So I’ve been reading more and more gripes about the cloak lately. Last night for a good 3 hours at the crown it was a non-stop debate/verbal-sissy-slap-fight. Every complaint I hear about the cloak largely boils down to some variant of, “It’s useless in close quarters.” And I’d like to stop you right there, because almost every person who makes this complaint usually follows it with the story “I was running through a group of enemies, passed right in front of one, and he saw me, chased me down and killed me,” to some variation or degree. Which tells me that a lot of people are overlooking basic things that play into not being seen. So I figure I'd just point out what I take into consideration when i'm doing a more close quarters approach and have had decent success with. (I don't die enough to think the cloak is broken.) First and foremost, I’d like to kick this thing off and break the ice here with a brief instructional video: Now that that’s taken care of, I’d like to derail this train right here and ask you to think back on every FPS and action game you’ve ever played with a stealthy enemy. Some of these rank amongst the most dangerous or annoying in their respective games, and often become the player’s top priority once they’re noticed. One could even say videogames have been training players to kill the stealthies for years now. Admittedly not a great positon for the Infiltrator since there's already a dregree of ire and bloodlust directed toward the snipers and sneaks of gaming. There are those that are just plain stealthy, and hide out of LoS until they ambush you (Stalkers, Dead Space 2/Head Crabs, Half-Life series) or those that become totally invisible and practically mock you with these abilities until you can strip them away (Stalkers, Borderlands 2). As much as infiltrators would like to be the latter, they’re not. They are a third type. Think of every enemy type that made use of the “predator cloak” method of lowering its profile. I emphasize ‘lowering its profile’ because the function of this cloak is no to be invisible, but not to be noticed. Think of any? Well just in case, of the top of my head: Phantoms and Geth Hunters from Mass Effect 3, Assassins from F.E.A.R. , Stalkers from Crysis 2, various cloaking Elites from the Halo franchise, and Nightstakers from Fallout: New Vegas. And these are just games I myself have played in the last year. But think of how those enemies behaved, but more importantly, think of exactly when you first come to notice them, both by sight and sound. BY SOUND First and foremost of almost ANY stealth enemy, not just the cloaker, there’s usually an audio cue. Not always but more often than not. Movement sounds, chirping, a low hum from a cloaking device, something to alert the player to their presence. There’s little coincidence that these enemies are almost always introduced all by their lonesome in a quiet and dark room, they want these audio cues noticed so the player will pick up on them later when the cloaker starts coming at you amidst other enemies and in daylight. These also become some of the more chilling experiences that set off every danger alarm in the player’s head. How often when playing half-life 2 did you back into a corner cradling a shotgun when you hear the chirp of a poison head-crab? (OH GOD WHERE IS IT!?) Infiltrators are no different with the cloak/decloak sounds. But in Planetside, that sound could just as likely be a friend or foe. Often when a player hears it they’ll take a quick look at the map checking for allies in the direction the sound came from, or looking for a friendly infiltrator nearby. It might seem safer to sneak in on the quiet side of the base, but the less action that is going on, the more likely a sound is to be noticed by anyone that might be there without the backdrop of nearby combat. BY SIGHT Now think about how you notice a 'predator cloaked' enemy visually. Usually it’s when the cloaked enemy is moving, making itself apparent through light refraction and distortion. Sometimes the AI decides to get close enough, usually attacking, where either the shadowed or distortion effect suddenly takes up a sizable portion of the screen’s real estate, or travels through the screen center, which is the player’s default focal point. The human eye is predisposed to focus on movement. The human brain is keyed to take not of breaks in pattern. Combine the two of these and think of any time you’ve spotted an enemy infiltrator and exactly how they stood out to you. More often than not they’ll be moving, or were somewhere that caused an obvious break in pattern through their presence such as crouching in a well-lit area, thus appearing as an out of place shadow, or against a wall graphic fill of ridged lines that are bent or distorted by the cloak. Now back to the meat and potatos: THINGS TO BE AWARE OF WHILE USING THE CLOAK. Your sound. Unless there's a lot of fighting going on nearby to drown out the sound, dropping in and out of cloak too often or when you don’t need to makes your presence more apparent than it needs to be. Better safe than sorry doesn’t apply here. Enemy density and traffic. The more people you pass by the more likely one will spot you. It’s as simple as that. Go around crowds, not through them. If you’re attacking a base odds are you’ve held it once, you know where the high traffic areas are and you know where people are going as they stream out of them, there are always a few patrols and wanderers, but most people have a destination in mind. It's best to avoid getting between the spawn point and the populated firing line that heavy and max suit are running off to. Enemy sight lines. You’re going to be in enemy Line of Sight. That’s the whole point. But keep in mind that the closer you get to screen center the more you attention you begin to demand from the player’s focus. Open spaces will get you killed. The easiest way to spot an infiltrator regardless of graphical settings is when they pass between you and what you’re looking at. Stick close to walls and objects, the more in the open you are the more you’re going cross those sight lines. You have about 25% of each side of your enemy’s screen where you can be without basically slapping them in the face. Stick close to walls and cover, and don’t cross open ground unless you have too when enemies are near. Enemy proximity. The closer you are the more screen real estate you take up, the more noticeable your visual aberration is. You could be in that earlier mentioned 25% of the screen but if you take up the entire 25% you still spotted. Surroundings (being spotted on High Graphics) If someone is looking at you, you’re between them and something else. Be aware of what that something else is and how your presence will affect it. A dark area with either dense or minimal patterning (landscapes or flat walls) and you likely won’t be stopped. But if you’re suddenly causing parallel lines and right angles to bend, expect a bullet. Stick close to walls and dark areas and you’ll minimize your aberrations. Distractions. You know that tank that just rolled into the base you’re trying to sneak into? Yeah they’re all looking at that. Use that to your advantage. Think of how you respond to threats and use your ally’s movements and actions to your advantage. Or take matters into your own hands, throw a grenade at one direction, then go the other. Movement. The more you move the more attention you attract. An enemy can be staring right at you, but if you don’t move there’s a chance you won’t be noticed. The faster the movement the more attention it demands. Avoid sprinting. If you’re crossing open ground between cover and are a good range from observers, it’s fine. In closer quarters it will get you spotted every time. Lighting. Transitions between dark and light areas can light you up like a metaphorical flashlight. If you are between an enemy and a light source you might as well just turn the cloak off and try with a pistol. The cloak distortion is also more noticeable well-lit areas and for people on lower settings you are now a shadow where a shadow shouldn’t be cast. Keep to the dark, a person’s eye is more attracted to light. EASIER TO SPOT ON HIGH OR LOW GRAPHIC SETTINGS. I know this is a major point of discourse on the class, and I admit I can see where people are coming from. I personally find cloaks easier to spot on higher settings. Returning again to movement, when a infiltrator moves on high or low settings they’re easier to see. However when they’re still the Low rez model actually has the advantage of not causing a distortion, they’re simply a faint shadow, a still object that can and will pass notice. On high graphic settings as a player moves past a stationary cloaked infiltrator because their perspective changes so is the refracted content, creating the illusion of movement. I’ve missed many more low settings infiltrators than I have high settings ones because of this fact. The truth of the matter is, most infiltrator players in general aren’t aware of their surroundings and how they bear on their likelihood of being spotted beyond “shadows and cover good, light and open ground bad.” Understanding how the game will display you to other players is important, and at the end of the day if you start paying attention to your movements, lighting, and how you might visually impact the environment around you, it really doesn’t matter what settings someone is using. TO SUM UP I get the impression that a good number of infiltrator players want to be invisible without actually putting forth the forethought and effort to avoid being spotted. They want to be the invisible ninja that can snipe and kill from the shadows and never be seen. I’d say anyone who’s ever played the infiltrator has wanted that one some level. It makes you feel skillful and powerful without actually having to be. What we have now can still do those things to a good degree, but it requires more attention and finesse on our part. We want a nail gun to get the job done, but we were handed a hammer. But this isn’t a stealth game. You can’t lower the difficulty and give yourself more leeway with getting spotted or memorize patrol route, and you’ll never get that feeling of being a ninja god, because those games were built from the ground up to provide that as a part of the core experience, and is impossible to recapture in an MMO that has to engage in concepts of power balance. In Planetside, you don’t have to be invisible; you just have to be the least noticed object within chaos. But the infiltrator will always be one of the harder classes to play because there’s more to be aware of, and depending on this, you either have a serious advantage, or a crippling disadvantage.
All of this sounds extremely theoretical and borne out of fantasy rather than practice. If you think you have something to teach us about cloaking effectively, make a video and show your skills.
Oh, I suppose I could. But why bother? Wouldn't I just do what everyone else does and edit it to only show the times I succeed? Or fail? Or whatever proves the point I'm trying to make? Posting a video of my best case scenario won't help anyone, and I don't need my ego stroked at the moment. No, I think I'll stick to Monty Python. The point of this was to make people think about what they're actually doing to make themselves less noticable, or lack thereof, not to prove that I'm a better Infiltraitor player than anyone else, because I can assure you I'm not. I'm delightfully average player with a tendency toward being analytical and likes to understand the 'why' of it when I succeed or fail. And after weeks of watching infiltrators seem to behave no differently whether they're cloaked or not, assuming some magic invisibility, then insisting it's broke when it proves not to be, a little theory couldn't exactly hurt. So there it is, take it or leave it. Maybe it will help someone.
It's a good post to wonder about stealth enemies in single player games, but you forgot to answer anything. You presume this and that, but I didn't find a single answer to anything in the post, in one read. You told why it's alright at range (low profile) and explained why it sucks in CQ. As did everyone else, if you have actually read any of the discussion instead of just presuming things. But how do you utilize the cloak to make your infiltrator class useful in cq? You're almost armless if you get spotted without a cloak and completely helpless if you get spotted while cloaked. Even if you got up close, there's hardly anything to do there, except give away easy kills. So, what's the secret? Well you would say that, but it's not true. 'Real men' actually prefer to play sneaky without a gimmick like the cloak, like in MW themed shooters for example. I'm one of them. I use LA for actual infiltration and Infiltrator exclusively for the (useless but fun) bolt action sniper, it's the only thing to do with the whole damn class. And the only practical use for the cloak as well.
A lot of this is sound advice. I play infiltrator and personally and statistically I'd argue that I have been a great fps player for nearly a decade. I have a fully decked out shadow and stalker, an OK bolt action and good certs. The mines are super effective. TRY playing any other class for a moment and it becomes obvious. The problem here is... the infiltrator class is, although very unique, under-powered and lacks the versatility of literally every other class. The infiltrator doesn't play well with others. It packs weaker armor and weapons than the engineer, who can also provide ammo, stop any (or many) infantry soldiers with a turret, and is responsible for the super important role of repairing everything. Also C4 is... in my experience.. seemingly OP. I've never used it.. but I've seen multiple fully armored masses dropped by one detonation. With excellent aim and the element of surprise, an infiltrator can harass and sometimes assassinate even the strongest enemies. Even so, anyone can and will drop you in a face-to-face conflict (it happens to the best of us), and there are loads of methods of improving this. Jumping around bases while cloaked has made me feel AWESOME stealthy. The cloak is sometimes very effective; however, it is not consistent (different situations/graphics settings) and often just leaves you looking at the back of 3 guys heads knowing that you can only run if you want to survive. So the infiltrator isn't meant to kill infantry, you say? Hacking in a sundy, an enemy turret, or even influential terminals can be can be fantastic for your team, but it is a situational and independent play. Something needs to be buffed. I like the weapon damage and I -sometimes- love the cloak. Nonetheless if we are going to be using these aspects in their current state, we need better armor. I don't mind being the weaker class based on intelligence and finesse... but viewing the class as a whole, it is VERY VERY underpowered compared to any other class and needs some customization and versatility. This being said I love my infiltrator and will main it forever.
You could hack influential terminals and turrets to defend against a counterattack a little earlier, but the smart move would be to redeploy as one after your team has secured the spawn and then back to a better class right after. Kind of like switching to medic to heal yourself, except the medic packs a punch and is always most useful. If you meant before securing the spawn, it either works for empty bases (yay) or isn't worth the time and energy you could have spent on the offense with a more useful class. Yeah, you need to compensate the impotence of the class with some serious skills if you want to play as useful for the team as you could with a competent class. But an artificial gimmick that makes picking your fights easier is hardly anything I would call intelligent or skillful.
I suppose the artificial gimmick you're referring to is the cloak? As many have said, it's more like camouflage. Which would be fair if we had some armor or damage potential. Overall you basically agree? I agree with most of your points and this is what I feel needs attention and buffs. By removing one or two of the glaring weaknesses they could make this class really fun and niche. The ability to prevent your enemies from switching classes or getting vehicles is nice on the initial assault. If your skills do allow you to get kills long enough, you can reammo. Or you can deploy a sunderer for backup and sneak somewhere else and hack yourself into a MASS or something within their base before an attack.
Thank you sir. I was moping around and quite close to quitting the game because of the death of my beloved Infil, Ah the days of PS1 when we actually had a purpose, but anyway you invigorated a new sense of wanting to actually try and see if I can devise a good set of strategies and tactics to get around the lack luster cloak. I had been running around with the auto scout rifle (so good) not actually sneaking just using the cloak as temporary cover and as a way to stir confusion into the enemy. I had to actually kill people... it was disgusting. Until stalker comes and I am back into my element I will try and not get caught and maybe not have to kill any one. As for the quality of the guide it is debatable as most of the information was common sense, but it served as a wake up call to me and emphasizes that dependency on the cloak is what gets most of us killed. Cunning, guile, and trickery will get us there not a cloak to do all of that for us. Good read and will call back to it when I need some spiritual help. Like the Infiltrators Bible.
You get it! That's all it is. Simple applications of common sense things that people are in the habit of overlooking. I often joke about it with people, but as games get simpler to appeal to a wider audience, gamers tend to fall into the 'press A to win' mentality where they're so used to playing in a way where the game itself guides the player through the experience, like having a little tutorial blurb pop up and remind you of a skill or technique whenever it's needed, or a prompt to move on to the next objective, that when things aren't done for them and aren't reminded, people don't often fall back immediately on those common sense ideas and approaches. So I wanted to help people remember. "This cloak isn't perfect, Oh yeah I should hide too!"
Liberty Cap, I get the impression that you’re looking for me to make points I never had any intention of making, and answer questions I never bothered to ask. I titled this post very intentionally as I’m specifically in the use of the cloak, not “How to play a CQC infiltrator.” I’m mostly addressing the constant complaints that the cloak is easily spotted and about as useful as a truckload of dead rats in an ice cream factory once you get into closer ranges which, in my experience, hasn’t been the case. I’m by no means saying the infiltrator class is perfect as is, I doubt that could be said of any class, just that most players seem to be assuming and expecting a bit much out of this particular tool and are far too quick to decry it as useless or broken in these situations. What an infiltrator actually does in close quarters is another matter entirely. The point I’m making is that the cloak is neither useless nor broken for those that want to get there, it just requires some common sense and awareness on the part of the user to fill in the gaps. I largely brought up the stealth enemies in single player games for one important reason. While their stealth provides a challenge to the player, their ultimate purpose is to be detected and killed. By reflecting on how these enemies are designed, and how you, as the player hunting them, first detects them, hunts them down, and kills them, should eventually lead to several ideas not only on how players are going to be tracking you, but also the ways those enemies give themselves away, so you can avoid falling into those same traps pre-programmed into an AI as a gimme to the hunting player. Because let’s face it, if stealth enemies were as powerful as we all want our stealth protagonists to be, the player would flip the keyboard and walk away after five minutes. Maybe I’m making too much of a leap expecting a majority to make these connections, but I’d like to think not, because a lesson is better learned when the conclusion is reached through one’s own thought process.
I agree with the central premise of this post. Most people who play infiltrator don't understand how to play it. I was like that for awhile and had a horrible k/d. In the last couple of days I've started to really think about how I'm playing and earlier today I left the game 28/2. If played correctly, the infiltrator class can be crucial to victory and can make a huge difference in a battle but to be effective you have to remain unseen. Personally, I rarely get close to the enemy because while effective it only lasts so long it's rather awkward to be crouching in a corner waiting for your cloak to recharge and have an enemy MAXX come strolling around the corner. If used correctly though it can be helpful to get the jump on a base assault. Sneak into a base, hack a vehicle terminal and have your squad spawn 5 tanks in the main room ready to blast out as soon as the shields are down. In addition, I've used the cloak many times to sprint by several enemies even practically bumping into them and as long as they're on their way somewhere or worried about the tank shooting at them I'm rarely ever noticed. Like I said though, I like to play at a distance and here's some tips I would give. As Plague Rat said, the cloak doesn't make you invisible, it's up to you to make yourself invisible. The key is to be where no one would expect you to be. Your greatest ally is height because players rarely look up just for the fun of it, especially in a firefight, the human eye responds to movement so they'll be concentrated across the field at the armored column grinding towards them. Use this to your advantage, with enough patience it's almost always possible to gain an elevated position in decent cover behind or to the sides or an enemy force and that's a snipers happy place. My advice if you want to play infiltrator is to get yourself set up with a bolt-action rifle and make headshots for 1 hit kills. Use your cloak to move from cover to cover and odds are very good that you won't be spotted. From more than 25m away an enemy will never notice a cloaked enemy unless they are scanning for them and are looking right at you. When you learn to play to the strengths of the cloak and use it to outsmart the enemy it will save your life more times than you can count. My only complaint about the cloak is that I wish it would come off automatically as soon as you fire as I've been screwed a couple of times by trying to make a reaction shot and forgetting that I was cloaked only to be gunned down. In conclusion, Plague Rat, you make very valid points but I hope that no one listens to them because that will just make my job harder.
Alright. I apologize if I misunderstood, but you did make it easy by clearly implying that "almost everyone" of those who complained about it wanted too much and as if they based it on something ridiculous like “I was running through a group of enemies, passed right in front of one, and he saw me, chased me down and killed me,”. You also said you had success with the cloak in CQ, and that you thought it was alright. I could see how this guide could help some *avoid* CQ, that the cloak is actually useful for, but you were accusing people with pretty ridiculous **** I've never seen myself, and telling them you've been successful and they're doing it wrong. It's like you're talking with your own presumptions of why people complain about the cloak that defines the whole class, while avoiding the actual issues.
My LA is far better at staying unnoticed than my infiltrator is, thanks to his relatively silent jetpack. He's also far more deadly at close/mid/long range than the infiltrator and loses to inf only at extremely long ranged, where sniper rifles becomes useful. And even then, considering current infiltrator state, this video makes more sense than your's: The guys with rifles are infiltrators trying to cope with inability to shoot while cloaked, weapon sway, moving targets and bullet drop-off.
Agreed. Humans VERY rarely look up, and the LA's ability to get a height advantage is far superior to my ability to obscure my self and sprint across a coverless field when setting up an ambush or remaining unseen what i would like is the ability to cert into jump height. Let the LA's have their jetpacks, just give me an extra meter or 1.5 of vertical and i'd be able to mantle up onto a few rooftops as well, or perhaps simply get back into the fight after stepping off a chest high ledge to hide in the tech plant leaving me no option but to jump to the ground and die
I do agree that it would be nice if the infiltrator had some sort of cert for improving mobility... higher jumps, faster movement something that would help balance the lowered health of the class. I disagree about staying hidden though. It's all about how you use the class and as an infiltrator I pick off LA like crazy because their jetpacks make them very visible by setting them against a backdrop of sky not ground. With an infiltrator you can use the cloak to move around unseen and gain a height advantage on an overlook that you can stay at indefinitely. I think it all depends on your play style. If you're a very patient person who is willing to take the time to flank the enemy and find a good cover the infiltrator can be very useful and help you survive. If you like to be right in the thick of things and get a lot of action... you'll probably find yourself frustrated. It's all preference and learning, the infiltrator has a pretty steep learning curve to get even decent with it.
I've always loved the Infiltrators ability to disrupt. Usually I'm not out to capture bases, but only to cause a bit of chaos for the enemy to give my team a slight advantage. I like your guide, it was all common sense, but I feel a lot of us overlook those simple things. I felt underwhelmed with the Infiltrator at first, but I took a second look at all his tools and asked myself how can each of these be useful. It's off-topic, but I see a lot of complaints about the sensor dart, when I find that just a point or two into it and it's amazing, especially considering your allies get its advantages as well.
As everyone else has said, I have much more success with the LA for actually infiltrating bases and that gives me some sadness. HOWEVER. I would not call the infiltrator useless, just that they're useless at what their class name implies. However I have great success sniping a few high priority targets and using the stealth to move from spot to spot. You shoot medics, engis that heal MAX units or vehicles, you can shoot idiot HA's standing still firing their rockets at vehicles all as a priority, and you can pick off other oblivious infiltrators or infantry for your own amusement. You kill one or two targets, cloak, move. I also tend to use the cloak to actually line up my shot, then remove it while my crosshair is over somebody's dome piece as this will allow me to take my time to aim with relative safety (especially if I'm crouched). As soon as I hear that sound finish I fire. Hacking is somewhat useful, the issue is that doing it at a useful time pretty much requires skipping any combat entirely and is really only useful when combined with a spawn beacon so you can get to certain places more easily. The Infi does have one very important advantage with the cloak however: the ability to remove a spot. I can't tell you how many times I've fired at a group and they all lose track of me because everybody relies on jamming their Q button and looking for red arrows rather than using their eyes. I do have a couple gripes. You're right about people being trained to hate stealthies/snipers, and I think that's part of why Infiltrators suck so badly right now. I think SOE is afraid of making them too powerful (or seem so) because of the nature of their class. Supposedly (an actual PS1 vet could tell you more than I) in PS1 the infis had a toggle-able permanent cloak did they not? Ours is not only clear as day unless crouched/not moving/in proper lighting, but it lasts like 12 seconds at most does it not? And they were also more suited to INFILTRATING rather than SNIPING. The problem is that right now Infiltrators are amazing snipers. Sniping is also amazingly useless in this game because the render range doesn't allow you to shoot from safe distances if more than 10 people are around, and most of the times in an open field you'd be better suited to helping deal with the armor, something the infiltrator can't do. Oh and if they don't fix claymore to AT LEAST be as good as the BB or PM I will be angry. Why does NC and Vanu get grey tiny discs and I get a beige device that not only sticks off the ground but projects green goddamn lasers for all to witness. Why SOE? Why?
I still have to find a good answer to this question. I believe the only solution is to try to hide and take cover, check enemy position with vehicle radar a detection device. Cloak just helps at doing that, but still getting close to the enemy is not so easy as one could think. And even killing at cq is very hard without the proper weapon, possibly upgraded. My main concern about the camouflage is I don't understand why does it have to run out of battery every 10 seconds, since it's totally obvious it doesn't represent an OP tool as one may think. I say devs should at least give us the Stalker Suite as alternative to the Hunter.
I got the impression that this guide was devised mostly taking into acount open spaces (with/without clusters of medium/small buildings). On said places you can definetely use the various elements and vast space to ge in/out, keep out of sight, hide, keep your distance, etc. But how de we adress the contradiction of short duration vs most effective when standing still, inside main buildings? Its too hard to aply said tips inside a medium guarded biolab, its completely impossible inside a tech plant, for example. The layouts of the bases (small corridors, cramped spaces, few hiding spots, high traffic even with only a medim number of players since the internal section is always small, etc) + cloak mechanics simply doesnt allow you to infiltrate the places you should be infiltrating i.e. the internal section of big bases. In theory those are the places where you would be able to disrupt the enemy to a considerable extent (Ha!). It would be possible if we didnt have to stop each 12 seconds (and theres also the sound) to recharge. We cant maintain a safe distance when we're inside so theres no way to avoid let youself away by sound. We also can hardly keep out sight. We're already far too visible to have to stop and make ourselves completely vulnerable and even so make a sound to alert nearby enemies of our presence so often. What I believe to be the best solution would be simply to increase the hunter cloaking duration or bring a new type with a higher one. And then start working what the hell we are supposed to do once inside a main base because theres no real reason now to get inside one.
