So simple question guys, do any of you have any of you guys actually use the decoy nades for any situation? At the moment IMHO, it feels something like this: If you look at the Infiltrator nades we have 3 types available: EMP (bugged, giving no xp), Decoy (pretty much worthless), Frags (AI nades that arent as good at AI as the AV nades). So the good old Infil gets no nade types that arent much use OR are bugged. My suggestion would be to either remove the decoy nade and just give us a smoke nade OR buff the decoy in some way. What you guys think on the nades we get ATM?
In all of my 2000+ hours of play, I have never seen a decoy grenade. If I have, I must not have noticed it. I think decoy grenades would be cool if they created a decoy player, like what you see in the VR Training room. When you shoot the decoy/hologram you would see hit markers and continue to shoot, but not actually do damage to it.
I use them. Sort of to bring awareness to the fact that they're useless. In small fights, people will turn their head for a half second if I toss 4 of them into a corner, but the moment they realize there's nothing there, they just keep going. It's not enough of a distraction to get a jump on a heavy with a pistol or anything, but it's kind entertaining to watch people. I would be better with EMPs but it's kinda fun using the least used item in the game.
I've been asking for years for DG to be fixed and I eventually succeeded. Unfortunately they still are too limited and situational to really help. Only once I managed to get a kill because of them and I received /tells accusing me to be a cheater LOL. At the moment the best use I can imagine for the DG is Stalker + Sensor Shield + Grenades Bandolier to create a diversion. But still remain a quite useless item in particular in big battle where noise and minimap signatures are likely to remain unnoticed.
I use them. It's hilarious when they work and you get to shoot someone in the back. If I can be bothered to remember to switch I like using them in small fights. In big fights I don't think it would be as helpful but who knows, maybe you'll trick a few people into looking the wrong way as your team runs in or such. I usually bring EMP nades for big fights though. My fps is really low in big fights so I think EMP helps me more in those situations as I tend to use the SAS-R and EMP allows one bodyshot kills. I use them with hunter cloak, and once my AP mine is avoided or already exploded I try to throw them past where I think an enemy will be running by me or on the far side of a capture point or such, then I wait for the enemy to run in and look and stay focused the wrong way. In one instance I've taken out a group of 3 TR one after another without being spotted by using a single decoy nade and a suppressed SAS-R, and my AP mine took out a 4th.
Last I checked, these were still bugged. The dot on the minimap that is produced, doesn't stay on the nade. Though, perhaps that is what they intended now. It runs off in random directions. Sometimes through walls which is funny. What is drawing their focus must be the sound of the thing going off. That and confusing as to why anyone would actually throw one haha.
Yeah, the dot goes in random directions and through walls. It does not follow the actual grenade at all. In fact the dot can even make a 360 turn and come back to you! The best part is you have no idea where the dot appears on the other player's screen so you can't always run in the "other direction". AND - if there are multiple people watching the dot, the dot is DIFFERENT for each player. One may see it go left, the other sees it go right. Where the dot goes is determined client-side. They probably wanted to remove load from the server - as if these would be flying around in every battle... I've only used it in small battles, and only a few times. I'm sure I could make it useful if it was my only option, but my EMP is much more useful in general so I rarely equip them. Now if the decoy dot was server-side controlled, and YOU could see where your own dot was going, and knew everyone else saw the same thing, it would be marginally more useful. But as mentioned previously in this thread, and in other threads, having a real decoy VR character would have been so much better.
The last time I was using them to win some "drunken-operations-lets-see-if-...-drinken-game" to kill some enemy Infantrist with one of the Granades that are obviously not made for killing anyone. It was for sure before the ESF patch that introduced the Coyotes got released but I cant tell if it was this year or last. I guess that says everything about my opinion on Decoy Granades...
STOP RIGHT NOW.. DOST THOU NOT REALIZE WHAT YOU'RE DOING???? If you keep complaining, SOE will not buff the DG.. they will only nerf all the other nades into oblivion to bring them on par with the decoy nade.. (You know.. like that time when nobody was using duster and such)
To be honest, after all this time theyve been useless now, I really don't care anymore if they do something about it or just finally rename them into "Deco Granades". Nerfing all the other nades wouldn't be that bad for me since I'm playing 99% of my Infantry time as cqc cloaker. It would even be some kind of inderect buf of my class. DECOY NADES SUCK!!!
Seems it isnt just me that finds them useless...... I like the idea of giving some sort of hologram target like in the VR room. I would also go with the idea of removing decoy nades entirely, then replace them with lovely smoke nades instead. Any thoughts on Smoke for infiltrators?
The "Hologram" solution (even a moving one) was already disucussed for many times and if I remember correct, it was even a point in the official schedule but got somehow dropped over the time. It's also my favorite solution btw. since I can still remember how much fun we had using the "Holoduke" in Duke Nukem 3D to fool around with the other players but I guess it could maybe also get a problem for the games performance if it's overdone with those things by some idiots. Smoke wouldn't make much sense imho since the cloaker is already hard to notice if he's cloaked and those who notice him are usually already good players. Then you got the thing about the different levels of "visibility states" while being cloaked getting useless in a smoked area and HS/NV scopes can't see cloaked players at all right now. It's just my opinion but it feels like this would somehow temporary eliminate the last really dangerous point for Infiltrators: Good Players. In BF2142 we had also some Infilatrator class with more or less exactly the same abilities of the PS2 Infiltrator but in BF2142 the class got RDX which was the C4 equivalent of that game. I guess the big difference about C4 equipped Infiltrators between the two games is that in BF2142 we had a limition due to the very limited sprint-energy that didn't allowed us to move around as fast as we can in PS2 while being cloaked. Also the overall situational awareness of the BF2142 players was about 500% higher then in PS2 since it never was meant to be a easy-mode-game for causual players but for old BF players and players with some longer experience in FPS games. I really don't know what a kind of solution could be a used for this problem, maybe simply exchanging the Decoy Granades with Sticky Granades what wouldn't chang that much for the Infiltrator class but at least fill the slot of the Decoy Granades with something being way more useful then the current "wild-card".
I think instead of a single dot, the grenade should create several sensor ghosts clientside that act in a believeable way (sides the running through walls, you can't change that. Like showing a dot occasionally (as if shooting), regularly if there's sensor darts, and constantly if there's a motion spotter nearby. Potentially even hiding real signatures in a small radius. I think that's more the job of a stationary jammer than a grenade, though.
The only real application that I can see is when you infiltrate large bases before the capture of a previous hex; in order to hack and flip turrets and terminals. You use the grenades to give you enough windows of opportunity by grabbing attention away from you.
If they would create multiple moving signatures on the enemy minimaps and keep that effect up for, let's say, 10 to 15 seconds then it would be maybe worth using them in some situations. I would use them for example in tower fights or whenever a server get's on lowpop and those little "Infiltrator vs Infiltrator" or "Infiltrator vs small groups of ghostcappers" fights happen more often. The only thing, regarding the multi-signature-moving solution, im a bit worried about is the abuse potential that they would introduce. Don't forget that we are talking about Granades, what means that you only need to throw them to get the effect so switching to your Infiltrator, throw one of them and switch back to your Class is a pretty easy solution to render any detection stuff useless and it would maybe have some performance impact if it's overdone in bigger fights. I guess on my server it could get somewhat close to seeing only some red square where a minimap was shown before in every halfway populated area.
Hmm thats an interesting stand point, the way i see it, at the moment smoke just adds an extra level of being difficult to see. A cloaked infil in smoke is UBER dangerous. Firstly because it hides the cloaked form much better and secondly if there is a lot of smoke going round people equip NV scopes, meaning they cant see you AT ALL when you are cloaked (cant see cloak animation down the NV scpope). With those two points in mind it would give the infiltrator a very good way of not being deteced, almost OP to be honnest, but that is negated by nanite cost of the nades and limited capacity (cant spam smoke like an engi can). The "Recon" class in 2142 was my best class by a mile. The reason RDX worked is because the cloaking device was a hand held device (you had to select it like a weapon), it was the same slot as RDX (i think) meaning you couldnt equip both (gadget slot i believe) and finally the cloaking device didnt even have half the up time of the cloaks in PS2.
I didn't used the Recon as my primary class but about 4400 RDX kills only on my main character should be enough to correct you. The cloaking device was on the same slot as the AI Mines and when it was on it's maximum level, it got at least the same time as the Hunter Cloak in PS2. Also, I've found another point in-between why the multible-moving-target solution could get a problem. The Stalker Cloak would maybe get a little too OP in combination with it. For the moment Stalker Cloakers need to use the Sensor Shield Implant to get around the motion detection but such a Decoy Granade would give them the possibility to also sprint and jump more or less unseen not to speak about having the Implant Slot free for other things like Safe Landing.
