Operator chooses to make highly accurate shooting much more challenging. Most combat decisions will affect your accuracy, and so to be “Operator Enough” and win engagements you will need to learn how to maximize your accuracy.
If you are short on time, the most important takeaway is: avoid sprint, use focus, and walk.
In Operator, the player’s sway represents stability and accuracy. One of the primary ways in which we improve tactical realism is by increasing stamina sway, and movement sway. The increase in sway reduces run and gun tactics, and improves tactical gaming by creating tradeoffs for every tactical decision. It also changes the skill curve to create a more balanced playing field, put more emphasis on tactics, and create a high skill level for the truly gifted. The sway in Operator is built from real life data and experience, but it will be frustrating for many players at first, because although we naturally and unconsciously accept our instability in real life, we generally expect stable sights in video games.
The things to keep in mind are the 3 S’s: stance, stamina, and speed. The focus feature is also essential so we’ll talk about that too, and suppression will play a small part as well.
Stance is the simplest:
The lower your stance the less sway, and thus the more accurate you will be.
Crouching is good, prone is best, standing is the least stable.
Stamina is straightforward:
Jumping, sprinting, and taking damage, all lower your stamina, and therefore increase your sway.
Sprint only when necessary, and rarely (if ever) for longer than 2 seconds at a time, until you recover stamina.
A good rule of thumb is: if you can hear the heavy breathing player sound, then you are sacrificing accuracy.
Speed and movement intuitive with one curveball:
The faster you move, the more sway you will have.
Sprinting at all will increase your sway for a short while, so that’s another reason to only sprint when necessary.
To increase realism, sway is most intense while moving. You should rarely shoot and move at the same time unless your target is close range.
To maximize your accuracy while moving, use the walk ability. The default key to toggle walk is “Alt”.
Think of normal movement as a speed walk, while the toggling walk is a slow stable walk (with being silent as a bonus).
There is one caveat: crouch movement (duck walking so to speak) is always less accurate vs upright when moving.
So while crouch+still is much more accurate than stand+still, crouch+moving is much less accurate than stand+moving.
Flashbangs and frags will cause intense sway for a long time, so avoid being near when they go off.
Lastly, use the focus feature. The default is to hold the shift key while not moving. It minimizes your weapon sway, and apart from going prone, offers the greatest increase to accuracy. Using focus in Operator is essential if you want to place shots accurately.
So to sum up, in Operator, just like in real life, you just have to accept that you aren’t unnaturally accurate. Most actions you take will impact how accurate you are.
Here are your operator headshot tips:
- Don’t sprint unless absolutely necessary
- use focus ability when accuracy is important,
- go prone for long range shots or tiny targets,
- and if you have to move and shoot accurately… use the walk ability