Feedback: Reduce Infiltrator Cloak Visibility

Okay, so currently we have the HS/NV scope exposing infiltrators like they used to, and the Flashlight, which will show people if it lands on them, and radar exposing moving infils... Look that is Fine. Keep those counters in place, because they work. They Require people be Looking at the infil and that is something that a player can deal with. That said, give us one thing in return:

Infiltrator visibility when cloaked should be reduced significantly. We are no longer in a situation where saying: "Well there are so few counters" makes sense. Everyone now has the ability to see infils, using 1 of the most use scopes in the game, or by using cheap addon that would go nicely on secondaries that would otherwise have no addon. Furthermore, you cannot say that as is, the infiltrator isn't pretty easily spotted. The shimmer is rather obvious, at least with the crouched shimmer it gives even skilled players a moment's pause. Since the counters are There, it makes no sense to leave infils being So visible, especially since as always, the invisibility can only Really be well utilized by stalkers.

The cloak as is, grows significantly less visible when you are still and crouched. That visibility, should be the default moving visibility for walking, the current shimmer should be the visibility for Running, and when totally still and crouched, the infil should be totally invisible.

We are now in one of those situations where there are enough ways to counter something that it really isn't at risk of causing the whole game to switch over to focus on a single class.

I agree to this statement and I also think that stalker cloak should give perfect invisibility while crouched/standing still. There are plenty of counters to it now and I think that is a fair trade off.

Agreed, I thought I had expressed the highlighted part in my post, but upon review it was rather ambiguous. Editted to reflect that. Ty

Cloak visibility was never acceptable for any endeavour that is supposed to be stealthy, but thanks to SMG you could at least defend yourself when found. But the stalker cloak removes you of your primary, and only offers permanent cloak and nothing else. That's not enough, you're reducing your means to earn certs and defend yourself for a cloak that has the same faults that makes you easily detected. Depending of the background you can see a crouched infiltrator, and even if you couldn't the cloak takes like a second to switch to the low visibility state and more often than not it doesn't even switch because is bugged.

This has to be a bug, even if the cloak was difficult to see there would be no reason to equip flashlights, since you give up nothing for using a scope.

That is my point you give up nothing using a scope, and really don't give up much using a Flashlight on your secondary. It would just be irresponsible to NOT leave without such an easily acceptable counter, since again: HS/NV is one of the best scopes ALREADY.

Whoa...the IRNV scope shows Infiltrators as well?

That's uncalled for. The Flashlight is one thing, but the IRNV scopes shouldn't display us.

Yeah, you give up your primary. If my secondary is out and I see an infil, I'm most likely already as good as dead. IRNV is probably a bug.

IRNV might be a bug, if it is then w/e... but if it isn't... and that is the point of what I am saying.

You kind of lost me though, Stalkers give up their primary. My point with saying the secondary weapon with a flashlight could be used for infil hunting, is that currently there isn't a whole lot of use for that weapon unless you were in a situation where you were low on Ammo. You could equip an IRNV scope on your primary to counter infils, but if you didn't want to, or you were using a weapon that didn't have HS/NV... you could just put it on your secondary weapon. Naturally you'd probably want to have a person or two with you while you hunted infils that way, but even if not... I am relatively sure you would still be most assuredly well enough equipped to deal with an infil on your lonesome, with an already drawn and ADS secondary.

Let's assume infils got way harder to spot for a moment. I would abuse the **** out of this. I'd either go with normal cloak + smg, or stalker + crossbow/commissioner. Any single target without darklight would be a free kill no matter what. With stalker, you just line the headshot up and you've got yer kill secured. With hunter, you'd need to be a bit more careful thanks to the sound, but you'd also get the smg, so you could potentially win 2v1s quite handily. If people don't see you, they'll die.

Consequently, people would have to equip darklights and thus invalidate most other options on their primaries. Cuz ... let's face it, if you have a beamer out, you're not going to kill anything that you briefly spot, especially if the infil sees you coming thanks to the bright light you're carrying around.

Basically, this is a lose-lose scenarios for both sides. If infils are too invisible, darklights become mandatory and they will be common, making it harder for cqc infils to survive, and the rest will be pissed they have to run around with flashlights. Imo., the only win scenario for infils is where the stalker cloak gets minimally improved (maybe you could get level 3 cloaking when you're walking around crouched?). In this scenario, darklights would remain as useless and unused as they are now, but infils would have slightly improved options.

If infils are going to be harder to see, it should be with the stalker cloak, otherwise we run in the same situation where ditching your primary doesn't worth it, and while the stalker cloak can be active permanently, if you're running around it won't last long. I didn't actually measure it and I can totally be wrong, but if you're sprinting I got the impression that the stalker cloak last a lot less than the hunter cloak, you're going to need to stay stationary not far away from the dude you killed. IMO you're exaggerating the effect of this loadout.

Actually,

Fully certified Stalker Cloaking lasts a lot longer than I anticipated. It is not an ambush oriented cloaking device, like I assumed it would be...

As I said, adding the third state of cloaking to the stalker for crouch walking could be a good compromise. Imo., you're really hard to see when you're in that state, and the slow movement would be a good balancing factor. What do you think?

ye devs this issue has to be addressed just put back the old cloak visibility from planetside 1,total stealth if you dont move

I run past waves of enemies all the time when cloaked, they only notice if I'm right in their face.

With Stalker you do have to decloak to fire, so that cloaking sound will indicate your presence either way.

Also, saying that it would invalidate primary's is hyperbolic nonsense. That is assuming the entire world wakes up tomorrow and decides to become Sam Fisher on Planetside, which wont happen. Further, you would still be visible unless you were standing still and crouching. The shimmer itself is difficult to see, but Moving is what makes it easier. It's like the current cloak, it's pretty easy to spot, if they are moving, but if they are standing and still, then unless you know what you are looking at you can easily pass it by. We are talking about the rail anyway, The rail attachment. The options for rail are only good with a few weapons, most guns only have a laser sight and the flashlight anyway. Giving the laser sight, which is Universally the choice people make NOW on live, some competition doesn't Invalidate the laser sight.

Also, given the nature of the flashlight, you only need 1-2 people using one to really make it effective. 10 people carrying a flashlight wouldn't make sense. Also, the flashlight's light is much less.. it's a blacklight it doesn't have that cone of light it did before, so you aren't signalling yourself like batman, despite however much you wish to blow a foot wide circle of light out of place.

I would be alright with what you say, about crouch walking making stalkers that level 3 version of cloaked... but I fail to see how making the flashlight something people would actually want to use, is a travesty.

While i agree that cloak is a bit too visible on higher graphics settings i think they have to do something about the low graphics quality cloak as well which is completely invisible at times and that is unacceptable.

This is the current low graphics cloak

Okay, I went to PTS again and measured it, I was mistaken and the cloak actually last 25 seconds, the confusing detail is that the drain rate is the same while walking, sprinting and even while crouched, so is 25 seconds while you move, no matter how.
I still think that what you can do with a commie isn't going to force everybody to use flashlights.

IMO the cloak should be invisible while stationary, the low visibility state when crouched might be hard to see but only against uniform backgrounds, inside rooms I spot them without issues so I never rely on that.

I agree with this, to a certain extent. The visibility should be reduced significantly when not moving (basically, almost entirely invisible), but when moving at a full-on sprint they should remain just as visible as they are now (maybe that could be toned down very slightly). Moving at a walking speed (not sprinting) should be less visible, and crouch-walking even more so.

This way, if you're being patient and careful you can sneak around very well, but if you're running around at full speed you still run the risk of someone spotting you.

Yeah this is a cloak for people who sit still for long periods of time. They'll need the increased stealth, but at the same time, we can't just make it a buffed cloak that requires the flashlight or people will hate it. As others have said, if you make the cloaks too good then people will be required to use darklight just like in PS1 unless they want to be constantly picked off, but with the new counters the current cloak doesn't work all that well.

Reduce visibility when still, and increase visibility when moving. If you want to be stealthy when moving use the original cloaks, but in a game where standing still can be a death sentence, those cloaks built for sitting still NEED to be better than they are by default.

Worse comes to worse, just increase the time to uncloak a bit to give people slightly more reaction time.

The current state of balance is a bit of a mess, because the flashlight mechanic is a rather haphazard addition. I started to regard this as a good option but then problems came to light.

Limited counters

Flashlight
The Flashlight is a pretty visible counter except during daytime. It's limited.

Radar exposing moving infils
Only scout and proximity radars show cloaked infiltrators. On the test server it's pretty easy to see that the darts/detector doesn't show cloaked infils. It's a limited counter, especially against Stalker cloak where users can l=remain cloaked indefinitely.

Scout radars do show cloaked infils though, but they aren't that popular since using the flash version requires being pretty vunerable to threats not directly from the front, and ESF radar is not popular among players who want to farm certs the best.

HS/NV scope
Haven't checked to see recent changes yet, but the movement and field of view are severely restricted when using this, so it's a limited counter.

Hmm, counters that are not visible completely ruin the ability to plan. Gameplay becomes too much of a gamble.

• This is the major gameplay related criticism of implants.
• New Flashlight mechanic.
  • The Flashlight is not very visible during day.
  • The Flashlight can be turned off.
  • The flashlight can reside in a secondary weapon - unnoticeable and unused until on demand.

There are appear to be four issues here:

1. At very low visibilities, visibility depends on software and hardware settings.

• • Visibility depends on cloak implementation (low settings cloak invisibility issues)
  • Visibility depends on the monitors physical ability to display intensities and handle contrast.
  • Visibility may depend on brightness/gamma settings.
  • Custom resolutions on NVIDIA graphics cards are darker (because low RGB values are inappropriately clipped for standard resolutions because a HDTV is assumed or something).

2. Hunter/Nano armor users remain visible half to one third of the time (IIRC it was half to one third) depending on cloak level. Skilled cloak management requires turning the cloak off and on. Making the cloak more invisible will not have the same effect as for Stalker cloak.

• • Balance for Stalker cloak needs to happen independently, including flashlight counters/invisibility.

3. The mechanic is unbalanced for players without flashlights, if they are new or just have limited XP income and higher priorities with regards on what to cert. Balance based on particular cert paths and certs required to traverse them aren't really ideal.

• • Some players might not need to go into pistol ADS in order to have the center of the screen marked, when they are engaging engaging target who are a few meters away - i.e. pistol laser sights can have a legitimate use provided you don't need to ADS. Proper balance would require all pistols come with Flashlight or something.
  • Counters cannot be assumed just because players in the forum have certs in sufficient abundance.

4. It's not a case of purely infiltrator vs the non-infiltrator-world. Infiltrators need to see other infiltrators who may be purely countering them - waiting around until they uncloak.

So it seems to be a bit of a complicated mess, unfortunately.

(The complete contrast between friendly and enemy units for Infiltrators is something that should be brought into line with other classes, regardless of the existence of Flashlight counters, or made even better since Infiltrator is a stealth class.)