The general mood around this forum seems to be that the operative is a underpowered class. The lack of a buff and some pointless abilities do make this class a bit underpowered but I think the power of disguise really evens this out.
While playing I thought of a few things that could make operatives easier to play.

1. Add an assassinate objective to operatives objective wheel. This would work the same way escort objectives work as medics. For those of you who dont play medics the side escort objectives allow you to guard a player who will be outlined in yellow for you, usually the player you guard will correspond to the objective at hand, in CCity medics are able to escort engineers, at the beginning of terminal when security has a hack objective security medics guard operatives. My idea is that operatives should have objectives to certain enemy players, the players location would appear as an outline until the player got within 50 meters from there they would simply appear on the operatives mini-map. If there was no specific class objective at the time the operatives assassinate objective would focus on medics or high exp players. Hopefully this ability would allow inexperienced players to cause good amounts of havoc for the enemy team.

Abilities

Remote Sensor: This would be a Rank 2 ability that came as a grenade-style ability with a 60 sec cool-down, basically it sticks to any surface (works moving objectives but is destroyed when built on destroyable terrain/barricades) and when an enemy passes it alerts the team through the commanders voice an the enemy appears on the teams mini-map. It would point the operative using to the exact location and warn the rest of the team to the general direction of the threat.


Electric Tripwire?: This would be a ability that works a bit like caltrops but does around 40 damage and a knockdown no matter how fast you pass through it. You would be able to set it up across doorways and it would appear as a very thin(ultra hard to see, to the point where you have to be within feet before you can see it) trip wire that you could only crouch under to get by it, it can only be removed by enemy operatives and you can place up to two.

I think the three above mentioned things would really make the operative a great class for everybody.

You know the UAV is basically a more powerful version of your "remote sensor" idea anyway, right?

The Operative is already a balanced class - they're just hard to use.

I don't see what abilities are underpowered, personally. Explain?

The Operative is not even hard to use. He just doesn't get the most useful and defining abilities from the start.

My main beef with the Operative class is that it doesn't have a very large place in Brink (in my opinion). Besides Hack objectives, I have never been an Operative during general gameplay (except, of course, for those times when I get so frustrated with high level bots that I become Operative out of desperation... it doesn't usually help).
With Brink being such a team-objective based game, and Operative not really helping the "team" part of it, I feel like the Operative could be kicked out (along with the Hack objectives) from gameplay, and the overall experience of the game would not be much different (something that could definitely not be said for any of the other three classes).

However, judging by forum chat, it seems that most people don't feel the same way as I do :teehee:

I love playing as the operative. I used to feel like you do though, The Eyes. With no real buffs I felt kind of pointless, but I started to comms hack every opportunity and firewall every post. The Caltrop bomb is my favorite, I try to land it where the enemy will typically run into unknowingly. It doesn't do a great deal of damage but it'll either slow them down or hurt them ( I laugh whenever a human player does end up getting killed by the spikes).

I suppose we have to think of the operative like a pure DPS, we support not with buffs but with impliments of chaos; the caltrop, sticky, turret hacking, etc.

I don't do much disguising, it's not that I don't find it usefull just never find the time to use it. I do expirment with it when my team is in a solid win.

I love playing as Operatives, I've tried other classes but I always come back to the good old Op. I just can't get enough of them, they're the most fun class for me, and very useful. For example, Caltrops not only slow down and damage the enemy, say you're defending. You can defend one area where the enemies will come through and throw a Caltrop in one you'll have your back turned to. An Operative sees that enemies are being damaged by Caltrop and can easily turn around and gun them down(if you're good that is). Also, you can torment your enemies with all kinds of chaos. A wise man once told me, if you're a good Operative, everyone on the other team will hate you.

Adding a secondary assassinate objective is a missed trick by the developers I think. Best idea I've ever heard on these forums, much better for an Op's objectives than 'disguise yourself'.

Other than that I feel operatives are fine. I love playing operative as my primary class in the past and my secondary now. Really useful for getting past tough defensive positions.

This is not a jab at you, but the "complaining" about ops in general
I've never played Team fortress 2, but it seems people are hell bent on making the operative work just like the spy.
It's a very common occurrence. It's like the "heavies should be on the front line, not flanking" argument. Who cares what you/I/we think about a certain character. If it doesn't play like we expect it to, rather than force a role upon the character, we might need to explore the character and discover its possibilities.

I played one game (yes only one, 'cause no one seems to use these abilities very much), where the operative used his marker, that makes a red outline on opponents and the comms hack constantly. In every tight spot around every corner everyone knew an opponent was coming and the game ended with almost no xp for anyone, because we breezed through the refuel mission. The whole team got the drop 9 times out of 10 'cause our op ran when he should run and comms hacked as soon as he had 5 seconds to do so.
spotting mines means your team mates don't die lonely in a booby trapped hallway on the shipyard map. spotting mines helps tremendously.
Stealing a single turret? great. Your opponent placed it to cover a hallway of sorts, if the turret suddenly fires on them, they have to spend time getting it back. It's not a game breaker, it's just little things that contribute.

Every team needs one, and only one truly effective operative. It's a special class in that regard because we can all use engineers and medics (soldier aren't that good IMO, but I can't shoot straight either) but a single operative can really mess up a lot.
I was listening in on a team that communicated via teamspeak and they got freaked out cause there were caltrops and stickies all over the place. You might not think an operative does much, but very little confusion goes a looooong way if the opposing team doesn't communicate effectively.

I LOVE being an Operative, but i do feel there a little underpowered when compared to the other classes

Using Disguise properly can turn the battle in your team's favour. Last time I checked, that was the most defining ability for the Operative, and I'm pretty sure it's available from the start.

It's NOT easy to use it well though.

Assassinate objective is a fantastic idea for operatives, current top scoring player on the opposing team would be the best target for the objective.

Forgot to comment on that in my previous post.

I also think it would be a good idea to give Ops "assassinate" objectives - target the highest-scoring enemy player as a "bounty" objective, or "intercept" objectives telling you to kill the nearest enemy capable of completing the objective (only targets enemies who are the right class for the objective)