Let me begin by stating that I absolutely hate contributing to the mass of topics that complain about the Infiltrator being victimized, underpowered, or bugged out in some way. That being said, I am relatively certain that the issue I am pointing out is legitimately unintended; an issue that SOE can respond to without disrupting the intended balance of their game; an issue that I've yet to see anyone else point out already. We can all agree that a better cloak would be really nice, but honestly, I just want the existing one to do what it's intended to. It's supposed to reflect everything behind it to simulate invisibility - and yet, there are several scenery objects that don't appear through a cloak; to be specific, almost every single thing that is a lit 'holographic' projection. Take terminals, as an example; you don't mimic them in your cloak. Empire holo-banners? No, you're a silhouette which shows up as the color of whatever is behind the banner. Greenish-blue scenery screens that are at head-level in almost every minor building? Same thing; you mimic what's behind the screen, not the screen itself. (Sorry this one isn't the best example, I'll try to replace it later with a shot of one of the larger screens that covers most of a wall) I've also witnessed this issue with spawn-room door shields, the light-blue spawn tube shields, the ammo or repair icon on a sunderer, and the blue glowing parts of the biolab's dome. To preemptively answer the first question this thread will receive; no, this is not just a client-side issue. Go get a friend of yours to be an Infiltrator and have him stand cloaked in front of the banner at the warp gate - you'll see him clear as day. I get that SOE doesn't want Planetside 2 to become Crysis 2, I really do. The game's primary purpose is large, open warfare - not small cloaked skirmishy ambush tactics - and that's fine; for the most part, it accommodates both, and is already giving the Infiltrator a step out of its hole with the upcoming SMGs. I'm not going to complain about the class's shortcomings, or compare it to PS1. I will, however, call out the fact that for the cloak to even serve the purpose SOE wants it to, it needs to reflect everything behind it; that includes screens, banners, etc. An official response would be sincerely appreciated. This game is quite honestly the best FPS I've ever played, and I find great enjoyment in playing the Infiltrator class as an actual infiltrator on an almost-daily basis. As it is a free game, I completely understand that these things happen, and that a fix can't be magically implemented immediately. I'm not looking for an immediate solution as much as I am looking to inform both the dev team and the players about this bug, so that if nothing else, at least other Infiltrator-users can be aware of this and try to avoid it affecting them for the time being.
I've noticed this, of course, but assumed that the issue was well known. It's not exactly easy to miss so long as you play an Infiltrator anywhere near a common structure. If I recall correctly, this even happens on low graphics settings when our shaders switch to an extremely transparent silhouette rather than the "glass bottle" effect we get elsewhere.
If you have an ATi card, go into catalyst then turn anti aliasing and anisotropic filtering on, the following effects stop appearing altogether. Infiltrator cloak. Biolab shield. Console holo-screen things. Holographic faction banners. Warpgate shield. Warpgate spirally thing. Spawn room door shield. Teleporter effect. Ammo sign at the top of ammo towers. Ammo/repair sign on sunderrers. It's highly annoying, and it took me a while to work out why I couldn't see any of that stuff. But the fact that these effects can't be seen through one anotherr doesn't surprise me much. If they're all the same type of effect in terms of the way they're rendered (as implied by the fact that if one doesn't work, they all don't work, and the fact they all switch off when you have AA and AF turned on with ATi cards), the fact they don't "stack" on top of one another is pretty unsurprising.
This "bug" was probably overlooked because it didn't really matter. They won't fix it. SMGs are primary for all 5 classes and they'll probably get nerfed a week after being put into the game.
That's actually more objects than I initially realized, thanks for the information. I'd edit that into the OP, but apparently this forum doesn't allow edits after a certain time period - even to OPs - for whatever reasons could ever justify that. I thought it was common knowledge as well, but after guiltily knocking off several enemy Infiltrators via this bug and reading through the pile of topics here, it became apparent that if it was known, hardly anybody was addressing it or trying to compensate for it. I'm sure there are some more observant players such as yourself that have also known about this for a while, but at least this gets it out to the general public and potentially improves how newer people walk into playing the class - at least until the bug's fixed. Also, Arc, putting aside opinions on how Infiltrators will be 'balanced out' after the next patch, I really have to disagree with you on this not mattering; we can't effectively snipe from the tops of biodomes because our cloak does literally nothing to help us blend there, we can't cloak and run out of spawn doors without there being a period in which our blatant silhouette can be spotted on the door shield, we can't come between the enemy's line of sight and a terminal or banner without completely exposing ourselves from any distance; the list goes on. I'm not going to get on a soapbox and preach about how SOE is doing the best they can and that you don't have a right to be ticked; that being said, this is clearly an issue that matters, and frankly I don't think SOE is so terrible that they're going to come in here and say "Sorry, but that bug is pointless and you just need to deal with it forever because we don't care."
Your optimism is against the very cynical nature of Infiltrators, but anyways, it wouldn't be the first time SoE has done exactly that terrible thing. As for the troubles with the shielding and holograms, I'm starting to think its on purpose to add some sort of "character" to stealth, or simple logic to the game, its a projected image or some **** like that.
Notice howsome things dont render until you are close to them, probably done to reduce server/client cpu load, I expect the issue of this thread is related.
It's not optimism, it's logical objectivity. At the moment, I have nothing to gain by being pessimistic, therefore I'm constraining myself to a more appeasing tone until the situation adjusts itself. If I were to expect the kinds of responses I've gotten in past experiences with other corporations, I'd be preparing for something along the lines of "The real bug here is that you're playing an Infiltrator; stop doing that and go zerg with heavies. Also, we're doubling the prices of everything and closing the game in two weeks, and you're not getting any of your money back." So, yeah; until that happens, I'm going to work under the logic that they might care more if I don't sound like I want to forcibly tear their heads off, and with any luck they'll actually address this and/or fix it.
Look at the "Roadmap 6 month plan" come back to me when you have been enlightened. You should post this bug in the general gameplay forums, they won't see it here.
Just finished reading all of it, and to be fair, some of the stuff in their plan is actually valid. I mean, the tunnels are a good concept, the new continent looks promising, and allowing just Infiltrators to have cloaked Flashes will do a lot for the class - assuming the idea sticks and assuming they don't still sound like a thousand lawnmowers. Along with those, the additions of Implants, Buggies, and UI color adjustments have a lot of potential if employed correctly. That being said, I'm painfully choking over their ideas of letting LAs get exclusive access to dual-wielding, the addition of TF2-style item crates, and the implementation of ragdolling (read: massive lag increase and making the game a parody of GMOD); not to mention letting people spawn when the SCU is down, restricting Sunderer deployment areas, and did I mention dual-wielding LAs? It's just so terrible that I don't even have words to encompass it. Once I regain the ability to breathe, I'll go ahead and see to moving this topic over to the general as you suggest. Bringing it back around to the issue at hand, though, this bug is going to get a lot worse with those new spawn room designs, considering the walls are almost entirely just a large spawn door shield that we can't effectively cloak in front of. While I'm not directly opposed to the change itself, this bug's influence on it is definitely going to be another debilitating vulnerability for any Infiltrator who wants to get out of the building without being spotted immediately - and yet another deterrent from people dedicating any time or certs to the class.
I was assuming cloaked flashes were for the entire faction. Other then that I can't think of anything they actually will add for infiltrator.
Ah sorry I didn't read the full thing, yeah cloaked flashs for infiltrators would be nice, but chances are they only last 10 seconds.
Update for those who might be interested in knowing, the latest patch appears to have fixed this bug. From what I can tell, the cloak is now reflecting the aforementioned objects it was not reflecting beforehand, both for you and other Infiltrators on your screen. It's no perma-stealth, but I've already noticed it helping quite a bit in terms of not being noticed, especially when attempting to hack terminals.
Must be a limit in the cloak technology... ;-) Also, assume you are visible even when cloaked. You will play better, more tactically and more carefully for it.
