SNIPERS: A Nightmare for Developers and Players

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."

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.

Splatoon is not exactly an FPS game but honestly it's definitely figured out how to make a fair sniper in my opinion. All they did was add a forced wind up every time you take a shot, and sprinting forces you to wind up all over again. However EVERY sniper one shots no matter what when you land a hit. This completely changes how snipers play in Splatoon, because it forces the sniper to be a lot more committal with their aim and makes more chances to bait out shots without instantly dying. And this also allows the devs to make entirely new ways to balance snipers, by making faster charging ones with less range, and slower charging ones with more range. It's a unique take on snipers that I'd like to see if it's possible to be put into a FPS game one day. One other thing to note in Splatoon is that snipers have pinpointers not just visible to you, but to everyone else in the game, which generally makes fights a lot less "hold this one angle".

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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).

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

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).

I know I’ll get buried and I’m late to the party but here we go: a solution I haven’t seen mentioned yet is what Phantom Forces does with the gyro-jet carbine. For those who don’t know I’ll explain: The gyro-jet in Phantom forces has a reverted curve for damage. This meaning that damage scales with distance. This is accurate to real life actually where the bullets are just glorified rockets. Applying this concept to all snipers would mean that on short ranges they do little damage, where on long range they deal massive damage. Granted you would probably also have to apply a curve to discourage mid range use but I digress. I think this is the best simple solution to this problem. I also realize that this would make the game way less realistic but I think this is the best solution.

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.

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

Kraber G100 from Titanfall 2 is basically the same but it still works with how hard it is to land and how fast everyone moves, to effectively use it you have to be absolutely devoted to it. There's also the charge rifle which works against titans and oneshots pilots but takes ages to, you guessed it, charge. They're honestly really fun and extremely challenging to use together but can be really powerful in 1v1s despite being a death sentence against teams.

Unreal Tournament 99' is the oldest game I know to have a sniper and some fairly large maps that you can use it, it was headshot one tap and some torso shots one tap on a non-armoured wounded enemies. It had no scope walking movement so aiming was pretty easy against some player types that don't utilize the movement which this game was known for besides the weapon types hence balancing the power of the sniper in close quarters and in the open by giving them the double movement key tap to quick dash.

I think an important thing to take into consideration is the map. Maps heavily influence the weapon choice of a player, which in itself could be a pretty good way of balancing a sniper

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

I can't remember which game did this, but my favorite "fix" for snipers is Slow ADS, High Zoom, and Terrible accuracy when non-scoped. It essentially makes it to where it is only usable at medium and long range, complimenting shotguns that are only usable at close range. When I play Judge on Val, I play with the expectation of using the Sheriff if I have to move points or I have to outright pick up another gun if able.

I think dealing less damage in close quarters is the best solution, you can do this with a charge as mentioned in the video or just a damage drop off the closer the target is. So you would do 50 or 75 damage up close and if you want to, headshots can still be one shot kill at close range.