[Dragoon412]

Navaron -

Look back a long ways; snipers now-a-days get few average recorded kills as they're virtually never deployed. Why risk sending in snipers to take out a bunch of 3rd-world thugs when you can send in aircraft that will pulverize every single inch of the ground with laser-guided bombs? Another other reason that snipers aren't a major factor in modern wars is that they're still viewed with a stigma; they're essentially assassins, which makes for less-than-honorable warfare. And snipers are the guys you rarely hear about, because they're with the SEALS or Marine Force Recon or the Rangers - not exactly organizations that make a whole lot of data publicly available. You won't turn on CNN and hear that the US deployed a USMC Force Recon Sniper to Afghanistan who has 14 confirmed kills, 2 of which are enemy leaders. Another issue is that many snipers operate individually and they have a very high fatality rate. If so-and-so the sniper racks up 40 confirmed kills and is never heard from again, that's 40 confirmed kills that don't go on the record books.

Dio,

No, I'm not saying my thoughts should supercede yours, I'm saying that realism should be sacrificed for the benefit of gameplay. The one thing marksmanship has in common with gaming is that an extraordinary amount of dexterity is required in order to truly excel. Cones of fire, sway, etc. are all nice ideas, but what seperates a full-blown sniper from any other marksman (accuracy-wise) is an almost superhuman feel for the weapon; something that's not replicable in a gaming environment right now because the systems currently implemented are lacking any sort of intricacy or complexity. There's too much randomness involved in current systems for someone to really develop a "feel" for the weapon, and that's to say nothing of the technical limitations that go along with sniping in a game - you can't even go prone, you can't control your body or your breathing, you can't climb trees or dive for cover - your ideas are very good, but we just aren't there yet, in terms of the technology that'd be required to make them effective. But, believe me - if there was a system in place that was even close to replicating the sort of intricacy of actual sniping, meaning that players who wanted to be snipers would actually have to demonstrate a phenomenal amount of skill, I'd be all for it. But it's not happening - games aren't even approaching that level of sophistication right now.

The other point, as I mentioned earlier, is that snipers tend to be a little... nuts. They're going deep into hostile territory, alone, often to take out a very high-priority target. They have no backup, no safety, and their job is incredibly infuriating to an enemy force. In short, they tend to not live a long time. And, obviously, in real life, you don't just respawn and run back. Snipers are a special breed of headcase (and for the record, I speak from experience - my family has a very strong military background).

So if all that's required is dexterity, what's keeping the population of snipers in check? Very little... most people are dexterous enough to pose a significant risk if you're on the business end of their sniper rifle. However, snipers are, in many FPS games (namely tactical shooters) capable of dealing out death just as (if not more) effectively than their real-life counterparts, yet there's virtually no assumed risk.

<B>Real life:</B> Sniping is very high-risk, but has the potential for huge payoff. Snipers are few in numbers, so they're utilized on very high-priority missions, such as routing/demoralizing (NOT destroying) enemy troops or assassination.

High risk, high gain, immense skill required.

<B>Typical Video Game Model</B>: Snipers can one-shot almost anything, sometimes they need a second shot. They can single-handedly wipe out entire squads of enemy soldiers who are actively looking for them. And if they get caught? So what, they respawn. So they tend to be much more forward and "brave" than an actual sniper would be.

Very low risk, high gain, little skill required.

Something not seem to match up right? It's risk vs. reward - a concept any game designer should be able to expound upon for hours. In short, the two need to be kept in line, relative to eachother. If one facet of the game offers significant risk with little gain, and another offers low risk with high gain, players will gravitate towards the low-risk, high-gain profession and ignore the other, thus affecting the overall balance of the game. Hell, it even changes the very fundamentals of combat. This is a patently bad thing for reasons that are very obvious.

So all I propose is this: since the technology isn't sophisticated enough to impliment a more realistic system of sniping and sniper control, we should asjust the risk/reward ratio to make sniping fall in line with other professions. No more low-risk, high-gain sniping. Since PS' design necessitates low-risk, it needs to be low-risk, low-gain.