I would have agreed, if i had actually had any problems with the cloaking sound. But i haven't. It's so irrelevant that i never even have to take it into account when i'm playing. So all this talk about how loud the cloak is just seems ridiculous to me. It's just people making up excuses.
This is exactly the play style I have adopted. The NC have the SAS-R, which is a 1shot headshot bolt action but it has iron sights. I use it with a x4 or x2. I use it without a silencer to draw attention to my position and bait, then relocate and kill or leave betties for any chasing me. I've been struggling with trying to use a silencer on the rifle but I just don't know. This play style is how you truly enjoy the infil, but the class it still feels like it needs more mechanics behind it.
We all know how you play - its not the style of play a lot of us are looking for. The sound has no meaning to you because you don't try to hide - you run in gung-ho, shoot, then make a runner. Now, I'm not saying this is bad; it is just not the play style we want. That doesn't mean we take that away from you - there are different traits for a reason; to cater to people with different play styles. I do wonder though why you bother playing infiltrator for this when you could play anything else doing this just as effectively, if not better.
Of course you can always add more thigns to do. I'd love some more distinct ways to influence the battle. But the infiltrator, or the cloak, is still far from useless like a lot of guys believe. I play the infiltrator because there is a strategic depth to the class that doesn't exist in any other class. You gotta know when to kill, who to kill. You gotta know what to do if you get caught, and know how to move. The other classes are just generic shooters. You point at the enemy, and whoever has the biggest stick wins. Stealth classes and sneaky factions have always been my favorite classes in games, because they allow you to outsmart and outmaneuver the enemy in ways that no other class does.
apparently i am oversensitive, gifted or a freaking dolphin because i hear the enemy infiltrators all the **** time. That's the reality of staying on the outskirts of big clashes and going for skirmish sized play. You meet other infiltrators in the open regularly and you learn to pick up the sounds really really fast. The only time i had trouble to hear them clearly was on Esamir, TR sound can get drowned in the whispers of winter winds. yes they do. I don't see how other classes need much brain to figure out how to use their tools of trade. Oh, dead corpse? resurrect! tons of wounded allies? AoE heal! Oh, i am getting shot at? Ubershield! Oh, i want to get on that nicely looking roof? whoooosh! i suppose i should cloak when - there is so much noise enemy wont pick it up - nobody can hear it (doesn't matter anyway) when it works reliably in outlier situations then this sounds very situational to me, what about skirmishes without omnipresent tanks pounding the ground with HE? The sound sticks out like a sore thumb.
Oh, so when I said "almost invisible isn't good enough", you just assumed I was talking about playing the class your way. Maybe you should stop assuming that, hm? By the way, in that video, I'm pretty sure you got shot more times with Hunter Stealth active than you did without.
But you don't use stealth from the videos I have saw. You are sneaky, that is definitely true, but not stealthy. Stealth requires achieving your objective without being noticed, while sneaky just means to be less noticeable until you strike; usually then running away. It is the difference between say being a pickpocket and being a purse snatcher. One never knew you did it until way after the event (if ever), while the other one is merely unnoticed (or merely not suspicious) until they have got their prize, before legging it away. The thing is, you can be sneaky without being an infiltrator just as easily, if not better - LA for instance. You could even use silenced slug shotguns to get the overall same effect as a close-range to mid-range sniper rifle, allowing you to one-hit kill and then get away.
I neither had problems with the cloaking sound. I had em with LA raining from the sky with no sound and a Tanathos in their hands.
I actually just went back and counted. 2 times shot without Hunter Stealth active, 5 times shot with, since entering the Tech Plant. It's about as effective as removing your faction-specific texture and making you immune to spotting, nothing more. Not good enough. I actually don't have problems with the sound either. At least, not compared to the visibility of the cloak itself. I use it so that people looking in my direction from a great distance don't help the people up close who I'm actually trying to get past, but if any of them have ever picked me up from the sound rather than just looking in my direction and clearly seeing me, I haven't noticed it. That doesn't mean I think it's fair that we have such a loud sound, but the complaints from this community seem vastly over-exaggerated.
This guy is using stealth to its fullest and succeeding. Infiltration was always about misdirection and creating chaos with confusion. This is what his play style does best. The stealth is the tool to help create and feed that misdirection. You can create this effect on your own by carefully flanking and dodging anyone who spots you using the stealth. He was shot more in stealth because he was weaving in and out of it, creating that confusion of his placement. He'd take a bullet or two but ultimately escape, but that wouldn't have happened in the video circumstances without cloak. Hunter cloak serves its purpose in this play style. The play style you're after is different, I believe. It seems like you want PlanetSide cloak options, permanent cloak with no sound and recharge while sitting still with complete invisibily while not moving. Pistol only, with no the purpose of combat but of hacking objectives. Sure, I agree that needs to exist and that more play styles need to exist. PS2 lacks noncombat infil roles. You're going about it wrong. The playstyle his videos portray work excellently. This is combat infiltration. He's utilizing noise and deception to bait and give himself success. You can't say that playstyle is worthless or underpowered, it works. Many of us use it and wreak in benefits and fun while doing it. You can say hunter cloak blows for original Planetside style infiltration because it doesn't allow you to stay still very long. Hunter cloak relies on you changing positions constantly to built the confusion it needs. PS1 cloaking relied on slow movement and patience to stay hidden.
The argument that Dr. Euthanasia was making is not that Ztiller's playstyle doesn't work - it obviously does - but that it could work regardless of the cloak. You mentioned he was using noise and deception, but that is not the cloak is it? You mention that the cloak is creating confusion, but so does the giraffe camo. Actually, I take that back; there is a video around here somewhere showing that just being where people didn't expect you to be in the first place creates the confusion, not anything else. The problem with this is that there is generally a good reason why people don't expect you in these places - it is not very useful. Killing a guy not near an objective point who can respawn nearby in a few seconds is quite frankly pointless. That isn't to say it is not fun - Ztiller obviously enjoys it - but not all of us want to play that way. Edit: Found it. Notice no cloak. Maybe, maybe not. It is extremely difficult to prove or disproof. I can mention possibilities though - LA: Jetpack to a roof or behind a rock, HA: Shield and run, CM: Self-heal and run, Max: Not really sneaky, but hell, charge and run.
When did I ever say it was either of those things? Actually, you know what? I'll do so right now. That playstyle is worthless. Not underpowered, no, but it relies on the expectations of your enemy being that they are safe. You know where nobody ever assumes they're safe? Contested territory. Capture points. Actual gameplay objectives. This isn't the only way Ztiller plays - he at least understands that hacking turrets can serve a constructive purpose for more things than cert farming, but entering bases with no allies around for miles just to kill people who don't expect to see you there serves nobody but yourself. It's also true that Hunter Stealth is entirely unnecessary to succeed at this, but that's a lesser concern when faced with the fact that it's a largely pointless task. At most, you can arrive ahead of the rest of your empire, help them close distance to the base if they're encountering resistance, and then do nothing of value while they capture it. In short, your enemies will be expect to see you where you would be doing something of value. Defying this expectation is self-defeating. I counted times that he was shot when entering someone's view with Hunter Stealth active. There was no "confusion about his placement" - some people mistook him for an ally and walked right past him regardless of whether his cloak was active or not. When he turned corners with it on, sometimes people shot him. This happened 5 times in total. That's pretty poor infiltration given how they were both expecting him (likely, since getting caught repeatedly and running away to survive is central to his playstyle), and his cloak was so visible that it didn't even make them doubt that he was there for an instant. If that base was actually under attack, I suspect that he would have been shot far more often for attempting something so unpredictable and reckless. By far, my greatest point of contention is the fact that Ztiller not only finds this acceptable, but that he automatically assumes that everyone else should be doing the same thing. The cloak isn't good enough. It's almost useless for getting you past enemy forces who are actually defending something of significance. It doesn't conceal you at all indoors because of how obvious the effect is. Just because these things don't matter to him, he opposes each and every request for change. Why should anyone desire to play the class differently? If only we'd learn to see things his way, we'd be so much happier with our non-functional stealth mechanic.
You should probably note that the tank push that he decimated was pressing on Tawrich Tech Plant. His actions not only forced that push to fall back, but nearly destroyed all of it's armor. Explain to me how this is objectively, score based, or even strategically useless. There are always flanks. There will always be holes and loop holes in an enemy assault. Players simply do not guard their backs that well. Light assault and good Infils find ways to exploit this weakness and capitalize on it either benefiting themselves, their team, or both. Could there be more actual objectives for infils to manage? Sure. Creative thinking also goes a very long way. The goal of infiltration is sabotage, or data collection. I think we can both agree he accomplished one of those quite thoroughly. This is the point I was making. There are two types of play styles. You seem to want sneak and never be spotted, and with the current stealth mechanics that is exceptionally hard to accomplish. It's not impossible. For that play style we need another form of stealth, one like the original PlanetSide's infiltrator. His play style includes baiting and dealing with being spotted, it's loose and fast paced. The original PlanetSide's infiltration was slow, careful, and very patient. You had to be because you only had a crappy sidearm and the TTK was very different in that game. If you were caught you'd likely end up dead. Hunter stealth is a completely different take on stealth and it is best used to deception, baiting, and quick movements. We need other options to be made available. So what I'm saying is this: What you seem to want to do with hunter stealth, sure, it's pretty ******. Hell even the original infills had trouble getting into highly defended areas, even their play style relied on the defenders not expecting them.
You guys are hilarious. I particularly like this part No, that is not the definition of UP. Just because something is difficult does not make it underpowered. I've addressed this already. The rewards not scaling with the difficulting is not the definition of UP either. Underpowered means that equal players cannot achieve equal results with similar effort and/or resources. I like this part as well: Bullcrap. His entire strategy was predicated on the way he uses the cloak. Nubery hit this nail on the head: You guys are arguing completely different playstyles.
Explain how in Ztiller's video a light assault could have achieved the same result? Or how about a heavy assault? A medic? An engineer? In the same speed? Everyone keeps saying what we can do other classes can do better with less effort. How can someone else have pulled off the same feat? Stop saying that it's luck. Everything can be factored in by luck. The light assault who flies over the sunderer and drops it. What if he was noticed? What if everyone started shooting him in mid flight before he even got there? The medic taken down before he can rez the person because there happened to be someone close by that no one expected? You're about to shoot an injured tank as a heavy assault but your own idiot teammate just ran you over with a flash? Everything is influenced by luck. The best plays and best plans can crumble with just one unlucky circumstance. It happens and has happened before. Obviously competitive play is to reduce that risk as much as possible but it still occurs. The fact that we are capable of doing that should give someone pause not to leave their turrets unguarded.
And here comes Ztiller's horde of defenders to draw attention to the one part of his video I agreed with. However, the ability to hack turrets to this effect is not usable in enough situations to justify the Infiltrator existing in its current state. Most turrets don't have a good enough firing angle. Sometimes your own team destroys them. Sometimes there simply are no tanks outside the base, a common occurrence at Amp Stations. Sometimes you're fighting in a Bio Lab and can't play the class at all because there are no hackable objectives whatsoever, and the cloak has nothing on an LA's jetpack in one of those. What do you do then? Not comparable. You use your ability and it works. Luck doesn't influence whether you can fly long enough to make it over a large gap or over a tall building as an LA - you can measure and quantify that yourself. Luck doesn't determine whether your healing tool gives someone the option to resurrect. Luck doesn't determine whether rockets fly out of your launcher as a heavy, nor does it change how much damage your shield can absorb. The ability to fail is influenced by luck, but the tools do not fail you. You know why you died in each of the above situations, and whether or not it was under your control doesn't change the fact that it was totally unrelated to what your tool was doing. Who cares if you got shot while trying to revive someone? Those circumstances are unrelated. Turning your cloak on and becoming "invisible" to one inattentive player and highly visible to the guy right next to him is not the same thing. Unlike the Light Assault's jetpack fuel, the Medic's revive timer, or the Heavy's ammo count and damage protection, that is not something that you can know about or measure.
If you can't see why getting caught repeatedly and running away couldn't be done as any other class (ok, maybe not Max) then I simply don't see any way to explain it to you. Yes the cloak allows him to unpredicatably dodge one or two bullets he may not have - but then the other classes have ways to either do the same or shrug of damage from those bullets. The only one I could say in particular (other than Max) that he would have less success doing this with is an engineer. Again, for your convenience:
I don't see the guy in that video destroying an entire line of tanks. Just killing inattentive players. In his video I'm referring to his tank kills. As for luck.. no. From a distance we do stop rendering at least on low settings and we're nearly invisible to see on medium/high. I've cloaked from my hiding place and even ran past the tank's view to get closer to people who's backs would most likely be facing me. Had I ran across the tank's landscape (who was enjoying shooting players at his own whim) without cloak. I would have been gunned down by the tank. However, I wasn't thanks to my cloak. Note that several people who claim our cloaks are useless also say no to us using Shotguns claiming it would be too powerful in our hands. If cloak was truly useless then how would a shotgun be overpowering since apparently we're no different than any other class except weaker? (Note I don't believe we are.) Personally it's not just cloak I find useful in this class. It's all our tools. The tracer dart alone has saved me from situations where I would have died as another class. Not to mention the fact that cloak DOES make it easier to perform the above (your video you linked) than non cloak even if it's just because it removes spot.
Fair enough if you are talking about the tanks only. As Dr. Euthanasia mentioned, it is far too rare an occurrence to say the class (or the cloak part anyway) is fine because it can do that. Arguably, if that turret had not been facing exactly the right way, or had been destroyed (and not stupidly repaired by an engineer on the opposite side for no reason), or noticed more quickly (seriously, how does he find all these inattentive players?!), or was more obstacles in the way (their usually is) he would have been far less successful (if at all). Still, good work. Now imagine if he had been LA and had a hack tool... I'll stand by saying that whatever the cloak can do can be done just as easily by any other class - usually easier. The cloak is not currently providing a play style that a lot of players would like, and I find it extremely irritating that the developers will not acknowledge this - even if it is to say "**** you guys, we are not going to allow you to play the way you enjoyed in Planetside 1 so piss off". That would be fine; least I would know that was the case then.
