One shot kill weapons are starting to make this game unplayable.

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by karlooo, May 12, 2020.

  1. karlooo

    I'm getting sick and tired of constantly getting killed by invisible people. It's absolutely stupid, suddenly just somebody appears out of nowhere and ding, dead...No counter.
    I've noticed a crap load of cheaters recently...Big change in gameplay compared to when it was filled up with new players.
    These cheaters appear mostly in big fights, where it's harder to notice but often it's pretty obvious...There are so many of them.

    This headshot damage multiplier is just mainly serving the cheaters of Planetside 2.
    • Up x 2
  2. JibbaJabba

    It's the cloak. It hasn't been right since DX11 released. Infiltrators can fire while still cloaked on the other player's screen.

    It's bullsh*t. Not a fun mechanic.

    I can't remember the last time I saw an actual cheater though. Couple months ago maybe? I play on Emerald (all factions)
    • Up x 3
  3. Twin Suns

    Is it the one shot kill weapon or is it the invisible player?

    The title talks about one shot kill weapons but all I see is someone raging about Infils.
    • Up x 1
  4. Towie

    Probably both ! CQC Bolt Snipers...don't you just love them ?
    • Up x 2
  5. TRspy007

    There was one actually this week (on Emerald), he had some weird name, a mixture of capital (i) I and lowercase l, making his name name impossible to type unless you copy/paste, which is why I can't link him. He seems to be patrolling servers using the MANA turret hitscan cheat to farm enemies from inside objects. It wasn't during prime-time, and he took a few hours to get banned.

    That said - it's a really uncommon thing, I've already tried addressing this in another thread.


    The problem with invisibility and the 1hk weapons I've also already tried addressing in another thread.
  6. That_One_Kane_Guy

    This same logic applies to many things in this game. Just because you cannot react to something doesn't mean there is no counter.

    >AP mines can kill you before you can react...if you run through every doorway blindly.
    >Shotguns can kill you before you can react...if you charge into rooms without paying attention.
    >Friendly vehicles can roadkill you before you can react...if you step out in front of or behind them without looking.
    >A decent player with a mundane weapon can kill you before you can react...if you let him prefire you.
    etc, etc, ad nauseam.

    There are a multitude of ways to reduce your odds of being killed by an infiltrator. "Don't stand still" being the easiest and most oft-repeated one, followed by "don't run in a straight line directly at him", or "don't charge directly into his motion sensors". Use smoke. Use cover. Don't keep poking your head out in the same spot. And so on. These are all good practices in general, but they go a long way towards keeping your head on your shoulders.

    At the risk of appearing condescending, I will point out that 'fewer new players' does not suddenly = 'cheaters', it just means you aren't fighting what amounts to high-functioning bots anymore.
    Also according to you these cheats are blatant and subtle and widespread? They can't be all of these things at once.

    This is explicitly false.
    Regardless, you fix cheats with anti-cheat. You do not change game mechanics to make the cheats less effective. That is like putting a band-aid on a broken arm.

    They definitely introduced new bugs to the cloak with DX11, but the 'fire while cloaked' thing has been around for longer than that. It's not consistent, though which makes me think it has something to do with the player's connection rather than the game engine.

    The last time I saw a cheater in this game it was someone teleporting around in a MAX suit. I can't remember the last time I saw someone I even suspected of 'botting.
    • Up x 1
  7. Illtempered

    quit yer ****** cryin and git gud
  8. JibbaJabba


    Cloak is dependent upon outbound latency from the infil + server latency + inbound on the target + fade rate of the client graphics.

    They monkeyed with that last bit when DX11 came out, it was somewhat unavoidable I think. Some tuning was required to mimick the original experience and I think they got this wrong.

    It makes the decloak begin late on the targets screen rather than begin the moment the trigger is pulled.

    This is then combined with the remaining factors which have always been present. Those that seemed to decloak a bit late before now are so pronounced that they outright fire and kill you while still fully invisible. This was super rare before and brought thoughts of cheating. It's common now.
    • Up x 3
  9. Yellow Rug

    Infiltrators are annoying, yes, but needed. I personally have almost never played with a sniper in over 550 hours, but their presence is essential on the battlefield. Basically they make fights less stagnant and they make people move.
    e.g. Sometimes, there is just a player that is camped perfectly in a rock and can't be smoked out. Bang, an infiltrator comes and makes sure that the person either pushes forward or finds another cover. If it wasn't for the sniper, that person would have been a one man turret that just prevents any advancement of the battle.
    • Up x 1
  10. Crayv

    Now imagine mines are cloaked and mineguard/flak has been removed. That's what dying to an Infil with BASR feels like. Whether you live or die in completely out of your hands. Sure you can treat every step like their is potentially a mine in front of you but that isn't a feasible or fun way to play, just like it isn't fun or feasible to always act like an infil has me in his sights because I never know when one might.

    Situational awareness is meaningless (at range it is full invis) and in the event that the infil does miss there isn't much you can do except keep going because you likely have to run across an open field to even get to him. Firing back is pointless at most you may just convince him duck behind cover for a second before he tries shoot you again. Then when you do get close there is still the chance he may just spin around and get a lucky quick scope headshot on you and still kill you.

    The KPM for the infil might not be great but the bonus from headshots, domination, marksman, and killstreak all add up to a disproportionately high reward to risk style of play. Then with high precision gaming mice making it easier than ever, the "one hit kill" sniper philosophy feels more like an out of place relic of the past.
    • Up x 2
  11. Scroffel5

    It is a connection problem, but people don't listen to me. If the devs raised pings by using a theoretically simple script to raise every super low ping player to, say, 100 ms while leaving the higher pinged players alone, the effects of the cloak would be reduced.
  12. Werkitten

    There is no problem with sniper rifles. The victim feels as if the sniper hits the head with every shot, in fact, this is not even approximately true, before this hit, he, with a high probability, missed several times, without causing any damage.
    As for invisibility, this is the most questionable thing in this game. Or rather, how it is implemented.
    Personally, I had no problems with this, much more often I am killed by heavy stormtroopers, who kill in a fraction of a second before they appear on the screen (and it is always the same VS with the auraxian LMG. I think it's not so difficult to get an auraxis with such a superpower, But of course it's a skill and nothing but a skill (sarcasm)).
    Infiltrators personally irritate me less, since I can often shoot first when they still think they are invisible, this reduces the impact of bad network code.

    However, the developers chose the most boring and annoying of all the disguise options. This game is generally bad with camouflage.
  13. Somentine

    No it wouldn't, and you can test that out yourself with a single other person while using a VPN.

    The further away each player's ping, the more pronounced the effect; if everyone was playing with 30 ping it would still be noticeable, but far less so.
  14. Scroffel5

    Dude, that is exactly what I am saying. Legit, that is EXACTLY what I am saying. However, everyone CAN NOT PLAY with 30 ping. You can't make your players pings lower, but you can make everyone take longer to communicate with the server. If a person is playing at 30 ping and another person is playing at 200, the effect would be pretty noticeable, because on their screen they have already killed you. However, cloaking is serverside, right? I know that if my internet spikes or something, I can't uncloak until it stabilizes, and I may already be dead before then. But if the gap of pings isn't so big, it would be less noticeable.
  15. That_One_Kane_Guy

    Give me a break. Completely out of your hands? Why move at all then? Why use cover? Why even bother playing?

    Did you want an iron-clad way to keep from ever dying to a sniper ever? Did you want an 'Infiltrator-Guard' Implant that holds your hand and shows you every infiltrator in a 100m radius? Would you also like an alarm bell to ring whenever a tank looks at you or a shotgun gets too close? Did you forget that death being constant, unavoidable and meaningless has been a running theme for this title literally from the beginning?

    I said, and I quote:
    Stating that it isn't feasible to do this all the time is like stating that it isn't feasible to wear your seatbelt when you drive because it won't help if you get shot.

    If it makes you feel better, you can even do these things reactively. If you die once to a sniper because you were standing still so what? Respawning is free, now you know he's there and can take steps to avoid dying to him again. Same with any weapon type. If I'm killed by a shotgun Light Assault hanging out around a tower, when I respawn I don't run straight back into CQ with him saying "please kill my dumb*** a second time".

    By your logic Shotguns are too strong because they win almost every time if both players start in close quarters, Air is too weak since they get hardly any kills in a Biolab fight and C4 fairies are pointless since the tank wins every 1v1 if both start 100m away facing each other. If we're going to cherry pick obviously tilted scenarios to support our arguments we will get exactly nowhere. A single player charging a single infiltrator across an open field not representative of the average engagement with that class in this game. If it is for you then your problem has nothing to do with the class.

    Situational awareness is more than just what you can see. The majority of the time you are clued in via audio that an Infiltrator is about well before he is in line of sight. If you know he is there, you can take the aforementioned steps to avoid getting domed. If he's so far away that you had no cues whatsoever and he still kills you he either got lucky or you were asking for it.

    Speaking of luck, is that really where you want to take this now? 'It's not fair because he might get lucky and headshot me in close quarters' What if you get lucky and kill him in one shot/burst with one of the several pistols in the game that can do so? What if you both get lucky and a VS drops an Orbital Strike on both of your dumb***** for having a stupid 1v1 in the middle of nowhere?
    I see lots of assertions with no proof. This sounds an awful lot like grasping at straws to find reasons to outlaw things you don't like.
    • Up x 1
  16. Somentine

    No, you're looking at it like 100 ping from two different players is 'closer', when it is actually 'further'.

    There does seem to be a need for abilities to be confirmed by the server, but there is still delay to the other players - otherwise a 100 ping infil would de-cloak on a 30 ping player's screen before the 100 ping player, and that just isn't true. How it probably works is that there is a request to de-cloak, the server then sends it back and says okay you can de-cloak, then the player sends okay i'm de-cloaked back to the server, and the server then sends it to other players that they have de-cloaked... essentially, it is still clientside.

    The issue of being killed goes both ways - if a 30 ping player turns a corner and shoots a 100 ping player, there is ~65 ms before the 100 ping player even gets the information. If a 100 ping player turns a corner and shoots a 30 ping player, there is still ~65 ms delay before the 30 ping player even gets the information.
    • Up x 1
  17. Werkitten

    If it worked that way, the problem wouldn't exist. Even a ping of 100 is significantly less than the average human reaction time, and this delay is clearly not enough to make several shots to the head before you appear on the screen of the enemy.
    I don't know how the technical part of this game works, but the delay is clearly much greater than the ping value that you are shown if you click TAB.
    For some reason, it is in this game that ping and FPS affect more than in other shooters.
    When you play with low FPS it looks like the game is running well, no visual lags, but everyone around you is running faster than you and shooting faster. It is worth raising the FPS to a value above 60 and you immediately improve your shooting accuracy, and your opponents suddenly stop playing super sonic.
    I suspect that at very high FPS values, this effect is even stronger and that is why some players get the opportunity to shoot at static targets, although target, for their part, think that they are running somewhere.
  18. DarkStarAnubis

    I understand the frustration - But aside from the problems introduced by DX11 (cloak less visibile and de-cloaking mechanism) and the ever-present net delay there are counters.

    Each and every time I have been killed by invisible cloakers (be them stalkers with sidearm/knives or long-range snipers) it is because I have made some mistake.

    To apply those counters needs discipline. if you want to play without using those counters then it is your choice, but do not say there aren't. There are and are very simple:

    1) always move. Even ballooning/ADADing on the spot is better than standing still
    2) pay attention to the environment. The minimap is your friend
    3) don't remain isolated for long unless you are an LA or have Catlike 5 so you can move in 3D
  19. Somentine


    A few things:
    - Ping is round trip.
    - The further away you are from the server, the longer your packets take to reach, the more chances that you will lose your packet at a hop.
    - The ping from the TAB screen is the average over 5 seconds.
    - FPS definitely directly affects both your aim (recoil, control, precision) and your reaction time.
    - Average gamer reaction time is faster than the human average, but that is under specific conditions. When you don't even suspect something, you react far slower to it... typically.

    I mean, as much as I think cloak has problems, including this, realistically the infil only gets a bullet (or two/three off if high ROF) before you can see them... and tracers in this game aren't the most reliable anyway.
  20. Werkitten

    No, you are very wrong about that. Just look at the videos taken by players with high KD. Their speed of action and reaction is about the same as the others, the difference is extremely small.
    This difference does not even approximate the ratio of results that we observe in practice.

    Even when shooting from a real weapon, a few thousand shots are enough to fully adapt and the further difference in results with a professional will be a negligible percentage, or only manifest itself in difficult conditions (big distance, wind etc). And this is much more difficult than quickly pointing the mouse, sitting in a comfortable chair.

    I repeat that personally I have Planetside is the only game that has such problems. I doubt that the players here are much superior to the players in other shooters. This problem has a solution already implemented in other games, in the form of linking the calculations of actions to real time, but here apparently the developers decided not to bother. It is a blatant slapdash attitude to the technical component and nothing more.