What is with all the constant hate of the Infiltrator ans obsession with anti-armor weapons?

And this is the typical reponse. Just like i said in another thread. Whenever you show of competence, it is dismissed as "luck", or "Your enemies were just noobs."

I'd bet 100 certs that i could sneak up on you aswell and cut you down before you even noticed.

I have infiltrated highly organized platoons. I have even infiltrated The Enclave. All undetected.

I have written 4 pages of instructions and tutorials on how to be an efficient infiltrator. 4 Pages. If that was all luck or bad players, then how come there are such a huge amount of factors weighing in on how you play. And how come i can do it time after time, at every facility and against every faction in the game?

Every single time i upload a video i get the same response. "Oh yeah, they are just noobs." It's absurd how fast the infiltrator fanbase just dismiss success, because it comes from a Infiltrator.

If it is so easy, then please. Show me a video of you doing the same thing.

Wrong, just flat-out wrong. Players who can sit there and watch an enemy infil knife friendlies or players who get knifed and just stand there are bad. It's not missing the point at all. In fact, I would say you and Ztiller are using scenarios like this and trying to pass this off as the 'average' player to enforce a point that simply doesn't hold water.

1. No, you wouldn't be able to sneak up on me like that. I'm not bad and I know what the VS decloak sounds like, not that hard to counters.

2. Why would you bring up the Enclave? All they need to do is follow orders, there is nothing saying they are the brightest PS2 players out there (in fact, some would argue the opposite).

3. What does it matter how much you've written? Much like the Spy in TF2, how well you do in this sort of thing almost entirely relies on how incompetent your enemies are. Sure there's knowing map pathways and knowing how to aim, when to cloak but for the most part you can easily be shut down by 1 competent player. If you'd like I can go through both videos and give you timestamps of every incompetent enemy and why exactly they are incompetent.

4. You ever think there might be a reason people are saying these things over and over?

5. Challenging me to make a video to do the same is a logical absurdity for a couple of reasons. A) I'm NOT saying it's easy to do, not sure how that isn't clear. I'm saying it's HARD to do because you have to be incredibly lucky to get that many incompetent players in one spot and you have to be lucky enough for one of them to NOT get lucky when firing at you. B) Because I'm saying it's based almost entirely on the competency of the other players I would have to actually find a group bad enough to allow me to do what you are doing. I've tried doing similar things before, I almost always get shut down after a couple of kills because someone halfway across the base saw through my cloak and sprayed me down before I could get to cover.

6. Something I'd like to point out. In both of those videos you got plenty of kills, sure, but you didn't do anything of actual tactical usefulness except you stopped 1 tank from being repaired and it blew up and killed a spawn beacon. The rest were some infantry kills, all of which quickly respawned at nearby Sunderers within 15 seconds. Hell, in te first video you didn't even do anything to stop them from taking Tawrich, you merely took out some of their forces of which they had plenty more and vehicles to back it up that you could do nothing to even though you were sitting on top of them.

I have to agree with the guy who commented on the ability of the players you were playing against.

When I look at a player I make sure I ALWAYS make sure they are in the same faction as I.
If a player walks right in front of me and hes wearing purple its pretty obvious its an infiltrator.

Yes, I get away with what you did in the videos frequently, but as soon as I see an 'experienced' player (camos, gun upgrades, composite armour, constant back checking, etc...) I stay well clear.

On the few ocasions I havent I always get killed.

You just can't do what you did with those people on truly experienced players.

I also fail to understand how they missed the decloak sounds.

So I'm guessing you think Medics and LA are useless because all they can do is resurrect infantry that would have respawned in 8 seconds anyway, and only drop one tank before they run out of C4. By your logic, since killing infantry is such a non-factor, the only relevant classes are Heavies and Engineers and Maxes.

(this is totally ignoring the fact that infiltrators can actually affect the amount of tanks on the battle field in a couple of ways)

I'm not trying to say that Infiltrators are perfect. There are some real imbalances... but they certainly aren't game breaking, and they definitely don't make infiltrators even remotely useless. Anyway, you guys can keep complaining about it instead of trying to figure the class out. It's not really any skin off my back and I'm about 90% sure nothing I say is going to convince you otherwise. If your opinion is that the infiltrator class should play differently, and not as combat stealth... I disagree with you but I can at least understand where you're coming from. To say things like "stealth is useless and broken" and "infiltrators have no effect on battles" is just completely wrong.

There are definitely some real issues here, but it just makes me laugh when I read stuff like that..

1: I'm sure thats what a lot of players say. Apparently, not many can actually live up to that claim.

2: Why don't you try it?

3: What it means is that there are tons of variables when infiltrating, while you narrow-mindedly dismiss what i do as Luck. That's like saying that someone is lucky, after pulling off 15 advanced maneuvers in chess to win.

4: Because so many simply refuse to accept the fact that the class is good, just difficult.

5:Funny. If you can never pull it off, while i can pull it off constantly, i see two possibilties here. Either my whole server is full with "noobs" and Only noobs and i am the luckiest player in gaming history, Or you are just bad at infiltrating.

6: I have other videos where i blow up 3 prowlers in a matter of minutes. At other times i supress a whole assault. In other, non recorded, scenarios i clear out whole entrenchments.

Yesterday i supressed a whole outfit of Annihilators on a watchtower, by sneaking up through the tower, right past all of them, and then taking them out one by one, drastically reducing their effectiveness. 45 kills, never detected once.

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/560965477491030970/A46892275AFF9BBB5B2AFE0EAD2A0AD9AD812530/

If you don't think that is contributing, then i don't know what is.

But as i explained earlier. The infiltrator is not a direct support class. It works indirectly, by weakening the enemy.

Considering the current metagame is almost entirely vehicle-centric, yes, the classes who heal/kill vehicles are currently the better classes. That said, killing infantry CAN be useful, but not in the way he is doing it. Killing a few people in a large group serves no real purpose unless you kill EVERY medic. Even then, the second video is almost entirely farming Sundy spawns, those kills ARE basically useless because not only was nothing done to the Sundy but he didn't even kill all the people around the Sundy. What he succeeded in was annoying a few people (and kill a few seeming AFKs), didn't really prevent the assault from continuing.

I dont get what everyone is complaining about either. If i want to bother with vehicles, i roll my engineer with tank mines.....

The only time i get killed by enemy armor when i play infiltrator is when im doing something seriously dumb. and i dont think ive ever been killed by aircraft playing an infiltrator. I use the class for what its best at. A sniper. from my gaming experience its the most fun sniper ive ever played. I couldn't care less about bringing the infiltrator anywhere close to the enemy, the cloak is so obvious i can get headshots with my slug shotgun on them at medium range with my engineer. and they have less survivability then the other classes.

I like to do the best with whats available. if that means never going into close combat, oh well, not worried about it. every player has default access to classes that perform better up close and personal. and every player has default access to ways to deal with armor. and every player has default access to vehicles.

That being said. infiltrator isnt even my main class, yet i have tons of kills with it. Thats how easy and accessible it is.

The only complaint i have with the infiltrator is view range which hopefully will be resolved to some degree this patch. I can sit at 300 meters out and get headshots if there are no allys around me to take up the render limit. otherwise effective view range is down to closer to 150-200.

Where is the increased reward that is proportional to the increased difficulty?

What server are you on? Server population actually could be a significant influence here.

Ztiller, you have to remember that you can't balance for the top, at least it should not be your prime concern. I've seen alot of posts from people on your side of the argument (bleh, sounds so adversarial, want it to be more about finding accuracy) about how they managed to work out how to use the cloak after X amount of time, where X is a significant amount to time. This is terrible design.

What should be happening is that you should be able to get the base idea almost immediately, but it takes alot longer to truly master the cloak. Hate to bring it up again, but PS1 cloak was brilliant at this. You could just start the game up, and actually understand the simple mechanics of cloaking-> more speed=bad for staying hidden, shooting reveals, class almost useless in direct combat. But it took alot longer, and there was a world of difference between a new infiltrator and one who had learned the ins and outs of the class.

In PS2, you don't have those base mechanics, as the cloak is so confused for use in close range (by design as it was meant for sniping). The faster you move, the more you're revealed, but you only have a set amount of time which doesn't alter based on your movement, so it encourages you to take as much ground as possible. The short timer encourages using it frequently, but the sound created on cloak/decloak is a great detriment to remaining hidden.

Yes, you have managed to parlay this meagre cloak into some very effective killing streaks, but I contend (and read to the end here) that the way you play infiltrator is wrong. Not wrong in that what you're doing is ineffective, or that there are other close range strategies that are more effective, it's wrong in that it should not be how infiltrator is played. Watching your first video again, there are a great number of stretches where you run through the middle of the base, decloaked and hoping no one recognises you as an enemy. You had some really effective escapes a couple of times there, especially with the jumping down that was a great reward for knowing the layout, and juking the heavy by faking going down then flying back on the lift was also good, but you barely had any time not at a dead sprint.

The infiltrator should play a slower game. It shouldn't have to run in the open like you did with little protection. You should be able to sit back, survey the situation, and THEN move when you know people are looking elsewhere. I'm not saying you should have 100% invis all the time, I actually like the idea of encouraging people to use shadows and understand how their cloak reflects and try to match up your positioning to your background, but you should not just have to leg it and hope when you're doing things correctly.

1. Whatever you want to think. All that entire line of thought is is a pissing contest.

2. Try what? My outfit played against the Enclave in the beta plenty, didn't notice anything particularly amazing.

3. No, actually it's not even comparable. All you are doing is pressing a couple of buttons at the right time, that makes up maybe 30% of doing what you are doing (at a liberal estiamte). It's not like you planned out your exact path and beat out the best players around with stealth. You made tons of mistakes and still got away with it because the people you faced were not up to par, it's plain and simple to see in the video for anyone who has actually tried it against even mildly skillful players.

4. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that the class wasn't difficult. What I HAVE heard them say is in most scenarios we are either outdone by other classes (true) or are reliant on little to no opposition (also true). I've also seen people saying there are things the class SHOULD be able to do but can't, many of which I agree with because currently we do not have a profound effect on the battlefield.

5. You can assume whatever you want about me. Here's the difference: we have video evidence of what is going on in your scenarios, you have never seen me play or seen my opponents. Wanna try again?

6. Buuuuut you DIDN'T post those. I get the feeling that we'd find the same problems with those videos that we do with these ones. And you can think what you like about Infiltrator but the fact is in the vast majority of scenarios we are a minor nuisance. Sure, I've stopped advances by taking out a squads medics or taking out crucial Heavies and Engineers on turrets, we CAN do some cool things but these things are few and far between and most of our arsenal is underwhelming at best.

Really now, if you think that i was even tryign to contribute to the game when i was goofing around knifing as many as i could, think again. I was obviously showing off the cloak and effectivness at blending it. If i wanted to contribute, i would have used every weapon in my arsenal.

Ahh, I agree with you. The game is largely vehicle based, but that's only in the broad pushes, and in the capacity of helping the infantry move up. Infantry captures points, and they are ultimately what decides the winners. If your vehicles can move up, but your infantry gets held down you'll still lose the fight, but that doesn't work the other way around. In essence, Vehicles are all in support of the infantry (even though I definitely grant you it doesn't feel that way sometimes).

Vehicles are strong, that's for sure, but everything has a counter. Infiltrators aren't as strong against vehicles as other classes, and they require resourcefulness to affect the number of active tanks on the field. I also agree with you that killing people at the sunderer doesn't do as much (it still does a little, though). But the ability to make infantry bug out of cover, or create confusion in the ranks of the infantry, is still incredibly valuable on the field and can very fast make you win fights.

I just feel like this class is constantly underestimated. It's harder, but it can potentially yield greater rewards. My personal opinion is the risk vs reward is a little bit out of whack and needs some small tweaks, but overall I still think this class is very powerful in the right hands.

I play TR on the Mattherson server and would like to chime in on a few things...

You want C4 - actually our class doesn't need C4, however, the current classes that do use it, should be required to use at least 3 of them to blow up a vehicle (just my opinion)

Anti-Armor rifles - I thought I made a good post about an anti-material rifle suggestion. None of us want to hunt tanks, but it would be nice to help support our squad members in being able to at least damage them (even slightly), since we are the only class that can't for whatever reason.

permanenetly 100% invisible cloak - we don't need 100% invisible cloak, but it would be nice to be able to increase the stealth time at a cert cost

lower cloak sound - it would make sense, since I can hear someone cloak/uncloak 50 meters away, but *can't* hear a LA's jetpack 10 meters away from me

shotguns - don't need shotguns either, just a better CQC weapon

Thermal vision - the only thing that thermal vision shouldn't do is see cloaked infiltrators. A 30 cert scope can negate a whole class's main ability? Really?

Anti-armor EMP grenades - don't need to effect "armor" if you have a way of damaging it with the class, OR, no damage, but disable. Pick one.

A hacking tool that can hack vehicles and generators etc. - generators make no sense, everyone should do that. Vehicles? The aforementioned rifle, EMP grenade, or the tool...pick one


Yes, the class is good, but as for shutting down facilities, enemy sunderers, etc...I don't know who you're playing against, but that would never happen on the Mattherson server.

Hellhammer for president.

-k

Okay my veiw.

Short vershion:

There are a lot of people in this thread who are eithier selfish or complete morons.

The kind of effect old school Infs want is simply not balanced. The maximum effect an Infiltrator can have on a battle at a given skill level and still be balanced is equal to any other classes. In anything but the smallest battles it's virtually impossibble save by fluke, (right places, right class, right time), for any class to do that much. It just wouldn't be balanced if they could have that kind of effect. IMHO everyone here is eitheir too dumb to see that or too "me, me, me" to care.

Thats said i agree there's some issues.

Those video's aren't bad, IMHO they players are a littile below par, not as much as some claim but absolutly not average. Trying to run in front of an average player with no cloak up will get you killed every time, same near a tank that has NV optics and is actually paying attention.

That said i disagree with the detractors, the majority of players, (including myself), cannot tell one cloak sound from another and with so many freindly inf's cloaking a decloaking all the time you'll have issues using that. Plus the number of players i know who can react fast enough to stop an inf decloaking behid them from killing them is pretty small. Even if they work out that it's behind them, (and for anyone using earphones i don't see how thats possibble from the sound anyway), the majority also don't have the reflex's to react in time. If you sneak up on somone and they've no idea there's an inf nearby you can kill them easilly.

The catch is after that first kill, one player in the area with just a tad more situational awareness than the average, an NV scope, and the knowlage of ow it reveals you can and probably will completly ruin things for you. If i know a CQC Inf is nearby i start sweeping with it myself, i know others do as well. Unless you can spot the doing that and get the drop on them out of camo your as good as dead. An organised group of such players using a VOIP system to communicate will shut you down hard.

The real issue though is your effect on those battles was far less than numerous LA's i've been had by. Simply put your taking out a guy here or there at a steady clip. By the time you get to your 5th or 6th guy the first guy has probably allready respawned and got back into the battle. Your only really keeping 3 or 4 people out of the fight. Even a nooby LA that approaches correctlly cna drop into the enemies midst and gun down a squad before they can react. He might not live very long afterwards, but he's often kept a half a dozen or more enemies out of the battle till they get back. Good LA's can take out far more, (and their visability tends to distract far more nearby opponnents for a littile while), and if they have C4 they cna be even more deadly.

I think SMG's are going to really help here as they'll let Inf's pull LA mass squad kills whilst the cloak lets them get away more easilly. Which is great. But it still dosen't change the fact that it's a lot easier for an LA to get into postion and they can still blow a tank. The skill gap, (and especially map knowlage gap), is hidiouslly large. The class just requires so much more skill to pull off the same effect than other classes. There's aslo the fact that aside fro C4 an LA needs no certs to do this, wheras every Inf vid i've seen seems to rely on a well upgraded cloak and pistol and restoration kits. It's a lot of certs to get viable.


In fact thats the crux of most of my issues with the class. You can do all sorts of things with it. But when push comes to shove it takes a hell of a lot of skill to do them. And the end effect is much equal at bestm, or worse at worst than what another class can achive with less skill.

The only other area i'd throw a lot of flak at is scope sway. It just seems like such a pointless mechanic. With bolt action weapons you need to unscope between shots anyway so there isn't much pont to it, eitheir you can line uip a shot with it or you can't, if you can then it makes no real differance and if you can't the lack isn't going to make a huge diffrance, and the Semi auto's need so many shots to kill, (3 body shots i belive, 4 with a limb hit), that all it does is render them usless.

@Ztiller:
Your carnage videos almost made me puke.

Maybe I'm a little dumb, but I can't get why.
The Stalker Suite, as it was in the beta, could make permanently cloakd only at 2 conditions 1) you had to move very slowly 2) you had to take a break and recharge the capacitor every now and then (same as Hunter but without uncloaking). Without to mention lack of primary weapon. It's just another cloaking device that makes easier to sneak behind enemy lines, but only if you give up your offensive power.
Since we have no explosive, no vehicles hacking, cloaking is not total invisibility, can be countered by cheap and common attachments, we have just guns... I don't see how this could be unbalanced.

This is just another concept of sneaking behind enemy lines, it's a slower-paced gameplay compared to the Hunter (with Zitler already mastered I'd say).

The only effect they should have a temporary weapons lock, hud disappear and a nasty "distortion" visual effect, but no damage. Emp grenades are meant to be a support weapon: they have to make the enemy weaker for a few seconds so the rest of the team can neutralize the vehicle.