Sorry, Tar, you have some good points but they don't "prove" it isn't immerstion-breaking.
I said isn't "That immersion breaking"
It can break some immersion. But it's not too bad as to be particularly egregious.
It's far more immersion breaking to have emails confined to PC's when phones are part of everyone's brain (Whereby text messages can be sent... And typed?) for example.
CDPR decided snipers don't get suppressor because [reasons] and we'll never know why unless one of them responds here and tells us lol, and just how it is.
We won't know exactly why, but we can infer.
They likely didn't want to deal with the extreme damage potential that a suppressed sniper rifle would do. As I mentioned in my first post, silencers provide that 100-150% bonus stealth damage. With also Grads having that 300% headshot damage multiplier. Throw in a T5 Cetus for guaranteed headshot crits and you're guaranteed absolutely insane damage reminiscent of the 1.0 damage stacking builds that one-shot everyone.
Like, there's a reason they removed the ability to put silencers on Revolvers with 2.0. They were also quite powerful with again, 200% headshot multipliers, plus the stealth damage bonuses and their 25% armour penetration.
For anyone who has any RL knowledge of firearms, it is terribly immersion-breaking
Not really.
Not all sniper rifles are used with supressors. For military use, sure, it is standard practice. But the majority of non-military uses (Which would include all people in the Cyberpunk universe that are not specifically a part of Militech) do not use supressors.
But then we shouls also consider the setting. Would Militech even bother with supressors at all? Given that random Scavvy McScavFace can trace someone's exact location using random hack software despite having literally no indication of their presence besides "Someone nearby was attacked by something"
What are the chances that Militech (Or any other corpo enterprise) doesn't have advanced tracking software that would identify the source of a supressed sniper shot? Which would render the thing obsolete. As does the nature of Cyberware and advanced armour that can render people nigh invincible (To say nothing about military grade Sandevistan and Berserk implants) making "Stealth" not nearly as important as in real life.
This is quite notable during the first episode of Edgerunners (And the scene you can view in the random BD visor found in an alley), where a cyberpsycho goes on a rampage killing cops and Maxtac come in and shut him down. The psycho with military grade cyberware and Maxtac with military grade answers to such powerful implants.
Thus it is not a forgone conclusion that supressors for sniper rifles MUST be available. Even if one knows about firearms and knows that they not only exist in real life but are commonly used in military applications, this doesn't not translate into the setting of the video game beyond "They
can exist"
To which they do, as we can access in the form of a specific Nomad rifle (Whether this was due to its military use during the Unification War or was an aftermarket modification adapting to the Nomad lifestyle after the fact is unclear).
Beyond that one rifle we do not get access to any. We can theorize that the regular ones we get that fit on Pistols, SMG's and AR's don't fit on higher caliber weapons (Which is a thing in real life. You can't just slap any supressor onto any gun, it has to actually fit the caliber of round being used). While any ones that would fit we simply don't find, either because they're uncommon or because for reasons we just don't get them (Like aforementioned items that exist in the game but we don't get)
In the end it's not that big a deal. Sniper rifles in the game are still incredibly potent and you can take out most enemies in one shot and the lack of a silencer is barely notable with how far away you can stand and take enemies out (Especially with Breakthrough as it can punch through almost infinite obstacles allowing you to shoot people through multiple buildings. Who needs to be silent when enemies literally cannot get to you)
Perhaps in the next game they can rework how stealth bonus damage works so that supressors aren't too OP to be allowed for anything but Pistols/SMGs/AR's (With only rare exceptions like Overwatch and Mancinella) and make them more available for other weapon types, like Revolvers, Precision Rifles and Sniper Rifles.
