Infiltrators - when will you balance them?

Out of curiosity - did or does any complain about Infiltrators actually reach the developers?

the question is not about if complains reach the devs .... it´s more about if devs are willing/able/capable to invest the resources to fix/change an aspect of the game ...

I think so, yes.

For starters, I never switched to the decloak on fire option when it was brought in... by the time it did become a thing I was entirely comfortable with manually uncloaking and cloaking.

I think I could also handle not being able to cloak for two seconds after uncloaking.

That may be down to my own personal playstyle, which is more about working at a distance, because the Blackhand is good for 130 metres and more, depending on the target.

I also flank a lot, and pitch up directly behind the enemy. A bit sneaky, I suppose, but I have to do something to make up for my total lack of first person shooter skills.

regarding running out of spawn and getting mowed down by any number of things...

For some time I will spawn to the base spawn room, just to check out what is going on.

If the spawn room is being camped by a dozen or more enemies, I pull a Valk from a nearby base and get to the point that way, assuming that is where I want to go.

Funny thing is, it is amazing how empty the point is, and how the attackers are just intent of getting that kill... the point is oftentimes there for the taking.

My post indicating someone at daybreak is an infil main got deleted.

Very underhanded and not trust building. If that went against some community standard which was it?

Mod Note:
Your message "they are not going to change it" is against the Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt forum rule.

Since you seem to be active on this subject, could you communicate why the developers are unwilling to plan changes at this point in time?

Because while devs might not think its a problem, much of the playerbase DOES think its a problem. And if its a big problem which causes frustration and people not enjoying the game or even quitting then it should most definitely be something they are planning changes for and fast!

Perhaps they have access to more information, and can see that it it isn't the apocalyptic, end-is-nigh issue some would like to pretend? Maybe they possess the keen powers of perception to discern that the bloviating of the same handful of individuals converging on this topic like moths to light does not, in fact, constitute a majority?

Or maybe it really has been a big conspiracy this whole time. I mean, it makes sense that the class typically ranked 2nd or 3rd for kills on any given server is actually the most played and the most powerful. Of course the Devs (all of whom main Infil, naturally) would go out of their way to defend such a class, because who cares about retaining the new players upon which your livelihood depends when you're winning at video games?

/S

or maybe not.

Its the same handful of individuals that both defend and attack the infiltrator. However as the very selfsame infiltrator defenders have noted several times over there are many non-handful people who find the exact same problems with the infiltrator and make a thread about it.

Also maybe you havent noticed but the problem stems from how it interacts with the game. The Vanguard isnt OP and the shield is the only thing keeping it somewhat effective, but that doesnt mean the shield shouldnt be altered or replaced because its making it a whole lot of people feel very bad about it. The Infiltrator cloak is one step further in how it leverages the background coding for an advantage it was never supposed to have.

So strawmanning it isnt exactly a big help here.

Pocket Orbitals only get a handful of kills an hour; doesn't make it good/balanced gameplay. The same applies to Infils, and that ignores that they are actually constantly fighting for 2nd place with LAs AND will almost always have significantly higher KDR than every other class except Max... assuming you are talking about FISU hourly server stats.

Hello there Demigan



is that a fact, or a guess based on people complaining here, Reddit and in Yell Chat?

it would be good, and interesting of a proper survey was taken across as much of the playerbase, both active and those who have quit

I know we can garner much info from sites such as fisu, but that info does not necessarily relate to the amount of people who think it is a problem

cheers

andy

Nice being singled out here. It started with the infiltrator defenders proclaiming that "we" are just a vocal minority. This from the same people who also loudly complained about why all these random people would periodically complain about infiltrators and didnt even have the decency to come up with different arguments!

Without a survey of a significant % of the playerbase it cannot be said with absolute certainty. It would be great if a large survey was added to look into this (and other things)*. However we can make educated guesses, something that was also done in the past.

For example much of the slang in game is about relatively regular occurences in a particular segment of the game, like C4 fairies or Bailassaults. When bailassaults appeared there wasnt a survey about how many players had a problem with it or not, instead actions were taken. Several iterations and retries of how kills were counted after bailing to ensure people who bailed couldnt take what was felt an earned stat away from their opponent. Eventually the ESF was given one level of auto-repair if an Engi was inside to make it more attractive. And that isnt even counting the macro abuse of despawning an aircraft after bailing and exiting the game that Daddy pioneered and was actively removed.

There is also slang about the SMG infil. Once in a blue moon the SMG HA but mostly the Infil. Why? Because its effective. It kind of destroys the arguments of others that Infils are easy to spot and most of the playerbase can easily deal with them if Infiltrators can easily get in close and be effective with SMG's. And we also know why its effective: the cloak, and the ability to decloak and fire quickly.
We know how the latency system works and how it gives an advantage to the person coming around a corner (or in this case cloak), we know players periodically complain about it (even from the Infiltrator defender's own mouths), we know that the defenders of infiltrators tend to be infiltrator mains rather than multi-class players... so why not change it?

It would even be a relatively simple way to do a "survey" of at least people frequenting forums, Reddit, Twitter etc. Just post about a brainstorm on a change you want to make to the Infil, then see both adulation and hate roll in.

I would just want the Infil to have its role adapted. Instead of an in-your-face decloak combattant they could instead be more like the LA: use cloak to get somewhere good, fight from there. You can then up the Infil's health and give them access to more weapons and utilities to compensate for not being able to decloak in people's faces anymore.


*and periodically re-do them. ZOE wasnt considered OP early on until its power was discovered and neither was the Flash thought to be OP early on. That doesnt mean the meta wont shift and it can become a problem.

Hi, not sure if you mean what you say there. Nice being actually nice or a sort of sarcastically nice, if you know what I mean.

sincere apologies if it is the latter

I really do try to fit in here and make friends, not enemies... may be what I have said in the past hasn't helped, particularly when it comes to defending the infiltrator class

yes, I seem to recall saying something along those lines in the last year or so and I realise now that that was not a great thing to latch on to

yes, it would be nice, but maybe a bit of a task for DBG to take on board

if there wasn't much of an uptake then you would only hear from the peeps who have the loudest voices, and I don't mean that in a derogatory sense

I for one would probably not respond to a call for a survey, and the main reason for that, personally, is I roll with what ever happens until something happens that totally breaks the game for me, then I will simply stop playing

regarding the in your face infils, I can understand the angst around that role

they tend to be the better players anyway and pretty much don't need any kind of crutch

they will fly to a tower and cause havoc amongst the defenders, that's for sure, and I often watch them doing it and try to take them out if I can


a little story from a session the other night, which kind of fits in with your "get somewhere good" thing

there was an alert on Amerish

I was doing my usual stalker + Blackhand stuff

there is a base just to the east of a tech plant with some really high rock towers, quite slender things

I generally attempt to get a perch on top of one of those features, because having the high ground is always generally an advantage because most people are totally focussed on the fight on the ground

having only just managed to land and then drop down to a suitable location a red dot appeared on the minimap and I could see that it was a heavy using his rocket launcher

I shot him in the head a couple of times and took him out

very shortly after that someone dropped on to me and took me out

I then flew back in and that same heavy was there again, and I was able to take him out a second time

I was expecting a little bit of grief for that but, instead, we chatted and he asked how on earth I got up there and at no point did the conversation turn ugly

we even ended up fighting together for an hour, along with the other guy who took me out, who was in the same small squad and explained how he was so quickly able to find me

so, it isn't all bad, I don't think... depends very much on the situation at the time, and someone's attitude to being taken out in such a fashion


in contrast to that, just last night, I took a guy out at a terminal and he proceeded to tell me what he would do to my mum later, which I laughed off of course

Some of the sources I use to form my view on where others stand:

High forum post traffic relative to other topics.
Similar on Reddit
the planetside discord
individual outfit discords
PIL and other Jeager rulesets designed by top infantry
Ingame public squads and platoons
A very distinct lack of non infiltrators defending infiltrators is also very telling... don't see this with other complaints as much.

I think a survey of "who thinks inflitrators need balanced?" would sway wildly towards "yes". But acting on that alone would be dangerous and I would not suggest it.

I prefer to use the more limited sample of just really experienced players that know the game from many directions. For example (not the only one!): Jaeger scrim rules are not meant to emulate live play and pointedly address imbalanced spots in the game. These are players that know the game and know their **** and they'll put limits on number of bolters, no maxes, motion related implants and such.

It's not supposed to be a popularity contest that decides these things. If it were the infiltrator would lose miserably and everyone would ruin their gameplay experience. We don't want that. Dev needs to show some leadership and address OBJECTIVELY broken mechanics in the game.

I've only been saying for years that the issue is with the networking rather than the ability itself. I've also said multiple times that fixing the core issue should take precedence over treating the symptoms. But no, you're right I hadn't noticed.
I've also brought up interim solutions that address this in the event the core issues are not solvable in the form of cloak adjustments (despite showing multiple examples of the cloak issue being not nearly as bad as people claim), but this doesn't fit into the box so tends to get forgotten or ignored.

I am not going to repeat what I have already said multiple times, but suffice to say that when the class claimed to be the most used and the most powerful almost never has the most kills on a given server, never sees significant use in outfits even in situations where a "magic bullet" class to give an advantage in a fight would be really helpful, and doesn't seem to yield any significant jump in performance for a given player when compared to their other classes, red flags start going up. Especially when the ignorant comments about Devs protecting the class start to get bandied about.

Based on what Mithril has said, I'm confident I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Indeed, it will be a shame if people start doing that.

Take away the cloak tomorrow and they will still have the highest KDR of any class simply due to how they approach engagements. This is not a fantastic metric to use for balancing discussion.

No, they won't. Pistol and SMG without cloak, even if they gave Infil back the 100 shield, would put them as a worse engineer (recon is still busted though), and no one is going around calling Engineers broken. Snipers are better Archers, but you aren't doing 70% of the BS as an Archer Eng that you can do as an Infil bolter with cloak.

KDR is a metric to use for balance discussions, it's just not the only one; you used KPH, alone, to try to lessen Infil's impact. I corrected that and added a second stat to the discussion that shows that while they aren't getting heavy KPH on FISU, they are still second or a close third KPH and have sometimes double the KDR of other classes.

So, not only are they roughly as good as LA/Medic for impact, they are also doing it safer and 'better'. Medic can be forgiven because Heal + Res, but LA? Eng is a wildcard cuz of vehicles.

BTW here's some interesting info from FISU about class use & performance screenshotted at 17:30 PM Central European Time :

Cobalt


Miller




Emerald



Connery




Maybe Americans don't notice the obnoxious infil spam off-prime, but on the EU servers infils have more kills than Heavy Assault while still having the highest infantry KDR. Here's an off-prime image of Miller in the morning ~9 AM :




The only time I've seen infils get low K/D is on Miller TR off-prime. But then look at VS and NC infils surpassing heavy assault kills or competing with them while having the highest infantry K/D. Also take a good look at the top players and how many of them are SMG infils, bolt actions and the occasional stalker infil.

Even on the US servers plenty of top performers are infils. It doesn't matter so much that they're spammed, if they're consistently going on big streaks with solid KPM and great K/D it's a problem.



At the very least, it's a big issue in the EU servers.


Here's another image for giggles - what players have voted to be weakest class in-game




Infiltrator got the second most votes, lmao.

The thing is, Light Assault seems to have these wild swings in performance where they're doing poorly on FISU or have the best stats. I'm not sure if it's because experienced players are stacking Lights on certain factions or because they're driving A2G. Most of the time I see them as infantry they aren't doing great, but there are some good ones.


Infil is consistently hitting 1+ K/D on every server. Take a look at some EU top performers : CQC sniper with 2KPM and 10 K/D, and most other infils who aren't as skilled have similar kills and KPM to heavies while having way better K/D. There's definitely a difference per player even if it's hard to see from how many heavies are pulled.

Shoutout to 81/0 K/D SMG infil on Miller and 7.4 K/D and 3 KPM SMG infil on Connery.



And to be clear - not used a lot =/= not overpowered, case in point ZOE MAXes pre-nerf and orbitals.

The problem here is that the core issue is what allows the game to operate as it does: the latency system.

Unlike other games the system does not constantly update every single thing the moment it has received an alteration which is normally send individually to each player, instead it collects multiple datapoints and sends that whole package instead, preventing an exponential data increase with each player added.
This same system is also why you can be killed behind cover or see someone decloak the moment you are killed. In fact in the post where you say its not invisibility and basically say "you should have seen the thing that is supposed to be hard to see" the last video is NOT about someone who is decloaked before he kills you, as we see that the fire animation and all hits arrive in a single packet just afterwards and there was no way you could have killed that infil before that packet arrives. Which is the exact problem: you cannot respond in time due to the latency system favoring their decloak&fire.

To solve this at the core would be to remove the ability to have 100v100v100 matches. So we can only combat the symptoms: the cloak benefits from this too much. So part of the solution you gave would work: make it have a slower decloak time. However there is no reason to only apply it to CQC oriented infil builds. The ranged cloakers benefit just as much, if not more from the ability to decloak and fire before his "hard to see camouflage field" is spotted.

What you've shown are video's of you happily spotting a cloaker. Pretty much because the cloaker was sprinting across your crosshair. This does not mitigate that the cloak is effective. Otherwise you would claim cloaking has no effect at all and could be removed or altered without consequences and there would be no reason for you to oppose anything.

Also the first video of you seeing a cloaker before he opens fire you can clearly see that your movement causes them to adjust their aim before firing, meaning they could have decloaked later and fired and still given you no chance to respond.

Are you sure about that? UberNoob seems to make a convincing case of the opposite.

Unfortunately these devs dont have a good track record for being objective, like randomly buffing the Harasser or the Liberator when no one asked for it for example, making them (more) OP and then leaving it in so long that people think its their right to have such powerful toys. Or in this case not bothering to fix a problem with the game. Wether its bad design like Spawnrooms, favoring attackers in almost every situation they create in order to get "movement" on the map without regard for how it affects defender roles or leaving broken mechanics like cloak in game.

Bullcrap. You can approach many situations better with an LA if you remove cloak. Also you are now arguing that the cloak is virtually useless, which again means there's no harm in changing it into something non-combattive.