So I have a friend who came back to the game after a 2 year break. You know the first thing he said?

After playing for 4 or 5 hours :

To which I said, "yup, one of the million other things where you can blame DB".

Funny thing is, I actually made a thread some time ago called "Infiltrator Side 2" whining about this.

Now that they got awesome shot gun that shoots both at short and longer range, get ready to welcome more infiltrators!

I blame the addition of SMGs, way back when.

Hyper inflation of the class ever since.

Infiltrator is a class that lets you get a decent kdr with very little effort. Either you snipe, run with a SMG, or go around with a Commissioner + AP mines, it's not complicated to kill some.

So what? Despite many claiming kdr means nothing a huge part of ps2 players are totally kdr driven. Since there is no clear victory condition, and no other stats to measure a player's skill, many just focus on kills and put everything else in the background.

The whole Directives system is around farming kills. And imo it has always been a problem.

But but...HA is the broken over powered class! WHAT DO YOU MEAN EVERYONE PLAYS INFLATOR!?!

Uh huh.

I doesn't feel like there's been an inflation of Infiltrators in a long time, actually. Even if that were the case, why should it matter? It's one of only six five Infantry classes and the MAX.

Weird, I'd imagine a new/returning player would take more issue with the class that has more HP and better AV/AA options with no cost or downsides. I guess that's just me.

I think it's funny how Infiltrator went from being a long-range class to an all-out CQB cheese class that tons of people play. From SMGs to Commissioners to knives... it's just become ridiculous.

Since we can't see them all, it makes you wonder how many there are at any given battle.

So, I did something recently, I sat in a tree above my sunderer in a Zerg battle for a while to see how many teammates spawned infiltrator and, by my estimate, 1 in 4 either spawned as or re-equipped to an infiltrator. I wasn't hard counting, but just keeping a detailed mental note.

Which means, at any given time, based on my detailed yet brief anecdotal count, 1/4 of the entire server is facking invisible. We can't see 25% of the frucking playerbase because they are all cloakers.

So next time you think the server is empty, think again, they're all ficking invisible.

Just need a few more infiltrator buffs or new infiltrator toys to reach 50%.

I take it, that if a hand full wanting to do field recon, long ranged engagement, or hunting down cloakers with sensor darts is meant to be a rare thing in a zerg battle.
Let alone, if that was against a Zerg, cloaks allow you to actually get in range to do some damage if the enemy has a place locked down & braced against LA's.

If I die to a well fortified position, or just go to a battle, I get an Infil & scout it out.
Then I know the best class, best position, and generalized number of opponents before engaging again.
Other times, it's to get a Sniper rifle, to pick off some heavy, engie, LA or infil perched somewhere so they aren't able to use the high ground.

If a base is near or on a Cliff, or has buildings, you'll see a lot of Light Assaults.
Does this mean they are overly populated in general, due to the situation of a battle? likely not.

A battle dictates the classes used, in terms of numbers.
If LA is near useless for a base or assault, will you see **** loads or near zero? Likely near zero.
If it is full of corners, doorways , covered paths and more, do you think to see Heavies or Infils? Infils would be more effective in getting around, but not holding ground.
If there is a **** load of vehicles, You'll see more engineers & heavies than most.

Situational advantages.
Without the context of the battle, might as well say most of the population is whatever flavor of the month takes your fancy.

Well, consider that the Cloak is an effective tool.
Would you rather it was a dead class beyond Sniper Rifles (where it gets complaints of not helping one bit), while everyone uses SMGs & commies as a Heavy instead?

Considering that without having any closer-range options, an Infil either stayed away or was useless in smaller sized fights, You'd think it was practical to have the recon class not literally be impaired the moment it wasn't an open field with hills.

A lot of weaker player play Infiltrator. Cause it lets you avoid getting caught in heads-up fights you will lose. Infil lets the player better dictate the terms of the engagement. Infil is also great for traveling or moving around a base: I drive my Sunderer as a Stalker Infil because I can hop out and survive and go get a new Sunderer from a nearby Termnal if I get engaged by anything too deadly.

HA is kinda like ESF in that the better skilled you are the more powerful it is. I suck at aim, so I skip playing HA most the time except as G2A, long range Ground AV, and Infantry fights where there is no flanking and it's just a narrow corridor meat grinder. I fear HA most of all the Infantry.

Infil. Infil? The class with a camouflage you can see through with practice? That has no in-combat advantage?
Not the heavy Assault with a second Shield on demand, that can be reflex activated in combat to negate even an ambush?
My gods man.

You suck at aim, so you don't play HA, which has the most rapid-fire weaponry?
All the infil has the heavy doesn't is the accuracy required sniper rifles for weaponry.

I hope you weren't going to say "I'm better with the Infil's weaponry" for accuracy, as my gods.
SMGs are also close-ranged, and need some degree of accuracy or you die.

Infil camo works better the farther our you are from target. So if you flank a player, their buddy can't see you coming, and you can then take out the player you are flanking.

Cloak is at its worst when you are moving straight at the target in close range. It's at it's best the farther you get from an opponent and the less out of direct sight.

And Stalker is it's own thing (2-hit snipe pistole, etc.). Same as long range OHK sniping.

Again, it offers Infils methods of play that give them much more options to dictate terms of battles than other classes (except for LA at times).

The only CQC Infil I do well at are ones that are in engagements with good flanking and where I use a very fast TTK weapon that can unload and kill at close very range regardless of their shield and dance. And in engagements where Dart/Recon devices aren't active. It also helps that as Infil I can put that Dart/Recon device out and know where they are in cases where they don't have the same.

Again, HA is kinda like ESF. Kinda. The more skilled player is gonna win in a heads-up situation, and HA will find itself stumbling into a lot of heads-up situations. And unlike the ESF, HA has a much greater emphasis on aim skill winning. And my aim skill is terrible.

I do well in ESF only because my dodge skill is pretty good (compared to most other ESF players) and ESF vs. ESF puts a lot of emphasis on dodge skill. Though my poor ESF aim skill still does hamper me vs. enemy ESF. ESF vs. ESF is pretty much the only matchup that matters for keeping an ESF alive most the time.

Enemy HAs typically will out TTK me in heads-up fights. Even consistently in ones in which I fire first. That better TTK is due to their better aim: more hits on target, more headshots on target. So rather than choose to be in fights I will typically lose, I move to fights where I can do better. Often time as Infil I will just skip firing on an HA entirely, in cases wher I would shoot at a non-HA/non-MAX Infantry.

Again, Infil is better at some evasion and at some measure of succeeding in landing a flanking.

If you saw how much I died as HA vs. HA, and the conditions, you would understand why I play Infil instead.

Maybe I am just very good at evasion/surprise too.

I use Infil SMGs like knives: point blank spam.

I am decent with non-moving opponent OHK or line-up-and-hose kills, but I find that a different kind of aim skill (mostly to do with setup and choice of where to shoot at under very different conditions). Also, I typically avoid Sniper role because I don't find as many engagements to use it in these days as opposed to back years ago when Infantry didn't just stick around bases.

This requires distance, and skills usually not found on inferior players, whom could just press "F" and the fire button.
After all, stalking a target, ensuring the cloak isn't rendered visible, and then to close the distance isn't simple.
And a sniper rifle, requires having aim which in turn is much easier to use with an LMG.

The cloak isn't able to assist when surprised, nor aid in direct combat, it requires thought.
The shield does not.
That was the point being made by me; Infil is harder than Heavy Assault...

If your aim sucks ***, infil is more punishing.
If your reaction speed sucks, again infil is more punishing.
If your tactical mind isn't the grandest, straight-up fights are not the Infil's fights with less health.

All these traits require some forethought, practice & similar.
As opposed to reactionary press-the-shield-button.
Infiltrator isn't easier than heavy assault.
If it was, you wouldn't have bloody dozens of idiots thinking cloak was actual invisibility 5 meters from opponents.
The same idiot can press "F" and shield up, allowing even the ****test aim to hit the mark, lol.

An ESF while having panic buttons, requires a level of skill to begin to use.
A heavy, is the simplest class in the entire game.
Vehicle; You got a launcher for that.
Infantry; Point LMG.
Engaged? Press F.
Something scared the **** outa you? Press F.

Infil, I dare you to cloak as a reaction; The sounds state you exist, and points to you.
The cloak is, by your own words, better at a distance, and is able to be seen.

Inferior players, wouldn't be able to use the lowest health class, dependent on ambush & long-range weaponry better or easier than the Heavy Assault.
There is a reason, HA is the most common class; Inferior, superior, moderate, average, all can use it perfectly well in 5 seconds.

And without that better aim, said player would fail hard at Infiltrator not better.
You need that aim at least, to not die to heavies while Infiltrator in all irony.

You skip firing on HA, you find HA the most dangerous.
For using a class apparently used by inferiors, you seem to be incapable of engaging the most common class.
The class with universal weaponry, that only gets more lethal with aim not requiring it.
You get the hint?
You called Infiltrator, a class used by Inferiors, yet everything you say about it needing, would make them superior at any other class; Those people playing HA would be far more dangerous, due to being able to use infiltrator without it being suicide.

The Heavy Assault is the simplest class to operate, and has the widest tool-box for handling threats.
The infiltrator has one of the most restricted boxes of tools, all of which in general require skill, aim or a combo of the two extremely.

With this logic, Infiltrator can't be used by Inferiors
- As it provides no incentive, anything done with HA is easier, faster, safer, rewards any thought rather than requires it.

Like my entire post is about How you said this:



If infiltrator was played by 'weaker' players, it should require less not more skill to even be used.
The "weaker" players would be far more effective as Heavy Assault, as any of the skill needed to use infil translates to better results as a Heavy Assault.
Skills as a heavy, do not translate back to better results on infiltrator.
At all.

Perhaps you should help him with tips re: how to deal with Infiltrators.

Correct.

Infil helps me better evade HAs at non-CQC. And I do.

I use to agree with you that HA was the most played (non-vehicle driver class) because it was the best for Infantry AI brawling. But I was reacting to info here that Infil was currently in wide use. Anyone have the numbers on usage by Class?

Are there any good data sites for PS2 left?

If HA is still the dominant Infantry class, then I agree with what you've said. However, if we are seeing the trend to play Infil instead, I stick with what I said.

Aret most the players of Infiltrators either lower level players OR higher level players using them in niche roles?

If there are a lot of Infils, then why do you think there are a lot of Infils? Why are they being used? Is it high level players using them? Was the idea they are being used a lot incorrect?

And HA will still lose to better skilled HA. Easy to use does not mean easy to get good results. Especially in an aged game plagued by lots of high experience/skill players.

ESF has a long learning curve, but a lot of getting decent with it is more figuring out how to control it (made harder because it's [a] non-intuitive, and sudden and violent death when used in-game outside of VR/Warpgate), and not actually dexterity skills. Though the dexterity skills come into play at the high end of ESF, you can beat most ESF without it.

With HA, because there is less learning curve to use it, and because it has such massive instant-damage-mitigation abilities, it's much more about dexterity skills. Similar to facing a high end ESF player, who can use damage mitigation to survive an alpha strike and then turn and out TTK their opponent.

Infil has a ton of tools. It just depends what you want done. As I said, I prefer Infil when driving Sundy ouside zergs.

HA has a bad time selecting the fights they get in. They tend to stumble into foes. Lots of heads-up and closer range fights. So if you lose heads-up and closer range fights, it's not a good class for players for that.

Infil and Heavy do better at different gameplays. A player who is poor at HA play may do better at Infil play.

HA is great when other players are playing non-HA. But if everyone in the front lines is HA, then it's not so great if they have better aim/dodge/TTK skill than you.

Seeing as we've said the same thing to each other over and over, I don't think we are gonna agree with each other. Apparently we just think very different on this. I'll take it as a lesson to keep my opinion more open in terms of where Infil and HA stand for new players, and that I might be totally wrong.

How is that helping?

A statistic showed that infiltrator is the Third most played class.

Heavys populate 25% of playerbase and then there is Engineer.

Maybe your friend should be less biassed.

First heavies were OP and everyone pulled heavy. Now people complain about how many infils are running around.We heard how light assaults were OP with new rocket rifle and c4 combined.Everyone plays a different class or chose to just play one.Different situations require people to change classes. Depends on what a person is feeling to be.Theres a reason why running with a group of friendly infils mixed into the battle have recon tools to help spot some of those unlucky infils that accidently start running instead of crouching that will make them appear on radar for others to see and pop our flashlights out and spot em.I dont have a hard time with infils at all.Just be aware of your surroundings and the sounds that infils make before running into one unexpectedly.Most the time long range infils miss quick often with sniper bullets and gives you and idea were to take cover or flank them to take them out.

It's amusing to see how many of these arguments boil down to basically naked assertions of "mine is the only valid skillset, and any who do not engage me on those grounds are inferior players".

Personally I'd be satisfied with a solid 1.0 KD. I just love the lonewolf type class. I can see the appeal, and since so many are KD driven it's not usually believed that 'i just love this type of class.'

Points valid just stated about my appeal. And i suck infil anyway.

It's a side effect of playing the game and thinking that nobody has your back. If nobody has your back you might as well go see if anyone is watching the backs on the other team.

SMG infiltrator does struggle against a HA in a head on fight even if their aim is better. Although someone who has mastered CQ bolt action could be a nightmare to deal with.

Too often the problem with fighting infiltrators is that they are in the middle of a group of oblivious friendlies so you can't deal with them without team killing. Generally there are just lots of infiltrators everywhere making sure you can not be sure that any angle is safe. It is annoying.