Okay, going right to the point: I'm kinda disappointed with the Infiltrator class. I mean, I still love it (specially when kills pop up on the screen after planting a mine), I like to infiltrate bases, hack terminals, and snipe unawared enemies, but I feel like useless sometimes, look: The only exclusive thing the Infiltrator class has is the ability to hack terminals. It's kinda useful, but we are extremely useless to the Empire. Today I killed a guy who stopped to repair his Sunderer. That was a great kill, but then we came back, punched me in the face (I got like a swiss cheese) and took his Sunderer back. I got MAAAAAD. Sometimes I think that Infiltrators should have something else to do instead of hide and snipe: I still dream one day that the Infiltrators could hack enemy vehicles (or sabotage them)! In my opinion, we should be able to choose from 2 options when close to an enemy vehicle: hacking should be really slow, but allow me or my Empire to use it, and sabotaging should make the vehicle explode or have malfuncion after a while. I though about this after seeing that infiltrating gets me really close to enemy vehicles and bases, but I can't do NOTHING about that to help the Empire. Then I get punched in the face by some crazy machinegunner. Discuss
The more PS1 infiltrator style, eh? Yeah, I find myself longing a bit for that too after a hard day of shooting people from very, very far away. Being able to sabotage vehicles somehow would be excellent, though destroying them entirely seems a bit overpowered. Perhaps an infil who gets close and hacks for long enough glitches the engine, requiring a full repair? Or perhaps something more subtle, like planting a tracking device that auto-spots the vehicle for all friendlies wherever it goes? Hm.
Infiltrators are mostly useless in a battle (the huge 200+ player fights), I don't mean to be offensive but the majority of the time the empire would rather you be a Heavy Assault to take care of tanks or a burster max. Hacking and sniping mean really nothing in that kind of environment. However, they are a vary valuable asset when you get into coordinated squads, for example, you drop onto an enemy outpost and you are able to hack out a surrender. Your most often over looked piece of gear is the scan darts, you move ahead under cloak and drop a dart into a room and now everyone in your squad knows who and where the enemy's are. People will love you for this. Also I would recommend you get your empires full auto SMG, its much more useful than a bolt action in this kind on engagement.
I don't fit well on close combat battles, I'd be giving away experience and certs to the enemy if I play as any close combat classes (I have a ****i** 1mb internet, and I'm also from Brazil, so I lag as hell sometimes, sometimes not). By the way, never player PS1, don't know how useful Infiltrators are in there :/ P.s.: LOVE the tracking device thing you mentioned. Hope the developers invest some more time looking into Infiltrator class.
Infiltrator Perma-hacking in PS2 is annoying and should be nerfed to a timer like vehicles have. But I do miss me some PS1 infiltration. I remember picking infiltration and dropping into a base upon first starting out. Landed and cloaked ready to cause some mayhem only to reappear 10 seconds later wondering what the heck was going on. Then i got shot and killed and never really wanted to play one again. Improvements would be: Move Sniping to a Recon/Scout class. Give them movement boosts and appropriate skills. Short-term cloaking ability as best - perhaps camoflague abilities. Make Infiltrators like they were in PS1. Pistols, SMG-pistols, knife. Perma-cloak. Ability to ignore sensors. Give them minor traps and the ability to set down devices that tamper with bases when put into key areas like: slowing down respawn timers, vehicle timers, increasing resource costs and short term hacking trees (vehicles, turrets, doors (WE NEED DOORS BACK with a limited door-REK for all classes) and consoles).
The ability to stop a Sunderer - not cause minor inconveniences to but outright stop, is absolutely necessary if this class is expected to have any motivation to infiltrate whatsoever. Be it in the form of C4 or vehicle hacking, I don't care, but there is often no greater objective in the game than a deployed mobile spawn, and we're currently powerless to deal with that. It's unacceptable, especially considering how many important bases don't have convenient infantry terminals that could allow us to at least switch to a class more adequately equipped to destroy such a thing. Ever been lucky enough to get inside a well guarded Tech Plant alive and well ahead of the rest of your team? I have, and the most damage it has ever enabled me to do was in the form of tossing proximity mines into large crowds, which all returned seconds later from a Sunderer I couldn't even tag with graffiti if I wanted to.
Good point... And I forgot, what do you guys think if the invibility cloak let us become TOTALLY invisible while motionless? And maybe drain nanites faster? Is that overpowered in your opinion?
Total invisibility is another thing we need, regardless of the drawbacks associated. I don't like the idea of draining energy faster since the whole point of being motionless is to hide (which can be necessary for very long periods of time) but more stealth options which outright stop our models from being rendered under any circumstances at all would go a very long way in helping the class actually move around and survive in close quarters. There are more than enough variables to balance out so much power, especially down to a level comparable with the Heavy Assault's shield or the Light Assault's jetpack. We can mess with the cloak's duration, fade time, and regeneration speed before even considering tacking on extra drawbacks like the loss of a primary weapon slot, but the point still stands. Without the ability to go where other players cannot (see again: jetpack), this class needs a cloak which isn't countered by being looked at. Complete invisibility while hiding and a separate cloak which still performs properly even while sprinting would both go a long way in giving the Infiltrator some kind of close-range viability, without the need for increasingly powerful weapons. If done properly, it might even give players a reason to watch their backs, because they certainly don't right now.
As you mentioned, LA has the amazing ability to fly. HA has a UNBREAKABLE shield and Medics can regenerate health. Not to mention that Engineers have infinite ammo and a super machinegun (with buggy hitbox, 'cause I can't simply shoot in the face of the machinegunner, even though there is a hole in the middle of the gun). Now, what do the Infiltrator have? An useless invisibility cloak which doesn't really make us invisible. EVERY single time I am cloaked, an enemy turns the corner and shoot me in the face just like if it wasn't on.
