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On FPS Sniping And The Ruination Of Gameplay
An anonymous reader writes "FiringSquad has a great article today which puts forth the claim that sniper rifles in multiplayer FPS games have made the genre infinitely worse. They take the time to explain why, and what improvements need to be made. It's definitely not the standard 'I hate campers' article." The editorial argues: "Every... 'reason' for the existence of sniper rifles - realism, historical accuracy, weapon diversity, giving players identifiable roles - is a lie", concluding that "...in games, snipers are given a ludicrous advantage over everyone else."
... in games, snipers are given a ludicrous advantage over everyone else." ... in real life. Snipers are a bitch. It takes very real work to take out a sniper in a battlefield, especially a good one. Snipers are hated in reality because of the real, significant damage they can do to a battle scenario.
... the 'detached delusion' of opiated players looks to have some interesting consequences ... of course snipers suck. That's reality!
Welcome to realism. Killing people is not as easy as your average Game-Junkie might think it is.
I find it moderately ludicrous that such an analysis can be made, in all seriousness.
If anything, this article demonstrates just how big the fantasy world most gameplayers live in can be
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The rocket is the sniper's bane. Any serious sniper will soon have half the opposing team on his ass lobbing dozens of rockets at him.
This article was nothing but an ad hominem rant. I almost never play sniper, and suck at it when I do. I do fairly well otherwise. So apparently there must be some skill that snipers possess that I do not.
;) Just because there is one class that you cannot beat as easily as the others, this does not make the class "bad" or "low skill". In fact, it usually means the opposite.
I don't like snipers either. But neither do snipers like spies that stab them in the back
There is a reason for every class. In Team Fortress, Heavy Weapons and Rocket guys would be the only classes anyone played were it not for snipers.
Too many people with sniper rifles? Then limit the amount available. Problem solved. Oh no, they fire too quickly. Well, that's easily solved with a change to the reload variable. Problem solved. Boo hoo, they take me down with one shot. Well, duh, that's the whole purpose of a sniper rifle. This simpleton doesn't take into account that a sniper rifle round fires at a much higher velocity than a AK47 and does much, much more damage. Hey, it might not kill you, but it damn will incapacitate you which in a game is pretty much the same thing. Waaah! They have more points at the end of the game. Well, put a ratio penalty on the rifle. Sniper kill is worth 1/2, MP40 worth 1 and a knife kill worth 2 points. Problem solved!
Good grief, why not write an article about how health packs are unrealistic and how in WWII they didn't have medics running around healing and poisoning other soldiers. If this whiner has a problem with it all... then stop playing and find a game that plays by "your" rules. Gah! FiringSquad needs better editorial control rather than let this drek hit the web.
This article gives no basis to its arguments whatsoever.
I fashion myself a bit of a sniper, thats the roll I play for the most part in Battlefield 1942. I also take part in competitive long range shooting IRL.
The truth of the matter is the military employs snipers for two basic reasons: 1 or 2 well placed snipers can hold down 50+ troops. And snipers can create a sense of fear on the battlefield, that any second your head is going to be whisked off your shoulders by an unseen enemy. This same fear is what makes multi-player FPS games fun.
Like it or not, in the real world a sniper rifle is "the finger of god" also.
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If you RTFA he says that he's pretty much only talking about CS and other FPS games where the sniper rifle is the "finger of god".
Right or wrong, what this guy is saying is nothing new. And as history has shown, the games aren't going to change.
The one point he misses in cs is that the extremely good players can get an aug or an m4 and get across the map and complete the objective without getting killed by snipers. What the sniper rifle does in CS is give the incredibly unskilled players the role of weeding out the average players and each other. The above average cs player will have the bomb planted so fast you'll still be reloading your awm. Kevlar, helmet, flash, aug, five seven, all hostages have been rescued.
Sure, you may have a better kill ratio. But our team has won ever game, hmmmm. One more thing, the "problem" he describes only exists on public servers. In any sort of real CS game with serious play, sniping is almost nil if you are on the offense team (T on DE map, CT on CS map). In a match the only thing that anyone cares about is which team wins, on the pub people only care about kill ratio. When people care about their team winning they put the sniper rifles away. That's not a game flaw, that's a people flaw.
This is why NS is gaining a lot of ground and becoming the Half-Life mod of choice. Heck, it IS the mod of choice. It hides the kill ratio. All anyone cares about in a game of NS is the team winning, and all the non-n00bs play as such.
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Moreover, most modern games don't get one aspect of scopes right - you can look AROUND the scope, to maintain situational awareness.
The way the old Outlaws game did it was pretty correct - you saw the zoomed view through the scope, but could see the rest of the scene around the scope. As such, if something moved out of the scope you could re-aquire it, and you could look around while waiting for that "prefect shot".
Modern games basicly "cheat" by altering the zoom ratio of the renderer and masking the display. I'd love to see a game do it right - render the zoomed view, render the scene, then put the scope view in the middle of the main view.
Also, take time-of-flight into account - the real issue with most games is the sniper rifle bullet is moving instantaniously from muzzle to target - there is no hang time of the round, no time of flight, no windage.
Add these, and watch the sniper rifle become much less useful.
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I can see that this individual has certainly dealt with some frustrating experiences with sniping opponents. I will have to disagree with sniper rifles being the "bane" of first person shooting though. It seems to me like I've read more about cheating being the bane of online FPS games more so than sniper rifles. Also, just because I would contend against this writer's arguments doesn't mean that I can't use any other weapons. Truth be told, in a FPS I am actually lousy with a sniper rifle and prefer to use other weapons. I have always been a fan of the sniper rifle though and certainly feel that it should be included in first person shooters.
Secondly if his argument were an "indisputable fact" then there wouldn't be much discussion going on here now would it. It's kind of risky to try and turn one's opinion, or even a summation of multiple opinions into an indisputable fact.
Arguing against the sniper rifle's lack of realism in FPS is kind of a moot point. I mean most weapons in FPS aren't realistic, unless of course the game is trying to be true to life. In that case I'd say he had a point, but only in the case of FPS that are supposed to reflect realistic weaponry. Games like Halo, Quake, and Unreal Tournament however would fail the realism test when it comes to most every weapon involved.
All in all I'd say this article was an enjoyable rant which obviously reflects a gamers' frustration which they are entitled to have. I can't agree with it being an indisputable argument however and nor can I side with their opinions. Oh well, five years from now (preferrably much sooner than that) it won't matter anyway.
that needs to be beaten with a Physics textbook.
That was the biggest, smack-my-face-due-to-sheer-idiocy point in the whole article..."Oh look, these bullets are the same size, they should do equivalent damage."
Well, why isn't an AK-47 used for sniping then, dammit? It fires WAYYYY more bullets. The velocity is way different! F=MA.
Geez...more like the Fired Squad.
Sniper rifles require less skill and that isn't realistic with real life...so you think the reason they were giving them to 10-year olds in Somalia is because those 10 year olds were crack Commandos? Hello?! They're supposed to be easy to use, and they're supposed to be effective at killing their targets. That's why they FIRE SO DAMN SLOWLY!
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Part of the reason the games don't let you look around the scope is balance. Yes, looking around the scope is something a person could realistically do. But give a player a 1 shot 1 kill weapon that enables them to see across a map, and you've given them enough of an advantage.
The limited field of view forces the player to chose: zoomed in, ready to take the shot in a particular area, or zoomed out, looking at other potential target locations (and monitoring your safety). There has to be some disadvantage to sniper rifles, and the inability to see much while zoomed is it.
The problem is in bad game design, not in the concept of a particular weapon itself.
When accurate modelling of the power of a sniper rifle is not accurately offset by its shortcomings, it's bound to unbalance things. the shortcomings being chiefly - refire rate, recoil, bulk, required stances (prone, propped or seated), range falloff, spotting, support, etc.
Sniper rifles in video games often ruin balance because they don't model those things at all, or effectively enough.
They don't have falloff over distance, so the primary skill of sniping is obviated.
They don't slow you down when moving (in cstrike, just switching to the pistol negates the penalty, allowing you to jump and move unrestricted).
They don't require you to take a prone, propped or seated position for accuracy. (AA excepted)
Furthermore, the 'damage' modelling for a sniper rifle is simply a linear scaling of the ambiguous 'damage' applied to the single hitbox on a target (subsets of the hitbox only model increased damage, never decreased as in, for instance, grazing shots).
Also, when games accurately model even modest anti-sniper technology (eg smoke grenades, thermal imaging) the usefulness against nonmoronic enemies plummets. Particularly given the relatively small spaces rendered in a game.
Ironically, counterstrike chooses to more heavily restrict the use of smoke grenades than sniper rifles: you can only carry 1 smoke grenade, but you can run and jump with the rifle without too much ill effect. (granted that is likely due to their original fairly high resource consumption)
Complaining that cstrike should allow more smokes per soldier, or thermal/nightvision imaging is reasonable. (whatever happened to nightvision goggles in cstrike? oh yeah, unfair gamma settings) Complaining that campers own you when you aren't even leveraging the tools at your disposal is akin to bitching that shotguns have an unfair advantage over knives.
There is always a trade-off in gaming (shooters particularly): reality vs fun. A 'real' sniper rifle would require proper positioning, spotting, support and cover. People don't find that fun. That's not something you can manage in most 'pick-up' FPS matches.
IMO removing 'sniper rifles' is a moot point - so long as i can fire off headshots over any distance with a stock AK, the AWP isn't necessary to upset balance. All one needs is a precise mouse and a high resolution. They'll likely even still call it 'sniping'. Removing a single weapon or lowering its damage just hides the true problems.
(bad balance and game design decisions)
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To be honest, I agree with you, but I believe you're dumbing down the severity of the issue (in terms of counterstrike). Public servers are the heart of the game, the first thing you play and what the general populace goes to have fun. They're not matches and they're not edge of your seat elite vs elite teams.
I think he's got a point. Servers without sniper rifles (i've seen them) are actually much more rush-orientated. There's nothing really to do, right? Just get in there and kick some ass. No one's blowing your head off before you rush around the corner and see your first enemy.
So yeah, in 'serious' gaming, perhaps CS is balanced. But on a pub, you'd probably make a far more 'fun' server by restricting sniper rifles.
Lead Time
Bullets are not lasers, they have to take time to travel to thier target, which may move. In most FPS games, bullets instant-hit, there is no travel involved, just a laser drawn through the air.
I for one love BF1942 and a good round of Enemy Territory - in those games, sniping actually *does* take skill. Yes, anyone can grab a sniper rifle - but to be good at it, consistently good, requires skills.
I like being a sniper - in BF1942 especially since there are no real "set" routes to get to a point - as a sniper, you do need to look at the terrain, find a suitable spot (i.e. somewhere you can get a shot off without immediately being mowed down), and actually hope and pray to god that those airplanes overhead didn't see you get in position.
In Enemy Territory, it's also not quite as easy as you'd like to think, it's easier though than BF1942.
Both games feature quite realistic action, it takes time to reload, and in BF1942 you actually lose your scope sight. Also in BF1942, a sniper rifle up close is useless. If someone gets close, surprises you, or otherwise hunts you down, you can bet your ass on it that if that player has any skills, they'll kill you.
And sure, you do have the advantage of the 2 shot kills in ET and BF1942 - the 1st shot is usually easy to get, but most people know damn well that if their health drops suddenly, that a sniper is busy aiming for their noggin, and will most likely take cover.
You also need to use some tactics and move around, if you just stay where you are, someone will come, find that you are peeking thru your scope, and will unload a full clip in your head because you never saw them coming.
Oh well, just my 2 cents.
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People playing these games are always complaining about "camping", something that's almost always synonymous with "sitting in one place, waiting for the enemy", "sniping", and, of course, "winning".
The fact that the entire gameplay depends on at least one person moving around at any one time, makes it a bit impractical to include a weapon that enables the player to sit still and shoot from a long distance.
Jakub, in his ranting listed 4 reasons that sniper rifles shouldn't be included in FPS games. Or 4 reasons that weren't "good enough". But there is only one overwhelming reason anything should be included in any game...
Fun
Plenty of people enjoy sniping, in various games. Sure the sniper rifle(AWP) in CS is a bit over powering, but CS is only one game. The sniper rifle in Unreal Tournament is underpowered compared to the shock rifle, rocket launcher and flak cannon. The railgun in quake is powerful, but plenty of people still use a rocket launcher.
While a camper may take out his or her share of newbies, It takes quite a bit of skill to camp, against very good/great players. All things being equal, a very good player knows all the camping spots and the advantage in any FPS is always with the player who is moving not the one who is standing still.
To camp against a great player, you need better spots, and you need to be smart about where you camp and where the player has looked. You might have to piston jump, or rocket jump depending on the game to take a good spot. That doesn't take skill? Aiming does take skill? Usually you get one or two shots in most games with a sniper rifle before whoever you are shooting at figures out where you are. You had better make them count.
All in all, his argument is pretty poor. I could make a better argument about rocket launchers being low skill but included in most games than Jakub has about sniper rifles.