50 shades of infiltrator, a commendation-speech for the valuable posters of this subboard

Dear infiltrators!

I have come to this subsection today, to congratulate you. It was long due, for I have learned that you are honourable, modest gentlemen.

You play a stealth class with OHK-capable snipers, SMGs and some group utility, yet you do not get proud. You don't parade around showing off screenshots with K/D-ratios of 30+.

You don't even take yourselves too seriously most of the time- you are able to just share a laugh with your fellow gamers. I recall a time, when I saw an infiltrator cloak into an enemy base and attempt to play the role of a light assault, just to prove that he didn't have to play his class correctly to have fun, that he could indeed be had for a laugh despite what anyone says!

Your good sense of humour on the forums is to be commended as well- I see infiltrators on other class-boards all the time, jesting with the best of them. An old childhood-friend of mine was an infiltrator before he died in a boating-accident, one of his favourite things in the world was to tell me, tongue-in-cheek, that he thought it outrageous to be killed while cloaked, after running around in front of enemy spawn doors to place mines.

Sure, there are some heated debates every now and then when yet another oaf claims your favourite class doesn't "suck". Just a few minutes from now I will have seen a post claiming that if you don't get good score/hour and it doesn't feel rewarding to play, it is your own fault, not the class'. When he went on to say that just because the class is called infiltrator, you don't need to run around enemy bases like a headless chicken, things got more than a little heated, but in the end, the matter was settled amiably, when a truly valorous gentleman pointed out, that the class is the least popular among all of them. He did not seem to want to address the fact that that might be because it's the only class that isn't face-roll-easy all the time, but I digress.

You deserve to hold your heads high, I salute you!
Don't ever change.

Not really sure what forum you have been reading, but i don't recognize any of this behaviour anywhere around here, on any of the forums or classes.

Don't be so modest, I'm sure you have screenshots of single sessions where you went 30/1 or better. I'm convinced most people do, it's easy enough.

P.S.: These forums.

lol thanks.

I think most people play infiltrator because they like a challenge. Its definitely not as simple as playing a HA, but I think thats what people find interesting.

Now if people only would stop complaining about it being a challenge

You could have made this such a clever joke about the cloak on low graphics settings, but instead you just slapped "Infiltrator" on the title. Frankly, I'm disappointed.

I play infiltrator because is supposed to be the sneaky class. GUESS WHAT.

From past experience from literally hundreds of other games, most people play stealthers because they're bad at games and don't like challenge- hence why they bank on the element of surprise or extreme range. That's why every game has thousands of rogues/assassins/snipers/cloakers/whatever-the-stealth-class-is-called (and fairly little tanks/healers), and also why the "common opinion" on these forums is that infiltrators need to get buffed. The only things that need buffing are peoples' brains and aim.

It kinda was.

Ok, here's my guess: you fail with the sneaky aspect?

har har, no.

Mind if i sig that?

It's nice to see some more people who agree with me. I have been trying to tell these guys this for ages. If you have any hopes of ever convincing them that they aren't awesome, and that it isn't the classes fault, well... Let me know if you get anywhere.

It's not a bug and it certainly can't be fixed - two entirely different graphical representations existing at once will never be balanced in comparison to each other. Still, the decision to make the low settings cloak change between literal shades of grey based on the in-game time was just... ridiculous.

I feel that as someone who vehemently hates Hunter Stealth, my character is being misrepresented quite badly here, so I'm going to set things straight. I'm someone who plays stealth classes because he enjoys stealth gameplay - the difficulty of it means nothing to me. In Team Fortress 2, which is where I picked up my name, I hardly even touched the Spy. I played Medic purely because it had the combination of a powerful melee weapon, decent health pool, and high movement speed, and I was a sneaky bastard all the same. I've played MMOs in a similar way, intentionally choosing non-stealth classes but playing them like one anyways, provided that the environments and game structure provide even rudimentary support for what I do.

Planetside 2 is a game which does not.

Base structures, particularly indoor base structures, are extremely restrictive in their design and barely change from location to location. Most of the time, running straight into someone is impossible to avoid if you need to get just about anywhere which matters, and the unrestricted player counts only worsen this issue further. There are no good hiding places, there is no good hiding cloak, and there are far too often no back doors (let alone hackable ones, like in PS1). The cloak's loud and distinct sound, which in itself is perfectly acceptable as a warning for nearby enemies, can be heard from great distances for no apparent reason, and at any moment a radar tool could be blowing your cover without you even knowing it. In essence, you have far too little control over your own visibility, and far too little awareness of it as well.

I could go on further, but I think you get the point. I don't want things to become easier, but I wouldn't care if they did. What I want is to know when I've failed, know why I've failed, and for that failure to have been within my power to prevent. That's what makes good stealth gameplay, and Planetside 2 is sorely missing it.

My responses in green.
I understand what you are saying, and I say to you: play LA.

Go nuts lol.
I know, I used to play Global Agenda, pretty much the same exact story there. Except people called "hacker" even faster.

So your whole argument hinges on the statement "Don't bother playing Infiltrator indoors". Did it ever occur to you that maybe that's something that Infiltrators should be able to do? It's kind of a huge part of the game, being indoors. All of the capture points except for a select few in outposts exist indoors, as do generators, the SCU, and vehicle terminals, which are in fact very important objectives in their own right.

The very fact that we're able to hack terminals implies that we should have the tools and/or the routes to reach them. If I was content with sniping and engagements around certain remote outposts, I won't be here demanding change for this class. For that matter, I could probably just play a full-time Engineer because there's few places a tank can't go where our cloak is actually effective.

Also, a good hiding place is where your opponents aren't likely to look. Of course I can "hide" behind someone, but when all he has to do is turn around to catch me, I don't consider it a great spot to stay undetected for extended periods of time.

What I am saying to you is, don't do something risky you clearly aren't very good at, and then complain about it not working.

Hacking gives you group utility, such as hacking turrets before an assault or during one (which is even more risky). Your cloak allows you to bypass defenders if you do it smartly and allows you to approach objectives unseen. You were given SMGs with preposterous fire rates for short ranges. You have a OHK sniper rifle on top of all that. Clearly, if all of these don't give you "the tools and/or the routes to reach" terminals and the like, the fault lies not with the class.

Your last paragraph makes little sense for that reason and others. Hide behind someone? You are taking what I said as literal as possible, huh? More importantly, why would you want to stay undetected for extended periods of time? What is it you are actually trying to do? It sure isn't something that's useful for the objective or anyone apart from the typical stealth-noobs I see fail on my routes every day, who don't understand what a class-based game is.

Infiltrator is a specialized class, with a very specific skill-set, like a surgical knife. You are trying to spread butter with it. Don't complain that it takes a long time.

P.S.: DW, infiltrators will be even more easy-mode soon, they're getting an update I hear.

And what I'm saying to you is, the "something risky" in question is a textbook definition of the word infiltration and our class should be far more capable of performing it than it currently is. The lack of significant objectives is a separate matter entirely, but if they were introduced right now, we wouldn't be able to reach them, or rather, we wouldn't be able to reach them much more easily than any other class, not the least of which is the Light Assault.

Right. So yet another "Learn to play" argument which assumes that my problems with the class stem from a lack of skill. I love how you glorify the cloak so much, like you've never played against it and seen how pathetic it really is.

I can bypass defenders and reach objectives unseen as any class. What I'm asking for is that the Infiltrator live up to its name and have a more tangible advantage when performing these tasks.

"Not die" and "Wait for something" would be the two most obvious answers. I've had to camp out in an enemy-controlled tower before while three squads of my outfit prepared Galaxies to crash the place. They were waiting for some of the defenders to get bored and clear out - I was waiting to hack the AA turrets a couple seconds before our arrival and spent the entire time providing reports about vehicles leaving the base. In this sense I suppose I'm defeating my own argument because I actually did have a pretty great hiding spot, but there are a lot of bases where it wouldn't have been possible at all.

"Even more"? Even Ztiller agrees that this is the hardest class to play. I mean, unless you're confusing the sniping aspects of course, in which case... yeah. I can't wait to see how they make point-and-click gameplay against this game's seemingly infinite supply of idiots who stand still on hillsides less challenging than it already is.

I love when people run right past me when I'm not even cloaked. Just goes to show that the cloak is a tool to be used to get from A to B. Not a "Get out of Death free" card. With the introduction of the SMG, I've been seeing more and more infiltrators in bases, doing sneaky stuff and being a general pain in the ***, which is a good thing. Oddly enough.

It's just people arguing and crusading against the hill-camping wookie are a bit mistaken. Some play medics more as assault troopers while others are, non-combat oriented. Some HA's are more geared for LMG's while others specialize in rocket launchers. Some LA's are more into C4 then guns (I'm a black scottish cyclops! There are more *bleeeeeep* then there are the likes of me!)
Me? I find the perfect spot on the hill, at draw distance and give you all love taps to the neck.

Also, OP. Ego likes the pettin'! :3

Challenge Accepted. Funny thing, when I started playing this game and playing infiltrator and slowly started realizing how hard it was to play the class, I didn't understand the concept of "you can change classes" because I wanted to get better at the class and didn't understand the other ones so I pretty much dumped all of my hard earned certs into it. Here I am BR30 because of my stubbornness.

Way to paint with a broad brush there chief.

i tend to play 'sneaky classes' not because i don't have the FPS chops to play anything else (indeed, i can tear people up with any class OTHER than inf) but because i enjoy the concept of precisely timed and applied force producing a much larger effect than simply bashing someone with a sharp stick as hard as i can.

i won't deny that there are people who fit your stereotypes, but you completely ignore a subset of players who play stealth based classes simply because we can be even more effective if we use our brain, as opposed to simply kicking down the door and running into the same meat grinder until success is achieved.

Answers in green again, in case it wasn't obvious ._.

Hey man, I remember you from GA (and a few games since), don't tell me I'm wrong, I bet I got some screenshots somewhere. c:
Of course what you're saying is right, but the fact of the matter is, all the carefully applied force in the world isn't as effective as the meatgrinder in games like this. I have seen very few infiltrators that were worth spitting at in this, sorry.

and I remember you as well, but at least in GA the scorpio rifle to a medic (or a tank) would ruin his day right quick

and you are right, there is not much use for precisely applied force; save flanking, or a well timed medic drop. Sadly neither of those are the sole purview of any class, much less the infiltrator; a problem that I feel is more the indictment of the game's design than anything else at the moment. It's perfectly possible to 'snipe' effectively with a battle rifle or even a LA's carbine, and one would be hard pressed to argue that the LA's jetpack is not a infiltration tool at least on par with the cloak. The class lacks identity and purpose at the moment, and blame for that should lie at SOE's feet, not the players.