I'd have thought that exactly the reason anyone would wear body armor to begin with?

There needs to be a balance man. Ofcourse body armour protects you but it shouldn't protect you from 4 mosin shots, that just doesn't really make sense in any regard

maybe that's how it should be because the shooter can't kill easily but have more patience for his target to stop and be able to shoot him in the head, but I think it's unlikely I'm more drastic I'd prefer a new damage system to the player something like tarkov in which each member has a certain amount of life and when that life ends, it gives double to the next member.

Hmmm, not sure what you mean about the Tarkov system but I do agree that a new damage system / health system would be good...although in regards to the current system, hitting headshots at ranges like that is (almost) impossible. At 400m its doable yea, but extending out to 500, 600, 700m etc etc. When you land such an amazing shot and you are met with "23 damage" to a players health....that sucks so much man. The game should definitely reward shots like that, they take really insane amounts of skill, patience and luck. If everyone can run around knowing that sniper rifles will only tickle them once they are outside of the 280m uncon radius then you lose a lot of the tense atmosphere that DayZ can provide, especially at an area like NWAF...you should be scared for your life every second you are there xD

The sniping above 450-500m in dayz is pointless right now, the guy is right, no oneshot. But I think .308 is perfectly balanced right now, cause you can kill a plate-less person with a single shot to body within 300m. Back in Arma2 Dayz mod we had M107, you always knew that you only need to land one shot and you're good. Sometimes (few times) there were insane shots from 1500m, if there were global chat on the serve, whole server applauded to it. In the same time M107 was extremely rare, could be found only on helicrashes, and those were only 3 or even less on the whole server (not like right now), so that was very exiting to find that weapon. If something like that would be present on vanilla servers, that would be amazing. If you'll put only 1 or 2 rifles like that in a spawn table (plus add hard limit for 2 units max no matter on player, or in the stash, or on the base) - that will be awesome. That guy is right on the money you know, long range sniping is suffering very much right now. But if you'll decide to just crank .308 damage up, better don't do that, leave that as it is then, 'cause just cranking up is the easiest way, yes, but it will ruin balance on the mid ranges, .308 will be overpowered in 300-600m range