Why is the sniper rifle not hitscan?

I use it more like a shotgun than a Sniper really. Since it has this stupid mechanic you can just run in front of enemies and noscope them. 2 Shots and they are dead.
 
I've been trying different combinations of weapons today and it just blows my mind the only sniper rifle is a slow floating ball of plasma.

Any laser or kinetic weapon far out performs the plasma sniper rifle in accuracy and that just seems silly.

Why would devs apply grenade launcher like mechanic to a sniper rifle?

The formula for snipers is well established Hitscan, High damage to head, small clip sizes.......

Please please please whoever mapped out the weapon balancing have another look and see how your mechanics compare to the last 20 years of successful FPS games.
Fully agree. In my Group we pretty much dropped the Executioner and went for the Tormentor. Same projectile speed, so pretty much the same engagement Range: Close to Medium. Works fine, in some cases even better as you have more ammo and faster reload faster.
Now imagine the hitscan sniper in the hands of your enemies. Wait. Don't. You're already dead. Thank you for playing.
easy fix: dont spawn them randomly, but as tactical assets on elevated positions. that way you have an incentive to scout a base first, take out the snipers, then the rest. Alert the base? No problem, they are on elevated positions, their ai tells them not to run around but to snipe you, so you as a player can take cover and sneak up on them. You can even use a jetpack which NPCs cant. Oh and your shield protects you from a single hit anyway.
Works fine in for example Ghost Recon. And you dont have a shield there.
the problem we have is not with the rifle. it is that the "sharpshooters" spawn together with the rest of the close-range crew. the current balance is more like a (bad) Call of Duty, an Arena Shooter. But Elite is not an Arena.
also: have you ever seen an enemy with a Rocket Launcher?
They can't build big enough combat ground to use long-range and high-velocity bullet.
Aphelion. Long Range, perfectly Accurate, Hitscan. But it suffers from Rock-Paper-Scissor.
Long Range is not several kilometers. It works just fine to sit on a Building and snipe at 200m. There are bases that are pretty big, like the Tourist ones.
Problem is, that Weapons are balanced around CZ, so pure close range combat.
 
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main issue is the low speed of the plasma "ball" and the scope is not magnifying enough.
A railgun sniper would be better, scope with high magnification, remove the aim crossaid when you don't shoulder the rifle and make it a "bolt action" type of reload after each shot.
 
The reason why we don't have a real sniper rifle is because the AI is not smart enough to deal with such an enemy. It would be like a target practice for players, shooting one npc after another for a distance. Especially since I expect such a weapon to be capable to one shot kill, at least with headshots

Nevertheless I am a bit disappointed with the plasma rifle, in all fps I usually play a sniper or a battle rifle scout and the plasma rifle is far from what I expected.
 
The reason why we don't have a real sniper rifle is because the AI is not smart enough to deal with such an enemy. It would be like a target practice for players, shooting one npc after another for a distance. Especially since I expect such a weapon to be capable to one shot kill, at least with headshots

Nevertheless I am a bit disappointed with the plasma rifle, in all fps I usually play a sniper or a battle rifle scout and the plasma rifle is far from what I expected.
the AI is smart enough to be honest. you can already snipe them when they dont notice you, after that the rest activates their shield, which block atleast one projectile. they also seek cover when their shield is down.
i had sharpshooter battles where my suit ran out of power before one of us could land a hit.

the problem starts after that first kill because now the enemies are moving and you need godlike prediction to hit at longer range...
 
Snipers used to hate me in the battlefield series - along with a trio of buddies we'd all equip engineers and squad up, then act as a fire support unit for our team. Two of us were already set up, two were moving to our next overwatch position. Enemy sniper goes active, the drill was practiced... If you're moving, go to ground and set up. If you're set up, drop 2-4mortar rounds on the snipers perch and displace immediately, you want to make some progress towards the line and set up again quick, because your buddies who had started setting up while you were firing are now dropping some rounds on likely approaches to (and therefore also egresses from) the snipers perch after which they will also scoot and resume progress towards their planned position.

We got all the "noob-tube" craptalk, but that's how that weapon is supposed to be used. We were never high up the individual rankings but we were a darn good force-multiplier for the rest of the team by effectively suppressing enemy snipers and forcing them to always "shoot and scoot"
 
Snipers used to hate me in the battlefield series - along with a trio of buddies we'd all equip engineers and squad up, then act as a fire support unit for our team. Two of us were already set up, two were moving to our next overwatch position. Enemy sniper goes active, the drill was practiced... If you're moving, go to ground and set up. If you're set up, drop 2-4mortar rounds on the snipers perch and displace immediately, you want to make some progress towards the line and set up again quick, because your buddies who had started setting up while you were firing are now dropping some rounds on likely approaches to (and therefore also egresses from) the snipers perch after which they will also scoot and resume progress towards their planned position.

We got all the "noob-tube" craptalk, but that's how that weapon is supposed to be used. We were never high up the individual rankings but we were a darn good force-multiplier for the rest of the team by effectively suppressing enemy snipers and forcing them to always "shoot and scoot"
Ah, good old Battlefield. Thats exactly the Balance i want to see in EDO. There are so many Players here who never experienced what good Sniper balance looks like, because they only know the Arena-Snipers from Call of Duty or so. Yes, in those Games Sniper Rifles are bad and broken.
Remember when Battlefield had the Commander? The High Valuable Target that you could actually take out? That was great. I loved sneaking behind Enemy Lines in BF2142 to take out the Commander, place my APM Mines at Chokepoints, or sabotage Vehicles with RDX.
In Ghost Recon, i loved playing a Sniper while my Friends moved in with Assault Rifles. I take out the Enemy Snipers from a Hill and provide Intel with my Drone, or cover them when i see something that they dont. Tactical Combat is so much more fun than Arena-Combat. Yes, Arena-Combat can be fun too, but not when its the only choice.
 
the AI is smart enough to be honest. you can already snipe them when they dont notice you, after that the rest activates their shield, which block atleast one projectile. they also seek cover when their shield is down.
i had sharpshooter battles where my suit ran out of power before one of us could land a hit.

the problem starts after that first kill because now the enemies are moving and you need godlike prediction to hit at longer range...
The AI seem to have a maximum pursue range around the settlement, if you run far enough away, they just stop following you and stand still. Like not being able to find a way back to the settlement and then you can easily kill them from a distance.
 
Ah, good old Battlefield. Thats exactly the Balance i want to see in EDO. There are so many Players here who never experienced what good Sniper balance looks like, because they only know the Arena-Snipers from Call of Duty or so. Yes, in those Games Sniper Rifles are bad and broken.
Remember when Battlefield had the Commander? The High Valuable Target that you could actually take out? That was great. I loved sneaking behind Enemy Lines in BF2142 to take out the Commander, place my APM Mines at Chokepoints, or sabotage Vehicles with RDX.
In Ghost Recon, i loved playing a Sniper while my Friends moved in with Assault Rifles. I take out the Enemy Snipers from a Hill and provide Intel with my Drone, or cover them when i see something that they dont. Tactical Combat is so much more fun than Arena-Combat. Yes, Arena-Combat can be fun too, but not when its the only choice.
Tactical combat is the only legitimate combat. Battlefield sounds intriguing. May have to look into that.
 
Tactical combat is the only legitimate combat. Battlefield sounds intriguing. May have to look into that.
Beware, there are good ones and bad ones. After BF2142 (2006) i only tried Bad Company 2 (2010), and that one was one of the worst Games i ever played. Where Shotguns became a replacement for Snipers because they didnt have Bulletdrop, where balance was just about "who can cry the loudest", and where Skill was replaced through Ping (the Hitbox of Enemy Players increased based on your Ping and the movement Speed. So if you had a bad Ping, you had it easier to hit)
 
Beware, there are good ones and bad ones. After BF2142 (2006) i only tried Bad Company 2 (2010), and that one was one of the worst Games i ever played. Where Shotguns became a replacement for Snipers because they didnt have Bulletdrop, where balance was just about "who can cry the loudest", and where Skill was replaced through Ping (the Hitbox of Enemy Players increased based on your Ping and the movement Speed. So if you had a bad Ping, you had it easier to hit)
Yeah, I noticed the Steam reviews were nearly at Odyssey levels on some of them. I always read the reviews to see if the cons are things that would bug me or not. Sometimes even the positive reviews turn me off because they like what I hate.
 
If they're only reason making the sniper not a hitscan is because then the AI would always kill you dead before you could react, that's an AI issue, not a weapon issue.
By the same token, needing hitscan weapons is an I issue, not a weapon issue. Not being mean. It's just that games should require some skill.
 
A weapon that would allow you to sit way outside a settlement, in a position of absolute safety, and kill all targets without the slightest effort. Always a popular suggestion (y)
Anyway, there are ship-mounted rockets for that :)
Actually you described the SRV. Beyond a certain range NPC don't even react to being shot by it. And while it isn't hitscan, it gimbals and has a reasonably fast projectile speed.
 
By the same token, needing hitscan weapons is an I issue, not a weapon issue. Not being mean. It's just that games should require some skill.
If this was a dedicated shooter first and foremost I would agree with you. However, Elite was a Spaceship game first and they need to realize a chunk of their target audience for one reason or another are either bad at FPS or struggle with it and could use the help from hitscan weapons. There's also the mismatch between the difficulty of ship combat and fps combat. A hitscan weapon on foot serves a similar purpose to a gimbal or turret weapon on a ship.

The game already requires thought and planning to not get overrun at a base and the AI has some damn good aim so I would say the game still requires 'some skill' its just not the same set of skills you'd expect from a player of Battlefield, Arma, COD, CSGO etc.
 
Yeah, I noticed the Steam reviews were nearly at Odyssey levels on some of them. I always read the reviews to see if the cons are things that would bug me or not. Sometimes even the positive reviews turn me off because they like what I hate.
The sad thing is, it started as a decent Game. All Weapons were slightly different. Some Sniper Rifles were faster, some dealt more Damage...but most players loved to Snipe and Camp. So, other Players cried. Sniper got nerfed, all of them the same Damage and same Range. Even the big Anti-Material Rifle was unable to onehitkill past 100m or so on a Headshot. So, Snipers simply started to use the one with the best Scope or highest RoF. Then they discovered that Slug-Shotguns dealt enough Damage to Onehitkill...aaaand a new type of Sniper was born.
Underbarrel Grenadelauncers were nerfed in Radius because those Players cried, so now you had to directly Headshot them with a Grenade to kill them.
Something was then later done to the Heavy Machineguns too. So yeah, last time i checked it was pretty much a pure Shotgun VS Shotgun Arena Shooter, and no longer a Battlefield.
If they're only reason making the sniper not a hitscan is because then the AI would always kill you dead before you could react, that's an AI issue, not a weapon issue.
Just as i said. Dont spawn Sharpshooters together with the rest of the Commando-Crew. Sharpshooters are not supposed to run around with the rest of them. You dont bring a Sniper Rifle into a Close Range Environment. Unless you play an Arena Shooter, its completely normal there. And thats exactly what we have.
Now imagine Sharpshooters would spawn on predetermined locations or had specific Spots they run or actually jump to...
Actually you described the SRV. Beyond a certain range NPC don't even react to being shot by it. And while it isn't hitscan, it gimbals and has a reasonably fast projectile speed.
And now imagine the Bases had actually a working defence like...Goliaths. Or Anti-Vehicle Seeker Missiles.
If this was a dedicated shooter first and foremost I would agree with you. However, Elite was a Spaceship game first and they need to realize a chunk of their target audience for one reason or another are either bad at FPS or struggle with it and could use the help from hitscan weapons. There's also the mismatch between the difficulty of ship combat and fps combat. A hitscan weapon on foot serves a similar purpose to a gimbal or turret weapon on a ship.

The game already requires thought and planning to not get overrun at a base and the AI has some damn good aim so I would say the game still requires 'some skill' its just not the same set of skills you'd expect from a player of Battlefield, Arma, COD, CSGO etc.
Not to mention that there are still different Tools then. Cant Snipe? Use the Assault Rifles and get closer. Still cant hit? Take a Shotgun. Still cant hit? Yeah maybe FPS is just not for you, but hey, there are Support Roles! Here, come with me and repair my Vehicle or help me Survive! You dont need Combat at all. Just like it is in Ship Gameplay, you can play without a Weapon.
No one, not even me, expects a Battlefield or Arma as you said. But variety is what makes Ship-Combat fun. I dont need to use a Pulse-Laser / Multicannon Setup on only a Fer de Lance. If i want, i can turn an Orca into a Fighter. I can choose over 30 different Ships and play most of them however i like. Personally i enjoy my Challenger-Sniper a lot. Hitting a Powerplant at 6km range is fun for me. Others like highly agile Shotgun Ships. So why is Odyssey limited to pretty much just one Playstyle in Combat? I mean...no one play CQC anymore. It will be the same with CZ.
 
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...Tactical Combat is so much more fun than Arena-Combat...
Particularly when you're playing with a team with plenty of real-world experience in small-unit tactics where the incoming fire can cause more serious consequences than a respawn. I never had that experience myself but more than half the crew I played with did and they weren't exactly reticent about passing on what the rest of us were doing wrong and how to do it right. Kill count? Game rank? Hades with that. Did your force take the objective or deny it to the enemy? THAT's a "win."
 
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