I am extremely looking forward to this game, and am extremely excited to try out all the different classes.

However, never having played a game that had the possibility for perfect disguise before, I am at a total loss as to how to fight a disguised Operative.

:ph34r:
Will you be able to deal damage against them?
Do they look different on screen, minimap, or other indicator?
Should you just shoot your teammates occasionally and see if you get positive experience from it?

:ninja:
And the flip side to this, I suppose, is how to be a good operative. How much and what kind of activity should you engage in? Should you focus on objectives, or attacking from behind at key points? How do you make yourself as inconspicuous as possible?

Anyway, I'm open to anolysis, options, and anecdotes.

What do you guys think?

http://www.fragworld.org/frag/brink/the-fragworld-brink-compendium.html

Disguises are far from perfect. The best way is based on what they do. You can't buff a disguised operative. Plus if you have good comms you will know who to look for.

You can play however you want. Its not till we play the game till we know what actually works.

Operatives get spotted by being too close to the person they are disguised as, running and shooting. (We arent sure about Melee but hopefully not otherwise you wouldnt be able to kill anyone) so the pplan is when your disguised stay back if you see the guy you are disguised as slowly back away... then run like F***. and no you shouldnt shoot your teammates every now and again, if you are an operative you can counter thier disguise by aiming at them.

Communication is the easiest way to detect an enemy operative. It appears to me that a player's name won't be displayed when you look at them, so you can't exactly ask LameName123 to jump, then shoot the guy in front of you when he doesn't jump. However, you can ask an operative you KNOW is legit on your team to look your direction and fill you in.

In fact, I plan to make an operative just for the ability to look all around and call out enemy operatives to my team, among other stationary opportunities.

I'd imagine it's exactly like Quake Wars and Team Fortress 2 disguises - There is absolutely nothing that lets you know someone is or not an operative at first sight. You'd have to pay attention to behavior, such as not shooting, running back to spawn, running directly at people, not buffing teammates.

The trick there is that all those things could very well be a bad player, actually on your team.


I've heard that if, say, an operative kills and disguises as MedicMan123 and the real MedicMan123 gets too close to the operative, the operative loses his disguise immediately.

There are 8 people on your team and if happen to see a twin of a fellow teammate, get a flamethrower and burn it like it's The Thing. Or just shoot him, that works too.

Haha, good suggestions all around. What is this about operatives being able to reveal other operatives? I have not heard of this yet. Is there a certain range they have to be in, or are all operatives simply immune to being deceived by disguise?

Ever kill spies in TF2? If you're actively searching for them, they're pretty hard to miss. It just comes down to being experienced enough to recognize how people behave.

The only problem here is that spy-checking a teammate is an instant deduction to your XP.

A developer stated that operatives will be able to distinguish enemy operatives amongst their team mates. I can only imagine you'll see the enemy normally, except your guys won't be shooting at him. Or he might be running around with the oppie symbol over his face or above his head.

As the enemy, they're fairly easy to deal with if you realize that they're there to deal with. They rarely move as comfortably when they're disguised because they do the whole "don't try to draw attention to yourself" thing that kids do when they drive drunk/past curfew. They go slow, make deliberate movements, and generally look out of place when you think about what your team is doing.

Now, there are good ones that the only way you'll know is when you realize you're looking at yourself, but they're not going to be common early on and probably not even later since it takes a huge risk, some luck, and a lot of skill.

As for being them, just look at the give aways I mentioned and keep them in mind. Use the disguise to get by an enemy, but in general stay out of sight even when you are disguised because people will be looking for you.

And for the love of gaming, rememeber not to go around just shooting teammates to find the Op.

Inversely, as an Oppie, when you have assumed the identity of someone, assume the personality with it. The trick to acting is to not act at all. You know your team's objective, you know the enemy's objective. Move forward with intent to secure your enemy's objective, without making any significant progress, and do what you gotta do. Pretend to mess with something, then catch up to the guy in the back and stick him. Follow some of your enemies to the front line, then blast away at them. Surrounding the enemy is strategy 101.

Truly, I need to get my hands on the game to really understand all an oppie can do, but blending in is the same every time. Don't act like him, BE him.

Mainly as Nobody and Wraith has stated you have to know who you are assuming what role they are doing, instead of killing randoms, kill those that are important like medics or engineers, cap command posts, interrogate, pretty much do things that are more sabotage than assassin.

We all know Operatives lose the disguise as soon as they start shooting, but will they lose it if they start working on an objective, like hacking a terminal or stealing a Command Post? Or is that an unknown?

I don't plan to use Disguise much (I'd rather kill my enemies straight-up than prowl around and assassinate them from within their ranks), but I imagine that will be a key bit of information for any Operative.

Yea assassination while fun is not what operatives are designed for.



We don't know and I still like my improved disguise concept. Guess Null won't be playing light that much.

I'll certainly have a Light character or two, but he won't be my main. I've explained why I'll be running Medium as my main in a few threads, and my sig has always boasted "Medium Resistance". But how did that come up in a Operative thread? :spotted owl:

If you meant I won't be playing Operative that much, well, (1) you're probably going to be the primary Operative in my regular group of players, and (2) when I do play as an Operative, I'll probably be looking to steal Command Posts from the enemy and fortify our own. Then, switch to Engineer, upgrade it, and buff the weapons of teammates spawning there. Finally, go forth and be awesome.

Edit: also, once I start shooting, a disguise would be useless anyway. I'd feel safer putting an enemy on the ground than hoping he doesn't realized I'm disguised. My SMG will be silenced and I will take the Silent Running ability, but I don't feel like Disguises will be worth my while. When playing as an Operative, I plan on avoiding the enemy and just not being detected until it's too late.

Too catch disguised players watch for sprinters in weird places and watch the mini map for friendly casualties. To be the operative you have got to know when your time has passed and play conservatively by leaving the front lines or else you will have so many revenge/pissed of people after you your death will come so quickly (drop a couple of those silly mines behind you though )