Snipers in Gaming

How do you feel about snipers in games? Do you think they tend to affect the game negatively or do they have a purpose? Would you find the games more entertaining without them?

Its like the moment a sniper is added the whole gameplay changes. Active engagements are now reduced to hiding behind safe zones until the sniper is taken care of. Shifting focus to taking out the sniper allows the rest of their team to take you out. This often results in the best way to take out a sniper being another sniper.

Yeah they help take out troubling targets from far away that most others can't engage in, but I feel it makes the overall gameplay less fun

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They're usually hamfisted and technically overpowered. A lot of games could be improved by removing them and adjusting the balance around that.

>do they have a purpose?
In a perfect world. Priority elimination.
Most times they become irritating due to the low skill level required to make a kill.

A snipers cheese level really just boils down to level design.

Snipers would be fine if we just had larger maps

depends of the game really. games with heavy weapons and vehicles, snipers are not a problem. a game with only infantry and were heaviest weapon is a LMG, snipers are no fun at all

Splatoon has the only sniper that's reasonably fun to play against and with.

>limited range, even if greater than other weapon types.
>Shots must be charged, otherwise weak and short-ranged.
>Charging exposes and slows you in a game based around guerrilla tactics. Laser sight also shows both your position and where you're aiming.

They're universally anti-fun.

snipers were awesome in Battlefield bad company.

Every sniper is either:
>A K/D-padding asshole who ruins the game by turning it into a deathmatch
>A dumb shitter who thinks he's helping the team but is really just a waste of a character slot
>A blatant hacker enabled by long-range hitscan weaponry
Can't wait for someone to make a game without them.

Biggest issue I feel is the sniper wars that inevitably happen. Most of these games have short respawn timers, so even if a sniper takes them out, they have to worry about the enemy sniper poking around the corner to kill them instead of taking out others on the enemy team.

Yeah you have good snipers picking off tons of people, but more commonly you just have 2 people in the game fighting a neverending battle with each other.

Yeah thats what I feel as well. In a game like Battlefield where there are vehicles and huge maps, snipers are less annoying.

Thy are fine in limited numbers.

Large maps just leads to battlefield or day z scenarios where a quarter of the players are plinking at things from a bajillion yards doing nothing all game.

THIS IS RUSSIAN SNIPER RIFLE
YOU AMERICANS AND UR FAGGY QUICK SCOPES CAN ONLY KILL 1 MAN
WITH THIS I KILL ENTIRE ARMY

You should NEVER be able to start a round with the sniper rifle. It has the capacity to be so completely overpowered in the right hands that it's just unfair.

Class based games need to get rid of the sniper rifle. Arena shooters like Halo/Unreal deal with it best, by making it a power weapon with limited ammo. Or gimmick matches like shotty-snipers (which are fun because everyone is OP).

But TF2's Sniper and Overwatch's Widowmaker should be removed.

Depends on how they're designed and how the game works. Ideally, you want them to be the thing that takes out key targets that would be suicidal head on or harassing small groups of people by picking them off, though this is speaking in a setting that leans more towards military shooters, more realistic ones anyway.

Snipers are always going to be hated though, no matter how well balanced they might be. Dying from a long distance from something you probably couldn't see is always frustrating and snipers get a bad rep for attracting the worst kind of people.

Snipers serve little to no purpose in games. The engagement type they encourage is only fun for one of the players. The factors that make snipers effective and interesting in real life have little to no effect or existence in video games.
The only game where a sniper has served even marginal purpose as a class, TF2, the same role can be achieved much more interestingly by the spy (i.e. the removal of priority targets such as Medics and Heavies).
Many games now give snipers tools such as in BF:BC2, Dirty Bomb, and now Overwatch, which add some of the utility that they would normally sap from their team back in form of the scouting they should nominally be doing. This also has the effect of making their job even easier, however. In any objective-based game mode (i.e. actual interesting gameplay modes), snipers serve no benefit to their team, and are selfishly only enjoyable to play as for the sniper themself, as engagements with snipers are never interesting or combatable in any meaningful way by the target.
There are many other game examples I could use, but suffice it to say that games would be just fine, if not improved, by the removal of snipers. There inclusion is only due to either their real-world existence and their perception as being "cool," and those players that would complain if some sort of sniper was not included in their shooter of choice.

This is absolutely true; they way they are implemented snipers should be a powerful reward, not an option the player has a right to.
And don't forget to include Hanzo, who is a carbon copy of Widowmaker in many ways (high damage single shots, mobility increasing ability for gaining high ground, wall-hack-esque power; trades off close range ability and protection/denial for his ultimate).

Never fun. and you can never criticize their design because of "git gud" idiots who don't understand you can be perfectly capable of overcoming a sniper while also recognizing how it degenerates the game.

If you wanted to fix the Tf2 sniper you could:

Reduce his ammo capacity to a low number like 5 which means he can't stick around an area forever

Increase his reload time, it is incredibly short and provides little opportunity to approach/counterplay when he's supposed to be vulnerable

Make headshots do 124 damage or something that isn't an instakill on any class. He would still be incredibly strong.

Frankly, if the Huntsman didn't have fuckhuge hitboxes it would be better designed than the hitscan rifles. Projectiles = can react/reflect/generate interesting counterplay

Sniper would be cool if you had to rely on positioning more, but the best ones can just neck you from anywhere, and while YES it's skilled, I'm not attacking your fragile ego. they need a fucking skill cap.

The problem is that players will rarely if ever "hide" or do things people in real life would do to protect themselves from a sniper, and with good reason (at least in pubbie matches where there is no coordination). And in all honestly this is not the fault of the player, but the game mechanics.

Absolutely true, see: Red Orchestra 2 (i.e. "Everyone is a Sniper: The Game")

> Close-range scouting snipers were awesome in Battlefield bad company.
ftfy. Also shotgun snipers lol

Snipers can fuck off.

They're fine and have been part of games for a long while. Neck yourself, casual.

Snipers feel like they actually serve a purpose when games limit the amount of them. They get nothing done if there's like 10 of them trying to land those sik 10000m kilz, but if there's one or two depending on the map, they're great. Squad and Rainbow 6 Siege do the sniper role thing great.

Provide reasoning or I will report you.

Snipers are ezpz when you're a 800lb gorilla.

hahaha I've seen those /k/ screencaps too ;D

lol Siege is one of the worst offenders of snipers being a waste on a team! There's like one map where Gaz has a use, SOMETIMES. I won't give up 1/5 of my team for some niche use, I'd rather have any other character or a recruit who can do the same shit, but also be useful in other situations.

They provide an actual punishment for scouting/being unsafe.

When a sniper is shit, it's especially shitty because they don't even act as a meat shield for the team. When a sniper is excellent, it's unfun for everyone else involved. Nowadays I almost exclusively play disruptor classes to make sure no sniper has any sort of fun whatsoever in match with me

does csgo even have a sniper when the awp is pretty much a one hit kill unless you leg them. i really only consider sniping to be headshots because they take just that much more effort than a torso one hit kill

unless youre going off tf2 hitboxes if so LOL

In defense of the TF2 sniper, TF2 is a game of classes countering other classes. If headshots did 124 damage, Heavies would be unchallenged, Engineers would build wherever the fuck they wanted without fear, Demoman would be able to spam from a stationary position the whole game, etc. Plus, headshots on quick fuckers like the scout are hard, and frankly deserve a one-shot kill. Oh, and sniper duels would fucking suck since the number of shots to kill would not change with a headshot versus a bodyshot, making there no reason to aim for the head in a sniper duel.

And it's not like TF2 snipers have no counters. Demomen/Soldiers can chase them away, Spies can sneak right through the chokepoint they're locking down, and Scouts wipe their asses with snipers.

Snipers are bullshit in realistic games where the "classes" all have more or less the same capabilities, but TF2 sniper is alright ON MOST MAPS, at least in vanilla. The Huntsman is some straight horseshit though

Fuck the Japanese E-liter users in Splatoon.

Snipers in games are fun when they're treated the same way as "special" weapons, such as Rockets, rail gun, snipers in Halo. Games that spawn everyone with snipers, or has the ability to, are not fun games. Snipers drag everything to a halt, and can lock down an entire section of the map with little to no penalty. They usually become the main objective, both in obtaining the sniper, and eliminating them.

Fuck, i remember old Halo matches where i would purposely jump off the map with the sniper just to piss people off. Games that have snipers in them tend to revolve around them.

Glaz can take off his scope and 1-hit everyone in CQB though.

>RO2
>everyone is a sniper
Really? Most or the time I've played has involved very close-range combat thanks to the map design.

The counter to a long range class like snipers should be closing the distance and getting in their faces, but that's hardly ever the case for some reason.

noob snipers are deadweight, master snipers are gamechangers

ENEMY FAGGOT SPOTTED!

did they nerf them already? haven't played for a long time but starting at around A- you see only snipers with(cheesed) 9 times dmg up so they don't have to charge all the way up

Most games make it difficult to do this. Especially modern games that revolve around 3-lane maps. A sniper can easily control a single lane by themselves, and if you dont have coordination, good luck getting down that lane.

The only other option in this scenario, aside from another sniper, is to go down another lane and hope that the sniper doesn't switch to a different weapon, or leave.

Not to mention that the game shouldn't revolve around taking out the snipers. It really shouldn't be that hard, nor important.

I don't think the sniper is overpowered on most maps. The Spy can pretty much hard counter him (razorback was a mistake).

On badly designed maps though, he's totally OP. A good sniper will instantly kill you the second you're out in the open for a second.

In all honesty it does have a lot to do with map design, and some areas/maps are done well (Barracks does fine for example). Pacific Storm has less/different issues with it as well.
Many areas and maps, however, turn into pixel hunts where anyone trying to move without smoke is obliterated by an LMG or a player with any rifle who's been camping in the same niche since the start of the match. (Mind you I like RO2 in a lot of ways as well, and these issues are not half as bad as they were in RO1).

Even if they are correctly implemented and balanced, snipers never do their jobs because their playerbase is ALWAYS cancer.

Adding on, snipers tend to chill by their spawn anyway, so it doesn't become a matter of closing the distance, its a matter of getting past the rest of their team, and into their spawn.

>if the sniper is shit you are down a teammate
>if the sniper is good you get an oppressive killer that the entire game must be played around


I see no middle ground here.

Every game has to have something that makes it not fun.

That is the Sniper class in mot cases.

The problem with snipers is it's 100% down to their skill if you die. They're no real way to counter a sniper. Trying to zig sag or whatever is usually a waste of time, so you just end up having to avoid their whole area, which isn't fun.

It depends OP, are you talking about single or multiplayer?
I like them in single players, specially if you play as one. But I could be biased since I have an interest in real snipers

But in mutliplayers that are generally bad for unbalacing the games (with few exceptions)

well, in the case of TF2 Sniper, he's meant to be a glass cannon- he can kill other classes very quickly, so you should be able to kill him very quickly. That was a vital factor to the developers in balancing his long-range power: once you get inside your effective range, he's your bitch.

Except that Sniper gets four weapons which go contrary to that principle, and allow him to be harder to kill, while continuing to be good at killing. This is imbalanced and unfun.

>Razorback

Has basically ruined the already-tentative Highlander meta all on its own; everyone wants it banned, and not just Spies, because the only thing that counters an overhealed Razorback Sniper is a bomb-in (a risky move) or another overhealed Razorback Sniper. Since Spies cannot kill overhealed razorback snipers without getting fucked (youtube.com/watch?v=OFXyE8SLHww), this leads to very slow, boring games where both teams tiptoe around the enemy Sniper's sight lines.

>Darwin's Danger Shield

Probably shouldn't have to explain this one, but a quick rundown: makes Sniper harder to kill by giving him the effective HP of a Demoman (150+bullet resist=176) against every class that attacks with bullet damage. This goes contrary to Sniper theoretically being a glass cannon.

>Cozy Camper

One of the only forms of counterplay to Snipers at long range is making him flinch with bullet chip damage. Cozy Camper removes ALL such counterplay, as well as giving him ungodly regen.

>Jarate

Allows Sniper to stall pushes by forcing the enemy combo to retreat when soaked in piss, protect himself from the class who's meant to counter him (Spy), put out fires, have guaranteed melee crits against enemies at close range with Bushwacka, and make his 50 damage noscopes do 67 damage, all on a short 20s cooldown.

If these four weapons recieved minor nerfs until their usage rates were equal to that of the SMG, TF2 Sniper would be a hell of a lot more tolerable.

None of those things are the problem. Sniper was a hell of a lot more tolerable before Sniper vs. Spy update came out. It's weapon unlocks that are the issue, not the stock class.

The purpose of snipers is simply to fulfill the player archetype/fantasy of the long distance killer with a weakness to being breathed on. Also to kill priority targets like video game medics as suggests.

The problem with sniping in games is that the only cue it takes from reality is the long distance element. Sniping is hard work, a fuckton of math, and even more of a fuckton of waiting. Sniping in video games is far too action oriented, too much moving around, too fast paced.

>US gets a semi-auto rifleman
Its strange how such a minor change in any other game completely revamps the dynamic of gameplay in RS

I know Nips get landmine grenades and knee-mortars but US has practically the best armaments out of the 4 groups
>Flamethrower
>best pistol
>BAR is godlike
>Garand semi-auto for 75% of the team

Its a shame BF1 is gonna completely skip over bolt-actions in favor of "muh fast speed smg and hoovy weepuns frantic gameplay"

Are the MGO' Snipers the only case where they suck? Or I rarely see someone really sniping on this game. Because in this game either you are a good sniper or you simply don't snipe.

Infiltrators on the other hand are overpower shit

THANKS FER STANDIN STILL, WANKAH!

>complaining about Sniper when Soldier exists

A class that has 200 HP, 90-110 burst damage out the ass and no penalty for spamming since LOL, NO FRIENDLY FIRE along with the best mobility out of any class.