[ESF] New Coyotes + Default Radar = Utterly Broken

Seriously, you don't even have to aim them anymore.

Enough of these lock-on weapons that take literally no skill to use, it's becoming too much like real life BVR combat where you just fire and forget and some dude you never even saw randomly explodes 400 miles away 10 minutes later. >.<

Especially with the decision to give radar to everyone by default:

What Daybreak have done is take away any requirement whatsoever for a pilot to develop some basic situational awareness and be able to scan the skies and spot his own targets, since everything is now lit up like a christmas tree from 600 meters away by default. (In any direction)

In my opinion, this design decision flies in the face of the entire spot mechanic to begin with. If the idea is for people to actually use their eyes to visually scan for targets, why would you implement a mechanic that made spotting obsolete for pilots?! This isn't "helping new pilots get better", it's handing things to them that they should have to earn on a silver platter.

The current air meta runs something like this: You spot a scythe and move in to engage, start fighting it, and just as quickly

All these changes do is dumb down the air game and encourage people to fly around in gank squads, then see which squad can out - coyote the other.

EDIT: for some reason I can't edit my original post, the second line from the bottom got cut off:

The current air meta runs something like this: You spot a scythe and move in to engage, start fighting it, and just as quickly 3 more ESF descend upon you with coyotes and hit you with every shot while you're in the middle of a reverse maneuver. They are just impossible to dodge now, and nothing should be a guaranteed hit like that.

Cry some more. Look, here's the thing: the learning curve for the air game in Planetside 2 is idiotically high. The flight mechanics make no sense whatsoever. It's SO BAD that basically there are 2 kinds of pilots out there: a tiny minority that spent huge amounts of time training their reflexes to do the patently ridiculous things the flight mechanics require, and XP Pinatas.

Let me clue you in on something: This is a GAME. It's supposed to be accessible to the players. The original designers made flight so unbelievably inaccessible that only a tiny, tiny, TINY fraction of players even bother with aircraft. That was a mistake for two reasons: First, it makes one-third of the game useless to almost the entire player base. Second, it denies them revenue from that player base because people who won't bother with aircraft don't spend money on aircraft.

So now they are stuck with a flight mechanic that sucks and makes players like me, who do very well in flight games generally, unable to enjoy the air game. They can't revamp the flight mechanics, because the entire air game is based around planes being able to fly in a certain way. But they need to make flight more accessible. So what CAN they do? They can try to find ways to make it less INSANELY hard to fly.

Basically everything else in the game works intuitively. Infantry run like you would expect them to. Wheeled vehicles roll like cars. Tanks behave like tanks. Planes? Not in the least.

So maybe you're the Rickenbacker of Planetside 2. Big deal. You had the time to invest in making your brain learn some totally counter intuitive reflexes. Yay for you. It's impressive but this is still a GAME that people play (and often PAY) to enjoy. Having a third of it inaccessible to paying customers is stupid and they are trying to fix that mistake.

I welcome the ability for new pilots to get up in the sky with me. What I don't welcome is that now my stealth has no effect on coyotes, meaning it's an almost guaranteed hit. That it's essentially turned into a 'I shot first, I win' scenario.

And that if there's more than one enemy aircraft, you can kiss your glorious behind goodbye.


Also, to the groundsiders, prepare to deal with a lot more ground pounders, because A2A fighting is going to reach a whole new level of annoying, so even veteran A2A pilots are probably going to turn to murdering the squishy things down below.

...except that your stealth DOES still work vs engagement radar, so if you're such a hotshot pilot you shouldn't have any trouble with them because you will not be dumb enough to fly directly at their nose from the front, so they won't be able to target you with those coyotes, and you will still crush them with your amazing nose gun skills.

Also, again, cry me a river. Every player has access to the same upgrades. All else being equal the higher skilled player will win. And I doubt your prediction is true about ground to air. If anti-air weapons are more effective than ever only a fool would outfit their plane for air-to ground because doing so will turn your plane into an XP pinata for other planes that have anti-air loadouts.

General comment: Jesus I get tired of hearing people *****, *****, ***** about missiles. Think they're powerful? The shut the F up and mount them yourself and stop whining. Stop being pissy little babies who say things like "I team kill people who use missiles." If that's your way of thinking then you're a griefing schmuck, not some hero of the skies.

Gods, you must be such a fun person to be around!

Yes, it does. Which means I can get the drop on inexperienced pilots. Most (Myself included), however will hear an enemy ESF coming and turn to look for it. However, that still requires a moment to find the attacker, during which time multiple coyotes are coming your way.
In addition, never said I was a hotshot never miss pilot. If we go into a hover duel, particularly with RM, I'm only an above average fighter.

I... I never said anything about G2A. And as the current gameplay shows, A2G is quite resilient.

What is annoying is that they're turning everything into a lock on spam. Ground, sky, g2a. One can barely go half a minute without hearing the beep of a lockon. Throw in fire and forget tomcats and virtually unavoidable coyotes and you might as well get rid of bullets in the game. Maybe we should just sit in the middle of nowhere and use cross-continent missiles to kill each other. Missiles that automatically lock on! I can't wait, sound like the best game evah!

The flight mechanics are based on futuristic aircraft (which don't actually exist), so comparing their behavior to that of conventional aircraft is an unrealistic expectation. That being said, you don't really have a frame of reference for saying the flight mechanics make no sense, seeing as how there isn't, as far as I know, anything in any other game that compares to it. The air-game in PS2 is completely unique (Which they hopefully don't end up murdering to appease guys like you).

Let me clue YOU in on something sir: Just because it's a game, doesn't mean it should be EASY. Ever hear of a little game called chess? It's so hard right? Wait, maybe a little too hard. No, you know what? Chess is TOO hard, we need to reduce the number of pieces that are on the board to make it more accessible to a wider audience. Two knights is too much, take one of them off - better remove that bishop also, the way it moves diagonally might confuse some of the newer players - There, that's good, AH, what's this?! GREAT SCOTT! The queen can move in all directions?!? Better change that, it might confuse the playerbase. From now on the queen can only move back and forth, so that those coming over from checkers can pick it up faster. Hell, you know what? 64 squares is way too much space for the board, let's just make it a 4x4 grid and cut the number of pieces in half. Congratulations! In your efforts to make chess more "accessible" to the masses, you are now left with a glorified version of tic-tac-toe. Welcome to 21st century entitlement mentality, where everyone deserves everything and nothing is exceptional. Again, it all comes down to our millennial generation wanting everything handed to it on a silver ******* platter. But none of us can escape this simple fact in life: At the end of the day, things that are not hard and challenging are not rewarding.

Again, this isn't your grandmother's flight simulator. You can't expect your skills from other flying games to translate over to PS2, just as they didn't transfer over for any pilot that ever got into an ESF. We all endured the frustrations and difficulties it takes to get better. And regardless of what you say, the PS2 flight system is a bit of an unintentional masterpiece, and many of the top pilots agree with me on that count. Could a few tweaks be made? Sure, but the foundational system of flight in PS2 is genuinely unique and deeply layered.

By giving them free map-hacks and auto-kill weapons? Naturally.

The real solution to this problem is quite simple: Create a Koltyr-type VR tutorial for flying in general. They could consult the top pilots on the material, which could go through basics such as the reverse maneuver, ascending and descending, how to enter/leave hover mode and so forth. The training area could even be outfitted with a "ghost" pilot to fight against to practice your skills. All this would actually help pilots get better, instead of feeding them with power that they didn't earn to make it seem like they are more competitive than they actually are. In other words, No coddling, just better training.

First off, flight is in general inaccessible to most players in any game where flight is a component. Flying is by its very nature more complicated (at least initially) to learn and excel at, seeing as how you are suddently dealing with an extra dimension of space. This tends to be a turnoff to the majority of players for the game in question and they just stick to land vehicles or infantry. This has been my experience in any game where there are aircraft and is hardly unique to PS2, so I think your claim that they are denying their playerbase access to air is pure sensationalism.

Also, I've spent probably close to 200$ on the game, which is dwarfed by some of the other pilots that I know who have spent even more, in some cases over $1000. So yeah.

Come on dude. It's no different than learning any skill, you get out of it what you put into it. No need to try to belittle the accomplishments of the top pilots who have actually devoted the time and effort to learning something that was challenging but also very rewarding. In fact the defensive tone of your entire post seems like an indication that you are just salty in general that there are actually pilots who are quite a bit better than you. Getting good at an ESF has to be EARNED, nobody owes it to you.

The stealth add on will block the radar and make it harder for locks, put it with flares and you should be safe from lock-on's choose your battle against another ESF and make sure you have a friend or two on the ground with AA or in the skys to help make sure you get out in one piece. Don't even need to know them generally if you fly by them being shot at they will attempt to help you.

Stealth no longer affects coyotes, however. Flares have always been notoriously dodgy with coyotes, as well. The rest is fairly sound advice, however.

And you can get the drop on people in exactly the same way. It's fair as-is. Think it's strong? Mount them yourself. Seriously. Let it go.

And if there were any other useful way to engage aircraft there would be no need for lock ons. What do you expect people to do from the ground - fire dumbfires at a jinking fighter? Waste pistol rounds against a galaxy? It's almost as true against tanks. An infantryman has to stand in LOS of a tank for a LOOOONG time to get that lock - way longer than it takes the tank to shoot him dead if it's paying attention. The reward of having a homing missile is only fair - particularly when missile pathfinding sucks so badly and you can simply move behind a solid object to make the missile useless.

Or is your stance that your plane should be an untouchable god of death in the sky? Sheesh.

I had no idea that stealth no longer affected them, Kind of sucks for flares. Good thing I posted on this forum would of never known about that thanks.

I'll adapt, but it's bloody annoying that this is the direction they're going.

Honestly, I want a decent G2A alternative to flak and locks. Unfortunately, the game is definitely leaning in the missile spam direction. Looking at you, Chingles.

No worries.

Blah blah fictional aircraft blah blah - that's all STORY. The REALITY is that the flight mechanics are ridiculous and waving a magic word-wand at them by saying they're "futuristic" doesn't change that fact that in a GAME that those mechanics make the air war inaccessible to most players. Hang around VR training some time and watch people crash and crash and crash as they try and fail, fail, fail to get a handle on even the most basic flying. The flight mechanic is stupid, it makes flying too hard for the player base, and Daybreak is trying to address that. It's that simple. You call it "unique" but "unique" should not mean "a pain in the *** to almost the entire player base."

And no, it does not have to be EASY, but likewise it does not have to be TOTALLY INACCESSIBLE to most of the players. You want "holy **** that's hard" go play Dark Souls or, if you're old like me, Sinistar. This game is not supposed to be in the "stupidly hard" category. The flight part of it, however, absolutely is stupidly hard.

And you made the point for me: You said you "endured the frustrations and difficulties". What possible benefit is there to the player base as a whole to make the air game something that requires that much frustration and difficulty? None. And from Daybreak's perspective having 1/3 ofd the game options inaccessible is dumb, AND it hurts their bottom line.

Unintentional masterpiece? By what criteria? that almost nobody uses planes because the mechanics for them are idiotic? Give me a break.

And guess what? Engagement radar was already in the game. And as far as I know the only one-hit weapon against an ESF is a tank cannon or Dalton round. So you can stop acting like either one of those things is a valid concern.

And sure, that's the "real solution." Asking veteran players to give up their own time to run a Planetside 2 flight school 24-hours-a-day, because the flight mechanics are too much of a pain in the *** for anything less to be helpful. Sure. That's SUCH a validation of the game's flight model - that you need an actual SCHOOL to teach people who actually have things like JOBS that prvent them from playing 18 hours a day banging their heads against a wall to learn to fly. Sure.

Why is it so hard for you ESF-fans to admit that the air game is a pain in the ***? Yes, it's impressive that you guys managed to master the flight model - BECAUSE it's so frigging bad. But that accomplishment doesn't change the underlying fact that the flight model sucks.

Shhh... you're talking common sense and teamwork to people who think ESFs should be Zeus throwing lightning bolts from Olympus with impunity. Your post is spot-on, so the fighter jocks will crap all over it.

hey, I would like an alternative, too, but what exactly would that alternative be? It seems to me there are only two options - direct fire weapons, and seeking weapons.

Except as I already stated to Steza, stealth doesn't affect coyotes, and flares often don't work with them. Against Tomcats and ground locks? Sure, against Coyotes? No.

The AA bit is spot on, however.

An AA pheonix like weapon would be pretty cool, particularly for spawn locked people. A ground based Dalton turret with medium damage to ground, even perhaps a missile that acts like a coyote, only locking on when it's close.

I think the air game is fine, would be nice to have a little tutorial for it like they did for when you learned how to hop in a vehicle, spawn a vehicle and use it. Just a little one to just learn the controls and mechanics of moving in the ESF, after learning that you can fly everything else it's just a bit slower and more harder turns. Or reverse it and learn from flying Galaxies like I did, you learn what type of pitch to use where, where to be when getting shot at and where/how to hide when being chased. Personal favorite is using camo of terrain + stealth and getting out of there sight and hanging against the ground they usually just pass on over. Sometimes they just see through it and you lose it.

Oops my bad, I mean rocket pods they suck right?!

it's almost impossible to hit a maneuvering airplane with a phoenix. That's not really a useful AA idea. Neither is a Dalton. Are there magicians who can shoot down ESFs with them? It seems so, but that does not make a dalton a useful AA tool. And TR already has a coyote-like AA missile launcher. It sucks, which is why most TR don't bother with it.

Like I said, the problem is not that other options would be good, it's "there aren't really other options." While it's generally a bad idea to compare real life to a video game, the fact remains that in the real world there are only two viable AA weapons: flak, and seeking missiles. If there were other, more useful options they'd already be so common we'd all be saying "oh, yeah, add that to the game, just like that (whatever it's called) that the Russians invented 30 years ago".

Tutorials are always welcome. I am not sure there is a useful way to do a tutorial on flight in this game, though, because the mechanics are so counter-intuitive.