[Warborn]

Originally Posted by Madcow

Thanks for not reading anything! Have a nice day! Seriously, if you can't be bothered to read what people even put down how in the world am I supposed to see your viewpoint as valid? I don't touch AMP (and talking about circle strafing with an AMP just goes to show you really don't know much about the gun), rarely use pistols, use Boomers pretty much only when I'm forced inside, use Spitfires almost exclusively as a distraction and get almost all of my kills with the knife. So how many of your comments applied to me? Hmmm. Just about none. Yet you were responding to me. Fascinating.

Now that's interesting. I like to think that as something slightly more than retarded apes we're capable of grasping a point whether every nuance is covered to a nauseating deree. Which makes me really wonder why on earth you've chosen to focus on the smaller, less important sort of afterthought section I posted, defending your honor like some Internet samurai. Believe it or not, but talking about how you get kills really wasn't #1 on my agenda. The point I was making is that infiltrators will always have the same gripes provided they're going for the same stuff as the grunts are.

Also, I never used an AMP as an infiltrator, so you're right, I don't have a lot of experience with the gun. But you know what? I kill lot's and lot's of infiltrators who use an AMP to run circles around me at close range, holding down the fire button. So, why do I need to have experience with an AMP as an infiltrator to know that infiltrators sometimes use AMPs and circle strafe around targets when I kill them every other day?

As to your question of why there aren't more cloakers? I'll happily give you my biased answer. Cloaking takes skill. Cloaking well takes lots of patience and lots of skill. The vast majority of Planetside has no interest in challenge, they have interest in killwhoring. Proof of this is the popularity of Dark Light. To hunt down cloakers without Dark Light is challenging, but far from impossible. Using Dark Light allows faster kills and at times incredibly cheap kills, and that attracts the player base.

Not many people play cloakers because ultimately you're just killing infantry like the rest of us, only you have a lot of chance built into it, though that gives you an elitist feeling, as if you're better than everyone else because you can die really quickly due to bad luck, so it still holds some appeal. I do agree though that PS on the whole has a lot of skilless roles, like Reaver pilot and using strikers or other homing weapons.

As for Darklight being something for killwhoring, give me a break. What's the alternative, shoot at a barely visible, fast-moving wisp of a cloaker as it runs around blowing people up with boomers and grenades? It's either Darklight, or having to deal with a really annoying enemy with very few effective ways to fight back, and thus very few ways to defend yourself and avoid being killed by grenades or otherwise.

I'm not looking to 'outkill' a grunt, although I'm sure there are times that I do just that. My job on the battle field is far different than the average grunt. I'm not holding down a stairwell (I can take down the first wave, but beyond that I'm helpless). I'm not rushing into the face of battle. It's a bad comparison, but it's the one you chose. My job is to get to the battle front before the battle begins, to get behind enemy lines giving myself the best opportunity to take out Snipers and AV, as well as optimizing my opportunity to mine gimped vehicles that drop back for repairs. If I'm feeling patient I can run a 4/1 or 5/1 k/d ratio, if I'm feeling less patient it's closer to 2/1 or 3/1. I'm fighting totally different battles than the average grunt though, I'm staying away from situations with large numbers of people in a confined area and therefore am not killwhoring. I'm not impressed by killwhoring. I'm happy to know it means so much to you.

Oh, semantics, it's been such a long time since we've gotten together.

The grunt comparison was to say that infiltrators are simply another type of fodder. This is a generalization of course and it may not apply to everyone, but the vast majority of infiltrators either run up to stationary targets, plant a boomer, and run, or they do a similar activity but use an AMP, and circle strafe instead. They're doing a grunt's job, just in a different method. Or if you want to nitpick, they're on par with snipers instead. Suffice to say though, even by your own admition cloakers spend most of their time killing people for no reason other than to grind the enemy through attrition. Doesn't matter how, but that's what they do, and it's also what grunts, or snipers, do.

But see, the 'inconvenience' that you're talking about is exactly what I'm hoping would happen with the change. I want people to have to commit to going after that cloaker, and the cost could quite possible be them getting blasted by somebody they can't see so well any more. That's perfect, that is a cat and mouse game. That's the reason they built that drawback into Dark Light to begin with, but it's easily gotten around by the flickering that happens.

Darklight might need some modification, but I would hate to see the developers focus on trying to make most cloakers just another group of killwhores, as you put it, alongside most grunts and most snipers. They already do have a lot of success in combat, as cloakers have been sharing without hesitation, and I don't see why they need to have even more if they're already so potent with DL as it is now.

And, changing DL for the worse will not increase the cat and mouse aspect. It'll be the same old thing, just now more boomers will be going off in spawn rooms, or by locked-down MAXs, or more spitfires will be popping up in the middle of infantry attacking a tower or enemy base. There is no cat and mouse to begin with, because the goal of most cloakers is simply to kill enemy soldiers. They're not trying to get somewhere Sam Fischer style and avoid detection, they're trying to run in, kill some doods, and respawn to do the same thing.

Originally Posted by Cauldron Borne

Grunt: Die, Respawn, run out, mash down trigger at nearest enemy target, die, respawn...

I thought you said you've played a grunt before.

Cloaker: Die, Respawn, TRY to sneak back into the field and find a place where his/her talents are most useful. ATTEMPT to pull off his/her objective. If that objective is not to kill something, then MAYBE get a few kills on the side. Get spotted for what ever reason, most likely INSTANTLY die, respawn. IF at any point the cloaker is spotted, he/she must respawn and try to go through the list from the beginning.

A Darklight change wouldn't make that much different. You'd still be going for the same place the grunts are going. You'd still have to deal with people actually at your objective, usually (dropping spitfires and other field work would be a bit safer though). And so long as the objectives of a cloaker don't stray from those of a grunt (blow the gen, hack the cc, hack/destroy the AMS, etc) I certainly don't want to see cloakers made anymore potent. The rarity that cloakers are right now is perfect considering they're just killwhoring for the most part, anyway. If Darklight were nerfed, they'd be doing it even more effectively, and as a grunt I would really rather not be fighting an army of cloakers primarily.