SNIPERS: A Nightmare for Developers and Players

It's an Arch production, every first-person shooter has a multitude of weapons to choose from, pistols, shotguns, rifles,

snipers

, rocket launchers, etc., but among those many weapons there is one so fundamentally broken that even companies of the world's biggest FPS games don't know how to do it. solve the problem and the various attempts made to balance the weapon can only be described as desperate. The gun I'm talking about, which you probably already deduced from the title of the video, is one that the sniper, let's face it, a competitive shooter is not. complete without at least one sniper for the player to choose from.

The often gluttonous extended range, with damage reduction seemingly missing, allows the player to pick up targets fairly easily at any range all day long. Handles that we can often choose between two different types. of semi-automatic

snipers

often wrapped by the name of The Marksman rifle, a fancy term for snipers who are capable of taking multiple shots at range and have a quick succession attitude compared to their counterparts, Bolt action snipers , high impact, slow firing, often single shot monstrosities created by humanity. and this part is where the problem that apparently no one can solve starts to better understand the problem, let's say we are making a game, we finished the maps, fixed the movement and now it's time to balance the iconic Armory of our game, a weapon is can balance in seven. different forms of damage headshot damage rate of fire range vehicle control mobility and handling games often don't show all of these stats when a weapon is shown for simplicity, but here's basically what it boils down to, so let's make an assault rifle, this assault rifle will be the core of our entire game, so we have the responsibility of Bear.

If he decides to give the weapon a super strong kill time, then we'll have to balance all the weapons around him the same if he decides to make the weapon. weak, then the other weapons also have to be on the same weak side. It's important to make this weapon feel as pleasant as possible, so let's make it take 4 shots to kill, a headshot with a body shot to kill, average average rate of fire. easy to control range, also average mobility which basically means movement speed when equipped and finally handling which means aiming down sights, lateral speed and other weapon handling.

Awesome, the M4 is now ready, but before we move on to another category of weapons, let's make an alternative to the assault rifle is the place to play and like any other game, we will make a super original Kalashnikov, I know, but for some That's why

players

never get tired of it. Stat-wise, we shouldn't make it too different from the M4, as it's within the same weapon category, but different enough that it feels distinctive and not just a cheap imitation, so we increase the damage and, To make it distinctive, we also make it so you can use one tip of the gun like you would with the AK and CS. we go and wrap to keep the time to kill relatively the same as the M4 we also have to lower the fire ant and fire our second weapon is ready now we create the machine gun for our game the same damage numbers as the M4 and even higher fire attacks but at a cost, as the range is considerably worse, and just in case, here's another submachine gun.

Let's also make a sniper rifle for our game. High damage, slow fire rate, and incredibly long damage dropoff. I'm not a sniper yet, but let's not go any further. of ourselves before making the sniper, we have to make its counterpart, the shotgun, with super strong damage capable of shooting even the tankiest opponents at close range and it has to be at close range because our range is hilariously bad, how much The faster the mobility and handling helps the shotgun closes the gaps where necessary, making the shotgun a force to be reckoned with, we finally have the problem, kid, the sniper, let's look at the stats, yeah, like that Here's the problem: The sniper is like the A1 shotgun hitting machine, but the main difference is that the sniper is a one-hit machine at any range, while the shotgun can only work in tight spaces, but is this really a problem with the sniper class and if so how big is it and how can we fix it? long range You could argue that the slow-paced sniper style of play that waits for an unexpected soul to walk sideways makes sense;

It would be frustrating to play if you didn't kill your opponents in one hit, however, as I learned from my recent course I took, you can't always come to a solid conclusion just by looking at it from your own perspective, ask yourself this question: is it fair? that the moment you step into a sniper's line of sight, you kill the team's seemingly eternal player base? Fortress 2 actually struggles with this question for a long time, the sniper as the name I suggest is made for shooting in TF2, a game where you try to kill is quite weak, especially at longer distances, fighting the sniper can be downright exasperating if you're on one side of the field and the snipers are on the other side, you just lose.

I even asked my community on my other channel if anyone had a good answer to the solution and most people just gave up. People know that choosing a sniper is a lost cause. If they're holding you back from afar, is it that fair? You could argue that that's what snipers are made for after all, but the counterargument is that the mere presence of a one-hit sniper in your game is enough to scare people away. taking the large and most exposed routes on a map so as not to derail before reaching the most important problem, it is better to say that it is probably balanced at longer ranges, just like shotguns that are fired at close range, there is also a weapon that wider ranges are shot and, like the sniper, thirds people take open paths, a shotgun announces its presence on the map in its own way, detergent to take Close Quarter Roots, so yes, long range snipers are balanced, but only if the shotguns in your game have a No time to kill at close range and as you may have guessed, in Team Fortress 2 they don't, now let's take a closer look, literally closer, since we are now in a medium range because a bullet apparently can't do more damage the longer it lasts. travels, the time to kill is still zero, so if someone jumps in front of us with an AK, we still win even though his weapon is made specifically for medium range engagements and the same as with SMGs at close range if They are even faster. to kill that AK SMGs are made to destroy people at close range, but the bolt action sniper still wins only if we grab the shotgun, there is a contender for us at close range, but here is my undoubtedly interesting take.

Both close range action snipers are sometimes better. than real shotguns, let's take a look at the recent Call of Duty title Modern Warfare 2, a game with many assault rifles, shotguns and one-hit snipers, a map known for having almost an entire area handcrafted for shotguns. Dominant farm 18 can easily be occupied by a bolt-action sniper. I won't go into shotguns too much today because it's actually for another video dedicated to shotguns as a wall, but shotguns are short range weapons due to their greater pellet spread and high base damage, unfortunately there is a problem. With this, because the weapon is made with the idea of ​​hitting people at close range in one hit, only close to the damage drop, it is often unrealistically aggressive, it also doesn't help that if you don't hit the minus 50 of your pellets on target, you may simply not kill your opponent.

This is done so that at close range you always have a way to compete with the shotgun player. So how can we abuse his weakness? We maintain a closed angle, but there is also a problem here, the problem is that when holding Titan. says that often you can only fire one bullet, maybe two before someone runs past the angle, human reaction time simply isn't fast enough to immediately register someone running, so when someone runs past, we shoot with luck, we tag him a little and then get out of the pixel angle to finish off the wounded enemy here is the slightly number four brigade we are playing against the shotgun We place them we go out of cover he turns around and we die he has to shoot us once while we need Shooting him a couple of times, it's not rocket science, it's just time to kill the gaps, but when we hold angle with a sniper, on the other hand, we fire our shot and take it up, oh wait, he's dead, now We killed them with one hit and he was never in a position to kill us because of the tight angle at the time, but Arch, I hear you cry, that's such a minor aspect of close range engagement and yeah, well, that's right, It's also not true if the shotgun and I run into the room simultaneously, it's technically easier for the shotgun to win, since you don't have to make announcements with the shotgun to be deadly, well, you do it with the sniper, but if you already I'm in the room and I zoom in while keeping a tight angle, I'll win, it's not even close.

I wanted him and he dies and if he fires me beforehand, which he can try, he won't kill me because not even 30 of his paddles hit me and don't underestimate how often we hold angles in video games if you're not actively there. When trying to contest a new area, you're holding an angle, so I don't think it's fair to cool holding a pixel angle, the pinnacle of the many ways we hold angles, something you don't do very often and, furthermore, if him and ran into the room while in the commercials it's a fair fight, if anything, it's easier for the sniper to win because your bullet doesn't spread out randomly like the blades on the shotgun do, which with a bit of bad Luck can't make you lose that.

That's why the sniper could be stronger at close range than even the shotgun, a weapon made to be mastered in close quarters. Leave it suspicious, okay, let's get ourselves together. A zero time kill at any range and sometimes an even better alternative to the shotgun. He can't be right, how do we let him get this far? And bio, why doesn't everyone just play straight as a bolt action sniper all the time to better understand why no one is able to properly balance gun and targets? a seemingly invisible problem in the FPS industry for dozens of years we have to travel back in time let's take a look at the history of the first FPS titles that included the sniper.

Most old school gamers unanimously agreed that Quake or Raditz improved the multiplayer-only version. Quake World started the trend of multiplayer first-person shooters released in 1996, the game was a huge hit upon launch, scoring a solid 9 to 9 and a half everywhere the original game had support and release. multiplayer, but there were a lot of issues that made the game feel slow and unresponsive, so just half a year later they released a multiplayer-only version with much better connectivity. I know the original Doom was here three years earlier, but that version of Doom doesn't let you search freely. and down, so I'm not going to go into much detail, let's take a look at the sniper in the earthquake and if it was already so broken in 1996, wait, there is no sniper and an overwhelmingly positive game that has no rifle

players

was rejected sniper.

I like to call the original Quake a child of the Doom series and it's kind of a sign that Doom 1993 didn't have a sniper and Quake didn't go out of its way to create one either, so the title established the unspoken rule of always having a sniper. sniper rifle in FPS game, the next major title that most of the player base agrees on and that shaped the FPS genre is Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, released two years later in 1998, it is a game focused in realistic gameplay and enemies only take one or two bullets. To release a game like this priced for its realistic gameplay, you must surely have a sniper rifle available for SWAT officers.

Well, no, no, shotguns, assault rifles, SMGs, pistols, they were all already available in the early days, but the sniper apparently not yet. I tried to do some research as to why and couldn't find a good reason, other than a good assumption that older games have some major limitations, the render distances had to be close toplaying at 30fps and if you're lucky 60. Making players run around with a sniper at a massive Zoom would mean the game has to render things further away, slowing the game down to an unplayable 10FPS. If the gamer doesn't have a PC that doesn't cost at least a thousand dollars, that might be too.

Honestly, those games are better off without a sniper, since it takes one or two bullets to take down a terrorist anyway, okay, this game should have a sniper. No Counter-Strike, not Global Offensive Source or condition zero, just Counter-Strike released in the year 2000 was like the previous games I covered, it is a huge success and better yet, it was not released with one sniper, not two, but three distinctive snipers to choose from and an automatic sniper or as cs goers call him, Silver's best friend. take a look at the two bolt action rifles, the scouts and the awp, both are weapons that have barely changed in the last 22 years, even in CS, go to the newest title in the Counter-Strike installment, the weapons are basically identical, the explorers are the avp. cheaper brother that may not want your people in the body but provides more mobility because of this, it is not really a popular option and only gets inferior rounds where they would like to buy cheap anyway to save money for real weapons like the AWP ours. lovely one-hit machine at any range, okay, it's interesting even in the first major FPS title to feature a sniper, it saved one hit.

Wonder, meaning the sniper formula hasn't changed after all these years, although it's not really unbalanced over the years. every team in CS often plays an awp and 4 AKA storm 4S for some strange reason they don't use 5 avps while the gun has an instant time to kill compared to the M4 and a case of what is happening here for understand the problem. Right now we have to go back way too early in the video where we defined the seven values ​​of the sniper. Let's see what we can change to balance the weapon starting with the damage. Instead of instantly killing someone, why not lower it so they no longer want heads on the body?

For example, dealing direct damage of 99, one point of damage below one. Shooting someone would mean the time to kill is now about 2. seconds, but this would make shooting extremely frustrating, there's nothing more annoying than dealing 99 damage to your player only to die to them right after, it's just not fun, Plus, it would make the beam a horrible choice over its semi-auto sibling. Marksman rifle as they also double hit but fire much faster so the damage we really shouldn't change unless we want bolt action snipers to be underpowered which technically solves the problem but also doesn't really rate of fire is next and yeah what can we do here?

We can reduce the rate of fire from once every 2 seconds to once every 5 or even 10, but we create the problem like we did with the damage idea: you shoot your opponent and kill them instantly because the kill intent is still 0 Ms and then you have to wait 5 or 10 seconds to fire your next bullet, which means that a second guy running in within this time period will kill you without a doubt, after all you won't be able to defend yourself. That sounds fun and fair, I mean up close? I guess it would punish snipers who get too cocky, but at long to medium range, where the sky's diaper is supposed to shine, it's an awkward moment when you take out someone and then have to wait before you can shoot them. someone else, which slows down your game.

Going down a lot and forcing you to sit as far away as possible to make sure you can reposition yourself when you kill someone, would balance the sniper slightly, but makes it a lot less fun to play, not to mention if you're a confident shooter. It doesn't matter how long it takes you to fire your next shot because you never miss in any way, there is never a chance that you can get multiple kills quickly. A sweet hit of dopamine that we all play for. Because of this, I think it's best to leave. The fire attack where it is now, as it is by far the slowest in the game.

While keeping the weapon active, we must keep in mind that the fun and balance factors are two completely different values ​​that we must justify if we implement this change. We would barely use Nerf for the gun and ruin the fun factor. A bad trade, in my opinion, the range is another value that I don't think we should touch. If we lowered the rank stats, we would only add insult to injury by putting people off. use it for longer ranges and encourage them to use it for short and medium ranges since we win at that range just by reinforcing the problem at hand so it's best to leave the statin untouched, so how about Rico, let's increase it by a ton.

Oh my god, Dilly, it's that easy, this is called sarcasm because of the way the mobility stats are. I guess one thing we could change is that even though the weapon already has a horrible mobility stat and lower it even further where you would basically run like a snail. It's not fun or necessary to balance the guests, our last hope is to balance the sniper using the handling stats and yes we could actually use the slower weapons in areas in most games with light machine guns and snipers and we could make it even slower. for snipers, so at close range you can't quickly make announcements to counter someone suddenly coming in, but I know I'm repeating myself here, this would also make playing Sniper feel really numb, I mean it wouldn't be fun if this were also the way to use Banner Snipers in In games, all games would do this, but they don't wrap and Counter-Strike aiming down sights is basically instantaneous and even in titles where it takes longer, like in Call games of Duty honestly isn't that bad, plus keep in mind that by the time we get the range we're the same one hit monster as before so I guess that's it, we can't balance one of these stats Either it would be annoying to play with the weapon or it would simply be underpowered, but we can change some variables.

Pop quiz, what's the one thing a sniper almost always comes attached with tick tick tick tick tick a magnified scope a scope is a funny thing, it makes it easier to select targets at wider ranges as it basically creates a zone of bigger impact to shoot, but at the same time it does. It is much harder to track in close range engagements in the game. The problematic shot in this video is called the operator, which is often considered the novice gun due to the single shot problem, but the truth is that it wouldn't come with a scope. attached to it, everyone would play it because it no longer has the disadvantage that you get when playing with a scoped weapon, a disadvantage with the scope, how is that possible?

Right, it makes everything bigger, which makes them a bigger target, that's awesome and yeah, well, that's true. From long range to close range, it's actually downright horrible. When you zoom, you don't actually bring the camera closer to the subject, but rather you decrease the field of view, which represents a field of view, the larger the field of view, the more you see around you. The downside of having less fuel is that you see less around you. You get tunnel visions. If you look at the door frame and hold it with a sniper, you basically force yourself to really focus on the door frame, so if someone picks you from anywhere else and also if you are located a short distance from the door and someone hits you, they move incredibly fast across your screen because of how close you are in that spot, just look at this example here, our opponent. moves relatively slowly, whereas if you hold the door with an operator he moves incredibly fast, which is incredibly difficult to react to by forcing players to have a sight on the gun, encouraging long range engagements and discouraging long range engagements.

Short range, perfectly balanced. I'm digressing. It makes close range engagements for snipers more difficult, but if you play against an expert sniper player, they won't be at close range anyway because any experienced sniper player backs away from an angle as much as possible anyway, even if it is a short distance area. They will stick to the back wall to make sure they have enough time to react and take into account whether that was the only thing needed to balance the sniper to match the assault rifles or situational weapons like shotguns, the amount of money needed in the games to buy the sniper would be the same as the M4 or cheaper, the difficulty of getting a gun is also a variable we could change, however changing the price is also apparently the only way the

developers

know how to balance a gun, just set a really high price. tag it and call it today or if you're making an arena themed shooter just place the gun somewhere high and hard to reach, it's okay this doesn't have to be bad, maybe the

developers

want certain weapons in The game is overpowered and I reward those who saved enough money or risked placing the gun in a hard-to-reach spot with an easier time, but that's not the case in most shooters and it just feels like a cheap excuse for a balancing tool because they couldn't understand.

Find a better way to balance the sniper and what if the game you're playing sponges on a weapon of your choice, something some relatively smaller titles like Call of Duty or Battlefield do if you don't have weapon generation or economy ? system in your game, this way of balancing is simply not possible, not to mention that while we try to show that having an antescope balances the weapon from Super overpowered to just overpowered, those games do the complete opposite, allowing you to remove the magnified scope and replace them with the default iron sights or red dots. They even encourage taking off the scope, as having a scope adds huge sniper shine and major Nerf to the ads.

Speed ​​The balance teams of the larger titles are not sure what to do with the bolt action problem which is completely different balance teams developed a completely different opinion on the effectiveness of the scope. Shooters like CS go fortnite and valorent argue that scopes contribute to better weapon balance, while titles like Call of Duty Battlefield and pubg argue that it's quite the opposite and having a large scope actually makes the sniper even more powerful, so they were worth it for players with better handling if they used null extended range. After brainstorming for a couple of hours, I came up with three possible solutions to balance the sniper in a way that shines. in situations should shine Solution one Originally I was thinking why not slow down the Eds so much to indirectly force people to not push anymore but then I realized when I said that CS go players prefer to execute one bolt action than several . a skill team is the same environment and other team based shooters you never use multiple bolt action weapons because well its hard to push an area while the gun has a faster time to kill it also has a precision cooldown time slow moving, which is something CS applies to all weapons in the game and in a game where you can get headshot once afterward with weapons like Defender or Sheriff, the bolt action sniper seems balanced if you force your place to stand still to shoot, increases the price of the weapon along with, if you agreed to a scope, Nerfs, the weapon, a scope with a slow accuracy recovery and widely available weapons that can kill you in the head and the ability to cut off chances to quickly move the dutch bullet makes it a bit balanced but that's if the sniper is pushing like an attacker if he keeps the side or area the only thing that beats a sniper is an incredibly skilled shot or a flash coordinator at max, not many options to beat him on defense here, but apparently he's balanced enough for those. titles you may notice.

I'm not very decided on this. I know there are better ways to balance a sniper than just making it harder to hit and forcing each weapon to be accurate while moving, but yeah the first solution is to basically change your entire To make the game like CS go or like valorent, then the sniper goes from being overpowered to having an acceptable current player base. I don't like to call it balanced because I don't think most casual players in those games know how powerful one is. -hit the sniper is or is not yetThey are skilled enough to use it to its full potential, think about it yourself if you play as a sniper, you have to position yourself differently, concentrate on the crosshair placement even more, you can't free up the shooting angles, you have to. really hits your moves etc, you have to play and use skills that you don't use to the same extent with the other weapons, anyway this solution doesn't work for me, you would have to change your game too much and if I don't want another CS turns into a scam, it just doesn't work.

I want a solution that's in the low-price availability range of shotguns and assault rifles and isn't as lethal as the close-range Team Fortress 2 Sniper I mentioned. Six pages ago Holy has an interesting mechanic, headshot always triples your damage, but base damage increases with time spent aiming down sights when range starts at 50 damage, so it's 150 per headshot. head, which means you can shoot six times. Of the 9 headlock classes at any rank, if you take 4 seconds to gradually fully charge, you wanted someone in any headlock since your base damage is now 150, meaning you can also kill once again to 6 of the 9 classes, but now also on the body, before this mechanic of aiming for debuffs longer to charge your shot, it's a pretty good balancing tool in my opinion.

Here is what I propose, the price of the weapon if you want an economic system in your game. Be the same as the shotgun, you always shoot your opponent in the head no matter the range or load me level, but now the juicy part, the longer you do it, the more damage a shot does at close range, this concept is something that I do not have. seen before in the game instead of charging your shot for all ranges or only for long range we do it for short ranges listen to me it takes say 4 seconds to fully charge your shot the first second it doesn't charge and you do 100 damage . at longer ranges, which does mean you won't hit enemies, but that's again completely fair if your shotguns fire too unloaded, we do 75 damage at medium range and 50 at close range a second later, all the Damage increases by 25, so the long-range damage is 125 medium over 100 and 75 ohms up close, which means that if we take two seconds to aim before engaging, we can one-hit kill the assault rifle. which can test us at mid ranges and two seconds is almost the same time to kill. the fourth and final second deals enough damage with a single body hit.

I know this sounds like a very far-fetched and somewhat unrealistic idea, but I think any form of lower bullet damage at close range is actually very balanced and discourages players from pushing. at close range all the time and hey, we don't even need to punish players for having a scope or, rather, not having one. By taking this approach, we make the sniper the complete opposite of a shotgun, while maintaining the ability to do so on your own behalf. -Defense, hit opponents at close range with a headshot and a body shot if you hold an angle for at least 4 seconds if you are not sure that straining your sights for longer is enough to balance snipers, Think about it like this, if your game has flashbulbs or throwable grenades, let's face it, every game nowadays has at least some kind of tactical ability where you can force the sniper to take off the scope to look away or move, which It means you also have to reload your shot. it means that at medium range the sniper's time to kill without a scope would be the time to ATS plus 2 seconds slightly slower than the assault rifle and that's fine since missing a shot means game over anyway, I have I have to get my shooting mentality right. without unbalancing it and keep in mind that if you just hit the heads it won't do it no matter what range, the final approach I have to the bolt problem is really simple and that is to just make it so that it is magnified even more if you have a magnification of 20 times on your weapon, it will be very difficult to focus in close range engagements, even at medium range, it will be quite difficult, but it will be doable, this only works, however, when you are very inaccurate when shooting from the hip, you have to do it . look through the scope or want to be able to hit the side of a barn.

I'm not too sure how much fun the gun will be, but it's a solution to determine which FPS game has the worst balanced rifle and which, in my opinion, has the best, hands down, most broken snipers are in the Call of Duty series. You can choose from many snipers and if you grant the attachment just a little, you can observe your opponents while speeding through the air. It's ridiculous and frankly feels unfair. It's frustrating to play against, but hey, I know it's not much, but Call of Duty is known for having balance issues. The best balance sniper in fps is TF2 sniper.

Specifically, I would nominate an alternative weapon from the New Zealander. Strange treatment takes longer. charge the shot, which is a mechanic I really like if you haven't noticed, but in exchange, the longer your headshot kill streak, the faster you will charge your next shot with a short 1.8 second wank to charge it if you have 6 skills, it rewards players with skill while also giving newer players a great opportunity to retaliate. Let me know in the comments section which sniper rifle in FPS you think is the worst and which is the best, including the video. Snipers are an unbalanced mess.

While large groups of gamers seem to be fine with bolt-action sniping and games like Valor and Cs, I believe and know that there are many out there who think the same, that sniping is not there yet if the developers go for my second solution, which is that longer charge equals closer idea of ​​damage. I think it would definitely eliminate the frustrations that most players have with sniping, meaning more fun while also making the weapon more skill-based with its always one-shot headshot mechanics and at the same time he keeps his Casio. Player friendly with its charging mechanic for short or medium range engagements.

I'll be honest, it's not the perfect and most realistic idea, but it will make both action snipers the long sidearm truly made for long range players. Heck, by doing this we can definitely reduce the cost and upgrade the sniper's airspeed, making them feel even more responsive and even more fun. Finally, this is the part of the video where I humbly ask you to consider subscribing and, if you want, receive a notification when my next video uploads. Also consider hitting the Bell button, tell me what you liked and didn't like about the video in the comments section.

I value them all and if you want to see more Arch content or Archment content, you can find the links in the comments section. I sincerely hope you enjoyed my first video and keep going.