The Real Problem with AA is Procrastination

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Aekir, Apr 5, 2016.

  1. Taemien


    Like I said, I use fact and personal experiences. And a little common sense.

    Fact: Aircraft have little impact in the game. Stats show this, they do like less than 5-10% of the interaction in this game. That might be an issue.

    Personal Experience: I don't feel underpowered facing aircraft in a Skyguard or with a Burster MAX. I feel bored when there's no air to shoot at. I feel like a fool when I pull a Skyguard and turn the corner and there's a Harasser or stock Lightning there ready to rip me apart. Hmm that might be an issue.

    Common Sense: Air have a place in the game. An EQUAL place alongside infantry. Only Infantry can cap bases. Air can help capture very few bases outside Galaxy drops. That's an issue.

    So I tie everything together. Stats and Common Sense tell me Air need better opportunities to help with base captures. Base design is a possible fix for this. AA is BORING and Useless when air leaves. Infantry have the option to respawn, redeploy, or visit a terminal to switch loadouts, can't do that with vehicles due to the nanite costs as well as the limited areas you can pull them from. So allowing AA weapons a measure of defending themselves from non-air is a good fix for that as well.

    Even with both systems in place, there might need to be some tweaks. But they fix many of the issues plaguing the conversation. Negative emotional responses won't do any of the sort except divide and polarize.
    • Up x 3
  2. Moridin6

    never mind the procrastination point, which i tottally agree with, i cant get most Emerald Vanu to point their guns up when theyve Been getting farmed by ONE WHOLE MOSSY

    i mean , theres 40 of us, SHOOT THE ***** MOSSY

    and so i end up switching classes and pulling a skyguard, which will be when one LA strolls, as in walks slowly, past all the vanu and pops me while im Trying to keep them alive from the air threat. granted i should have been moving more or whaterver but YOU BRAINLESS DCKBAGS LET HIM WALK UP TO ME??

    90 percent of emerald vanu DESERVE to get farmed by air. they have neither the intelligence nor ambition to protect themselves from it so, let your KDs go to sht because One mossy came through, im done trying to help you Scrubs
    • Up x 2
  3. Demigan

    The exclusion list specifically states "straight and taken". What if we broke you up...
  4. Demigan

    I think your common sense missed a step.

    Ground vehicles (excepting the Sunderer) overall are less capable of helping with the capture of a base because they are far more limited in where they can fight things compared to aircraft. Your current reasoning would dictate that aircraft would be used more often than ground vehicles, which isn't the case.
    Also you make a strange leap. First you claim that aircraft have less than 10% of the interaction in the game based on the amount of kills, which is already a bad form of displaying interaction especially when AA is involved which would rank far lower if only because it's aimed at a vehicle rather than infantry, second you then say "they need more influence in base captures", which has nothing to do with the kills. So you do know that kills does not equal interaction but you use it on and off anyway? I don't get that.

    Anyway, I think the problem is a tiny bit more complicated (no sarcasm). When people use aircraft there's basically two things they complain about: How AA works and is unavoidable once it starts shooting forcing them away, and how A2A works if you aren't a pro pilot (IE it's unfair to ask an average player to waste time on becoming a pro pilot just to be able to fly around without getting buttkickings all over).
    That's discouraging, especially if 90% of the A2G combat that players do is basically "find base without/with low AA, farm until enough AA shows up".
    The solution? First is make flying easier to put it closer to operating ground vehicles, but with different controls. RM and hover fighting currently dominate the scene. By upgrading all other maneuvers you get a deeper A2A metagame and because there's more choices and more ways to move it becomes easier for the average player to pull off a good maneuver that aids them. Especially if those maneuvers also allow you to dodge A2A missiles which reduce Gank squads and instantly solves this problem that the pro-pilots have been screaming against since the beginning of time.
    Second part of the solution? Reduce the ease-of-use of AA so that it doesn't scale so exponentially. Make sure aircraft can fly around within AA presence and even when damaged could feel confident enough to stick around because their dodging skills might be good enough to avoid AA. Then have those pilots either reap the rewards, or get horrendously torn to shreds by that AA that had the skill (or luck) for a finishing blow.

    Making air and ground vehicles have more influence on base captures and the general meta is a solid plan, I just don't think it's the solution right here.
    • Up x 1
  5. Taemien

    I didn't miss anything. I'm just not going to speak about particulars that don't involve the topic of the thread directly. Sure MBT's for example are pretty useless too (and I know you've seen me say this in numerous threads btw). But I'm not going to bring that up in a AA usage thread.

    This where the AA crowd allow themselves to be clouded with their emotions. They don't see the issue that pilots or would be pilots have who wish to help out teammates. I mean I hear phrases such as, "its combined arms, have your guys deal with the AA and then you can push in." Well damn if they can deal with the AA, they've done dealt with the enemy and don't need air support now do they?



    I have a third thing to add. Its a pipe dream though.

    The removal of third person from vehicles, and then buff resilience to compensate. Resilience being something complex and not simply just raising hit points or resistances/armor. But rather make vehicles not as affected by their environment as much. For example ground vehicles, especially Sunderers, Harassers, and Flashes CAN'T flip. Like seriously, if we take away 3PV, then limit the axis that they can tilt. There's no reason for these vehicles to tilt more than 90 degrees in one direction. Or at least remove the damage they take when they flip and have a mechanic where they automatically flip back over.

    And then for air vehicles, allow them more leniency when striking the environment. If you knick the edge of a building or tree, its not as devastating. I mean if you nose plant at 300kph then yes you should die. But clipping a wing or tail at 90kph shouldn't result in destruction. Especially since without 3PV this will happen alot. And it doubles as measure to let newer fliers get into the pilot's seat a bit easier.

    Here's the main reasoning for it:

    If you've ever looked at a ESF montage, you always see the pro-pilot switching views. Why is that? Well he's using 3PV to locate his enemy. Last I checked, there was a defense slot for that. Engagement Radar. The 'T' button acts like a ghetto version of engagement radar freeing up the slot. I don't think this is intended. Furthermore, newer pilots aren't adept at this and are disadvantaged. I mean this is actually the purpose of the radar. I don't think slots and modules should be for new players only. Those are crutches. Crutches are bad, as they are reinforcing a handicap. Allow them to be features instead.

    The by-product is interesting though. Liberators I think wouldn't be affected much. Except requiring more communication between pilot and gunner to locate targets. Valkyrie and Galaxy pilots would need to be precise in their drops. I think this one would be a BENEFIT as too many pilots do a curved pass which causes anomalies when dropping. People flying off into the distance and crap. Now they'd be forced to actually slow down and maintain a steady heading (giving AA more time to react and make an impact). Battle Galaxies would require more communication as well.

    Tanks would be largely unaffected, as 3PV is just a QOL type thing. Sunderers and Harassers would need tweaking somewhere probably which is fine.

    One thing I would do is allow the view button on vehicles to still have a purpose, Galaxies, Liberators, and Valkyries would be able to look down with a camera mounted below to see what their gunners see (hell we need this now). And ESF's and Ground vehicles can look directly behind them using a rear camera.

    Or if removal of 3PV is too drastic. At least remove the ability to fire weapons in 3PV and see instrument panels and ammunition. And any enemy that you cannot see in 1PV is invisible to you. This was the compromise they did in MechWarrior Online. The game started with only a 1PV. The case was made that 3PV would help new players cope the the complex controls of mech combat. Of course critics (like me, I had a part in this) said that it would be used in exploitative manners, such as seeing around buildings and over hills. PGI agreed and made the restriction I said above and everyone was happy with the results.

    Well... everyone but the ones who wanted to fire on people around buildings and hills without being detected themselves. But they were quickly disregarded by the general community.
    • Up x 1
  6. Demigan

    Not sure what you mean with this phrase, can you explain? The sentences seem a bit warbled to me.

    I think vehicles flipping isn't a problem. But as you say, remove or reduce the damage they get when flipped (I would go for remove) and allow players to flip them back up either with a utility or with some mechanic. Utility is fast, mechanic is slow.
    The removal of 3rd person also means that tanks become far more tunnel visioned and have far less situational awareness available. This warrants them getting co-axial guns to better deal with infantry (as well as more combined arms to keep them safe!). Preferably rather than a co-axial you get a 3rd turret up top with a higher elevation range that you can switch too.

    I had the idea to simply allow aircraft to actually take a 300+KM/h nose dive into the ground, but it would set them to burning. Additionally, any ram with environment/vehicles will cause a concussion effect, reducing your maneuverability. The more damage you got from the ram the stronger your concussion effect. This means that newbs have far more leniency when learning to control aircraft. Aircraft that ram the ground are definitely screwed and much easier targets, but it's less of "tree's are better AA than the AA itself". It also adds a tactic for aircraft to ram each other without it instantly being a suicide tactic.

    Every single game with 3rd person suffers from two things. The first is players using 3rd person have a higher situational awareness because they can see a larger area and the second is a larger to-hit area on your screen due to a person's "shadow". Because you can aim behind someone where the bullet has to travel through them to get there you essentially allow a player to get a hit by aiming either directly at the target or at the shadow behind them. This is mostly a problem in CQC fights or with hitscan weapons, at range the shadow means it can mess up your leading capabilities.

    Yes I think that the way the 3rd person works now gives too much to the aircraft. It allows them to scan a much larger area than from the cockpit, and I mean something akin to 3 or 4 times as much in PS2's setting. This is a massive advantage for A2A but also when scouting the ground due to the downwards angle of the camera.

    I like the 3rd person restriction to remove anything vehicle or player you wouldn't be able to see otherwise best I think.
    • Up x 1
  7. Moridin6

    lol no 3rd person..

    maggys squishing friendlies is going to go up sharply
  8. RageMasterUK

    Dare I say it...

    ... PS1 had a coaxial-mg as a secondary fire on the skyguard and was its own vehicle, not some Lightning conversion kit. The existence of such a dedicated AA vehicle highlighted that AA was a VITAL vehicle function IMHO. Im a bit gutted PS2 didnt respect its predecessor enough to figure out that it actually had made some good design decisions on issues such as this.
    There were also good reasons behind PS1s... 2upMBTs
    2gunLightnings

    Currently, the AA vehicle option is buried in the Lightning cert tree, newbs might not even consider its existence for the first month of play perhaps, whereas an intuitively named skyguard-vehicle would instantly pop out even to new players as an AA option, every time they visited a vehicle term.


    I would have preferred a dedicated AA vehicle in PS2 personally, with differing AA weapon options lock-on etc and also with a 'lesser secondary weapon'' not unlike PS1.

    In PS1 you could see how much AA your vehicle column is made up of instantly, in the sequel its a sea of lightnings that you have to weapon assess each one to get an idea of who has SG. Squad commanders managing tank columns should be able to see who has AA from looking at the vehicle icon next to player, currently you have to call that over radiochat.

    Who has AA, and where AA is should maybe be something that is tracked on the global map, so in addition to the enemy count per hex, perhaps there should be an enemy indicator saying whether there are 0 - 5 aircraft / 5 -10 aircraft /10-25 etc etc...
    .... that way not every squad has to network their chat or perform their own individual recon to figure out this quite basic information that nanites should be able to tell them.

    And maybe even Green circles around any occupied AA equipment showing AA safezones on the minimap might also aid folks into making informed decisions on what equipment to pull, where to fly to safety, where to set up more AA, where the air-game is weak/strong, where to reinforce/pull back...

    TLDR
    PS1 Skyguard was better. Give players the information to make more informed choices, and make their choices more accessible, tempting and obvious.
    • Up x 2
  9. Taemien

    Players that wish to see the airgame deleted from the game.


    Its a pretty badass compromise to be honest. I hated the idea of 3PV coming to MWO, it literally ticked me the hell off. But the way they did it made sense. It gave people the ability to maneuver in tight areas without getting stuck, and gave NO tactical advantages. It worked very well. I think it would do well here.
  10. Demigan

    Ah yes.
    The airgame (and tank game) should be just as important as any part of the infantry game. The amount of importance may vary from base to base, but overall every aircraft or vehicle should have just as much use, importance and impact as infantry.




    I think so too. Especially since we can assume players have some video feeds or sound signals that assist them in these kind of maneuvers.
  11. Aekir

    Not happening.
  12. cobaltlightning

    I'd like to add onto this post

    I've also suggested elsewhere on the forums that one could give the default launcher a G2A Mechanic, too. I'd like to add onto that suggestion: Give the Default Launchers a G2A Mechanic that operates like a Tomcat, as in one would have to keep their ADS aim on the Target or else the lock will break. Y'know, the ESF A2AM? Let's have those on the Ground.

    If lowering the price of the ES G2A is too much to ask for, then perhaps a G2A Default w/ Tomcat Locks would be a compromise, too.
    "But that'll ruin muh Air Gaimz" I can already hear. If the Default Launchers get the Tomcat Mechanic, the Heavies would themselves be crippled as they keep their lock on the target. The Pilot could simply kill the Heavy and break the lock, or just get out of the Heavy's Line of Sight without having to worry about a rocket tailing him.

    I know, the Stock Launcher can 1shot a Stock ESF, So let's also have the rocket behave like a slow Swarm Rocket when locked, too. Hopefully, if this ever gets considered, it could quite down the planetmen without causing too much of a ruckus from the skyknights. Seriously, a stock ESF can easily outrun three Swarm Missles, let alone just one.

    The change to the Default Launcher would help the Newer Players, because they aren't (as) gimped against Air, without hurting the air too much, because generally a Planetside2 Pilot runs at the first sign of lockon/damage. At least, against the ESFs and Liberators that get too close, but Libs are just flying Vanguards anyway.
    Galaxies are generally too high up to get a lock, and Valkyries are moreso used as disposable transports than they're intended role. Unless equipped with that Squad Support thing, but then they're just smaller Galaxies
  13. Taemien


    Interesting idea, dunno how good it would be though. The damage type would need to be changed. The default launcher currently does like 2980 damage (plus splash) and instigibs ESFs. If its damage type was changed to medium ordinance (that of lockons), it will start doing quite a bit more than the decimator and alot more than ground lockons despite not being able to lockon to them.
  14. Demigan

    The default launchers have been setting ESF on fire for ages, they don't OHK anymore. In fact, "early" in the game they set them on fire and you could shoot them with one commisioner bullet to destroy them, now you need to hit them a bunch of times before they die, which gives them ample of time to get over their shock and use their inevitable FS to save their skin and boost away.

    I would rather start with giving G2A locks this Tomcat-like ability with forced LOS on the enemy to maintain a lock, but allow the lock to start after the missile is already away or even regain a lock after it was broken. The default launchers could benefit from a Coyote setting for instance. The tracking distance could be large like 10m (one Sunderer length), but the slowness of the missile and a slow turning speed would prevent it from being too powerful and still easily dodgeable even if it does lock. The lock would only help hit the target but nothing more. That would give newbies a better G2A weapon rather than the single burster they get now and allows for older players to use these in a pinch.
  15. Taemien


    It would replace ES/NS Lockons and Decimators.

    You realize that if you change the damage type so that it doesn't do 2980 damage to ESFs, it will do 1700 damage to Sunderers compared to the Deci's 1460.

    I still think a better idea for a starter AA source is a flaking Viper (Lightning default cannon). Does its indirect damage as flak if it passes near an aircraft.
  16. Demigan

    You mean the stock rocketlauncher? But I'm not suggesting changing it's damage type, as the stock already does what I said: Set ESF on fire.
    Also, why would it replace ES/NS lockons? Lockons would still be stellar in longer range G2A warfare while the fast bullet drop, slow speed and lack of fast attraction to aircraft would keep the default for CQC scenario's. The 10m coyote distance was an example, perhaps a bit extreme but just to illustrate the point more effectively.

    I would love it. Although I would have one addition: Use the "old" flak type. Where flak would only detonate the moment it would start creating more distance to the aircraft. A good flak user could get more damage by hitting the aircraft directly or getting his shots closer to the hitbox before detonating. If you give Vipers that same ability you can still deal extra damage when hitting them directly to reward the high-skill shot of a Viper directly hitting aircraft while also making it a decent G2A weapon if you don't hit directly.
  17. Blackbird

    I rarely go up in the air . Last night I did , Lib TB/Zep/BD . I gunned . We didn't have the best pilot but he was good . We wrecked a lot of players . Died a few times . .

    We still was able to fly over populated enemy areas with MULTPLE AA units and live and get kills as they focused fire on us . That is the definition of OP .

    Anyone who has every watched a LIB dive in and Tank Bust a Skygaurd KNOWS just how OP Air is in this game . SKYGAURDs only purpose is to kill enemy Air ....WOW

    In RL the enemy that controls the sky wins . Most of the time in Planetside2 the faction that controls the sky wins . In RL the enemy MUST take out the AA to control the SKY because the AA works ! In Planetside 2 the AA doesn't have to be destroyed to win because the AA sucks
    • Up x 2
  18. orangejedi829

    You're right OP; AA sucks so hard in this game that players will avoid using it, even when there are dozens of potential targets in the sky. Can you name any other weapon system where people will consistently pass up on opportunities to engage easy targets? Nope, just AA. Because even with all those easy targets, AA is so weak and pathetic that you'd be lucky to even get a single kill; more likely you'll get nothing and be out several hundred nanites. And you're chastizing ground players for not pulling AA when there's even less of an opportunity for engagements? Players generally make decisions that best benefit them, and there's VERY good reason that they consistently "procrastinate" at pulling AA.

    On second thought, are you sure this isn't a 'buff AA' thread?
  19. Problem Officer

    Anyone on Emerald want to team up with Lancer/Vortex or have more people for that?
    I can get minimum half an ESF's HP now.
  20. Haquim

    Yeah, the reason is that they prefer getting farmed and complaining to actually doing something about it.
    AA is so hard and unrewarding to use that I can chase off 2 ESFs by myself only with my G2A lock-on.
    No, I usually won't kill them. But in 2 minutes of their gametime they will be shooting our guys for 10 seconds, spend 80 flying to and from the battle and the last 30 repairing. I've met people who manage more kills per minute with a pistol than those pilots will.

    You are literally the prime example why people on the ground have problems with A2G ESFs.