Online Sniping...how bad do you think it will get?

[Grizzly]

Ok, first off I'm going to say the sniping in most online games is becoming ridiculusly popular, but there a few major problems.

1. You gain absolutely no skill other than being able to snipe well.
2. You do not help your team and only benefit yourself.
3. Sitting in a corner and waiting for someone to come along skipping along and then snipe them does not make you all that macho.
4. No matter what you say, it still does not help your team. Most sniping weapons on games are WAY to ****ing powerful and should take at least 3 hits to kill. PLUS, it isn't that hard anymore since the physics deny you the speed to shake off a sniper. Basically you can just jog/kind of run, or jump. All make you easy targets.
5. If sniping is all you do you really do not belong in an FPS game.

Now that I got that out of the way, I'd like to explain a few things that has been happening with many online FPS games. Probably the biggest example would be Halo 2. My friend got online that game once and was saddened and surprise to see so many snipers and the like. Pretty much all I've seen and experienced is the best clans have amazing snipers who sit at each corner and wait. Area 51 was probably one of the worst online games with snipers. You couldn't get ANYWHERE without some moron sitting in some spot squatting or laying down and sniping your ass. And then when you spawn back and get a sniper gun yourself to get some payback some noob comes in behind your and kills you behind your back.

Recently I've been playing Battlefield 2 for the PS2 and oh man is it almost as worse as Area 51. It seems there are three kinds of people. First, the snipers who pick a designated spot and stay there every...damn...time. All they do is snipe, snipe, and more sniping. Then there's the noobs who have amazing luck in running up out of your sight and killing you when you can't even fire off a shot. Then there is the people who actually do something. They defend, they attack, they risk their ass just to secure a spot for the other team members. But the ratio here is 70% snipers, 20% noobs, and 10% hardworking FPS players. There is an unbalance with this.

I'd also like to further explain how sniping cannot be THAT tactical. First off, as I had mention...you do NOT gain other skill except learning to aim with the one weapon. Secondly, most people who do snipe do it because they really don't want to make their ass a target and actually run into an enemy base and do something. I'll make an exception to the snipers who cover their people, but that is the last thing that is actually tactical about it.

So, basically in creating this thread I would like to you to post your experiences within a game and the problem with snipers. I am pretty sure someone will come in here trying to prove me wrong, but aside from that I really would just like to see other peoples view points on the issue. Plus I've become enragingly frustrated by the amount of people who sit on their ass and just snipe.

[-Xu-]

Loads of people do it because it's the easy option. I've never been online Halo 1 or 2, but when ever I go to a mates house playing on Halo multiplayer sucks.
If it's just two people, thats fine, because there's no real point of sniping, but as we all know the fun of multiplayer lies in the masses.
We once had one of the little lan things set up so 8 of us could play, I'm not an x-box owner, the other 7 were, but even though I often lose, I still have a good laugh, unless they all get into sniping mode, which they often did and still do.
7 idiots waiting for someone to move, I went and got myself some snacks, and they were still there.
Pointless.
It takes the game, competition and fun out of FPS's.
Sniping is ok, but only in small doses.

[DasHnGasH]

I think people like the idea of a one hit kill. I know that in games like Socom just one good hit wiht the M82a1a and the person is dead no matter where u hit them. The very unpopular semiautomatic weapons take longer to take someone down and therefore people dont feel all that powerful.

[Autumn]

I'm here to challenge your post.

You appear to be describing camping, more than sniping.

I'll talk about if from a UT point of view. It's similar to some of the camping that goes on in DM instagib games. Then again, in many DM games I've played I've seen players camping out the areas where good weapons spawn and they get owned. Especially if it is 1v1. Why is this? Because if you camp one spot you miss out on all the power-ups and the huge assortment of weapons that the map will have on offer.

Quite simply, if you can't take out a camping sniper, then your skills aren't good enough. I'd rather play against someone who crouches in a corner than someone who challenges me for map control. The best combination of weapons to use in UT2k4 is the shock rifle primary fire followed by a shot from the lightning gun. This is because both weapons are "instant hit" and offer excellent precision. You'll find, these shots are made without any zoom being used and can hit other players no matter where they are. If they use the same camping spot each time then even better.

If, you're playing something like Counter-Strike, it becomes harder to deal with a camper. However, you get people practicing bunny-hopping on large open maps, such as awp_map to counter snipers. Also, the good players will use the AWP but they won't just hide in a corner, they'll play "actively" while dominating with their AWP; and of course this prompts other players to also use the AWP with proficiency.

Let's take Day of Defeat, where maps are designed for camping since you need to protect captured points. Even then the campers aren't unstoppable, because there's often a long route around the map to camping positions, as well as grenades and the camper being stormed by a few people all firing at him.

How can you categorically say camping does not help your team? What if the mode was Team Deathmatch? Or what about CTF where you're defending your flag? I remember I just stood in an alcove to the left of my flag on the UT map Niven and took out a series of people before I got killed. However, it bought valuable time for my team.

Anyway, enough of that. As for my experiences with camping:

I found it very annoying in Day of Defeat. There were some completely dark corners where people would hide, with their mounted machine gun and you'd die very quickly. Eventually you could break their position, although it would take quite a few deaths.

In TFC I didn't really like the turret building abuse the engineer class had. I would just run into a base and there'd be 3 turrets at the choke and I'd die before killing them all. I'd die even faster if the engineer was also there shooting me with his shotgun.

There are a lot of camping noobs in CS. The most well-known example would probably be Terrorists camping the entrance of the main tunnel on Dust. Of course, this isn't a good tactic for the Terrorists as Dust favours the CTs and if both sides sit the game out Terrorists lose. If you play a public game on Dust not many Terrorist players care about getting the bomb planted and set-off. They seem more focused on getting a decent KPD score so they camp it out, while those who care will try and push the CTs. Similarly, this is what would happen on Assault, the map which favoured T. It'd get frustrating after a while so I switched to mainly playing fun maps.

[Grizzly]

Yeah, you definitely have a point with people who camp snipe and others who actually move around and take different positions to gain advantage. But let my explain this a little more.

Again, on Battlefield 2 there is one map that's basically the length of an airstrip and pretty much one side of the map has quite high ground for snipers to sit up there and just take out people from your own base. For example, I can spawn near the flag on CTF and try to go get a veichle...it means I must move in open space for them to perfectly snipe me. So, you want to take out those campers, right? It's 90% impossible. Why you ask? Because in order to get even near them you have to run all the way from your base to their base without being seen (which is also impossible) and if you use a veichle they can just as easily snipe you out of it. It's a one way street.

So, snipe camping is extremely effective on this map (and many others) to where you can't do jack shit to get around them without being discovered or killed. And trust me, I've tried to get around them a million times. So tell me, would it make me less skilled to not be able to kill a camping sniper when you can't even sneak up on them so easily? It's really the main thing that is giving me so much frustration. I wouldn't make an issue about this problem if there was a decent way around the problem itself, but in some of these games it's just ridiculus.

[Autumn]

Ah, I see. I played some Battlefield 2 about a year ago but I didn't really get into it. The issue is people abusing poor map design, and if the map leads to such things happening I tend to avoid playing on it. It reminds me of Citadel in UT2k3, which I absolutely refused to play on because people could go to the top of the tower where the lightning gun was and snipe you as you were running from base to base. Like I said, in Day of Defeat it isn't so bad because you can just take a long trek through part of the map to reach camping positions, and on CS you get a lot good bunny hoppers, although it became somewhat harder after 1.3, but it's still possible.

[nix]

If you want a higher skill level in BF2 it would be advised to join a clan and get some matches into you. As this is where you will see a team working their ass off aiming for the objective.

No point in complaining about people in public, some people play for the objective, some play to raise their stats and some play whatever role that excites them. Sniper being one of them, despite what you may think - sneaking around and sniping people from afar is quite fun and very rewarding when you pull a shot off.

However i do understand your frustration when your working your ass of to defend a base thats being attacked by tanks and you see like 2-3 snipers climbing a ladder that you know they will be of no help.

Battle field 2 is a bad example of how usefull snpiers can be, due to the fact that you can hide from snipers in a tank/plane.

But Counter Strike source on the other hand is a different story, the key memeber in any CSS match is the AWPer (Sniper) I'm quite an effective sniper myself and can "pwn" a whole team with the sniper, close range and long range and i never stay mobile for too long.

So to your question "Are snipers useless" certainly not, if you see a shit sniper dont get angry at him for being a shit sniper, as hes more than likely useless with any other role also, just ignore and do your thing.