Dogfighting is Annoying

A frequently abused bug/exploit should NOT be a barrier to entry

Demetrios made a good point. It's either going to be that or this...

Watching this vid, it almost feels like what the players would prefer doing in this dogfight is to move like they do in PS2.

I'm glad a few people posted about their fun experiences dogfighting in PS2. I think it just depends on what you're looking for in your air combat.

Badname 707 was right in that PS2's air combat is very unique and while it may not be to your liking there are obviously plenty that do enjoy it.

I love how people think that they are good at easy things. Then again people do take the path of least resistance more often than not and it's easy to become detached when you only stick with one thing.

Flying was hard until I finally gave in and watched videos, hours and hours of videos and then hours and hours of practicing in warpgates. After I learned and flew for awhile, I realized how boring it was and how useless I felt most of the time. If anything I had more fun dying horrible quick deaths than staying alive for extended periods of time in an ESF.

Pilots enjoy doing what they do, so let them. You like doing what you do and I absolutely love doing what I do. I love thrills, such as seeing a bunch of dudes around a corner and outplaying, gunning them and winning against crazy odds. Something that just isn't feasible in an ESF or any other vehicle against similar units. You could say that my knowledge of using cover or knowing when to hip fire or ADS and knowing how to position myself to not die is a crutch but it's just something that comes with experience. The reverse maneuver might seem lame but it's not impossible or even that difficult to learn, it's just something you learn to do with experience. You don't start out being a pro at any game. You start playing games and die, then learn things to help you perform better and live longer. There are plenty O videos out there to help you fly, even more so than there are videos to help you tank, which MANY need help with basic things like flanking or not exposing your rear.

Just keep in mind that everything is hard until you put effort into it and try, though some things can seem harder than others, all things just require experience. Dogfighting is annoying to me because it's extremely repetitive and long and drawn out. Flying isn't hard but fighting in the air is significantly harder. Learning maneuvers isn't much different than learning to strafe or crouch in a gun fight. The flight mechanics might put off some people but don't think because they are too difficult to learn or because you are so good that you made everyone rage quit flying. Different strokes, and live and let live...If you rocket pod me I will no skill G2A you! Unless you are really bad, then I will ROFL when you get dumb fired.

Claiming that flying in directions other than directly in front of the aircraft is a "bug/exploit" is silly. The engine models on the Mosquito and Reaver even rotate to indicate the direction of thrust when you activate afterburners. That sure is a lot of effort SOE put into something you feel is unintended.

Did SOE anticipate that the flight model they created would have a skill-cap that is so much higher than the rest of the game? Probably not, the game was built from the ground up to emulate modern FPS spunkgargleweewee garbage and even shares many of issues that sub-genre has. But, the history of competitive video games shows that the best gameplay systems are almost always completely accidental.

all i hear is mimimimimimi guys just ******* deal with it and get better at flying yourself this is a combined arms game and not ******* call of duty in a open world with tanks. If you have problems with air that get better at flying ! Yea i know the skill sealing is pretty high with esfs and there are a lot of good aces arround. Even i with my 130 flight hours have some pilots to struggle with ! BUT THAT IS THE FUN PART becouse you will die time after time but than if you will kill the one guy who is killing you all the time it feels way better. Besides that you can actually notice some improvments in your skill if you start to fly "sereously" and than you just want to get better and better!

Soe nerfed down the ground fights to a lvl of ******nes already. ( i speak of latice links, no deploy zones, sunderer garages, etcet
dont let them nerf the air to a lvl where every one is equally useless -.-

It isn't either of those things anymore.

I wouldn't be at all opposed to a more complex flying mechanics, but I think that would only worsen the problem of new pilots being unable to get into the airgame. Speaking as some dude who plays video games, I have no idea what most of those terms mean, and even the reverse thrust maneuver is easier to learn than all that.

Why do people like you Crusade for a more boring flight version of PS2? It is clear you either simply dislike PS2 flight mechanics or are struggling to learn how to fly, either way it is obvious that many people really enjoy the game as it is. Accept this fact along with SOE not having the resources or devs to take the massive amount of time to destroy an amazing flight model to appease a few less adaptable players who couldn't grow outside of traditional flight mechanics. Currently with how PS2 operates aircraft are reliant on our VTOL capabilities to effectively operate in the game with landing, A2G, and defensive maneuvers in the air. Move on from this pointless cause of destroying the last bastion of high skill play from PS2, the devs will not change it, and no amount of QQing will ever change that for ya.

Thrust vectoring is totally useless. AS fighters are intended to engage from BVR with missiles rather than guns.

THEY DONT!!

You make a good point. But I can make the same argument for lets say, the "AD" bug. Which the Client/server cannot respond fast enough to infantry quickly strafing. causing your enemy to miss their shots. This bug exists for infantry only. So the "AD" bug should be a barrier to entry for Infantry fights?

Except the AD bug creates a scenario where damage was being negated, and usually required a macro to really exploit properly. While the reverse maneuver is simply a way to manipulate the aircraft in a non exploitative or unfair manner that was identified back in beta. Not to mention it has been extensively covered and explained with dare I say hundreds of videos and is common place knowledge among anyone who takes a moment to look it up. To call it a barrier is an exaggeration as I figured it out before anyone even had a name for the maneuver as it came naturally just from learning to fly in PS2. I will admit it is a crucial skill to learn to truly master the ESF experience but lets not go over board with acting like its on the same level of AD exploit where people used macros or other means to accelerate the input commands.

As an example I kind of look at the discovery of the reverse maneuver like Skiing was for Tribes, minus the manipulation of code to achieve it originally. They handed us this mechanic weather they intended it to be so iconic or not is irrelevant now as it is the heart and soul of ESF combat for PS2. You should of made this case back in Beta during its initial discovery because at this point the vast majority of the flying community enjoy and wish to preserve this unique flying mechanic only found in PS2. http://tribes.wikia.com/wiki/Skiing

There were a lot of things back in beta that i wish stayed. Backwards flying was not one of them, in fact it wasn't used nearly as much as it is now in live gameplay. But simply saying "Learn back flying or don't fly" is not fair to, well, everyone who wants to try to fly.

If we are agreeing to disagree maybe there should be something like a "Reverse Thruster" cert line that enables backwards flying. This way you know who the potential "Aces" are, and everyone has an opportunity to cert into that skill and use it to their advantage. As it is now those who don't know are just completely screwed and an equal chance isn't even offered to others

You have to be able to pick your fights and get out of situations where you're guaranteed to die, if you're dogfighting another ESF and you start taking damage from another source you should get out of there and get to an area with more friendlies or the warpgate. Other than that it just takes practice and figuring out maneuvers you can pull off.

Among top pilots it was used regularly since Beta but across the overall population it did take time to learn. But as I said the information was there as videos and threads of its discovery became available back in beta explaining how it works and its potential importance. But again the knowledge of the reverse maneuver will come naturally if a player simply takes the time to explore the VTOL mechanics PS2 offers, but they have to actually try to practice. I mean pilots can still be successful with actually never using the reverse maneuver, you will just be at a disadvantage for not knowing it.

As far as adding a "reverse thruster key" we already have the analog throttle key which is all the help the game can give you in that regards. That key will cut your engines out and put you in a hover faster then holding S and allows for a faster transition into a VTOL maneuver. There is no way SOE can make it easier to transition into hovering with out gutting game mechanics, players must learn to identify the direction of their thrust and how to manipulate it. I can absolutely agree that official videos and guides should be offered by SOE to assist the more casual pilots but the mechanics are actually incredibly easy to learn. Most new pilots being taught can perform it regularly in under ten minutes.

But let me be clear, there will never be an equal chance to win against an ACE pilot when you are inexperienced, there is far more to the flight game in PS2 other then the reverse maneuver to learn and master. It is a important part of the flight experience in PS2 to grasp but far from the only one. The skill ceiling in flying is incredibly high due to the over abundance of things that pilots must learn to identify due to their ability to kill us or influence fights we may enter. It usually takes pilots about 300 hours of flying to actually become good, because of all of those factors they must learn. We can agree to disagree on the weather reverse maneuver is a bad or good thing but I ask you not to think that is the main thing holding new players back.

I never said anything about a "key" I am talking about a whole cert line for it. No need to be passive aggressive about this only trying to help piloting as a whole

Then I feel you really don't understand how the flight mechanics actually work in PS2. Utilizing the reverse maneuver or any VTOL mechanic is simply utilizing the hover aspect of the aircraft and manipulating movement with pitching the aircraft certain directions, similar to how a helicopter flies. The importance of hover mechanics in PS2 cover many areas like simple landing, A2G, and A2A combat, it plays a critical part in all of these aspects. A2G especially for me as the unreliable render mechanics in PS2 forces pilots to dwell within render range for some time to allow the client to catch up and show us the targets below. What would be the trade offs of having or not having a hover mechanics cert line, how would they even implement that with out breaking the game in its current form?

The devs have mentioned in episodes of command center that reverse mechanic can be remove without being game breaking. This is why i believe it should be put into a cert line, as it stands now new pilots have no idea that you can do this in game, at least with a cert line serious "ace" pilots can invest into the move. And the newbie pilots can save up for it.

In response to you directly: I do understand how the mechanics work in this game, it seems to me that you just don't want your easy newb pilot farm to go away.

To perform the "reverse maneuver" all I need to do is roll left or right and pitch down. They can disable AB or nerf it further to slow movement but it is highly unlikely they would be able to remove reverse flight without breaking the flight game altogether, and their track record with breaking game mechanics only reinforces that opinion. And really why should they, how does that even help new players at all? Why would you place a cert line for something that is already available, what is the purpose of that cert line? Tutorials teaching the capabilities of aircraft sure, but putting a cert line for reverse flight when it is part of the core flight mechanic makes no sense. Like I said man I really don't think you understand the flight mechanics in PS2 or even the implications of what you are offering as a fix. If you want to help new players then promote a better tutorial and ask they five official videos explaining mechanics, but creating a cert tree for a mechanic that is already available to everyone would only alienate new players not help them.

And this is exactly what i am saying the reverse maneuver does to new players, it alienates them from the air game entirely.