Project Reality Forums

I reckon those grappling hooks would

a: Make a lot of noise when being stealthy and catch on vegetation or ghillie suit
b: Make the sniper be lazy in choice of location, and not have them consider exit routes from firing positions, mutual support or two man sniping.
c: Make it too easy to choose a location that is near impossible to access unless you use the similar method. Fair enough... but also see "2."

Its great for people who love and don't care about the consequences of lonewolfing, so that idea won't get my support.

has potential but no thanks from me.

cat wrote: This is absolutely pointless ingame. The hook NEVER works for climbing up steep terrain. It only works for 100% vertical things (houses). /at least from what I have seen. And I REALLY tried using the hook on mestia. So basically we get the hook for engineers on maps with almost no places to use it and it is removed on maps where it is actually useful (city maps).

There are at least 3 rock faces you can scale with a grapple that you can't without on mestia.

I think no, I've spent some games when I choose to do a sniper squad, most times myself and another clan m8, sneaking around cities forever till I can get to a nice spot. Then I sit and hide until a target presents itself. In this lies the difference between marksman and sniper. A sniper is supposed to be behind enemy lines scaring the krap out of their soldiers when one of their squad m8s suddenly goes down do to sniper fire. That squad will now either be down one or two guys or spend time looking for you and not trying to cap flags. If you're good and well hidden you can eliminate an entire squad. Marksmen on the other had need to stay with the squad not lone wolf it. They are there to take out the one stubborn enemy soldier or provide cover for the squad as the move up.

Snipers with grappling hooks. :26_suicid

Cat, you are the sort of failbaby psuedo-sniper I right click grenades onto.

[R-MOD]Masaq wrote: I'm also talking about Pubbie play, and if you're regularly playing on servers with no commander and where nobody cares about where the enemy tanks, APCs, AAVs and bunkers/firebases are - then if I were you, I'd stop playing on those servers because they sound ****!

It's not like you have that many to choose from. When one server is full, the other one is usually empty.

cat wrote:Can we have the Hook added to Sniper and marksman kits?

Since you treat both of those this kits equally... probably it's not a good idea

cat wrote:I mean the hook is completeley useless on anything that is not 100% vertical.

It is useless when you throw it on terrain, throw it on objects (well, that's what I figured out ).

I'm well confused as to where cat got the idea that playing this game on a public server didn't involve organisation...

I can see hooks for snipers perhaps being realistic and working out perhaps, should be assisted by a spec ops though. Being a snipers more about recon then kills in this game if you ask me, and the SOFLAM obviously helps with armour in this role behind enemy lines to a great extent.

I'm also talking about Pubbie play, and if you're regularly playing on servers with no commander and where nobody cares about where the enemy tanks, APCs, AAVs and bunkers/firebases are - then if I were you, I'd stop playing on those servers because they sound ****!

I am having great fun on public servers. I do not get why everyone is bashing public play.

Snipers with grappling hooks.

So why are the specops getting hooks then?

Anyhow, on topic... I think snipers should be limited to positioning themselves within the intended terrain. Grapnels are a bit too 'Hollywood' as it is. But I digress. Sniper kits should not receive a hook enabling them to easymode their way onto any available ledge/flat surface. Rather, they should be forced to work with the terrain available, or with a spotter. Sniper kits should also be commander reliant assets that can only be accessed when there is a commander for a duration of more than 5 minutes. But again, I digress.

From what I have seen on TV about snipers (documentations - not jarhead) They spend a lot of time hiding. In any urban environment on TV they would always hide INSIDE a house. This works In muttraj because of all the accessible buildings. However in other maps with older Bf2 building I often used the hook to climb into balconies. (ie in Basra there is some large building on the main street which I used to hide in.) So the hook would provide the analogy of the special hiding skill an urban sniper is using.



About the difference of Snipers and Marksman kit.


I play often on Muttrah. Now there is basically 2 types of sniping. The "official" and approved way of being in a 2 man team and hiding on a hill. The other way is lone wolfing INSIDE the city. As you may suspect I prefer the 2nd thing. Now the following result is going to come out of that:


2man team sniping:

Both players hide on a high place (hills). They do have some limited way to spot the odd truck or APC coming in. However the ability to actually kill anything is very low. I have tried both firing positions, hill and inside of town. On average the sniper team on the hill gets less than 3 kills over the whole game. However doing the same thing inside the town (firing distance in most cases BELOW 150m) the amount of kills goes to like 10-20. I do not want to brag about my shooting record I just want to point out that anyone in the more superior position (INSIDE town) can get this many kills. So do not confuse this as some hidden bragging.

Hiding inside the town

Has many advantages. The amount of targets. and hiding is actually much easier. Because anyone goes looking for the obvious sniper spots like Hills or (for dumb people) teh crane.

Hill sniping does allow to keep the distance and hide fairly well because of the background. However the vision is limited INTO the town. Only players on roofs are really esay to see. (I generally avoid running around on roofs when I am not a sniper). And players running over the open roads on the edge of the town.


About spotting

by now anyone reading this will likely accuse me of not supporting the team or being a kill whore. But I would say that I support my team more by killing anything that I can see than sitting on a hill, killing 3 guys and occassionally calling out an APC. Which is in no way as useful as killing many players. APCs are almost impossible to hide. They are noisy and drive around a lot.

The Spotter itself is also useless because It is very easy to spot targets on my own and actually hit them. Habving a 2nd player calling out the distance for me is not needed. Again I do not want to brag but I nromally hit 90% of my shots on a standing target. I am not saying that I am special. Anyone with a bit of practice can do it. Without a spotter.



High value targets

As suggested snipers should "only engage high-value targets". what is high value? If the rare opportunity is displayed in front of a sniper to have a whole squad in his sights, it would make sense to kill the squad leader or the medic first (whic is not that easy because of the LOD model practically remoing all detail on large distances). In most cases players trickle down the map alone or in 2 man pairs. This gives enozugh time to kill anything in view (given that the rtarget is moving in a way that allows for high probability shots). So NOT killing a lone rifleman runnign down the street when there is no other target presented anyway IS a lot more letting down the team than actually letting him go.

So yeah being focused on a lot of kills as a sniper is a good idea.

Also I assume a lot of this "cool" and "correct" sniping is derived from movies like jarhead. This may work in real life but on a 2km map It is not effective.


To get back to the topic start:
Sniper Hooks would allow the sniper to actually USE the terrain

Whether or not it's fashionable, or popular to agree with him, cat raises plenty of valid and good points.

Spotters are a waste of time, and a waste of a soldier who would be more useful in an infantry squad. Spotting in real life is a very different matter to spotting in a game with very simple ballistics, no windage, and foliage that doesn't render properly. The Spec Ops kit can do some very useful things behind enemy lines, but can't do much at all from atop a hill simply using binoculars to spot for a man with a rifle which isn't accurate for 8 seconds after blinking. The only arguements for using a Spec Ops to spot for you are that the hook is nifty for reaching some nice sniping spots, and that occasionally a SOFLAM is nice for lazing targets. If you are sniping in the approved fashion, no one is going to get into CQB range anyway, and the number of times I've actually seen a Spec Ops use his carbine up close in defense of a sniper is 1, and that was on a Vimeo of absolutely ideal PR sniping.

While cat's figures about the number of kills you'll get on the hill in Muttrah are a joke (20 kills isn't hard hillcamping on that map if deviation and hitreg plays out favourably), he's right about getting up and close with the sniper kit. Far and away, the sniper rifle is more effective at lower distances (>150 meters), provided you have adequate concealment. There's nothing wrong with that (aiming is easier up close), but there is a problem with the fact that other weapons aren't as effective at these ranges (making the sniper rifle comparatively too effective at these ranges). Blah blah blah, will be fixed in 0.85 we've been told. The point here is that just because it's not "realistic" and it doesn't conform to your idea of what a sniper "should" be doing, it doesn't mean it's automatically not right.

He's right about spotting too - the sniper is no better at this than any other class with the new spotting system. Binoculars are better than a sniper scope for all forms of spotting duties, and they come on every kit - even the spawn ones. All the sniper has in his favour for recon is more bandages (which really shouldn't be an issue at recon ranges and in cover/concealment not firing) and a rifle that can in some situations be used to fire at long ranges accurately (not needed for recon at all).

And he's right about high value targets too. Aiming with the sniper rifle is such a joke that if you only even engaged "High priority targets" you'd be lucky to be popping more than ten shots off a round. If "high priority" is extended to stationary weapons, then you might be able to find some AA or similar to camp, but that's likely to get you found fairly fast. Even if we assume a sniper can't fire accurately in less than 8 seconds when prepared, on a real battlefield, targets are a lot more likely to sit still for 8 minutes then they are in PR's battlefield where there are a lot of very strong disincentives to be stationary for prolonged periods without any good cause - snipers in PR rarely have the luxury to pick and choose about who they'll shoot - if someone standing still for long enough, and it won't get you caught, you should pop them. The fact of the matter is that judicious mind games and lots of shooting work just fine if you position yourself properly, and does a lot more for the team than sucking a Spec Ops into a camping trip on a hill with you, or using what should be a precision rifle for looking at things and reporting them. Medics and Officers are a dime a dozen on the battlefield, and contrary to what the devs wanted, losing an Officer on the battlefield isn't a big issue - unlike real life PR soldiers are not reliant on their officers for tactical decisions, while rally points should ideally be static for large portions of the round.

I've been very vehemently and loudly told off for sharing these thoughts on servers before, but the Sniper class needs to be massively re-examined or just removed. This half baked role playing with it needs to end - it doesn't work properly, and it's probably high time we admitted it and stopped having tea parties with Spec Ops in the hills.