Need your opinions.

Is the M417 a decent rifle? been thinking about unlocking it, but not sure if its worth the effort. I would mainly use it for medium to long distance shooting. Let me know what you guys think or if you have suggestions for a better weapon than this.

It's decent. It's only single shot and is considered a sniper rifle, but feels like an assault rifle. It takes 2-3 shots to kill generally and has a fair amount of recoil. It isn't really functional as a long range sniper rifle because it takes too many hits to kill. If you're not really good at sniping but want to play recon to help your team, this is a pretty good option to start out.

All it takes to unlock is 20 flag captures and 10 tugs assists. it really shouldn't take more than a couple matches playing as recon to unlock it (20 flag captures are probably already done anyway just from playing). i say unlock it and try it out.

I love that gun One shot kill close up its a killer. But not good long range takes to many shots but really god and medium range is good.

I quite like the gun but only use as an assault rifle (holo and foregrip). I found it really good on the urban maps like metro and bazaar.

I've been using it with a holosight in TDM to see how effective it is, and I'm liking it.
I's the same as every other semi-auto rifle (apart from the SKS) except it has a 20 round mag instead of 10, so there's no reason to use any other semi-auto over the M417, it works well enough in CQB to give you an all-round weapon option, which is necessary to play the class usefully, as you can act as squad DM and still have firepower when in close to the objective, without losing your long-range ability by taking a PDW or shotgun.