Bolt Actions Speak Louder Than Words
Monday, January 24th, 2011Sniping is the core of PC shooting even if you call them all camping cowards who should be shot (at close range). The mouse means we can aim precisely or spray the street with equal ease, making it a major challenge for developers who have to reward skilled play without breaking the balance. Make “Murder from miles away” too easy and everyone’s head keeps exploding, which is counterintiutively boring, but make it too hard and you’ve got a load of idiotically invincible linebackers running around waving huge guns like crotch-substitutes at an orgy.

That’s their subconscious function anyway
Sniping is a vital element in shooter design (despite being the opposite of the word “vital” as in “to do with living”), and the recent fascination with realism makes even more important. Even if that’s a very special definition of “realism” which involves carrying ten tons of ammo and resurrecting from the dead, as long as you have lots of detailed shading on boringly repetitive guns when you do it. We’re looking at how some of the best multiplayer games deal with the Sniping Problem. Surprisingly few of them chose “run away” or “wear a helmet.”
NOTE: These aren’t the best sniping games (though some of them are). They’re games that represent very different attitudes to shooting people from a mile away.
1. TF2
TF2 servers are better balanced than a Zen monk holding a Ming vase on a tight rope. Some cunning design decisions make the Sniper part of the most aggressive ecosystem outside of Mur-dorr, the Violence Planet, in a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors-But-They’re-All-Guns. The usual problem with gaming snipers is that by definition they must carry a gun capable of instant kills. In real life this forces them to hole up somewhere for half of forever in the hope of their target passing by, but on a server there’s nothing to stop the sniping idiot running around shooting it like a ludicrously large six-shooter with bigger bullets.
Ideally a pistol shouldn’t be as long as the person holding it
But in TF2 our Australian friend can’t noscope. He needs to charge up a headshot for an instant kill, and the scope sticks him with tunnel vision more restrictive than right-wing earthworm. He can cripple an enemy advance by dropping the Heavy, or even better, blue-balling the Medic, but his back is wide open to anyone who can kill at closer range. Which is everyone else in the game. Spies are the natural predator but there’s nothing more fun than Scout-bashing a Sniper’s spine in.
2. Counter-Strike
TF2 reduced the Sniper’s awesome kill power to balance the game. Counter-strike servers take the exact opposite approach. They “balance” sniping in the same way capitalism “balances” being extremely rich. The AWP is the most lethal weapon in the history of gaming and has killed more players than Bowser’s spiked-flooring contractor. When asked “Doesn’t that mean that someone good with an AWP could kill everyone?”, CS answers “Yes. So get good with it!”

The cause of more electronic deaths than the MCP and Skynet combined.
But even the most awesome force in gaming history has an equal and opposite reaction. The AWP is an incredibly powerful and effective weapon, and the opposite is weak and ineffective whining. A full decade after the first headshot, players still complain that defending an objective by using a sniper rifle to pick off targets at long range - that is to say, using a sniper rifle to snipe - is in some way “cheap” or “camping.” If you want to run around all across the map go play a CP map. In the meantime, being shot through the head sucks. Buy a helmet.
3. Crysis
Crysis servers technically have a sniper attachment, in the same way “Meat is murder” PETA campaigners can technically be listened to - it’s far more effective (and fun!) to just run over and punch them.

Or punch other things at them!
Shooting people from four miles away is fine for frail fleshbags, but when you’re wearing a nanotech tank it’s not just hiding your light under a bushel, but sealing that bushel in concrete and dumping it in the North Sea. The single player campaign might manufacture a few artificially heavily-emplaced locations to force a headshot or two, but it’s usually faster - and always more fun - to sprint at them like a pissed off Flash who’s allowed to kill people.
4. Day of Defeat
Day of Defeat servers embrace the idea of fields of fire, making the sniper even more effective despite his being more of a furrow. Heavy machine gunners can suppress entire teams by blazing across an open street, which is what makes one man who can take him down a team player. The exact opposite of the sniper’s normal role.
I hereby rename this street Death Street!
Capture point maps make excellent use of this rock-paper-everything-else battle: the sniper can kill the gunner, but the gunner can kill everything, and the sniper has to watch out for an entire enemy team moving up under the suppressive fire. The central square battle on Donner is the first time you truly understand the phrase “Cover me!” In most games randomly spraying your machine gun is about as damaging as a camera flash, and less likely to even worry the enemy, but DODs heavy machine guns really can kill dozens of people in seconds. Like real machine guns.
Which is why taking them out is so important it’s even in the achievements.
5. Halo
Halo revolutionized console shooters (although the PC Halo servers are pretty fun as well), but that revolution was all about ending the importance of accuracy. After Master chief first marched through an enemy army and restored himself to full shields a few seconds later, health bars have been more endangered than bald polar bears.

You had to use things to heal? We were living like cavemen!
Console combat compensates for the inaccuracy of thumbsticks by turning into a grinding battle - every assault rifle is effectively a Pyro: hold the enemy in your sights for long enough and you’ll win, if he gets away he’s fine. While there are sniper rifles they’re included like the AOL homepage is included online - grudging relics of an older time and simply not very good.
Parting Shot
What does all this tell us? We’ve only covered a fraction of the sniping games, barely mentioning the graphical joy of the ghillie suits in Modern Warfare or the ludicrous image of an Unreal Tournament player trying to hide, but the conclusion is clear: sniping is a PC player’s privilege, and it’s all kinds of fun.






































