I love the operative but his skills compared to the other classes seem to be just...Lacking. Im a lvl 18 and i have the entire operative tree maxed out (except for the EMP grenade of course) and have quite a few points in the engi tree as well.

First up Disguising is a really usefull ability and so is hack turrets and comms hack (although it does take quite a while.) Cortex bomb is just so orgismic. I'v gotten revenge on many people with it. but the other skills seem pathetic.

Sticky grenades can easily be seen on the floor and easily shot, take WAY too long to explode, and are removable by the enemy teamates which is ridiculously easy to do, for damage that can't even incapacitate an unbuffed light. Caltrops is a mixed bag while it does give you a lot of XP when thrown onto chokepoints the damage is so meagre and the slowdown effect is marginally good depending on circumstance. The control turret imho it's so bad it's not worth even considering, first off you have to put the control device on the turret which takes a fairly large amouny of time, secondly you have to hole up somewhere and hide to use it, which isn't very beneficial to the team as it's much better to have a turret AND an operative behind enemy lines (Not to mention that you need to actually aim it which reduces the turrets effectiveness.)
With homing beacon i find that by the time the homing beacon has activated they are already dead and that's in the rare occurence when i am ironsighting (I usually hipfire.)

I have firewall, yet i have never come across it and so cannot gauge i'ts effectiveness, seems good though.

So anyone else agree with me? Or am i just not using them right? My 2 cents.

Useless until executed right, when playing online hack turret will be useful but compared to other classed the Operative will always be not so useful

Ye, I LOVE operative, but his skills are meh =/

Needs a little buff. Less time on detonation of sticky. Make the caltrop a bit stronger. I haven't tried out control turret yet, but I plan on hacking an enemy turret and then using that.

I haven't finished with my soldier build yet, so I don't know much about the operative except from checking his abilities. They sounded cool but I can understand what you're saying about some of them being near-useless. I think all his skills benefit from him being in disguise. That would buy you the extra time you need while hacking things. It seems like more of a saboteur class that is meant to disable/slow-down/create vulnerabilities in the opposition.

Control turret should be an engy ability

Sticky 'Nade should either take 3 seconds to detonate or only be taken off by other operatives and engineers. Not soldiers and medics.

I enjoy Caltrops but I think they should do more damage. Well, to be honest I haven't experienced the damaging end of caltrops so i can't really say if increasing their damage would be fair.

I don't think Operatives are useless but they should have a buff ability like maybe increased accuracy. You know, something to contribute more to the team. Well they do have Comm hacks but they should be able to interact more with their team

Sticky Bombs are awesome used in conjunction with Disguise and timed when your team's pushing into where the enemies are.

Especially if the enemies have to hold a chokepoint, and the blast can hit 2 or 3 of them.

Also, Caltrops are GREAT for keeping an eye on an alternative route into an area. Toss them down at one entrance, and go defend the other. Watch for your "Caltrops" XP notification to show up, and you know someone's approaching from that direction.

O.K lets examine this scenario. You throw sticky at the enemy, they realise and it gets taken off then the entire group mows you down. Or for some reason they don't notice it explodes none of them die and then they tur naround and mow you down. Or you could shoot them in the back and kill at least 2 or 3 before they mow you down.

Useless, no.

Though I agree the sticky would be nicer if it didn't take forever to go off. But honestly, who just drops it on the ground somewhere? The real money shot is throwing it through a window while jumping through a different window and landing it. Or just in general throwing it, and watching the players run around with a lit fuse. Makes me lol every time. (To the point that I wont shoot them too much just so they get the chance to explode.) But that's why it'd be nice if it wasn't such a huge timer, I could've shot and killed 4 seconds before the bomb goes off.

Caltrops are fine. They can do huge amounts of damage, and if you are there shooting as people run over them its an easy few kills. Might be nice if the damage was less and they inflicted a slow, but then people would cry about being slow so who knows.

Cortex is amazing, an easy way to knock out a player who just got you.

Hack Turret is pretty quick for a hack.

Comms Hack is nice because the radar lasts long enough to be useful, even though you're stuck straddling a corpse for ~20 seconds.

Firewall Command Post could be good or bad not really sure, seems like it'd be even more useful if there is an engineer upgrading the posts, making them more valuable for you to keep.

Control turret isn't worth using, at least not for my playstyle, or anybodies who really wants to utilize the Operative.

Homing Beacon COULD be useful IF the iron sights weren't required / usable while disguised. Or if you were to play a medium or heavy body operative you could use it to call targets for your fireteam.

EMP grenades look like they'll be really nice but I haven't gotten to them yet.


Add in the Universal Skills: Sprinting Reload, Sprinting Grenade, and Silent Running. And your a pointman to be reckoned with. The game may not be about kills, but honestly the operative is really able to get the most if you play smart, Hack comms, disguise and then melee and shoot enemies. Steal their turrets. Use your Caltrops in chokes or where they're grouped up. Land stickies on them and throw some rounds so they don't defuse it (or notice it).

An operative isn't supporting his team directly by buffing them. Or really even staying with the team isn't super helpful in many cases. You have a few objectives you need to do, but the rest of the time you should be off capping command posts. And playing behind enemy lines to wreck havoc and be a distraction. Your toolset reflects that and lets you accomplish that.

Before brink came out i questioned the Op class but if you have light rifle e.g sniper look a like and disguise up close with that gun is amazing or even disguise with a shotgun and smg. I usually disguise spot mines then take command post and rotate with hacking

Mkay as an update, I just played a game and i used the caltrops quite frequently. They are MUCH better than I initially realised, causing mass slowdown at chokepoints is really effective, for me the damage is just a nice bonus.

soldier is more useless imo

Lets examine the scenario as it would ACTUALLY play out.

They've just started taking fire (you're doing this AS YOUR TEAM ATTACKS, if you do it right - like I already said), and they're distracted by your incoming friendlies.

If you're lucky, the explosion will take down one, or maybe two enemies who have been injured already, if not, the blast does major damage and causes confusion in their ranks, knocking people down, and preventing them from fighting at their full capacity, at least for a few seconds.

Worst-case scenario, you throw it early, it gets removed, and you're in the process of getting finished off when your teammates show up. You've got the enemies all facing the wrong way worrying about the enemy Operative who showed up, and it turns your friendly assault into an ambush - that might be just enough of an edge for your team to succeed.

no the real scenario is that an smg and a regualr frag will cause more damage and confusion, caltrop is at least useful for area denial to some extent.

the soldier is just as useless. if it werent for planting bombs and hacking no-one would use soldiers or operatives as they are the least beneficial to the generic team. soldiers only decent team role is ammo resupply on long defence objectives. operative is really only useful as capping consoles. grabbing the main objective is useful to finishing the game the other stuff is just exp .

Just because you're better with other classes, doesn't mean they're useless.

If I were to use your logic, then Engineers are totally useless. Fortunately, I'm not self-absorbed enough to truly believe that, so I can accept that I'm just bad at playing as an Engineer.

And If you're throwing your Sticky and NOT trying to shoot someone else, then you've failed as an Operative. Sticky + SMG > Frag + SMG (when done right it is, anyway). Caltrops are more than just "useful to some extent" - they're brilliant WHEN USED PROPERLY.

Don't rubbish something you're not good at just because you're not good at it. Either stick to what you do well, or learn to play Operative properly.

Operative is all about psychological warfare. I haven't found any of his abilities useless and all of them have gotten my great lolzy moments playing online.

What you said about the sticky bomb not being able to kill people is just wrong however, once you stick it on someone it's a sure kill unless they get it off. My buddy got a triple kill from one because the idiot ran to his team near the end of the timer.

have u tried molotov , flashbang .... those things are owning !!!! when u get a flashbang u can't even see the radar .

no but i can see the enemy health bar when i sight them so i can shoot them just fine...better even.

molotov doesn't impress either. like i said the only times soldiers are ever neceseary to the team is the rare HE charge objective on primary objectives. and very useful on the rare operative hacking objectives while the rest of the squad forms a defensive team to protect the crippled operative. doing ammo runs while guarding stuff is counterproductive.

these abilities could easily be rolled into engineer and medic..mostly engineer though which poses an issue. engineer could easily be the hacker, and certainly plant bombs

All the Operative skills are VERY usefull when used properly...

control turret is terrible, get rid of it imo in place of something else, other than that the rest are about on par with other classes, i say add a buff in place of control turret, perhaps a slight speed buff

buffing speed would make the class useful to a team. so far the only skill useful to a team is caltropes. buffing recharge speed could be good as well. medic uses an awful lot of pips keeping team members active either with healing or rezzing so buffs to resupply would certainly help. it certainly pains me to see teammates lying on the ground dying when i have no supplies left to keep them breathing.

Yeah I feel operatives are useless. Really, its not so much that they are 'useless' but that the other classes are so much more useful it beats the purpose of using operative. I think operatives need adjustments that would really help them out:

1. Speed buff for self and allies.

2. Disguise does not deactivate when: hacking turret, hacking objective, hacking command post.

3. being able to aim down sight while disguised. And 'marking' was quicker and longer

4. Radar actually lasted longer than 5 seconds.

Sorry if any of these are actually already implemented, but havent really had much time to play operative since there seems to be a lack of medics online.

Hey...i'm not a "review" person but i read cause i like hearing others people opinions (btw i think this review hasn't been posted in this forums,what a miracle...),article review http://uk.xbox360.gamespy.com/xbox-360/splash-damage-project-untitled/1167152p1.html?_cmpid=gspy53

Anyways OP about operatives,so in this review has an example,enjoy :

During one particular mission where my team had to plant an explosive on a heavily guarded Ark support column,
I hacked the comms of a fallen foe to pinpoint enemy positions (XP!), disguised myself as my opponent (XP!),
snuck into the area unnoticed, hacked an enemy turret (XP!), planted a radio-control device on the turret (XP!),
snuck back out of sight, and began unloading on the bad guys (XP!) with their own weapon. Pure gaming bliss.
And it allowed my Soldier teammate time to plant the bomb, take out the support column, and achieve our objective (uber XP!). Victory!

So,the bottom line is,this is Brink,a NEW FPS game and u need time to learn it,learn the classes properly.Mostly,it remains team-oriented and objective-based,so be patient,learn the class,then comment on them.

Thanks.

Lets see...

• Not usefull -
  
• Less usefull +
  
• usefull ++
  
• pretty usefull +++
  
• super usefull ++++[/i][/i]

++ Disguise:
Good to gain acces to command Posts or to flank enemys.Or to get past Turrets to hack them.

+ Firewall:
Okish ability, helps a little to slow down enemys trying to grab your posts.

++ Homing Beacon:
As a Passive ability its usefull , everyone in your team can see the enemy you are targeting, that can be precious intel.

+++ Com Hack:
Very precious Intel for all team mates for a good amount of time.

+++ Sticky Bomb:
Great Tool! An additional Grenade wich is pretty easy to hit people with.People often oversee if its on the ground and walk over it. The weaker landmine.

++++ Caltrop Grenades:
These are Awesome, I use them everytime they are up, They can build a stronog defense line. Everyone that runs over them gets hurt and is confused where the damage comes from. Also you know if someone trys to get throu your line of Defense because of the Hitmarkers, makeing you aware of one or more easy kills.

++ Hack Turret:
Oporturnities to hack turrets are kind of rare, If you can, it can be Helpfull.

- Controll Turret:]
You need to plant a Hack box on the Turret then hide yoursellf . adn then you can PoV the turret and use it. You far more Usefull to your time if you Run and Gun and use your other abilitys.

++ CortexBomb:
Blowing up enemys that try to hack your dead body or try to walk past you can be helpfull,and satisfying.

???? EMP Grenade:
I havent tested these yet, but they sound as if they could be as usefull as the Caltrops. This depends on the duration of its effect and the power of the slowdown on Hacks and HE-Charges.

Summary:


Operative is everything else but Useless!
At start it pretty weak, when you get Sticky grenade and after that cultrups its pure joy to be an Operative,and is a very Strong Support for your team. :thumbsup:

I enjoy hacking turrets, placing caltrops at strategic locations that everyone runs through, disguising to a sneak attack, cortex bomb enemy passbyers and sticky grenade kills. They are all fun and very satisfying.

Hacking turrets - Very useful as a way of disabling turrets quickly. S.M.A.R.T. around it, hack it.

Caltrops grenade - Throw them directly at the defence location, such as a hack or repair site. Or at a door the a lot of enemy players run through, makes them easier to take down as they are already hurt.

Disguising - Act like you're one of them to stay hidden. When they are unaware, surprise party!

Cortex bomb - Ha ha! I'll take you down with me! Being in capacitated near the defence site is a huge advantage, they can't get close!

Sticky grenade - Takes them down even you are down. Might be able to make the player panic a bit.

Overall, I think operatives are really good attackers as well as defenders. They can infiltrate for surprise attacks, or defend the locations so the enemy can't even get near it.

Hell no they aren't, Operatives are probably the fastest class types to reach rank 5 without trying much.