A common G2A complaint which irks me greatly

"Lock-ons are useless, you can only kill bad pilots or people who screw up!".

This sentence worded in various ways comes up quite often to describe the feelings of helplessness of infantry only players. Basically my issue with it is that I don't see how that is any different from how anti tank weapons work.

I can fly a reaver pretty well (not liberators though), well enough that I know by name whether a pilot is likely able to beat me or that racking up 30+ kills with an airhammer loadout is nothing special to me. And yes if the TR/VS have no air support or 2+ flak sources then I can harvest infantry all day with a combination of flares and retreating/returning. I am fairly certain of my continued survival baring a mistake, a fit of greed or enemy air intervention.

That may seem unfair but I also drive my fair share of vanguards (and I am lucky enough to have the same gunner almost every time) and again racking up 50+ kills each in a life (which often last upwards of a half hour) is entirely normal. Basically we pick of tanks/infantry from range, retreat to repair often and basically don't push our luck unless we feel like "diving" to finish a wounded tank or something.
We are not going to die to lock on's or MAX's or turrets unless we make a mistake, get greedy or have to face another MBT.

My point is that the situation is the same (a liberator would be a better example but I can't fly them). Most of the time a single enemy ESF will die to me in fairly short order in my reaver, there are MANY pilots better (significantly better in some cases...cough Daikar cough) than me but most aren't. Same with our vanguard we pretty much know the 2 VS crews and 4 TR crews capable of beating us and anyone else is basically cannon fodder.

In summary I will lose my MBT to:
1. Mistakes (usually C4 or mines).
2. Greed (Usually AV maxes).
3. Comparable/better MBT crews.
4. Reasonable Liberator pilots.

I will lose my ESF to:
1. Mistakes (crashing).
2. Greed (The AH encourages greed...).
3. Comparable/better ESF pilots.
4. Excellent liberator pilots.

I think the issue is that a well manned tank LOOKs a lot more engageable as a lonewolf / small team than a well flown ESF but in reality you are only likely to C4/rocket down the bad/mediocre ones just like ESF's where you have no issue depleting the sky of newbies until you are left with only the good ones.

I think the issue is that even if you've over extended rocketpodding infantry, you still have afterburners to escape any g2a lock on.
If you do the same in a ground vehicle, or (to some extent) liberator, you don't have the same luxury.

Anyway; I think it's an older argument. Things are better balanced if you can be bothered to pull aa. It is fairly boring doing that job though.

This argument tends to come from a lack of understanding as to the core problem with these weapons. Anti-vehicle weapons are currently the worst method of actually destroying vehicles. Anti-tank rockets and missiles are specifically designed to penetrate tank armor or spall that armor to kill the crew. Anti-air missiles and flak are designed to explode on proximity to an aircraft, sending high velocity shrapnel into that vehicle, destroying its poorly armored and easily destroyed components. AA guns are designed to fill the air with bullets with the same intended effect as the shrapnel produced by AA missiles and flak.

However, as it stands, anti-vehicle rockets and missiles are the worst method of destroying what they're meant to be destroying are are best suited to other tasks. This is completely absurd.

People don't always comprehend why things bother them and so just express a feeling of helplessness or something else. In this case, the problem is that anti-vehicle weapons aren't functioning as any knowledgeable first-world human or gamer would expect them to function in terms of damage potential and usability.

But you're right, a good AA user can be as terrifying as a competent pilot in an aircraft. Unfortunately, even not-so-great pilots can easily escape the best AA users and return fire from beyond that AA user's effective range. I think that's another core issue people have with anti-aircraft gameplay.

I will give you that. It is very tedious to deter air. But tbh I have spent 10 minutes flinging phoenixs over hills at prowlers and never killed them, that is a bit more fun though because of all the blue missiles.

AA isn't fun, games are supposed to be fun, when people pull air it makes people on the ground have the choice of:

1) pull AA and hopefully scare off the aircraft but more likely you will die or be stuck spawn camping while the rest of your team is doing fun stuff like fighting actual targets, getting points controlled, nice pushes or room to room combat through the facility instead of staring at the sky in hopes that you can scare somebody away.

2) die.

Which one is the fun one again?

No one ever said that. Maybe they mentioned tank shells or dumb fire rockets only killed bad pilots who screwed up.

Exactly, why do you need more than 2 flak cannons to DETER one pilot. Farming infantry...is it rewarding? Do you actually feel useful? Probably not, it's probably something you do out of boredom while others are trying to be useful and play objectives.

Tanks cost more resources and should be a bit more effective when you have a gunner, unlike an ESF. You also are at range and are exposed to more threats than if you were in a ESF. You can't just fly in and get kills then fly out. You use positioning and skill, which the bad tankers that would die to you at such long ranges didn't. Also, if someone wanted to kill you they are only required to waste a bit of time by going to your location unlike what they have to do to kill an air unit (pull something that costs resources AND waste their time to actually kill you).

Btw, do you only use vehicles? You know what is more common than that complaint you mentioned? How you want to keep your playstyle intact and don't even try to understand the counter argument of others because it's not in your best interests.

With maxed-out after burner and racer chassis on a mosquito, I escape G2A missiles maybe 50% of the time. It's not like it was before at all, now it only works if you were already on the edge of the launcher's range.

Solution, Add Icarus JJ and make 1 C4 OHK Libs, ESFs, and maybe 2 C4 for Gals. Then, laugh maniacally as LAs become the most valuable member of any squad and people shoot up like rockets to kill aircraft.

Lock ons, and infantry AA in general isn't useless, but if you're locked in the spawn by aircraft, infantry AA does becomes useless. We can't get a good angle of fire on aircraft from spawn rooms, so it's easy for a few aircraft to lock it down and remain safe, which irritates people.

Just want to point out that if you check my SOE player database for Malikardushale then I am pretty sure that I have over 75% of my kills as infantry.

Right. Well my size 12 shoe is stuffed firmly in my mouth. Even still I would think you would understand the point of view from the ground perspective a bit more. There are vast differences between the areas or sizes of battles players play in as well. Such as if you only move with a platoon or if you fight even+ pop fights. Smaller than large fights or underpopulation at a fight=complaints about air, which is justified because pilots know enough to stick to those fights or they have to face the high risk/high reward of playing the way SOE intended them to play. Libs weren't buffed because they were UP in anything outside of large fights, but most don't even bother with those.

Ok, I just checked and I have 79% inf kills for the record (I happen to prefer infantry combat but understand that I chose to play a combined arms game and try my best to combine my arms).

I do understand a lot of the complaints of ground only players, the big one for me being small fights combined with 2/12 galaxy bulldogs. I just don't like the double standard where I find it just as hard to remove a skilled tank crew as a liberator (i.e basically impossible with only 2-3 of you) and honestly I find tank shell spamming to be a lot more intrusive than aerial bombardment most of the time. Zephyr+bulldog is pretty scary but is essentially the equivalent of HE/HEAT + PPA on a magrider - basically you best hope you only ever have to shoot infantry.

Say 3 of us are volleying phoenixes into a magrider/prowler, it is pretty unlikely that we are going to land the second fatal volley on it before it disengages to repair but it can happen. Just like firing 3 hawks at a lib, they won't usually let us fire the 3rd fatal volley but it can happen. Taking skill into account, the lib is much harder to use than the tank and also the anti tank weapon is much harder to use than the anti air weapon.

However the blandness of G2A missiles annoys me, it is hardly the high point of my day waiting for lock tones and launching fire and forget lock-ons.

And this argument come from lack of understanding of gameplay mechanics, do you really want instant kill AA guns ingame?(yea ok ofcourse you do) but that would render air utterly useless, unless if we on top of realistic damage models also add realistic flight speed and then realistic AOE damage against ground....no?

A must watch...

Good idea, lets all go out ot youtube, because some of the people in this thread are royally full of dodo. Lets look up killstreak videos for ESFs using LOLpods and see how that looks. Then lets look at some sweet aa max killstreak videos and then we can all come back and tell these pilots to just ****!

Well, that's just silly. I don't want to instantly kill aircraft. I never said that's what I wanted.

What I want is for game mechanics to be believable. Right now they're not. I can't believe that my anti-tank rocket is doing nothing to a tank...or even many of them have little impact. I can't believe that hitting an aircraft a dozen times with explosive rounds has zero impact on that aircraft's performance. None of this makes any sense given my admittedly limited(though still above average) knowledge of how these vehicles behave in the real world.

I mean, I fully understand that this is a fictional game-world, but things still need to be believable to make this game-world gratifying to play around in.

What could appease this need for believability in Planetside 2? A variety of things. Some complex, some simplistic. The best solutions are kind of in the middle of that spectrum, though. Things like basic(or advanced) vehicle damage models, some objectives that aren't simply flags you stand next to for a few minutes until the base falls completely under your faction's control, an actual need for close air support or an armored battalion among other things.

That is the type of thing that I want, more gratifying game mechanics for every type of player.

The difference is, there is no such thing as a skilled flak user. The cone of fire and flak mechanic force every AA user to the same level of mediocrity. All g2a aa weapons need to be harder to use and better reward skill. Some versatility wouldn't hurt either.

As an aircraft, flak detonation is crippling to my field of view and FPS. Would you like a "cursing and screaming" sound effect to play when you hit someone with flak? I'd provide my voice, but proxy chat in inaudible to enemies

Yeah, to me bulldog galaxies were one of the dumbest things to put into this game but I spoke about it last year and it hasn't and never will change so like many, I've moved on to voice concerns about newly tweaked things where SOE might understand some of the concerns. I disagree with what you said about a skilled tank crew being just as hard to remove as a liberator. I've never met a tanker that I couldn't kill. I am very persistent and will gladly take the very long route to flank and kill a tanker that annoys me. It is rare to encounter a tanker with radar, which makes it pretty easy. And your point about lock ons is the same for all of us. I have never had a desire to use them, but have out of necessity. They are boring and feels too much like camping, which I am not a fan of. The way I killed libs in the past was with a friend and both of us carrying decimators. Good libs were annoying but they always gave you a window to move as a ground unit due to them not sitting in one spot. It was the bad libs who hover spammed and got decimated or shelled by tanks, but SOE probably overlooked that part. Most want something to counter air which requires skill to master, but once you are good with it you are very effective. Something that would require skill to use as infantry would also require skill from the pilot to evade instead of pushing the deploy flares button, in which evading should be highly possible. Lock ons aren't fun for anyone. I was sad when they lowered the price of lock ons because that encouraged more spam gameplay instead of trying to tweak the things that made you need those launchers in the first place. Either way I only posted because I was bored and certainly not because I think that it would make a difference or help change anything.

I choose option 3- Stay indoors.