SNIPERS: A Nightmare for Developers and Players

[@randomindividual769]

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."

[@zombine7103]

That is the only thing we are supposed to say when someone says sniper is unbalanced. I have been playing tf2 for years and i only have 600 hours. Its also because i play many other games and online shooters but you get the idea. How to solve sniper issue? Well, this is a life issue. The issue is that some people dont have it.

[@zombine7103]

@@Randus1058 thats a goo-*aahhhaamm* an evil approach.

[@marsupialmestre9088]

@@Randus1058 lmfao

[@kaidwyer]

@@zombine7103 what can I say… evil is effective

[@zombine7103]

@@kaidwyer yes but also the easiest. Solving peacefully requires skill. Its in our nature to chose the easy. I also sometimes want to kill specific stereotypes but i dont even think it will solve anything.

[@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.

[@justascarecrow6988]

Few things as nice as firing a projectile at an angle you know will be peeked and crouching into cover to hear the kill sound. It makes for great mindgames and also encourages thinking ahead, as opposed to "just" pointing at heads.

[@dukeradwardthe5th843]

The Huntsman begs to differ

[@ethanspradling]

Didn't the snipers in both Titanfall games also work like this? I remember them not only having travel time like but also some bullet drop, requiring you to lob your shots depending on how far away you are.

[@hisyam1664]

@@dukeradwardthe5th843 more of a gimmicky weapon, no?

[@Dark_TBE]

@@dukeradwardthe5th843 can't 1 shot on a fully charged body shot so it's balanced in my opinion

[@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.

[@MrShkolololo]

It's also was the first Unreal Tournament by the time of CS1.6, which had pretty deadly sniper rifle, especcially on large maps. And yep, it looked like balance as all the guns have some killer features like really big boom or dedly substance blobs spawns

[@MmmMmph1968]

THANK YOU. I got so annoyed when he skipped TFC and went straight to Counter-Strike.

[@Noway-sg8md]

ya he didnt mention UT or TFC, zzz

[@farbeyond37]

Man the biggest challenge with sniper in the original quakeworld TF mod for quake was the fact we were all playing on a dialup connection back then. I was rocking a 14.4 dialup connection on AOL back then. I didn’t hit many sniper shots.

[@fahrradmittelfranken8207]

@@MmmMmph1968 TFC, Half life (had an actual sniper weapon) or Quake 2. The guy must be very young to not know all these games.

[@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.

[@iain.collins]

100%. Came here to say this. There are a bunch of things you can do to mitigate the higher damage output but scoping should take longer and hip fire accuracy should be low (or not possible). You don't need to fully model fatigue but you can use drift over time or breadth control to encourage players to not camp scoped ready to fire all the time, which is also more engaging. One hit weapons in PvP are usually an awful idea and best avoided as a rule; 2 hits to kill from full health with a bolt action is deadly enough.

[@acertainname7247]

@@iain.collins The best balancing for snipers imo. Is bad hipfire accuracy, decentish ads speed, no 1 shot torso but all range 1 shot head. this forces the gimmicky hipfire/ quick scoping out the window, while allowing skilled players to still keep snipers as a very deadly weapon.

[@lamalello]

But quickscoping is so fun and so hype

[@acertainname7247]

@@lamalello I agree and there can obviously be games that allow that. But if you want to make a true balanced game for an actual competitive scene and what not you sometimes need to forgo the more fun aspects like that.

[@Blackeye1987]

also i never seen a sniper jump around with tgeir rifle or shoot it correctly while walking / standing / crouching

[@ka1withan1]

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

[@randomcow505]

correct me if im wrong but I remember halo 3 having this or it was suposed to have this I found a limited edition version of the game many years ago, the one that came with a book on enemys and weapons and i remember it saying in that book each of the weapons damages at diferent ranges, with long range weapons doing less damage at closer ranges but at the same time I do not remember ever feeling like this mechanic was in the game itself

[@Right1994]

I find it funny how he does mention Battlefield, but not that Battlefield 1 has exactly the mechanic you mentioned here. It's even used to differentiate the rifles against each other, with different rifles having different one hit zones.

[@cactusskeet]

1:46 There could be more aspects depending on the game, mobility can branch out into aiming walkspeed and hip walkspeed, handling could branch into recoil, ADS time, or sway, and range could branch into a damage range (less damage over long ranges) or velocity which is how fast a bullet travels.

[@Idk_what_to_name]

I was about to comment something like this, another solution is make the shotgun have better rof and mobility and handling than the sniper

[@BigBoss-sm9xj]

@@Right1994exactly

[@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

[@libingmeme8474]

you also need to constantly reposition and have bad mobility for at least a little bit before you whip out the knife, which is too late when you're already getting slowed by shots. Anyone that's not an MG lowelo dog can easily win awps

[@GshockBeats]

and this is why woxic plays on serial killer high sens so he never has to scope out hahaha

[@Eridelm]

Moreover, the amount of money you recieve after kill are the lowest, if we deeply look onto in-game economics, you can get a kill or two, still die with lost round and not get a new rifle in the next. This ultimately pushes the player to analyse, are they confident to make a push in enemy controlled territory or they would rather save it to the next round, thus keeping on team-economy with high valued gun. That's what I think is the best balance point in tactical shooters. Snipers almost everytime have a low balance so they have to rely on their teammates or switch gameplay to money grinding SMG's/shotguns e.t.c

[@iller3]

...only if you've got headpones on, and they're cranked up to EAR BLEEDING. They're basically legal wall hacking and I've never agreed with the people who believe it's realistic to turn footfall up to 11 and still call it "fair and tactical" gameplay

[@libingmeme8474]

@@iller3 you can hear scoping on any volume, you don't need your volume through the roof. I'm pretty sure you can hear it even on speakers, but idk why anyone would do that to themselves.

[@marcoaltran1581]

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.

[@craig5340]

AA 2 best game ever...... No scope/crosshair MOS mount mekenna .. I wish i could still play it :( Back when bunny hopping was a bannable offence. Now its just a 13 year olds way of moving ugh the good old days haha

[@ronarscorruption]

This is very much what I was going to say - although I didn't have an example ready. This is a more fair, fun, and realistic way to balance a sniper rifle than any of the balances mentioned in the video.

[@DeadSpacedOut]

@@craig5340 bunny hopping is annoying, but banning people for bunny hopping is pretty petty and lame.

[@craig5340]

@@DeadSpacedOut Never said I want it banned I am telling you this is how it used to be . For the people around for the entire fps genre

[@DeadSpacedOut]

@@craig5340 I didn't say you said you wanted that, all I said was that it's petty and lame.

[@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).

[@goofyhawk7170]

world of tanks does exactly that

[@tyler3201]

That is called weapon sway.

[@LordTaos]

@@tyler3201 I played a game (probably COD) where the weapon would make a small figure 8 when looking down the sights. When you say weapon sway, that's what I think you mean. My idea isn't that. For my idea, even if I had the sights on someone's head, if the accuracy circle was too big, I would still miss (most likely). The round could go anywhere within that area & it wouldn't be an accurate shot, until you remained still for a certain amount of time.

[@wayisrimlord]

The problem (if i understand you right) is that most games have this feature on all guns. Also this is what he was saying with snipers are bad for pushing at the very end.

[@Avelcaine]

​@@LordTaosI believe you're thinking of reticle bloom, which is utilized pretty universally in shooters to represent the effect of recoil, but can also be applied to movement or any other action.

[@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

[@neoumbrela4935]

This only applies to TF2. In other games like CoD snipers run and gun as if they were shotguns and still have the range advantage. It's funny that even the most balanced sniper type in the video is considered OP by the community. But I think this video is proof of how well designed TF2 and why it has such a persistent community.

[@josepetersen7112]

Or there’s the real life solution, which is that everyone dies to the mortars, sniper included.

[@alface935]

@@josepetersen7112 Bad idea

[@alface935]

@@neoumbrela4935 Yeah in Call Of Duty i have no idea how we could fix that while still being fun to use the snipers

[@josepetersen7112]

@@alface935 Oh, I didn’t mean that realistic fire support was a good idea for games, just commenting on how in real life 90% of combat is indirect fire.

[@everythingsalright1121]

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.

[@Twoface698]

Furthermore, it is very easy to bait out a shot from the AWP and push immediately afterwards while it still reloads Team coordination makes this even easier

[@LuxthXO]

Also utility balences snipers alot

[@gooburt]

@@LuxthXO agree. utilities destroy the awp, flash and smoke.

[@butter_nut1817]

The awp is OP but it's a key game mechanic of the game. It's like a map feature or dangerous part of the map. It makes the enemies economy even more important.

[@smokysams2043]

It's still annoying when its 90% of my deaths

[@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.

[@prince0panda914]

yea but iv come to close to screaming the n word coz someone sniped me from 200 meters away and theres nothing i could do abt it, causing a decrease in fun for close-quater players

[@oba9ara]

@@prince0panda914 Just admit you have racist tendencies without blaming the game LMAO

[@mousetrap4751]

@@oba9ara every gamer, racist or not, has come close or has said the n word at least once.

[@Littlevampiregirl100]

that was my first thought too going into the video, that the sniper could just be modified to be weaker on closer targets. other solution could be that its accuracy would become worse the closer the target is, where being too close to an otherwise clear shot will make it have a much higher chance of bullet spreading away from a target than a shotgun would around corners. the game can show your vision gradually blurring more and more while scoped, the more you aim at closer surfaces, until it becomes completely blurred aiming at something right in front of you. so shotgun would pretty much always win even with a whole wasted mag. would completely discourage anyone from even attempting to use a sniper in close combat, so snipers stick to zones they are capable in. bonus balancing point could be that if target moves into you, they shove your sniper rifle aside so you cant shoot them at all, so you are forced to use secondary in corners where you can get caught off guard. like how some games disable using bows if warriors get too close, makes aiming impossible. i feel like i have seen so many action movies where people grab pistols to disarm someone from shooting, its strange no one thought of it as a balance against sniper rifles. those guys probably dont want you to push around their heavy and unbalanced gun while sticking your smgs in their face lol

[@prince0panda914]

@@oba9ara I was exaggerating for dramatic effect I don’t use the n-word when I get sniped

[@simmons218]

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.

[@Deadvalley200]

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.

[@Bazzooka1518]

Exactly my thoughts watching this video, and why I have mostly dropped casual shooters (who needs "weapon balance" when the biggest threats are grenades, vehicles and artillery? Lol)

[@thisgoddamusernamestoodamnlong]

Destiny2 also balances their snipers this way, and it's why they feel great

[@wilville3752]

Same with cod for quickscoping you let go of all movement keys for a couple milliseconds then shoot

[@Phoenixstorm36]

Didn't excpected that PR would be mentioned here, but I'm glad you did :3

[@jennalove6755]

@@thisgoddamusernamestoodamnlong no they feel great because they game literally has aimbot.

[@bandana_girl6507]

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

[@pedronabais1456]

but that just means an class in game with 8-12 shrikens alot of the creativity and kind of maps you can make

[@vivelespatat2670]

The best solution to the Sniper issue is to not add it in the first place.

[@catocall7323]

Bazookas! Clear sight lines no problem, just barrage the shit out of any obvious sniping position.

[@nyaleph]

Same thing for utility... Snipers are balanced by having their usual position being flashed or their view blocked by smokes

[@jatollar]

@@vivelespatat2670 That's also how you lose millions of players as well. You'll still play the game if there are snipers, I won't play the game if I can't snipe.

[@legitXsuspect]

One thing that is commonly overlooked is the focus/depth of field. At long range (as intended) the scope would be clear. But if running around in close quarters, everything would appear blurry (as they do in real life). Scoops are sighted in for specific ranges and if outside of that range it objects would appear blurry. They could tune it to be difficult to to differentiate targets from the environments. Making it harder for snipers to run around close quarters.

[@RAndrewNeal]

This sounds like a great solution. But it introduces a ton of calculations for the GPU to handle every frame, without the option to disable it (as doing so would defeat the purpose). Not only is it somewhat computationally expensive to blur an image, but it would have to get the distance of every pixel (or every mesh, for performance sake) from the viewport in 3D space and factor it into the blur calculation.

[@user-sl6gn1ss8p]

​@@RAndrewNeal I think with things like deffered rendering and for medium to high end systems, that would probably be fairly ok tho (emphasis on think : p)

[@halycon404]

@@RAndrewNeal Seems like there would be a way to cheat that. Instead of calculating every pixel just figure out which pixels aren't blurred and blur everything else. We don't care about the objects too close or too far away, only the ones in the sweet spot. And since distance calculations already have to be done for meshes anyway, just lock it to already present mesh value. Just pick a distance mesh layer to set as the default range for a sniper rifle and blur everything that isn't on that layer.

[@jkl944]

Um thats ALSO ignoring the fact that whwn your sighted in for that range its going to affect where your bullet goes. Say youre sighted in for 100 meters and someone is standing 10 in front of you. You aim at his upper chest and shoot, bullet flies over his head because its sighted for 100 meters away, not 10. Only game ive ever seen do this is bf4 (proving most computer nerds know nothing about how guns work xd)

[@RAndrewNeal]

@@halycon404 I guess if you want to do it in stages instead of a more life-like gradient, that would ease the load. And I didn't realize that the distance to the viewport already needed to be gotten, so that helps. I'd still worry that requiring a blur effect to be enabled might make the sniper unplayable for people on a low-spec system, though.

[@ashleyroberts4403]

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

[@Nyx_2142]

Oh no, a sniper functioned entirely as designed and you got killed in a PvP game, the horror.

[@Nonname_From_The_Internets]

Ummm... You have solve problem with: ninjaneers, normal and bonk scouts, rocket jumpers, jetpackers, uber medics, heavy, that do difficult to shoot, huntsmans, other snipers, flires, skying demoknights, dodging, and SPY (and if you say about razorback i can say only one thing: SPY HAS GUN AND HE CAN SHOOT). Sniper isnt op because it needs normal hands of user, just fps users has nornal hands and can hit to head (and some of them has aimbots and xray, yes)

[@endzor]

​@@Nonname_From_The_Internets here's why it doesn't solve problem: Ninjaneer has to get behind enemy first to kill that sniper and thus there's extremely high chance of him meeting sniper bullet/other enemies on his way 9/10 times he tries to sneak by (also remember sentries covering chokes and engineer lacking any way to deal with them) Rocket jumpers get sniped either when they jump or mid air and lose all momentum or even die if they have

[@endzor]

​@@Nonname_From_The_Internetsoh well if only tf2 was a popular casual game with you meeting only gibus snipers every game. Oh would you look at that - the game is dying, casual is filled with aimbotters and community servers are filled with nolifers. And even if games would be filled with noobs/normal players (I guess ur definition of normal is casual) when u meet a nolifer your gameplay is ruined and u better quee for another server. Sniper is limited only by their skill, positioning is useless because of quickscoping and the fact of snipers almost always being in the backlines.

[@TheRecklessBravery]

I have an idea. Make the sniper rifle not do as much damage at close range

[@SamercamYT]

I also think to balance snipers there needs to be a consideration of map design, game mode and mobility. In a game where you can only strafe, maybe crouch, and maybe jump, and moving punishes you by ruining your accuracy, it can be very hard to contest a sniper rifle. In contrast in team fortress 2 where spies can go invisible, soldiers and demos can fly through the air, scouts can double jump and run quick, and all damage, even chip damage gives meaningful aimpunch when scoped, it makes it much harder for a sniper. Even then people still find him overpowered, or at least non-interactive which is a different discussion altogether. But even with that mobility, there are some maps and game modes in tf2 that make the sniper's strengths shine, and some where he becomes much weaker due to the back and forth nature of constantly repositioning and maps being more closed off. Great video though, as always. I think games need to stop chasing some weird concept of realism with the weapons, and just change snipers to be fun, interactive, and have counterplay and pop off potenial just like any other weapon would. Who cares if it's not realistic if it's fun! The reverse falloff damage charge mechanic you mentioned is a good example of this. in general, reverse falloff damage makes sense and has been suggested many times in a few communities for a gun type that is meant to serve the inverse function of a shotgun.

[@murdurmuffin7872]

I definitely agree with your first paragraph. The second... I would suggest that you consider that many of us consider realism the fun itself. The reason people find one hit body snipes "fun" is because it's effective and they know that a .300, .308, .412, or .50 cal round ripping through someone in spitting distance really is absolute destruction... pulling it off with multiple consecutive kills feels extremely rewarding because you know YOU DID THAT. We make some concessions in games, take things for granted like regenerating health. Sure you killed that guy with your sniper before he killed you... but only once you play Escape From Tarkov do you realize that you are still going to die as your character is coughing up blood and close to blacking out while you frantically search for a bandage to hold your AR shredded intestines together. Winning a fight due to tactics and not inherent mutant/god abilities to survive violence upon your body is it's own, different, kind of fun. Arguably, we could be having the same discussion about grenades in video games. Realistically, a handheld deformed ball will kill anyone within 10 feet (or more) without even needing to expose oneself to use it. They are also so high in availability we think of them more like ammo than a weapon. I haven't seen a lot of crazy grenade montages since Halo's sticky grenades though... and few people complain about them either.

[@Connorses]

I say we make a game with no hitscan at all.

[@dancintilldeath]

ever got one-shot in the air in tf2?

[@SamercamYT]

@@murdurmuffin7872 Yeah it wasn't my most thought out paragraph. I think realism in games like tarkov is a great thing because as you explained, the realism IS the appeal. But in a game like Valorant- there is NO REASON for any of the guns to have realism. I also believe that many games go for realism as part of the appeal assuming people care- but I don't think the majority of gamers are itching to have a perfectly modeled real life gun. Those folks exist, but I am not convinced they are a majority worth catering to across every genre of shooter. If the purpose of the game is competitive, esport type gameplay/balance, I think realism NEEDS to be sacrificed. I don't think that is important for all games though and it is perfectly fine to be realistic as part of the appeal. And if you want realism AND competitive stuff just get rid hitscan snipers! People are too good at games now.

[@magicalchicken5667]

@@purp40 Later call of duty games aren't hitscan, just very fast projectiles. Also there isn't really such a thing as both, unless you go with a method that sends hitscan traces in intervals moving forward at a certain speed from their firing position, that's the only real "both" method that I know of (Don't know of anything that really uses that though) Also, unless I'm misunderstanding, your mentioned both method doesn't really make much sense, that hitscan check sounds useless and would just be a projectile regardless, unless you just missed some info to explain that there.

[@kennytran1968]

A small thing to note about the sniper in team fortress 2 is that all of his guns have a laser dot that projects on any wall he is looking at while scoped. This helps to balance out the sniper by 1) alerting the sniper's opponents of a sniper's sightline whenever they see the dot on the wall and 2) for more experienced snipers, who knows to place the dot on a different wall in order to not alert the enemy team of his sightline, it forces him to spend just a second more repositioning his crosshair in order to land his shot.

[@kravkik7930]

I agree, but as a sniper main, I think they should make it similar to mvm's bot sniper, it should be a transparent laser that decreases its opacity as the sniper charges his shot, that should at least give most players a chance without having to resort to nerfing his damage/range. Also I think we can all agree that bodyshots need to be nerfed, they take significantly less skill to pull off as headshots yet can still give you 150 dmg.

[@Cletus-Hellfire]

It is always about balance which means there will not be much difference between the weapons which becomes boring. Snipers should be effective and it anyone can use it so there is no point in nerfing it. If I'm using a sub machine gun, I do not want it to operate like a handgun. Or hand-to-hand combat being the same as using a knife. Snipers are not exactly invincible as you can throw bombs at them. Run and gunning is the best way to die. If it is a game with no respawns then you get in one or two hits and die.

[@Buglin_Burger7878]

That doesn't work at all though, most classes can be 1-shot instantly with 0 charge. Those that can't have slow projectiles or are Heavy which is dead anyways. The sniper doesn't have to aim and is rewarded for not aiming by being aware of potential spies and having a wider field of view.

[@Draco-9158]

The dot is small and can blend in on some walls. You won't always see it to know there's a sniper

[@firewulfz]

Also, the demo class helps fix a lot of the short range sniper issues because of how much the grenades can bounce I would always bounce the grenades off the door frame, and since snipers had such low health, it would normally take care of them before I would even enter a line of sight

[@shaunwu3910]

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).

[@Twisted_Logic]

Even then, the rail has been considered to have balance issues by many. I like Reflex's answer: the stake gun. Turns the rail into a projectile weapon, but in return you can use it to make stanfable surfaces on walls

[@sk8erbyern]

Half Life also have sniper (crossbow actually but it functions as a sniper) and it naturally released before CS did.

[@matthewgagnon9426]

That just means the amount of skill you need to have to kill people with it goes up. Among the best of the best the railgun is still just as broken as it is among the best in other games.

[@nowamajormotionpictureeven3797]

@@matthewgagnon9426 Quake 2 didn't even try to balance all of its weapons though. There were 4 distinct tiers of weapons, and part of the game was a race to get top tear weapons. (1.blaster, shotgun, machine gun. 2. chaingun, hyper blaster. 3. Super shotgun, grenade launcher. 4. rocket launcher, rail gun and BFG) The rocket launcher helped balance the shotgun/sniper divide by giving skilled players the ability to shoot around corners and behind cover, as well as get multi kills. Camping with the rail gun for too long usually meant getting second or third place. However, yes, 1 vs 1. almost always ended up as a rail gun duel where people would only use the rocket launcher for rocket jumping.🤣

[@YUNGRALDO]

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.

[@Esketh19]

I have fond memories of sniping from the top of the towers in facing worlds in that game

[@johnk9727]

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

[@zanitzeuken]

i loved that thing in Q3. it was definitely tricky to use, but so satisfying when you figured it out. some toons were easier to frag than others just because of their size and movement patterns. there was this old NES game called "Hostage: Rescue Mission" and it had a sniper phase where you had to shoot dudes in a window before sending in the SWAT FPS phase. while aiming at the 'whack-a-mole' windows, your crosshair would shake and jiggle, simulating your breathing/bloodflow/natural limb fatigue. it wasn't like that in the FPS phase, so they understood real world mechanics. they should bring that back.

[@raidzeromatt]

You pretty much have to learn how to use all the weapons though or you can't keep moving

[@ekinteko]

I came to say the same thing. You cannot "charge" a Sniper, not unless it was an Magnetic-Shot (or some sort of Energy/Plasma). In which case, Q3A came to mind with the Railgun. It was both over-powered AND balanced, this is because it required a lot of skill, since characters can run fast, jump everywhere, and teleport. The other thing that came to mind was the Ballistic Shot in Doom 2016. But that's mainly a single-player game. When it comes to more "real life" games, that is when the Sniper becomes difficult to balance. You can't have people flying about. You can't charge-up a shot, I mean you can, but only by having all the bolt-action use a Huge Bullet with really long reloading and aiming times. So not really an option, or a fun one. And it makes no logical sense that the damage in close-range should be lower than one at long-range. Not to mention many balancing properties make the game less fun (really long reloading, really heavy walking, really really long aim down time). So it's a mess to sort out. So what can you do? There's some options, such as: - Aiming. Make the guns light to carry and run with, but cumbersome. Their ultra-long size means that moving the aim is very slow. At long ranges, this doesn't matter since you only need small aiming adjustments. But in close ranges you need to move the barrel left or right relatively fast. If this is slow, it makes it very hard to win against shotguns and smgs, and it makes midranges against ARs more balanced. - Recoil. Hip-firing will be very random and almost never hits your target. Medium range is also not very good, and it forces people to "mount" the weapon on the floor, against a box, or wallface to fire more accurately. Making it basically useless at close-range kind of like how a Shotgun is useless at the long-range. - Scoping. You must always have a scope, which blocks your peripheral view when used (tunnel vision). And you cannot quick-scope, because the eye-sight is blurry, and your aim when fired before the animation is complete, will stray off-course a lot and randomly making you lose your shot. Kind of like hip-firing but not as bad, but bad enough to make the weapon not very viable in that play style. - Supplementary Damage. Make it so that no gun can 1-shot the opponent, but physical damage comes with supplementary damages with certain weapons and ranges. Such as burning or bleeding effect. This means you can give Bolt-Action Snipers the ability to do 95 damage in all the ranges, but midrange gets partial effect (so sometimes 1 or 2 shot to kill), and long-ranges get full-effect (always 1 shot). But this isn't that realistic either, because it's a blanket-solution, since in the real-world these effects soldiers depending how they got shot, where they got shot, and the unique individual. Things that make the game too complex (simplicity needs balance). - Physical Damage. Make close quarter shots do less physical damage. The idea is that bullets "go through" the targets instead of getting embedded which does not actually sound unrealistic. People have been conditioned to this through movies already. This means you need to multiple shot them (body) and due to the slow reloading, it means you lose against close-quarter weapons. It's probably a good idea to make this 3-shots in close range, 2-shots in midrange, and 1-shot in long-range. Except headshot which are always 1-shot. - Viewing. Make it so that basically using a scope comes with problems in close range. That is if someone starts shooting in your general direction, dust and particles lift up and blur your vision but only in the close ranges. You can still see through it and make out the long ranges. This can apply to flashbangs as well, so that if an enemy used that on you, you would recover quicker than everyone else but only with the scope in the longrange, at the hipfire and midranges you would be very blind perhaps longer than everyone else. It is justifiable but not very logical or realistic. ....and lastly you can run a combination of all of these! (to be honest, I'm not a fan of the idea of a charge-shot or supplementary damage, as they make the game less realistic. Not a fan of Viewing differences either as it makes the game more complex. But perhaps a combination of the other options above, yes, they can keep the game simple, fun, and balanced. That's something missing in Call of Duty and its rivals.)

[@gurgodarkk]

Another thing that I think is a decent solution is characters having moderate speed and bullet velocity so you have to lead up shots and obviously players dont always walk in a straight line

[@gamerdudejake3092]

Its easiest to hit opponents that just bounced off a pad since the movement is predictable but all other movement is pretty hard to hit.

[@bobbuilding7264]

I actually love how titanfall handles one shot weapons like the kraber by making its source of damage a projectile, putting you in a position to take more time or even reduce your movement in order to make a shot. Plus in a game with such high time to kill and the noise and tracer of the kraber announcing your position, it makes having to cycle the bolt surprisingly tense when any pilot coild slide hop around the corner and delete you.

[@fab9207]

doesn't nerf the close range engagements though, because the projectile hits basically straight away

[@asdfasdf-mn8iu]

Yeah, upping the game speed works kinda well with slow weapons and the faster players move, the harder it also is to actually line up a shot and hit, a thing which has been neglected in this video throughout; It's assumed the sniper player always hits, which is not a given at all anymore at certain game speeds (including TF 2 in which you can also try stuff like double-jumping in order to dodge shots).

[@chasetoyama8184]

I think the reason this works in Titanfall is because everyone moves super fast so it’s hard to hit anything in CQC. In Apex, they removed the one-shot capability, made it take forever to cycle the bolt, and gave it 12 rounds per Kraber, and it’s still OP because everyone moves a lot slower and the map’s bigger.

[@antonpietsch9150]

Titan-Fall did a lot right!!!

[@ZesPak]

@@chasetoyama8184 Also, the time to scope on the Kraber is suprisingly slow compared to anything else in the game. It's still a 240 headshot damage, but yes, no one shot on the body. That said, as mentioned, TtK is very high, so the issue that other games have where for example an assault rifle has a one shot headshot. Even headshots with something like a flatline (most powerful assault rifle) needs FIVE shots, and the second most powerful sniper (Sentinel) still needs two at least. That's why the kraber works. It's way more powerful than anything else whilst still not being a one-shot-body-kill.

[@SovietImperator]

I like Battlefield 1’s take on balancing snipers (and I guess all other guns too) and that’s having a sort of “sweet spot” where it does the most damage, but drops off at closer and further ranges

[@stefankecina]

cousin, let's go bowling

[@Juxxi81]

Thats the best way imo

[@HomoErectusOnUranus]

Yeah, but Snipers were still pretty broken on many maps due to wide open terrain perfect for farming fiestas.

[@randomninja7632]

The other way they balanced snipers was by shining, letting faraway players they were about to be fired upon

[@TonFGaming]

Too bad that was the worst decision cuz older games before bf1 u had to headshot where that let you one hit body in a game in ww1 where u didnt have longer range options

[@Willing_Herold]

Elephant in the room: Not everybody’s got aimbot!

[@loafity4244]

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

[@Goofy_Ah_Being_15]

call of duty exists

[@m4rcyonstation93]

see: splatoon

[@dustydeemer8347]

maybe get good and stop crying when u get merked

[@Goofy_Ah_Being_15]

@dustydeemer8347 Using texting shortcuts in comments, and the comment is actually true to some degree.

[@dustydeemer8347]

@@Goofy_Ah_Being_15 what about texting shortcuts?

[@lightynide]

Snipers in higher realism games like Squad or HLL are often balanced with fundamental game mechanics like noise, suppression, shifting spawn points, and the game objectives not being exclusively about kills or kda. The first two are huge... When you start shooting you make the enemy aware of your presence, and since all guns are lethal and there's a solid suppression mechanic they can make your life hell really quickly if you don't have adequate cover, distance, and good timing.

[@jakepassolt9640]

In squad snipers are also less powerful because most classes have a 4x optic that can 1 shot headshot at any range, plus you can always hop in a vehicle and circumvent a snipers position

[@tristancoffin]

@Repent and believe in Jesus Christ GO FLY ON A CROSS YOU DAMED BOT FLY

[@Carolus33]

@repentandbelieveinJesusChrist9 NIV is crap, use the Douay-Rheims

[@jamesa3818]

You mean realistic games like Tarkov, right? Because those other two games aren't "realistic" per se, they're just less embarrassing than Fortnite.

[@jamesa3818]

Anyway, at 5.30 in and I am leaving this video. Dumb question. Tarkov has basically shown if you make the game and the guns realistic then they're all pretty well balanced, devs made this problem for themselves. If any of your guns take more than one headshot to kill then your guns/game are already broken. As for the question as to if snipers are OP? Snipers do in games what they do in real life. They kill shit, effectively, at whatever range you like. The only "fix" most games need is to make the ADS time slower and increase sway, quick scoping is definitely not a realistic trait of a sniper rifle. Tarkov did that, and no one would tell you that snipers are OP on that, they might even tell you that snipers suck in Tarkov, or are at least definitively in their own class and not a weapon you would carry as a shotgun substitute. I think the fact that sniping is a harder skill to learn in any game makes lots of people shitty about its effectiveness once mastered. Video already said it, snipers do at range what shotguns do up close (area denial). They're both specialty area denial weapons, and if they get "tweaked" until they can't do that, then they're broken. E.g. a sniper that takes more than one shot to kill at range would be broken because then there's no chance of defending an open space at range. The simple solution is that people stop being little bitches.

[@alejandrogomez1698]

I like the snipers in Battlefield the most. You have to headshot to kill with them unless you hit a sweatspot range that is different for every gun (I think). Also snipers with long range scopes leave a massive reflection that basically reveals your positiong to everyone which helps to deal with campers on giant maps.

[@generalgrizzly7914]

not to mention the bullets on snipers have bullet drop off at certain ranges, forcing the sniper to adjust their aim based on how far their target is. Also in battlefield you have some good possible counter play options if you are communicating with your squad. If someone is in a tank, chopper or jet you could try blowing up the position, or if you have someone with an RPG /SMAW you can cover fire and then they shoot. There's also smoke grenades and flares to counter the snipers visibility, which can be used to quickly charge at them, go for a flank by going into different cover, or entering a vehicle to either flank, counter attack or disengage.

[@RockycGaming]

@@generalgrizzly7914 Using Battlefield 4 as an example is just unfair because it's infinitely the best multiplayer shooter ever made.

[@armaggedon4christ]

@@RockycGaming bf3 imho is equal...but yes, I still avidly play BF4, its an extremely good example of how to balance MOST weapons.

[@user-sg9ql8nk1u]

but then there also exist some really *sweaty* dude running around with 16x scope doing cqc 50-100m away while at the same time sniping and constantly hitting headshot

[@generalgrizzly7914]

@@RockycGaming gawd damn it you're right

[@calebstroup6917]

The problem is that snipers are actually just super effective weapons in real combat situations. And not everyone can be an effective sniper. That's why elite sniper teams exist, and they proceed to put in way more practice than the average soldier to hone their skill. A sniper in a combat situation would never risk going close quarters because there is a very real mobility and volume of fire problem. And video games don't properly capture the fact that at close range, assault rifles are just as deadly as snipers. In a video game where the consequence isn't your actual life, and there isn't a realistic equalization of shot power for all guns at close range, the risk for a sniper being out-maneuvered is worth the reward of high damage one shot kills.

[@ToniRuottu]

Quake 1 did not have a snipers as mentioned shortly after 10:22. However, all subsequent Quake releases had the "railgun" which, unlike the name would suggest, is a sniper riffle that shoots laser beams. One balancing factor in play is how the laser beam accurately reveals the exact position of the shooter. This provides the sniper motivation to relocate between shots rather than killing an entire enemy team from a single well protected position.

[@DizzySpark]

Quake 1 had a lightning gun. That was a pretty fucking snipey weapon

[@bostonjackson3415]

So it's the machana

[@ConsciousExpression]

@@DizzySpark Except it was so short range.

[@nitramdh]

One thing to mention though is that the RG was not that powerful, there are not headshots and it was meant to be used on the move. You can't really stay stationary in quake, the camper will be flushed out by grenades, rockets and plasma slugs. IMO its more of a "coup de grace" gun.

[@DefinitelyNotAMachineCultist]

@@ConsciousExpression AND it is a tracking weapon instead of a flick-shot weapon. It deals meaningful damage over time and not in an instant. Also, as others mention, even the RG didn't do crazy damage against a well-kitted player. Compare this to lag-compensated, insta-kill-at-any-HP-or-armor-level hitscan weapons we got in modern shooters. The elephant in the room is movement in general. Quake on top of all the above downsides had players with very fast and unpredictable movement in maps often with maps that weren't super large usually, indirect nerfs to RG effectiveness.

[@Oxhmxn]

I liked the Battlefield 1 solution. One shotting to the body only on certain ranges, the "sweetspot" system enabled skilled snipers to choose their engagements based on the range.

[@omnianti0]

one of the more unintuitive game ever where you can headshoot a aerial pilot with sniper but you need 2 explosive for destroy the aerial vehicule as the tank

[@smokescreen100]

​@omnianti0 It's not exactly complex. The pilot is more vulnerable than vehicles, but harder to hit.

[@omnianti0]

@@smokescreen100 if you considere the helicopter integrity its very vulnerable to any damage especially the litlebird what their is barely nothing out of structural and critical mecanic to hit if you shoot it a dozen of time with cal.50 it not a real threat ND EVEN A SINGLE RPG7 SCORE IS NOT ENOUGHT

[@Creepernom]

​@@omnianti0Battlefield 1 doesn't have helicopters.

[@omnianti0]

i dont experimented rifles versus planes but i bet ita the same resistance @@Creepernom

[@neilsandwich7423]

I really liked what Titanfall 2 did with the Kraber. It's a one shot sniper, but it has 4 shots, a REALLY slow rate of fire, a long ADS time, and a REALLLLY long reload time. Additionally, while many guns in Titanfall 2 are hitscan, the Kraber has a physical projectile so shots have to be lead. In a game where everyone is flying around at the speed of sound, it requires a great deal of skill to wield the Kraber effectively

[@TheMaxxter]

I used to play titanfall 2 and I loved the Kraber The headshots made me feel like a god

[@UrAverageDumbPerson]

As a kraber main, I can confirm that cross map shots on a moving pilot is a nightmare.

[@satmat2561]

Every time I play Titanfall 2 I main almost exclusively the Kraber. It's just so damn fun to use and so rewarding.

[@xChikyx]

Best weapon in any game. I used to be krsber main when I played. I love that rifle.

[@picomark4]

you know it's funny you mention Titanfall 2. I feel like something about the map design and movement encourages closer range combat so much that my frankly unskilled automatic/shotgun reliant self ended up with my best KD using snipers in Titanfall 2. no still nowhere near 1.0, but an interesting alternative take to the balance question. making movement so fast that the question of range becomes irreverent. And yes, I use a Northstar xD

[@Sugar_Crash1]

Personally, I think the biggest issue is how well the sniper can kill while at close range. And there's an easy solution. REVERSE Damage Falloff- Damage Ramp-up, if you will. Make it so that Sniper bullets deal more damage the further they fly, encouraging long range plays, and discouraging close range gambles

[@dasmaffin1633]

I think the most important part to balancing a sniper is map design. Always have multiple ways to go so either everyone takes a sniper and when one shot misses you basically lose, or theres an open spot somewhere to be exploited. And thats just one of many things you can do

[@Laireso]

There isn't a map in TF2 that would be good for fighting sniper, because they one-shot quickscope your head anyways at any range with any class. As scout you need 2 shots with primary or 1 shot with primary and like half a magazine of your secondary, where all he needs is 1 hit. There were too many times I closed the distance perfectly with full HP and got instakilled meter in front of the sniper... so that's not a valid point. The only way to balance a sniper I've seen is to reduce the damage it deals the closer your target is to you, then map design plays a huge role in how you play and where you play making you more predictable and interactable for the enemy to deal with. That will still generate one-sided firefights where sniper always wins long range and never wins short range, but that's simply unavoidable as the whole nature of one-shoting weapon will be massive ups and downs. I think for TF2 it'd be more fun if the sniper rifle was replaced with something like the WW2 bolt actions without scope, requiring secondary to finish enemy off at close range due to that reversed falloff while making it still usable for midrange "sniping", also with that remove the headshot modifier entirely or only slightly increase the damage, where it deals 150 instead of 100 and increases charging speed on headshot meaning it'd still pose threat to high HP classes, but it'd have to be deserved through waiting for full charge (wouldn't have to be charged by time spent or slow you down. It could just increase ammo consumption so it'd take 3 ammo from a 5 ammo magazine pool for example)

[@ImaTroper]

COD BLOPS 2 was the worst about this. Every map was a tiny 3 lane hallway simulator with multiple chokepoints. Add in infinite tactical insertions and it became almost impossible to bump snipers from power positions. Best you could do was spawn, dump your emps and C4 in their direction, hope they aren't running flak/trophy(hint:they are), and either try to wall bang (and be shot in the back) or just patrol parts of the map you think have fewer snipers.

[@A1cr_yt]

Or, just add significant hit flinch that makes ur cross hair point to the f’n sky

[@Laireso]

@@A1cr_yt I think muscle memory would easily deal with penalty of that sort, just watch what recoil does in CS:GO it's not a downside, just an extra skill to master to unlock weapon's full potential. Not to mention it wouldn't address the issue with bots or regular cheaters which, despite my hatred for all the edgy sniper mains, deserve the nerf more.

[@TheBfutgreg]

I really like most of Call of Duty's MW2 maps (reincarnated with new weapons that probably don't work) If I missed like 2 or more shots I had to hunker and prepare for the worst, even Wasteland or Derail which are sniper maps except the middle area/one of the 2 major buildings respectively

[@howdee_]

Your editing style has always been high quality, so it’s great seeing you branch out from valorant.

[@OfficialArch]

Just have to think about my narration, i feel like its too energized for a documentary style channel

[@FaizPhobia]

@@OfficialArch there's no such thing as too energized :(

[@cclover]

@@OfficialArch No shame in being unique

[@imnotsmart9037]

@@FaizPhobia there definitely is, but i get what you mean

[@tanukionwheels5381]

@@OfficialArch it sounds better than most documentaries (:

[@vincentwood7036]

Make the scope zoom in to high power and make the rest of the screen black. Then make the reticule move unpredictably during cycling between shots and let it settle in a random position. Also make the scope sway unless you are prone, and make it sway worse depending on whether you are kneeling, standing or moving. These are real-world issues with heavy scoped rifles and may aid in game balancing.

[@ontheupside9521]

also could have a machine gunner class with rising storm 2 type bullet suppression that would help reward team play by suppressing the sniper

[@perryborn2777]

Could give it the Intruder treatment and force you to stand still to fire accurately Intruder also has a whole character balance meter, so if you're moving your balance lowers, so your shots will be less accurate, and if you get shot, you'll very likely be knocked down and ragdolled for a few moments. If you fire the sniper with low balance, you haven't got a chance in hell of landing that shot, so stop moving, crouch or lie down, and actually aim

[@christopherjolly]

I was going to make the same suggestion 🙂 But my tweak of the stability/weight affecting the handling is that this stat could be rolled out to all weapons. This could give low powered hand guns a strategic advantage due to their instant manoeuvrability. And with the scope I want to suggest to dim and blur the surrounding image instead of blacking out everything.

[@Tonyx.yt.]

@@ontheupside9521 bf3 actualy had the supression Fire bonus and player supressed get blurred screen for few seconds

[@myztrile]

Well, the problem is that it will only work in the realistic/hardcore type of FPS games like Tarkov, Arma, and other milsim shooters where the gunplay is very methodical and tactical. For the more arcade-y style shooters like the examples given in the video, using a "realistic" sniper rifle will give the player a huge disadvantage and they will constantly get rushed by other weapons that have a significantly better handling with not much compensation. It will take out the fun factor and the high dopamine rush usually associated with these type of twitch shooters and will render the sniper rifle literally broken, but not in a good way. In fact, I never recall hearing this kind of problem in the more realistic type of hardcore shooters. Only twitch shooters have this problem.

[@EYZ-GD]

One idea that kept popping in my head, was to reduce the damage of the sniper rifle the closer you are. This would fix the problematic close encounters with a sniper, while also making it more rewarding to take a few steps back as a sniper to enshure you'll get the 1 hit kill. Great video overall I must say ;)

[@valles6903]

Shounic ran a test on his server, where all snipers had a beam coming from their sniper rifle that the enemy team could see, people still died but it gave the enemy team a chance to react, and it made the deaths less from chokepoints and more spread through the map

[@Kensuke0987]

like Splatoon the thing is though, you could hide your aim by pointing it elsewhere (ie at the wall in front of you) and then just do flick shots.

[@k2ggers961]

That requires skill and makes it more difficult to hit your shots than waiting for someone to walk into your sightlines@@Kensuke0987

[@lunasagaming5801]

@@Kensuke0987 you could, but it's much more difficult to do that and leaves you open due to looking at a wall

[@Kensuke0987]

@@lunasagaming5801 when you're aiming down the sight or through the scope at something far away, you're already leaving yourself open from being attacked from the flanks - you literally have tunnel vision. Splatoon is in 3rd person, so you can actually look past the wall even if you're aiming at it, but I think you can kinda do something similar in first person shooters by standing some distance away from the wall, or aiming at an obstacle between you and your target to hide your beam (or just your aim). In competitive Splatoon, it's pretty much meta, so everybody practices it and can do it consistently without compromising awareness/vision.

[@JuppeD]

yeah in games where its mostly close range that would actually be pretty sick but at the same time if they add that... They can just directly jump the realism part lol

[@TheArkInfinity]

Three variations of sniper balancing that weren't covered, but may be worth exploring further: 1.) Battlefield 1 - All Snipers have a unique "sweet spot" range where they are 1-hit kills, outside of that sweet spot, they are 2 shots, unless to the head. This sweet spot varied between snipers but requires a large variety to pull off effectively. 2.) Black Ops 1 - On release, snipers required you to stabilize the reticle in order for the shot to be on-target. In its time, following the madness of original MW2, this was met with insane amounts of backlash which led the developers to revert the design choice shortly after release. Looking back, it prevented 'quick scoping' and forced snipers into the niche the weapon is designed to be played in. 3.) Halo 5 Binary Rifle - Initial accuracy, 'quick scoping', was much less reliable since the weapon required you to maintain that accuracy for a short period of time while the damage was being dealt. Granted, the 'con' here being this requires the gun to not be a modern weapon; but, the design works well for futuristic weaponry. Rather than immediately dealing 100 damage, the rifle takes a second to deal that damage in-full. Damage is calculated via a linear ramp based on static chest/head damage that occurs with each game tick that the reticule is on the target.

[@edgybitch2177]

I think any mods meant to make a sniper rifle more tailored to how it is actually used, will invariably lead to it being less adequate than assault style weapons in battlefield style games, because they just are. Snipers were designed for scoping out enemy positions, and occasionally firing from the comfort of a bush thousands of meters away from your actual target. Quick scoping and other nonsense is only a thing in games thorougly removed from the reality of these weapons.

[@nafetz1687]

Another Option for more realistic games is to make every weapon one shot.

[@dustinjames1268]

@@nafetz1687 That's not realistic. Sure 1 shot will often kill someone eventually But it's not enough to kill a person instantly unless it's a headshot or it pierces the heart There are many stories of people needing several shots from a 9mm to be taken down because adrenaline kept him going through the pain and blood loss

[@NathanielBTM]

Don't forget about bf's bullet drop, especially back in the day it was one of the only games that did the whole bullet drop thing

[@dustinjames1268]

@@NathanielBTM That's an important factor because sniping is supposed to be high skill requirement but high reward for mastering it Although, it does nerf the sniper at long ranges, where it's supposed to dominate, encouraging more medium range engagements

[@beefyblom]

I was personally always a fan of "inverted damage fall-off" as a solution. It just makes sense from a gameplay perspective, as it forces snipers to y'know.. snipe, instead of use it as a glorified slug shotgun.

[@jarekmarcinek1261]

Battlefield 1 has a mechanic like this. Every slow firing sniper has a “sweet spot” (like 50-70m) where they 1 tap to the body. Longer range snipers have larger sweet spots to compensate for the difficulty of firing at range

[@Bromasterplays]

Yeah right, since realism doesnt really apply here anyways since shotguns in rl also have much bigger ranges.

[@evgenas2381]

I was thinking that through the entire video If the sniper did less damage the closer the enemy was it would encourage people to snipe

[@7tales311]

yeah, its a videogame. this solution favours games not going for extreme realism, which most if not all popular fps dont prioritize. its more in the vein of sim games

[@PetaNight]

The main issue is if someone gets close your secondary will most the time lose the duel and your sniper definitely will

[@tbjpersonal]

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.

[@TideV2]

Yup snipers are really easy to balance but the problem is most developers pander to the quick scoping crowd at the expense of everyone else. They completely abandon the drawbacks of a real sniper and just make it a high risk high reward god weapon that people who play a lot complete dominate with. Have been on both ends of the skill spectrum and it makes it where you either become a top .1% player or it’s pointless to compete.

[@moistcena648]

Mad respect that this is your debut video. Production Quality is gorgeous, your Voiceover is soothing and the script you wrote is easy to follow & understand. Even your idea on how to balance a bolt action sniper on close range is well thought through. Keep up the good work and I'm sure you'll make it!

[@OfficialArch]

Appreciate it!! The next one will be even better :)

[@anderman1231]

true iv'e been watching this channel maybe half a year? and i really like his content

[@GamingHelp]

And his audio/sound is spot on! Half the time when I watch game video's, it's like people are allergic to paying attention to the audio work but this is just top notch. :)

[@gabrielc7861]

@@anderman1231 how, there's only 1 video

[@ansonpoon4814]

@@gabrielc7861 well I mean my dude has another channel

[@officialswordmaster3069]

Battlefield 1 I think had a very interesting mechanic for sniper rifles, that being a sweet spot range. Bolt action rifle bullets for the most part had a range, say from 80-120 yards, where a single body shot could kill. The game forced you to make your shots carefully and take into account things like bullet drop, damage drop over range, and bullet travel speed.

[@Spore9996]

Of course, it also made holding certain spots on certain maps ridiculously easy - I remember an Operations game I had where I was playing Scout with the Arisaka, Infantry-pattern (no scope, only ironsights on the rifle with the shortest sweet spot). I held a point by myself for over 20 minutes since the only entrances to the area were a pair of open staircases at the exact sweet spot range. I racked up 50 kills with 1 death, and I got res'd by a passing Medic anyways.

[@Frankenspank67]

you talking about Battlefield 1942?

[@siemion303]

Also, second mechanic that worked well in tandem (as sweet spot generally encouraged playing in mid-to-slightly-long range) was the drag coefficient, which would gradually increase bullet drop rate with distance traveled. Led to fewer people sitting hundreds of meters away from any kind of objective (hi, Op. Firestorm mountain in BF3/4), although it didn't exactly stop it fully, obviously. Also, one curious spin on the sweet spot was adding a different scope glint to mid- and high power scopes when rifles they were attached to pointed at you within their sweet spot range. Gave you a good hint that maybe it's time to look for cover.

[@kindafunnyvoiceactor6438]

​@@Frankenspank67 no the battlefield after battlefield 4 was called battlefield 1

[@Spore9996]

@@Frankenspank67 BF1, the WW1 game.

[@sebastianfries274]

I like the idea of forcing scopes on snipers, but then blurring the scope immediately after sprinting or jumping, making quickly aiming after moving, much more difficult

[@elihovorka1828]

Fries

[@Personnamedvrinucity]

@@elihovorka1828 Burgers

[@getingfood1517]

@@Personnamedvrinucity soda

[@viethoangpham445]

u mean csgo

[@theelusivepyroshark5119]

Baking soda

[@cynderfan2233]

It's a fairly simple fix. The sniper is not a weapon that should be able to run and gun. So increase the scoping up time and decrease stability massively while standing/moving. Make it so you can't fire while raising the weapon into scope mode and make that process take 1.5 - 2 seconds. If someone appears in front of you and you're not crouched or prone and still, you'll probably lose unless they whiff their shot. Also give the scope settling time. Once you bring the scope up it takes a second or two to become still. You can counter the sway, but it will take time and give your enemy a chance to shoot first. And make no scoping really inaccurate. You might get lucky, or not.

[@chalk2348]

Among my own game ideas, I've been playing around with the idea of overpenetration, meaning snipers deal notably reduced damage at close range. This would definitely make for an interesting mechanic. 🤔

[@Bookslayer10]

I love that, overpenetration is such a good term to describe how you deal less damage at lower ranges if you add that feature to a game. And it doesn't matter against the head, because... well, it's the head. Furthermore, what if overpenetration was always lethal, but after a time delay? In a few seconds the enemy would die due to the strong DoT the overpenetration would apply; however, that sill gives them long enough to push up to the sniper that hit them and have a chance to take their revenge. Snipers would need to be careful to hit their headshots, lest they suddenly need to finish off their target with a second one. Edit: the point would be to not leave enemies on fractions of health, which can feel bad, instead doing something that still isn't as good as a guaranteed kill but is more fun to work with.

[@ToadKingStudios]

I like that idea. Always seems like making a sniper rifle a one-shot kill in all ranges was unnecessary. Feels like making it do less damage and harder to hit in close range makes more sense as counters to the long-range destructive power of the gun.

[@chalk2348]

Oh, thanks you two! Even if, like a total dummy, I commented this before realizing it's mentioned in the video. 😅

[@incinerativemario]

I was thinking something like that too, a mechanic where it will do less dmg within 30 meters, then the bullet speeds UP and does insta-kill dmg.

[@Manu-sz4fo]

@@incinerativemario Yea, let's say you have a sci-fi related game you could make a sniper that works on plasma or something and would have some sort of heat up or speed up mechanic wich would do 1 hit on longer distances but significantly less damage in close range Combat.

[@ryry_2720]

One solution I haven’t seen is reverse damage fall off. The closer you are, the less damage you do, forcing you to both spend more time lining up your shots and more cautious of closer ranges

[@therobertguy2436]

It’s not a sniper, but the medic in team fortress two has a crossbow with this exact mechanic. It’s also a projectile weapon, but it still applies in concept lol. Weirdly enough, it does healing based on the same mechanic.

[@kravkik7930]

But then I'll just be forced to camp at long range instead of coming closer to go for more high risk encounters, literally that's what people have been complaining about, those longer ranged camping tactics, so I don't see how this will stop the complainers from whining

[@kravkik7930]

@@therobertguy2436 It also has an 100% crit rate, just like his ubersaw

[@spinosaurusiii7027]

That's actually one of my ideas for how devs could balance snipers too, and I actually have it from a RTS game In Company of Heroes 2, LMGs do more dps at long range, due to the model with the LMG firing more often at that range That means that 1) the squad keeps most of its long range dps even as soldiers die and 2) other squads can still fight them at mid - short range as the LMG is less powerful there, even if the squad overall does more damage because of their other guns Of course you'd have to change the weapon cooldown to damage for an FPS, but still, make it so they deal the most damage at a specific range, like BF1 did too. Or you just pull a Hell let Loose and make it so almost everyone one-shots everyone, as all boltaction and semi auto rifles in that game oneshot, but only the snipers have scopes.

[@jama211]

It's an interesting idea except it doesn't make sense. The right solution is to require very specifically headshots for a kill at any range, and a long reload time. It's realistic, and if they shoot the body at close range they're screwed. And more vertical movement options for players. Or, as he says in the video, just make them scope for longer for full power. Cool idea! Makes sense.

[@JustGency]

I really like how the snipers work in Splatoon, or chargers as they're called in that game. Like TF2, they also need to charge a shot in order to one shot. Uncharged shots (tap shots) do not only less damage (3-4 shots depending on the specific charger), but they have less range and a slower travel time on top of that. Killing with tap shots is also faster than fully charging a shot though the damage does scale up the longer you charge. If you manage to rush down a charger, you have the advantage unless they just happen to have a charge ready. And speaking of charge, there's a mechanic introduced in 2 that makes playing around the charge mechanic more interesting, which is charge holding. I imagine if there's one thing I can expect anyone to know about Splatoon, it's that your guns shoot ink and you can swim in your ink. The way the charge hold mechanic works is that if you go into swim form while holding a full charge, you can keep that charge as long as you come back up after a certain amount of time (about a little over a second). Another thing to note about chargers is that, unlike snipers in pretty much any other game, chargers have a hard limit on how far their shots go. And there's not only a lense flair system to let you know when someone's charging, but a whole ass laser that points directly to your position and cuts off where your shot ends. Like sniping in TF2, this means you need to be mindful about not altering enemies towards the fact that there's an e-liter staring them down. So generally that means taking cover and peaking just as you're about ready to take the shot. The best part about the limited range is that it allows there to be weapons in other categories that can challenge the chargers. As for the scope vs unscoped balancing thing, Splatoon leans heavily on unscoped. However, there *are* two specific chargers that have scoped variants that actually gives you something to try to make up for what you lose playing with a scope. Scoped chargers have the tunnel vision thing as you'd expect and they also lack the ability to store a charge, making them inherently less mobile. As for what they get in return, well, they get more range. It's not a huge amount of extra range, but it makes enough of a difference that some people take that trade off. Lastly, the different chargers can all feel different from each other. As of Splatoon 3, there are six chargers in the game and only two of them properly feel like what you'd expect from a sniper. You have the Splat Charger, which is the average hold down the charge and get your shots off charger, and the first with a scoped variant. Then there's the E-Liter, which has the longest charge time out of any charger but has the longest range in the game as well as is the other charger with a scoped variant. My favorite that I don't use anymore, the Squiffer, trades range for aggression, it has the shortest charge time out of all the chargers that can one shot and is the only charger in the entire game that doesn't get a charge speed penalty for trying to charge in the air. One of the more gimmicky chargers is the Goo Tuber, it also has a longer charge time but is the only charger in the game that can one shot with a partial charge (70%) though you still need a full charge for your max range, it can hold a charge for three seconds and store partial charges. Another aggressive charger is the bamboozler, it has an insanely fast charge time but is a two shot, also balanced with a shorter range (but still out ranging the Squiffer for some reason). And finally, the newest charger from 3, the Sniperwriter, this one's gimmick is that a full charge gives you FIVE shots instead of just one at the cost of needing two to kill and not being able to charge hold, has Splatterscope range though. So yeah, Splatoon's design for snipers leads to interesting and unique weapons. It's just a shame that a lot of the maps lack viable flank routes, makes charger players harder to deal with than we should be, and frankly, I want more flank routes because I like sniping from unexpected angles.

[@xanthousizalith5641]

Even with all of that, they're still vulnerable if something like a Brella challenges them, less so in 3 because of the shitty net code, but you can still use the Brella canopy to run up on a charger with relative ease, not to mention Brushes mobility giving them the perfect tool to duck and weave between shots and get to them, or the various specials that can shut them down.

[@sowrdigio]

i hope they fix brellas one day

[@Dinstyvmorsa8539]

Also thought of splatoon! Their way of nerfing the sniper works in achieving balance. Buuut, that way doesn't work in any realism shooter..

[@alex.g7317]

Tldr pls

[@xanthousizalith5641]

@Alex .G Splatoon keeps snipers balanced by limiting the range they can one shot from and how quickly they can charge up a one shot while also giving a variety of snipers to choose from so the classic sniper is not the only viable option

[@Sorchestral]

just the bit where he knives two hostages while continuing to talk like nothing was happening

[@ME0_]

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

[@pingviinipelaa9531]

shotgun slugs with similar range to shotguns but more damage?

[@MidoEl]

quickscoping is not the problem and it should be rewarded, a quick scope upclose takes skill and is not easy to do and so when you nerf quickscoping you basically cap the skill ceiling and reward long range 1 hit 1 kill with no consequences to doing so, thats why the best possible fix for it is damage falloff that still rewards close range quickscopes but discourages long the long range camping.

[@mansamusa3788]

@@MidoEl Quickscoping is the problem you shouldn’t be rewarded for using a long range weapon in close range. Snipers should be boring and campy its what they’re made for you should be playing around them not running in a straight line towards them. There are multiple ways to bait snipers(jiggle peeking, jump peeking, utility, etc), and get close but if you get clapped easily even at close range then theres no real viable strategy to handle them just pray they miss.

[@GamerGod-fp1tj]

@@MidoEl nah it should be the opposite. The sniper should do LESS damage at close range. That sounds stupid, right? yes it does, but an explanation could be over-penetration causing the bullet to do less damage. This way would be the best way to balance snipers in my opinion

[@owentucker6215]

@@GamerGod-fp1tj what about giving it high inaccuracy when aiming the weapon with your mouse quickly?

[@timothymiles2851]

I like the BF1 tactic. Every sniper has a sweet spot where it will 1 shot body shot. Different snipers have different sweet spots. None 1 shot body close or super far. Makes it feel super rewarding when you learn the specific rifles.

[@Tom_Hillman]

yeah! not to mention bullet drop, travel time, scope glint and suppression for the sniper, the skill gap is so much higher for bf1 snipers and you really have to play actively and not passively with them!

[@ClueIess]

@@Tom_Hillman bf1 is like the easiest battlefield to snipe on tho lol

[@Tom_Hillman]

@@ClueIess It's certainly the most enjoyable sniping experience for both the sniper and the other players.

[@deaconfetundes7888]

@@Tom_Hillman It's also realistic too (+), In real life you really don't want to f near an uncovered sniper's den in ww1 because one peek would make your head explode. Some parts on why it's enjoyable too.

[@dylanconnolly2665]

@@deaconfetundes7888 Not necessarily because every gun IRL can do that you will die unless your incredibly lucky to any gun if your with in there range

[@snowgoon8955]

A multiplayer game I recall with a simular concept as your "charging" idea is is Jedi Knight academy from 2003. The sniper in it was a laser rifle that would shoot like a marksman rifle when quickly fired, but if you charged the rifle by holding down the fire button it would shoot a one shot that would disintegrate people. If you held it down to maximum charge it would automatically fire too, this meant if you wanted to 1 shot people you had to heavily anticipate where and when you were going to shoot.

[@suddencrysis3134]

There was the railgun where it exploded on max charge killing the user so you couldn't just wait.

[@mobilevideoviewer2610]

Handling, mobility, and recoil most people aren't shouldering a 50 cal and I doubt anyone is throwing a second shot even if they are without a lot of bulk or a bracing system which also would slow mobility, mounted decreases recoil by half to 2/3rds get rid of awareness by blurring and adding a scope sweet spot that you can be staggered from viewing/reliably correcting shots. It's not hard it's just effort to make feel good enough to not kill the class and to do that you need dynamic maps which means your weapon team and map team have to be on the same page last game to do that that I've seen was halo reach.

[@acaribouintheattic8345]

​@@suddencrysis3134 The tau cannon from Half life worked the same way!

[@Ostr0]

​@@suddencrysis3134 🌚 KEKW

[@justcallmexen]

The idea that you can't hold a charge at maximum sounds good, forcing the potential sniper to have to lower their gun for a moment to reset the charge and give an enemy a chance to appear at an inopportune moment. Heck, TF2's Huntman made Sniper lose damage and accuracy if holding his bow drawn too long, requiring down time, even for a moment.

[@ivanbarnes5067]

0:38 missed opportunity for the og intervention sound

[@acoolfoxy]

fax

[@Zubzub343]

In Halo, I find the sniper quite balanced. It revolves over a few key facts: - You get unzoomed if you're hit by any bullet. - No oneshot in body, only headhost are oneshot - You cannot spawn with a sniper (well that depends on the game mode, but in general no), you have to find it in the middle of the map.

[@Optimus_Prime_2007]

I was looking for this comment

[@bzbug2648]

The unscope mechanic can be downright infuriating tho. But itdoes give SMG class weapons an edge, not shotguns tho

[@speven371]

The reticle on the screen and the fire rate of the sniper makes that almost irrelevant though

[@nickkohlmann]

​@@speven371 No

[@user-ov1ep5rf2l]

Hipfiring is super accurate though

[@gojiradropkick9447]

I always found that Battlefield 1's "sweetspot" mechanic was optimal for balancing the bolt action rifles. And the fact that different rifles had different sweetspots meant that they all had a niche and there wasn't really one "best" rifle.

[@insgib613]

Not only that, the suppresssion mechanic also helps, so you can't fight enemys as good that are actively shooting at you (e.g with an assault rifle).

[@afj810]

ranking by sniper balance in shooters: 1) battlefield 4+ series 2) phantom forces 3) everything else

[@stunningandbased5516]

Sounds good on the surface doesn't hold up in-game. For 90% of use cases the Ross MkIII is the best rifle, because it's straight pull-bolt action and can one-shot enemies unlike any other rifle. The only thing it doesn't have is reduced drag or a super long range sweet spot, M1917 has that covered. 2 rifles make the entire rest of the weapon category redundant.

[@lemmonboy6459]

The biggest problem of BF1s sniping, was that the support class was better at it. You could suppress snipers (can no longer accurate hit you), unlimited ammo, and the defensive nature of the game made this strategy incredibly easy to replicate. Genuinely infuriating to being getting laserbeamed from across the map with no easy counter

[@tomekl3476]

@@afj810 snipers in phantom forces are opposite of balanced. Yes they are fun but definitely not balanced. They are just insane at close range

[@ma9ici4n]

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

[@milopaso2151]

fr

[@vinnieandhispizza6299]

Fire rate is pretty close to reload speed, but not the same. An ammunition amount is also an important factor

[@rohanshirodkar8353]

Well, the issue being considered here is how broken the Sniper's 1-shot-kill mechanic is. And while, yes, both of those are valid and important stats for your average gun, for a sniper specifically it doesn't really affect the issue at all - if you can kill your enemy with a single bullet, for that encounter what you do with the rest of your magazine is completely redundant

[@partycrashergms]

@@rohanshirodkar8353 I mean thats one of the issues but isn't whats being discussed how snipers are overpowered in general? The video talks about changing firerate and mobility which might affect the "fun factor" is any lower which isn't relate to the 1 shot kill problem. Increasing the reload time or reducing the magazine size could be useful for balancing without making the gun unfun to play with. As other people have said, people are assuming that we have 100% accuracy even in close quarters. You might only need one bullet to finish an encounter, but if you're right in someones face, reducing the number of bullets you have will also reduce the number of mistakes you can make.

[@sigvestein]

Yeah and ingame price of the gun as well!

[@Eltrixengames]

Make shotguns realistic and not turn into BB guns when we go a meter away. Case settled.

[@eagles2249]

One factor I like about the CS sniper is the audio from scoping in which can give away your position or weapon choice in close quarters. Limits your mobility without actually limiting it

[@llmkursk8254]

I play a TF2 mod that does a bunch of rebalances, and one of them is giving Sniper an audible reload that everyone can hear. That way, you know when a Sniper is vulnerable and can push their sightline.

[@FLPhotoCatcher]

One thing he didn't mention is the normal lag issue. If two players (in CS), one with shotgun and one with a sniper shoot each other at the same time, even if they both get a headshot, the sniper seems to always win. Why not make it so the shooter's damage is not always one value? It's actually more realistic. Also, both players should be able die at the same time (except maybe if they are the last players in that round).

[@2A_ROCKS_]

11:37 half life?

[@Gavlavyus_Rumi]

It is good idea

[@javon27]

One factor that I don't think anyone has mentioned is lens focusing. Just like camera lenses, sniper scopes don't have unlimited depth of field. For whatever reason, games don't simulate this. Objects close to you and far away are both in focus. In real life, scopes would be focused for their intended range. Maybe if devs program the scope to initially focus at their intended range and have it autofocus for closer ranges (over a small amount of time), this could discourage using it for short to medium ranges.

[@LambdaTF2]

Damn, interesting idea. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this implemented before but it would make a lot of sense.

[@overtone55]

I think that's an interesting idea, but it really doesn't fix short ranges unless it took an extremely long time to focus because of how much bigger the targets are

[@freetobe5218]

I think CoD: Ghosts did this by blurring the area outside of your scope on snipers. I’m probably wrong, but it might be right.

[@juliasrouvali1924]

I like that. It would be like BF1 sweet spot damage but more realistic version of prefered range enforcement

[@LoadoutsAirsoft]

@@overtone55 make it fixed short range. or let the player adjust scope (zero feature in battlefield games) before ADS.

[@Emmaria_]

Your second solution is pretty much exactly what I was thinking. Despite being "unrealistic", snipers should deal less damage the closer the target is to make it a reverse shotgun. Games should be designed around fun and balance, realism should definitely take the backseat to both. If your game allows multiple weapons, you could even take this one step further. By making the sniper so bad in close quarters that you need to swap to a backup weapon, like a pistol, adding some variety of play without it being a one-hit wonder at any range.

[@absolstoryoffiction6615]

Not a great idea. The "Sweet Spot" system is better and it can be used on all guns. Especially in games such as Escape From Tarkov where guns are customizable and numerous. The more options you give to players. The more than can handle situations in the game. The less options... The more stringent the system/rules have to be.

[@omnigamer6671]

@@absolstoryoffiction6615 well your right and wrong the issue is it's to easy to use a sniper as a shotgun in most games, ADS is to fast in most games and all ways has been for snipers that's the issue people are use to it so they build there whole play style around fast sniper ADS to slow it to a more reasonable speed would take years to do cause it would have to be done slowly or everyone would complain it's the same as changing what platform you play it takes some time to relearn controls it's similar but even slower snipers ADS has been to fast from the start so quick scopeing became a thing which is largely the issue imo

[@anaccount6610]

all video game snipers are now gyrojets

[@thedugan8r593]

I agree that realism should be second to gameplay, but a little MORE realism would fix this problem entirely! When aiming a real rifle, your head moves to the sights/scope; the gun doesn't magically snap to aim wherever you were looking. You will NEVER look down a scope to find it pointing right where you want in real life, so why should it in games? The heavier the weapon the harder it is to stabilize and correct quickly, and the quicker your arms tire while holding your aim for extended times (That's part of why sniper's shoot from prone).

[@absolstoryoffiction6615]

@@omnigamer6671 True... Akin to shotguns in fast pace FPS games. Absolutely destructive in the right hands before devs nerf shotguns.

[@noahnas1587]

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.

[@Kronophonix]

I think the only thing that wasn't in this video was the "hold breath" stamina/stabilization mechanic to steady your rifle in some Call of Duty titles. It worked kind of well because you couldn't sprint around and then stop and steady your shot due to being fatigued. It didn't work as well if you just ran a high input sensitivity because you can fight the scope sway.

[@HazeHuzo]

He also left out Sniper-Flinch. You get hit first -> You will miss

[@_DAN11L_]

My cod sniper builds: all in speed of movement In cod there are interesting feature, idk how it called on pro language but i called it prescope or halfscope. In cod you have time when you press RMB and spread start decreasing to get you in scope, you can release mouse button to break sequence. So you can prescope shoot and with skill and luck you kill opponent on various distances.

[@alcerixxia614]

@@_DAN11L_ I know exactly what you mean, and tbh that is not at all broken, if you have the skill to pre-aim at the right direction and hit 1 shots it should be rewarding

[@dialog_box]

i'm not an fps player at all, so i've never heard of this mechanic. that seems like a really good solution all things considered. if your game has a stamina meter of any kind, just tie it to the player's ability to ADS with a sniper. i could see it going a couple of ways. either have ADSing (AingDS? lol) with a sniper outright consume stamina; or else pause or slow stamina recovery when you ADS with a sniper and have the current stamina level influence things like view-bobbing, bullet spread, damage, etc.

[@marioncrea]

That and time to hit after shot that can be an exclusive to sniper feature like in some of the battlefields: The bullet will take some time before reaching its destination, which allows the adversary the opportunity to avoid the shot at long range and to answer with his own defense at mid range

[@jacksonboyd145]

For the range problem you could take an idea from ROUNDS and make the bullet do more damage the farther it travels, discouraging close encounters, and encouraging people to use a sniper like a sniper.

[@hellhound74]

Giving a sniper reverse falloff has its own issue however as someone may land a shot at decent range but due to it being a kid range shot falls just short of killing the target Not to mention giving a sniper reverse falloff encourages rushing the sniper instead of playing around the snipers sightline and basically encourages playing like an idiot

[@jacksonboyd145]

@The Knight fair point, I mean if the solution was simple, this video wouldn't exist

[@cookiecrumbzi]

Wasn’t this the second solution he offered? He just added charged shots on top of this

[@rua0933]

@@hellhound74 I dont see either point being an issue considering the first applies to shotguns as well and has never been a large problem, if it was such an issue it could always be tweaked to be a flat damage between certain ranges/range changes. as for the second point, is that not the point the snipers are meant to be weak at close range? when playing around the snipers sightline comes down to avoiding peaks entirely I dont think it's productive to fluid gameplay

[@1ab23c4d5e6f]

Another game that does a great job with it is Mechwarrior Online. The maps are designed around high time to kill and many of the long range weapons also have minimum ranges, so instead becomes a tool for softening enemies before they get in range to retaliate, rather than killing them outright. You also can often bring multiple types of weapons and fire them at a time, so you could reasonably run medium and long range weapons at the same time, and often would.

[@GamebossUKB]

I like what the crossbow does, long reload, low velocity resulting in high arc. But able to one shot, and when that shot connects it’s oh so sweet.. The pinnacle of balance in my opinion.

[@quick_light]

i assume you are talking about the HL2 crossbow and if you are i agree

[@AIastor1929]

Reverse damage falloff, the closer you are to an enemy the less damage you do with a sniper

[@NicolasRodriguez-wy3mc]

The best sniper mechanic I’ve played was Battlefield one. I loved the one shot sweet spot mechanic. I felt like I had to actually position myself to make it useful but when you found the spot it was the most satisfying way to kill enemies. Especially if you were using iron sights. I really wish they brought that back.

[@TheWampam]

Battlefield One in general had really good gunplay. And for a "realistic" military shooter it's weapons were extremly diverse.

[@-doctorwjo]

i completley agree with your statement. Battlefield one had one of the best sniper mechanics. "You peak and just see glints of rainbow towards you!" that feeling! omg! :D

[@corydonahue9638]

@@TheWampam "realistic" umm lol

[@TheWampam]

@@corydonahue9638 you know what the quotation marks are for in this case?

[@yuumiotp9463]

idk what to tell you but the snipers in bf1 are turbo broken, bf4 worked well in the series context

[@nein3405]

the worst about snipers is that while the other team's snipers kill you the instant you spawn, your own team's snipers cower under a bush suckling on their weapon's barrel.

[@heyyanewbie]

Thats probably just you being bad at avoiding snipers

[@bigdiccmarty9335]

@@heyyanewbie *just don't get shot, bro* riveting suggestion, you should be a general or something

[@elgordobondiola]

Have you tried getting better teammates?

[@samatics4]

Woah bro. Easy on the homophobia. Not cool especially in 2023.

[@elliotgillum]

@@samatics4 Huh? Who's being homophobic?

[@sergodobro2569]

When you play games such as Enlisted, where you have too many enemies, snipers become more balanced because they are not effective against the masses, but you can still hide somewhere and shoot important enemies (on machine guns and etc.)

[@suddencrysis3134]

Well also more realistic titles like tarcov, squad, arma extra made everything dangerous all the time and made it a hassle to be in an advantage. Then there is games like foxhole with a logistics mechanic so its just difficult to be useful with. It makes it important but only to the level of its risk.

[@cbence96]

Also in Rising Storm 2 Vietnam, where the game limits the number of snipers to just 2 or 3 per team, and it it really does suck at closer ranges.

[@yhwach1]

is Enlisted still worth it?

[@ESALTEREGO]

@@yhwach1 no

[@sunder739]

​@@yhwach1 yes

[@lynx8779]

First of all, great video. The weapon reviews has truly become an iconic part of this channel 2nd of all, another solution a temporary blindness. My family has an air powered rifle with a scope on it, and I personally find a difficult time trying to line up my eye with a scope in a way that actually makes it useful. It’s a surprisingly small actual area and what we could try implementing into a game would be a kind of temporary blindness maybe for a second well actually scoping in and also wall moving if you have the scope up, it would also lower your field of you even more just a small idea that might be fun while also being both balancing and having roots in reality.

[@wintermanthenforcer]

In Sniper Elite, there is a stamina mechanic. It basically means the more you move around, the less amount of time you will have to steady your rifle. This also makes your aim very shaky. I think this is a good idea to limit the sniper's mobility while keeping the rifle fun to use.

[@Deadvalley200]

I think this is probably the best way to balance it, but some players prefer a more fast paced play style.

[@BobOrKlaus]

​@@Deadvalley200well, if you prefer a fast paced playstyle, just dont play sniper in that case

[@ste4lth147]

@@Deadvalley200 that’s the opposite point of a sniper. Just don’t play sniper then but if you do, don’t expect if to work well because that’s not what snipers are intended for. Simple as that if you want to be a good sniper you won’t be fast, if you want fast don’t be a sniper at least that’s what it’s like in real life and realistic and accurate games. I’ve been playing snipers in games since Xbox 360, and in real Life I do all kinds of competitive shooting. And currently in the process of joining the military. But what do I know just a couple thousands maybe tens of thousands of rounds throughout my life. My point is, IRL and accurate portrayal of real life would be “Fast gameplay doesn’t = sniper, sniper = slow but highly accurate and quickly paced if put in the hands of a competent shooter. If you want to play fast and great. Best option anything but sniper, if you want highly accurate, hard to Learn and hard to master, but a bit slower, go sniper and I’m basing this on more realistic games like arma physics, etc. not that COD or battlefield reality wanna be physics. But If you wanna be a fast gameplay high kills God Tier sniper if you achieve that, you’ll know it’s not a great game just from that being a possibility. But hey live and let live I guess

[@Deadvalley200]

@@ste4lth147 well said

[@cadeyoung4406]

This is your FIRST video?? This is higher quality than 99% of everything else I’ve seen on this platform. Kudos.

[@DylanKreutzer]

One thing to take into account in regard to snipers that I didn't see mentioned in this video is 'aimpunch'. This is when your first-person-view flinches upwards, often away from the target, because the enemy hit you with a bullet from their gun. The phenomenon of aimpunch goes a long way in helping to balance sniper rifles in a lot of FPS games.

[@poliznia]

He’ll Let Loose does this very well in the form of suppression; any bullets coming near you, especially in large quantities, will shake and grey out your vision. This makes suppressing snipers incredibly effective because they can’t actually fire back because snipers are meant for, ya know, precision

[@emilscholz9777]

Kf6😊😢😊😊😢l😮😊😊

[@emilscholz9777]

Kf6😊😢😊😊😢l😮😊😊l😅😊ol😢l😢😅

[@Thatoneguy0007]

It’s infuriatingly prominent in TF2.

[@redoneteron5933]

@@poliznia BF1 also does suppression fairly well, without being overbearing on most fights as an arcade shooter. Suppression has less of an effect up close, with 2 stages of severity, and only hinders health regen (any suppression at all stops health regen and prevents the timer from damage from counting down without a full reset), and increases the natural ADS sway that bolt action guns have from minuscule to a moderate, preventing hits beyond medium range. At high suppression, the screen sways (more for bolt action ADS), weapons lose accuracy, recoil is greatly increased, and recovery time for both accuracy and recoil is much longer. That said, the sway/shake and inaccuracy for bolt actions with scopes (marksman/sniper variants) while suppressed should be increased some. A prone LMG at medium to semi long range shouldn't be as easy to hit as it is with a scope.

[@ErrorP1xel]

I never thought about it like this, I see the sniper as long range and useless short range, which is why the crosshair is usually large when hip-firing, and being slower to realojad if you miss at short range so they shred you before you can reload. Cool vid tho, taught me a lot! Keep up the good work!

[@Gorpmeat]

Another balancing tool is important to consider: Projectile speed. I think almost every game has at least ONE weapon where projectile speed is relevant, especially with rocket or grenade launchers. The Arma series, PUBG, and other titles have this with realistic firearms, and there are even more examples of fictional weapons balanced through projectile speed like the plasma gun from Quake/Doom or the flak cannon from Unreal Tournament.

[@InvadeleYogurt]

Halo Infinite sniper is much harder to use than earlier games, especially the previous one

[@sz2yn]

i was mainly thinking about the kraver in Titanfall 2 where the movement and projectile weapon work in making it much harder to use

[@edun4513]

That was a huge part of longer distance encounters in Battlefield games, since all of the guns had a certain muzzle velocity that actually mattered. SMGs at long range with the recoil was like pissing in the wind(as it should be), but for ARs, marksman rifles, and snipers it took some serious leading to hit a moving target

[@CH4RM_QU4RK]

Bioshock's crossbow is like that and it's kind of their sniper equivalent

[@kerkertrandov459]

Playing cs 1.6 paintball was so fun, the slow projectile speed of the paint hits meant you could dodge and juke BUT it was still very tactical cuz a single "shot" killed u. I was so fucking good dancing around the obstacles and corners and dodging shots that they called me hacker. I was the king of paintball.

[@prism223]

Who would have guessed that the single most terrifying enemy combatant in reality would also take the fun out of a combat game designed to suspend disbelief about the horror of warfare?

[@silver1340]

Yeah, everyone calls snipers unbalanced, but never know how nightmarish it is to be IRL solider, stuck in the open, with an enemy sniper pinning you down. And just like in the games, you don't know where they are. Snipers are a menace in real life like that.

[@sebw89]

but those irl snipers don't kill on close range :D this video game sniper nonsense is so idiotic to me in general. just aim for one millisecond and hit headshots... yeah right

[@silver1340]

@@sebw89 I presume (with an un-educated guess) that the reason we don't solve all wars with close-range sniper duels, is because they're bulky and it takes considerably more strength to hold them up or spin around with them to take aim. How do we translate that to video games though? No matter how close in-game you stand to a wall, you're never going to accidently hit said wall with the gun barrel, character movement has to be responsive and not realistic, etc. It's a god-damn mess!

[@destroyerofturtles5024]

@@silver1340 you could make it so that people carrying a sniper rifle move slower than others.

[@silver1340]

@@destroyerofturtles5024 Lower it too much, and the weapon itself becomes unviable to reliably carry. At most it makes people switch to other weapons more (knife) for increased mobility, which also increases time to take a shot as you have to pull out the sniper, but in the end it just turns annoying. Perhaps some simulation of weapon weight (slower movement speed) + respecting their bulky nature (drag when looking around with weapon out), the latter of which is unnoticeable on compact weapons such as SMG?

[@blackberry1397]

Crazy how he didn't even mention flinch. If your scope goes to the moon when they hit you with a normal weapon you can't kill them.

[@shoople46]

eh people can still hit nasty flicks through flinches

[@iller3]

that is one hell of an excellent counter point

[@HypnotiKSykotiK]

personally i consider flinch and tagging to be some of the worst balancing decisions, especially since most games incorporate them into all weapons. Your punishment for being shot is losing health, slowing you down and also making your aim fly in random directions feels downright sadistic.

[@donkeychips5898]

That's what I was thinking the entire video!!!

[@Mr_Edwards_1995]

It worked in Halo.

[@gmanftw217]

I always find it funny how everybody just calls the CS Scout useless and wonders how to fix snipers, when the reality is that the Scout IS the fix, high output if you can aim precisely and useless if you can't. If you can't deal with tagging people when you miss the headshot then just use a class of weapon that allows you to make those mistakes, like literally any other class besides maybe shotguns since those are also punishing to whiff with. If you HAVE to include one-shot body guns like a Barret or some other anti-material rifle then either require the player to set the weapon up to aim down sight (which they would have to anyway) ex. anti-tank rifles from Red Orchestra or make them so unwieldy that they are useless outside of a defensive role. People will complain about high-skill/high-performing players regardless of what they use but if you want the sniper rifle to fill that niche instead of just being an end-all solution to gunfights, then there's your answer.

[@mintycandyyumyum]

I always believe this solution would work for tf2: Old school Halo had a great idea where if you recieve a threshold of damage, then you get unscoped. This would allow a lot of classes, even Heavy, to fight back, and doesn't result the sniper being useless and is forced to reposition which is SUPPOSE to be his downside, where he has to avoid being targeted.

[@lavetissene339]

Mfw when aim flinch

[@notsojharedtroll23]

​@@lavetissene339 😂😂😂

[@3three3three3three]

just like in meet the sniper. "i think his mate saw me. yes, yes he did."

[@SyRose901]

I like what FishStickOnAStick proposed better, which is giving Sniper more downtime by giving the sniper rifle less ammo and a hard reload. So, the Sniper is just unable to watch his sightline forever, and is more vulnerable when scrambling for ammo packs, more opportunities for the flankers.

[@HumbleBeeUK]

@@lavetissene339 Aim flinch doesn't always work, since people can easily headshot if it's not enough, and won't be able to play if it's too much. Based on the many different contexts of fights, aim flinch can be terrible for either party, and game devs can't account for every situation (especially since sniper already flinches). Aim flinch also requires you to risk yourself by putting yourself in sights of a sniper whilst at his preferred range, because if you weren't making him flinch, you'd have just killed him. Whereas forced unscoping means you can drastically mitigate a sniper's damage, whilst also not outright killing him, which seems like a really good compromise and actually gives him proper counter-play outside of "be a better sniper". Might even be a reason to start using The Classic, lol.

[@lilturkey5406]

I don't think it's all about guns, it's also about map design. You shouldn't have a map that allows snipers to dominate over the entire map, just certain routes. That way snipers can hold down certain areas and limit enemy movement, but if the enemy makes it over, the sniper is forced to move out of his element.

[@damp2269]

yep, u nerf snipers by buffing smoke.

[@andrewstambaugh8030]

Yeah, you want to encourage risk and reward and variety. A single wide open area with sparse cover is just a shooting ground. Being trapped like sardines in landing craft scene in Saving Private Ryan is not fun gameplay.

[@damp2269]

@@andrewstambaugh8030 it can be though. i think BFV did that pretty well with the iwo jima map. that assault force it's pretty much force to throw themselves into a meat grinder but at the same time they give you some tools to make it work.

[@karlippoeis9882]

I actually love how battlefield 4 handled this, every sniper had some sort of "sweet spot" where it only one-shots at a certain distance. If you tried to kill someone in close quarters, you had to switch to your secondary after hitting your first sniper shot. That way, it is/was more balanced in close quarters where snipers just aren't meant to be used for

[@badhusband1902]

bf4 never had a sweet spot, and bullet drop of snipers are super bad. 1 and 5 do tho.

[@EljelH]

BF4? Do you mean BF1?

[@dizzi051herab7]

@@badhusband1902 na 5 doesen´t either, in 5 most snipers are just 2 shot, one shot head, the one shot snipers need a bipod to scope and incredible long to reload

[@SlimStarCraft]

And when u zoom in your cross air isnt centre..

[@rrnate]

That's not BF4, but instead BF1

[@calebstroup6917]

It would piss everyone off, but you could just make it so that the range of shot is a multiplier for snipers. At close range it does a base damage that makes it pretty equivalent to ARs damage per bullet (making it ineffective at close range). But as you get further away, it multiplies your damage to the point of getting one shot kills to the head and then at a far enough range you can one shot kills in the body as well.

[@DanQZ]

The issue is that the guns perfectly follow your mouse no matter how heavy they would be irl. If instead of a 1:1 movement of your camera and your gun and instead the gun had some sort of bulkiness that can be felt in gameplay, such as an acceleration towards where you’re looking at, it would make it much less viable at such short range and only useful on long range targets in a predictable motion.

[@QweQwertys]

In my opinion, inconsistent turning speed can feel alright in some situations for a joystick but it feels really bad for a mouse. Some sort of reactive weapon sway might be better to limit usefulness for close targets. Iirc in the 2002 game "Conflict: Desert Storm" had two red dots that were on sniper rifle scopes' crosshairs. if you quickly turned while scoped the red dots would get moved off the center of the crosshairs proportionally to how fast/far you turned and they affected the gun sway as they tried to reached equilibrium settling back in the center. I guess that wouldn't really help solving the issue when people can hit on the first swing of their camera, but it would limit being able to effectively fight in situations where one would need to watch more than a 30 degree angle in front of them. Maybe if it was some sort of futuristic setting the gun could temporarily 'lock for safety reasons' if it's swaying too much. Not being able to fire quickly while turning a lot would also feel bad, but it's an option.

[@cheesypoohalo]

@@QweQwertys that two red dot idea got me thinking, what if a sniper fired two shots from two cross hairs that face off to the sides. When you scope in, the two cross hairs slowly move together and overlap. Hitting an enemy with both bullets is an instant kill, but just one bullet isn't. This stops you using it like a shotgun, because when moving around unscoped your bullets spread apart to the left and right, and because this is a more 'physical' mechanic in the game it doesn't feel like arbitrary balance, which is how 'scope in longer to do more damage' often feels imo.

[@pedronabais1456]

i mean the biggest difference is fhat snipers in actual battle fields can take minutes to fire because they need to spot someone calculate all the wind etc, adjust their aims, and the fire while also making sure he won't be spotted after but i guess it would be unfun to take 2 minutes to shoot in cs go

[@DanQZ]

@@QweQwertys yeah that would also be a decent solution. Just *something* that conveys the bulkiness other than movespeed.

[@DamnZodiak]

To be clear: Your solution is to introduce mandatory mouse acceleration into certain guns. A setting which every single competitive shooter player on the planet hates with a passion. That's like saying certain guns should increase your ping...

[@davydovua]

I think the "inaccurate when hip-firing" property deserves more mention, because in old CS 1.6 the AWP was completely broken due to being lasergun-accurate even when not aiming through the scope, and the absence of the reticle was easily circumvented by any kind of overlay, up to just drawing a dot on your monitor with a marker

[@ilyakusenco8151]

I remember 20 years ago, one guy was knocked out of his seat because gaming club admin saw him using sticker for AWP reticle. Good times.

[@ryanthomas392]

Ahh red dry erase, been a long time since i thought about those days :)

[@Joppi1992]

Uuh in 1.6 it was still inaccurate. It's just that the circle of where it could randomly hit a target, was smaller than in 1.5. So for it to miss noscoping, the target would need to be further away than it was in 1.5. But quickscoping was insane in 1.6. You didn't need the scope up at all. And you didn't need to destroy your screen with a red dot to do it, it would build up as a feeling by playing a lot. It just required around 0.01s from scoping to shooting for it to shoot where it'd hit when scoping, so you wouldn't even register in your head that you used the scope other than that there was some black frames mixed in very shortly. You could do the quickscope long range as well as short range, and beginners would even think it was a noscope sometimes, just because of how fast it went. It would just depend on how accustomed you were to the distances and the angle of the weapon relative to where the scope would get zoomed into, in your head. It was a very different kind of quickscope compared to what's common these days.

[@anon2427]

@@Joppi1992erm akshully🤓

[@aunaprendo9957]

lol i did this in csgo as a kid w/ the auto sniper and electrical tape. it was busted

[@KingQuiIl]

Battle field one had an interesting way of balancing, they had “damage hotspots” where there is a sweet spot range when your gun deals its maximum damage but it deals less closer or farther away from that spot, so, if you decrease the fire rate and lower the damage using this tactic to let’s say 85, it would force snipers to stay medium to far range

[@pamparam3495]

Yeap, sweet-spot mechanic was great feature

[@k4RtInk]

this, and it's not like it's an indie series

[@StarSpliter]

True, when you get into the flow state 1 shot range of the Martini Henri it always feels amazing

[@noonehere6994]

battlefield snipers are very balanced, I totally agree. There's the very (near unrealistically) pronounced bullet drop, projectile travel time, and of course, no one-shot-body-shotting.

[@nobodyimportant7380]

I ldo really love that sweet spot in BF1 such a great method of balancing for correct ranges.

[@breadfromdiscord]

There is a game called "the finals" which fixed this issue by not making it 1-shot since its not based off realism

[@gold_me]

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".

[@-RandomStranger-]

Can you elaborate more on how the sniper there works? I'm confused

[@CalciumEnjoyer]

@@-RandomStranger- Charger (sniper) has a (you guessed it) charge up time, during this charge time you move extremely slowly with most chargers, you can hold the charge as long as you want but you have to be slowed. They ALWAYS one shot on body and head, with only a few exceptions. It forces you to be committed to making plays.

[@-RandomStranger-]

@@CalciumEnjoyer the sniper in tf2 has the same mechanics and hes still hated, except he only oneshots 5 classes in the game with a bodyshot, but a lot of snipers still have a moral code to try and aim for headshots, even if they're fully charged

[@stavbearer9878]

To clarify,, you cannot passively charge it or hold that charge. You must choose to charge it and then release

[@-RandomStranger-]

@@stavbearer9878 and that seems like the huntsman, the tf2 weapon all players like/ars fine with(excluding the bugs)

[@Executioner9000]

I think a good idea is to make the scope zerod in at long range only. Make the scope image fuzzy at close range, and getting less blurry the farther away the target is. This can adjust over time but the default is always for a long range shot. This penalizes close range engagement when it takes a few seconds for the image to clear up as the scope adjusts

[@ducksongfans]

who tf uses scope in close range

[@soulstice33]

@@ducksongfans I guess u were never killed by a sniper in close range

[@OminousPinapple]

Yeah but we can but a 4x scope, or even a reddot as seen in the video

[@QuartzQuill]

@@ducksongfans devs make it so noscope have Garbo accuracy in an attempt to nerf it

[@nodeldev]

This is interesting however only valid for holding angle and not quick scoping in cod sadly.

[@jax5683]

Battlefiled 4 had a supression mechanic where firing at an enemy would decrease their accuracy and add visual effects. It was great for countering snipers

[@RealStitchie]

It also countered anyone who tried to do anything at a range more than 50 meters

[@jax5683]

@@RealStitchie Yeah, but they only have so many bullets, and they're making a line of tracers leading right back to themselves.

[@mannypardo8900]

Hell Let Loose has the same thing times 100. Taking any fire in your direction removes color from your vision, gives you insane FoV, blurs everything, and makes your aim jump all over the place. Great way to balance snipers in large, open maps.

[@Elisabeth99]

Battlefield has a very interesting mechanic in which the sniper can only one shoot at a certain range on the upper body.

[@bursucu2912]

There are some points i believe you missed to put out, which are: You forgot to mention that in some games, the sniper's damage can also vary depending if you hit hands or legs, like in CS for example, which i'd say also adds a level of balancing factor to a small degree that doesn't allow anyone to just 1 shot unless they have some experience with aiming in that game. Thou i'd also say that in CS, the bolt actions are a lot more respected as guns in comparison to their DMRs which almost everyone universally hates. In PUBG the balancing is done trough scopes, drop chance and also body armor and the very best sniper in that game is locked behind an air drop that will be heavily contested and if you're also lucky that air drop has the AWM. Then you have to learn to use the mils in the reticle of your scope to aim because you have bullet speed, bullet drop and the target's movement. In Battlefield snipers are balanced through the obvious glint, the tunnelvision and the damage drop. The snipers also have a specific range where it does maximum damage depending on the rifle you use, like 75m+- will have max damage for example the Ross Mk.III and SMLE in BF1 if i remember correctly. All have a 100% headshot damage but you have to be good at aiming since BF has bullet travel and bullet drop as well on top of the target's movement speed just like PUBG, it's not like CS where the bullet hit is based on a registration instead of a physical contact.

[@consequences1937]

In Destiny 2, Snipers have been hit hard not by balancing damage, but by increasing flinch when shot, thus when you ads the reticle just goes everywhere causing you to miss the shot

[@Tehn00bA]

I like the balace that BF1 and BF4 had with snipers. In BF1 the 1 shot kill was in a specific distance and dealt less damage closer or further away than that distance and in BF4 the only 1shot kill potential was point blank or in the head. CSGO awps are honestly easy mode (the auto sniper is basically cheating). The scout is much more balanced to the game.

[@mohammedsh2329]

Oh how i miss the sweet spot mechanic

[@Buglin_Burger7878]

You also can't hit someone if you don't have experience aiming in that game... snipers landing shots isn't black magic or anything crazy. It is just landing a normal first shot. In PUBG every gun has bullet drop unless I'm mistaken... but not every gun has info on scope on how to use it. Most of these factors tend to make Snipers stronger then other guns. To even see glint means you are likely dead and panic.

[@bursucu2912]

@@Buglin_Burger7878 Yes in PUBG every gun has bullet drop and travel and varies a lot, same for BF. Scopes in PUBG specifically the range drop mills on the vertical chevron are automatically zeroed to your gun's ballistics, once equipped iirc. Everything else you have to figure and learn. Seeing the glint of a sniper in BF doesn't mean you're dead, it's pretty much a warning and if you run Support, you can dish suppressive fire on them and force them into cover. Plus they have a high chance of getting counter snipped by the scouts in your team. The glint has a wide angle of spotting.

[@Bready3000]

If I'm gonna be honest, my best experience ever with snipers was from Battlefield 1, seriously. The added necessity to have a damage/range association in mind when firing any weapon in the game really made getting 1 shots incredibly satisfying, you have to figure out being too close for the bullet to be at peak power, being in the sweet spot, and being too far to do enough damage.

[@tuxness]

this! i’m a casual to average FPS player and Battlefield 1 has so far been the most addicting for using a sniper rifle. and the glare from a scope was an interesting addition too as it gave away your position

[@RandomHandleLol1738]

Agreed.

[@saigonsquidward3782]

yeah only game i could think of that did it right, i'd say. also the fact that (most) snipers lose a bit of accuracy while moving / strafing, and the fact that they're not hitscan which encourages you to find a good spot to shoot from and take your time or pick up a variant with no scope and go for heads since they won't one-shot body shots. even then, you lose some of your ranged potential given the maps can be SO big and you can't accurately fire at some guy 300 meters away. this video seems to focus a lot on games where there's a lot of options for one shotting people, so the snipers are balanced around also having tons of one shot potential, so I think BF1 is a good example of balancing where there's very few options to one shot and the snipers reflect that.

[@flinchfu]

​​@@tuxness Scope glint is an overdone trope imo. Glass doesn't just randomly flash in intervals, irl you have to be at the perfect angle to reflect sunlight to an observer, just like anything else reflective... It has to constantly move in and out of the reflection angle to flash. Somebody is not going to be holding a scope still and it randomly flash every few seconds... I get that it's to balance advantage in games but it still irks me.

[@JWQweqOPDH]

​@@flinchfuThe lens also has to be in direct sunlight to have a bright reflection. Any sniper is going to prefer shade in order to not stand out.

[@Sebmb01]

The ammo was not adressed in the video and I think that lowering the amount of ammo you get helps a lot, because a sniper with low ammo is only useful for a bit of time ando also it punishes bad aiming.

[@bforbiggy]

It punishes bad aiming and thus bad players, but the good players are practically unaffected no?

[@MatthewNotSoFriendlyNeighbor]

@@bforbiggy the problem is in games like cs:go awp is still one shot one kill weapon and takes practicaly no skill so no neither sides are affected but in realism games like arma, squad its not big of a deal either since you will be waiting for perfect timing most of the time

[@bforbiggy]

@@MatthewNotSoFriendlyNeighbor That is a good point because snipers in most large map games are a lot less oppressive. I think it's different though because Arma has a large map and many players, so deaths are less impactful? Imagine a 5 player fortnite battle royale

[@smoldog6013]

yeah but ammo systems are never fun, unless in a game where limited ammo is a feature, tf2 weapons have limited ammo, and its basically the worst part of the game

[@0NeeN0]

@@MatthewNotSoFriendlyNeighbor no skill xD let's play 1v1 awp only I'll do you 10-0 "noob weapon" my ass. Look at how they play with a sniper on silver/faceit 1 and on global elite/faceit 8-10

[@ryan_1314]

Even though you said the TF2 sniper is the most balanced, there's actually a lot of discussion in the TF2 community about how broken sniper is. Its mostly due to the bot crisis, but also how the sniper can kill players with no warning in a far away position that enemies could never get to without entering his sightline. A few suggestions I've seen are firing tracer rounds, having a laser where he's aiming, lowering ammo, slowing reload time, or just lowering the amount of damage a fully charged shot can do.

[@caliburnleaf9323]

The moment you introduced the problem, my thoughts immediately jumped to "reduce damage at close range and scale positively with distance." I am so glad to see that was your ultimate conclusion as well. I think one of the big problems FPS games have is that they try to stick to some sense of "realism," or at least perceived realism. Having a shot that kills at long range but not close range is weird from a physics perspective, but makes a lot of sense from a game design perspective.

[@Franfran2424]

its such a junky solution tbh. same gun, different damage depending on distance or aimed time...

[@kalreynolds5829]

@@Franfran2424 Not really, it's a great solution. In either case, it rewards you for making your life harder. The shit literally balances itself at that point. You can deliberately make your life harder by taking shots at long range where you can get those kills, but now getting hits is incredibly difficult. Throw in a distance bonus and it's pretty great. Aimed time forces the sniper to think a lot more about stealth and repositioning. Both of these things work great.

[@UReadMyName]

Battlefield 1 did this, there was a sweet spot where snipers could one shot to the body, too close no one shot, too far no one shot

[@baitposter]

​@@Franfran2424 it's a great solution that fits a gyrojet weapon

[@alphamaccao5224]

@@Franfran2424 So, how a shotgun works you drooling neanderthal? Sniper is meant to be a long range weapon, punish short range use, simple.

[@Gyozaplanet2]

Absolutely incredible video, really makes me want to maybe make something similar about one shots in video games in general. A potential solution that I haven’t really seen, which you touched on, is the matter of overpenetration, which is basically that the bullet goes TOO fast at close ranges and doesn’t deal full damage. It more or less nullifies close range fights and punishes bad positioning, and forces players to be aware of their weapon choices. Yes, the heavy 1-shot .50CAL kills at torso, but if you aren’t at least 35m plus from your target, you’re screwed. Overall, great video, and I can’t wait to see what you make

[@OfficialArch]

Over penetration... completely forgot about it! Great call and thank you for your kind words :)

[@humaaaaaaaaaaan]

I am sorry your .50Cal punched a fist sized hole straight through the enemies chest he did not take any damage...

[@Nurse_Xochitl]

​@@OfficialArch Tactical shooters/Milsims (Like Insurgency, Ground Branch, and ARMA) have implemented stuff that makes snipers less of an issue. Bullets are bullets, and just like IRL it only takes one well placed shot to kill... or just a few poorer placed shots. Realism balances itself out. P.S. Rainbow Six Siege is not a true tactical shooter, nor is CSGO. For example, lets compare Call Of Duty's LMGs to ARMAs. COD - Bad mobility (lower speed, however no stamina reduction) - Bad accuracy (even when ADS, it's bad) - Bad handling (ADS is slow, reloading is slow) - Bad damage (often requires several bullets to kill) - Lots of ammo ARMA - Same mobility speed as other rifles (But your stamina decreases much faster) - Good accuracy (as long as your stamina is not drained... if it is drained - enjoy the fatigue you get which gives you gun sway and reduces your overall movement speed) - Bad handling (IRL LMGS weigh a ton! Some of them weigh even more than 30 pounds, while the average AR is about 6-8 pounds) - Same damage as other weapons of similar calibers - Lots of ammo (but if you carry a lot of ammo... you get less stamina overall!) The same sort of things apply to snipers in Arma, Insurgency, Ground Branch, etc. - Snipers usually shoot bigger bullets than most ARs for example... so you can't carry as much. They are also less common so good luck finding ammo should you run out (Your typical American AR round is a 5.56mm NATO or 7.62mm NATO which is much more abundant than .300 Winchester Magnum, .338 Lapua Magnum, .50 BMG, .408 CheyTac, etc.) - Bigger calibers, bigger recoil. (Perhaps enough recoil to take your target out of the sight picture, when using the more powerful sniper/anti-material rifles.) - Bigger calibers also tend to have lower fire rate... gun parts have to move more weight and move a further distance to cycle a round. - Bigger calibers, bigger rifles with longer barrels (BTW they also implemented more physics, longer guns have more trouble going through doorways, etc.) - Bigger calibers, more penetration. (BTW, friendly fire is a thing. Pls don't kill your teammates on accident. lol) - Bigger rifles, more weight... more weight, less stamina. Less stamina, you'll meet your personal enemy "fatigue" faster. - Bigger calibers, more noise which is harder to suppress. (Yeah buddy, did you hear that somewhat loud boom? That was my somewhat suppressed sniper rifle. lol) - But hey guess what? An AR with weaker ammo can still one hit kill you, even if it may require a headshot. Are you sure you want to take all the cons of a sniper, or do you want something a bit more versatile and easy to use? Realism in the end, while much hated by COD/BF idiots... generally balances itself out.

[@caolmhurich4968]

BF1's "sweet spot" mechanic for snipers did a similar job quite well, shame they didn't bring it back for BF5 & 2042.

[@Cyan_Scug]

@@OfficialArch tf2 for the w

[@Viperspider1]

Was waiting for you to mention Halo's implementation. Sniper is a 2-shot unless you land a headshot. Meaning skill shots are rewarding and the weapon is not so oppressive. Granted, Halo's weapons have slower TTK but still was worth mentioning.

[@abalrog42]

You also immediately zoom out in Halo when you get hit as the sniper. This means that under suppressing fire, you cannot take your time with a headshot while being barraged with bullets.

[@Smoulderboi4162]

yea halo's sandbox is so unique compared to other fps games, it baffled me when I started playing csgo and valorant that you can't get descoped and no scoping is extremely difficult

[@7tales311]

@@abalrog42 this is a clever design decision.

[@robmarney]

Destiny does the same. A sniper is never a one-hit to the body unless you have some kind of temporary damage boost.

[@WarDaft]

Halo 3 on Guardian was one of the - if not THEE - best local multiplayer FPS experience since Descent.

[@ikermont]

I’m really surprised you didn’t mention Overwatch at all. Granted it’s gameplay is really different from most FPS but the sniper Widowmaker uses is kind of balanced. Even though it one shots most of the roster on headshots, you still have to charge it while ADSing and you can never one shot with body shots. Also another disadvantage is that in Overwatch almost every hero has a movement ability, and there are classes specifically design to be quick and “dive” the sniper, who has very low mobility

[@jigstraw2809]

The most interesting attempt i've seen at balancing a sniper was surprisingly the one in Doom 2016's multiplayer. The multiplayer itself was nothing special, but in addition to doing the tf2 hardscope timer thing, its sniper also projected a visible laser beam across the map the entire time you aimed down the sights. This not only gives the sniper's position away, but can give players time to react before the sniper shoots. Taking the element of surprise away is a huge step towards making snipers feel less frustrating to play against even if they're still not balanced.

[@caliber5302]

Tf2 has something similar in that you have a bright red dot wherever you are aiming

[@MarekHR]

so whats the point of sniper then? Long range kills,one shoting ppl,even on close range they one shot,making suprised kills and make teams dissorianted...best way to nerf them is just make them zoom 6x so nobody wanna use it on close range only like 50 or more meters,make them one shot machine but make them heavy so you need to cary them and you wont be able to run half the speed and limit bullets to 15 so ppl wont spam the bullets but will ads and try to aim... i love sniping and hunting ppl... i play hunt showdown a lot because of that way.. there you have some snipers that are expencive as hell but dosent one shot, one kill, just when you headshot somebody... so its really non rewarding when you see target at 100m and shot him in body and he dont die like wtf man, why even this gun exist if you cant kill somebody in bodyshot over 100m?

[@KingDetonation]

@@MarekHR Close range one shots is a shotgun's job. Believe it or not, snipers are not shotguns...

[@MarekHR]

@@KingDetonation mostly shotguns are shit at 15m in all games... its stupid.. like in game indoors shotguns should own and out doors bolts... if you miss your shot with bolt AR will spray you if you not in cover and you down.. but with shotgun indoor use is stupid because even with ball (slug) in lot of games shotguns suck... as shotgun would destroy your chest while 7.62 or 7.9 bulet would fly trought you.. there is lot of army ppl who survived high velocity bullets... but never heard somebody survived shotgun in chest at 20 meters

[@KingDetonation]

@@MarekHR That's a problem with shotguns then. Snipers should not be made to fill that gap. Iyam, shotguns in games should be good between point-blank and 20 meters, ARs should win between 20-40 meters, longer ranges should be dominated by snipers and other longer range rifles.

[@arttukettunen5757]

Sniper: one-shots = unfair for others Sniper: needs more shots = unfair for the sniper It's a logical paradox!

[@jackmcmorrow9397]

I wouldnt say its unfair at all. A scoped sniper weapon already has a massive ranged advantage, it doesnt need a TTK advantage too.

[@KimDare75]

Well... if a sniper (maybe with the charge) holds a defensive position, it _should_ be powerful. That kinda is the idea of snipers. Support your storming squad from the back or hold a really strong defensive position, hard to take over. My idea is, snipers should be capable of defending really good while assault rifles... well... should be strong while _assaulting_ a position. Or something like that. And lowering the damage to non-headshot non-kill makes the sniper very reliant on comrades (or a potential side arm), as they need to take out the severely wounded enemy, while you cannot. FPS games should generally be more team/squad based...

[@AliceLoverdrive]

It's not that it's unfair, it just undermines to the core fantasy of playing a sniper. And I'm personally fine with snipers in low TTK shooters like Call of Duty or CS, but in games that consistently give some leniency for making mistakes, sniper just doesn't compute.

[@AliceLoverdrive]

@Kimi Timoskainen I've never played either, so can't comment on that. In TF2 and Unreal Tournament, high TTK games I've played extensively, snipers aren't overpowered per se (as in, there's an effective counterplay), but yeah, very fuck fucking annoying to deal with because having a cool 1v1 being suddenly interrupted by you or your opponent wandering into sniper's sightline while jumping around like madmen is very frustrating -- it, unlike in, say, CS, tests a fundamentally different skill in a fundamentally different way. (it's also heavily influenced by map design, as it's not an issue in a very claustrophobic Quake where true long-range engagements are not really a thing) RE: fantasy Fantasy of playing a sniper isn't the same as accurate simulation of sniper's job in the real life. It's a set of reasonable expectations, informed by multitude of other games, gaming-related media and completely unrelated media like novels, film or TV shows. I expect sniper oneshoting people at long ranges, just like I expect a shotgun to only work at spitting distance, or a greatsword to be slow, even if both are _wildly_ unrealistic.

[@littlehorn0063]

That's why you go quake route and don't include the sniper rifle at all

[@tybreezy5894]

I think a very important thing about sniper balancing is movement. When you have slow movement options,like counter strike, and run into a sniper it’s nearly impossible to dodge.

[@hmslc8289]

You have 4 grenades on your belt, all of which can be used to neuter the AWPer. You also have teammates, and with good peeking and teamwork you can trade kills, as the sniper cannot multi-kill. The AWP is one of the best balanced snipers in gaming

[@MegaloMan-d6l]

@@hmslc8289 Ye sure bro. Every pro who uses it has the highest rating out of everyone on the team. Even the more mediocre awper this is true. Any bad aimer swaps to awp when they are having a bad game. One of the least mechanically intensive guns I've ever seen in a shooter before. One shot to the body and a scope that can one shot on a pixel jiggle.

[@hmslc8289]

@@MegaloMan-d6l Then why don't teams run 5 AWPs if it's so overpowered? Because it's a niche gun that does one single thing well. It's terrible in clutches, it can't multikill, it can't spam smokes, it's bad at close range, it's extremely expensive, and it has a tiny magazine. It's an extremely situational weapon that is good at holding angles and nothing else. It has so many disadvantages that mean it's only viable for a maximum of two people on your team to use one

[@MegaloMan-d6l]

@@hmslc8289 Have you played any role type game before. Individual characters, roles or weapons can be extremely oppressive and considered broken but teams wont run more than one of that role for the reasons you have mentioned. That in no way diminishes the power that the one person who is the awper holds. Anyone with any sliver of aim can completely destroy entire teams and games on there own with the awp. To do the same as a rifler would require a significantly higher amount of skill and mechanics.

[@aaronstevenson6569]

@@MegaloMan-d6lThey can’t balance based on the lowest level of play or else there will be no money invested into creating a pro scene. Awps are the most balanced sniper in history

[@pixeldropper3659]

Over the years, me and my friends came up with some ideas (open for discussion): - drop the concept of "if long range is one hit kill, so is close range" and just start making snipers weaker at close range. Games don't need to bind themselves on real-life-concepts. - back in BF3 there was a concept called "supression". If bullets flew by close enough, you would loose accuracy. This was way too overpowered in BF3 but could work perfectly if applied correctly to sniper players (so pre-firing corners would supress a sniper and his accuracy would drop, making it less likely to hit you) - make scoped-in-accuracy depending on the position of the player → laying is 100%, standing only 30% - somehow make the gun in the viewport block a larger portion of the screen so that players miss close-range opponents - make only 10x - 20x zoom available - simulate the paralaxing-real-life-issue. IRL when aiming down a sniper scope at close range, you would hit your target a few inches below the point you aimed at. This would add another level of skill requirement, needing to aim for different heights on different distances - use bulletproof vest and/or helmet to counter the one-shot ability (maybe only effecting snipers) I honestly don't like your idea of "charging damage" cause it could promote camping scoped-in...