Journal of William "Billy" Redbot:
April 15, 2010
War has come a long way. Used to be, a sniper was someone who sat in the bush and picked off point men with a short-barreled carbine. Now, we use bullets the size of your thumb and a newfangled rifle that can throw them over a mile and a half.
When I get back to the States, I think I'll give sniper school a try. Maybe Fort Bragg. The rifles are monsters, but the shooters are surgeons. It's amazing the things you have to know to be a sniper. I watched a Captain kill a man at a dead run yesterday - it took nearly two seconds for the bullet to reach the target! Like hitting a moving taxi cab with a frisbee.
Every element here is a sniper target: shoot the soldier, C4 the tank, and pound the gun nest with mortars.
Being a sniper in a first-person shooter is usually no easy task to begin with. You sacrifice aiming speed for a much longer viewing distance when you trade out your iron sights for a scope. Plus, your fire rate is drastically diminished en lieu of more powerful ammunition. Bang! Click-chk-whir-buzz-clack. Bang! You get the idea.
It's actually kind of funny how the sniper role has changed over the years as games change... At one point, it was a class that offered a more powerful - but slower - main weapon, and that's about it. Since running and gunning was out of the picture, snipers camped. Hard. Anti-camping measures were put in place to quell the screaming run-and-gun advocates, so the sniper profile had to appeal in other ways. Enter games like Battlefield: Bad Company 2, which hands snipers the advantage of visual camouflage, blocks of C4 for up-close devastation, and a mortar strike ability that can be used from afar. Not to mention an unlockable Spotter Scope, which literally places a visual blip on enemies for your entire team to see.
So how does Bad Company 2 balance the sniper class? Two words: bullet drop.
The guy on the right - he's practice.
"Easy to learn, difficult to master". I've always loved this phrase, because it indicates that a game or skill is inclusive to all who are willing, but provides measurable bragging rights for those who work extra hard. Mastering shot placement is very difficult in Bad Company 2 thanks to a realistic bullet trajectory that falls over distance, but if you work at it you can literally shoot helicopter pilots from their cockpits. Quad bike drivers from their quad bikes. Even tank gunners from their turrets.
The wide-open expanses of Bad Company 2's maps seem too sniper-friendly at first, but thankfully due to the appeal of being a long-range marksman, there is always a counter-sniper on your team.
Upgrades for this class include Magnum Ammo (which increases range and damage slightly), variable power scopes, and the Spotter Scope that I mentioned earlier. Spotting (tagging) is a huge value to the team overall, and due to their aptness to camping far away and picking out solitary targets, snipers are automatically in a prime position to spot and tag. Not only does it benefit the team, but a fair amount of points are given to a sniper when someone else eliminates a target that they tagged. The Spotting Scope is not necessary for this (without it, a press of the Back or Select button will tag any target in your normal scope's crosshairs), but it helps.
This is just one of many aspects of the latest Battlefield game that we'll speckle here on the Co-Optimus Battlefield Report. Check back next month to see what we dig up next!