[Skruface]

"Sniping" is not what you see in the movies, or in COD. Most experienced players will try and steer new players away from this because it'snot fun unless you already have a decent skillset (have done some real firearms shooting, understand camo/concelament from practical experience ie: been in the military - not from playing video games, and know that 90% of the time you'll be watching, not shooting) and a whole bunch of money to burn. Seriously, some of us have been playing for a looooong time and understand what we're talking about.

In order to shoot effectively from long range, you need a highly upgraded rifle. It's not uncommon to see people put over $1K into a weapons system for this role, and I have played with some folks who are approaching $4K on one single gun. That is the amount of money it takes to make a sniper rifle with repeatable accuracy and utter reliability. A $200 rifle just will not cut it. Then you have another several hundred bucks invested in other things (ghillie suit, load carrying, etc.) that are nice (but not necessary) to play the role.

If you can swallow the cost of getting decent gear, then you have to determine where you'll play, and what style - skirmishes (short games that go on all day) or Milsim (military simulations with many objectives that go on for hours or even days). This choice will also affect how much you'll need to spend, naturally.

Other than that, play what you want to play - and have fun your own way as long as it's within the scope of the rules and the event. No one's really going to care if you play a sniper role or not (unless you keep shooting your pals by accident). Be advised that in your local, there is a requirement at many fields/clubs to graduate the "sniper course" before you will be allowed to play with high FPS guns - so that automatically puts you at a disadvantage because there will be many many people on the field that at the same velocity (400 fps) and range (about 40-50 yards) as you, except that they shoot 20 bbs/second to your 1 bb every 3 or 4 seconds......

On the subject of high FPS, that's a loaded question. High FPS =/= accuracy or even necessarily range. What you need to shoot for in your weapons system is low fluctuations in FPS, and repeatable accuracy. That comes at the heft cost mentioned above.