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Cloaking is not coming on May 6

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Tarquin Markel Pink Fluffy Bounty Hunterz Noir. Mercenary Group 88	Posted - 2013.04.09 05:03:00 - [1] - Quote Cloaking is going to be a kitten to balance. If it comes late, I'll take that as a sign that they're being careful with it. Better late than broken.
Tarquin Markel Pink Fluffy Bounty Hunterz Noir. Mercenary Group 90	Posted - 2013.04.09 17:28:00 - [2] - Quote Xender17 wrote: Cloak+shotgun? Nay, sir! Summon not the overpowered heinousness that surely shall invoke the great nerf bat (whose wings darken the very sky). Personally, I'm hoping the cloak is potent and effective, but takes up the light weapon slot. Combine that with a fix or three to nova knives, and you've got yourself a practical ninja.
Tarquin Markel Pink Fluffy Bounty Hunterz Noir. Mercenary Group 90	Posted - 2013.04.09 18:03:00 - [3] - Quote DUST Fiend wrote: Tarquin Markel wrote: Personally, I'm hoping the cloak is potent and effective, but takes up the light weapon slot. Combine that with a fix or three to nova knives, and you've got yourself a use for the damn things. ......... Why would you make a piece of equipment use a weapon slot..... There are so many ways to balance a cloak....why....I just....what? It's a matter of sheer individual importance. A practical cloaking device is a role-defining piece of equipment on par with a heavy weapon. A cloaking device is not a drop uplink, a nanohive, a remote explosive, or an AV mine. All of these, as strategically important as they may be, are ancillary equipment pieces. Yes, logi suits have their role defined by their equipment slots-- by having LOTS of them. Almost any combination of cloak + light weapon I can think of is, on its face, overpowered. For all following examples, assume abundant dampening. Cloak + shotgun = sneak sneak REEK REEK +50 sneak Cloak + tactical sniper = lurk aiiiiiiiim toom toom +50 lurk Cloak + AR = sneak aim dugdugdug +50 sneak Cloak + mass driver ... pretty much the same. You get the freaking idea. The basic problem is this: essentially every light weapon in DUST is utterly lethal, capable of downing all but a heavy or a proto assault with at most a couple seconds of concentrated fire. Surprise attacks are deadly as hell, and anybody who gets caught flat-footed is looking for a new clone. A cloaking device on a decently stealthed suit is virtually a coupon reading "free ambush." It's the same with sidearms, but less so. Sidearms are deadly, but in more narrow conditions. Scrambers have small magazines, limited range, minimal zoom, and want a headshot for best effect; SMG's have still more limited range and basically ask for point-blank for best effect-- and unlike shotguns, they don't alpha-strike you straight into oblivion; nova knives ... well, they're nova knives. Depending on how the lore is handled, a cloak need not be some little box on your belt with a switch on it. It's just as plausible that it might be bulky and need to be hand-held and actively maintained, the cloak dropping when the user switches to any other weapon or tool. Cloaks in Eve are high slot tools, occupying space otherwise occupied by turrets, torpedo launchers, smartbombs, or energy vampires. With one lone exception (the stealth bomber), cloaking uniformly comes at the expense of firepower. That exception, BTW, has a very specialized role and is made of paper mache' even as frigates go. This makes sense to me. It also usually imposes a firing delay. This makes sense to me in Eve, even if I don't quite like it. It does not make sense in an FPS, beyond the time to switch weapons. I want a good stealth mechanic. I do not want an "easy mode" for DUST, which is what I will have if CCP lets me combine a cloaking device and a Duvolle assault rifle or breach shotgun.
Tarquin Markel Pink Fluffy Bounty Hunterz Noir. Mercenary Group 90	Posted - 2013.04.09 18:25:00 - [4] - Quote DUST Fiend wrote: I just don't really see the point in eliminating your ability to shoot in an FPS. Who said anything about eliminating the ability to shoot? I'm talking about limiting the ability to lay down assault suit-grade deadly fire. Sidearms aren't nothing. The SMG isn't exactly a cheese grater from five feet away, you know; nor is the guy quietly decloaking 15 feet to your left going to be shooting daisies into your ear with his scrambler pistol. You want them slow, but well-armed. Fair enough; that's one paradigm. I want them quick and quiet, but lightly armed. That's another. My vision of a cloaked scout ... did you ever play the original "Half Life"? Remember the cloaking assassins that turn up about two thirds of the way through, cloaked but armed only with silenced pistols? That's pretty much what I'd like to see-- and not as an artistic statement (which is usually what a scout with a nova knife seems to be), but as a viable tactical role.
Tarquin Markel Pink Fluffy Bounty Hunterz Noir. Mercenary Group 91	Posted - 2013.04.09 22:01:00 - [5] - Quote Ivan Avogadro wrote: I still don't get why you would put it in a weapon slot. Every single piece of equipment needs to be readied by the weapon wheel already. You can't, for example, use an Injector and a Sniper Rifle at once. So a sniper simply can't be using his cloak device and sniper rifle at the same time. Problem solved there. It would have to be shoot first, then cloak quickly to hide from counter snipers. As for CQC assassinations, just add a sound to the cloaking device. When you put it away, a distinctive noise goes off letting everyone in the vicinity know a cloak went up or down. Kinda like when you hear the shotgun "reek reek" you start looking for it. Except in this case it would give the victim an extra split second while the assassin readies his weapon. I'd put it in a weapon slot to ensure that you can't put a weapon there that's as nasty as what a non-cloaked assailant would be using as primary. As for the CQC assassinations: I'm not bothered by those as long as they're not overly easy (shotgun). What I would be trying to avoid: decloaking noise - WTF - REEK - dead (Shotgun assassination-- decloaks at close range, requires little to no aim or skill) ... But I have no problem with the same scenario with a scrambler or SMG. Also, that's actually the more even-handed ambush scenario-- you're close enough to hear the cloak. The less even-handed is the one where someone decloaks at 20 or 30 yards (immediate peril much less obvious) and burns through the side of your helmet with an AR. Let me be clear: I have no problem sucker punching people with high-grade weaponry. It's my preferred play style. But I want the cloaking device to be the sort of device you base a build on, like an HMG or a sniper rifle, not a nifty toy like the drop uplink. (Yes, I'm being maybe a little unfair to the drop uplink and I get about a third of my kills from remote explosives. They're still ancillary equipment.) If the cloak occupies the light weapon slot, it becomes the defining characteristic of the fit. It is, itself, the role, and can be balanced accordingly, making for a much more powerful tool than the kind of gimped, move-at-a-crawl cloak DUST Fiend was envisioning. To put it another way: if I'm going to have a device that turns me invisible when equipped with few drawbacks aside from having to watch my signature, what else I can do should be extremely goddamn limited. I want a powerful cloak. To get it, I'm willing to give up my primary weapon because the cloak itself will then be my primary weapon.
Tarquin Markel Pink Fluffy Bounty Hunterz Noir. Mercenary Group 91	Posted - 2013.04.09 22:16:00 - [6] - Quote DUST Fiend wrote: That's why cloak should require you to be slow, not quick. In the time it takes that shotgun assassin to get set up, an average Joe with an AR has already picked up 3-4 kills, nevermind the actual skilled guy. Like I said, we're working from different paradigms. I'd much rather have a lightly-armed assassin who can move quickly and effectively, but has to make good use of a second-rate weapon. Gimping speed ... ugh. I assure you, this idea is every bit as painful to me as the idea of losing the light weapon slot seems to be to you. It was bad enough when the thing whose speed was getting gimped was a spaceship. I play scout suits for a reason. SOME slowdown is acceptable. Moving like a heavy, which is the image you're invoking in my head, not so much.
Tarquin Markel Pink Fluffy Bounty Hunterz Noir. Mercenary Group 91	Posted - 2013.04.09 23:44:00 - [7] - Quote DUST Fiend wrote: So I'm curious about something Why is it wrong for someone to sneak up on you with a shotgun and kill you, but it's ok for someone stacking melee damage mods to sneak up on you and kill you with a knife? (actually melee mods don't stack with knives, for whatever silly reason. Same goes with a point blank SMG with complex mods though, same effect as a shotgun at that range and with surprise) Good question. I'm not against sneaking up and killing per se. I like stealth kills. I just don't want them to be too easy. The nova knife is kerbusted at the moment. If it worked well (functional instakill on anything shy of a heavy), I still wouldn't be opposed because there's the charge-up warning and backpedaling works great against knife wielders, so you'd usually have to make a clean kill to get a kill at all. On the SMG versus shotgun: yes, a clean stealth kill with an SMG is just as inescapable as a shotgun. The important words here are "clean stealth kill." That is, you caught your target cold, flat footed at point blank range. Most any weapon you care to name (aside from the broken nova knife) is deadly under those circumstances. You remember when I characterized the shotgun kill as "decloaking noise - WTF - REEK - dead"? The WTF, there, the point at which you realize you're in danger, is one critical difference. SMG is very dangerous at close range, yes, but you have to keep the spray on the target for however long it takes to erode target defenses. The shotgun, by contrast, is a 1 hit kill on many targets, and going with the alpha strike version (I forget which that is) bumps that up to "most." A target that starts to react as the SMG opens fire is apt to take some damage, but survive and retaliate. A target that starts to react as the shotgun opens fire is probably dead, right then, right there. What's more, the shotgun user probably also has either a scrambler or an SMG for when the shotgun runs out of ammo. If all you had to begin with was the sidearm, you're stuck reloading instead of switching weapons and finishing a wounded target off. It makes a substantial difference, especially with the scrambler and its teeny magazine.
Tarquin Markel Pink Fluffy Bounty Hunterz Noir. Mercenary Group 91	Posted - 2013.04.10 00:36:00 - [8] - Quote DUST Fiend: Let me try to respond to you by answering this guy. Yani Nabari wrote: Define potent and effective? As taking up the primary weapon slot would render it neither of those points in most players books. We'd laugh it right out of existence everywhere outside of random ambush pub matches. Potent and effective: cloak is active whenever equipped, with little or no cooldown between uses. User is nigh on invisible when motionless, and visible only as a shimmer or blur when moving. Speed is not limited, nor are running, jumping, etc. Entering and leaving cloak are both silent. Electronic signature is, of course, unaffected, necessitating the use of dampening modules. The specifics are negotiable, but some combination of the above is needed to make the cloak, effectively, the scout's primary weapon. In this scheme, the cloaked scout can and does serve several purposes: scouting, alerting squad and teammates to enemy movements; infiltration, sneaking behind enemy lines to hack objectives, hunt snipers, and (in a pinch) flank mid-firefight. Note that while the scout doesn't have an AR or sniper rifle, there's nothing preventing slipping in close with an SMG or popping somebody in the head with the scrambler. Also, grenade slots remain, allowing the scout to decloak, huck a grenade, and recloak. Similarly, the scout can seed drop uplinks, plant remote explosives, or drop AV mines all over creation. Use in Ambush would probably be limited to scouting and assassination of particularly aggravating targets ("Go kill that kittening Thale's guy"). Use in Skirmish would expand to infiltration and hacking. In all cases, the role would give the hostile team something to be paranoid about other than snipers, since you can never be sure that a guy isn't going to literally appear beside you and one-shot your head with a proto scrambler pistol before going "poof" again. You can kill, easily, with a sidearm. You just have to be a little better at using it than you have to be with a light weapon. The cloaked scout would focus on doing exactly that.
Tarquin Markel Pink Fluffy Bounty Hunterz Noir. Mercenary Group 91	Posted - 2013.04.10 00:52:00 - [9] - Quote DUST Fiend wrote: We'll just have to agree to disagree. This vision of cloaking feels kind of silly to me, as for me, I just feel that stealth specialists should specialize in sneaking. They take the time and the effort to sneak behind enemy lines to hack a key objective, and then they move up to take out enemy hostiles. Most of the uses you mention are arbitrary at best, and can basically all be fulfilled by a non specialist as is. I think letting someone hop in and out of cloak at will, along with having movement largely unhindered, is the wrong direction to take it. Heh-- we may not disagree as much as you imagine. I, also, prefer the way stealth works right now. I like having to stay physically out of sight and have the electronics duel it out for whether I can be spotted on the mini map or not. It's satisfying this way. If I sneak up on somebody, I feel like there was some actual skill involved. Cloaking ... well, I suppose I feel that if they're going to insist on including it, it should at least be something actively important and interesting in its own right, something to let those who use it really focus on it. At least it'll end the general pattern of people sneering at dampeners. The uses I mention are uses for which I think it would make a good primary tool. If you're going to have something that lets you slip around invisible, it seems like it should (1) require sacrificing other capabilities and (2) at least arguably be worth the sacrifice. I don't actually want it at all, but it's coming, so ... shrug
Tarquin Markel Pink Fluffy Bounty Hunterz Noir. Mercenary Group 91	Posted - 2013.04.10 01:17:00 - [10] - Quote Yani: By "shimmer or blur," I don't mean something sparkly and bloom-enhanced. I mean something like the way invisibility works in, say, Skyrim-- an indistinct humanoid outline. Sure, people are going to work out how to hunt for those, and fair enough, but there's probably not going to be anything there you can target with a sniper rifle (to pick an example at random). (Yes, I've been a little frustrated trying to sneak around Manus Peak. Why do you ask?) Yes, sharp-eyed people with assault rifles will be a problem, as they damn well should. No, I don't agree that this will reduce the cloak's usefulness below a critical level. If it does, CCP can always reduce the shimmer or blur. As I think I said somewhere, balancing this thing is going to be a kittening pain. Enough; I've been arguing this off and on literally all day, and I don't even want it in the game. This is just my best shot at a decent way to implement it. What say we give it a rest and see what CCP actually does with the silly thing?

Tarquin Markel Pink Fluffy Bounty Hunterz Noir. Mercenary Group 91	Posted - 2013.04.10 01:41:00 - [11] - Quote Yani Nabari wrote: Curious, why do you think a sniper wouldn't be able to see you yet a guy with an AR would, assuming they were looing at the same spot.... A player doens't need their equipment to register an enemy to take a shot, see movement that isn't tied to a friendly? Fire, kill, maim, destroy. Well, for one thing, I'm not thinking the cloaked person would show up as much of anything at that range. Depends on how the graphics are implemented, but a distant, cloaked subject probably doesn't look like much of anything. Also, if there is some trace of movement but it doesn't effectively describe a human form, it makes precision very difficult, and precision is absolutely necessary for a sniper. It might help if your "crosshair" pixel still turns orange when on target, but you still have to time the shot on a moving target to begin with. That's AFTER spotting it. Compare to: AR just sprays in right general direction. Oh, look-- a hit. Taking fire probably drops cloak, so more hits follow the first....
Tarquin Markel Pink Fluffy Bounty Hunterz Noir. Mercenary Group 91	Posted - 2013.04.10 02:11:00 - [12] - Quote Yani Nabari wrote: Unless something was actually done to make it so it didn't render outside a certain distance, it's likely it would be visible to anyone in the map that can see the spot. Harder to get a one shot kill, yes, but not impossible to land a couple rounds into the cloaked body. This is assuming an awful, awful lot about the implementation, considering that, as a cloaking device, the whole point is to make you difficult to spot. If you're easy to spot, it needs work. If you're impossible to spot, it also needs work. Presumably there will be some point in between that the cloak will actually inhabit. Exactly where that is will be determined by the poor bastard tasked with balancing the thing.
Tarquin Markel Pink Fluffy Bounty Hunterz Noir. Mercenary Group 92	Posted - 2013.04.10 05:37:00 - [13] - Quote Then you and I have very different standards for what makes a worthwhile trade. That's really all I have to say.
Tarquin Markel Pink Fluffy Bounty Hunterz Noir. Mercenary Group 92	Posted - 2013.04.10 16:09:00 - [14] - Quote Yani Nabari wrote: I'm sorry I just see no reason to base a build around something that someone can counter by looking at you from 100+ meters away. If it can't stand on it's own outside of specific favorable circumstances it's not worth using. Whereas I figure that a tool that requires some skill to use is just perfect for the game I'm looking to play, and a crowded, busy battlefield is a pretty good area to stay unnoticed in. Maybe you have some trouble sneaking around right under the noses of alert players with nothing better to do than scan for movement, but that's what diversionary tactics and actual sneakiness are for. It wouldn't be any fun if it reliably prevented you from being detected running across the face of a sand dune. Tell you what: if it works as I suggest and hope, we'll have plenty of chances to find out whether it's worth the time and effort. ... And, the more players analyze it your way, the more effective it is likely to be. Rarity breeds unfamiliarity breeds unexpected scrambler bolts to the cranium. Hee!
Tarquin Markel Pink Fluffy Bounty Hunterz Noir. Mercenary Group 92	Posted - 2013.04.10 16:54:00 - [15] - Quote Yani Nabari wrote: Rarity in a game means it's usually not worth doing. edit: or it's inconsistent as kittens or heavily tied to random numbers. Yes, but there are other options. For example, dampeners are currently rare in DUST, not because they don't work but because most people figure that because you can be visually spotted there's no point in trying to hide electronically. This makes things very entertaining for those of us who are half-decent at actually being sneaky (and is a major reason why I'm not actually wild about the cloak. I like stealth being a niche role).
Tarquin Markel Pink Fluffy Bounty Hunterz Noir. Mercenary Group 92	Posted - 2013.04.10 17:42:00 - [16] - Quote sigh Look, man: the reason I know sidearms are freaking deadly when used right is because the SMG is already my primary weapon half the time. My second-most-commonly used fit is a mixed-media stealth troublemaker. It involves a sniper rifle for counter-sniping and picking off targets of opportunity, AV grenades for ambushing LAV's, remote explosives for setting booby traps (I look forward to the day people start consistently spotting those at objectives so that I have to get more creative with them), and an SMG for close combat. It works. It works much better in Skirmish than in Ambush, but that just means I use an assault suit for Ambush. You can sneer at me for James Bonding it up all you like, but I will happily trade that sniper rifle in for the sake of being invisible when motionless and less-visible when moving, and I will count it as a major plus if that doesn't take the skill out of the thing.

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