I was looking forward to Infils here until I started out and found that their survivability (not counting glitches), is pretty piss poor for anything but sniping. But if they're sniping they're not doing much infiltrating. Now, that isn't to say I haven't gone on any killing sprees. Scout rifle has gotten me a decent number of kills, but in general it is overly lacking as a class... Here's my proposal: Across the Board: Class Passive Effect, +5-10% Run Speed & Fall Damage Reduction/Height before fall Damage is taken. Cloak sound slightly less audible. (Obvious fix to low settings making cloakers visible.) Primary Weapons- (Will be a function of the Cloak) Side Arm - No Change Tool - Keep Recon Tool, Add REK Option for Vehicle Jacking, Add T-REK for E-War like Abilities. Tools are NOT CLOAK DEPENDENT. Melee - N/A* Ability - 3 Cloaks: 1) Hunter Cloak - (as it exists + Variable Zoom Range.) So whatever scope you have on your rifle, you can zoom in or out 2x (Max is still 12x). This is a bit like PS1s variable zoom which everyone had. (I know this removes the need of the 12x scope. Small price to pay IMO). This zoom extends to all scoped weapons for Hunters. 2) Stalker Cloak - Cloak energy only expended while moving. (3 Ranks; 150, 350, 500 certs) - Investing more ranks into it reduces damage while cloaked. - Must de-cloak to fire. - Cannot use Sniper Rifles/SMGs. Scout Rifles Allowed. (SMGs when they get nerfed). - +1 extra magazine capacity per rank invested. 3) Infiltrator Cloak - Perma Cloak as PS1. (1 Rank - 1000 Certs). - No Primary Weapon Allowed. (*Special) - *Can Knife while cloaked. Firing Side-Arm will de-cloak. Must wait 3-Seconds to Cloak Again. - *Double Utility Capacity. +1 Special Grenade Capacity. (Sticky or EMP only) Suit: - Nanite-Cloak Armor to Remain as is. Buff efficiency. - Flak Armor - As other classes - Inertial Dampeners - Grants Increasing fall damage resistance and/or greater height prior to taking fall damage. Grenades - Largely to Remain as is. Buff Sticky radius slightly. Buff EMP effects greatly. Utility - To remain as is except for *Infiltrator ability. Disclaimer: All Numbers and variables are for examples purposes only and can vary for balance purposes. Yay, Nay, Questions, Comments, Concerns, Tweaks. Have at it.
A few things i dislike here, in the case of balance: I remain in my belief that the infiltrator should not have a weapon agaisnt vehicles, simply because it is a very unique class that is not intended for direct confrontation. Their support in taking down enemy armor should be in the neutralization of the armor-support, nto direct damage/neutralization of the armor itself. As for the Stalker Cloak, what level of invisibility would you want with it? Similar to that of the current Hunter? If you give them SMGs and Scout Rifles, there definetly needs to be something to balance it out here. Big no. It simply is not balanced. It worked in PS1, because the TTK was much mugh higher. It would not work in PS2, where it is less than half a second.
Destroying or stealing vehicles isn't strictly necessary, but motivating drivers to leave their vehicles and fight us (by punishing them for not doing so) strikes me as a perfectly reasonable compromise. Also, Sunderers are too important for us to have no interaction with them. We should be able to mess with their spawn ability or hack their supply terminals.
This is my only issue with your opinion...If it's invisible, it's not seen. There is no "Level" of invisibility because then it wouldn't be invisible now would it? TRANSPARENCY level will be the same across the board. ie...Invisible in all cases (Edit: when not moving obviously). The idea behind the 3 cloaks being they require a different play-style for maximum effect and put the infiltrator, back in it's original role if the user so chooses. - Ranged sniper (as is) - Midranged Attacker to allow survivability in CQC. - Infiltration for sabotage and quiet kills. As for attacking from cloak (Infiltrator cloak only), I don't think that's imbalanced just like you think it is, but it can wait till implants get re-implemented on the roadmap. Then I'm sure Darklight will make a come back and then it's no longer an issue.
I'd prefer only two cloaks, and be able to knife out of either one with a OHK. The fact you can't do this right now is unbelievable. There's been a lot of good suggestions in the infiltrator revamp thread, the problem is, there is so many good ideas, and the class needs such a large revamp, that deciding what to do exactly is overwhelming. I do agree with most of what you posted tho! We definitely need some sort of vehicle counter.
I can't edit first post anymore, but i completely forgot about PS1 cloakers with "Boomers." and while I don't disagree with you there, it's quite a balance issue to give infils C4 or Tanks mines. However, if they fix EMP nades to work as they did in PS1 that could easily be a vehicle deterrent.
I think the same Ztiller. Infiltrators are only anti-infantry soldiers, we're not supposed to harm vehicles even it sounds unfair and even if Max are in this case considered like walking vehicles. What I'd love to see is actually EMP grenades slowing down vehicles and / or jamming their weapons. I would at least have 1) a decent way to escape vehicles when they spot me and get too close 2) a good support weapon: I debuff the vehicle, then the rest of the team will eventually do the job. And BTW EMP should drain nanites pool, preventing everyone (Max Included) from using their special abilities while affected: Infiltrators cloaking device, jetpack, nanites shield etc. should be blocked for a few seconds. But also Decoy Grenades need love. They're useless. As far as I see it the should dramatically reduce the resource cost, or as alternative fix the effect (red blip on minimap not appearing today) and add a holographic effect of a fake Infiltrator. That would justify 150 certs and 50 resources. Regarding the OP. 1) More cloaking variants are probably very close. Personally I keep my fingers crossed for the original Stalker we had during beta, which was meant to work a device for slow-paced infiltration and a very a little aggressive play-style. I just wonder if that would be balanced together with the new heavy pistols they added. Probably the answer is NO. 2) Inertial Dampeners: VERY interesting. Probably we won't need because this stuff will come in the game as bionic implants (available to everyone). 3) Knife and pistol while cloaked I say, that would be seriously unbalanced. On the other hand I hope they will reintroduce a certification that we at the end of Beta, which was Melee Boost. That actually increased melee damage making the knive a better weapon. One more comment: at the moment I would just be satisftied if they decided to fix the turret hacking and the recon dart.
Infiltrators are pretty good though, I've been playing them a lot more than any other class recently (SMG inf). There's no need to knife when cloaked, this will just lead to inf. himself being nerfed. However, I do hope they run faster, be more resistant to fall damage, and buff their EMP grenade a lot.
As much as I would love to knife while cloaked I hope they don't introduce it. It would be so OP. Imagine a tower fight, swoosh swoosh swoosh, everybody is dead by the invisible enemy.
As an added negative to some of OP's cloaks, how about if you cloak you turn off your shields? Uncloaking re-enables shields but they have to regen from 0.
Assuming my Stalker cloak, that's not a bad idea. I know i posted a full revamp, which included what you mentioned, but even little things like that can really begin to set the infil apart. Now that you mention Inertial Dampeners as an implant, You've just opened up the door to Common Pool and Class Specific Implants. Interesting indeed. But I also agree, before anything is done, they needa fix what's currently there with Recon darts, cloak visibility on low settings etc. I thought I mentioned this, any sort of attack while cloaked would be dependent on a Darklight implant being available. Otherwise, I'm with you. As things stand it would be OP. EDIT: And I think we're all in agreement, a working EMP nade ala PS1, which would disable or hamper vehicles, would be welcome to the class.
What about a suicide cloak ? (a C4 vest) You render as a enemy and infiltrate a base and run up on top the flight decks and let out a few zealot muslim screams by the maxes and enginners and blow yourself up ? At that point you gain the radius deaths it causes for XP. Or A infiltrator teleport pad with a squad beacon like timer. You get deployment bonus and provide a distraction for the sunders to move in closer that keep getting blown up?
For sure, but then again I don't think medics should have C4 either. I was mainly getting at EMP grenades actually working against vehicles (heck, in BF2142 they were specifically anti-vehicle), and being able to possibly hack vehicles. As for knifing....the reason I offered to knife out of cloak is that the noise is so loud when you decloak that it is worthless to sneak up behind somebody with the cloak, since they'll just hear you. For a sneaky class, this makes no sense. So either make it so that you can knife out of cloak (doing so will break cloak, obviously, and make the loud noise, so you'd have to be smart about it), or kill some of the noise or something so that people who are good enough to get behind guys can get rewarded for doing so. In Bf212, I could take out entire squads by cloaking up behind them, decloaking, then proceeding to backstab each one of them. The knife only took one hit too, which made it a lot better than the PS2 knife. I feel like knifing out of cloak wouldn't be OP because the cloak is so poor right now.
Not quite sure I follow: Are you asking to be able to OHK with the cloak off, or are you saying that knives should break the cloak...not turn off cloak then knife? If the 1st, perfectly fine under infiltration cloak...assuming Darklight doesn't make a comeback. If darklight does make a comeback, it makes infiltrators, infiltrators again. Though i guess something can be done to 2HK from within cloak and OHK with cloak turned off? I'm not to keen on knives breaking cloak however unless it was a 2HK.
REK T-REK E-War Please write out Acronyms or Jargon. Or write them out in parenthesis after using them the first time. Or write them out the first time, then stick the Acronym or Jargon in parenthesis after them. I don't know what they mean. I looked up REK in Google. Is it "Remote Equipment Kit"? I couldn't find "T-REK". What are "E-War Abilities"? I definitely want the Cloak "fixed". As in, I want it consistently visible across graphic settings. And I want it consistently visible at day and night. (more on the night vs. day problem later) Run Speed and Damage Fall off are neat. But: 1) do we need them? 2) would we rather have something else? 3) would it anger everyone else and get us nerfed? Specifically I think Fall Damage Reduction fits into #1 and 2. And Run Speed fits into #3. NOTE: the three questions above should as a rule be applied to any potential buff to the class. I really like the idea of Variable Scopes or Swapping Scopes in the field. Just like I like the idea of adding/removing Suppressor in the field. However, I am not sure they should be tied only to specific Ability slots. Is the intent to make the Hunter Cloak the "Sniper Cloak"? Which is ok, and could be good. But if you make a Cloak for each role, then you have some things to worry about: 1) makes it much harder for new players who have to pay a ton just to play in each Classes different roles (already a problem with SMGs SC/Cert prices) 2) you have to make sure that each Cloak sucks enough in some cases, so that players just don't all use 1 of them all the time because it's just better in almost all cases. (like it is now with Hunter vs. Nano-Armor Cloaks) Is this the CQC Cloak? Is this the Infiltration Cloak? (blow up Generators, Hack Terminals, etc.) I'm all for added Suit Slots, as long as they fit a role and players would choose them for that role. Would players choose Inertial Dempeners? Maybe some Pilots? (if it was like Ejection System) Right now the most used Suits for Infiltrators seem to be: Flak Armor (Level 3+) Nanoweave Armor (Level 5) Ammunition Belt With probably most (of those who know what the suit difference provide) using Flak Armor (3+), unless they've Certed out to Nanoweave (5). Infiltrators already have a weapon against Vehciles: Turrets. Infiltrators have 4 options for dealing with Vehicles: 1) Turret (Hack if needed) 2) Terminal: Change Class 3) Spot: if allies nearby with ability to kill them (or Squad chat if players have that option) 4) Run Away, Re-Deploy, Log Out, Ignore Them, Hide, etc. I know many players vibe with the "elegant" notion of Infiltartors having limited ways to deal with Vehicles. But it's a bad idea in this game at a Game Design level. Why? 1) it leads to Infiltrators avoiding Vehicles, causing them not to interact with each other 2) it leads to people who prefer playing as an Infiltrator to have to switch out of their class to handle common situations 3) it leads to Infiltrators selectively choosing where to play in order to have better access to their 4 options listed above All of these lead to crappy gameplay. For #1, it's literally making a system where players avoid each other (and when they do meet, it's just farming with no sense of fun interactive gameplay). For #2, it's making the game less fun for players (who WANT to play their favorite class, not switch into playing what they don't want just to avoid failure). For #3, it's making a system where players avoid or cherry pick content to maximize their OP level. I see a lot of Infiltrators flock to areas with Turrets and Towers. I see a lot of Infiltrators doing well in CQC at night. This is because players are learning to go where they can get the most power for their character. This is ok in a single player or random group game, it is bad in a game where players are supposed to cluster together across all types of content, all over the map. We don't want a game where players check the in-game time to see if it's night so they can CQC Rampage, but log out and play something else if it's now. We don't want a game where Infiltrators stick to Towers, Stations, and Plants or nighttime for other bases or just Snipe. This is huge. Sunderers are consistently the key to attacking bases (and stopping that attack). Since Infiltrators have no way to deal with them, this is a major knock on them when determining their value to squads, outfits, or just the impact in a given engagement. Infiltrators CAN destroy Squad Beacons. And that can be huge. Imagine how stupid it would be to choose one of the classes and make it so they can't destroy Squad Beacons. They'd find them on the battlefield and just stare at em. I don't care HOW you make Infiltrators able to affect Sundereres, but until they can it's a major Game Design hole that makes them uniquely impotent in a key area of the game. Which puts a major dampener on their value on the battlefield.
Something I used to do constantly prior to the spawn change was snipe people as they respawned at the Sunderer. It wasn't an effective solution as people would often get by, but it did hamper the attack efforts of the opposing team. Maybe do something with this?
