[Ricochet]

It all depends on where and who you're playing with, although it gets less and less as time goes on, airsoft can be any number of things. It's almost like a squad based sport, most of the time anyways. If you're on a team or in a group, then being ineffective is detrimental to everyone's success. There's nothing wrong with running a sniper rifle, or other alterate weaponry. It is however, very important, to understand airsoft physics and dynamics, have the appropriate experience, and make it fun for yourself, while fitting into your community. So it's very advisable, if not blatantly necessary, in most cases to do yourself a favor, and get a reliable AR. That includes appropriate upgrades, batteries, magazines, etc. Then move onto something different. A sniper rifle will take time, money, tinkering, and skill, to even get halfway decent, or close to fieldable. If you have a reliable AR to fall back on while you take that journey, then you have nothing to worry about. When you're playing capture the flag, speed ball, milsim, or whatever, and you get asked to hold the left flank, can you? Can the other players depend upon you, or are you totally ineffective? If you're playing an every man for himself match, do you have any chance of being competitive? Airsoft has many cool dynamics, including realism, simulation, etc, but stripped down its tactical, it's competitive, its combat.