A Cloakers plea

[exLupo]

Originally Posted by Mightymouser

I think the more openness they can leave for players to decide how to use the role, the better...

From a design standpoint, players ultimately control the way the game is played. All I was meaning was the initial implementation. The only real time that devs have total control over the game is at the moment of launch and I'm hoping their decisions are rational (form fits purpose) instead of emotional (lolz, that's so cool!).

In time, their decisions will mostly be reactionary. Taking how the players play and tweaking/adding things to flow with or shape the game. Granted, almost every game hits a point where devs take what they've learned over the years and do a massive retool. At that point, you just have to hope it's with the players in mind (blizzard's cata changes) as opposed to marketing's desires (NGE).

@RavenUSC3 - The only issue with patience is opportunity cost. PS1 stealth+patience could be 5 min sneaking to the core of a bse, 3 min setting up enough boomers to 1-shot the gen and 30 seconds of blackout while everyone rushes in and undoes your 8 minutes of work. Regardless of how gratifying it may have been, those 30 seconds usually made little impact to a properly defended base. Cool when it helps but, even then, your team may be dicks about it with the "Gen drops are for noobs" trend that started a good time ago.

Conversely, Spy in TF2 does essentially the same thing with engineer nests. Spend a minute sneaking in, kill the guard, sap the nest and even if it's still just 30 seconds, that's easily a win unless your team is totally oblivious.

Time invested : Reward reaped is something that needs to be taken into account in the design phase.

@Huma: "If you dont like getting flicked either don't give them a reason to flick DL." - The only reason that a player needs to spycheck is simply because cloakers exist in game at all. Early on, if DL and cloakers remain unchanged (both highly unlikely), it will be a field day for the invisible but, in time, DL flick will be reflex, regardless of reason. Look again to TF2 and compare the new Valve servers to a regular veteran server. Those that don't know to spycheck fall to constant chains of backstabs and blown engi nests. Those that do really can keep spy players in check, no pun intended.

Ultimately, avoiding suspicion only takes you so far. When the enemy team treats every moment of every day as alert time, there's little you can do. General paranoia plus one tactic (tf2) or implant (ps1) could nullify any realistic impact from any number of stealth units. Each additional detection tool only exacerbates the issue, increasing time investments and decreasing rewards.

Part of me would like them to totally scrap the PS1 stealth system altogether and create something totally new.