Tom Berenger has a lot to answer for

[septuscap 42]

Crack Kenny's hit and down.

Hit the deck scout and scout as much as possible looking for the sniper until another shot finished Kenny of and the crack of the bullets start whizzing past my ears.

Can't find the sniper and it is becoming too dangerous to stay put. Break cover and run back up the hills towards the forest with bullets slapping at the dirt by my feet. Zig zagging all the way I make it to relative safety. Eat, drink and move down to the south to meet up with another friend.

Essentially we never saw who hit us. You could say he's playing the game well, but I don't feel it's really PvP with guys being able to take people out from great distances, relatively safe from small arms, machine gun & assault rifle fire.

Honestly, the way you describe it doesn't sound like a sniper. I'm *assuming* you can tell the difference in sounds.

Back when there was side chat, I killed a lot of people who then cried in global about a "sniper" when I just stalked them and waited for the opportune moment, usually killing them from sub-100m.

I can't help but feel many "wahh sniper" posts suffer from this mistake. ie. just being completely outplayed and then crying sniper.

With regards to the role of sniping in-game, I think overwatch is a huge part of any group, and group PvP as well. It adds a dynamic to positioning (and strategy/tactics in general) that just wouldn't be there without it. One of the *best* ways to practice is to try to kill the campers in Elektro/Cherno. Sniping isn't OP, and snipers are generally sitting ducks.

Edited July 27, 2012 by SeptusCap

[Mojo Jojo 6]

A. If you don't drop your gfx to the lowest settings to make bushes disappear and make it easy to spot players at a distance then you put yourself at a disadvantage. I have everything turned down when I play and so does my clan and we spot people all the time trying to hide in bushes that are not there to us because the gfx for it are off to us.

I don't care if people have a $1000 gfx card and you like the pretty shadows and post processing, I will see them before they see me.

Wow, hadn't heard of that exploit before. Sketchy... but helpful, I guess.

[Askar 177]

I think, for the moment, ammo needs to be very scarce. I just don't see another way to really balance them at the moment without having something seem gimicky.

Ideally, DayZ would have a radically different map, something I hope they do for the standalone. Say, the type of environment we have now, but surrounding a huge, true city. Rocket has been talking a lot about increasing the map size as well as player count in future iterations, so I'd like to see something along the lines of a city the size of Chernaurus now, with roughly the same sized area we already have surrounding this city. Think a large city, with smaller "Elektro/Cherno" sized urban areas around it, with the smaller 'towns and villages' farther our and surrounded by the type of terrain we currently have.

I feel like sniper rifles would be much more balanced by nature in such an environment, especially within the city itself (where I see the highest risk and highest reward being present). Within an urban area, there is exponentially more cover and concealment available from snipers than we have in the current wide-open areas. Sniping would remain unchanged in the outskirts and surrounding wilderness, but would be much more difficult in the city due to reduced visibility and abundant cover from snipers. I think this would naturally balance snipers better than any ammo/scope/weapon abundance tweaking could ever hope to.

With most of the 'hot spots' being in highly urban areas, snipers wouldn't be able to just sit a mile out and shoot anyone who wanders into the area due to the surrounding environment. They'd still be perfectly capable of doing this in the much less desireable/traveled outer regions of the map and the outskirts of the city, but they wouldn't be the ultimate presence where it truly counts, as they are now. Now, a sniper at an airfield or on the outskirts of a large city can dominate much of the surrounding region with little threat to himself. In a close-quarters zombie infested city this would be different, with shotguns and potentially assault rifles/submachine guns ruling instead.

I think changes like that would bring much needed variety to gameplay across all levels, and significantly level the playing field with all weapons having an environment in which they are optimal for both zombie killing and banditry.

Just my two cents, coming from a long-time sniper who would love some more engaging gameplay.

[thehumandove 344]

Keep snipers as they are. I don't have a problem with them, and I've never even used one in the game, though they've been used on me.

No need to take away the element of fear, not knowing if a sniper has their scope trained on you. That's half the fun

[xwhitemousex 67]

Okay, now we're just arguing in circles.

Every day you have hundreds if not thousands if not tens-of-thousands of these rifles being duplicated. One rifle becomes 2, 4, 8, 16, with just a few mouse clicks. The same goes for the ammunition.

Granted, I can agree that the duplication issues are wrecking havoc on the perceived amount of weapons in the game right now.

So absolutely, the duping and scripting issues need to be resolved before any sensible itemization and loot rate / rarity decisions can be made.

I still don't see any reason for military snipers to be present in a game where civilians are thrown together to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. Are they really needed or just a desired item for people who treat this game as a sniping simulator? Wouldn't a CZ550, optionally other types of hunting rifles, suffice as far as overwatch and cover goes ?

Furthermore, keeping duped items in mind, I think the way the game is playing out right now with such an easy availability of sniper rifles is a clear indicator that the game (once duping / scripting is resolved) really needs to maintain a restriction on the amount of sniper rifles introduced into the game (whether through limitation on spawn rates, spawn locations or ammunition availability). Otherwise it simply becomes a Sniper Ghost Warrior with permadeath game, which it has proven to become in it's current state given the large amounts of scoped rifles available and the huge amounts of people using them.

Making balance choices at this point is like trying to make interior decorating decisions while your house is on fire.

I suppose this is a picturesque illustration of the situation. All in all, I guess this discussion about snipers needs to be picked up again after duping/scripting is resolved and we have a clearer overview over exactly how easy they are to obtain.

[Nihlathak 20]

Let me reiterate a very key point I keep trying to make:

You are the inhabitants of the world. I am the architect. You guys are going to decide how this world plays out. Don't compare this to other games and look for different balancing mechanics. This is an attempt at something different, it is an experiment. There is no balance, other than the balance you will put in. I will put in the features required for you to either destroy this world into mindless PVP, or create something else. Don't look to me for that balance, because I will not give you it. We started this in a particular way, we're going to finish in that way.

Some of keep looking to me to provide you a structured experience, balanced. That's not what is happening here. I'm not looking at something realistic, that isn't possible. I'm aiming for authenticity to the extent possible, but I'm realistic about what can be achieved there.

You guys keep saying I'm trying to encourage this or that with that mechanic, I'm not. I'm trying to model thought processes. The interactions are too complex to breakdown into simple mechanics so I have to focus on situations and thought processes I am trying to put into your head as you play. So I'm not doing this to support/remove PVP.

I wish I could find the quote where rocket says Blizzard and EA arent here to balance the game for you, but alas, this quote is the best I could get for now. Quit your whining about sniper rifles. If you think they are such a big problem, play on servers without nametags. The fact that the built in rangefinder is missing deters most of the snipers. Even if you run across some, they are not that hard to avoid. Hell, I would hazard to guess that at least 70% of the "snipers" I have encountered couldnt hit water if they fell out of a boat. Movement seems to throw them off. And before you ask, I am not a sniper. I can snipe, and am actually pretty damn good at it, but sniper weapons in DayZ are situational weapons. I personally find that it is easier to be a bandit with weapons that do not have scopes, due to the fact that they can be utilized in a variety of roles beyond long range support/PKing.

Also, in order to add some perspective to the argument that scoped weapons are too common, I would like to state that the 3 bandits in my squad that have M107's spent a good three weeks finding them. One was found in a barracks, and the other two were on shitty bandits that we murdered. While it can be argued that the two weapons we obtained off the bandits might have been scripted in, that leaves 1 M107 that we found in 3 weeks of playtime. That is not common at all! And i havent seen a CZ550 spawn since about 3 patches ago. Again the only one i have spotted recently was in the backpack of some random survivor. All of our weapons were obtained legitimately, and by that i mean we did not script/hack/sacrifice a virgin to get them. So, even if you still believe that the number of snipers is a problem, the fact that rocket will fix the scripting/hacking/virgin sacrificing issues before the final release of the game will fix this problem.

[Sakeoe (DayZ) 115]

Sniping wouldn't be a problem if it was more like this

Edited July 27, 2012 by Sakeoe

[Sakeoe (DayZ) 115]

Sniping wouldn't be a problem if it was more like this

LTBvPn19g98