The visibility is wretched. You can't rely on it at all indoors even when crouched and not moving, and its inconsistency across graphics settings ensures that you can never be sure when using it is appropriate or not. It doesn't take skill to use your cloak at all, it takes skill to avoid situations where you would need to use it, because it's the only class ability in the game which gives you no feedback about how effective it's being. What's been done well about it is that it removes spotting and prevents you from rendering beyond a generous distance. It's entirely a sniper cloak which provides almost no advantages to close-range Infiltrators beyond approaching bases and making them harder to track running away after they've already been caught, which is itself almost inevitable if they ever have to rely on the cloak itself to hide them.
The cloak flat out does not work at keeping you from being detected in the vast majority of cases where you would have been seen anyway. Basically, if you make sure you don't get in anyone's line of sight you are fine - but then so are you if you don't use the cloak. The only case you can really even remotely rely on the cloak keeping you from being detected when you would have otherwise have been is when you are at the distance at which it switches to full invisibility. What the cloak does do is cause confusion and hesitation - enough at times for you to get past with only a few bullets having connected. Good for blockade running (as long as that consists of only one or maybe two people), bad at actually keeping you undetected unless you are sniping. Example, in this video, the infiltrators were detected (cloak didn't help them, actually hindered them) - however, instead of trying to play it cautious (which obviously did not work) they might of been able to run past m44v and gotten away. Now, they may have been able to do that without the cloak anyway, so it is hard to say if the cloak even helps there - but statistically I think it does. Now, whether you consider this a problem or not heavily depends on your style of play - I think this is why some people loath it and some people really don't care. The solution for me is to give an alternative cloak that suits the more cautious playstyle, particular for those who want the sabotage style of play back from PS1. Edit: Bah, got beat to it by the Dr.; needless to say given this post overlaps a lot with his, but I agree with him.
I agree that the radars and the LOUD cloak noise is against a lone infil, but the base design? These bases are, almost without exception, designed to make things easier for the attackers. Which would be a ******** way to do it in real life, but here the attackers have to have a chance. Thus we get huge holes in walls that serve no purpose, generator buildings with doors hidden from the defensive guns etc.
Cybernetic ears that communicate wireless and flawlessly with the computer. Guaranteed to last a few years.
They're working on it... http://globalgrind.com/style/lil-wayne-million-dollar-beats-by-dre-headphones-photos?gpage=0&#gtop
Most of my issues with base design come from what happens when you get inside them. Amp Stations and Bio Labs are utter chaos and it's easy to get around, but never to anywhere important (admittedly, this is because the former is protected by massive, impassable shields and there's no low-profile way to get past those). As soon as we're required to enter one of those prefab outpost buildings, we get limited to coming in the front or the back door and then running up one of two stairwells which most likely lead to the same room. There's no way to climb into the windows past the first floor, no rarely used side passages we can hide in... it's all incredibly straightforward, which is anathema to the needs of a stealth class which lacks the tools to get around undetected on its own. Light Assaults with their jetpack are much better than we are at getting inside these buildings, which itself is not a problem. The problem is that our cloak options don't include anything which is functional indoors, and the indoor environments don't give us any opportunities to avoid attention without using a cloak. There are a lot of important objectives we can't even consider approaching because a lone defender could catch us approaching them easily. It's not a problem specifically for attackers, just the sneaky guys who don't have jetpacks to carry them onto the roof first.
I really felt the need to point this out: If the cloak "flat out does not work" then why does it "work"? Well, in any case in m44v's video, I found it was the cloak sound that gave those cloakers away on top of the fact that m44v seems to have the mindset that once he hears that sound that he instantly starts hunting for them almost relentlessly--that, my friend, is a deadly combo. In my recent experience with the cloak, I've found ways to use it effectively--like building a working car from junkyard scraps. Now, keep in mind, I run on the graphics setting set below low. Yes, there is a setting lower than low. So it goes without saying that infiltrators in general aren't that hard to see. I have however come across a few that know how to use the cloak to cause confusion and slip away and I've learned to do the very same. I've put it in my head that the cloak is almost (stressing "almost") useless. I go around about my business as if I'm perfectly visible to the world so using things like the recon detect device allows me to watch my back. So if I am cloaked and I come face-to-face with an enemy soldier, I won't hesitate to uncloak and fire that shot on his head that I lined up in his confusion. That's the key: in the confusion this among many enemies I've come across have had, I have had the time to line up the valuable headshots I need to stay alive. Especially in CQC, if you catch the enemy (especially if they're a heavy) with their trousers down and back turned to you and you don't line up a headshot, you'll be lucky if you get out of that trade alive. And the way I found to get the time to line up the kills is by using the cloak in conjunction with proper misdirection. But seriously, if I see a cloaker walk in front of me, I don't hesitate on pulling the trigger. Now, don't take this as a L2P or some **** like that. This is my experience with making the cloak work for me and since you guys enjoy the class it might help you get around the obvious flaws this cloak has (granted you haven't already with must frustration I assume). Don't get me wrong, I would enjoy a couple tweaks in our favor in regards of the cloak and I really think it's just the sound that screws us over.
They really need to fix the cloak so it stops rendering beyond 10-15 meters. And the cloaking sound. I mostly kill infiltrators because of their cloaking sound or when they decide to run towards me while being cloaked.
Bad people and newbies play all classes, not just infil. The cloak in this game is easily the best implemented one I have ever seen for a competitive multiplayer environment. "Hey that guy's bad" "No, he's an infil, infils are bad" <--- (this guy's not very good, or just has poor thought skills)
mh, that was a big necro, but it seems to be still the same. in my opinion this "cloak" is one of the worst cloaks for infiltrating. it is good for long-range hiding - true, but not for infiltrating. i have seen better infiltrator-cloaks, mostly disguise-cloaks, they dont turn you completely invisible, they can be seen, its all about how you act as an "enemy". run around without shooting, run around with only a pistol (if the primary weapon uncloaks you, but not a silenced pistol), run into the wrong direction, cover near strategic object...all things that can "uncloak" you, if the right player noticed it.
Good question, not sure if I can explain in full, but I'll give it in part at least, will undoubtably forget some major aspects that make everything make sense =p Primarily because it has very strong and consistent counterplay elements; it naturally encourages the cloaker to engage in more predictable positive tactics, while at the same time providing flexibility in different environments/conditions. It has an extremely broad skill spectrum, where a noob is useless with it, someone with a bit of experience can be effective by playing safely-ish, and the benefits to people of increasingly higher skill levels present themselves constantly to a rather high skill ceiling. The cloak accomodates a number of situations and often has independent counterplay factors within them. Ie how you use it with a 6x+ bolt action is dramatically different than how you would use it with a scout rifle which is dramatically different than how you would use it with a non-pdw smg -- and for each of these scenarios how you would go about fighting them would be dramatically different as well, even though it's the same toolset. Not too sure I'm really explaining this properly, so I'll provide some different reasoning... Most multiplayer cloaks fall into 2 categories: Perfect(or near perfect) cloak, cannot shoot. Imperfect cloak, can shoot. 1 has a variety of obvious problems, it has limited counterplay potential, you'll either need a radar or visibility assist (like darklight from the first one) to have any form of consistent counterplay, and both of these present additional inconsistency and contrived stupidity. As the cloaker you can be marvellously successful sometimes and just get flat out screwed by chance or seemingly chance many other times, independent of your skill as a player. You could of course play explicitly conservatively, but this is generally viewed to "suck balls", and "not fun". Likewise from the view of the victim, they'll often feel like they didnt have much chance to prevent their deaths, which may well be true, they might have just been very unlucky in attempting to detect the enemy... basically having chance be a major factor in a mechanic that directly influences your success as a competitive game is simply not a good idea, which is why we've seen this being phased out progressively over the past 14 or so years. 2 has different but very similar problems. The imperfect cloak may be easily spotted sometimes, and other times be practically impossible to spot. Combine this with the ability to shoot, and you have effectively created cheese. I'll cut this explanation short and just say it has the same problems as 1 - it is inconsistent, and the effects are heavily dependant on factors outside of any player's reasonable control. It's important to note that changing the weapons available to this has no effect on the significance of the problems, it'll only make it more frustrating for the cloaker (if the weapons are made weaker) or the victim (if the weapons are made stronger) - this obviously only applies in class based games. Now many competitive games/gametypes have put their twists on this to try and alleviate the inconsistent or cheesy gameplay (though most just remove the cloak), but ps2's implementation seems to be the best I've seen (ignoring low graphics settings, which I lack enough experience to judge). First off it has a solid effect, which accomplishes the important tasks of looking cool, and also being rellllatively consistent across most environments and contrast levels, however still has advantages in certain scenarios, most notably against low contrast backdrops (oh, and some clear disadvantages as well, most notably high contrast splits in backdrops). The cloak is more noticeable within visibly shorter ranges, however still obscures the outline of the target, making it a viable defensive tool in scenarios where the cloaker's opponent will be required to aim. This alone has the effect of making it easy for an observant opponent to determine that there is a cloaker in the area if they are visible and at a short visible range, however it does not equate into death for this cloaker similar to what would happen to any other soldier caught in their situation. The lesser skilled player will at the lower levels (just above nubcake) , still realize that there's a cloaker, but likely have no luck tracking them, and will usually lose their target if they try and ads on them. Or of course they might just not notice them at all. Of course, you'd also not notice the cloaker if they were intelligent at moving through the area in a manner that exposed them to minimal levels of visual exposure, reducing the chance of being detected visually. Given that the cloak becomes more consistent (or "deeper" if you prefer) when you reduce your movement rate, it's my experience that it's fairly rare that you actually have to expose yourself to any potential of being seen. You can observe the enemy safely (while stationary, and in a position that's not utterly moronic), and simply choose when to move in past their likely periphery. Now if what I had described thusfar was the extent of the cloak, it shouldn't be hard to see that this would be wildly problematic once your had reached the skill level to use it the way I'm suggesting. You could simply approach players from behind without them having any realistic chance of seeing you (remember, being of above average skill/observant is NOT REALISTIC), having picked your target you would simply decloak, drop them, and fade into the shadows before the 1/20 players who would potentially notice this would attempt to find and stop you. This is of course addressed by the cloak/decloak sound (and the cloak/decloak transition time)... which is fine and dandy for close range... but how do you handle it at range? Well, at extreme ranges, you have restrictions built into the weapons; sniper rifles have sway, and bolt actions (where sway is not an issue due to follow-ups within a breath/breath recharge being impossible) require headshots. They've even changed it so that all high zoom scopes have sway now. So you don't need to hear the decloak/cloak sound as a victim (or more importantly potential victim =p) at their effective range, there's already measures in place to ensure they cant just lay down death with impunity. At medium ranges, there's alot of possibilities, though generally you can expect there to be some cover (though always alot of cover and potential angles of attack in facilities and most bases), and for reasons I'm not entirely clear on, tracers seem to be much less of a concern (this may well be imagined). Basically at certain ranges, you'd have far too easy a time exploiting the cloak against your enemy, unless there were a relatively decent number of enemies in the area to find you regardless. So if the cloak sound was overtly audible (at the point of the primary target), it'd make it highly disadvantageous when fighting larger groups of enemies, and if was too quiet it'd just be silly overall. The PS2 devs have designed it with what appears to be an unrealistic attenuation property. The cloak is quite loud within close range, quickly becomes much quieter over a short range beyond that, but remains audible for a decent range beyond, though it would very easily be lost if there was any significant noise in the environment. This allows it to be highly useful in counterplay to small groupings of players, while not gimping the infiltrator when larger groups of players are spread out across their area of operation (as while they are more likely to alert players nearer to them, they're much less likely to alert their intended target, providing a nice tradeoff for both players). Anyways, I got tired of typing bout halfway through so my explanations are nearly as concise as they should be even in their expected half-*** state, but maybe you get an idea, I don't expect to change any minds but maybe give it some thought while playing, or truly entertain the idea of a different cloak while playing and really play out the effects on the game as a whole.
Counterplay elements which are present in all scenarios where the cloak has any effect whatsoever. Counterplay elements that have variable strength which is hidden from the cloaking player, denying them the ability to make meaningful risk/benefit decisions. Since when is being predictable ever a good thing for the stealth player? Also, the cloak is completely inflexible indoors, as there exists no diversity in lighting or environment, and the refraction effect shows up most easily against detailed backgrounds such as all of the floors and walls in every base. The cloak is basically not worth using inside of a building when you consider the drawbacks of activating it. The situations where the cloak is useful are few while the situations where stealth would be desirable are many. Furthermore, the ease of detection also scales up with both the skill of your opponents and their number, and you have no way of determining the former. The better the observer is at spotting infiltrators, the fewer places exist where the cloak is a reliable tool. Using it with a bolt action or scout rifle involves abusing the ranges at which it prevents your character model from rendering, while using it with an SMG is essentially a playstyle where you capitalize on the game's clientside hit detection to uncloak and begin shooting the instant you enter someone's line of sight, appearing on their screen to fire from cloak almost immediately (and usually before they can identify you as a threat). None of the above involve avoiding detection, as being noticed is almost inevitable once you enter the field of view of an enemy player. Tribes Ascend, Global Agenda, Team Fortress 2, and Blacklight: Retribution would like to have a talk with you about how perfect cloak mechanics have been "phased out" over the past 14 years. Can you name a game other than this one to have a non-perfect cloak? Counterplay mechanics built into the gameplay of cloaks is the only way to go in a competitive shooter if the purpose of those cloaks is to get players past their enemies without being caught. Why? Because it's the only way to show both sides what the other is likely to see. Look at a player in Planetside 2 - you can't tell whether he's looking at his screen or having a bloody heart attack. All you know is that you are on his screen, and he may be paying enough attention to notice you. That's completely unfair to the cloaker no matter how you look at it. Even the smallest visual or audible cue of a detection mechanic like radar being used is enough to let you know that you might be in danger, but the ability to implement those cues is what makes stealth detection fair. 1 is not inconsistent or dependent on factors outside of the player's control at all. If the counter-stealth mechanics are implemented well, it's your fault for getting caught by the cloak because you didn't use them right. Likewise, if you stumble into radar range, don't respect the threat it poses, and get caught sneaking around, it's your fault. I'll point to TF2 just once again in this post. Spies never get caught by something they could not have expected. The only way to avoid this completely with imperfect stealth is to not use the stealth mechanic and stay out of lines of sight themselves, thus defeating the only purpose to its existence. No argument here, however, if your perfect stealth mechanic is implemented in a certain way, it can be made completely impossible to ambush enemy players from a state of invisibility without them being responsible. The fade-out time and noise we have in PS2 partially accomplishes it, but lag between clients gives players too little time to react even if they do notice the threat. Not seeing it. PS2 has the worst of both worlds. The cloak has a limited duration that doesn't scale with movement, denies you your ability to shoot, can always be detected by any player, and exists on a class which is (if not significantly) weaker than its peers for this "advantage". The "observant opponent" in your example proves to be nearly everyone in practice, and their awareness that an enemy infiltrator in the area is a failure condition of stealth, not the expected result when attempting to use it. The effect is obvious and unique enough that players are almost always certain that they have seen an infiltrator after first contact, and this only makes it easier for them to spot you when they go looking. Tracking infiltrators is not hard at all, especially since they're guaranteed to make loud cloak noises every 12 seconds or sooner. Wrong. Absolutely, objectively wrong. The cloak has three stages of visibility and only one of those is reserved for movement - the most visible. It doesn't matter whether you're sprinting, walking, or crouch-walking, you are just as easy to see as you would be in any other state of motion. Also, you have correctly identified how to sneak around in Planetside 2 - by avoiding situations where the cloak is relevant as often as possible. This does not make it a well implemented mechanic. Quite the opposite, in fact. I'm going to skip the rest of your post mostly because it deals with the noise and I have no disagreements in that regard. It's an effective mechanic to prevent ambushes, but can be heard too easily from too far away with the right hardware, and its audible range should stop exactly when it is determined that players should not be able to hear it, not leave their ability to hear it up to how attentive they are or whether they're using headphones.
