August 27, 2025 - Infiltrator Rework – Phase 2

• I feel like you're getting the cloaker back to where it started.
  
  MUST TAKE THE SNIPER AWAY FROM CLOAKER IMMEDIATELY SINCE 2012 TBH. Get rid of it and give it to engineer or heavy

LOL.... imagine being angry for over 13 years because a cloaker sniped you.

In all due respect, focusing on cloaker is a huge red herring for balance.

For every super sweaty skilled sniper close range infil, there are probably 100 heavies and carapace medics that regularly drop into enemy bases and just farm new players nonstop.

Check out every single skilled outfit and push, there are almost no infils in compositions.

I actually get a bit excited when I see an infil that can actually pull off close range sniping, it's THAT rare. Is it frustrating? YES. But you would also be dying vs that player on heavy or medic, and probably more so.

There are counters too. Equipping the right overshield on heavy completely nulifies the one shot capabilities. Running with a group like Planetside is meant for, completely nullifies one shot infils. Pit any group of medics / heavies vs an infil comp and the infils lose EVERY TIME equal skill considered.

I've played for a long time, and never considered sniper to be an issue. If anything, nerf carapace, nerf infra vision (why do new players not get this?), nerf overshields for heavies, etc. I spend about equal time on most classes, and prefer the mobility of light assaults more than anything. Nerfing some niche class setup is just decreasing the available play styles even more.

I'm a fan of expanding infiltrator capabilities to include more support options. But this game is old, and game play meta is stale. We need more gameplay options not LESS.

Mithril, are these notes complete? The first section indicates changes to recon tools and implants, and I've found a few unmentioned items suggesting changes, but there's nothing logged officially.

There was nothing wrong with the cloaked. This change is nothing more than coddling the players that have been subject to a sneak attack or sniper shot. My recommendation, focus on a completely different subject and leave the infiltrator alone. Maybe focus on the hackers out there with flying sunderers or turrets underground. That is the real issue getting players to log off. If you truly want to "enhance" the infiltrator, bring back vehicle hacking from PS1.

"

"recon tools, and implants"

Where are the change notes for them?.

Also will you ever look at the post-NWA damage models of Scout Rifles(334s) and Semi-Auto-Snipers?.

13 minutes of unedited darklight and being spotted and seeing deep op users with darklight and the PTS visibility changes.



funny reminder that darklights work, even on deep operative.

You can delete deep operative and no one will care, and it should be removed.

-the new ability option to spot players for 40 seconds, even when going into cloak, should be default for recon drone and should not be a seperate ability at all.

-cloak visibility should be turned up, just slightly, inbetween what it is on pts right now and phase 1.

-some helmets that are rounded cause cloak to be even harder to spot even without deep operative, which is why its visibility should be turned up.



what shoudnt reach live: the new spitfire implant. that counters the whole point of infiltration by having a implant that can auto target you even while cloaked, for any naysayer crybabies, werent you crying about construction turret A.I's? oh how you dont complain about it when it benefits you, which is basically the whole of infiltrator complaints as well.

i can drive up behind tanks and infantry with my javelin and theyll still be looking the other way, 90% of the time it isnt the cloak, players in this game just suck and refuse to get better and the tryhards that make the same complaints just want less counters to their cheese class builds. thats the real reality.

Just gonna copy my feedback from the subreddit

1) Cloak
>* Hunter Cloak, Stalker Cloak, Hermes Cloak, Wraith Cloak, Minor Cloak, Nano-Armor Cloak
* Adjusted decloak visual effects to better represent weapon lock-in time.

* Step in the right direction, but the current decloak visuals are only really matching up with stalker, which speaking of...

>* Stalker Cloak
* Reduced the delay between decloaking and firing.

* Step backwards, stalkers may have less overall impact on the game but they're already plenty easy to kill people with and do so at minimal risk. Oh and the Stalker changes from the 1st set of PTS notes still don't exist



>* Cloaks are now slightly less visible.
>* Cloak humming sounds have been made quieter.

* I said it before, I'd be fine with cloak and audio remaining unchanged with a proper delay. Even more so if a weapon balance patch on long rifles (Snipers and Scout rifles) happened. That said, the cloak is still much easier to see compared to live (but not NSO bad) and I do like the idea of the cloak audio hum for dealing with perma invisible stalkers in small fights, though at the current PTS audio levels you aren't going to hear it outside of **very** small fights.

2) Recon tools


* Drone is still bugged and has some questionable features. Is much quieter now (possibly too quiet in larger fights). Still has access to observer cam controls so can massively speed up far faster than clearly intended (which allows roadkills and some other bugs). Still gains distance on taking damage. Still works with grenade bandolier so the drone can drop multiple grenades and can now equip any grenade type it seems instead of just emps. Can also lift players through floors completely if the floor is thin enough. Spots audio doesn't come from the drone, but from the player, which given the 32 second spots that can't be broken with cloak (also against since we need less "play infil to counter infil" design) that you can be spotted for means you can be perma-spotted without ever being aware of it. Oh and Advanced Sensor Systems and Hanging munitions is in the cloak ability slot instead of where ever it's supposed to be (assuming they don't go there).



3) Implants

* Observer doesn't break the game anymore and seems to work as advertised. Still against it since we don't need more implant bloat when you're already restricted to just two implants.

4) Long rifles and radar recon tools are still untouched unfortunately.

Also, scope glint now exists on most 6x, 10x, and 12x optics, irrespective of weapon class
there is no glint on any 4x optics or less
there is no glint on any 7x or 8x optics
there is no glint on the Daimyo thermal 6x, Dragoon 6x, or Hunter QCX 6x optics

cloak fix is easy, remove it or leave it like its on live, all this humming ,extra visibility and delay on shooting? is just plain stupid, rather have it be removed all together.

Its more like instead of 20 players running somewhere there might be 2-3 and multiple infils would destroy a push without even being seen or anywhere near the fight. Less players, more aweful fights with infils involved

changes really needed is scout rifle balancing, recon removal and no cloak on bolters

Was thinking about playing this game again. After being afk for some time. With Infil was the class that I would play this has not made me want to return.

Infils did not have a huge impact on the game and many didn't play them before. As playing a infil I would rarely see another infil let alone a skilled infil.

You should be trying to balance the player base choices of classes not nerfing another less played class because they annoyed someone on the dev team.

Some constructive criticism.
Infil cloak visibility was fine as long as you were watching for it.

With weapon delay I could understand making different weapons have different delay timers. Knifes super short or 0 scaling higher with more firepower weapons.

Scope glint should only have an effect in relation to sun direction. This will make sniping positioning and relocation more realistic.

The recon drone sounds interesting. Maybe a step in the right direction.

For the time being I will not be returning to the game.

Must be missing something, the bugfix section doesn't include fixes to the longstanding bugs of random flickering due to dark lights bugging out and/or being within half a mile distance of any construction base.

It also doesn't include any buffs (compared to live), so the title of "rework" is misleading; these are all nerfs, including the observer implant just outright countering the avoidance one (so what's the point of avoidance existing in the first place?)

For example, Hacking is severely underutilized at the moment, and anything that is hacked can be undone within a couple seconds by an Engineer.
-Buff hacking to make hacked terminals remain hacked even if destroyed (within a reasonable timeframe, lets say 5 minutes), unless another Infiltrator counter-hacks the hacked terminal; counter-hacking should take longer than the initial hack.
-Allow any deployable to be hacked, including ammo dispensers (disables them), shield generators (disables them), Hardlight Barriers (removes the barrier part while keeping the frame), Ordnance Dampeners (its yours now), Hardlight Canopy (disables them), caltrops (its yours now)
-Give Infiltrator a grenade that hacks everything within its detonation radius (requires more than one to counter hack).
-Allow the Recon Drone to hack (by default) via line of sight (not via proximity, like with some vehicle terminals) from a decent distance (5-ish meters or more, buffable via the hacking passive cert line).
-Allow hacking of vehicles to inhibit their function, like, hacking a tank removes its ability to move, or to disable its weapons, or disabling the spawns / the barrier / the Reactive Armor on a Sunderer, undoable pre-maturely by removing a device at the back of the vehicle (maybe the Recon Drone itself attaching to inhibit it while present).


If Infiltrator is supposed to be a spotting class, and spotting is the big feature they provide to fights, then they should have a passive that decreases the range at which enemies can audibly hear their spotting shoutouts; shoutouts can be heard from very very far away, even further away than the sprinting cloaked state is visible from, Infiltrator shouldn't get punished as severely for giving away their position for something they're intended to provide, for example, Medics can revive without being on top of their teammates as to not expose themselves to the same harm, where as an Infiltrator that is spotting from an open position with good view is practically inviting everyone to kill them.


Other classes don't have a hard limit on their class ability tools (Medic can heal/revive infinitely, their barrier fields have a CD, Engineer can spawn infinite ammo bricks and their turrets have a cooldown), So to soft rebalance radar, radar tools should be infinite in access (but you can only have 1 dart/spotter out at a given time), and the Drone should be on a cooldown.
Similar reasoning as to the other classes, in big fights they're practically infinite anyways (engineers exist), where as in smaller operations having unlimited access to them wouldn't provide a massive benefit so limiting them is redundant.


Any and all "sniper" nests are done by Engineers with anti material rifles and scout rifles, gathering more Engineers and Heavies to join and do the same, which are now getting buffed, once again, to be completely immune to Infiltrators approaching them, because their turret can automatically prevent any and all Infiltrator approaches, as if it wasn't bad enough that the turret can lock onto someone and shoot within 0.1 seconds of decloaking, while not even being within the initial line of sight.

If you want to buff Engineer in the "Infiltrator rework", how about this "Engineer rework":
-Limit the angle at which the turret can shoot, only 110° Infront of it, no turning around completely, if they want to have their back covered they should consider positioning it in a way that covers the most probably approach, not everything within the line of sight of the turret, and if they want complete coverage, they have to either bring an Infiltrator for radar, or more Engineers with more turrets to cover more angles.
-Severely limit the range at which turrets can spot invisible infiltrators, with or without observer/avoidance on either side.
-Remove the ability of observer to hard counter avoidance.
-Fix turrets being able to spot people through constructions in bases.
-Remove the beeping from the turret on spotting something, the shooting of the turret is enough of a giveaway, which actually gives the opportunity to hack it without announcing to everyone that the turret is currently being hacked.
-Nerf the "Anti-Materiel" Rifle (which are not affected by the sniper glints btw) to not 1 shot any class anymore at any range (including infiltrators), sniping belongs to the infiltrator, not Engineers, while "retaining" the actual intent behind what the weapon is supposed to do; kill maxes and harass vehicles.
-Rework the output of ammunitions from the dispenser to severely lower the rate at which long range options are provided with ammo, so that they can't infinitely spam scouts/anti-materiel rifles from mountaintops, while retaining their effectiveness inside bases where close to mid range options are favoured.
-Limit the Shotgun Secondary ASP skill to not work with Anti-Material Rifles/Scout Rifles in the primary slot.

As the population gets lower, and infils continue to snipe or instagib before they even appear uncloaked the game needs to adjust im afraid.

Literally in Planetside 1 a few cloakers would gang up on 1 or 2 people in the final plays and it was miserable.

TIME TO DITCH THE SNIPER OFF CLOAKERS AND PASS IT ON.

NO MORE 1 SHOT CRAP. HORRIBLE

you think lagswitchers doing this wont be able after rework? these 'shoot before decloak' guys tend to be the clientside players, you think they won't be able to do this after rework? on your screen they will be cloaked, on their screen they won't. nothing will change except the class will be ffed for players enjoying it.

what class will get the next rework? lol

theres literally very little bolters. i play just about every day if not every other day and i only encounter 1 bolters and only die to them once or twice. many good bolters can easily bolt you with engineer as i can as well, its not the cloak, its just you being distracted most of the time by something else. any good sniper waits to shoot you while your shooting somone else hence less movement easier to aim. the only decloak bolt that ever happens is if your walking in straight line between buildings heading to the next building.

Speaking of PS1 hacker ability. If the sniper is lost from the infiltrator, what have you left them with? Recon and?? (not a supporter of removing the sniping ability) It was already stated in this forum that the hacking is already subpar due to the quick ability of an engineer to undo what you did in less than 30 seconds. PS1, infiltrators could hack vehicles and it created some of the most amazing moments in gameplay.

Hacking a lightening and then running over the driver as you blare their horn held its own amusement not to mention how it would turn a fight in many directions. Now, that being said, I know that would not bode well in todays gameplay. But....If vehicle hacking could return in the form of temporary disablement of a vehicle to move or return fire for a set time (i.e. 20-30 sec)...now there is a good use for a hacker. Drivers/pilots could maintain their nanite used spawn but it would make a vulnerable target in the middle of an armor column onslaught. Food for thought as this "rework" ( Nerf ) moves forward.

It seems as there is not stopping this from coming, regardless of all the negative feedback being given towards it. So if it is coming, add something while you take something to maintain a class balance. The shot before uncloaking, I am not aware of. Perhaps that is one of the clientside players doing this event.