Be Excellent To Each Other

So, you've got your "realistic" FPS game like CoD or Battlefield.
One man on the map has a sniper rifle and a hiding place, and is wiping out everyone. Thing is, this is how snipers work "in real life", so how do you solve it for your multiplayer FPS so that it's fair for run & gunners and snipers?

My suggestion, although perhaps a little unrealistic, is to have a long set up / tear down phase, during which the sniper is immobile and vulnerable. After that, a short "calming" time after each shot, during which the sniper is less accurate.

Very low ammo on sniper weapons? the Gears of War 3 beta seemed to have that approach.

Napalm.

You mean like air strikes when you spot a campy sniper? That's grossly unfair to Mr Snipey, isn't it?

Certainly never, ever implement semi-automatic sniper rifles.

I dunno. If you want to slow things down, have your sniper have to do a range check whenever he settles down, like real snipers have to.

I thought all was fair in love and war?

They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist-

I think slowing things down is a good solution, and the range check could be part of the set up phase.
I'm not sure it's that good for the snipers, though - thing is, the only reason snipers kill so many people in games is because said people are running around as fast as they can, without bothering to use cover. In real life, when you know there's a sniper around, you damned well stop and think about how to flank them.

Make it so that every second or two that he's aiming, his scope glints in the light effectively giving away his position to anyone who is paying attention to their surroundings.

Then make it so that going into the aiming position takes longer than it would for normal weapons.

It's a hard balance, because if you make it good for Mr Snipey then it's harder on others, and vice versa.

I think it's the one areas that CODBLOPS has implemented better than MW2, because the quick-scoping on the latter (allowing you to almost run-and-gun with a sniper rifle) was ridiculous.

I think map design is vitally important, moreso than making a sniper 'set up'. As long as there are no impregnable areas, once you've been killed by Mr Sniper once, it's relatively easy to avoid it happening to you or your team-mates again. That's one thing that I think CODBLOPS does really, really well. It's never felt unbalanced in that sense at all.

Could you implement all the weather effects snipers would have to take into account? Wind and haze and stuff ( I don't know if games do this at the moment - I haven't played a FPS in yonks ).

Spontaneous human combustion.

Forced, intermittent, visible laser sight?

What my friend says.

It's worth noting that Quake's lightning gun solves this problem by being a sniper rifle that gives the firer's position away each time it's used, forcing snipers to be more mobile. Arguably, the CoD killcam does this too, if people are paying attention and working as teams (so you call out the sniper's position when he kills you).

Hahahaha.

If you have all the maps memorised in intricate detail, sure. That doesn't help newbies at all.

I sort of learn by 'not going where I just got killed'. but I'm shit at games like this.

I think Day of Defeat had perhaps the best balance of weapons in the game. I don't recall snipers being particularly unbalance in it. However, the map design was VERY good.

Environmental damage so you can shoot a big rock which will fall on his head. like 633 Squadron's idea.

Tactical Nuclear Strike.

Well, to an extent. As MaliA said, if you get killed in one place, try to avoid going there again.

Newbies are always going to be at a disadvantage in an FPS, due to control, weapon choice for the environment, tactics, map knowledge etc. I don't thinkit's possible (or even necessarily desirable) to attempt to remove the benefits of experience.

To be honest Bad Company 2 solves this one fairly well by implementing several ideas:

1: Snipers can't go prone, they have to crouch. (Oooh, the Battlefield community hated that one! It's great, though.)

2: Motion sensors. Running along a ridge that might get used by snipers? Drop a few motion sensors down. They don't last forever, but any baddy within 50 yards will show up on your radar.

3: 'Spotted'. See the fire coming from somewhere? Put the aim sight over the enemy and press 'Q' (or back button on the pad) - this immediately marks them on everyone's radar and puts a little orange triangle above their head. They tend not to last long.

4: Compensate for distance. You have to fire above the enemy and drop the bullet down, the further away you shoot.

5: Let the 'sniper' do over things. Snipers are called 'Recon' in Bad Company 2. They get C4, motion sensors and a decent handgun. They are encouraged to keep on the move, spotting for allies, laying down sensors, C4'ing enemy tanks and capture points. If you hang back sniping all the time you're doing it wrong - for on the field there are corn-bread fools with a lot of muscle mass, but it's time for recon to get up in their ass!

Make the sniper get muscle cramp, so after being prone for a couple of minutes he has to stand up and walk it off.

I'd forgotten about Battlefield's spotting mechanism. Yes, that's ace.

I think Lace Sensor started a thread like this a while back. My response then is as now.
1) A sniper can not jump in the air while aiming down the scope and shoot a target 400 yds away. Therefore shouldn't be able to in games.
2) Set up and clear down time - including having to catch my breathe if I hold it to aim.
3) 'hip firing' a 50 cal sniper rifle does not work. Laws of motion mean the recoil would send the gun (and probably you, certainly your arm/aim) wanging all over the place. Semi automatic hip firing - bollocks.
4) Realistic aiming, you can't aim at someone who is running's head when they are 400 yds away and head shot them, you need to aim quite significantly in front of them.

Things not to do. CODBLOPS has levelled the snipers out in the incorrect way, they have fucked up the collision detection. This is just frustrating.

I do like the spotting idea.

In the CoD games your crosshairs move around until you hold your breath, at which point they go still for up to 4 seconds. You can double this to 8 seconds using perks, but after that there's a recovery period (proportional to how long you held your breath) where you can't shoot even vaguely accurately.

Around three feet, fact fans!

(Assuming a non-degrading muzzle velocity of 3,000ft/ps, no wind, not worrying about gravity, the fact that chappy is hammering along at 13ft/ps and is running at a right-angle to the shooter).

It is, aye. And I honestly feel that snipers are reasonably balanced in Bad Company 2; you're going to get slaughtered if nobody bothers trying to spot them, of course, but if you let a sniper maintain his offensive he's definitely going to kick the shit out of you.

And both his legs are the same length.

That's it! Non snipers wear one club footed shoe so they bob up and down when running between cover.

Slow turning beyond a couple of degrees, have them flip the lens cap every time they want to look down the scope & close it afterwards, random goat farmer patrols providing intel to the opfor, vague vapour trails behind bullets, make them less accurate unless a friend stays with them as a spotter, make them reek of pish since they tend to lie in the same place for days while observing/waiting for their target

Don't put sniper rifles in multiplayer FPS games.

Every time a sniper rifle fires a shot within 10 metres of itself or another sniper rifle, it should become more obvious to the opposite team. Dot on the minimap, arrow in game, routes to the sniper nest highlighted, grenade trajectories highlighted, and finally, after 10 or so shots a random player on the opposing team gets the ability to call in an automatic airstrike on the position.

Make sniper rifles unable to fire without being zoomed in, and make the minimum scope 20x.

You appear to have missed the bit after the "and"

Snipers must forage for bullets.

Snipers must use a joypad, as it is less accurate than keyboard and mouse.

Yeah, that will hamper the 360/PS3 users.

Snipers must be bred without the ability to produce lysine, so will die if they escape into the wild.

I assume you mean Q3 and the Railgun?

That was a good system, especially as you could customise how long the trails were there for.

But Q3 isn't realy realistic, and doesn't really suffer as much from the problem (you can still lock down areas of the map though if you know what you're doing)

Malc

If they spend more than 3 minutes prone, a tiger appears from behind and vigourously and loudly bums them putting of their aim completely until someone kills them or the tiger. If someone kills the tiger, the Horny tiger smell attracts further tigers every 30 seconds

Have them strip and clean the gun after every ten or so rounds. More authentic that way.

360 snipers have to use the Kinect controller and lie on the floor all the time.

Uhh, yeah, I do. The lightning gun was UT2k3. And although these games aren't realistic, they are still showing ways of solving the problem that can be applied -- the suggestion of "make snipers show on the map when they shoot" up the thread isn't very different. It makes them give their position away when they fire.

I think the way to do it is with ammo, if they have to leave their camping site to pick up ammo, then it reduces their ability to dominate, but not too much.

Although I don't really like "realistic" type games, I prefer Q3 and UT, and haven't played them for 5 or 6 years...

Malc

Halo also leave a trail for the sniper guns, but that is where it ends with halo, as the snipers were the best weapon in the game by a long way, for any scenario.

Except when you're against The Flood.

Someone should totall make a Napoleonic era online FPS where people just stand in three ranks and fire at each other, and another person has to press A and B to beat a drum. it'd amuse me, greatly.

Crysist 2 does this cool (but small) thing in any team matches when a team member dies from a snipers bullet you hear one of your team scream 'Sniper!'

Just a small touch but enough to alert you. Honestly, I can't see why more people haven't tried C2's multiplayer, it's really good.

Just as long as you have a real-time 20 mile march to get to the battle, followed by a making a camp, and then possible death by typhus before you ever get near any fighting.

I always leave that to Gary, Mark, Jason, Howard and Robbie.