Snipers and you

[Dedtoo]

With the recent opening of the Overwatch beta, I've been playing quite a bit of a shooter again. And before that, I played quite a bit of Dirty Bomb. And before that, it was Team Fortress 2. They're all good games, with lots of fun classes to play.

But there has always been one kind of class I've always hated. The snipers. Why? Because I'm no good at sniping, and because I don't like being one-shot out of nowhere.

Of course, I understand that some people like them. I understand that games like that benefit from some long ranged classes. Having to focus more on the aim than the movement, finding a good position, and so on. Doesn't make me like them.

Here's the thing though. I can be okay with one on each team. But for some reason, some people seem to not care at all about team composition, and just go sniper anyway, ending up with a consisting mostly of snipers, which end up losing horribly.

So, what's your opinion about the popular fellows, who prefer to stay back?

 

[Saelune]

I like sniping...but I also like being useful, and prefer to do what others are not doing. Makes no sense for everyone to do the same thing.

 

[gsilver]

The sniper (Sharpshooter) is far and away my favorite class in Hawken, but I generally avoid them.
I think that it's mostly because the maps in Hawken really lend themselves to that playstyle, and I also have a lot of CQC burst damage as the Sharpshooter (especially when equipped with a damaging item)

 

[Evonisia]

I like sniping myself, I like being a support role (hence why I also like playing Medics), but I suffer a lot from panicking to get that shot out which usually ruins my chances of success.

In games where maps are small or CQC based I tend to opt to not use them, however. I haven't got the patience to line up enemies when those enemies can get to me in the blink of an eye.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

Not so much, no. Mainly because the class is difficult to balance in most of the FPS I've tried- if you're given an extremely powerful rifle with a scope on it like say, an AWP from Counter-Strike, why stay back? Combined with the supposed allure of being 'Mr. One Shot One Kill' it leads to ludicrous numbers of them being chosen often.

I also hate Sniper in DOTA 2.

 

[Zhukov]

Yeah, they can annoy me too for much the same reasons.

A really good enemy sniper can ruin your day no matter what you do. If they're sufficiently good at clicking on your head then there can be precious little you can do about it. Which can feel unfair.

On the other hand, few things frustrate me more than being on offense and having a team of wannabe leet pro snipers who spend the whole round crowding the one well known vantage point to worship at the alter of KD. I remember being driven nuts by this in Bad Company 2. I spent many a round popping smoke grenades in the faces of friendly snipers in order to force them to move.

Luckily that last hasn't frequently occurred in Overwatch as of yet. Sure, I've had some terrible team comps but on the whole people have been pretty good about picking suitable roles.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I like playing as a sniper, because I don't like dying. I also like the idea that one good sniper can hold off an entire army. And when I do that, it's great. I enjoy the hunt.

Problem is, I've only ever found one game where it really feels like it was made for a sniper in mind. Modern Warfare 2. Some of those maps were pure gold if you played as a sniper. I could waste the entire team and they'd never be able to find me. It was about waiting, moving slowly, and hunting other players, and making sure you had an escape path if things went sideways.
Now though, most games give you a sniper class, but not a sniper world. It's all about quick shooting instead of lining up a perfect shot. It's more about finding a good camping spot and just locking it down instead of hunting. Corridors are too confined now, designed more for assault rifles and quick reflexes. Gone are the days when I could hide in a forest, and people knew I was in there, but going in there to try and find me terrified them because they'd think I was in front somewhere, and when they'd turn around the rest of their team was dead and I was putting a knife in their chest.

 

[Joccaren]

I like playing as a sniper, because I don't like dying. I also like the idea that one good sniper can hold off an entire army. And when I do that, it's great. I enjoy the hunt.

Problem is, I've only ever found one game where it really feels like it was made for a sniper in mind. Modern Warfare 2. Some of those maps were pure gold if you played as a sniper. I could waste the entire team and they'd never be able to find me. It was about waiting, moving slowly, and hunting other players, and making sure you had an escape path if things went sideways.
Now though, most games give you a sniper class, but not a sniper world. It's all about quick shooting instead of lining up a perfect shot. It's more about finding a good camping spot and just locking it down instead of hunting. Corridors are too confined now, designed more for assault rifles and quick reflexes. Gone are the days when I could hide in a forest, and people knew I was in there, but going in there to try and find me terrified them because they'd think I was in front somewhere, and when they'd turn around the rest of their team was dead and I was putting a knife in their chest.

Maybe try the Battlefield games if you want more sniper-oriented maps.
3 was the most recent I played, and you'd have kilometers of wide open space, plenty of hills around on some maps, some maps had giant towers, others had forests, some had urban centers where there was plenty of room to hide.
Hell, even Metro, for all its bottlenecking, had ideal sniper positions in the first and final stages of rush, pity only second through to final stage made it to conquest and everyone was stuck in second in a crapshoot.
Even vehicles aren't that much of an issue. I've sniped pilots out of jets and helicopters and stolen their ride more than a few times. Utterly turned the tide of battle when the map's only two helicopters were owned by our team, and the one that would respawn for the enemy team was flown by my friend and I, who played tactically and withdrew to repair when needed, and mowed down anyone that tried to reach an AA gun.


OT: Hate snipers as they are in most games. 1 shot kills are just bad for gameplay. A player never has any time to react, or try anything different - they're just dead. If you don't show a kill cam, they don't even know where from in order to be more careful next time. With most maps in games like Battlefield being wide open plains with little cover for a fair portion when crossing between areas of interest, there's often not a lot you can do to avoid being taken out. It also leads to people trying to do ludicrous 'skillshots' and spending 20 minutes taking shots at that guy in a helicopter 3km away to try and land a 3km snipe and go "Woo MLG" and put it on their Youtube account.
Headshot should remove 90% of your health, not a one hit kill. And you should not quickly regenerate your health. You get hit, you find cover, and you have a chance to react. At the same time, you're not going to one man army that sniper, as 1 shot from anything and you're rekt. A sniper can keep an army at bay, but the members of that army get to play the game too, rather than just drop dead. And counter-sniping with an assault rifle is always fun, and something I was great at. Pity I only got to do it when they missed their shot, rather than having two players who could aim trying to kill each other.
That, or snipers are inherently not pinpoint accurate. Small amount of bullet spread, so at longer ranges even if you line up a perfect headshot, you might not get it. Of course, this would infuriate snipers, however it would encourage body shots as even with the spread you're going to hit still, and give non-snipers a chance to react. Also more 'realistic' for those that actually care, as a headshot is still a one hit kill, and any gun IRL isn't pinpoint accurate, and things like wind, maintenance and other factors not in games will screw with your shot at longer ranges.

In games with decent sniper mechanics though, yeah, they're fine. I remember when you didn't die in 1 shot to snipers in... I think it was BF3, even on a headshot. Loved facing snipers then. And then they all cried for 1 hit kill shots, pretty sure they got them, and everyone started running as the Sniper. At least if I remember correctly, been too long now. Hell, even I ran 'sniper', though I took an SMG, and just used the mobile spawn point and motion sensor to farm points instead, whilst close range wrecking enemies.
Basically, snipers are a power fantasy that ends up pretty OP, as giving a player with good aim a one hit kill weapon always will. The answer usually is to make everything else ridiculous and OP in some way as well, but it doesn't change the fact that snipers just aren't fun to play against, something that's very important in a multiplayer game. Tone everything down, and make snipers more fun to face off against, and I doubt people would have as many problems with them.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

As a Battlefield player, snipers can kiss my ass.

But just for Battlefield. In other games, I appreciate the more. Snipers on the Battlefield are a) useless and b) incredibly annoying to be killed by.

All they contribute are kills, and that's it. They cozy up in some literal mountain, and fire away. They get like 10 kills and zero deaths, in a game where you have 800 tickets. Good job, dickhead, you contributed 1/4 of what every player on the team should. Its funny too, because sniping in BF4 was incredibly nerfed in comparison to previous games. So not only are they useless, they are more useless than they usually are. Even better, there are games when 1/3 of your team are just camping from base.

And when you get killed by them, what do you feel? How is anyone supposed to feel about being picked off by a person 300 meters away, far enough that their head is composed of a single pixel? I honestly respect the skill of quickscopers than I do of long range snipers.

Snipers are what I like to call inherently OP. In the real world, a squad of snipers could halt an entire army's operations. Just like jets, tanks, helicopters, etc. So all of these things in Battlefield are either OP, or just powerful enough to be unfair, yet at the same time so ineffective it's a chore to play as them.

Anyway, I personally am "meh" about sniping. I can respect the skill that it takes (at least on console, on PC sniping is as easy as pointing and shooting) to snipe, and I do get a rush of adrenaline when I get a headshot on a guy running horizontally, or when I win a 800 meter shoot out with a sniper on another island, but when most of your time is spent looking down a scope seeing people do more interesting things, I just decide to change my class.

 

[Hero of Lime]

After several months of wanting it so badly, the longest range sniper rifle weapons in Splatoon were nerfed in such a way that made them more manageable. Still, running into amazing snipers leaves me a bit salty. The kind that can snipe you in midair, can spot you swimming in your ink, and the worst of all, the laggy ones who kill you despite being behind a solid surface.

Unlike most shooters, your standard assault rifle weapon won't be able to take out a sniper without getting fairly close to them. One recent nerf ensures they can't use quick effective grenades called "burst bombs" to kill you if you happen to actually get in a range where you can kill them. So with that problem mostly gone, it's gotten much better, unless you relied on burst bombs as a sniper of course.

And of course, I have lots of trouble using the sniper weapons in the game. I love sniper rifles in most shooters, but I've never been good with them against other players in online modes. I've always preferred being a mid to close range player. It fits my play style more.

 

[Superlative]

I like playing as a sniper, because I don't like dying. I also like the idea that one good sniper can hold off an entire army. And when I do that, it's great. I enjoy the hunt.

Problem is, I've only ever found one game where it really feels like it was made for a sniper in mind. Modern Warfare 2. Some of those maps were pure gold if you played as a sniper. I could waste the entire team and they'd never be able to find me. It was about waiting, moving slowly, and hunting other players, and making sure you had an escape path if things went sideways.
Now though, most games give you a sniper class, but not a sniper world. It's all about quick shooting instead of lining up a perfect shot. It's more about finding a good camping spot and just locking it down instead of hunting. Corridors are too confined now, designed more for assault rifles and quick reflexes. Gone are the days when I could hide in a forest, and people knew I was in there, but going in there to try and find me terrified them because they'd think I was in front somewhere, and when they'd turn around the rest of their team was dead and I was putting a knife in their chest.

First off, props on your crazy levels of aim @SniperTeam4.

Whenever I play shooters (which is admittedly rare) I try to be you, but end up zerging around, trying to use the sniper rifle at close range.

The most effective snipers I've seen do kind of that...but not really. Seemingly, the best sniper is one who can move and shoot at the same time, engaging targets just close enough to not need much aim, but far enough out that rifles are inaccurate.

Honestly, I think people who dislike snipers actually dislike the feeling of disempowerment that comes from being taken out by someone you can't see and thus (supposedly), can't fight effectively.

 

[Something Amyss]

One of my friends almost always plays a sniper. I play support. People hate us. Him for being able to hit things, and me for murdering anyone who gets close.

 

[MHR]

Sniper class if fine. For all the problems created from having instant-kill zones everywhere on a map that is fielding good snipers, there is also something to be said for ruining mindless rush tactics from a distance.

It's when almost every scrub chooses sniper that your team gets infested with fucking incompetent dicks. There should be class limits or mandatory hardware integration that slaps you for sucking as the 3rd+ sniper on a team.

 

[Vigormortis]

Honestly, I think people who dislike snipers actually dislike the feeling of disempowerment that comes from being taken out by someone you can't see and thus (supposedly), can't fight effectively.

This is, more often than not, the case. And frankly, that's the point of a sniper.

They're not just a tool for taking out the enemy at long range. They're a tool designed to literally demoralize the enemy.

An effective sniper does both. If you feel angry about dying to a sniper in a game, barring the sniper weapon/class being woefully unbalanced, then you're simply suffering from what the sniper was created for. Disliking them is the intended goal, and it shows that the sniper is doing her or his job.

Spoiler

 

[Chanticoblues]

I love sniping in games, especially ones where speed isn't the game's defining trait. I got pretty good at The Last of Us's online and there was nothing like downing an enemy that didn't know where I was, waiting for someone to help them, then killing both. I like it a lot more in games when snipes aren't one hit kills. Killing a team's spirit is what sniping is about.

 

[MysticSlayer]

I've only liked sniping in Battlefield games. The maps are large enough to actually feel like a sniper's haven. There's no interfering with the core mechanics (e.g. adding a mandatory wait to get the full power of the shot) to balance the sniper, just utilize the already present bullet drop and headshot focus to make long shots a challenge. And the sniper can feel like an important asset without essentially turning the sniper rifle into a god weapon.

Granted, I don't know how the more recent Battlefield games are, but at least BF1942 and BF2 did a fantastic job, and BF3 seemed to capture the same feel when I tried it.

 

[LetalisK]

Luckily that last hasn't frequently occurred in Overwatch as of yet. Sure, I've had some terrible team comps but on the whole people have been pretty good about picking suitable roles.

Then you'd hate me. I play Bastion on offense. Though I'm actually good at doing it and I don't mean just sitting on top of the payload. Especially if I have a Reinhardt on my team.

 

[Neverhoodian]

I play a fair amount of Sniper in TF2 (assuming my team doesn't have two or more already, which happens distressingly often), though I usually rock the Huntsman when I do. Sure you gotta lead your shots, but the fact that it uses projectile hitboxes instead of the smaller hitscan ones more than make up for it. It's actually a beast of a weapon at close range; I've killed many a charging Scout by loosing a quick arrow at their face (I sometimes joke that it's the best melee weapon in the game). I'd be lying if I said the occasional "fucking lucksman/cuntsman" comment doesn't stir my inner schadenfreude (I named mine "The Skillsman" for extra salt).

I tend to gravitate more towards support/medic roles in other games, which means snipers tend to be one of my biggest threats. Despite that, I don't get all that perturbed if they manage to nail me. I always try to make myself a hard target to hit, so I tend to see it as a testament to their aiming skill (unless they're aimbotting, in which case they can go suck on a shotgun).

 

[Wrex Brogan]

I'm fine with Snipers (mainly because as frustrating as it can be to get one-shot across the map, it's also amazing how few of them realize that assault rifles/grenades can do the same thing) as opposition, but I generally hate playing as a Sniper myself.

Why?

Zoom. Fucking zoom levels. I have no idea why, but every multiplayer game I've played has Snipers with zoom levels 50x higher than I am at all comfortable with. I want to cap someone in the skull, not count how many nose hairs they have. I imagine it's a balance thing (limits vantage points and fucks you up at mid-range/short range combat) but it's just too much of a negative for me. Give me an Assault Rifle instead, that way I can get headshots without seeing the molecular makeup of my opponents moustache.

 

[SlumlordThanatos]

Hate 'em.

On their team, they never miss. On my team, there's three of them, and none of them realize that they have to stand ON the point in order to capture it.

So I just play Reaper and make their lives miserable.