I've tried to bring up this clear issue that the new sniper does not have an adequate optic, my previous threads were marked as resolved and then duplicate. The devs don't seem to want to hear this type of feedback.

I completely agree with this. This is a military sniper and should have a dedicated long range scope for it. Reimplementing "Long range scope" sounds like a proper solution imo. Especially if ONLY sv98 can take it. It can be a military T3 ~ T4 spawn. I mean 4x Acogs are already spawning everywhere. It would be an upgrade from Mosin, and bolt action doesn't make it OP as SVD which is semi auto + takes suppressor. Sounds like a reasonable trade of benefits and drawbacks if you ask me. And a great reason not to get rid of 7.62 rounds once you find .308 sniper usually ... It's not like it's going to make players use Savnnah less often. Might as well be a good chance to test a huge magnification (8-12x) scope with "picture in picture" rendering method..

WeirdXone we definitely on a similar page,

This may be controversial but if we get a VS-89 ONLY scope like say reimplementing Long Range Scope especially with it being a military rifle,

Maybe 4x, 8x, 12x is the right call for a SV-89,

And maybe Hunting Scope needs to be reevaluated from a balancing aspect and nerfed to 3x, 6x, 9x 👀

After over a month of constant feedback through this tracker (multiple threads), the DayZ discord, Steam community, and Twitter, we still do not have an adequate optic for the new VS-98 rifle added in 1.25. I know the devs are aware of this issue and was hoping this would be resolved by the time the update rolled out. This leads me to believe that it is a deliberate decision by the devs to restrict the capabilities of the new rifle. It is unclear why this level of incompetence is on display, the community and myself especially would like any clarification. Failure of clarification can only lead me to believe this as a case of developer negligence.

I agree with you guys, but think they made acog x6 max only bacause of an ammo. 7.62x54 (same as .308) is only good within ~500m, above that distance you can only "tag" a player (hit to the body which won't cause death or knock down), so most likely he will just hide/run away. With x9 scope you will see the target better, but still above 500m it'll make zero changes, meanwhile acog 6x provides enough of magnification within these 500m. I'm not defending this decision, just saying it is logical here (as you won't be able to do anything above 500m, unless a headshot, but not everybody is that lucky). I thought they going to release .338 variant of SV (as they mentioned "exotic"), so it would cover 500m+ distance. But the reality is completely different, we got SV98 limited by 7.64x54 ammo power (capabilities) and limited by acog x6. Description say it has the best precision, but compared to SVD with PSO or M14 with acog x6 it does not look good at all. The model of a gun itsef is amazing, but that is it. 1.26 is going to be late this year (fall) and most likely the last update of the year, so our best hopes for 1.27 (first update of 2025), but with the same probability this problem can be left unsolved till the end of game support. Sure there are tons of M200, L96 and M82/M107 on modded servers, but I'd really like to finally see some heavy sniper rifles in vanilla, even no mag 1 bullet bolt action, but capable kill players on 800m+.

@MilesDownshur I'm pretty sure that the problem is the fact that SV-98 has a picatinny rail. Which means, that if you enabled long range scope for SV-98, logically, you'd have to do it for every gun with a picatinny rail ( NATO weapons). Meaning, M4, ASVAL, AUG, MP5, DMR, FAL etc. would be able to use it which could totally mess up the balance and people wouldn't even bother with bolt action rifles. As I mentioned previously, the easiest solution would be to introduce a new long range scope that would fit only SV98.

@WeirdXone your way of thinking is right. But there are ways to make it only for sv98 (if to talk about tech side). If about lore side - they can just add it for sv without explaining why it is only on sv and not on other picatinny rifles. M14 DMR with hunting scope would become even more powerfull. But still, scope is just a very small part of a problem, I'm still sticking to my point of view that x54 and 308 is critically not enough for long range sniping, therefore there no point in x8 or x12 scopes now (as you won't kill anybody farher than 500m). Im sure this problem will be solved if they add .338 or higher, in that case they'll have to add new scopes for long range or allow to attach hunting scope.