[Suggestion] remove hover ability from ESFs

The problem isn't the RM, its the way it was handled after it was discovered as a glitch in the flight physics. as a mechanic it can be fun once you get the hang of it, the real issue is that SOE really did nothing to make it into a polished mechanic / ability for ESFs and left it in its convoluted unintuitive state without so much as in in game tool tip.

When i startet the Game, i also had Ideas like this... but it is really the special way of PS2 flying.
Also the engine with enemys spawning only 500m away from you, is not very ffriendly to fast flights, mostly the enemys simply dont spawn in bigger fights, before you can fire.

So i think there is right now now way to remove hoovering...
Maby just add another aircraft? Idk...

I suggest playing IL 2 sturmovik instead, it already has the mechanics you want!

Who cares about your spm? Either way, that you think Banshee is meh doesn't make all these BR100 spergs farming infantry 24/7 disappear. Oh noes, their spm is a bit lower than if they were after the vehicles too. They don't care.

It is parasitic behavior because it has nothing to do with "combined arms" (I bet you got "combined arms" in mind even though you pulled spm as argument to 'banshee broken/not broken'). Newsflash, combined arms in this game is a JOKE. There is no well rounded army, it's an ungodly mixture of whatever random people felt like pulling. 50 tanks? Be my guest. Sky full of ESF and libs minute later? Suit yourself.

It's nothing but a chaos where force multipliers get to be on top of the foodchain and are used liberally to repair kdr and ego. Combined arms my hairy ***.

It's a mistake for the devs to put farmmobiles in the game in the first place. Players who don't feel like flying are not NPCs for airspergs to farm, especially when only 1 class out of 5 + skillsuit are able to fight back in the first place and the AA toys are behind a cert wall. If you can't fight it, you should be able to ignore it and that's more or less possible with unpleasant ground mech, not so with air.

Like i said there are plenty of ways to harm infantry even without air, we don't need borderline uncounterable sky charriots appearing out of nowhere to **** on skirmishes.

I don't give much **** about the reverse maneuver itself but i do think that outside of strategic layers, hovering yet very fast air is the worst thing the devs have done in PS2, right next to MAXes (I don't care what was in PS1, both things are broken by design).

Yep, one side has to perform 10 different roles "PTFOing" and designate people to take on a mindnumbing task of looking in the sky with weapons that have 0 use outside of AA and pretty much all of them require a hefty cert investment to even bother, the other can solo it at their leisure or attach itself to pretty much any random blob of people, farming kills like there is no tomorrow, breaking killstreak records.
Working as intended.

And it's not like i want pure infantry fights, but seriously, proportions seen in the game are out of whack. In every other battle you can see more than 50% of attacking pop in some farmmobile or at the very least using a skillsuit. That you paid some amount of irrelevant resource points doesn't mean you shouldn't work your *** off for your kills. Gibbing neon pixels on the dark screen every few seconds is not that.
In many battles i have near zero things to do as an infiltrator once i drop the motion spotter and are locked into the class because it's all mech, air and maxes with a small group of nuthuggers to sustain the blob.

No. Let the noob pilots hover. My AV engi turret and AV base turret (not to mention my Phoenix) will thank you eternally.

Or if they just added an new pure A2A fighter that worked like this.

You're missing the point. The point is (a) paper is useless if nobody plays rock, and (b) paper is only just barely useful when players play rock, but if (c) a ton of players see me playing paper and keep repeatedly playing rock, they're going to have a really bad day because of their repeated mistakes.

No, it's mistake punishment.

• Pull infantry? I'm going to punish that by using an AI nosegun.
• Pull dual AV tanks? I'm going to punish that by using an A2G loadout.
• etc

So yeah, I totally agree players are terrible at fielding a good mix of combined arms -- I punish it every day, constantly. AI noseguns are one of the harshest forms of punishment, because they didn't even choose a viable outdoor participant. They chose to be the most vulnerable and weak-hitting outdoor participant, and I chose to collect the free kill they were offering me. Perhaps they'll make better decisions in the future.

"Scissors just doesn't suit my playstyle." -Worst Rock/Paper/Scissors Player Ever
It should come as no surprise that if you select your weapon based on preference rather than need, you're going to spend a lot of time losing.

Air is fine because outdoors there is a mix of units (vehicles) which are all more or less balanced.
MAXes aren't fine because indoors where there should be a balanced mix of classes you instead have MAXes being significantly stronger than all other participants.

Not just one side. Both sides have to field a well-rounded vehicle force or they'll be punished.

AA isn't mind-numbing, nor is it useless outside of AA. Skyguards beat Viper lightnings in a straight DPS race. Skyguards land solid damage on infantry and vehicles (I kill sunderers fairly often with them.)

Taking a AP+Walker tank is enough AA to completely stop full-on Hornet/Rocket ESFs (AI ESFs don't even have a chance) while fielding tons of AV damage.

I've said since beta that players should start with dual Burster or Skyguard unlocked. But that never happened, so players should be aware that when they spend certs they're making a choice between something mostly useless (infantry) vs. something extremely powerful (vehicles) and should prioritize accordingly.

This discussion becomes a lot clearer after looking up the fact that you have zero certs spent in Vanguard, Reaver, or Lightning at BR 86. Not even the 1-cert optic and ammo! You didn't prioritize according to weapon strengths, you went all-in on infantry play (known to be the weakest playstyle for outdoor fights.)

Look, if you're playing the game to be farmed, don't complain when people farm you.

Whatever.
For every person who flies ESF and pays lip service to combined arms there are 10 who are in it for honest to god farming and regularly **** on skirmishes that are tight enough to not have enough hands to spare on some random ESFhole.

What you are saying doesn't change the fact that the game is made WORSE for a big part of player base for almost no reason and that's on the devs. There are plenty anti-infantry things that are punishing enough, yet being somewhat counterable with what you got, air requires specialized **** nobody uses for anything else. If air didn't have AI, nothing of value would be lost.
I'd love to see how things would change if tankers and airgods were getting only let's say 25xp per peon. I bet "combined farmers" preying on peons would largely disappear. Would you go after infantry if your spm that you hold so dear dropped by 75% by doing so? Somehow i don't think so.

Win and lose is irrelevant. Fun vs time wasted on unfun activities is what counts.

The problem is that it's largely true but only for infantry and ground mech. They don't get to afterburn away when **** goes south, they get wiped out on the spot. Air? Just fly away, wipe the sweat drop off your brow saying 'phew that was close!' and find some other place where you can **** on people until you make them so pissed off to pull AA which means time to go. Wash rinse repeat.
Hell, air can just appear out of nowhere in a battle it has no business even being 3 hexes away from their territory to **** on both sides. What do you do when you are heavily skirmishing with cap point switching back and forth and then 2 3rd party libs show up, demolish sunderers and fly away?

That almost feels like an ad hominem.
Get this, you are a tryhard and you apparently don't understand other mindsets. I on the other hand don't understand how people can be so focused on full-on farming passed as 'combined arms' that they are damaging long term viability of the game they play. This is not an outfit only, mlg ready game, nor a serious milsim. That miracle turning all pubs in ruthless cogs of a well oiled war machine you are hoping for hasn't happened in last 2 years and it's not going to happen in the future.

Infantry is only weak outside because of scarce cover, maybe no prone, plus farmvision on everything that moves. Like i said before, infantry with low profile would be viable if the air had only a fraction of second to perform the attack and farmers didn't go on farmvision supported killstreaks at the expense of everything else.
Also the best infantry gameplay is in the open because copypasted buildings got old long time ago and there is that thing called space that makes meaningful flanking possible. If infantry is relegated to buildings then infantry classes are a wasted programming effort imo. 5 squishy classes, tons of abilities only to be used in 2 buldings per base. Awesome...
Why not make MAX the only 'infantry' class but with a wide variety of tools of current classes? Infantry stops being a pushover, doesn't get trampled in their own niche and people don't get the choice of shooting themselves in the foot by playing UP stuff and the game starts making a bit more sense - instagibbable infantry stops making sense in the 21st century on earth, and PS2 is a "sci-fi" world where everything can have the eye of sauron and where magical radars penetrate walls. There is no upside to having squishy infantry logically speaking.

As for why i don't play mech? Because at the release i went on a killstreak with a stock lightning and thought yup no challenge and i bet it was a ****ton of fun for all the guys who got zero chance against armored can in a crappily constructed base that doesn't protect anybody from anything. Such **** drives people away so i'm not participating.

Just few days ago i jumped into a random vanguard possibly for the first time ever. 26:0 out of nothing, ended only because we soloed right in the middle of TR blob taking VS techplant. You can play tanks with one hand scratching your balls that's how hard it is. Tiny shreds of sympathy i had for vehicle users who complain about c4, AV turrets, lockons and what have you evaporated right there. If you are half awake, it's literally zero challenge.

Nobody farms me because i can cloak and redeploy (i still do pay the tax to airgods few times a day because i don't have 360 vision), doesn't change the fact your avg gameplay in PS2 is an unbalanced mess where farming reigns supreme and where people deal with a lot of dumb **** for short moments of awesome experience.

2 things i agree on in this thread.

1. the reverse maneuver is bull.
2. themal optics on any vehicle is bull.

1. RM
Personaly i belive anything that allows some1 to increase distance from target, manuever to avoid shots, and still keep reticle on target for permanent damage is too much, alas its here to stay tho so whatever. I also dont find it terribly difficult or deep to pull off tbh, and also am of the opinion that its dumbed down the A2A game into who can pull it off better, you never see anything else other than reverse or some1 getting completely destroyed because they dont know how to reverse, completely the opposite of deep.

2. Thermals
IMO it far too easily highlights infantry. As someone above said, infantry have 1 advantage when fighting a vehicle, small profile, the ability to hide within the surroundings. Thermal completely removes this ability for what 200certs, thats cheaper than grass cuttings. Give these thermal users effective AI (pre-nerf PPA) and look at what happens. Although you could argue that infantry having c-4 nullifies this but i dont think so, cant put c-4 on a lib at 200m alt.

Tight skirmishes are the ones where you want to avoid mistakes. Failure to counter an AI nosegunner is a huge mistake.

The game isn't worse for it. Look, if you're seeking a shallow shooter where only infantry exists, Call of Duty is right there waiting for you. I'd be sorry to see you go, since that would be a vote against deep games and for shallow games, but if you're not ready for depth maybe it's good to practice up with a weaker game first.

I think we can be reasonably confident you care whether you lose. Otherwise you wouldn't complain about Paper when it repeatedly beats you as a Rock-only player who is unwilling to play Scissors. You'd simply accept your repeated defeats as the price you pay for such a rigid playstyle.

Being flighty (literatively and figuratively) doesn't mean aircraft auto-win. A ground force of 3+ skyguards, tanks, and sunderers can quite often successfully push to the next base and aircraft will generally be powerless to stop it (of course the more G2A-focused the ground force is, the more vulnerable it is to an equal number of AV ground vehicles -- but that's just the natural checks and balances of PS2's outdoor gameplay, and perfectly fine.)

Certainly if a 3rd faction wastes its time flying into hexes it has no business in, it will generally weaken the attacking force at that base -- but that's just how bad play works (the libs are playing badly and their faction is suffering for it by doing worse at battles elsewhere since some of their players are off fighting at useless battles.)

So you intentionally chose a weaker playstyle, and then complained things were harder.

"Doctor, it hurts when I do this."
"Don't do that."

No sensible game would be balanced around players intentionally playing badly.

PS2 isn't about polite jousting between equals.

It's like most games. It's about leveraging every advantage to win the fight for your team. If you intentionally play badly and then label the players who are playing well "tryhards" or "farmers" then your mindset basically guarantees you're going to languish as a mediocre player who never contributes strongly to battles.

It's up to you whether to choose to play well, but if you choose to play badly then you basically give up your right to complain about players who are playing correctly.

These other games have leagues, tournaments and **** where tryhards can ********** together. Here we have people like you who love to kick puppies, get off on 3 digit killstreaks and get tools to do so 24/7.

People like you is one of main things that kills player retention in PS2. Giving people like you, enamored with SPM, liberators, ESFs and all the other toys "punishing mistakes" was PS2 shooting itself in the foot by design.

If you play PVP games expecting a Hug Simulator, you're going to be a very disappointed, angry individual.

Player retention is mostly low due to now starting new players with a max-rank item in every slot, so that the playing field is even. I've asked for such even playing field improvements since beta.

I don't do tournaments (my last one was a RTCW:Enemy Territory tourney; took first; yeah, that long ago.) So assuming this game was suited to tournaments and they existed, it wouldn't change anything.

So you'll just have to accept that not all players intentionally play PVP games poorly, as you are. The game will not change for you, but you can change for the game. As the saying goes, "When you can't change the direction of the wind -- adjust your sails."

^

This so much. Wow *wink*

Whilst I don't agree with the OP, an easy to fix not being able to land would be a "hover mode" which limits you to 100kph or whatever the OP is suggesting and disables your weapons. It could be done with the "deploy" key of B.

Dogfighting would be incredibly boring without RM. PS2 has ****** flight vehicle physics; if someone gets ony your tail, you lose or spend the next 4 minutes turning before getting ganked by a third party.

Thermals could stand to use a nerf, but so could: burster maxes, lockon rocket launchers, c4, max AV weapons, etc. Until infantry finally get the nerf they deserve, thermals shouldn't be removed, except by something that has a significan opportunity cost, like a utility slot or secondary slot.

No, I like the ESFs the way they are. There are plenty of games with regular dog-fighting in them, go play one of those.

I think the circle straff RM fights are already boring...each to their own.

I dont think bursters need a nerf. Neither do lockons since there is a direct counter for them, just hav to giv up the op fire supp. Gen 2 max weapons need a range nerf, well nc and vs do, agreed.
Removing themals now is too late, vehicle based AI has been too nerfed because of it already, revert some AI changes, especially on libs, but remove thermals is my vision.

My main problem with stuff like bursters and g2a locks is just them hitting beyond render range. If that was changed, I'd stop complaing. Alternatively, I heard an excellent suggestion to make current ESF flares passive, but have G2A locks deal 90% damage (twice what they do now) to ESF's.

i could see them changing the abilities of the current ESFs to make a new interceptor class.....and i can also see every skyknight ever using it and then condemming anyone who tries to fight back against them and calling them scrubs and cheaters for daring to touch their shiny new interceptor with lockons or bursters

Or as I said long ago, massively buff both A2AM and G2A launcher damage and massively nerfing their homing capability at the same time.

It would turn dodging lockon into something more than "hear warning, pop flares", requiring its user to think, as well as rewarding both good airmanship (for dodging) and careful use of lockons (since they would do MASSIVE damage), which are things that buffing flares and/or giving everyone and their dogs one cannot achieve.

In fact, if that gets balanced well enough, one can argue that we can nerf flares afterwards.

But as an afterthought, since it's an idea that I basically ripped from Ace Combat, I'm not entirely sure it will work with the current RM-and-hover-heavy PS2 air mechanics.