The Infiltrator is getting... "FIXED" in Planetside 2. Let's Talk About It.

Honestly, with the rise of use of c4 and tank mines and how people are constantly one-shotting maxes, we should get max revives back.

This is not balancing, this is crap. By listening to the whining of four imbeciles, devs are destroying the most beautiful game in the world. Infiltrators are part of Planetside 2 and if you don't like them, you should just change games. Period.

ammo/battery, apply a max value of the cloak so it cant be spammed forever?

Issue with sniping is that there is literally no reason to do it beyond CQC bolting. People get instant revived so all you are doing is padding your KDA. If they made bolters headshots make them not revivable, then we might see a difference.

Meh, doesn't matter.

A problem that isn't often talked about with the infiltrator, is that it is a trap for new players. "If you can't beat them, join them", but the combination of cloak and sniper rifle is very bad for learning gunplay. SMGs arn't much better, as you don't need to learn how to control recoil as much as a carbine. The gameplay gets samey, you give other classes a good honest try, and you find you need to unlearn a lot of bad habits. Forcing the player to choose between a cloak and a primary weapon is a good solution for this. I have only a little over a 1000 hours in game, so my first 200 are still relatively fresh in my memory, compared to most veterans, but I can't speak on the greater balance issues this may cause.

Vocal majority consensus.... But in reality Infil is the most non-issue. Bunch of crybabies.

dying instantly the moment someone sees you? that not an INFIL thing, that's a lag thing, happens against every class

noooooo, everyones gonna stop playing infil and my infinite source of kills will be gone. But seriously, if you just use your eyes its not hard to spot and kill an infil...

Dead game. Lmao

I guess we'll see what happens. Long range snipers have never bothered me. CQB SMG infiltrators have.

I find it funny how infiltrator is ALREADY a counter for an infiltrator. xbow stalker catlike infil makes a perfect hunter for enemy infils. Crouchwalk anywhere you see recon darts/dildars (just fyi, crouching renders you immune to both of them), have an ability to destroy them, and instantly oneshot headshot any infil up to 45m, which you can get to very easily. And thanks to catlike you have an insane mobility due to increased jump height which allows you to cross many obstacles, and get to some places where othervise only LA can be.

If they fix the vehicle play i think it would fix a lot of aspects

hell yeah brother

Yeah because of how powerful peeker's advantage is and being able to peek from anywhere with a decloak shot... a nerf to that is just the only way...

I have all of my playtime in PS2 on Infiltrator (NC), and I think the example of backcapping as a lone wolf is a perfect example of Infiltrator doing what it's really good at. The class is meant to be that behind-enemy-lines nuisance for the enemy team and excels at infantry-on-infantry combat because you can control the terms of engagement with good cloak and intel usage and get the drop on people most of the time. This said, I think the class actually pays some appropriate costs for having these powers: It has almost 0 anti-vehicular capability (only grenades/mines do any notable damage to armored vehicles and even then, not much). HA not only has both good anti-infantry and anti-vehicle weapons, but also has a personal shield that can allow them to win most 1v1 infantry duels, even if the enemy gets the drop on them (lost way too many ambushes to solo Heavies as Infiltrator to them just being able to live long enough to turn around and kill me before I can put enough damage on them).

This said, I totally get people's frustration trying to fight against infiltrators, they can be an extremely annoying class to try and kill, and can feel very unfair if you're not in a vehicle or a heavy w/ a shield available. To be honest though, they should be annoying to play against. That's the point of the class. They're not annoying to verse, then they are probably just garbage and not worth playing as. It's already arguably one of the weakest classes in the game since it brings less utility than every other class: LA's are able to get places no one else can and also can carry C4 to kills vehicles if they can get on top of them, heavies are probably OP as it is, medic sustains infantry pushes, engineer sustains vehicle pushes, Infiltrator mostly provides some intel (which is useful, but also somewhat replaceable from other sources), and that's about it.

only weak players complain about infil
i hope they will too pay the price with new updates

I haven't pulled a max since they took away revives.
Since half of everyone you fight has either a pocket rocket or c4, getting one or two shot as a max happens all the time. They're sitting ducks, solo, and need support to be useful, anyway. Now they just feel bad to play.

And if infiltrators have to weapon swap to cloak, heavies should have to weapon swap for shields. And infiltrators are almost never what enables an actual base cap. That's the heavies and medics. Annoying to get headshot or shot in the back? Sure. Worth annihilating the only thing that makes them in any way viable? No.


Just my two cents.

Making the infiltrator not having a sniper while cloak ability what does this mean? I ask because we already have it where we have the infinite cloak secondary weapon playstyle, but now does this mean new players are unable to cloak at the start or unable to use a sniper at the start?

they have been OP since launch, just ez mode play.

CLOAKED FLASH, CLOAKED FLASH, CLOAKED FLASH get rid of this log out and maybe quit the game machine!

Regular infils I actively hunt as an LA ambusher main. I run around like I'm being shot at NOT jetting till they uncloak at me. I'm behind them near instantly and shooting them midair for those 3 seconds. I can and have killed cloaked flashes this way but it's the only way I can think of and it's rare. I specialize in 1 v 1 ing vehicles even when they're actively fighting me and the best I can do is get away from a cloaked flash and still even with the fastest flying infantry in the game they still run me over plenty if they never uncloak. If you try and be any other play style out in the field besides an infil or la that knows what you're doing, cloaked flashes are going to wreck you over and over with NO chance of living.

There is no real counters to the renegade cloaked flash, it has to go! How many ppl have quit this game for good because of them?

dude wtf is that robotic voice

Ha! Great to see the reclaimed Vanguard footage you teased:)

As for the infil rework, I am so torn. Infils have been the way they are for so long seeing change only makes me concerned. That said, infils have never been fair. As a LA main, infils could be more unfair than MAX's, a class designed to be unfair 1v1. The ability to essentially fire from cloak due to network latency has no counter, and the only class with intel (aside from the crossbow with detect bolts) is such a massive power skill to overcome.

How about this small suggestion. We make all intel useless to the person who placed it. The thing that gets me are the lone wolf (sorry but this footage can qualify) open field assassins running up crazy kill counts uncontested. This would force at least 2 infils to be there.

Also maybe a recon shield change??? That in itself would cause a massive change in that playstyle exploited in the footage.

This future patch, if and whenever it happens, will be the nail in the coffin. The NA and EU server merge is the smoking gun. This is following the same path to numerous other F2P titles that have completely died. Game gets sold -> server merges -> drastic changes that become absolute fuckups -> … -> death. Those who also played Combat Arms up to its soft death can vouch.

I keep saying it, but this isn't a symmetrical balance issue. The fix is asymmetric. Simple fixes that already exist in the code to adjust the following:

1. Get rid of NAC. Rogues shouldn't be tanks, ever, especially not while invisible. This was stupid the moment it went into game. Turn it off, refund certs.

2. Get rid of Wraith weapons. This wasn't in PS1 for good reason. Again, stupid the second it was put into design documents. Disable when wraith cloaking is equipped.

3. Add 3-second recloak time like Wraiths have. We can't just have an equippable item for cloaking devices. Heavies don't have to do this shit, and they're by far the biggest killers in the game. This is such a terrible direction. First strike advantage already exists for everyone with PS2's peeker's advantage gap vs other games. LAs and HAs already have this in droves, and such a delay only benefits laggers and penalizes people actually playing their own server. What doesn't benefit laggers (or anyone else) is getting back into cloak after coming out and hitting someone - they spot, they may or may not die, and the cloaker then gets dunked on before they can re-cloak. Three seconds is a lifetime in this game. This penalizes both CQC bolters and long-range snipers; CQCs can't hit-and-run as easily, getting hunted much quicker and put down without being able to escape, while long-range snipers can't just pop-in-and-out and are easily counter-sniped or hit with vehicles in open field combat. This code already exists, copy-paste.

4. Increase refraction modifiers based on weapon equipped. Knives and pistols have no modifier, SMGs have a 25-50% increase, long guns (BRs, Scouts and Snipers) have a 50-100% increase - that means even when kneeling and staying still, it'll be grossly obvious someone is there due to having walking-levels of refraction with a SMG while being immobile. The problem with cloaking "coming out of nowhere" is that not everyone is playing with the same graphics and settings, some making cloakers impossible to see under all circumstances while others make it pretty obvious. This would balance that out and make it so cloaking is more for infiltrating (shocking) behind enemy lines or onto a flank, and not for running up on someone in broad daylight completely invisible. This code already exists, just adjust the modifiers in excel.

This "fix" has the opportunity to break a class for no other reason than people being bad at the game and not playing with proper settings. I get CQC bolting being garbage, too, but a lot of that has to do with recon + cloaking + NAC + quick-scoping; engineers can do this, for example, but we don't see it often because while they can recon (crossbow) and quick-scope, they lack the NAC and invisibility to reliably and safely get into position. Remove the NAC and add the re-cloak timer and suddenly even CQC bolters aren't able to survive nearly as long, if they even make it to the building to begin with.

Also, recon and surveillance is part of the game, people need to accept this. There are plenty of ways to counter this, from implants (Sensor Shield, Avoidance, Catlike) to deployables (EMPs, shooting darts/dildars) to playstyle (suppressors, not using flash suppressors, not running everywhere when you know someone's around so they can't hear you as easily). It's been this way for years and the salty diet MAXes are complaining about having to give up their implants to be invisible on radar while having an overshield? Like really? lol "Assimilate is staple so it's unfair to have the invisibility implant because it limits options" - that's the point, you gotta' make choices with your implants, you can't have it all.


Finally, one monkey's paw result of nerfing reconnaissance in this game is players who are running around with POOR QUALITY triple digit connections killing folks through walls will be even worse without being able to tell where they are. Everyone suddenly becomes an infiltrator without recon spam if people take suppressors, folks will just die left and right from beaconside spammers at tower fights when folks can't have an indication of where these people are coming from or where they're running off to.

When room temp IQ activates for 2 seconds to generate some BS response.

So in short they taken away the fun of playing infi.

I don't get at all why people complain about infils, I don't play infil at all, and feel pretty fine, you stop moving, that's on you, you can't see the warped air that's on you. If you move and look playing against infils is fair.

honestly any of those nerfs would be an equivalent of straight up removing infil class from the game. i'd rather see it removed than handicapped to the point of nonexistence. and i'm saying it from a perspective of engi main.

If they are screwing over the infil, i wana see screwing over the HA

High skill - high impact
So... CQC bolters? 🙃

that would kill the infiltrator class.... holy moly so many high end gaming setup people already sit on the heavie class af if it would lead to cancer to play something else... this change, takes low end gear players, with high latencys, and bad pings, completely out of the game. seems like they still have too mutch players engaging on the battlefield and they want to get rid of them lol

switching in order to use your cloak? what next? the same for heavie assault shields and medic heals? that would sound fair lol however it kills the purpose of the differences between the classes. and im defenetly one of the people who couldnt believe maxes aren't revivable. like they have the cost of 3 battletanks, and when they die they're gone lol...

that's hillarious in the last 6 hours of game play i encountered exactly 2 maxes... 1 vanu and 1 nc.... was that how they ment to do it? and im talking about 6 hours with an average of at least 24 players per side up to 94 at peak

touching the infiltrator class is as big of a mistake as removing revival from maxes and only results in more stale gameplay. everyone and his mother already permasleeps on the heavie assault as it is. simply cause those op shields in combination with high end pc gear and all the other tweaks you can do in order to get an unfair advantage in this game basically remove the death option from their charackter if not by an accidantel sniper headshot lol....

there was a time, where people pulled engineers, despite not pulling a vehicle because it was actually usefull on the battlefield.

now we have an implant that automatically replenishes ammo, i never have to go away from my rock as an infiltrator because of that. that implant is the only thing that remotely makes infiltrator gameplay op they already got hit multiple time with the nerfbat in the past, reducing their hp to 75 % in the past did more than enough to keep that unit in check.

reworking utility in generell however would be a welcome change.
adding more debt and more playstyles to all of the classes , that means.

For the recon devices:
Remove the ability to light up specific enemies on the map. Have them more as a passive system to cover flanks. If any enemy is within a certain range (less for darts, more for the placeable device), you get a notification "Hey, someone is near your recon device."
That alone would make it pretty useless (beyond still giving those few points for reconning enemies) - so it does not show up on enemies minimaps. They dont know if it's there or not unless they checked it out. It should still make a sound, be visible and destroyable. But not as easy to spot. Perhaps if it gets spotted, it can be shown on the minimap.

I feel like another way of going about this is simply adding a cooldown to the cloak. Kinda like how the flash cloak got nerfed perhaps implement the same idea. Like 3 or 4s cooldown between cloaks.

I think the counter to infil should be the engineer, who could place stuff like jamming fields to counter/weaken recon darts in a large area. The more jamming fields active, the stronger the effect maybe.
Also, lights. They should make every single light on the map darklight, give the engie deployable darklight floodlights, and the engie turrets should have a little darklight projector so they can catch infils.
For the cloak, we're forgetting stuff like changing the cooldown/active timings to encourage infil players to be more careful with it. That's a piss-easy nerf that a dev can do with a sandwich in the other hand.
I don't hate the bodyshot idea either, and scope sway needs to be on every scoped weapon. The ballistics computer attachment is total bullshit and needs to go.
They could try that and then go harder if the infil is still pissing people off

Stealth Snipers/Assassin's are always going to be frustrating to play against even when they are weak, that is just how their archetype works. Nobody wants to be assasinated. Now answer this question if you think Infils are too strong:
20 Combat Medics try to take over a base or 20 Infils try to take a base who would win? Probably the Medics.

dont touch the dragoon

can be remedied with macros

Deep Operative and no-scope-sway snipers are the major issues with infil. Both of these remove the features intended to balance the class: being able to see the cloak shimmer and scope sway. No bolt should be exempt from scope sway (remove the anti-sway attachments too). They should also not have access to long-range weapons via stalker cloak. "Heavy" secondaries like blackhand, showdown, crossbow, etc. should not be on infil. I think those are the common sense easy to implement changes that only the most egregious infil copers would complain about.

Recon radius should also be visible on the map so you can avoid stepping into it, as well as recon devices being permanently spotted from the moment of deployment.

Also about scout rifles, they never should have been combined with battle rifles. That was one of the worst changes Wrel made. They were separate and limited to infil for a reason.

I remember the nightmare when Infiltrators had access to shotguns initially lol.
You could have cloak be something that requires 2 hands to activate....so you have disabled and equip a weapon to fire. Holster hour weapon to activate cloak again.

I know its a different game but Helldivers...when you activate your Strategem wrist panel you used both hands...can still run around but cant fire, nade, heal etc until deactivate your wrist panel.

I haven't played in a while but bolt action CQB cloak sniper was my 2nd main for PS2 but i also used to be Infiltrator/sabotage knife assassin in PS1 when guns wernt real the best option.

12 years later today I learn that you can shoot recon darts. Wtf.

We seem to be of the same opinion despite the fact that infil used to be my main class when I started playing and over time I'm using it less and less. Even then it still sits at 40+% of my playtime on my main. I do think they're a bit op in their current state. If even I can go on a crazy kill streak with something, then it's probably op lol.

I don't play as it nearly as often now. Only when the situation really calls for it and nothing else will do. I try to concentrate on the other teams' infils so kinda a counter-infil playstyle to keep them off my guys. I don't mind playing against them... when I'm also an infiltrator. When you're playing any other class and you die without ever seeing the guy, that is annoying. It can be difficult to even get to fights at times with so many infils going around. So I totally get it. These days I mostly play LA and heavy.

As long as whatever changes they make improve the experience for the majority, I'm all for it. I think the overall experience people have when playing ps2 is more important than any one class. Maybe people just rage about them cause they've come from other games and arent used to it. I dunno.

something not touched on is the niche play of stalker infil with a knife/sidearm assumed it will completely removed with nothing replacing or trading for it, being a counter to snipers new and extremely skilled there will be no counter other than vehicles or other snipers and will have the unintended swing toward snipers farming battles or controlling them entirely much like hossin tree snipers making defense impossible or attack painful but now they can do that anywhere. while stalker infil has minimal effect on gameplay the chance there is a stalker infil that can harass snipers moves skilled snipers away from being their main or a core of cert farming making the game worse for everyone who cant/doesnt want to snipe

dosend matter, u need to ban the exploit aim bot guys... not fun to play

One thought I had was that what if both the recon dart and the motion spotter could have a cool down once used. This would add three things:
1- You cannot resupply it with ammunition boxes/infantry terminals
2- If you destroy one, a new one is not going to immediately appear
3- Less darts and spotters on the map overall. If you fire a dart at a building you want to push, you cannot fire another dart at the other buildings for a bit.
I would then suggest that putting certs into the darts and motion spotters would improve their cool down and range.

Glad to hear you see infil as overpowered as well. I think another thing is the skill creep. Post DX-11 update and with the removal of nanoweve any of the previous downsides the class had have been reduced. This brought its overall overpowered elements more into the focal point.

Having people cry over infil is...whack.

They are easy to handle. Carry flashlight, and they'll light up and shotgun to the face. No infil no more.

Personally I like giving them the Jackhammer Special in burst mode. (NC FTW)

You cant nerf infil without killing its "fantasy." the entire class is designed around it. without it its just a really weak Heavy or less useful Engi. When i played WoW it was the same thing with Rogue. They were either really strong or complete ass. there is no middle ground. you either embrace the playstyle or kill it.

P.S. not an infil or rogue main lol

if they remove cloak or nerf how you cloak then they might as well remove heavy assault shield the thing that litearlly makes any shit player get kills. it is fair :) if they dont do that expect me to be spamming EMP's and showing the true power of infiltrator