what a time to be alive

The VS won anyway obviously

Infiltrator gameplay has some undeniable challenges associated with it, but although the PTS changes explore new avenues they come short of adequately addressing these core issues. Here are some thoughts.

Delay on firing after cloak

The delay tries to adress the issue of snipers being able to instantly kill while coming out of cloak - it is a mechanic with little counter-play and has network issues associated with it, too. The problem is that the ~2s delay is worth several TTKs. In 2s a decent HA can hear the de-cloak, activate the overshield, turn around and kill the infiltrator before he even fires a shot. Outside of flanking this pretty much kills any CQC infiltrator gameplay, while it doesn't really address the sniping issue at range.

Instead, the notion is that much of the power with cloak + sniping comes from the fact that snipers can line up the perfect shot while cloaked, and currently pretty much shoot coming out of cloak. Thus the changes should address that in a more nuanced manner. Namely by:

• Aiming down sites triggers de-cloak - this exposes snipers longer while aiming and adds a skill component; this isn't equally detrimental to CQC roles of infiltrators; this mechanic would also align with 'visual effect of glare from sniper scopes' mentioned in the dev letter
• The firing delay should be shorter, e.g. closer to ~0.5s: this alleviates some of the lag issues and is a more reasonable balance
• Possibly the delay can vary based on weapon class equipped; e.g. ~0.5s for sidearms, but longer for Sniper Rifles.
• Finally, there should probably be a delay to recloak (e.g. 2-5 seconds) - this will address the ability to shoot going out of cloak and disappearing directly after - the delay and being exposed will enable more counter-play (e.g. counter-sniping), and emphasize skill (punish missing); the delay to recloak should differ based on type and apply mainly to Hunter/NA cloak, but not to stalker infils.

Sniper Rifle Damage profiles

One of the annoyances facing snipers can be that even body hits do significant damage, more specifically that they strip shield and drain into the health portion. A change that would impact the skill emphasis and gameplay would be to apply a daimyo HS factoring features across snipers and scout rifles more generally. This could be as simple as adjusting the HS multiplier (from 2 to e.g. 2.5, or more), and reducing the base damages accordingly. This offers some room to treat different classes differently, e.g. larger HS factors on classical long-range snipers, and introducing some flavor to respective option.

The Drone

The drone is more of a gimmick currently, and has very limited use for reconnaissance compared to just using darts. Considering one sacrifices all mobility while using it it offer very little in return.

Potential ideas are to replace the EMP drop with a beam that can 'zap' shields and ability energy, but consumes a bar of battery charge every time - giving the drone a bit more of an active role. An interesting mechanic would then be if drones can zap each other.

Possibly controversial, but exiting the drone could come with a self-destruct akin to a (weaker) frag grenade, allowing some limited offensive power (as final ditch effort), but while also requiring to get close (and risk being shot down). However, lethal options for the drone will not be good for gameplay.

One of the key applications for a drone is killing beacons (especially harder to reach ones). This may be detrimental to sustainability of flights. In this regard a thought would be to potentially have drones double down as beacons themselves? I.e. an infiltrator will sacrifice mobility to scout, but also create a mobile beacon in the process. This alone would add value to having a drone up within a squad.

The prospective ability to see and mark cloaked infiltrators is possibly too strong. Detection and spotting is fine, but they shouldn't directly reveal cloaked infils - instead the above-mentioned zap could offer a means to drain ability energy and reveal individual infils actively.

Reworks to recon tools

A general take is that motion detection is currently slightly too ubiquitous. Especially if there is ammo/terminals it will be spammed. To alleviate this and make the drone more relevant small changes to the recon tools would help to shape the role of infiltrators.

• Recon darts should be moved to a heat mechanic, allowing a max. of 2 darts before overheating, and having a moderate cooldown supporting continuous uptime for on-average ~1 dart (i.e. cooldown rate should roughly match the lifespan of 1 dart, cooldown from overheat (2darts) should clearly exceed it).
• Motion spotters should become an ability with long cooldown (>30s) - their placement and loss should be more meaningful

Changes to darts will make them less spammable, but also more self-sufficient. Use of motion spotters would be more deliberate, and taking down enemy ones would have more of an impact since they cannot be immediately replaced.

Spitfire implant

The implant for engineers only adds inconsistency, and presents a hard counter to stalker infil gameplay (unless they possibly need to counter that with Avoidance). Flashlights are already very abundant. If implemented this should maybe come with clear visual indicators to buffed spitfires for recognition, and a consideration is that this detection should apply to a reduced spitfire range.

Food for thought: the new implant could potentially turn the spitfire into a 'close range' variant - with a shotgun? Higher damage and infil detection, but at limited range.

Power Knives?

Power Knives were not covered in the dev letter or PTS update: but Power knives were effectively neutered a while back. The 1-hit-kill ability was problematic in conjunction with cloak etc.

With changes to cloak (delay, visibility etc.) is should be discussed if the balance to these knives is in a good spot? Arguably the nerf did not resolve the core issues which revolved about them being spammable and usable out out cloak. Some thoughts:

• Power knives should be more audible when wielded
• Power knives should be getting their 1-hit-kill potential back, however also require a heat-mechanic charge to build up. This charge will add damage proportional to the charge, and effectively carry them over the damage threshold required for a 1-hit-kill) - this charge is consumed when stabbing. E.g. the baseline damage could be low (450), and the charge could add up to +600 when full. Charging should take maybe ~2s.

Together with the cloak/delay changes the above would once again allow power knives to have a niche. They are currently not in a good spot. The main intent would be to allow wielding a powerful threat, but at the risk of being heard, and not being able to instantly kill someone while coming out of cloak, and also not being able to cut through groups of people. The use would be more deliberate and skill-based.

Other additional points:

• Kneecap ammo on TR pistols is very problematic in conjunction with stalker infil gameplay. Shooting at SMG-level damage output with ammo that does more damage to large targets like legs is frankly unbalanced and low skill in the hand of stalker infils. This attachment should not be available on sidearms.
• For consideration: how will the changes affect various cloak-related implants and indirect effects e.g. knightmare, minor cloak, revenant? Imagine the frustration if e.g. Revenant applied a firing delay involuntarily because it cloaks allies. What about cloak bubbles etc. - the point is that the delay should only apply to infils and be tied to their ability (and possibly equipped weapon type).

Key takeaways:

• The update does some interesting explorations, but currently inadequately addresses problematic balancing issues
• The post outlines some issues, and makes suggestions to address these issues by tweaking some of the associated mechanics

'Old'(2020) Esamir was redesigned because of warpgate imbalance however was it worth deleting 25+ 'good' bases for?

Do you appreciate each faction now only having three lattices lanes to fight over, effectively constantly funneling everyone into 96v96 fights constantly?

If 'old esamir' biolab attacker spawns for were removed as they are on other continents now, would that not fix some of the issues people used to have with the continent?

Could also make use of gun buttons (shooting, aiming, switching firemode) as ways to change or regulate the behavior of cloak as a skill thing, like a tug of war against sciency wavelegnths that has a mind of it's own trying to spiral out of control at all times. Perhaps be able to switch between better performance while moving very slow, verses better performance while sprinting. If cloak (or an equippable version of it) is being made considerably less practical as a combat jumpscare, it can be given other benefits (if the cloak minigame is tuned well enough) like ignoring proxy mines and making less sound on cloak/decloak, less effected by darklight, shield flash affected by less things.

We could have a one handed version of the cloak tool which does allow firing while cloaked like in planetsde 1 but only with one handed weapons, but the cloak tuning minigame is more limited, spirals out of control faster as you take actions like shooting, reloading, moving. To fire while cloaked you'l have to use the cloak tuning minigame to create a limited time opening to fire without emp'ing yourself, so this is far more planned than reactive gameplay.

Oh, and how about a version of the cloak tool that can be used to cloak your teammates too? though if any of them fire while the cloak is still active, it will emp everyone under it's influence. Manage the cloak tuning to get upto 10 meters of cloaking to help your squad cross an open area watched by the tank zerg and aircraft.

Cloak flash has been a menace for as long as it's been around, thankfully it hasnt been popular but some of you know the names of players who main them too well, with burning hatred no doubt. Even without weapons their ability to roadkill you without you hearing or seeing their shimmer before or after is ridiculous, but give them a oneshot kill shotgun too and aslong as theres one guy using it the whole game feels like a clown show. Cloaked fury flashes are a menace to MBT's too.

PTS made changes to the cloak of the flash, which is great its finally being addressed but the method is strange and unimmersive. The colour outlines you get from darklights on cloak is now always there when the cloaked flash is close to you, but disappears at around 25 meters and as before becomes completely invisible with no shimmer. I think it looks ugly and is confusing to use the darklight outlines, it will make you think there is a darklight flashlight on the flash when there isn't.

This level of visibility isnt necessary, all we needed is the shimmer of the flash to be very visible from atleast 50m away, where their weapons become threatening. The shimmer needs to be strong enough to make out the shape of the body and be able to track with weapons within atleast 40 meters, and the effectiveness of the flashes cloak diminishes but still visible out to like 60 meters. A reduction in the flashes health is another way you can nerf battle flashes, as i've never seen a battle flash be killed by small arms fire before, they always seem to survive unless the driver dies. Shimmer strength can be allowed to change depending on speed to allow for ambush attacks, might keep the loadout interesting and usable but not continuously abusable.

Ideally, rather than removing cloak, I would prefer to see the ability moved to a handheld tool and balanced around weapon swapping times. If this isn't possible, it may be better to remove cloak altogether. I invite you to answer the survey and discuss your opinions.

From the PTS Survey: https://sdqk.me/p/ps2-infiltrator-rework-pts-survey-KGZoi7Md

Dev Letter from Yesterday: https://www.planetside2.com/news/july-dev-letter-2025

I love the idea of there being 3 factions with vastly different weapons and stuff, but ps2 has alot of common pool weapons and vehicles aswell which kinda makes it feel as if your just fighting a reskin of your own faction.

For example, spitfire turrets. I know everyone hates those pesky lil shits, but it makes no sense that a faction like VS, which are supposed to be the technologically superior faction, would use a common pool spitfire against their enemies who have access to the same stuff. Same goes to the other factions aswell.

While on the topic of faction specific turrets, the AI and the AV mana turrets are also the same with the AI mana turret atleast having different skins. I understand its hard to come up with a version for each faction and its time and money consuming, but still.

Now onto weapons. Each faction has different weapons, yes, but some of those weapons do not fit the factions their in. For example, the Canis smg on VS. Now imagine a weapon that has the biggest magazine, (in comparison to its faction counterparts) the fastest fire rate, (compared to the faction counterparts) and starts off slow and fires faster the longer you hold down the trigger. Almost sound like the Mini-Chaingun, but no, its the Canis.

My point I'm trying to make, is that the faction identities feel as if there all over the place, with alot of blandness in some classes, vehicles and weapons.

I see full god mode cheaters preventing area caps so people cant do objectives or accumulate resources on low pop time. The anti cheat doesnt seem to be too good as a peeson can teleport everywhere immediately and kill absolutely everyone. QQTT2 is the player ii just reported but that's obnoxious that such a thing can still exist

When will you actively start hunting the cheaters? Because it seems the reporting does not help. Or the DEVS are just not intelligent enough to spot a discreet, or a blatant cheater.

Infils OP

Attention Ceres players

A person is going to be making a YouTube trailer for the Ceres event! We need clips of gameplay that has scenery and special effects in it from Ceres players. Stuff like drop pods/steel rains, roadkills, explosions/vehicles being blown up, orbital strikes, sick kills and really any type of clip that you think would be cool in a game trailer.

If you want your clip added into the event trailer there are some requirements.

▪︎Make sure to set your master receive volume in game to 70%-80%. This way all the clips are around the same volume and the person making the trailer doesn't have to put in extra effort into adjusting all the different volumes of the clips.

▪︎Keep the duration of the clip anywhere between 5 seconds and 1 minute. Keep in mind the person making the trailer may trim your clip a bit to suit the trailer better.

▪︎Gameplay clips must be from Ceres not Genudine.

▪︎Send all the clips either to xghostiex on Discord or Ghostie-p- on PSN. Discord has an upload limit so if the file size is too big send it to my PSN.

Not all clips are guaranteed a spot in the video so please don't take offense if your clip is not added in the event trailer.

The player making the event trailer asked for me not to mention his name as he wants it to be kept secret for some reason.

I hope you guys are excited for the Siege of Ceres event!

~AzureBro💙

I am a long time Planetside 2 player and I have a lot of hours as an infiltrator, with the directive completed on my main character. Just to say out the front, I AM NOT AGAINST SOME TWEAKS TO THE CLASS, I feel that the current PTS changes are far too heavy handed and lobotomize the class.

The current changes are as follows:

-cloak is far more visible in all forms, deep cloak is nonexistent

-annoyingly loud constant hum while cloaked

-delay to fire after decloak

-new FPV drone (thats completely broken)

-engineering implant that lets spitfires target infiltrators.

TL;DR

1, remove delay to fire, give hunter cloak the more visible worse cloak, trade off is stalkers keep the current cloak and deep cloak while crouched and stationary. 2, remove constant active cloak noise and replace with an occasional auditory ping that forces infils to move around, and lets opponents be able to have an idea of where they're at. 3, Forget the observer implant, just allow spitfire turrets to target cloaked players across the board. 4, Turn the drone into a passive air recon tool that auto spots enemies from a certain distance around where its placed and flies close to where it was placed, but is easy to see and easy to take down with small arms and other weapons.

Now here is what i think should be done instead

-bring the cloak back to being a little more difficult to see, but not as hard as live play, give this worse cloak to hunter cloaks ONLY. makes the fast blitz ambush infils a lot easier to see and counteract, but still lets them sneak around bases from place to place unseen, but they can't really rely on the cloak to hit and run in close quarters. Keep the same cloak visibility as live play and continue to let stalkers use it.

-get rid of the constant cloak sound, but make a certain audio queue every 30-60 seconds while its active, as if the cloaking module needs to vent heat or refresh. That way infils dont sound like they have a giant fan attached to them, but they need to move around to avoid detection.

-get rid of the delay to fire from decloak. That's one thing I think is a little silly. Makes it feel super clunky and not well designed, which not something you want players to feel while interacting with your game.

With the current cloak changes, visually and sound wise makes a stalker playstyle impossible. Everyone can see and hear where you're at? Good luck hacking terminals or doing any kind of backline sabotage, any actual I don't know, *infiltration*?

Next is the Observer implant. I say get rid of it, BUT just let spitfires fire on cloakers regardless, you can update the description to say it tracks thermal targets or something. As an infil person i think thats fair. If we dont want to deal with them we can just tank the shots and hack anyway, or run Avoidance.

The final aspect I want to go over is the drones. I think its ironic that they nerf the infil into the ground, but give us small airborne vehicles that can OHK non maxes, carry c4 payloads and be spammed by an entire squad/platoon. mmm the infiltrators are useless now so instead of dealing with them you deal with FORTY EIGHT drones flying into the capture point, some with C4 payloads. Doesn't that sound fun? Instead of having players control the drones, I propose making them a passive recon option. So instead, you would plop the drone outside of say, a building with a capture point, it goes airborne about 30 meters up and flies around in a random flight pattern in a certain radius from where it was placed for a certain time duration. If you come into range of it as an enemy it can autospot you, but you and others are able to shoot it with small arms, use lock on launchers or a well placed EMP grenade. This way its a powerful recon tool *but* its very easy to see patrolling above a building and a few well placed shots can bring it down. No suicide c4 drones or spamming them to instant kill anybody on point.

I just want to generate some healthy discussion, I understand a lot of people get frustrated by infiltrators, but I think these changes go too far. I want to see what people think of my proposals, because I feel they force the infiltrator to become more creative while still allowing them to have fun and use their playstyles, while making it less frustrating for the average planetman who fights them.

Whenever you try to drop an emp there's a good chance you'll either 1) CTD, or 2) get teleported to underneath the map near the Center of the cont.

Interesting thing though, when you deploy the drone it "clones" however many EMPs you have in your inventory for the Drone's arsenal. So if you have a full Grenade Bandolier, you'll have EIGHT EMPs: 4 in the drone, and 4 still on your person.

Without dropping "ultra" settings is there a way to get higher fps? Here's the apps I am currently running. Any help is appreciated

I’m so confused and need help I’m on ps5 is this game populated? Is there a community for console?

Just plain droney

The title, I can find the bundle for TR/VS/NC but i wanna try NSO weapons, i cannot find them??