SNIPERS: A Nightmare for Developers and Players

The Unbalanced Problems with Snipers in Video Games.
☆ My Other Channel: @Archmeton

⍜ Musicians Featured in Video:

⍜ Timestamps
00:00 - The beginning or Arch
00:47 - All the Guns
04:12 - Is there really a problem?
10:16 - A rushed history of Snipers
14:11 - The stat change part
22:36 - 3 Solutions
29:48 - Conclusion

Arch is a channel that releases high quality 30+ min videos on media like games, series and movies.

[randomindividual]

I recall an old quote of Tf2s balancing issues. It went something like: "Not one class was designed around an individual player having 50k hours of playtime on said class."

[Sethicorn]

You forgot to mention the ORIGINAL Team Fortress, which was based on Quake. The Sniper had a gradual zoom that zoomed in over a few seconds and got more powerful as it zoomed. So it got harder to aim at the same time as it got more powerful. Shooting unzoomed was about the same damage as a standard rifle.

[husveq]

Another thing to consider is hitscan vs projectile. The original snipers in fortnite had massive travel times making shots far harder to hit and feel much more fun to use and fight.

[clearlyenough]

Elephant in the room: Quickscoping is itself a goofy mechanic. Bringing the scope up should force a semi-random placement (within a cone) of the crosshair. Now you have to find your target again, through the magnification. Short-range effectiveness nerfed to where it should be.

[bandana_girl]

The sniper also has balancing options with map design as too many clear sightlines means you have too much long range availability. However, if you let those vantage points exist with some form of path to the point that isn't visible from the point, you can somewhat balance that

[everythingsalright]

One thing you didn't touch on at least for CS GO is that when you buy a sniper, you also gamble on the chance that if you die with it, you just handed a powerful weapon over to the other team. I think that in itself can be a partial balancing factor. Especially if you cant afford another one/good weapons next round.

[georgeisratemint]

Let's not forget that in CS:GO a lot of gameplay revolves around sound cues. the sniper makes noise when you scope in, so players have the choice of walking around scoped in which leaves them open to more angles, or staying unscoped, increasing time to kill, as the snipers are still inaccurate for a few moments after ADS. In higher level CS, giving away your position is almost always a death wish

[phenex]

The main problem in CoD series snipers are the quickscopes. as soon as the ads animation starts, the bullet spread is completly removed meaning, you can just press RMB and LMB together and can one shot a guy at close range, completly skipping the ads part. One fix for this can be to delay the spread removing effect, so that upon ads-ing you will achieve the pinpoint accuracy after completly scoping.

[marcoaltran]

America’s Army 2 was the game that best solved the sniper issue with completely different tools. The aim naturally shakes a lot, and is magnified by the scope. You have to stay still and be crouched or proned. It also takes time for your breathing to calm down, specially if you were running. Still, your aim is never static. You can forget about using a Sniper in close quarters.

[kawithan]

Many games have mechanics similar to over-penetration. Simply, you do less damage up close because they just go clean through the target. This also has the fun mechanic of walbangs dealing MORE damage at close range

[Deadvalley]

The game Project Reality has a feature known as “stability.” The way it works is that if you move around and then aim down sights, your shots will have higher deviation. In order to shoot accurately, you have stay still for a moment to stabilize your gun.

[LordTaos]

The best idea I can come up with is to have an accuracy circle that shrinks. The smaller the circle, the more accurate your shot will be. It doesn't start shrinking until you are standing still. Any movement (other than turning), including changing to/from prone, standing, or kneeling/squatting, the circle resets. Any shot fired can go anywhere within that circle, regardless of where the red dot/site is. Trying to run around and quick scope will cause any shot to wildly miss (most likely).

[skylark.kraken]

5:12 I'm in the TF2 mapping community and the solution is map design, simply break sightlines and provide a safe opportunity to peak such as through a fence so you can check if there is a sniper before going into danger. You can also provide alternate routes such that no single sniper can cover every route requiring them to move around as the enemy will figure out that they shouldn't risk one route and should go the other.
Snipers get a huge amount of focus in map making and as such maps in development have most of the issues solved surrounding snipers while also not making them unfun to play

[maicin]

Crazy how magazine size and reload speed was not mentioned for the main balancing stats of a gun.

[steeeen]

Battlefield 1 utilized a "sweet spot" mechanic. The snipers had a specific range for 1 shot body kills, for example: 150m - 180m. Ranges closer than or further than this "sweet spot" become ~2+ shot(s) to kill. It worked well in BF1 and was really fun. Though it's a viable balance idea due to Battlefield's projectile based weapons and large maps.

[ashleyroberts]

I think one of the main frustrations especially with tf2 is how unfun it feels to fight a sniper where you’ll be fighting someone else or doing something else and die suddenly and without warning out of nowhere from across the map with the best counter play being simply to avoid them that generally leads to a lack of feedback and general displeasure in the matchup especially with sniper being the only long range class in the game with all the others being mid to close range

[shaunwu]

Quick note, Quake 2 does have the railgun which is a sniper (which doesn't even have ads). Quake 2 was released in 1997, before Rainbow Six. Arena shooters in general already balance snipers through faster movement options (which kind of transferred to Titanfall when they also had fast movement).

[ME_]

quickscoping becoming it’s own thing just made this fight that much more complicated

[johnk]

The quake Railgun is a pretty cool solution I think, due to how fast you can move through the arena, the you have to have a really good aim to even consider using the weapon

[simmons]

One thing I always thought changed how I think of sniping in games as a whole is the Sniper Elite series. Breath holding mechanics to steady shake or focus your scope isn’t new, but sprinting around raised your heart rate and when you topped out it was almost impossible to pull off a critical shot. Most importantly the ammunition you outfitted your kit with was key for success. Armor piercing is obvious, Soft-points for huge damage on unarmored enemies, Subsonic rounds for quieter shots, Match Grade for long distance shots. I always thought games needed to mess around with that sort of stuff more especially if it’s a game where you have to economy your kits.