Snipers and you

[Jei-chan]

I don't particularly like snipers in multiplayer games, for reasons many people have mentioned. I love them in singleplayer games, however. In the Mass Effect series I was Infiltrator extraordinaire~

It really bothers me when people nerf the weapons. Like in ME2 some of the sniper rifles do about a quarter health-damage each shot on low difficulties. I watch things like the cutscenes in StarCraft 2 where Kerrigan and Raynor are using up two or three shots to bring down a single hydralisk and I just think "man, the Dominion needs higher calibre sniper rifles." The whole POINT is that it's supposed to be such a powerful shot no standard enemy can survive. I'll accept the ridiculousness of mercs taking three headshots from a rifle to go down on Insanity difficulty in ME1 because, well. Insanity. But if you're describing my gun as an anti-tank weapon like in ME2 you'd better have it drop random salarian mercs in one hit.

So when multiplayer sniping is nerfed to make it more fair it just makes me wonder why people put it in at all. It's not really true sniping anymore at that point.

 

[Vigormortis]

That might be true. But it's kind of a negative thing if it demoralizes me from playing the game, now isn't it?

Not if the goal is to allow for a variety of gameplay styles.

And yes, it's the one-hit kill from a range that I have no chance of retaliating that i dislike the most about it. If it wasn't a one-hit kill, it would probably help quite a bit. As long as it's then not rapid firing. That kind of negates the lack of damage again.

In most games, at least those with any amalgam of balance, that 'one-hit kill' requires either a lot of skill to pull off or a heavy cost for access to the weapon that allows for it.

The inclusion of snipers in most shooter games is akin to the inclusion of any other sort of combat style. It adds variety and fosters adaptation in play style.

If most of your opponents are using very powerful close-range weapons, you have to adapt you playstyle to compensate. Same goes if your opponents start including snipers.

I'm not saying all shooters must have sniper weapons or classes, but there's nothing inherently negative about them.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

See that's the problem with snipers. In almost all FPS', they're OP'd. And the thing is, you can't really balance it out without making the sniper too weak in comparison to every other gun. Why be a sniper then when you can just run around and get kills just as easily, if not moreso than sniping? And if you leave them as they are, it pretty soon just becomes a game of who can aim better. Have a big map so they have to find each other? Well, guess what, a lot of players find it super annoying to have to search for a month before they actually find someone. IF they find someone before they get shot from some place no one could ever have seen without psychic powers.

But yeah. Sniping sounds super great on paper, but in practice it just... Doesn't work out very well.

 

[Maphysto]

I fucking love sniping in PVE-based games. My first characters in Borderlands and Borderlands 2 were Mordecai and Zer0 respectively. I almost always favor the long-range headshotty weapons in any given game, and I get an almost perverse satisfaction from a well-placed shot.

And yet, I'm absolute garbage at sniping in PVP.

I've thought about it a lot, and I think the reason for this is motion. See. in a PVE mode, the enemies you shoot will tend to move like regular people: running for cover, jumping down from higher areas to lower ones, and having to stop for a moment to cancel out their momentum if they want to change directions quickly.

In PVP on the other hand, players aren't bound by the laws of physics in the ways that an NPC's animations will simulate. They zig-zag back and forth with no conservation of momentum, they bunnyhop all over the place... in short, they make it impossible to land a headshot unless you have peak-human reflexes or an aimbot (Which I'm convinced most "snipers" on multiplayer games use).

With that said, in the current Overwatch beta I've actually been doing fairly well with Widowmaker, getting a decent K/D/A ration in most matches and even snagging Play of the Game a couple of times. I've also had some good matches as Marquis in Battleborn, so maybe it's more a matter of the nuances of individual games than anything else.

 

[Combustion Kevin]

It really depends on the type of game I'm playing, if it's more realistic or the enemies are super deadly, I prefer going long range and go sniper.

In other games, like borderlands or battlefield, I prefer a more survivable class and pick armour and utility, everyone appreciates a good medic or engineer.

 

[FalloutJack]

On occasion, I like to snipe. Other times, I prefer to switch it up a bit. It's okay.

 

[Sassafrass]

I'm alright with them, as I stopped playing BF long ago and as such, don't need to worry about half my team not helping me cap a point while I'm being ripped to pieces by the entire other team.

Although I will say Overwatch does, at times, get a plague of them. 3 snipers in a team of 6? One of you, please fucking change. Or be fucking good. Or stop bitching at the healer for keeping the tank alive and not you.

As for me, personally? I don't snipe much. I'm just not that good at it.

 

[Mcgeezaks]

I hate snipers in most games but I'm a hypocrite since sometimes I catch myself playing as a sniper. Not that I'm very good at it.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

I was a pretty prolific sniper back in the CoD 1/2 days and I can still pull off a pretty decent performance with characters like Widow in Overwatch.

They're fine, for the most part, but I can see and understand the complaints. It's no fun to be whacked from across the map with no chance to defend yourself (looking at you, artillery in World of Tanks) and kills gameplay flow for a lot of people. But, by the same token, I can appreciate the skill/twitch reflex involved in making those kinds of 'shots' on moving targets in fast-paced games like Overwatch and CoD/Battlefield/etc.

For the sniper, it's pretty much always enjoyable to, as Yahtzee put it, use gun on man.

 

[retsupurae yahtsee]

I do not like snipers or bowmen: Standing a mile away from your target and hitting him through a scope is too easy, with no danger nless you get really unlucky. I like to get close to my enemies in games with swords and machine guns, or blow up everything with rocket launchers, which at least looks cool.