TLDR: Cloak is broken and detrimental to the game. Please remove it!

Wall of text:

Cloak as a mechanic is wholly broken for any number of reasons, but a few of the main issues as I see it is as follows:

1. Clientside hit-detection enables bolters to kill you before they decloak. This makes it impossible to defend against: It's just a random deathtimer. (Now that engies also have a one hit HS mechanic we've proven it's possible to bolt just fine without cloak.)
2. Cloak is a crutch that too many players rely on, effectively bloating the cloaker population to absurd levels. In larger fights it's becoming a turret-defence game where every high-spot is filled with bolters, and the ground is covered in a sea of snot as the stalkers are packed thick.. 
3. Unfun: Cloak enables too many unfun gameplay-styles that effectively are strangling the game. Be it boltervillages effectively stalemating fights, cloaked shotgunflashes, ant-mashing or stalkercamping terminals it's just the most unfun way to die in PS2 and cloak is the single enabler to this.

A2G, OS, Bastions, tryhard sweat-heavies, max suits and HESH are all terrible gameplay mechanics as well, but they are all identifiable and counterable or avoidable to some extent. Cloak is not. Darklight flashlight is a useless tool due to it's range, it's visual cue and it's spot as a substitute for other attatchments. And not even having cloak to show on IR/NV or infravision just goes to show how hopelessly overpowered it is (in fact it goes TOTALLY invisible on those. Go figure..). There are really no counter to cloak other than beefing up as much as possible, either play a HA as infantry to max out soaking, a max, sit in a tank or pull another infil yourself and only adding to the problem. Without cloak being in the game the other classes would be more viable: I can handle a HA as a medic, but not a HA and his 3 invisible buddies..

Removing cloak would have TWO immediate detrimental effects to the game as I see it and that is:

1: Sundy cloaking would not be a thing, and while the white camo directive is implemented in it's current state that is a bad thing as EVERYONE is encouraged to kill EVERY sundy as fast as possible on sight. (Increase no-deployzones of depoloyed sundies to avoid spawnstacking and buffing deployment shield, while also removing the requirement for white camo, would perhaps be a solution to have more stable spawns without cloak.)

2. The players who rely on cloak to make themselves feel good by using the godlike advantage of cloak to stomp on others would not be able to do so anymore and they would have to adapt to a different playstyle or leave. (I struggle to define this as a negative point, but there it is..)

On the other hand the benefits are overwhelming: The game would be more fun for everyone NOT crutching on cloak. New players and old alike would be less frustrated and disheartened and more likely to invest time and money into the game. There would be less cheesy action that makes no sense, like running loops in a cloaked flash just demolishing anyone spawning at a sundy in a hectic fight, or crouchwalking as a stalker into a massive pointhold just to get that one kill before you're instantly deleted.

I love this game at it's base, but how cloak is in the game still is a gameplay decision that I find mindnumbingly stupid and a serious detriment to the entirety of the PS2 game and it's community.

A normal session has me now at 30-45% of (unavoidable) deaths to infiltrators, and ALL of those deaths has been facilitated by cloak. Either directly or by enabling the cloaker to get into a position he shouldn't be able to.

I'd happily advocate giving hacking to the engineer, giving detection the shaft as it's effectively a hack in any other game, and then removing the infiltrator completely as it has NO role in the in the game besides spreading cancer, but I'll settle for the removal of cloak from what is currently Cloakside 2.