Rifleman Archive
Thread: Musings on making a true sniper class in an MMORPG
The reason true snipers are difficult to implement (perhaps even impossible, though I don't claim expert knowledge) is that one-shot, one-kill trivializes encounters which are supposed to be challenging, and which ARE challenging for other classes.
I mean, think about it: Sharnaff Bulls on Corellia have a ton of HP. I dropped a headshot2 on one the other night for 1500+ damage, and he lost about 5-8% of his mind bar. Clearly, Sharnaff Bulls are meant to be tough critters and tough fights. If I could one-shot a Sharnaff Bull every single time, that trivializes the encounter, especially in comparison to the difficulty any other class would have in killing one. Other classes would (rightly, IMHO) complain that they were woefully underpowered in comparison to the sniper class, and that snipers could just sit there all day and rack up XP by one-shotting Sharnaffs, while they had to group up to do it, or use run-and-gun techniques, or what-have-you.
Some possibilities that come to mind to correct this problem:
Make the Sniper ability a time-based skill. In the Real World(tm), snipers take a lot of time setting up their position, and setting up their shots. They sneak in, find their perch, and then they don't move, often for hours. One idea might be that a sniper would have to go prone, take cover, and then activate a /sniper command. The /sniper command makes you totally immobile, and would start a timer. This would simulate a real-world sniper's behavior: Taking cover, and then staying VERY STILL for a LONG TIME. The timer would take a variable amount of time, depending on the toughness of the critter, but would take at least 2 minutes per attempt, and possibly as long as 5 minutes per attempt, from the time you hit /sniper to the time you're actually ready to fire.
Once the timer has expired, you shoot. YOU CAN STILL MISS. A flat 5% chance to miss, let's say. 1 out of 20 shots, on average. But if you hit, it's insta-kill. There might also be critters that are sufficiently tough that they cannot be one-shotted no matter how much time you take.
Make this work for PvP. We don't have buildings, so we can't hide in 'em, and obviously you aren't going to target some enemy Overt and wait 2-5 minutes for the /sniper timer to expire. But let's say that you're in Bestine, and you KNOW a Rebel raid is on the way. You take cover in a strategic position. You hit /sniper. The timer kicks in and immobilizes you. After 5 minutes, you vanish from the overhead radar and from normal sight. The Rebs come in. You target one and fire. One-shot, one-kill. When you fire, you become briefly visible on the radar and to normal sight. Anybody who sees you when you're visible doesn't lose sight of you unless you run off and manage to /sniper again. If you fire again from the same position, you lose your cover completely and are not hidden to anyone.
Give the Countersniping track in Rifleman extra skills. If you are a Rifleman with Countersniping, a sniper concealed in this way will be visible to you for longer periods of time once they fire. And there would be a chance for Riflemen with Countersniping to spot a sniper before they fired. The higher rank you are in Countersniping, the better your skill is at spotting concealed snipers. Maybe even add this skill to scouts or rangers, so a person going the Ranger/Rifleman route could have an increased chance of finding snipers, due to their knowledge of where a sniper would hide, and their ability to track and tell if people had been in a particular area.
Again, this is all just wishful thinking. I don't think that any MMORPG will ever implement a true sniping class. The first MMORPG to try it was DAoC, and the sniping classes had all their sniping abilities nerfed because people didn't like being one-shot without being able to fight back. But I think there are some neat ideas above. Maybe someday...
I think there's some interesting (and doable) possibilities for turning Riflemen into soldiers and snipers.
As a soldier,we have the skills we already have. Essentially a weak carbineer that hits a different pool.
As a sniper, we have new skills that are much like you describe.
If you take cover within visual range of someone, they know where you are. If you are already in cover when they come within range, they don't see you -- the server does not evenbroadcast your coordinates. If you have the "sneak" ability, you can crawl and stay in cover and thus hidden. You are revealed based on your "Cover" skill. At the lowest level, you are revealed if someone walks within 20m of you. At the highest level you are revealed only if they are within 1 meter.
For sake of balance, you are also revealed when you shoot -- but you stay covered, so any new arrivals to the area will not see you. This would work like the TEF flag. When you shoot, you basically get a "Sees You" flag for everyone nearby. The server broadcasts your location to them. Any new arrivals do not see you until you shoot again.
"Aim" changes function. If you queue up "Aim" and "Headshot1", you will aim for a small accuracy bonus and then shoot. If you simply hit "Aim" and do not queue up anything else, you will "begin taking aim". The longer you hold it, the higher your accuracy and damage will be when you finally shoot, up to 99% accuracy and 20x normal damage if you hold it for 5 minutes (so in PvE, a 2000 damage headshot3 could actually do 40,000 damage if you were able to aim for 5 minutes). If the target moves too close or too far away, it breaks your aim and you'll have to start over.
This way a rifleman who is forced to run-and-gun is like today: a big pile of suck. He can do damage, but not a lot and not very accurately.
But a rifleman who has a chance to hide and sneak and spend a long time aiming can do serious damage in one shot (a 40,000 point hit against a Dark Jedi would still only be 4000 damage because they have 90% resistance to everything).
You may think I'm kidding with the numbers, but we've seen the damage Commandos do, and 5 minutes is a long time to sit there and just aim.
Thus, riflemen are potentially the most high damage class in the game and they can one-shot anyone.....if they're willing to sit in one spot and do nothing for a long time.
Another limited factor could be "ammo". Make some high powered sniper rifles that require a clip or a battery pack that Novice Weaponsmiths make. Normal rifles (like the Laser Rifle) don't need these packs, but there are new high powered sniper rifles that require these to fire. Similar to Commando weapons, you have to get a new clip or battery after X number of shots, but those shots are vastly increased damage.
thats mainly what rifleman need is a way to not be detected, and it not take 5 minutes cause some good battles might last 3 minutes. **edit** if you go prone, its like turning of a neon sign please come kick me cause thats all the damage that needs to be done to kill me.
ISEEJOO
Currently, carbineers are weak riflemen, not the other way around (when it comes to AE damage, anyway). In order for the "sniper" idea to fly, it would almost certainly be necessary to strongly tone down our AE attacks, i.e. remaking the rifleman as a sniper effectively reinvents the class.
If you don't want to wait, then you should be a carbineer.
Snipers wait. It's in the job description. Snipers are famous for being able to wait.
I would do it like this....
For every second you aim, you get a damage multiplier of .07
If you aim for 60 seconds, you get your usual damage times 4.2
If you aim for 120 seconds, you get your usual damage times 8.4
If you aim for 300 or more seconds, you get damage times 21 (this is the cap)
So you can find that Rebel General with 8000 HAM, go prone and get within 50m of him. Aim for60 seconds and you get a damage bonus of x4.2
So your headshot3 would have done 2000 damage but because you spent 45 seconds aiming it does 8400 damage and you kill him in one shot.
We might even say that if you aim for more than 30 seconds, the AP rating of your target will be treated as if it was 0. If you aim for more than120 seconds, the resistance of your target to your damage type will be treated as if it was75% of the normal value. So if you aim for 5 minutes, you can shoot a Dark Jedi (90% resistance) for 10237 damage in one hit (assuming the attack would have otherwise done 1500x.1 damage).
So 5 snipers might not be the fastest killers in the game, but they'd be the most efficient.
In PvP, if you could find an overt enemy sitting in a camp you could aim at him until he stood up, then POW, one shot kill because you had an 8x damage bonus on top of what you would have normally hit for. Even a DLT20a could hit for 1600 damage in PvP if you had time to aim for 2 minutes.
To make it more interesting, cover could also make you vanish from radar as long as you used it from >64 meters away. So you spot someone, run 65m away, take cover, then sneak back to about 60m away and start aiming....
Heh, as long as we're talking about things that will never be implemented, you could also throw in player feedback to keep things lively. Like you get a message "The wind is changing, you need to adjust your aim to the left by .5 degrees." You have 5 seconds to either fire, type "/adjust left .5" or else lose your aim. That way you can't just be a "Sniper" and go watch TV for 5 minutes and then shoot.
Noules000 wrote:
Currently, carbineers are weak riflemen, not the other way around (when it comes to AE damage, anyway). In order for the "sniper" idea to fly, it would almost certainly be necessary to strongly tone down our AE attacks, i.e. remaking the rifleman as a sniper effectively reinvents the class.
I could agree to giving our AE attacks to carbineers. That makes more sense anyway. Carbineers have things with names like "Full Auto". They are the machinegunners. Riflemen are the one-shot snipers, not the spray-and-pray types.
Or that's how it would work if I were king.