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."

Comments

Same is true:

[torpor]

... 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.

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 ... the 'detached delusion' of opiated players looks to have some interesting consequences ... of course snipers suck. That's reality!

Stupid Article

[etymxris]

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.

I don't like snipers either. But neither do snipers like spies that stab them in the back ;) 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.

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.