Sniper - Thoughts and Suggestions for the Betterment of a Stub Tree

I've been playing around with Sniper for a bit here, mostly in conjunction with Karate Grandmaster, but to some extent with a special little loadout I've copped for myself (no I shall not share it with you....). I know this is a stub tree, but there should be some improvements to the tree to make it more versatile.

Examples:

Concealment - An excellent ability, although you can't move (that is realistic). Allows you to disappear into the ether to use your Sniper attacks, Concealed Shot and Sniper Shot. Both abilities require the concealed state. However, once you complete an attack, success or fail, you drop concealment, and the WHOLE WORLD can see you. This is not realistic, and I have a suggestion that might help with this.

Make the concealment drop a chance, i.e. 45% chance to drop. Or even better, have the Sniper have to check against a perception roll of every hostile within 15m of his position upon completion of a successfull attack. He fails the roll, he drops Concealment, he beats the roll, he stays concealed. He misses the shot, he drops Conceal automatically. Also, you can Hyperjump while concealed.....a bad idea. Fix that.

Escape and Evasion - Another good ability on the same grounds as sneak, but with a bit lower detection roll, and a (supposedly) faster movement speed. Good for getting to your hide, but one problem, you can't Hyperjump, or even regular jump as you are in a sneak position, which makes it impossible to get to your hide undetected UNLESS you Conceal and then Hyperjump, which is just stupid. I say fix Escape and Evasion to something like Sneak....call it....I dunno....Track and Target.....allow a hyperjump, remove the speed boost to another ability I'm gonna suggest in a moment.

Sniper Shot - A good ability, with good base damage. Two pet peeves though. One: The ability doesn't do nearly as much damage as it should, I mean come on folks....you are shooting people in the head with a high powered rifle, I know this is The Matrix but....come on. Make the ability do a base damage of AT LEAST 1000pts, and add a 50% chance to stun, cause lemme put it this way, you get hit in the head with a 5.56mm round.....stunned is just one of the wonderful things you will be.

Concealed Shot - Again, another good ability with a low base damage, and a low chance to stun. Fix those two things, and add a buff to the chance to remain concealed, and you will have a hit.

Sniper - A tertiary that give a boost to Rifle Tactics, good.....very good. How about adding another tactic....Sniper Tactics. Since it requires a special rifle to use Sniper Shot and Concealed shot, why not add a new tactic for this special weapon? Add Sniper Tactics that boost your sniper rifle chance to hit when equipped with a sniper rifle.

Line Up The Shot - Excellent ability that buffs RCT 30pts for 6 seconds. However, since it takes longer than that to get a shot off.....methinks the timer could last a smidge longer, say 10 seconds? Just a thought.

New Sniper Ability Suggestions:

Below are some new Sniper abilities I think would really help round out the tree.

Enhanced Concealment
Requires: Concealment at level 40
Enhances: Concealment +20pts at level 50 (Levelable ability)

This ability will help you stay concealed, and help mask your presence even when many enemies are close....

Steady Breathing
Requires: Concealment at level 30
Enhances: Ranged Damage +200pts for 30 seconds
Debuffs: Health Regeneration -45% for 120 seconds

Use this ability to create a bio-feedback loop that will slow your heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing, making your shots truer. However, your slower heart rate will impede your ability to heal effectively.

Break Cover
Requires: Concealment at level 15
Enhances: Movement Speed 45% for 15 Seconds, Super Jump +15 Pts for 15 Seconds
Debuffs: Concealment -50pts for 30 Seconds

When discovered, you may be forced to break cover and run. This ability will grant you a boost in speed and jump height to help you escape your would be dispatchers.

Those are my suggestions, I hope you like them.

Really nice ideas, I like em!



One thing I would like to see though is the game actually using Sniper rifles, not Assualt rifles with Sniper names.

I've just started fooling around with sniper but I like these abilities you are suggesting, especially increases to damage.  Also I wanted to bring up the ranged combat tactics downgrade that rifles have, I understand this for assault rifles, they're designed for high rate of fire but sniper rifles are designed for accuracy, if anything they should have an RCT bonus.   One other thing, sniper rifles don't use 5.56mm bullets, at the very least they're 9mm rifle rounds and of course you got those .50 cal ones..... Just wanted to point that out :smileywink:

Oh yeah, I know that sniper rifles use higher powered rounds like .380, 7.62mm, and .50cal, but that 5.56mm comment was a dig on the fact that the best sniper rifles in the game look like M-16A2's with iron sights. I was thinking of 1 or 2 new models of sniper rifle.

One named the RSR-1, a knockoff of the PSG-1. The whole deal, longstock, barrell, optics, just to be on the realistic side. The other would be the Samson Marksman Mark-I and Mark-II, a knockoff of the Barrett .50cal sniper rifle. A must is that the models have optics. Another cool addition would be the addition of bolt-action rifles that give a boost to RCT or Sniper Tactics....yeah, that would be sweet.

True, the sniper rifles in game do look like M16s or CAR15s.  What I'd like would be a good ole Springfield '03, guess I've played too much Medal of Honor and Call of Duty :smileywink:  Also something that would be cool though probably not practical or that would have severe balancing issues would be the sniper rifles actually having the range to shoot from the roofs of buildings. 

The sniper tree doesn't really reflect what a sniper would really be like. I personally use rifles and sniper rather regulary. Therefore, I would like to see the following changes made, to make sniping a little more realistic and useful.

I recon that if they were to extend the sniper tree it should go something like this...

The lvl 33 ability sould give rifle damage and possibly stealth bonus (every 5 lvls give 1pt or something)

There should also be a better sneak, even with capped stealth I can still be detected by lvl1 NPC's. This could be the lvl 36 ability.

The lvl 39 ability should be a range booster and give a +5m range when using a rifle or rifle ability and last for 300 seconds.

The lvl 42 ability should be a medium damage shot with a medium length re use timer. (possibly 900 damage with a 3 min re-use timer)

The lvl 47 would be a high damage and high re-use timer (i think a 1300 damage shot with a 5 min re-use timer would be good)

And last but not least, the lvl 50 ability should be Marksman and grant +180 health and +5 rifle tactics.

This would give being a sniper a meaning, not just a "sniper shot" that does less damage than deadly shot. It makes sense that a sniper should do more damage as they are trained to pull off headshots rather than hitting the body.

Anyway, these are just my thoughts.

Well, increasing the range wouldn't really be a balance issue, the reason the range is capped where it is I think is that you can't see the models of players beyond....I want to say 45m away. Of course they could add an ability called Stare Down The Scope, that amplifies your view in a very narrow cone up to 100m away....yeah....that would be sweet.

I think sniper should be more sniper like

So the range they have is very gd but they must be in a certain sniper position and this position is equal to the sitting position

Also they can only see infront like a FPS

However hte advantage is that they do somit like 2000 damage in 1 shot. 

THis would be a very small tree and is joined with all the other gunman trees e.g duelist

Sniper=A combat Data Miner.

Yes you can move while concealed.

That is why sniper, with a better range and nearly as good state transmission with the correct weapon,  makes an excellent support class for ambush in team PvP.

*Bizump*

As of right now, my main gripe for Sniper is that you aren't being a sniper at all.  I like the idea of looking down a scope at an enemy farther away and shooting them from of great distance, that would be fun, it would make being a sniper difficult in missions since you are indoors, but thats why its merely a stub tree.