and make lots of sense, but bows already have that. Giving the same bonus to a different weapon doesn't feel right, as it's one of the major characteristics of bows. That's why I suggested a headshot multiplier, because just as with an arrow at great speed you expect it to fly through an enemy, with a sniper you expect a headshot to be outright lethal. It also would encourage careful aim.

For the combo counter, I thought about it, and looked like a good option. You could find a good, reasonably safe spot and keep the combo growing over time, getting more damage the longer you stay hidden and taking out enemies. When you stop aiming, the timer starts, and you have the same 3s to move or pick another target and fire again to avoid losing your multiplier. With harkonar scope, that time would grow to 15s, and I found it a good trade-off for a mod slot. Making the counter reset for not hitting something doesn't feel right, even when it's on a longer time of around 6-10s. Snipers shouldn't need to rush a shot if it's not a sure shot imo.

[Autongnosis]

1 hour ago, -CM-Limbo said:

For the combo counter, I thought about it, and looked like a good option. You could find a good, reasonably safe spot and keep the combo growing over time, getting more damage the longer you stay hidden and taking out enemies. When you stop aiming, the timer starts, and you have the same 3s to move or pick another target and fire again to avoid losing your multiplier. With harkonar scope, that time would grow to 15s, and I found it a good trade-off for a mod slot. Making the counter reset for not hitting something doesn't feel right, even when it's on a longer time of around 6-10s. Snipers shouldn't need to rush a shot if it's not a sure shot imo.

True, though i would make the base a little longer then since a lot of snipers have nearly 3s reload times and thus wouldn't be able to keep up the combo counter even if they wanted to.

As for the bow thing, i think just giving innate punchthrough wouldn't be so much of a problem because bows don't have just punchthrough, they hit everything in the line of fire as long as it's bodies AND they have innate punchthrough. So the bows would retain their uniqueness (the unlimited body punchthrough) while snipers would gain something that imo makes more of a difference compared to a different flavour of "more damage".

Also, bows and snipers have basically always been two flavours of the same class, so it wouldn't be as much of a problem.

[linxcat]

On 2017-05-29 at 10:08 AM, lukinu_u said:

Of course, this is pretty bad and not lore friendly because in real life, these movment are caused breathing, and warframe dont breath...

I want you to log in, open the star chart, and look at your warframe's chest for a few seconds.

[Combustionsquirrel]

Scope multipliers: I completely agree that the current system is poorly implemented, and while I like the idea of bonuses based on shot distance, you also point out a flaw in that system in that Warframe doesn't have much open space, probably 50 meters on the low end and 300 meters on the high end. But we can work with that, just gotta scale the bonuses with that distance scale. The snipetron, for example would get +5% damage at 25 meters and +15% at 200+ meters (or even more at longer distances) and make it a linear scaling between those points.

Combo counter: TBH I don't even notice this most of the time as I play with the scope HUD turned off, but yeah combo timers in Warframe in general need some work, as in at least doubled. Also I didn't realize that it penalized missed shots, definitely seems a bit counter-intuitive to have both a timer and count missed shots. I dunno about your suggestion of losing the counter when you un-scope though, seems like if that were the case then you would lose the counter when you reloaded.

Scope shake: Completely agree. We are space-ninja-robot-armors, why do we shake only when using scopes?

Cucumber bullets: I think your idea of an increased headshot multiplier for snipers is wonderful, it rewards skill! I dunno about he stagger/knockback effect though, I feel like snipers would turn into stun-lock machines.

Sniper Scope HUD: There is currently an option to turn it off in game, however with turning it off you also lose information like the shot combo counter and zoom level. It would be nice if DE made it so those numbers didn't go away when you toggled it off. Or even better (if you ask me) a re-design of the scopes so they are not so damn cluttered. Have tenno/grineer/corpus themed crosshairs and leave it at that. Real-life scopes are plain for a reason, so you can see through them. Not even saying that they have to get rid of the spinny animations on zoom change, just make the crosshairs a big circle with 4 lines going inward ending at a small circle in which the reticle is located.

And that's my 2 cents.

[Cortanis]

I would also like to take a moment to add on a particular issue I have with snipers into this thread.

Forced Inaccuracy when hip firing- For the love of god, can this go away? In the accuracy category of weapons, from pistols on up btw, you can at least semi accurately shoot things all the way across the tile you're in. We're talking even in tiles like the earth tile with the water pool in the bottom section. So why is it that apparently a sniper rifle that you're at least shouldering with some semblance of aim to it, still can't apparently hit a target with any kind of accuracy, if at all, only 10 meters in front of you in a strait line? I actually have a high accuracy hunting rifle and I don't have this issue in real life, let alone a video game about piloting super powered exoskeletons. This forced addition to snipers needs to go away in the worst way. At this point, Lex Prime/Aklex Prime does a better job at being a sniper rifle than the sniper rifles do.

[Ikusias]

Sniper rifles sway must go (to a certain place in hell).

If DE feels the need to make snipers realistic they already have a neglected mechanic for that: recoil and the mod steady hands to counter it.

A sniper rifle is usually a gun with a beast of a kickback meaning that you can't rapidfire it at long distances without a bipod or any other form of bracing because recoil would spoil your aim after any shot - and we can crouch, so why not combine the two things?

Recoil x when firing from the hip, x-50% when firing crouched and another x-25% when scoped= firing while scoped and crouched removes 75% of the recoil after each shot permitting to chain shots with a reasonable grade of ability. (and you can always choose to invest a slot in steady hands to reduce it further)

bam! Player imput and ability influence a weapon behaviour based on REALISM!

Add massive damage on headshot and punchtrough on soft cover and you finally have a sniper rifle worth the name.

N.B I've noticed that most bow don't seem to have punchtrough but more ragdolling to credit for multiple kills - going to check facts in the arsenal.

Otherwise I think someone at DE played too much the sniping duel in Metal Gear Solid...

[Cortanis]

9 hours ago, Ikusias said:

Sniper rifles sway must go (to a certain place in hell).

If DE feels the need to make snipers realistic they already have a neglected mechanic for that: recoil and the mod steady hands to counter it.

A sniper rifle is usually a gun with a beast of a kickback meaning that you can't rapidfire it at long distances without a bipod or any other form of bracing because recoil would spoil your aim after any shot - and we can crouch, so why not combine the two things?

Recoil x when firing from the hip, x-50% when firing crouched and another x-25% when scoped= firing while scoped and crouched removes 75% of the recoil after each shot permitting to chain shots with a reasonable grade of ability. (and you can always choose to invest a slot in steady hands to reduce it further)

bam! Player imput and ability influence a weapon behaviour based on REALISM!

Add massive damage on headshot and punchtrough on soft cover and you finally have a sniper rifle worth the name.

N.B I've noticed that most bow don't seem to have punchtrough but more ragdolling to credit for multiple kills - going to check facts in the arsenal.

Otherwise I think someone at DE played too much the sniping duel in Metal Gear Solid...

To point, a sniper rifle has nothing to do with recoil or even caliber. It has everything to do with accuracy and stopping power. That being said, you'll find that some of the first sniper rifles were little more than trumped up hunting rifles and the same can be said for many of the guns that you can buy in most Walmarts today. As far as this applies to video games, the recoil effect actually isn't particularly accurate ether but is still the closes thing to accuracy.  Scope sway is actually minimal, but what is in the game is just an abomination. It will depend entirely on how stable you are as a shooter and considering we're talking about super powered exoskeletons that can cut through metal, that doesn't hold water at all.

It they're going to continue with these kind of mechanics, then they need to start giving the mods and mod capacity to deal with them. As far as I know, the only mod in the game to actually influence actual accuracy is for shotguns. Even if the other guns DID have such a mod, acceptable build have no room for it since most HAVE to feed nothing but power stats just to make them viable. All those sniper rifle only sorties? Yeah, imagine doing those minus two of your mods in your rifle build. Sounds fun right? Go ahead and test that one in fact on your level 100 Bombards and such just to test how viable your damage will be for those sorties and kuva flood missions. At minimum just to make current mechanics work, they need to give said rifles at least two extra slots just to stack on things like reload speed and punch through just to deal with the fact that they're single target damage weapons in what they've called from time to time, Left for Dead in space.