Can we PLEASE nerf Infiltrators already?

We went through this a thousand times already, I know.

It's ridiculous how many Infiltrators run around in battles and are able to win said battles that way. I played an alert today, and the TR completly stomped through without the possibility of getting stopped by simply spamming huge amount of cloakers.
Turn a corner - headshot.
Turn another corner - headshot
Flank the cloaker - headshot from one of his three buddies

And not only CQC bolters, masses of SMG and Commissioner wannabe Predators as well. There is simply no counter for the class when it gets spammed. Not even a single reliable counter in the game (Flashlight bug)

Oh, I know: Gid gud, "I can see them with my graphic settings", "play cloaker yourself" Yadda Yadda. The class is ********, and who ever thought that the invisible class (which shouldn't exist in such games) should also get the most powerful guns hopefully got fired from working on any game ever again.

So, could we maybe get powerful countermeasures to infiltrators in the next update so it's not an automatic win to choose the class? Infantry gameplay turns more and more into a Ghostbusters game

I don't think the class is the issue so much as the ability of cloak is. Tweak that and things change drastically.

Yes! I totaly agree. Time and time again i pull my wallet up and sub for planetside. I have fun a while, and some fights are very very fun. But what makes me quit every single time is the cloaking and the headshots.
And if both you and me are experienceing this. Imagine new players. They wont play this game for more then 4 days before never touching it again.

I mean, it's like it's a cloaking combat game. And then there are some noobs running around as easy pickings.

Everyone who has played PS2 for more than a day knows the number rule in PS2 is?

Never stop moving...

Why?

Because of cloaked infiltrators, the number 1 rule in the game is because of 1 classe's ability. That seems very lopsided to me.

Its the number 1 rule in pretty much any FPS. Why should PS2 be different?

To modulate the tone here from the "oh noes an infil on every corner" bias, just tweak cloak. Add a longer decloak delay or make the cloak sit in a second weapon slot so players cannot aim their weapon and decloak easily but have to keep switching weapons for cloak or firepower. That would solve most issues.
Along with just moving when you are exposed, and some basic of basic situational awareness to know from where you could be sniped. Just check the deathcam from where you are shot, excluding CQC bolts most snipers will always sit around the same positions sniping at the same area's. Snipe them back, grab an LA and tap them on the back before blowing their brains out. Don't stand still in the places where it should be obvious a sniper can reach you.

That is the problem, most Infiltrators don't snipe in the classical sense - the alert rush was completely carried by close combat cloakers. Avoiding snipers is easy for every halfway decent FPS gamer (+ it's fun to snipe them back with a battle rifle ^^), but how to deal with invisible enemies that can jump on you from any angle unseen? Or after engaging an enemy only to find out he had 2 cloaked buddies hidden?

The Meta of close combat cloaking breaks the class

Why can't it be different? And in reality the only reason PS2 is around still is because IT IS different.

But that point aside, my initial statement still stands. In this game the primary strategy that all players must adhere to is because of 1 class and their ability. Again, that's lopsided.

>Can we PLEASE nerf Infiltrators already?
No.
move to live.

Or to another game if it gets out of hand (more common nowadays)

Listening to the same old "you have to move" and "dont be stupid" arguments is like listening to someone asking you where you put the key's last time when you tell them you lost them.
Yes captain obvious, thanks for the input. /shrug.

You can stealth as a sniper, or in midrange, you can stealth with a automatic weapon or a pistol. You can just sit and wait and empty a full clip in someones back. or headshot people in the same room. Or frikking jump headshot people and go into stealth again. It's just to mutch and to many doing it. It's not 10 grunts, 2 medics and an engineer per sniper. It's 10 people using some sort of stealth and then the other guy.

Trash image for trash L2P advice, perfectly balanced as all things should be.

Magazine*

You should try:

1. Moving
2. Upgrading your pc to support 4k
3. Getting a better gaming chair
4. Using 90% of your brain

Because it wouldn't require just reworking Infiltrators or Snipers, but all weapons? It's not a walk-in-the-park simulator. Moving is the lifebread at almost any time in the game regardless of what you are up against.

I've found CQC cloakers exceedingly rare. Looking at recent usage stats seems to confirm that snipers aren't some menace to the game, at least not yet. One way to gauge this is by the lack of supporting Infils. If there's a CQC cloaker around every corner, why wouldn't your faction do the same? Wouldn't you notice your buddies having them too? Well ofcourse not, because as far as I can tell it's just bias. I can understand that getting killed by a CQC cloaker is not fun gameplay, you want to feel you could have done something so I agree that something needs to change. But blowing it out of proportion is not the way to go.
An Infil with a sniper that jumped out at you unseen is almost undoubtedly heard, unless they were really far from combat when they cloaked.
If you dealt with the first and there are 2 cloaked buddies? Well seems to me that you were trying to engage a 3:1 battle and managed to kill one anyway. That seems a pretty good deal to me. On the other hand if there had been 2 uncloaked HA's they would have engaged immediately and you would have had an as$ whooping.

I would argue it has to come from both sides. It's never as black and white. zig zagging isn't a magic tool that makes you instantly safe, but it's not useless either. 4K monitor alone isn't enough, but I have experienced improvements between different screens with recordings where on one screen they were clear as day and on the other they weren't. If you look at your map and get shot... Well I'm sorry but that is a sin on your own end, never ever open the map and expect to be safe.

Should we change something? Sure! There are good reasons to change how Infiltrators can be used to make it a fun experience for both the user and their victims (although some of the current one's high on it's current power will be upset, a small loss). However this is reaching C4 vs vehicles levels of ridiculous. You can protect yourself, not using the protections because they aren't 100% protection methods is your own fault. Use them, don't let your bias get you whenever the protections fail and notice how it does reduce the amount of times such a thing happens. Keep bugging the devs to try and inject a better and more enjoyable experience when dealing with infiltrators. A few more detection methods delivered to different classes could already go a long way.

Doesn't take a special monitor or resolution, you just need to pay attention. I kill Infils this way all the time:

That's at 1080p, max settings, ~70-80fps with 4+ year-old hardware. Not exactly unobtanium.

If you know where to look and what to look for you can see them a lot further away than you think, and it only gets more obvious as you get closer. The cloak is at its most effective when you aren't looking for it or don't know it's there. Fortunately there exists a loud audio cue to alert us when one is nearby at which point you should start paying attention.

As far as never standing still is concerned, welcome to FPS Basics 101. It sounds like L2P because it is. If you aren't taking advantage of unpredictable movement to make yourself harder to hit you are actively crippling yourself, and calling it trash advice is disingenuous as ****.

Similar hardware? (RX 5700XT, R5 3600), slightly better FPS on 1440p x 2560, and it's kind of inconsistent. I don't have a problem seeing them up close, but at range I can see them one moment, shoot them a bit and then they just disappear, no shimmer, no distortion...

You can extend the range at which cloak distortion can be seen with high magnification scopes, that's good to know.


As for the video, I did see the guy run to cover, cloak, and have only seen him once he started uncloaking. IDK if it's YouTube compression or my eyes, but I couldn't see him while cloaked and standing still.

If you have really good headphones you can even hear from what direction they cloaked/uncloaked from, then ambushing them if they didn't spot you. There are many ways to punish bad/unaware infils.

Empire specific farts while cloaking/uncloaking are high profile, imporant audio to watch out for but if you hear it and you haven't spotted an infil yet it's usually too late...

Won't debate it's usefulness as a tip as it's always good to move, but it's a throw-away line with little to no meaning now. Totally didn't know that dodging improves my chances of living with 3000+ hours into the game, it's not 2013 anymore when everyone sucked at the game, and more and more infils can one-shot targets now even with snappy movement and while flying with ambushers. It's a great first step to fighting infils and getting better at the game, but not some magic fix to infiltrators like some infil mains have stated on this forum.


Infils scale to stupidity the better they can use their gear, pollenating the battlefield with recon darts so they have a map-wide tracker, press G to halve everyone's HP and explode any explosive grenades where they burst you in 2 headshots or OHK you right after, to the SMGs that have faster TTK than your own primary. The moment I encounter the "MLG" infils instantly throwing EMPs and consistently shooting even Ambusher jumpet LAs fighting them is a vomit-inducing chore. Had to breakdance as a full auto shotgun heavy for a minute just so some **** with a CQC bolter won't one tap me and the stupid "haha, thought you could run or fight back after I missed a shot? Lemme one tap you with my 2nd shot right after" DayyLMAO.


That said, Sensor Shield 5 is great. You can actually move without being tracked 24/7, and even veteran infils can't see it coming, shotguns of any kind give SMG cloakers a run for their money. It's not even about infils being OP (they aren't), I'm so tilted by fighting ONE good infil and that I have to dedicate half my play session to hard countering infils by playing infil, LA or even A2G ESF so I can maybe play the game as a footlslogger.

There are definitely some nice counters to cloakers, but for the most part it feels like it's less about your personal skill and experience in dealing with infils and almost entirely if the enemy can miss you, and it's annoying as hell. Of course you can turn the tables by pulling vehicles because they have no AV or burst him down with most every weapon if he's bad, but once you find the CQC BASR wrist sniping jockies it's game over man, either die to them or play exactly like them.

Definitely. ADAD does help as does crouching at the right moment, but it's hard to tell when to do it due to extrapolation, the image is more of an expression of throw-away advice and how tilted the class makes me.

As infantry, the best way to counter them is to play infiltrator, or attack from somewhere unexpected (Light Assault or infiltrator, again). I'm not sure how you'd make them easier to counter but not useless, all I'll say is that the skill ceiling needs to be lower, and to compensate skill floor could also be lower. Low skill infils are a non-threat, highly skilled infils control any infantry engagement.


Start with a miniature cloak delay and limit active recon darts to 5 on an infiltrator and call it a day. Maybe touch EMP AoE to not hit targets through partial cover and walls, and make EMPd targets regen their shield in 4 seconds instead of 6 after impact, and darklights actually working + draining cloak on exposure. Really don't think the class needs anything else.

It would help a lot if the cloak and decloak times were increased. Some players have ping that is longer than the decloak time.

Let's also not forget that it isn't just infantry play where cloaking is a thing. The fact that the flash can decloak and chunk more than half a tank's health with a grenade launcher that was intended for anti infantry play is just dumb. Cloak ant is another issue. I build a lot and I do run cloak on my ant, but mostly as it's intended escape mechanism (although I just can't help myself when I see a harasser). The offensive potential for cloaking on a vehicle as big as the ant is just too much, and I wouldn't be heartbroken if it got taken away.

I changed and started to play as an infiltrator yesterday night. I turned my loosing streak from having twice the death count then kill. To killing several people before even being in danger. So now i wont even bother to listen to anyone talking against this. Infils are to powerful and destroys alot of the fun for alot of people. Aspecialy new players.
Im gonna keep on playing infil and just grief the **** out of this game in hope to trigger more people to do as i did. And join the forums soly because this is a huge problem for the lifespan and enjoyability of this wonderful game.

No point making Infils harmless by nerfim them. They have been made to upset other players.
In many cases playing Infiltrator make your KD higher but not always. Point rooms defence/attack are the cases where Infils are not very useful if unuseful at all. As HA mostly player I feel a real pressure from Infils only on open spaces. So indeed: move to live, always think of enemy infils nearby, use shield/jump/crouch.