[Suggestion] Allow Infiltrators to Attack while cloaked.

Honestly I feel the next logical step in boosting cloaks effectiveness is simply giving us the ability to fire while cloaked. Theres no reason why my chatacter cant swing a knife or pull a trigger when his cloak is active. Hell and if we're so easy to spot while cloak as so many people keep saying it shouldnt even deactivate completely when we fire. We can still be spotted fairly easily while moving in cqc are still limited to a charge timer.

Currently, how many of us use the cloak armor option? From what I've seen not many. Its obviously designed for more agressive play like cqc infiltration. Not having the ability to attack with ot active completely negates it usefulness. Its short duration armor boost that is a cloak designed for combat. Give us incentive to use this ability.


I dont want full invisibility. Its a cloak suit based on technology, not some super power out of a comic book, but for crying out loud, let me attack while its active.

I wouldn't mind that as a function of the armored cloak, with the hunter cloak still locking out gunfire as a focus on remaining hidden and sneaking into positions. I'd honestly love that since I tend to play a more close-range game, and while the armor cloak only lasts a few seconds, still that's enough for a good ambush. As of right now I just refer to that as the 'spite shield' because when you turn it all all you're saying is, "I'm going to make you waste one more bullet to kill me"

I think what people are afraid of are long range invisible snipers, which would be the equivilent of holding an angry midget at arms length while kicking them in the groin.

I would like to shoot while uncloaking. The 1-2 sec pause while uncloaking gives me away and gets me killed.

This is the unfortunate reality and perception of such idea. Many are afraid of some "Predator-style" cloaky who just murders squads single-handedly. Let alone, a lot of people come from MMOGs like WoW or DAOC where cloaky classes were always invisible murderers who could get in, deal massive damage, kill stuff and just disappear just that instantly.


However, things can indeed be done to make it fun and intriguing without imbalacing in this game.

Things can indeed be done. I think we should focus more around a set of unlockable suits with dis/advantages (as well as new knives). This may be going the TF2 Spy route, though.
But back to this game, Infiltrators are very limited when compared to, say, a Heavy Assault class. Heavy Assault can indeed do a lot and all that in one class. As said elsewhere, the Light Assault class is the better infiltrator at many times too.

Even with snipers not uncloaking its still on a charge timer. The only classes that are a threat to long range snipers are other long range snipers. There are too many people who are saying the cloak is useless and how they laugh at infs who think they are hidden. We are still dealing with nv/ir scopes being able to see through cloak arent we? I honestly cant see how fire from stealth that last for a set duration is that much different than firing and restealthing while playing as a long range sniper. It wouldnt increase sniper effectiveness at long range hardly at all but woukd would tremendously help us at medium to close range combat, aka cqc infiltrator.

Yeah that short pause ALWAYS gets me killed unless they're looking the other way or they're ********. BTW you've got a beast of a machine there

Yeah, they need to fix that dely, always get burned by it.

But yeah now that I think more about it, firing while stealthed would be best suited to be added to the nano-armor cloak. It's cooldown is longer and can't be reduced. It'll be ~24 seconds to recharge no matter what, but with certs you can expand the duration from 3 seconds to 6 with an extra 10% damage reduction. On top of that, when you fire your muzzle flash would still be seen without a flash or standard suppressor. That doesn't sound too OP to me for the more combat savy infiltrator or those wanting to get off a few rifle shots from behind the veil.

If they see you de-cloak, you're doing it wrong. Infil CQC is a pistol to the back of thier head, not thier face. If they see you decloak before you shoot them, you're either unfortunate (you can't always count on not being seen), not hiding in a very clever place, not far enough away, or you're just running in like you're rambo. Alot of the infil issues i see all seem to revolve around the presumption that Infil are supposed to be undetectable and can just run across peoples vision, or stand ontop of a hill and not worry about thier silouette. In all the times i've rolled Infil, not once have i been killed because i didn't de-cloak fast enough. I've missed shots because the target moved, the target got hit by someone else 1st, or the target got into a vehicle. I've even missed a target because thier mate came out of the building behind me and saw me walking up behind them (my fault, didn't scan the building to check), but never have i de-cloaked INFRONT of my target thinking it'd be me who walks away. Stay out of sight, keep the noise low, and strike once then vanish. Do that, and they can't see you to shoot back.

I really don't see having to uncloak before shooting as a problem. I do kill many cloaked infiltrators at pistol range but that's because they abuse of the broken cloak way too much, if I heard the footsteps of somebody getting near, the last thing I would do is cloak so they get to shoot me while I can't fire back.

The cloak doesn't make you invisible and the sound gives you away, there's really no reason for cloaking in a situation where you might get shoot.

I could understand the worry of it being to OP if we were completely invisible, but we arent. Its just a better camo that is still highly visible while moving, and can be countered with nv/ir scopes.

We are the squishiest class in the game, have no speed advantage for being so and are totally unable to defend ourselves while our cloak is enabled. Theres no reasoning why i would be unable to swing a knife or pull a trigger with cloak engaged. It just doesnt make sense.

The fact that infiltrator as a class is married to sniping means we don't get to shoot to break cloak. While it would make a lot of sense for close quarters and actually trying to infiltrate, it would just be too broken on a sniper rifle.

Being able to break the cloak by swinging your knife would be nice, though. Even sort it by weapon class, maybe? Scout rifles and side-arms can break cloak by firing, but sniper rifles can't?

I keep hearing that sniping while remaing cloaked would be too OP but could someone explain why? I don't snipe, but honestly how would using firing a bullet while cloaked and remaing cloak(for as long as tge current charge timer allows) be so much different than being cloaked, lining up your shot, decloaking, firing and immediately applying your cloak again? You still have bullet trail, and damage direction indicator if you dont
get a OHK.

i'm not that bothered by it, but i wouldn't mind if certain things COULD fire while cloaked. the RDD for instance.

No - And I'll remind you why not.

Time - To - Kill (It's incredibly short)

In the time it takes to do the uncloak animation you can empty an entire "scout rifle" magazine into an enemy - this kills anyone but a shielded heavy or a MAX. Sniper rifles is (obviously) the same issue.

Now if shooting while cloaked had a consequence - such as a long cloak failure (it won't regenerate) timer or damage to the player (Perhaps the entire shield bar) we can start discussing balance.

Assume for a minute you could fire from hunter cloak. Fully upgraded hunter cloak regenerates almost as fast as you use it when it’s active, that’s in the ballpark of half the time you playing, you will be invisible, and if you play it smart and find some good cover, the time you need to be uncloacked can be spent entirely hidden. This isn’t so much of a problem in close ranges, because if someone is looking for you, there’s a reasonable chance they’ll eventually find you, but at a distance, even through a scope the cloak blur can easily pass notice.

This gives any infiltrator the ability to instantly kill or at least seriously injure an enemy without any real fear of reprisal. Even with bullet tracers, and damage directional indicators, all someone can know is where you were when you fired the shot, and their only recourse is to blindly spray entire mags at this location, a tactic which is easily foiled by simply moving a meter or two before firing another shot, and there is quite literally nothing the target can do to prevent this from happening short of cowering behind cover, and knowing the general area the next shots will come from. Suddenly, it’s not feasible to play anything BUT an infiltrator because anything else would be too easy of a target without such an advantage, and the most likely counter would MAYBE be another infiltrator.

Currently, I just can’t see how firing while cloaking could possibly fit into the current meta game without throwing the infantry game horribly out of balance.

As it is now, that moment the infiltrator is required to decloak before firing is the balancing point. The first shot might have been unseen but someone, an ally, or the target themselves, and they can watch the area, and have a brief window to fire and attempt to suppress or kill the infiltrator before the next shot can be fired, or at the very least spot them to let others know where they are, forcing the infiltrator to either relocate or deal with the attention that’s now upon them.

This is a must have on the Stalker Camouflage Cloak when it is finally available, but I'm not convinced this is something cloaks with rifle slots should be getting.

What the existing cloaks need is IR/Thermal not highlighting them and a removal of the cloaking sound or make it so you only hear it at very very close proximity.

All of your points can be fixed by the suggestion I've seen pop up a few times and support: When firing from cloak, it breaks completely and drains all of your batteries. This would make it useless for sniping, as you need the cloak to switch position, but make it viable for what the class is supposed to do - Infiltrating. Currently, it borders on the ridiculous to even attempt to do what the class was designed for: Hacking, overloading generators and scouting enemies. All 3 of these things are somewhat nonfunctional, since hacking leaves you exposed in the middle of an enemy base (not to mention having to rely on sneaking past countless enemies with a highly visible blur) and the other two are infinitely better done by the LA class because they can just jetpack away and enter/leave any base at any point. It certainly doesn't help that our scouting tool is almost entirely broken, as it only detects moving enemies in a game where you have to stand still to shoot anything at over 10 yards and even fails at that for various reasons.

If you could fire from cloak (and break it), it would be far more balanced considering that we're already the squishiest class and that a full auto scout rifle only has 20 bullets and low damage output. In comparison, your average TR Light Assault has 40 bullets, so you have to be entirely spot-on to have half a chance to kill anyone, not to mention they have to be blind not to see you, somehow not turn around for the decloak duration AND stay in very close proximity so you won't miss. Basically, they have to be bad at the game for you to succeed. This is an MMO, so there's a good chance of that but in that situation you're not relying on skill, but a dice roll, which is never acceptable in a PvP game like this.

It also doesn't help that cert gains as an infiltrator are significantly lower than any other class, due to the issues we have. Unless you're a master sniper and the render gods are on your side, you can't possibly hope to match what any of the other classes can do in terms of exp/cert gain. Engies can repair, leave ammo, use a proper full auto weapon, deploy a turret, use anti tank mines and several other things. LA can fly, thus accomplishing our tasks infinitely better, use proper full auto weapons, C4 on vehicles and get to vantage points that should be reserved for snipers. HA can shoot vehicles, function as a "tank" with their bullet soaking shields and deploy a variety of explosives. Medics can heal, revive, have some of the best guns in the game and are just cert magnets in general. Even a god damn MAX has more diversity and utility than the Infiltrator does because it can reliably kill infantry, vehicles and air depending on loadout. It also has damn near infinite health if an engineer is smart enough to hang around it.

We can snipe and that's it - An ability that is also broken in large battles because the rendering distance shrinks to around 20-30 yards.

The "Stalker cloak", which was always on the cert list in beta, but never actually materialized if it comes back and if it comes back the same as the tooltip descriptions in beta will allow Infil's to attack with their pistols from cloak.

That was the final rank of it in the cert tree, attacking would make the cloak far less effective. Infil's could only carry their pistol and not a long-arm with with this cloak too. Also the cloak would recharge when stationary allowing essentially perma cloak if used correctly.

My hope is that this comes back and soon as it will begin to start to replicate us being Infiltrators like we were in Planetside 1. Also that we will be able to use decoy grenades and AP mines while cloaked while using the Stalker cloak too.

I haven't bothered buying any rifles or certing anything into Hunter cloak because I assume Stalker cloak is on the way back.

I'd be fine with guns/knife being usable when cloaked and auto de-cloaking the infiltrator. That would at least give us that 1st attack advantage.

We had it in beta infiltrators with shotguns who could fire while cloaked. Trust me you don't want this back it was really bad for the receiving party (while highly entertaining when you were the user tho).