Snipers sometimes do not play their audio cue when shooting players. I don’t know why, but I speculate it might have something to do with latency, the audio cue warning for other attacks playing simultaneously and/or the sniper targeting/switching between multiple players.
This does happen quite often where they shoot before you get the warning sound. I played a good while without mods and had this happen to me and teammates.
It doesn’t occur that often for me, but I know there’s no audio cue for the shot when they are shooting at other players, so it’s reasonable to assume that it mayoccur when multiple players line up for a sniper shot.
The sniper audio cue behaves erratically too. I’ve had a sniper continue to track after the sound cue goes off, but that could also be a server delay issue.
I figured it was caused by snipers spawning in with the party in their line of sight. It used to be pox bursters would explode immediately after spawning if the party was close to a door they spawned at. Since one of the updates they did, the pox bursters wait a bit at the door before charging through.
For snipers, I’m guessing they sometimes spawn with the party in view, and without delay immediately take a shot when they appear leaving no time for visual or audio cues.
I once was lined up perfectly with another guy and a sniper double killed us.
Neither me nor the other guy heard the audio cue, so its not that.
3rd party member was already dead, and the 4th one was on the other side of the room.