Hi all! I'm a hardcore fan of planetside and have been for many years, flew more than a couple of transport runs in my trusty Lodestar back in the day and i've played planetside 2 since the day it was available, but i've largely stayed off the forums. Well today i'm coming to the forums with something that I feel has become a serious issue and i'd like to hear your thoughts on the matter; Class overrepresentation of in-game demographics. There are five general infantry classes in planetside 2; -Infiltrator -Light Assault -Combat Medic -Engineer -Heavy Assault And there is one specialised infantry class; -Mechanized Assault eXosuit You would assume that at any given time the five general classes would be in relatively even distribution, each having a role to play in almost any encounter but that simply isn't the case, it never has been, and it is getting worse. These days my tracker board is overwhelmed with infiltrators, both kills and deaths, no matter the fight, no matter the time, no matter the situation and no matter what class I myself am using. I would say at most times infiltrators easily account for 40% of my overall feed. Is this a problem? Not really, not on the surface and not when you look at it from a 1v1 perspective but if you take a step back and consider that this game is not intended to be a 1v1 game then you may begin to see an issue. These infiltrator players, whether they are playing with sniper rifles, SMGs, Pistols, Knives, Crossbows or anything else, are a drain on the gameplay of the other players. They aren't on the objective, they aren't in squads (Except for the XP bonus, they certainly aren't actively doing anything with anyone else), they aren't pushing or holding or defending or scouting (And please, everyone can press Q, you're not suddenly a great benefit because you did it). No, they're sitting on hills or on top of terminals, waiting for someone to come along so that they can click and collect a kill. It doesn't matter who or where it is, it only matters that they got a kill. Ostensibly the game is entirely about killing other players that's correct but people aren't playing so that they can be your victim, they are playing so that they can engage in combat with other players. Infiltrators want the kill without the combat To people playing the other infantry classes the gameplay flow is something like "Determine objective" > "Go to objective" > "Engage enemy" where engaging the enemy means a back and forth exchange of gameplay and activity, the macro scale of the combat involves holding areas and points and the micro scale of the combat is each individual player's personal encounters with other individual players. Infiltrators largely remove themselves from this gameplay flow and that is a problem because while the other classes interact with the frontlines of combat and move accordingly the infiltrators do not, they turtle up in their nests or haunt a particular terminal and that is it. They don't react to the micro of the game, only the macro, so as everyone else moves around a base dynamically the infiltrator doesn't react until the base is either won or lost, at which point they move to the next base and do the same thing they were already doing, irrespective of what is actually going on. This is absolutely not a complaint about weapon or tool balance, nor is it a reaction to being killed by an infiltrator. It is a response to seeing the game that I love absolutely plummet and a reaction to, yet again, spawning into the only fight on the server to find half of my team sniping from the spawn or sitting on a hill, watching the base flip. Neither is this a personal attack on infiltrator players, not even the ones who exclusively play infiltrator. If you are reading this you almost certainly are not the players I'm talking about, infiltrators have a very important role to fill in the gameplay of planetside 2 and you likely fulfil that role with excellence and certainly understand that having the ability to cloak does not mean your job is to do nothing at all. When the fight becomes a WW1 trench battle where the first person to move gets his head blown off by fifteen snipers then the fight stops being fun for the people in the trenches. The people with the sniper rifles may be having a whale of a time but that isn't enough in a multiplayer game, everyone should be enjoying the game even when they're dying but people aren't. They're crouched behind a rock cowering for their life, not in fear of the other team who are also crouched behind a rock cowering for their life no, in fear of the snipers on the hill 300m away who probably outnumber the enemies on the other side of said rock. And after a week or so of that the new players leave. The snipers KD looks great but the new players leave because they want to fight the people on the other side of the rock, they want to kill them and they want to die trying but they aren't getting the chance. And the old players, who want to actually play, get tired of being denied it by people on their own team. This has been a long and winding rant now and I apologise for it but please allow me to reiterate that this is not a balance issue, it is one of perspective. There is nothing inherently wrong with the infiltrator class, there is nothing inherently wrong with sniping from great distances or camping a terminal. The problem is that there are just so many of you doing it that it is actually harming gameplay flow. I've already taken the liberty of stamping "Just keep moving" on my forehead so there's no need for that. Many thanks, -Scrundle TL;DR: Too many infiltrators are the gameplay equivalent of stepping on the wrong tile and dying to a trap, as opposed to dying to an enemy.
After reading the title I immediately thought 'HA' - purely because i've always felt that the Heavy benefits grant such a large advantage in 1v1 that it's the go-to class. I still feel that today. As for infiltrators, I grant you they are by far the most annoying class - sneaky in the extreme. They do things that are not going to win them many friends. Sniping a vehicle terminal - really ? Just infuriating. BUT it gives the lone-wolf or dastardly minded something to focus on. I personally would be happy to see them removed entirely (as would many others) but at the end of the day, I like the fact that PS2 supports so many play styles and gives so many options. Variety is the spice of life after all.
There was brief shining moment in the game's history when Nanoweave 5 prevented bolt action headshots beyond 100m or so. But since half the playerbase are professional mountain sitters (not exaggerating) they screamed bloody murder and got it reverted. Infiltrators are a worthless class whose only use is hacking terminals at enemy bases. And you are exactly right about the burden and fun tax that infiltrators impose on everyone else, as they play their own private game while interfering with others who are trying to play the actual game. It's a structural flaw, one of several, grandfathered in from PS1 that should be remedied if they ever make PS3: give Engineers a hacking skill and delete Infils from the game.
I'm really wondering what kind of playstyles you guys have that infiltrators are your worst enemy. I play mostly LA which is supposedly the class that exposes itself the most to Infils and they are barely a threat... Unless you are stupid enough to often sit still out of cover. I suspect that its not about the infiltrators but that you probably play HA, and the fact that someone can get the Drop on you and beat you is aggrevating you. Well tough luck, HA's are the most overrepresentated class in the game, too omniversally useful and very easy to use compared to the other classes. Having the Infil be capable of taking you down in a surprise attack is a wonderful balancing tool. Now there definitely are some cheese tactics that need to be fixed, such as being able to snipe people at a terminal. Just giving people the option to keep moving while accessing the terminal would already solve most lf this problem, and giving each terminal a small shed to protect you from snipers would also be great. Otherwise theres little problems with Infils. SMG infil is very strong but still requires actual tactics to get the Drop on "press F for all the tactical depth" HA's.
No Bancheese pilots are my most despised type of player, but bolt plebs are a close second. Heavies warp the game negatively in their own way, another flaw inherited from PS1. There is a reason Enclave squads had like 9 Heavies, 2 Medics and an Engineer. In the sense of attacking or defending bases, ostensibly the main goal of player activity, sniper Infils don't even factor into the equation; they play a completely separate point-and-click adventure than people actually competing over objectives. Incidentally "pro" infantry players who all main Heavy don't consider snipers to be the main enemy; rather it is vehicles. A Heavy kitted with Nanoweave can easily be splattered by even a stray explosive, no matter how good they are at strafing and keeping the cursor over enemy heads.
You're in luck! Sounds like Planetside Arena is for you! I don't mean that in a sarcastic way. Planetside 2 feels like the game that came so close to being great, but never really made it. In PS:A you don't have to deal with pointless and annoying invisible snipers, on your team or the enemy's. I personally prefer a quicker ttk in shooters, so my beef isn't with OHKs. It's about how sniping is landing a headshot on a jittery target or bust. I'll list some games that I think did it better. Squad: Depending on the range, you'll need to shoot someone twice. But it takes a while for the target to patch himself up, and bandages are scarce. A big problem with this game, same as Arma, is that if the class weren't limited then you'd have squads of only snipers. Ghost Recon Wildlands: Surprisingly, this game has great PvP. Once you take damage, you're stuck with it. Getting hit in the torso from across the map means you're at half health for the rest of the match. I'd LOVE it if this game was much larger than 4v4 and had respawns of some sort. I love the combat, but it's much too "Arena" feeling for me. Division 2: Odd, right? Sniping went from a joke in the first game, to a solid option in the 2nd. Rifles take huge chunks out of players, and self healing is limited and slow. A sniper covering your advance and landing a hit now and then means you'll have a favorable trade and a win once the cqb fight kicks off. I have a much bigger problem with HAs than Infils, but those annoyances pale in comparison to Maxes and battle flow. All of which are solved in PS:A. The one think I'd really hop on board with is the removal of motion spotters and all radars. But then infils would be completely useless to actual squad play.
Infiltrators are a trash class 1v1 wise and literally effortless to defeat. If you have issues with them you are simply a skilless crybaby and no, I main engineer. Thanks for my shotgun ASP. Its whingy little cretins like you that destroy games with your homogenising QQ fest. This game is coming to the end of its road. Don't like a key class of the game? Piss off and quit. You won't be missed. People have invested hours and hours into their infils and how they play in the game. Part of it is why they stayed. Being some sort of 1 class warrior bigot, just shows the addled state of your empty skull. People are allowed to enjoy alternate states of play. You don't like it, I suggest you never go anywhere with differing opinions. Infact - avoid other people and multiplayer games entirely. After all these years, I'm thoroughly sick of people like you.
I remember the days when Nanoweave 5 would prevent an instant headshot if you were a decent distance away from the fight. I used to main Inf at the time as thought it was a good idea. I had no issue with the idea that you had to be within range of the fight to get an instant kill. Worse was the introduction of the Stalker Inf who can camp all day and OHK people with a pistol Inf is easy mode and that's why so many play it, I'd restore Nanoweave headshot protection so you'd need to be within say 75m to get an instant HS kill. I'd also make Stalkers knife only.
You might be right about every single point, but ultimately it comes down to a subjective take on how many infiltrators is too many. You can't claim the game objectively has too many infiltrators because they annoy you. But from your last paragraph, it's clear that you recognize this. So all I can say is that I disagree; there's not too many infiltrators. Either I don't get cheese-killed enough, or it just doesn't get to me.
As Stalker I make good combats on the A point. I set my Spotter near the A (or other) Points so my people know where the enemy is coming from. Sometimes I lay Mined, sometimes i hack Terminals so I can pull a Sunderer. I don't understand how in the heck your conclusion is that Infiltrators are not participating in fights...
I apologise if what I said was misunderstood, I wasn't saying that there's anything imbalanced or unusually difficult to deal with regards infiltrators, nor did I say they are useless and have no purpose. I actually thought i'd been quite clear in stating the opposite of that! I will reiterate that my problem is simply that there are, in my opinion, too many infiltrators being played at any one time in any given place, on all three empires. In ANY combined arms game if one thing is being used too much then it highlights an issue, not necessarily with that specific thing but with something nonetheless. Nowhere did I say "I die to infiltrators too much, please let me stand AFK and not get shot", nor did I say "Infiltrators OP, NERF infiltrators, **** infil players" so i'd appreciate less of the personal attacks against myself please. I want everyone to enjoy playing the game however they want to play, that includes people who play exclusively infiltrator. I have a healthy amount of hours and certs invested on infiltrator myself, it would be weird not to. When there are more people crouched on a mountain than there are trying to take the point, and when the people trying to take the point get repelled and those people on the mountain do not react, when those people on the mountain tunnel vision so extremely that an enemy simply walks up there and kills them all one by one, only to have them all respawn at the nearest AMS and sprint back up there as the base assault fails and collapses, that's a problem. Not a mechanical issue that can be solved by tweaking numbers but still something that I felt was worth discussion. AND AGAIN; Please note that I am not saying you should be stopped from doing that! You should be welcome to do whatever you like! But please, please please please, if there are already many infiltrators crouched on the ridge you're running towards, take a look at the map and think if maybe you could play a different playstyle, just for a few minutes.
There are a lot of gameplay styles that are fun for that particular gamer, but decidedly NOT fun for the other player. Take just as an example the A2G farmer. What would be nice: Get to strafe infantry like the beaches of Normandy or something. In a PvE game this works great. The computer AI plays the part of the infantry being farmed and the player gets to enjoy doing the farming. Being the one being farmed? Not so much fun. What about infiltrators: I wanna play hide and sneak until I can get up on someone and give them ZERO chance of surviving. Takes skill to accomplish of course. But on the receiving end, how does it feel to be killed when no amount of skilled play on your part could have prevented it? Same as above. Not so much fun. None of these playstyles are "bad". It's just that it requires a bad experience for others to accomplish. Planetside has to balance all this. To get that good A2G farm, you need droves of people wiling to be farmed. Two things to make this works. 1. Don't have it happen very often. Limit with G2A weapons, limit with nanite costs. 2. Give those players something fun to do while this is happening. It takes a tricky balance and Sony + DBG have done a fairly decent job of pulling it off. It ain't perfect though.
You've never had a good grasp of what a good sniper can do then. There's plenty of bolt snipers who aren't useful, but plenty who are. A good sniper in a flank can limit the cover the enemy can use, pick off targets of interest like a repairing engineer or a Medic keeping people alive. If you ask nicely most will throw a recon dart your way. A good sniper also slows down players returning after a respawn and draws enemies away to hunt after him. A good solution is to limit the situations where snipers can just KD *****, such as sniping people at terminals. Removing snipers from infiltrators will just limit the amount of options people have. There's plenty who complain about them. If it can kill them without a "fair" fight where they can activate their shield and use one specific tactic to bring you down, then it's worth removing! And just because they also hate on vehicles does not mean that infiltrators aren't on their list.
Infiltrator is "just" the third moste played Class, The most played Class is Heavy and Engineer. Imagine all the People get out of their Tank and Aircraft to oush the Point....would be more than Infiltrators sitting on a Hill/Mountain
I haven't read all the replies, though I can gaurantee you are going to get some flame. An assassin class that can go "invisible" is a draw card to many players. This game lets you live out that fantasy fairly well. So I can see how many players are drawn to it. Infiltrators want to kill without the combat. Well see, it's the point of the class. You also say they don't contribute to the push. Ive seen, and played as, infils dropping radar, Ive seen and played infils converting vehicle terminals where their squad is being overrun and turning the tide. Ive seen them dear cloak and save their teammates from death. Ive been scared to cap a point because I know there's a stalker there. Ive seen stalkers tear apart groups of the enemy with confusion and their trusty activated knife. Ive seen and I play medium range sniper, working just behind the squad, anti sniping and picking off hidden targets. It's not an easy role to play well, and those that can't play well will probably change class. It's not much fun sitting on a hill getting a kill every 10mins. I love infiltrators, and I'm not to bad at the playstyle, but even I have changed to LA recently, and I love it. So give the people a chance, if they aren't contributing as much as you say, then they'll soon get bored and change class. Otherwise they are probably helping more than you realise.
dude.... i cannot agree more with you. i also wrote about it, the ridiculously effective of the infil class. invisibility should be reduced by half duration, smg should not have such power (more than any other guns in max dmg range), bolt action infil's cloack duration should be reduced to 1/3.
