So after 3 days of playing Infiltrator, full of its ups and downs, I’ve decided to post something on the Infiltrator. Beware, super long post. My problem is that in this game, and many recent games, there seems to a bias towards Recon/Sniper/Infiltrators being weak in CQC while inadvertently allowing other classes/kits to be just as effective at long range as them. BF3 comes to mind, where you had to be at absolutely extreme distances to get any sort of advantage and that didn’t stop them from being able to fire back with some accuracy. MAG, for anyone that played that one, had a similar problem although it had a problem based around the weapon design. Infiltration requires getting close to enemies so that the aforementioned issue of being close to useless at CQC is definitely an issue. For sure Infiltrators need a series of weapons specifically for CQC. Yet another issue springs up when you consider the uselessness of recon/infiltrator roles against vehicles. Several games have tried different routes to solve this problem. BFBC2 gave Recon the ability to call in artillery, while BF3 dialed it back and gave Recon a SOFLAM instead. BF3’s solution made Recon feel super passive and still mostly useless, while BFBC2 may have been too much. My biggest issue by far though, is that Infiltrator is terrible at its name sake. The cloak is just bad; the almost cartoonish outline makes it too easy to spot. Although I will note that cloaking removing the spotted mark is useful (I assume it does that). The spotting systems especially makes it harder to be sneaky. Part of this issue is that the Infiltrator is not nearly mobile enough. In order to be sneaky, you must be mobile and be able to approach from unexpected directions. LightAssault does this much better at the moment. Finally, what the hell do we infiltrate for? Hack a terminal or turret? Cap a point temporarily? Maybe flip a generator/gate? Plant a claymore or two? None of these things have any major effect during an assault, save for maybe the turret hack. The turret hack, if you can get there, is the one thing I feel currently fits the bill of Infiltration. Infiltrators should be weakening defenses and preparing places for assault. That means crippling infrastructure, killing important targets, and creating openings for your allies. I can see where the basis for such things is in place, but they aren’t there yet. A quick note about the recon tool: it needs work, but I love it. Part of it comes from the mini-map being cluttered, even at the best of times. It makes it less useful for telling where the opponent is. It should also give you experience for enemies killed while revealed by the dart. So rather than just complain, I’ll provide some suggestions. ~New weapons, like compact PDWs or SMGs, could be useful for making Infiltrator viable in CQC. ~In addition to the EMP grenade (which is in need of some serious of love), how about a flashbang or chaff grenade (for messing with radar/missile lock)? Both of these would be useful for helping in infiltration as well as supporting an assault. ~C4 for destroying vehicles and equipment (generators, terminals, turrets, etc.) would be an excellent addition and would definitely help the feel. It would allow for clever traps and what not. It also would give the Infiltrator a way to combat vehicles, but it wouldnt be too direct. ~Speaking of traps, hacking needs to do more than what it currently does. How about booby-trapping terminals and teleporters? The teleporter booby-trap could damage anyone that takes it, or being deactivated for a while, or perhaps hijack it for a bit. The terminal booby trap could cause it to explode violently upon use or cause the vehicles that spawn to be defective in some way (like missing ammo, being unable to turn left, or constantly being revealed on radar, etc.). ~For the cloak mechanic, perhaps adapting TF2’s cloak mechanic involving the flicker on damage or contact would be better. For the cloak, TF2 would be a good place to look with their different spy-watches and what not. ~A big help for the infiltration side would be that knives, in an infiltrator’s hands, instantly kill from behind. Perhaps certification involving assassination, culminating in a silent take-down style of kill would be useful. ~The recon tool should start revealing enemies from the moment it is fired. This would allow it to successfully scout a path much more effectively. Perhaps let the ammo be infinite, but only allow for a max number of darts be active at once, cert-ing to allow for more to be active at once and be more effective/last longer. ~Allowing Infiltrators to set up mobile spawn points (like a squad lead) would drastically increase their ability to support the team. Helping teammates sneak into a base or for an assault to bypass a hardpoint. ~For the mobility issue, I think a climbing tool might be interesting and different enough from the Jetpack. Allow infiltrators to scale walls and what not. It would help with the infiltration side, and be fun to boot. It could take energy from the same system as the cloak, so the Infiltrator would have to decide when it was safe to climb and what not and using both in conjunction would be ineffective. And it would limit how high the infiltrator can climb. To match this, infiltrators would have to be able to take longer falls (perhaps special certification for that). All and all, it's definitely the most fun I've since playing Spy and Sniper in TF2, just needs work to feel effective. I feel like they undershot the mark on purpose, for fear of making Infiltrator too strong. Hopefully, in the coming weeks/months they'll work to make the infiltrator the feared soldier it is supposed to be.
- The tool is always nice, but it was infinitely more useful in BFBC2. Maybe it should mark targets through walls too? If too OP, maybe just mark enemies in the ball's line of sight for us to see through walls. - I feel that the scout rifles and lowrange scope snipers + the pistol fill the role of cqc infil pretty well. Now they just need to put back shotguns. - You can already booby trap stuff with the bouncing betty mines, and those are not as cheap a kill as a booby trapped terminal would be. - You can already setup spawn points - being squad leader with cloak to get in close, or hacking a terminal to spawn a sunderer. No lowkey spawnpoint options, but since this game is all about controlling spawn points to spawn the biggest zerg of players, it would be OP. Maybe it would work with a 3-man limit or something -Speaking of cloak, I feel it's in a good place. You're gonna kill an enemy if you get the drop on him from behind, so it's only fair to have a tool to help sneak by while enemies are occupied/when they don't expect anyone and arent focusing + wipe red triangles and scouting from a distance, rather than a full blown invisibility cloak. On/off time could be improved though. Cloaking feels fine on high settings, with all the shiz going on on screen, I don't know about on medium and low - easier to spot it maybe? - I like the idea of instakill knives from behind or a couple of seconds after decloak or something. It would also be interesting to be able to climb walls and assault from weird places, though thats kinda the expertise of the Light assault.
I agree with most of what you said, and most of what you want was present with the Infiltrator from the original Planetside. The Developers have said they plan to add new better cloaks like Stalker Camouflage which is close to the PS1 cloak, they've mentioned more pistol options and SMGs, New knives are in the works (although not sure if they're just cosmetic) and they've mentioned Vehicle Hacking which was part of the original game as well. So, there's hope. However, even if we get all these things there's still issues with the larger game. There's way too many easy OPed means of detection and identification. - Q Spam/ 3D Spotting - Infantry detecting radar as an option on most vehicles (up to 200m on an ESF!), and no counter for Infantry. - IR/Thermal which sees Cloaked Infiltrators. Just on FNO last night one of the developers agreed that if they ever added Darklight Infiltrators should get be getting true Invisibility cloaks to compensate... Well IR/Thermal is better than Darklight on Vehicles and already in the game. The game's very fast paced and there's little benefit in Infiltrating in the first place, blowing up a generator in PS2 is not what it was in PS1. Fact of the matter is at present Infiltrators are better off fighting from range and focusing on getting kills or switching to another class for CQC.
MY current problem with infiltrators right now is that i have VERY little reason to WANT to perform my roll, when i can just as easily get the drop on a couple of people and get literally 5x the experience. There needs to be greater reward/incentive (other then the obvious team benefits) to hacking a terminal/turret. Remember, even though the infiltrator is a beast at spotting, providing intel on enemy movement to the squad and upsetting the enemy base, it sure as hell doesnt bring in the certs... EDIT: I noticed and thought i'd point out that most people, including a vast number of people beyond this thread, will preach all day about making infiltrators better killers, rather than better at actually infiltrating...
They went some way towards improving CQC effectiveness of the infiltrator with the (sadly accidental) inclusion of shotguns in their arsenal. Now, while a stealth character with a shotgun could be seen as overpowered, the cloak is easily spotted once you know what you are looking for. They gave us "scout rifles" instead, which appears to be a mid range semi-auto rifle, and a staggeringly awful automatic rifle - the NC one from when I tried it was basically a carbine with the hip accuracy of a semi-auto rifle. Not a good mix. Please, SOE, let me cert for shotguns with my infiltrator again! Even if its a specific certification costing a couple hundred certs to allow shotty usage (Or give me stalker stealth, so using a pistol + knife is actually a viable solution)
I have the same assumptions, and not for the first time. As you mentioned, the Recon in BF3 had similar problems at launch. There just didn't seem to be any point to playing Recon, because the assaultrifles were so accurate, they'd outgun you before you even had time to land the headshot. Same thing is going on right now. T9 Carvers outgunning me at long range have my blood boiling with deep furious anger. What happened in BF3 tho, is that the Recon didn't get improved: the full auto weapons got nerfed. They became less accurate at long range, and that's exactly what this game needs. Example: I switched to medic yesterday, and there happened to be a TR INF on a hill. I was shooting at him with my ironsighted piece of crap SMG. There's no way in hell I should have been able to hit him at that distance, yet I got a couple of rounds in him and he fell over dead. Would my bulletspread having been like it should have been, the infiltrator might not have died with 3 hits, and actually have a chance of gunning me down (as well he bloody well should have been able to, my gun is described as being close range in the tooltip mind you!!) Then there's our cloak: I can live with the cloaking as it is now, but not in the combination with our current survivability. The one and only chance I have now, against any other player with an full auto weapon that has seen me, is him running towards my position and me decloaking right in front of him, and shoot him in the face. If by any chance he is not running, gets to fire first, or I miss the shot (which is most likely, because close range headshotting with a 12X is not easy I can tell you), you are very very dead. I have succeeded a couple of times, but the ammount of skill required compared to the ammount of skill it takes for him to kill you is.... well retarted. Since he/she can basicly gun you down at any range. (exept ludicrous 600m ranges, where you don't even want to be since you're doing f*ck all for the team) So: we either need our stealth improved so we can get out and live to fight another day, or we need our survivability increased, so we can actually fight back with our tiny pistol, if we happened to be caught with our pants down. (it's only fair innit? The other guy has a big big machine gun?) THEN skill would come into the equasion. Not: "insert random class" > Infiltrator. We cannot infiltrate, the way we are now. They are always many. We are always few, or alone. They have full auto weapons that are useful at most ranges. We have our pistol. They can take about 5 hits or more to kill. We die upon being spotted and fired upon. I can go on.... endlessly. Everyone wants to be an Infiltrator. Not everyone wants to put in the effort it takes to play one in the current enviroment. Let's hope our blood sweat and tears will get rewarded in the long run... and SOE throws the loyal INF players who invested their certs points in them a bone... by wich time, I'll prolly have switched to Light assault.
Knife is already OP .. 2 hits from behind it kills anything. If you sneak on someone and stab them , they have no time to react for the 2nd blow. Often in CQC against another infiltrator , while they try reloading their pistol, it's much easier to rush them and stab them then reloading that useless pistol (VS). I think Knifes shouldn't be doing 1 hit kills at anytime from behind. This aint BS3 , this aint TF2. You likes those games ? Play them , but don't make PS2 be like "you" want it to be. That's my 2 cents
This is so much ********. The knife doesn't even register hits 80% of the time on an even slightly moving target. Even crouch/uncrouch will make it register a miss. Further more you have almost 0.6s before you can swing again. That's plenty of time for you to register the damage and react if you're a half intelligent player. I've killed more infiltrators that have been trying to knife me than I have died to infiltrators that knife. I don't bother using the knife on any class anymore since the hit detection for it is so ****.
I think the problem isn't the knife but the guy behind the screen I have no problem using it. I don't have that 80% chance to miss that you're talking about, so I'm not sure it's really the game the problem, or the player. I rarely see people reacting to the first stab and when they do, I still have time to give the final blow to kill them. You might wanna reconsider your approach or your sneaking
One other thing I find extremely annoying is the time it takes between decloaking and being able to shoot. It takes too long. Whenever I get in a risky situation, like being spotted, the guy attacking me can get some damage on me before I'm even able to pull the trigger. This is the one thing that's ruining CQC for me at the moment.
That is, if you can get the knife hit to register. Hell, the few times I've successfully knifed someone usually happened through space magic and lag. On the other hand, I can't name the number of times someone tried to knife me during my reload, failed, and instead got a face full of lead for their efforts. Funnier yet is when they just straight up try to knife me, even if they catch me off guard, they usually get murdered before the second blow lands and I'm not even one of the dangerous CQC combatants. The knife is not reliable in the slightest. The fact of the matter is that an Infiltrator, even getting the drop on someone in CQC, risks dying far too easily. We have too few options to dispatch an unsuspecting foe in CQC. As for the other bit, these were simple suggestions. I used ideas from successful games, which most people would recognize, that contain aspects of play similar to PS2. The parallels are obvious, and it would be foolish not to capitalize on the mechanics that worked well in those games. It's not like I said, "You know what? PS2 is fun, but what it really needs is briefcases full of intelligence that the teams fight over in a comically gruesome fashion".
Unfortunately, your experience isn't the majority of people. Also, if you reread my post again, I was talking from the perspective of someone getting knifed, not doing the knifing.
Another thing I thought about while playing today, how fragile the Infiltrator is. I currently use Nano-weave cloaking as well as Nano-weave armor just as an attempt to offset this fragility. Normally, this kind of fragility should be offset by lethality or utility. However, currently this is not the case. Nearly all of what we contribute to a fight can be done by just about every other class or vehicle. Even hacking is basically done by everyone else any time a base is captured. As it stands I'm not sure what an Infiltrator brings to a fight that cannot be accomplished, at least in some measure, by someone else.
the biggest problem that i have with the infiltrator is that he is nothing more than a shadow compared to the inf of planetside 1 i mean in ps1 you had perma cloak with full invisibility and you had 40 more gadges to do stuff not to mention that hacking was so satisfyng
