Too many Infiltrators in fights

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by BlackFox, Jan 31, 2021.

  1. BlackFox

    (I post this in the Gameplay Discussion because it effects the gameplay)

    Like the title says, there are many fights where too many nearly invisible enemies run around. Over the last two days I barely saw matches without people constantly getting killed by masses of Infiltrators on both sides. Groups of them can completely bring a fight to a hold as everybody is busy hunting them down. Once killed they can just respawn and continue, which makes it a never ending circle of hide-and-seek instead of a massive firefight.

    Given the competitive heavy design of the game, invisible enemies with high damage weapons break the whole formula. The other 5 classes can be seen and spotted, which means A) they are easier to react to and B) the teammates can provide support more easily.
    Same goes for vehicle cloaking, it's annoying to have invisible flashes driving around and roadkill a huge load of players. Especially fun in an attack on a base and 3 guys just doing that continuously.

    In short: It's not fun constantly dying before even seeing combat, getting one shotted in CQC and dying 90% of the time by an infiltrator (probably while trying to counter them)
    My assumption is that during creation / balancing of the class they thought about 1vs1 combat or how a single player handles it without considering that a whole bunch of them could run around in a fight.
    _______________________________________________________________
    Oh, to save some time:

    "Lol, use counters" you might want to say.
    The counters are ineffective against the amount of cloakers you encounter. The flashlight gives away your position, takes a slot off your weapon and has a lousy range - only effective against one target. Motion sensors are an option, but for non-stalkers it takes away a weapon and they can be disabled by crouching

    "Stalkers have less HP" is something I expect to see.
    100 shield points less equal one bullet, given the element of surprise and the high damage weapons they have access to it's not an effective disadvantage

    "Have better awareness for your surroundings" is general good advice, but again: Nearly invisible enemies.
    Especially while moving it's hard to see the slim glimmer. + With the amounts of infiltrators within a base (or a mountain) you get shot by 2 others while fighting the one you spotted .
    • Up x 8
  2. JustGotSuspended


    Not even, with nano-armor these things become as tanky as a heavy.

    Well my considering a majority of players are bad, it's fair to assume that a majority of them turn to cheese to make themselves fell good. Streaks in a2g, harassers, or infil make them feel more accomplished then constantly dying trying to play medic or heavy.

    And it's not entirely their fault. I blame whoever added these options in the game. You give spammable weapons, or weapons that are extremely accurate, and kill in one shot - or that combine both (daimyo) - and obviously the players who have no idea how to position themselves or win fights in cqc by managing a high bloom/recoil weapon to land 3-4 headshots before their opponent does turn to this sort of cheese to scrape together a few kills.

    We all know health isn't a factor in this game. MAXes die in under a second. Heavy assaults die as faster as regular infantry. Light assaults as well. The only thing that actually matters is stealth. A sneaky LA will cause so much more havoc than a heavy trying to push a point. We all know the potential of a cloak and or flash, or ofc the infiltrator. It's obviously easier for people to switch off their brain and let the game do the sneak for them, instead of actively improving their movement and aim/recoil management.

    I agree that because of clientside these types of long range insta kill weapons paired with the cloak do feel quite unfair. And it doesn't really give you the opportunity to improve. You can't really do anything about the clientside extrapolation that makes you a linear moving target, and hides the infil. And you can't even react by the time you die.
    • Up x 2
  3. NotziMad

    It's been like for a while now.

    SOE became DBG in 2015.

    Wrel joins DBG team in 2016.

    And (just one of many), I was making this kind of post in 2017

    https://forums.daybreakgames.com/ps2/index.php?threads/infiltrator-side-2.244236/

  4. DarkQuark

    Honestly, if cloak were just removed from the game entirely with no other changes it would solve several problems.
    • Up x 3
  5. Thalestr

    Infiltrator main here.

    I'm of two minds about this. I think the gear choices need to be refined and have less of a focus on CQC (no SMG's, short range bolts, etc). I think this would really cut down on the amount of cheap feeling kills that occur during most engagements. Snipers would still exist but I think they're a lot easier to deal with than a pro cloaker running around with an SMG. Infs also need to be squishier and nanoweave should be removed from the class.

    But I also understand why a lot of people play as Infiltrators. Cloaking is a very good way of avoiding bullcrap. You don't have to worry about being pancaked by ESF's, farmed by tanks, or being instagibbed by legions of sweaty players that have a disturbing level of accuracy. You just simply live longer as a infiltrator and thus the game is more fun. I think that's less of a problem with the infiltrator and more of a problem with the game in general and just shows how many fun-ruining things there are in the game.
    • Up x 4
  6. DarkQuark

    Agreed on the SMG and nanoweave thing. But you already would have a 1 shot 1 kill weapon that you can use at extreme range, there is no need to also be invisible. Your class ability should be the use of the uber death rifles not invisibility.
  7. Thalestr

    Ehhhh the actual amount of sniping that happen at these hypothetical long-ranges is actually quite minimal. The various projectile influences (bullet speed, bullet drop, damage fall off) make long distance sniping impractical at best and suicidal at worst. Confining the class to do nothing but sit up in hills far beyond the range that their weaponry allows is a good way to destroy the class. You should basically just remove it at that point.

    Remember: Most of the other classes already have access to powerful scout and battle rifles (the Bishop/Obelisk/Dragoon in particular are excellent and can take out most targets in 2 taps). If I'm going to have my cloak removed then I might as well just snipe with my Heavy Assault because at least it has a beefy shield.
  8. ican'taim

    How to fix Infiltrator:
    1. Take away the sniper rifles and SMGs, and make Stalker cloak default. Remove Hunter cloak as it is now useless.
    2. Make a new class, called Marksman. This class will essentially be the sniper class, and inherits all the sniper rifles and SMGs from Infiltrator
    3. Remove the tactical slot along with anti-infantry mines, and move them to Marksman
    4. Make a new class symbol for the Infiltrator class as the crosshair icon no longer reflects its purpose.
    5. Use the old Infil icon for the Marksman class.
    Boom, no more stupid SMG infils and now we have a proper sniping class.
  9. Somentine

    Even without cloak, Sniper > heavy shield + BR. Not to mention that while the CQC bolters would still be very strong in CQC, BRs tend to not be. So, they would still have a better long range wep and a strong CQC wep.

    For the OP: all stealth could be just straight up deleted and it would be a far better game. Infil, as a class, is so bloated with strong mechanics that it honestly boggles my mind how they haven't been nerfed into the ground.
  10. pnkdth

    Infiltrators are getting a similar amount of kills to LAs, about half as many as HAs. It is therefore unlikely that you're constantly getting lit up in CQC by infiltrators. Roughly speaking 1 in 6ish kills will, on average, be from an infiltrator. If we then suppose there are too many infiltrators around it would appear they do not have a very big impact on each battle. Not to mention if we also assume that BASRs, SMGs, and Stalkers are the issue then all of these are having to share that same pool of infiltrator kills which makes each of these even less frequent in occurrence. Even if we were just to use the BASRs and SMGs we'd be looking at the same amount of kills as the class who get the least kills (medic).*

    A point which makes a lot of sense to me though is the nature OHKs. I hate it myself, and I understand why it feels frustrating to go up against. The cloak isn't the issue since if the class couldn't OHK I doubt anyone would care since then you're up against highly specialised SMGs (which are the easiest to spot since they have to run up to you) or scout rifles (which are balanced by being pretty average weapons). As for 6x magnification and up BASRs, they're mostly harmless and fill a certain niche.

    Point is, just because you find a mechanic frustrating does not mean the entire class needs to get nerfed into oblivion.

    * I'm using PS2alert for class data. The reason why I am not using voidwell (for KPU, etc) is that doesn't account for the impact infiltrators have + it has already been proved time and time again that infiltrators, from a pure performance standpoint, isn't overpowered. What almost everything thread comes down to at the end is that everyone (more or less) agrees that OHK weapons are pretty bleh.

    (I did not account for MAX kills, just the core classes)
    • Up x 1
  11. BlackFox


    I would simply switch the invisibilty to be honest - no visual cloaking but complete lack of minimap detection. Additional to that Infiltrators could get a small movement speed bonus and different ability slot options. Like a limited time mobile movement sensor backpack (not visible on enemy minimaps), a moment of marking everything they look at through a scope, the option to lay down (?) and get immobile for longer breath holding, stuff like that. Maybe remove the blinking icon when hacking a terminal in addition.
    Besides that I would keep them how they are.

    It's not about nerfing them into oblivion but making them fit more in line with the gameplay. Also what does it matter how much kills a class archives? HA's for example also engage planes and tanks, engineers are practicaly the vehicle pilot class and medics usually are healing rather than fighting (in the TR at least). That INFs aren't the rambo class is clear, never the less they have a big impact.

    The thing is that Infiltrators not only interrupt fights by killing but also by needing to be chased. A LA can fly away - sure - but you don't need to get very close or equip specialized tools to detect him in the first place. Cloakers just go invisible, run away and then can attack from any angle they want if it goes bad for them. Or they sit in a corner keeping groups of players busy looking for them and away from the actual battle. Snipers already have the "long range" advantage ("long range" in terms of PS2 distances), there is no need to have them also be a META class for classical infantry gameplay
  12. OneShadowWarrior

    It’s been an ongoing exploit that I have done countless posts on.

    Sniper rifles in the original Planetside could not be used by Infiltrators and were common pool weapons available to the other classes.

    It wasn’t as much of an issue initially in PS2 until they removed the nanoweave benefit for headshots, reduced the hit damage pool for heavy assault shields and went ridiculous on headshot multipliers.

    I’ll say this as a repeat discussion, the snipers are controlling the lanes and then cloaking away and hitting most people before they can even react, even when you lay down suppression fire, if your carrying a sniper rifle, you shouldn’t be able to cloak.
    • Up x 3
  13. Somentine

    It's probably also mostly due to the fact that you're more likely to die to an infil (of the same skill level) than to another class, ignoring frequency. This is supported by infil KD being significantly higher than any other class except MAX and occasionally ENG (due to it counting kills in vehicles) during prime time (the best time to compare).

    Being 1 shot is annoying even without cloak, but cloak is also a glaring issue. Rather than be a tool to get behind an enemy's position and infiltrate/recon, it is used mid combat. No one can argue the fact that sight is the most important sense in this game - you could have the best hearing, best hand-eye co-ordination, best multitask (minimap), best decision making, but without sight you couldn't do jack all; this class eliminates your sight completely at long ranges and under certain conditions, and even in the best conditions, it camouflages and makes your sight unreliable.

    The strength of cloak is proven by the inflated KD of any infil vs. other class at all skill levels. While impact (best measured in KPM/SPM) is typically lower than support classes at low levels, it is comparable to Heavy/La at upper levels while still sporting higher KD.

    As for frustrating mechanics, that is most definitely a reason to nerf or change them, even ignoring how technically balanced it may be.... which Infil is absolutely not.
    • Up x 2
  14. Scurge

    I agree the cloakers are insanely OP, but if you play the game you see that clearly.

    PS1 I had fun as a cloaker with my pistol and traps and our counter was the Darklight implant. This only made cloakers show up like infrared but you was blind to everything else and it was toggled on and off depending on the energy you had.

    PS2 currently the only counter is a 10M crap flashlight and remembering to watch the radar, which is like driving while reading the map at the same time.
    • Up x 1
  15. NotziMad



    I refer you to an old post of mine :)

    You could use that same argument for the kill stats
  16. pnkdth

    I'm calculating the frequency of kills since the argument is, 1) infils are everywhere, 2) I'm getting killed constantly by infils. Therefore, the impact of infiltrators is being exaggerated because players find the class' mechanics to be frustrating (OHK and cloaking). Otherwise, we would see a lot more kills by infiltrators.

    The subjective claim of how many infiltrators is too many and/or how many is required to create frustration is another argument entirely. Which is also why it is a complete waste of time to try and argue that "infiltrators are OP" because statistically, they aren't. It also creates the same discussion over and over.

    The most convincing arguments I've heard comes from arguing cloak/clientside issues and OHK creating a bad experience. Fixes that comes to mind are, changing the visibility of the cloak depending on speed (crouch, walk, sprint) and when using a primary weapon increase de-cloaking time (add the ability to interrupt going into cloak by firing). This would deal with most issues and feelbad-moments.
  17. ObiVanuKenobi

    That's because of sniper rifles not cloak. Most people snipe from a safe distance so they die less and kill more people simply by being out of range. Average k/d for sniper rifles is much higher than SMGs
    • Up x 2
  18. NotziMad




    In my experience, and I know that if you don't know me that's not worth much, but still .. in my experience, there are infiltrators everywhere in low pop fights and/or low pop continents. For example, during prime time, in 24-48 fights, or 48-96 or bigger, which are not uncommon at that time, then they are not everywhere.
  19. pnkdth


    As a designer, user experience always matters, I just want to distinguish from performance versus experience. In this case you're also giving a very clear contextual image. That is why I'm trying to reduce the "gotcha" and "feelbad" moments by making it harder for the infiltrator to simply pop up, kill, and disappear. If the cloak is the most visible when sprinting you will get a visual queue and dropping out of cloak would take longer (so mitigate clientside issues).

    Both of these would make it easier to deal with both in duels and in smaller battles (more visible and have to move slower since sprinting would make them more visible). If we were to compare it to the LA, the proposed increased visibility while sprinting would be like the sound the jetpack makes as it gets closer, i.e. once the infiltrator makes its move it can't remain in hiding.
  20. NotziMad



    Well yeah, that's the reason there are so many infiltrators in smaller fights, that's when the class becomes Over Powered. In "normal" fights (which don't happen most of the time, cause "normal" fights happen at prime time and tbh, that's just a couple hours a day).

    There isn't just one issue with the infiltrator, there's tons, but the thing is, these balance out fine in "normal fights".

    To take an example :

    1 vs 1

    Iinfiltrator at the A point, you spawn to save the base.

    He uses darts or motion spotter, and you know that he knows exactly where you are at all times. So whatever advantage or disadvantage he may have as a class, the simple fact that he knows where you are at all times, and you don't know where he is, and he gets to engage first, it's just a huge advantage; at equal skill level, there really isn't much you can do when fighting someone who knows where you are all the time if you don't know where he is.

    Typically, that"s a feature the class has that becomes over powered in 1 vs 1 right? You can see that?

    But in normal fights, it's fine. That huge advantage disappears (if only because in bigger fights both sides are using radar anyway).

    That"s the issue that the devs have been struggling with pretty much since launch but particularly since SOE became DBG : they balance the game according to prime time fights, but what works then, doesn't work the rest of the itme.

    In low pop fights, you get ESFs farming infantry like there's no tomorrow, that doesn't happen so much in normal fights.

    In low pop fights, you get Liberators cruising around 5 meters above ground destroying everything and anything with not a care in the world. Same thing. In normal fights they could never do that, they'd get hit by anti air of all kinds.

    So if you're looking at balancing a pvp game, you can't just focus on the narrow scope of kill stats and "this item performs like we want it to". It's that kidn of reasoning that leads people to believe VS is OP.