Titanfall Nerfs Sniping: Defining Quick Scoping & No-Scoping

Titanfall dropped a new teaser on their forums saying that “quick scoping and no-scoping will be ineffective” in the impending FPS game. This is the first release of information about sniping in the game and has been receiving mixed reviews.

What is Titanfall?

Just to quickly catch everyone up, Titanfall (wiki) is an upcoming online-only mech-style first-person shooter; Titanfall's release date is targeted at March 11, 2014, when the game will go live on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox 360. The game focuses on twitchy combat mixed with some freerunning abilities, where (interestingly) players will be able to fight both out-of-suit and in-suit – effectively as either an 'ejected' pilot or manning a mech. Anyone interested in Star Citizen's features should also look into Titanfall, as they do share a few similarities.

What is Quick-Scoping? No-Scoping?

For anyone who hasn't spent a lot of time in FPS games or spent time sniping, “quickscoping” is defined when the sniper rifle is fired as soon as the reticle appears when lifting the scope - or even before hand. This is a popular, competitive way to snipe in Call of Duty games. No-scoping is when the scope isn't even lifted and the sniper rifle is fired from its neutral position ('from the hip,' as it were), getting the player a kill. No-scoping consistently is virtually impossible in Call of Duty, but is something that is prevalent in every Halo game due to the sniping mechanics.

Respawn Entertainment is determined to make their game more enjoyable for players by decreasing the effectiveness of sniper rifles. This isn't a new trend in game development. Last year, before Call of Duty: Ghosts came out, Infinity Ward leaked that you would not be able to quickscope in the game. This upset the large community of snipers that exists in Call of Duty, but when the game finally dropped, it turned out quickscoping was still possible. The real detriment to snipers in Ghosts is that it is very hard to stay alive long enough to go for the 4-5 man quickscope kill streaks like in past games. This is due to the array of other over-powered weapons that exist as well as the low level of health players have in the game. Before Ghosts, Black Ops II had a patch release that nerfed snipers to make them less effective. Snipers in the game that were targeted were the two snipers most heavily used by players going for kill streaks and trickshots. Sniping in Battlefield hasn't changed too much over the years and has boasted snipers that can't be quickscoped. It is possible to snipe quickly in the game, but not in a way that's generally considered quickscoping (opinions varying); Battlefield 4 introduced more intensive physics drag on bullets, incremental range optimization (setting your distance), and other features to increase difficulty of sniping.

It is definitely becoming a major focus that sniping should require more skill no matter what game. This is in contrast to the days of Counter-Strike: Source, where the AWP one-hit kill sniper rifle saw wide-spread bannings across player-maintained servers. The AWP guaranteed a one-hit kill if the targeted player was struck in the torso and head hitboxes, as opposed to other rifles – like the Scout – which required a more traditional two-hit kill (or one to the head).

Titanfall Reduces Traditional Effectiveness of Sniper Rifles

Taking the time to focus on the rest of the quote from game developer “scriptacus,” it could be that Respawn Entertainment really means it when they say quick-scoping will be “ineffective.”

“Due to how the game plays, [sniping is] a pretty different animal than you'll find in your run-of-the-mill modern military shooter”.

The mechanics in Titanfall already look to bring a lot of fresh ideas to FPS gaming. It'll be interesting to see this “different animal” when the game drops on March 11th, 2014.

- Paige “dino pillow” Spears.