Infiltrator Update or Nerf ?

Yeah I don't expect to single handedly take down vehicles. Maybe a pair of us can. But mostly I just want the assists when the opportunity arises. It'll be nice to not have to always run away from maxes though.

Regarding hacking, I could go on for quite some time about our extremely lackluster system...but this thread HERE will give you a fair understanding of what type of setup I want to see. With that said, there are many things that could be implemented into the game for us to hack...and the energy bridges are only the tip of the iceberg.

Blast Doors:

This was the example I had provided within the quoted text of my last post. There could be alternate infantry oriented pathways incorporated into base layouts that provided defending forces a means to flank the enemy as they seek to penetrate through the main methods of entry. These pathways could be sealed by faction controlled doors which will only open for defending forces...unless an Infiltrator slips beyond enemy lines and hacks the terminal that's integrated into the wall on the defending side of the door. This would then permanently open the door for assaulting forces and give an alternate route until a defending Infiltrator gets themselves over there to hack that terminal back and ensure it's no longer aiding the enemy forces.

This could be something that turns the tide of battle. I'd like to point out that this isn't my concept and was suggested elsewhere within the past...an excellent idea that I bring up whenever possible.

Ammunition Towers:

Another concept that wasn't my idea, but I find extremely interesting, would be the ability to hack ammunition towers as a means to stall assaulting armor by taking away their ammunition supply back home or provide assaulting armor a means to resupply right there at the base they're assaulting. Some have also suggested the ability to hack landing pads for a similar purpose...and, well, that would do the same thing.

Teleportation Tubes:

Here's another base feature that could potentially incorporate an integrated wall terminal right alongside it that hackers could exploit and provide their forces with another means to penetrate base defenses. Very similar to the Blast Door concept listed above...without knowing what's going to be on the other side when you use it. Still, it'll work similarly I imagine.

Vehicles and Aircraft:

Vehicles and Aircraft would be the most persistent form of hacking within the game...because they're always around. This has been discussed time and time again throughout the forums, so I really don't need to reiterate.

Combine all of those with the energy bridges along with anything else that the development team can come up with, and make these objects indestructible, and now you have a persistent hacking system that doesn't just disappear within the first few moments of battle...but remains a constant threat and role for all Infiltrators within the area, both defending and assaulting.

Right now, the only two things we can hack in the game can also be destroyed for experience...and often are. Even if they aren't, it only takes a couple of Infiltrators to fulfill the role. Incorporating everything listed above, and potentially more, would fully define this roll and actually make it as prominent as medical aid, repair, and ultimately recon.

As for the Light Assault troops not wanting Recon...the Reddit post has a fair share of support when linked to a thread that I tossed up quickly because our update is so close to going live. There's a lot that would need done to make this exchange a lot more lucrative...but it's beyond possible.

When it comes to them giving us ways to nullify the radar while retaining our recon capabilities...I just don't see that happening. I'd much rather regain my stealth capabilities and get a better hacking system that actually synergizes with these abilities. Let the Light Assault gain recon and interesting tools that help them become more efficient, mobile, killers.

Still...if the development team goes live with what they have now, I'm going to delve deeply into this concept and fully flesh it out.

I can agree with this stuff here, but this is what I meant: These are more long term things. Teleportation tubes would need a fundamental redesign of a number of bases to either Add in teleporters, or remove the shields on teleporter rooms, or add gens/terminals somewhere so teleporters could be interacted with...

The only way I see teleporter tubes working, would be if you had the ability to hack into the teleporter rooms that were shielded, by like, hacking those shields and then walking through. Doing that you could make it so that the teleporter could then be hacked to shut it down or allow transport depending on the situation.

Ammo towers, will be closely tied to the resource revamp, by my understanding being what empowers both resource collection and enabling a gen-hold like situation with sunderers being the "Gen" so I think those should be untouched.

Doors would be added in for the express purpose of having hackables, I'd prefer it be shields, but even then, see points on teleportation tubes.

Vehicles are a go, but we've already heard it is possible to do... but it's going to take some Time to get done.

Understand I don't hate the ideas (If I take exception to something I am explaining), it's just that the issues we have with the things that -will- be released are something I think people should focus on more right this moment, than talking about fundamental shifts in how the class is made, 2 days prior to it's release. Everyone does it, and I have done so in the past, but tbh I concede when I do, that it's akin to walking up to an aircraft carrier while they are about the swing the wine bottle to christen the ship, and saying that you would have preferred to have a submarine.

Stalker needs some more focus. That is the most important issue I see in all of this right now, that the community can effect change on.

Infiltrator Update or Nerf ? Let's see.

Long to Medium Range:

• New ES sniper rifles - Long to medium range update. Adds new gameplay for TR , NC have a sniper rifle that might be balanced to be purely op and easy to handle(haven't seen the latest test server update), fVS get a rifle that just combines existing gameplay for VS so that it's worse than the specialist ones.
• NS semi-auto rifles - Medium range update. More close range than the cheap semi-auto, trades better hipfire for damage.

CQC

• Crossbow- Cross-class, probably started out at a generic weapon but had radar and explosive bolts added.
  • Shotgun pistol damage - Update.
  • OHKs infils slightly beyond 30m - CQC nerf overall, despite the high damage bullets.
  • Detect bolts - Gives to other classes an essential part of Infiltrators usefulness: Major CQC Nerf.
  • Explosive bolts -Very slight update after explosive bolts get nerfed. These will soon be nerfed taking into account that all other classes already have c4.
• New PDW variant - Fairly inconsequential. It''s a variant not addressing any particular hole in Infiltrator CQC weapon variety.
• Stalker cloak - Small CQC update. More oriented towards beginners who don't have to manage cloak charge and the factors involved in management like: line of sight/prediction of movement hence future lines of sight/enemy attention, at the cost of the primary weapon. Basically the Infiltrator version of the ESF hud tracking, trading off being useful for beginners with a significant drawback.
• Darklight flashlights - CQC Nerf. Have to be effetive to detect crouched Stalker cloak campers. Therefore a nerf to the non-newbie cloaks: Hunter and Nano-Armour.
• Motion sensor - Small CQC update. Functionality is a lot like existing radar, the destruction mechanic might be practically ineffective.

As far as actual updates towards Infiltration go, with the Stalker cloak being oriented towards beginners, the flash-light mechanic nerfing the two cloaks useful for non-beginners, the main thing making Infiltrators used in squads being given to all classes, and the motion sensor not adding anything significantly different, the overall effect is a big Nerf.

• This is despite the soon-to-be-nerfed explosive bolts being useful, but obviously not as useful to an Infiltrator as c4 is to a Medic or LA even if they didn't have access to explosive bolts.
• This does add more weapons ranged combat, but ranged combat wasn't short of options and it doesn't really help with Infiltration.

I think Sniper rifles were among the last things the class needed attention to, especially Empire Specific attention, and the vast majority who use Sniper Rifles aren't specialist Infiltrators using them to achieve objectives, but farmers who want a new farming diversion with little risk of retaliation when they are not in their vehicles.

Their voice seems to be drowning out the rest, compounded by a lot of perfectly natural discussion about tweaks to features actually being worked on, regardless of whether those features are important overall.
We've had 3 iterations of Sniper Rifles already with dev response tweets about them, whereas most other things are in their first iteration with not much in the way of responses.

Farming is an unwanted by-product that exists because of the way XP is given and the type of Stats SOE has added - as well as players trying to win a non-existent MLG competition by padding said stats instead of playing. Farming should be regarded as something that will go away in the future. Therefore the game shouldn't be optimised for farming, meanwhile.

Will other Class/Vehicle revamps end up being regarded as making gameplay worse for experienced players, by the players who use those classes a whole lot in Squads?

Fully understood.

I'm willing to temporarily lose the primary role we have to get a better role in hacking and increased stealth capabilities though. With that said, it's very unlikely that they're going to do this now...but I want to get as much support as possible for when I go deeper into this concept and propose it after the update goes through.

I don't see things going well for us after this update...so people will be looking for a game changer by that point. If I can't get the development team to consider it now...............I might be able to rally the community to get them to think about it for later, and then everything would get implemented at once.

The personal Shield Diffuser would help with this by giving us the ability to bypass shields that typically restricted infantry. There's a lot of different ways they could set this entire concept up if we had that capability.

Hmm...

Where did you obtain this information from? If that's the case, I see your point.

Doors or anti-infantry shields...either or would be fine.

I suggested solid blast doors because you normally have defenders exploiting shields. If they're blast doors, we would have to go around if they incorporate the personal Shield Diffuser and ultimately work our way to the other side of the door. If they're anti-infantry shields...we could phase through and hack easier.

Either is fine, but the setup of the system would have to be tweaked a bit depending on which door type was chosen.

Yeah, this will be the main feature...I'm sure. Still, all of the above would contribute heavily in combination to anything else they can think up.

The reason I'm focusing heavily on this is because I don't see this update going well.

Hacking wasn't addressed, wasn't even mentioned by the development team...and our hacking capabilities have been further limited and weakened as of late rather than increased. Further detection capabilities are being implemented into the game, and with Scout Radar having been made lucrative through the experience reward...stealth is just extremely watered down right now.

The sheer volume of things you have to worry about that will expose you in the battlefield extend well beyond the Darklight flashlight hard-counter we now have. You have to worry about Scout Radar, Detection Darts, Recon Darts, the Motion Sensor, our own sound mechanic, and the Darklight flashlight atop of that.

I'm probably missing another form of detection...

Agreed, not saying anything against that...

My thread on this subject talks about Stalker Cloaking needing a huge buff...but everyone is talking about that so I don't highlight it in detail, no need...everyone else is.

i would call this patch a huge nerf for any infiltrators not off on a hill 2 hexes away, due to the sudden availability of a hard counter on literally every weapon in the game.

darklight was designed to stop the stalker cloak, but in the meantime it evicerates the hunter and the nano armor cloaks

the net effect is the the NC come out ahead, since the NC:ESSR is shaping up to be a long range engagement monster, while the TR/VS variants push those empires closer to the fray… and closer to a swarm of detect darts and dark light attachments.

if the test server is anywhere near what goes live, RIP INF

Potentially. As I said, I have my doubts about the system, I'd prefer our given role be buffed... but more power to you.

Link. Malorn has been doing pretty well to inform people about the resource revamp on the thread these days.

Yeah, here is the thing, I really think people are blowing flashlights way out of proportion. I heavily doubt you'll see but 1 in a thousand people actually carrying one, because it is competing against something that improves your hipfire accuracy, which I'd say about 80-90% of people are more likely to use, given that stealth just isn't that hard to miss already. If the visibility was reduced on cloaks, it would boost the use of the flashlight, while also helping out infils.

Well, yes and no. This gets back up to the point you had earlier about community efforts... we just went through another night with no stalker cloak buff, and no idea what the ESR's will get in terms of attachments... OR what the NS sniper rifle will have in terms of attachments... Or if the Recon bolt for the X-bow will be infil specific... I could go on.

I'd say this is a "Carthage must be destroyed" kind of thing, where everything we say has to focus on what we need to know about for this update.

You could ambush if the cloak was noiseless + you could shoot while the cloak was up or was 100% invisible. As for now, all you do is **** yourself.
You are very visible while cloaked. It takes time to uncloak and make a clearly audible sound even in high noise environments. My conclusion after that is that if you plan to stay in a corner and camp you might as well stay uncloaked. That way you can shoot faster and not make the annoying sound that the cloak does while being only marginally more visible then cloaked.

i'm not sure, but i'm pretty sure that the cloak sound is also a very high priority sound, so if there are more sounds playing than there are available voice channels, others sounds will be cut first, meaning that the cloak sound will almost always play and almost never be drown out by other sounds.

which makes no sense for what the sound actually is.

why would the cloak sound be louder than a gunshot, or a bloody TANK firing next to you?