Can we PLEASE nerf Infiltrators already?

Pffft! stealther still wins the majority of battles inside or outside bases.
They are not only snipers, the have all kinds of weapons.

But yes. the "heavy" assault can hide inside a small room with thick walls like a true champion. The infil will still have nades, mines, knifes and all kinds of stuff. Im not saying that they are better then a heavy in thouse cases, but im not gonna say the have a huge dissadvantage ither.

Ither way, to many stealthers, waaaay to many. no mather what kind of fight it is.

I guess you don't play on Miller then, because cloakers are one of the prime choices for frontline fighting on that server.
And it isn't bias, getting rid of the cloakers in my own team would also be an improvement

I've been sniped a fair amount, and I do think Infils need a slap with the nerf bat, but I stand by one, critical thing.
Removing **** should be the absolute last resort, and doing so will PISS PEOPLE OFF.


Think about it. If Jump Jets got removed because "flanking is too powerful", or if Heavies got nerfed because they're "the most played class", people would be pissed as hell, and rightly so. Removing cloak would piss off... virtually everyone who plays Infil. It's integral to who they are and the roles they can do. Remove cloak, and what do you have? A class that has 100 less shield health, the ability to hack, use recon devices, and Snipers. You might as well call them Scouts at that point, because any stealthy **** they can pull can be done by everyone else too:

• Hacking, while nice, becomes decidedly harder to do when you can't turn invisible to do it, and the returns and rewards are not worth giving up other classes to use, you would just hack it and change classes.
• The recon deployable becomes harder to use effectively when you can't get within enemy territory stealthily to use it, making it damn near pointless to use over the resupplyable recon dart.
• Spitfires become literally unhackable, as you can't get in range without dying or using an EMP, so your only option becomes to destroy it - something other classes can do just as well.
• SMG, Pistol, and Knife Infils cease to exist as sniping becomes the only viable playstyle, since you can do all that better on other classes now. Why risk your neck with a class with less health when you could use a Medic and self heal or an LA and flank? Remove cloak and these already niche playstyles start dying off completely.
• Sniping becomes EVEN WORSE, because now every Infil is running them. No stealthy shenanigans with Stalker, no Nano-Armour SMG sweat, nope! Just snipers, because they immediately become the main draw of the class over others, since their main ability separating them from other classes just got removed. Sure, they become easier to see and shoot, but thats not always possible if they use a longer range weapon, or join the zerg to CQC snipe you.

Removing cloak from Infils removes a chunk of their identity as a class, and I haven't exactly seen a lot of ideas of WHAT TO REPLACE IT WITH. Because leaving a class without an ability would make them entirely unique, and in a bad way, and would just make the Devs look lazy. The ideas on how to balance cloak are great - give it a weapon slot, make it an ability slot with a longer holster time, increase cloak and decloak delay, give use some godamn functioning counters to cloak other than the barely functional darklight. But outright removing cloak is not the answer. Sniping could recieve a look in, but everyone has issues with cloak first and foremost, so that should definitely recieve a hefty balancing pass.

Yes, Infils should get a nerf. No, Cloak should not be outright removed to make it happen this far into the games lifecycle. Yes, calling for Cloak to be entirely removed makes you sound like you're purely calling for nerfs on an emotional level, rather than looking at things objectively and trying to find methods of balancing that don't alienate players. Because sure, new players might be discouraged by cloakers, but new players can get discouraged by a lot of other **** too. We don't need to haemorrage existing players who like Infil, as losing players is the absolute last thing we want if we want this game to keep going.

I think that we need to make Infils check the environment much more as well as let players scan or detect Infils in various ways, but those methods should not be useable against infiltrators alone.

Examples:
Pop mines/alarm mines. You toss an oversized recon dart sphere which attaches to any floor, wall or ceiling thrown towards. They have a large detection radius that makes them go off (say 3m) but very low damage, 100 damage at point blank for example.
The main use of these mines is that whenever they detonate they make a loud faction-unique sound and create a minimap-icon for 5 seconds for the owning faction. Even if your enemy sees the bright light and shoots it the mine still does its job, or if the enemy tries to circumvent them because they don't want to give away their position...
They would be cheap and you would be able to carry a lot. You could even allow them to be fired by an oversized recon dart gun and replenish them as ammo, but have a limit to how many can be placed at once and if they are placed within 3m of each other they detonate automatically (cheap sensors).
Potentially you could also allow the mine to spot any enemy within its radius upon exploding.

Pixie dust:
Reacts to something on enemies, like shield harmonics or a lack of IFF tag. This causes bright flashes to appear on their body regardless of them being stealth for a short while (10 seconds for example). Pixie dust is easily spotted when deployed but not obstructing the view. It could be a good way to make stealthy players think twice about moving through or let players find a cloaker.
Pixie dust can be delivered through many ways. Obvious ways are as additions to smoke grenades, but you can also add it to a deployable which keeps generating some pixie dust, the pop mines from above could deploy some when they detonate, it could be added in a small tripmine that sprays a little bit away from the surface its deployed from or you could even add it as an ammo addition so a hit cloaker cannot simply hit cloak and disappear.

Laser radiation spotting:
In some ways similar to pixie dust. Reveals and spots enemies that cross the laserbeam, even cloaked ones. Disadvantages would naturally be that the laser is visible throughout it's effective range and might have other disadvantages, although a glorified spotting laser that happens to spot infiltrators seems disadvantage enough.
Could be used as a deployable that sends out a pulse every now and then, a weapon attachment that turns itself off when it runs out of a quickly recharging battery, as part of mines etc.

Echolocation:
Wether its literal sound used to locate enemies or some auraxium magic, this fires a visible pulse from the user which reveals the position of any enemies caught in it at the moment of the pulse, so if your enemy moves the revealed position is no longer accurate.
The advantage is that it reveals enemies to all your allies through a wire-frame similar to the one used for night vision. This wire-frame is visible through walls and objects, allowing players to get an idea where enemies are inside rooms or area's they can't see yet. The wire-frame remains visible for 5 seconds.
Again variations are an option, from a cone-shaped pulse to a spherical one to certain weapons having such an option, like certain explosives which could create such an effect.

Security camera/darklight light:
The simple idea of letting a player deploy a camera or darklight spotlight. Would be great if you could even set an area it is supposed to survey, the camera/spotlight slowly moving across the area you told it to scan (if you want). If it detects something it can simply give off visual, audible and minimap warnings that something is happening, tipping the players off that aren't around and supporting the players who are around with a darklight feature.


This way infiltrators need to pay more attention to their environment as detection can be an issue and the tools available to other infantry can be used somewhat effectively since you can get an idea of when you need to use them against infiltrators. The tools are also useful for other classes and scenarios.

I play on Miller. I guess you are grasping at straws.

I don't say they should remove the cloak, I say there should be more counters to it than a flashlight that only works 80% of the time. Bringing back IF sights that can spot cloaked enemies (ignoring implant traits) would be a huge help.

And while we are at renaming, the class should be called either "Hunter" or "Predator" - because everything they have access to is designed to hunt infantry

Sure reads like you want them removed, but aight. Benefit of the doubt. A lot of people do call for them to be removed though, which like I said, is dumb.

We do need more ways to detect infils, and the flashlight needs to be not useless. We have a tactical slot, give it anti-infiltrator stuff like the kind Demigan suggests. A deployable that causes hostile Infils cloaks to shimmer in an area, or a bigger engineer barrier that can't stand up to massed gunfire but can take sniper shots easily. Make the sneaky bastards put some effort into their gameplay rather than standing away from the fight and farming K/D. If they want to get in close, they shouldnt only need to worry about people with semi-functional flashlights and graphics nonsense. If they want to snipe, they should have to work to avoid being hunted down or countered. Cloak nerfs and detection buffs work toward this.

Also renaming... yeah ngl those names are kind of eh. Infiltrator at least fits with Stalker, Hacking, deploying recon, etc. Plus it just sounds cooler IMO.

Great, play against the NC at / slightly after prime time and then come back and say again that there isn't a huge cloaker population

I main TR on Miller both Prime and a while after. Cloakers are pretty present, but they aren't exactly a huge population, as its mostly a mix of other classes. They're very hard to ignore when they start cracking heads from a nearby hill, true, but you only get large groups of invisible folks during big fights with long sightlines that throw infantry hordes at each other (e.g. some of the bases on Esamir, where Armour will duel a bit away from the fight, Infils will take up posts on rocks, and other infantry will rush from sunderers into the base proper). Infils are a problem, but they aren't nearly as omnipresent as you make them sound.

That's just Miller NC being Miller NC. Spamming infils, heavies and A2G and then winning 40% of alerts because of it. Miller VS is a lot more fun to fight against ironically.

As infantry, I die the LEAST from infils. The LEAST from snipers. I main a infil knifer / pistol main & next to me on the front lines I see, the LEAST front line infils. Infils are the LEAST of my worries.

That being said cortium bombing / flailing other people's silo unfairly, is a whole different OP issue. As a infil main I don't cort bomb / flail people's bases, it's unbalanced. Silo's need better defense for spotting infils. Pain spire / AI turret doesn't help.

One word. BHO. Practically every day you can find a zerg platoon around primetime going all in.

The problem isn't anything intended, it's the fact because of servers or update rates or something the uncloak, shoot, decloak can basically give you 0.1 second warning of it half uncloaking before you die horribly in a oneshot incident.

The non-hud decloak animation should be sped up to compensate even non-laggy things, at worst they fully decloak for a very short moment before the 1shot is delivered.

Maybe because the decloak animation is delayed somehow now that i think of it?

Literally, raising the cloak and decloak timer is something everyone can live with, so before you make a post about how much you hate Infiltrators and wish they would just die, why not go and do a little research on potential solutions to the problem? Mostly what I see here is a lot of hate. If you don't like something, you don't necessarily have to nerf it; you just have to change the way it plays. I have already suggested things that would be fun for both sides, such as spotlights and headlights illuminating cloaked infiltrators, deployable lights to detect them, maybe making the cloak act as a decoy grenade so that it puts a dot on the minimap everytime they uncloak within X meters of you. That way, their attacks have to count even more so.

If you hate the Wraith Flash, change the Wraith Flash to be a class specific module so that more classes have things to do. In all honesty, its not as bad as you think. You have a 5 second recloak timer after you decloak, so you are a sitting duck for 5 seconds after you attack someone. You are easily seen. You could make 1 of those seconds weaponlocked so that you have to drive up uncloaked or something. You could make the sound of the cloak louder. You could give all cloaks a passive sound, however quiet it may be, so that you can detect it without the need for any other device. In fact, do that for the regular Infiltrator too, because thats as it should be. Tools should make it much easier to get a task done, but for combatting a whole class, you should be able to do it with what you have on hand. These changes can benefit everyone, as its not a direct nerf, but a change to the way something plays.

If you hate snipers, lol theres not much we can do for you other than increasing the rechamber time and messing with the handling of the weapon. Damage changes would be absolutely bonkers and remove a reason to play the weapon, therefore leading to backlash. We can't be doing that anymore. We need to be better. If you increase the rechamber time, you need to land the first shot or you die. Also, you can change how quickscoping works, so that the scope has to be fully zoomed in before you are fully accurate. That'd be better, though not for everyone. If you change how the handling of the weapon works, it makes it harder to hit shots, therefore making the weapon harder to use, meaning that the people who are using it effectively are actually better. You'd still complain, but at least you'd know they did have a challenge in trying to master the weapon. These changes will make the game better for the majority of players, hopefully everyone if they see the reason why things were changed. Maybe RPG can tell people WHY things were changed in their patch notes.

Next time, before you make yet another post about X, Y, or Z, remember that every single idea you have ever thought is unoriginal. Every thought that has flown through your head is based off of something. Take the thing that thought is based off, and expound upon it. Make it better. There are people who are just like you in the way they think, and they have probably said and thought the exact same things you have said and thought. If they are here too, then they have probably posted what simple thought or feeling you have posted too. So instead of saying how bad something is and that it should be nerfed, say how. Say why. Say what you'd do, the implementation of your idea, the positive, the negative, the repercussions on the other side of the playerbase. Ask for feedback so that you can make your idea better and something everyone, or at least most people, can get behind.

Congratulations, you are correct. What happens is that on the Infiltrator's side, they have already decloaked and shot by time you see they decloak on your end. Lets take that 0.1 seconds you have. It means you have less than 0.1 seconds to end them before they end you. If they end you on their screen first and the server recognizes that, you are dead, even if you haven't died on your screen yet. The server hasn't told you that you don't have a chance anymore. It hasn't told you that you have died. It means that unless you have the ping of the server, you will have that cloak delayed on your screen, because it takes time for an event to be sent to the server, recognized, then sent to everyone else, hence being killed when you just moved behind a wall, or you moved and therefore you shouldn't have died so fast. Its because on their screen, you weren't behind the wall yet, or you hadn't started moving yet.

Thats why this is so hard to balance, because of the differences in ping. If we do raise the decloak timer, people with lower ping are gonna absolutely yeet you because you won't be able to do anything by time they recognize whats up. When you keep it where it is, people with higher ping than your decloak timer won't be able to react. Its either the Infiltrator gets hurt or everyone else gets hurt. So here is what we can do. RPG, take the statistics of the average ping of the playerbase, compile that into a chart, and lets give the Infiltrator a slight advantage. Take the median, subtract idk 10-25ms, and that is your new decloak timer. That means that the average decloak time - 10 to 25 ms after the server recognizes that you clicked to decloak, you will decloak on your screen and on their screen.

There may be a simpler way to do that, like an adaptive script that takes the average ping of everyone in the hex thingy and adds that to your decloak time so that most of the people you fight will have a chance, but that'll get annoying to have to constantly adapt to. Whatever, thats fine for me.

Oh an adaptive one ONLY for the visual decloak speed would be way less intrusive, could even maybe be clientsided based on your ping if it isn't too broken to be so.

The problem is the visuals more then anything.

I've been saying this for years. It's the cloaking that is the problem.

A lone sniper on a hill, getting kills. That's fine.

It's the 1000 others that seem to dominate most other aspects of gameplay. Too many mid-range/close-range invisible guys with OP cloak. They should be the finesse class, not the main infantry choice.

Pretty close, 2060 and i7 6700k. At those ranges I see them consistently.



Shame about that aim, though. Although watching back I don't think YT is doing the visibility in-game justice.

It does little at close range, but random movement is absolutely great at any distance where there is a noticeable delay between shooting and hitting. It also means a sniper is more likely to go for the easier target- i.e. the other guy who isn't moving as much. It's not a magic fix but it's far from useless.

I've been saying motion darts need to be adjusted with limits and counterplay for years.
EMPs are more useful for module destruction than anything, tactically I don't see them as any more threat than a flash or conc aside from the insta-det.
Daimyo got hit hard with the nerf-bat this patch so I don't think it's going to be much of a problem anymore.

Players at that skill level are going to dump on you no matter what weapon they choose to use. It doesn't matter what shooter you're playing.

If you can`t beat us, join us!

Infiltrators just got a BUFF in the latest patch. They now get a free Sidewinder 5 visual effect while decloaking and only highlight for INRV and Infra Vision when the decloak process has fully completed.

*sigh*

Yes, they totally needed a buff against Infra Vision users. /eyeroll.