Plains of Eidolon: Sniper Review!

[Yargami]

4 minutes ago, BladeRambler said:

It is awkwardly-worded, but read it again: it takes 1 second to fully charge the Lanka now, not 1.5 seconds, so it is a huge buff (should say charge 'time' decreased, not 'rate').

   I think at first (unless I misread it) it said "charge rate increased from 1.5 to 1 second" but people got confused by it so they reworded it. Now it's not only confusing, but also wrong.

[Kinetos]

3 minutes ago, Yargami said:

   I think at first (unless I misread it) it said "charge rate increased from 1.5 to 1 second" but people got confused by it so they reworded it. Now it's not only confusing, but also wrong.

Yes, that is a thing that happened. I think it's also labeled wrong ingame. 

[Dobroazur]

I feel like DE is afraid long-range sniping will effectively break the plains.
What is stopping you from just avoiding all and any danger if you can just snipe everything from 600m away?
Enemies will not shoot back at you, and even if they do they have such a bad aim they will never hit you, you could clear all hostiles from all the map without having to fight ever. That's just unacceptable from a game design standpoint.

It may sound strange, but i'm pretty sure sniper rifles are in the game only because the tiles of the normal missions will never allow you to use them as real sniper rifles. Now with POE they suddenly could work as real snipers, and the idea of players being able to kill enemies from miles away with no risks screams "broken" like nothing else.

So here you get your scopes nerfs.

[ADDgamer45]

3 minutes ago, Dobroazur said:

I feel like DE is afraid long-range sniping will effectively break the plains.
What is stopping you from just avoiding all and any danger if you can just snipe everything from 600m away?
Enemies will not shoot back at you, and even if they do they have such a bad aim they will never hit you, you could clear all hostiles from all the map without having to fight ever. That's just unacceptable from a game design standpoint.

It may sound strange, but i'm pretty sure sniper rifles are in the game only because the tiles of the normal missions will never allow you to use them as real sniper rifles. Now with POE they suddenly could work as real snipers, and the idea of players being able to kill enemies from miles away with no risks screams "broken" like nothing else.

So here you get your scopes nerfs.

Ivara + almost any projectile weapon. Titania. Ash. Mesa. Take your pick. It is not like sniper will be any more op than anything else.

[Dobroazur]

1 minute ago, ADDgamer45 said:

Navigator + almost any projectile weapon.

Yeah,it is limited to a single frame + navigator drains energy so you'll end up going dry and not able to use it anymore eventually, especially without Zenurik + it is slower and it would take a considerable effort to kill a large number of enemies that way.

[ADDgamer45]

4 minutes ago, Dobroazur said:

Yeah,it is limited to a single frame + navigator drains energy so you'll end up going dry and not able to use it anymore eventually, especially without Zenurik + it is slower and it would take a considerable effort to kill a large number of enemies that way.

You can speed it up... then you can slow it back down. I killed 20 140 corrupted heavy gunners without running out of energy on my ivara with glaive p. And arca plasmor is a joke with that build.

[Neightrix]

These are great changes overall. I don't understand the decrease in zoom. 4-6x seems like a good level for most content, but I really think 12x minimum is more appropriate if you're looking to shoot between 300m and 600m, even more for the rifles with 3 zoom levels. The removal of sway more than offsets reduced zoom of course, so it's an appreciated improvement.

I was hoping for increased crit chances for consistency, as well as reload speed to help the pace of these weapons in a mass horde game (although the punch through does help with that also). I don't think increasing hipfire accuracy would hurt either.

[Dobroazur]

19 minutes ago, ADDgamer45 said:

You can speed it up...

It stil is slower and requires more effort than just pulling the trigger, and you still can't use it if you run out of energy. But that is not the point.

The point is it is a tactic with downsides.

Yes, it keeps you safe, but you sacriifce a lot do it.
First of all you are forced to use a specific frame you may not want to use.
Second, you need to spam energy pizzas if you want to do it indefenitely, then go farm back the materials to craft more.
Third, it is slower and more tedious compared to just going in close combat.

And of course you actually have to farm and build Ivara, and level her up if you don't have her

If you are willing to endure all of this (and i think almost nobody would), you deserve to kill everyone while being safe.

Sniping everyone from 1000m away has no downsides. NOTHING. You are just in Godmode. Maybe you can run out of ammo if you snipe too many enemies and may need to put down an ammo pizza every 30 minutes, but that's it

[KlutzMeister]

 I might be crazy,but i kind of wish the snipers acted with more veriety... like, vulrkar wraith having like 10 firerate and quarter meter damage radius, but an insane upward recoil.. or snipetron vandle having a fire rate of 4 and no recoil... maybe  small enemie attractor around lanka projectiles to make up for travle time...or give rubico 3.5 crit mult, but 13% crit and  one second reload.

sorry for my flights of fancy... also ,whats your plans for bows?

[PeyEll]

Love the changes. I know some people are salty about the reduction to zoom levels, but with the sway gone, this will make long range shooting easier and the reduced zoom will make snipers less motion-sickness-inducing to use on regular maps. Also, the reduced combo durations are a trade I would happily make for faster fire rates and combo counters going down in increments rather than all at once. 10/10 Now all we need is a corrupted mod that reduces zoom even further for players like me, 'cause rolling rivens for that is painful.

[Othergrunty]

Hate to be negative, but so far these changes don't really look like they will breath new live into the sniper rifle category or make them that more effective in Plains of Eidolon than they would allready be without the changes.

Now, natural 1 meter punchtrough on all snipers is of course a nice addition. No more shots being wasted on a slow firing weapon, because a piece of pixel or bullet proof railing was in the way.

Removing scope sway also sounds nice, though i can't recall encountering it when using sniper rifles, which might have something to do with having the first person scope switched off in general. Note that having that option is great and i'm thankfull for it's addition. I find them too distracting and not overly atmospheric. Maybe scope sway isn't present in the aim down sight with zoom levels version. So i guess this also has the effect of both options now being even in terms of disadvantages aka. having non. So again nice change.

But why did snipers had scope sway in first place?

Honestly scope sway doesn't make much sense to me from an in universe perspective. The Warframes are allready super human strong, capable of wielding any melee weapon and gun regardless of the bulk of the weapon or their own physical shape. A Mag or Nova can wield an Optictor or Galatine just as easy as a Rhino. So the weight of sniper rifles or length of their barrels can't be a reason. Similar they seem to natural balance out atmospheric effects on the weapon, since it doesn't matter if it's on planets with strong winds or barely any atmosphere at all, they always hold their guns steady. Finaly the majority of guns in Warframe do not have any kind of sight or similar device that helps aiming them. Yet it doesn't hinder the Warframes on being precise with them. So logically the aiming is done by the Warframe's own neuroptics, which means there is no reason why sniper rifle scopes should provide any problem for the Warframe when aiming.

This is also why i don't understand the need for hipfire spread on sniper rifles, which was not mentioned in upcomming changes to be removed. Why would Warframes be unable to fire a sniper rifle without using the scope when they can fire any other kind of weapon from an infested rocket launcher to gun in shape of a stick, which feature no sight what so ever, without a problem?

If it was done to keep the fire power of sniper rifles in balance, then we are actualy lacking in said fire power to justify that mechanic. If it was done because "other shooters do it" then it conflicts with how the rest of the guns work in Warframe, making it just seem wrong.

This brings me to the combo mechanic. Why do weapons which are meant to fire slowly and reward precise aiming, need a combo mechanic which constantly forces players to rush shots to keep it up? I can't recall this kind of mechanic from another shooter that feature sniper rifles.

Not even Serious Sam 2nd Encounter and that game was all about shooting down large hordes of enemies quickly. The only thing which to me comes close to it, was the combo counter in Unreal Tournament, which i remember some people abused on the map with the two towers on asteroids, where you could build up long combos against bots and particular single minded players. But that was just for fun. It also required an ideal terrian and enemy behaviour.

So holding onto the combo mechanic on snipers and trying to modify it, instead of scrapping it and comming up with a better gimick for sniper rifles, feels redundant in my opinion. It reminds me to the stamina bar we had for sprinting, which had been around for far too long than reasonable.

The true problem with sniper rifles in Warframe is not that you aren't rewarded for chaining shots, but one that it shares with similar weapons in other games that feature leveling enemies (like Borderlands). That you can't reliably take out enemies with single shots. Because they constantly grow beyond the damage of the weapon. That's also why i see so many wanting the option to go 100%+ crit chance on any sniper rifle, because anything below it makes their crit chance unreliable, which is not good on weapons which fire slowly.

While the change that you gain a larger amount of extra damage for hitting the heads of enemies is nice, said damage boost might still not be enough to actualy reward the time and effort it takes to aim for those spots. Especialy when you also have a combo mechanic ticking down telling you, you are losing even more damage by trying to take your time to aim well. Also it might be difficult on some enemies to actualy know where the heads are.

If the hipfire spread is to remain as kind of a balancing and using the scope is to be rewarding, then i would suggest giving scopes a weakpoint mechanic ala Zenith instead. Basicly if you see through the scope you see a weak point highlighted on enemies (fittingly also showing the head area on creatures which have no visible head). Hitting said point deals extra damage on top of your weapon damage. Maybe even scaling with the enemies overall HP. So regardless of enemy level you would have a higher chance to take them out in one hit.

So overall, while some change is better than no change, i think this weapon type still requires more work than this to find it's niche. But of course i will have to try these changes out first, before i can truely say they were ineffective.

[ADDgamer45]

10 minutes ago, Dobroazur said:

It stil is slower and requires more effort than just pulling the trigger, and you still can't use it if you run out of energy. But that is not the point.

The point is it is a tactic with downsides.

Yes, it keeps you safe, but you sacriifce a lot do it.
First of all you are forced to use a specific frame you may not want to use.
Second, you need to spam energy pizzas if you want to do it indefenitely, then ge farm back the materials.
Third, it is slower and more tedious compared to just going in close combat.

And of course you actually have to farm and build Ivara, and level her up if you don't have her

If you are willing to endure all of this (and i think almost nobody would), you deserve to kill everyone while being safe.

Sniping everyone from 1000m away has no downsides. NOTHING. You are just in Godmode. Maybe you can run out of ammo if you snipe too many enemies and may need to put down an ammo pizza every 30 minutes, but that's it

Do you not have ivara? And energy siphon. Is magical.

[Sebith]

Hitting headshot should bypass armor (pure health damage). Combo counters should be removed at all. It's against sniper nature. That's my opinion.

[Dobroazur]

6 minutes ago, ADDgamer45 said:

Do you not have ivara? And energy siphon. Is magical.

Yes, and Navigator with max efficiency consumes 0.75 energy/sec while Energy Siphon regenerates 0.6 energy/sec.

And Navigator is a channeling ability so Energy Siphon does not even work while you use it, what is your point?

[ADDgamer45]

6 minutes ago, Dobroazur said:

Yes, and Navigator with max efficiency consumes 0.75 energy/sec while Energy Siphon regenerates 0.6 energy/sec.

And Navigator is a channeling ability so Energy Siphon does not even work while you use it, what is your point?

Well if you put a decent efficiency build on your ivara you can kill everything in an encampment I garentee that them when you are done your energy teens. Plus you get to pick up all those sweet energy orbs. Oh and this is what 300m looks like at 12x zoom.

You have fun with that 1000m shot.

[Datsher]

22 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

 

 

Snipetron Vandal

 

• Fire rate increased from 1.5 to 2

• First level zoom +10% Damage replaced with +30% Head Shot Damage

• Second level zoom 15% Damage replaced with +50% Head Shot Damage

 

 

Vulkar Wraith

 

• Fire rate increased from 1.5 to 2

• First level zoom +15% Damage replaced with +35% Head Shot Damage

• Second level zoom 15% Damage replaced with +55% Head Shot Damage

• Second level zoom reduced from 6x to 4x

• Third level zoom 20% Damage replaced with +70% Head Shot Damage

• Third level zoom reduced from 12x to 8x

 

 

Great, now the SnipetronV is just a worse VulkarW. The gun needed a buff already after DE stealth nerfed the combo counter about a year ago.

[Brasten]

3 hours ago, tarfeef101 said:

Removed sway

• So basically, you want to make them even less skillful to use. It's already way easier to snipe in warframe than almost any other game. This was not needed. A hold breath mechanic for super long range kills would've been far better, and kept the integrity of sniping intact. This just encourages people to run around like chickens with their heads cut off quickscoping S#&$ (which you could still do before, but with some amount of skill at least)

 

Scope sway did not add any significant skillfulness, was entirely random, and basically just lead to unneeded strain from the finicky small mouse adjustments. Scope sway as the same regardless of action, standing, crouching, sliding, jump, gliding, latched (which looks like your sniping one handed), all had the same sway. Also you clearly don't use Sniper enough in this game or you'd know there is another limit to quickscoping Hip-fire penalty. The Hip-fire penalty (which was not removed) still requires about 0.4 seconds to fully decay while zooming in. Firing before that time still brings on the accuracy penalty.

Skipping any arguments about realism jumping right to Game Systems. Scope Sway is not, an still does not even with the changes coming, a justifiable counter balance to the sniper rifle class of weapons. The limited targeting and ability to deal with massed hordes of very quickly randomly moving enemies was more than enough.

Also say it with me, space magic super suits. If the Warframes can swing Fragors like helicopters blades, and hip fire rocket launchers (ogris) without issue, keeping a high power rifle steady should be no issue.

All combined with the zoom level changes, combo, and scoped headshot bonuses and there still being a Hip-fire penalty, its even more encouragement to stay scoped in as much as possible. Quickscoping would actually be harmful because of the delay in the decay of the hip-fire penalty, which works against the 2 second combo timer.

[Dobroazur]

17 minutes ago, ADDgamer45 said:

Well if you put a decent efficiency build on your ivara you can kill everything in an encampment I garentee that them when you are done your energy teens. Plus you get to pick up all those sweet energy orbs.

Of course you probably "CAN" do it, but are you WILLING to do it? it is bad, boring, and tedious and still requires you to have energy to start with, despite you implying Energy Siphon magically fills your energy bar fast enough for it not to be a concern.

And it still requires you to run a specific frame.

Because i tell you, nobody will will use this tactics in the plains. But a hell of a lot of people will switch to snipers in a second if they are remotely decent at killing things from very far.

[Foxbat40]

20 hours ago, tnccs215 said:

My thoughts exactly 

*congruence*

*logic*

I don't deny they could use some tweaking - the rubico's could very well use a reduction. But the Lanka? No. 

In order to keep FPS up they have lots of LOS blockers in game. Ridges and hills block the LOS in most recent videos. The 400m range is probably their longest visable distance in POE. 

They reduced the zooms but removed sway. Overall this is a huge accuracy improvement. 

The real problems I see are the Lanka and its slow projectile speed. And the low combo counter time of 2 seconds. That is not a lot of time to aim. Who knows maybe punch through and multishot yield more combo points per shot than we think.

[ADDgamer45]

17 minutes ago, Dobroazur said:

Of course you probably "CAN" do it, but are you WILLING to do it? it is bad, boring, and tedious and still requires you to have energy to start with, despite you implying Energy Siphon magically fills your energy bar fast enough for it not to be a concern.

And it still requires you to run a specific frame.

Because i tell you, nobody will will use this tactics in the plains. But a hell of a lot of people will switch to snipers in a second if they are remotely decent at killing things from very far.

You still haven't addressed mesa, titania , ash, volt or anyone else. It is not like ivara is the only one that has crazy ability range. Hydroid's #1 has no cast range cap either. Neither does limbo's bubble. If you ember fire buff volt his infinite range 1 does radiation.

[Fylas]

FIFTY PERCENT DAMAGE REDUCTION !?!?!  thats 0.5% less damage per meter after 400, I thought you said you wanted to INCREASE the range of snipers, not reduce it :< sigh.... at least there's a hard cap of 50% on damage reduction. Why the scope zoom reduction? do you not want people to shoot more then 100 meters over regular rifles or is this compensation for removing the sway on zoom, addition of a zoom increase mod. Clarification would be nice. 

 

Not to sound ungrateful but is the lanka affected by falloff ? if so, could you at least increase bullet speed? in the current configuration it would take a lanka shot 2 seconds to hit a 400 meter away target  that means the corpus rail/coilgun has a muzzle velocity of 720 kilometers, while real world snipers are around  4 times that X_X 

[(PSN)big_eviljak]

1 hour ago, Dobroazur said:

I feel like DE is afraid long-range sniping will effectively break the plains.
What is stopping you from just avoiding all and any danger if you can just snipe everything from 600m away?
Enemies will not shoot back at you, and even if they do they have such a bad aim they will never hit you, you could clear all hostiles from all the map without having to fight ever. That's just unacceptable from a game design standpoint.

It may sound strange, but i'm pretty sure sniper rifles are in the game only because the tiles of the normal missions will never allow you to use them as real sniper rifles. Now with POE they suddenly could work as real snipers, and the idea of players being able to kill enemies from miles away with no risks screams "broken" like nothing else.

So here you get your scopes nerfs.

You may have a point. I want all future snipers to have abilities to enhance game play rather than power creep. Plus, looks to me like vulkar wraith is the king of the castle and Rubico is ofc the Queen. Plz bring Rubico prime with zephyr prime @[DE]Megan

[(XBOX)Nittymaster]

As far as the proposed combo counter changes go will the Arca Scisco pistol change too?  Only makes sense to me.

[SolidJames]

1 hour ago, ADDgamer45 said:

I'm still trying to figure out if you want a sniper rifle nerf or a group of scoped assault rifles.

 

Neither. Just because DE's current plan doesn't fit your personal definition of what a sniper rifle should be (which is subjective and has changed throughout history), doesn't mean it isn't satisfactory for others.

I have average to below average vision, my aim is terrible, my mouse surface is trash, I'm using a wireless mouse, my sensitivity is hardly ideal, and I'm not struggling to hit targets 120+ meters away at 2.5x zoom. That's effectively the same as shooting targets 280+ meters away.

 

 

There are multitudes of people more skilled than I who would easily do better than me. And there's no need to engage beyond 300 meters. They can't hear me shooting at them from 120 meters away, which means I can fire away without fear. If my goal was to snipe on a regular basis, I'd bring Ivara (with a Hushed sniper rifle) or Banshee to PoE, further increasing my options for stealthy engagement.

[mrrobotto67]

Just now, Sebith said:

Hitting headshot should bypass armor (pure health damage). Combo counters should be removed at all. It's against sniper nature. That's my opinion.

That is actually a simple fix for snipers. Give this man all the ups.