Sniping

[Shoqiyqa]

My main FPS is team fortress 2, and i guess because of it, i now have a strong distaste for assault rifles. Incredibly long range and automatic bullets just really irritates me because a sniper is supposed to have such long range, not assault rifles.

Assault rifles are long-ranged weapons, at least in computer game level design terms.

A little old Rifle .22 No 8 Mk 1 (as seen in the hands of 13-yr-olds over here in gun-fearing England) can kill someone a mile away. Of course, firing a point two two Long Rifle round at someone a mile away is a recipe for failure, but if you let one off at just the right angle you could fairly reliably drop it into a stadium a mile away, and then it would still be potentially lethal. Who makes levels a mile long?

Move up to 5.56x45mm and you get two miles of potential kill from a negligent discharge, even though it's officially only effective at 200, 300, 400 or 600m, depending on the barrel length, sights, presence or absence of a bipod and so on.

Sniper rifles are supposed to allow a deliberate one-shot kill at considerable distances by being very accurate weapons and using ballistically efficient bullets. A 12.7x99mm sniper rifle isn't much more powerful than a 12.7x99mm MG. It's a bit easier to lug around and a skilled user can put a single shot into a man-sized area at up to 2000m in good weather conditions, but it won't turn an entire man into a spray of red mist above a pair of boot soles and more than one lucky hit from a spray of the same ammunition from a machine-gun would.

If you want sniper rifles to have a realistic advantage over other weapons, make the other weapons stop being pinpoint-accurate on their first shot. The problem isn't that getting hit with an SMG from 100m hurts. It's that a man with an SMG running and jumping around 100m away can get consecutive headshots by tapping his mouse key rapidly.

If you really want to play at being a skilled sniper, add crosswind, gusts, range, angle of elevation or depression, time to target, breath, heartbeat, vegetation, arm support, camouflage augmentation, ground hardness, movement noise, wild birds, whether the leaves you disturbed in getting into place have had time to dry out before someone looks that way, insects whining around your face, the need to eat, drink and pee and so on and so forth. In fact, just get yourself an air rifle and go out and try to shoot rats in the head in a public place without being noticed.

 

[SilverUchiha]

Because if snipers in games were in any way realistic, they wouldn't be fun, so game developers just make them like any other gun, except that it's a 1 hit kill. Why wouldn't you use it? There's no downside whatsoever.

I don't use them because I have a sense of honor when I play a multiplayer game. Getting sniped sucks. I hate it and I know alot of other people do too. I don't want to do to others something that immensely pisses me off when done to me. Also, I'm a team player. I love to work with my teammates and win. Sniping contributes nothing to the team, which is why it fucks over so many Bad Company 2 matches. If the game requires a team effort to attack and seize an objective, having 8 of 12 people sitting in the mountains at out spawn ruins the fun. Snipers only help themselves.

Sniping does plenty for a team. Example (L4D). My team is fighting a Tank, I can pick it from the distance. If they go down and the Tank shortly afterwards, I can get them up with minimal damage because I stayed back. Or I can pick off special infected in the distance before they become a threat. And that's just one game.

I find snipers to be more accurate than most other guns too. Plus, the 1-hit-kill saves a shitload of ammo compared to a short range shotty or a bullet-wasting automatic. Not saying those weapons are bad, they just lack finesse. I personally think you're just upset that snipers have taken you down so many times.

Side Note: Most people I play with don't like using snipers. One guy claims he "just can't aim with that thing". So I doubt that your 70% of gamers using snipers is entirely accurate.

 

[Cru31ty]

It makes me feel like a game hunter or something. It requires a certain amount of skill and it makes you look cool.

I agree to half of that statement. However, sniping only makes you look cool because of the amount of power you have over the other combatants. So it's difficult to look cool when EVERYBODY is doing it.

 

[HentMas]

Hey guys, I was wondering...
One thing that always bothers me is that about 70% of gamers will go into a shooter and immediately pick the sniper rifles. Every single goddamn time. I really don't understand this as I can't see how something as slow-paced as sitting back and picking off enemies one-by-one from a mile away can be very much fun. So to those of you who use the snipers, what on Earth is so damn appealing about them?
Thanks

i find that not being in the place where the war happens but still being allowed to kill people (when they cant hit you) is a great way to play a game, you get kills and dont get killed too often (unless you suck or find a better sniper on the oposing team)

 

[00slash00]

i feel like sniper just kinda kill the experience. i disagree that sniping takes skill, i think of it more as the safe way out. unless you pick a shitty spot to snipe from, your probably not gonna have to worry about dying much unless someone can sneak up behind you. i think sniping takes very little skill. i mean, maybe im some sort of sniping prodigy (which im not) but every fps ive played, i never had any problem picking up a sniper rifle and effortlessly taking down a dozen or so other players without having to worry about my own safety. i usually switch to an automatic gun or a more shirt range rifle shortly after though because sniping is too easy and too boring. more close range combat is much more tense, i feel. much easier to kill a lot of people faster but also much easier to die. problem is that since so many people choose snipers, choosing a play style like that puts you at a disadvantage because its so much easier for them to kill you than it is for you to kill them. ive been in games that had more snipers than short range gunners, which is just stupid. its gotten to the point that if i join a game that has lots of snipers in it, ill just leave the game immediately, because games like that give me two options: be forced to pick a class i dont enjoy playing, or spend most of the game getting killed by a bunch of guys i cant even see

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

It makes me feel like a game hunter or something. It requires a certain amount of skill and it makes you look cool.

However, sniping only makes you look cool because of the amount of power you have over the other combatants. So it's difficult to look cool when EVERYBODY is doing it.

I've found that on the servers I play on (TF2) I'm usually one of the three or four snipers running around. And consistently taking down Heavy's is a good thing for my team. They appreciate it. That is power and most everybody is playing as Soldier or Demoman anyway.

 

[friedo.obrain]

Because if snipers in games were in any way realistic, they wouldn't be fun, so game developers just make them like any other gun, except that it's a 1 hit kill. Why wouldn't you use it? There's no downside whatsoever.

I don't use them because I have a sense of honor when I play a multiplayer game. Getting sniped sucks. I hate it and I know alot of other people do too. I don't want to do to others something that immensely pisses me off when done to me. Also, I'm a team player. I love to work with my teammates and win. Sniping contributes nothing to the team, which is why it fucks over so many Bad Company 2 matches. If the game requires a team effort to attack and seize an objective, having 8 of 12 people sitting in the mountains at out spawn ruins the fun. Snipers only help themselves.

I am forced to disagree. A good sniper - especially in BFBC2 where you can spot enemies - can be very useful for picking off troublesome targets, warning teamies when flanked, provide cover fire (will you run down a lane you know is being watched by a sniper?) etc.
That said snipers are usually asses who only want headshots and high killcounts

 

[GundamSentinel]

Subtlety? Nah. I snipe with a machinegun. Powah! I'm often a sniper victim, but I don't care. You can take more snipers down with automatic fire than they hit you if you practice. I don't mind snipers. You just need to learn how to handle them, that's all.

 

[biggles1]

snipers can be very useful to a team, especially psycologically. on cod4 I managed to secure the entire western side of the map by myself, getting 8 kills in one area kinda makes the enemy stay outta there. so I shepereded them into the place where my team was waiting with alot of guns and explosives to slaughter them. we owned that match.

similarly, another game I worked specifically with my 4 team members in a role system, I was sniping, my uncle was scouting, my cousin and friend were assault. we easily defeated the enemy team despite having 1 less player, my uncle spotted while my friend and cuz protected the flanks, leaving me to pick off any stragglers. again, we pwned.

tactics FTW!

 

[LitleWaffle]

My main FPS is team fortress 2, and i guess because of it, i now have a strong distaste for assault rifles. Incredibly long range and automatic bullets just really irritates me because a sniper is supposed to have such long range, not assault rifles.

Assault rifles are long-ranged weapons, at least in computer game level design terms.

A little old Rifle .22 No 8 Mk 1 (as seen in the hands of 13-yr-olds over here in gun-fearing England) can kill someone a mile away. Of course, firing a point two two Long Rifle round at someone a mile away is a recipe for failure, but if you let one off at just the right angle you could fairly reliably drop it into a stadium a mile away, and then it would still be potentially lethal. Who makes levels a mile long?

Move up to 5.56x45mm and you get two miles of potential kill from a negligent discharge, even though it's officially only effective at 200, 300, 400 or 600m, depending on the barrel length, sights, presence or absence of a bipod and so on.

Sniper rifles are supposed to allow a deliberate one-shot kill at considerable distances by being very accurate weapons and using ballistically efficient bullets. A 12.7x99mm sniper rifle isn't much more powerful than a 12.7x99mm MG. It's a bit easier to lug around and a skilled user can put a single shot into a man-sized area at up to 2000m in good weather conditions, but it won't turn an entire man into a spray of red mist above a pair of boot soles and more than one lucky hit from a spray of the same ammunition from a machine-gun would.

If you want sniper rifles to have a realistic advantage over other weapons, make the other weapons stop being pinpoint-accurate on their first shot. The problem isn't that getting hit with an SMG from 100m hurts. It's that a man with an SMG running and jumping around 100m away can get consecutive headshots by tapping his mouse key rapidly.

If you really want to play at being a skilled sniper, add crosswind, gusts, range, angle of elevation or depression, time to target, breath, heartbeat, vegetation, arm support, camouflage augmentation, ground hardness, movement noise, wild birds, whether the leaves you disturbed in getting into place have had time to dry out before someone looks that way, insects whining around your face, the need to eat, drink and pee and so on and so forth. In fact, just get yourself an air rifle and go out and try to shoot rats in the head in a public place without being noticed.

I don't really want a realistic touch to First Person Shooters (though that could be quite fun), I just think that each basic type of gun should have a definite range.

Shotgun- Close Range: Effective inside small buildings and areas, but mostly innefective from 20 feet or so away.

Assault Rifle- Mid to Close range: Effective at decent range and not as effective as a shotgun, yet still capable at killing someone within close range

Sniper- Long Range: Should be effective at hitting people far away or in mid range, but extremely difficult to kill with at close range.

An Assault Rifle in a game should be unable to hit with every other shot from across the map. Maybe more like 1 in 4 or 5, making it possible, but not very worth it. While a Sniper Rifle should be able to hit at a long range, though more experience is required, and leaves them vulnerable for a close range attack.

 

[gigastrike]

People have glorified the concept of a sniper, taking it to be some sort of super-ninja, and beleive that using a sniper means that they're skilled. They don't go for a sniper because it's really more fun, they like the feeling that using it comes with.

 

[Shoqiyqa]

Assault rifles are long-ranged weapons, at least in computer game level design terms. ... .22 ... can kill someone a mile away. ... 5.56x45mm ... two miles of potential kill ... officially only effective at 200, 300, 400 or 600m, ...

Sniper rifles are supposed to allow a deliberate one-shot kill at considerable distances by being very accurate weapons and using ballistically efficient bullets. A 12.7x99mm sniper rifle isn't much more powerful than a 12.7x99mm MG.

If you want sniper rifles to have a realistic advantage over other weapons, make the other weapons stop being pinpoint-accurate on their first shot.

Shotgun- Close Range: Effective inside small buildings and areas, but mostly innefective from 20 feet or so away.

Assault Rifle- Mid to Close range: Effective at decent range and not as effective as a shotgun, yet still capable at killing someone within close range

Sniper- Long Range: Should be effective at hitting people far away or in mid range, but extremely difficult to kill with at close range.

An Assault Rifle in a game should be unable to hit with every other shot from across the map. Maybe more like 1 in 4 or 5, making it possible, but not very worth it. While a Sniper Rifle should be able to hit at a long range, though more experience is required, and leaves them vulnerable for a close range attack.

That's kind of what I said.

Spoiler: Lots of text!

It would be fairly easy to give the Covert Ops (the only class that gets the sniper rifle in ET) higher accuracy than the Soldier (who gets most of the other weapons) and everyone else lower accuracy on every shot and add inaccuracy of each weapon to that for every shot. It'd be a bit harder to make everything fire bullets on ballistic trajectories at decreasing velocity and have them all tumble as they fall back through the sound barrier (except the .45, .22SSS and 9mm from the perforated barrel of a silenced Sten, all of which emerge subsonic and therefore don't have that problem) but with enough RAM and enough processor speed you could do it.

The shotgun in particular should lose total power over range as well as having its power more and more spread out. Beyond a certain distance, it becomes a matter of chance whether any of the pellets hit you even if you're within the spread area.

Google has a gunwiki article cached [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8Xv1hUqLO4sJ:thegunwiki.com/Gunwiki/FactorsOfEffectiveRange+ammunition+lethal+range&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-a] (hence the long link) that quotes some ranges:

* Absolute maximum effective range: This the "this round is not considered lethal after crossing this threshold" distance. Neither of the other two common "maximum range" values will be greater than this. Purportedly, NATO defines this as the point at which the projectile's kinetic energy dips below 85 joules (62.7 foot-pounds). This is typically claimed when recounting that the P90's effective range is 400 meters on unarmored targets, as classified by NATO. It's worth noting that while the P90 looks neater than the civilian PS90, the extra barrel length increases the muzzle velocity and thus the civilian model actually has a longer absolute max effective range.
* Maximum effective range on a point target: This is the maximum range at which an average shooter can hit a human-sized target 50% of the time. "Point target" is basically a euphemism for hitting a human torso sized area in this context. If this range were greater than the absolute maximum, the absolute maximum would be quoted (a non-lethal hit may be accurate, but it's not effective).
* Maximum effective range on an area target: This is the maximum range at which an average shooter can hit a vehicle-sized target 50% of the time. In other words, this is the maximum distance at which it would make sense to open fire on a group or vehicle, etc. If this range were greater than the absolute maximum, the absolute maximum would be quoted (a non-lethal hit may be accurate, but it's not effective).

M9 Pistol 9mm 1800m 50m ?
AK-47 7.62x39mm ? ~400m ?
AK-74 5.45x39mm ? ? 800m
M-14 7.62x51mm ??? 460m ???
M-16A2 20" 5.56mm 3600m 550m 800m
M2 ("Ma Deuce") 50 BMG 6764m 1500m 1830m
M-4 14.5" 5.56mm 3600m 500m 600m
M-9 (Beretta design) 9mm 1800m 50m ???

* Sniper rifle effective range: Sniper rifles are judged by entirely different criteria. A sniper rifle's effective range is judged based upon the range at which one shot, carefully fired by an expert marksman, is guaranteed to strike the target. Sniper weapons tend not to list point or area effective ranges, as sniper rifle effectiveness is not calculated with 50/50 hit ratios.

5.56mm 400m 600m
7.62x51 NATO 800m 1000m
338 Lapua 1200m 1500m
50 BMG 1500m 2000m

Not the horribly short effective ranges on the pistols. It's not that it's ineffective beyond 50m. It's just rather unlikely to hit your target beyond that range ... unless it's that sniper pistol from HALO or the sniper pistol from Half Life or the sniper pistol from ............

Starting from that, I'm inclined to take the "effective range of fire" on the Modern Firearms [http://world.guns.ru/assault/as00-e.htm] Assault Rifle pages, where it's provided, as being "point target" range.

Some examples:
Steyr AUG: 450-500m
SA80IW: about 500m with SUSAT
Galil: 500-600m 7.62mm with bipod, 450m 5.56mm without, 300m 5.56mm short version, 150-200m 5.56mm SMG-style
M16A1 (US 5.56mm, 1:12 twist): 460m
M16A2 (Euro 5.56mm, 1:7 twist): 550m
Colt M4: 360m

The sniper rifle pages mostly assume it's as good as the shooter holding it. Some quote accuracy in the 0.5 to 1.0 minute of arc range rather than range but the L96 page quotes 800m for 7.62mm and 1100+m for big Magnum calibres.

Then you get the Steyr 15.2mm AMR, which'll blow clear through a modern APC at 1km, the RT20 20x110mm "effective" to about 1800m, the NTW-20 20mm good to 1500m and NTW-20 14.5mm good to 2300m, the Barrett M95 12.7mm good to 1800m and all those other weapons you wouldn't normally issue.

As I said before, even the 360m range (to 50% on-target for an average shooter not leaping around and spraying) of the Colt M4 is probably all the way across the map for most online FPS games, so it would make sense to scale the ranges down, making the pistol and SMGs horribly inaccurate beyond 25m, the carbines not very accurate beyond 125m, the assault rifles in single-shot mode only 50% accurate for the soldier class at 200m and so on and maybe also to allow people to set the range on their sights then curve the bullets' trajectory and reduce power over range (google your own ballistics charts for that).

What a lot of games seem to do instead is have really ineffectual weapons, so someone can run up the road despite it being watched by someone with an MG, knowing that the ten hits they'll take from that gun won't be enough to stop them, whereas one sniper shot could drop them instantly.

Maybe that's why people play sniper. Maybe they're just sick of shooting people in the head with no discernible effect.

 

[Sephychu]

Sniperism allows you to pick out targets, follow them, find out their patterns, and pick them off. Sniper duels are even more fun, and can be short, snappy exchanges of fire or long, drawn out battles of attrition.

 

[slipknot4]

They are slow, bulky and make ALLOT of noise... and people tend to die fast like fuck when shot by one.

It's a more sophisticated way of killing that going in guns blazing like you wore f****** Rambo or something.

 

[Acidwell]

Its fun especially bolt action rifles since you have one shot to get the kill, you can't spray and pray.
Yeah you can get a few lucky shots but the most fun i have sniping is in games like battlefield, games that have bullet drop and you must aim in front.
This is a hell of a lot more skillful than what a lot of people do with most fps games. And it gives you an amazing sense of accomplishment.

 

[fix-the-spade]

I really don't understand this as I can't see how something as slow-paced as sitting back and picking off enemies one-by-one from a mile away can be very much fun.

That is not how you use video game sniper rifles. Anyone who using game sniper rifles like that is doubly satisfying to use said sniper rifle on properly, followed shortly by their tears and accusations of hacks.

Most sniper rifles in games are one/two hit kill cannons. They aren't just effective at long range, they're effective at all ranges and they always go where you point them.

Now get right up in your enemy's face and drop him in one shot, faster than his supposedly close range favouring shotgun/smg/assault rifle can dream of. Then keep moving and engage his mate a hundred metres away before he can even get a shot off at you.

Watch (good) Scouters and Awpers on Counterstrike to see what I mean.
Although it's a bit different in TF2 and Battlefield games...