Nothing but air zergs again, why bother playing?

Well, that paisty was also a game journalist.

and the opposite of a journalist is a reader. This paisty must have read some of this forum whine in his trip from the parallel world

Nope not a journalist. Been using this nick for 10 years though.

DH I could not care less what you think. BTW we have had this same discussion at least 3 times this year.

SOE needs to fix this game while there are still a few players left. Presently the constant air farming is chasing players out in droves. While even more are simply cutting back their play time in PS2 and finding fun games to play.

Until the dev's fix this crap AA = deterrence but Aircraft destroy anything on the ground situation, there is no hope of this game gaining population. It will be chopped from the SOE offerings like a frostbitten foot.

I dunno what it's like on other Servers (Cobalt only here), but I honestly can not remember the last time I heard someone in /region or Proxy say, "Quickly guys, arm your best AA and get to the top of the tower, we'll down the Lib in 10 seconds".

Ten seconds is all it would take, 5-6 guys with an AA Lock-on or a Dual Burster thrown in. But it never happens.

It's a human issue, and won't ever be resolved. Unless you already feel you are tangibly part of a group receiving the order (or part of a group to be able to deliver the order) like a Squad/Platoon, it won't happen.

There is so many reasons I could go into why it wouldn't, but it's all weird sociological problems as far as I can tell. It's so rare to hear people use Proxy as it is, which surprises me, because I'm happy using it to speak to random gunners in my MBT to relay and request info.

It's so mind blowingly simple to be rid of Aircraft Dominance, if people just gelled for 10 seconds for the betterment of the group.

What Air farming? I don't get Air farmed, but then again I don't run around solo, nor am I afraid to pull an Air vehicle to protect my ground troops and kill enemy Air ,when it tries to gain air superiority.

Your problem is you do not understand, that you can not buff ground based AA any more then what it currently is otherwise you completely destroy the Air game and that if you are in a fight and the enemy is bringing in Air vehicles, your side needs to do the same to counter those Air vehicles or have 3-5 players switch to lock-ons and bursters.

You need to dismiss this notion that Air vehicles can be completely countered by ground based AA, that simply can not and will not happen, it scales too easily and makes every area on the map a no fly zone and completely destroys 1/3 of this combined arms game. You need to understand that Air vehicles need to be the part of every well round squad or platoon, just like some ground vehicles are necessary as well for the infantry to accomplish their goal, but that is too much for you. You do not want to be troubled, so guess what you are always going to have an issue with Air vehicles. Where as those of us that work in groups and always make sure we have 1 or 2 fly boys with us, do not have issues with being farmed...

Change playstyle. Gal drop on the point you wish to take with a platoon. Sit on point, don't go outside. Use medics to rez, put engies with AI turrets to cover doorways. Cap the point, hold out till base flips, redeploy and repeat. Don't worry about pulling sundies, lightnings, or MBTs.

Never have to worry about air again. Only time you do are bases with points exposed to air, just vehicle zerg those as normal and pray you have more. But for every other base in the game, you make ESFa and Libs obsolete. Sure they can fire on your Gal, but with four burning in at the same time, they can't get everyone, and once you're inside.. they're negated.

The more the enemy flies, the more that can't be used to get you off point. Let them pull all the air they want, the more they do, the more it helps you.

I wish more people would do this. It would force major changes in the vehicle game play so its actually relevant. Right now vehicles are just for cert farming. Both for being farmed and tools for farming. They don't take bases, they don't really even help with it, except for zerg vs zerg.

All good points. I disagree slightly with this last bit...It is not the vehicle that is farming, it is the infantry that are allowing themselves to be farmed, all they need to do is redeploy and no more certs for the enemy that has clearly won the fight and is boxing in the spawn. I do not get farmed ever, if the enemy has a tactical position on the spawn room, I do not lemming myself out the door to my death and waste all of that time or come into the forums and cry. No I redeploy and counter attack from a better position or begin setting up a defense.

As you imply Air vehicles do not have much of a role other then to deny the enemy infantry from getting to the where they want to go, which means killing them, that is not farming that is being tactically smart and boxing in the enemy so your team can win...I would like to see additional roles for both Air and ground vehicle be implemented in this game, such as floating or elevated Air terminal, that attacking air must hold to help flip the point, if they get chased off then it naturally reverts to the defenders. Right now the only meaningful contribution Air or ground vehicles can contribute to a fight is to kill enemy infantry, because only they can capture a point, as long as that is the case, then infantry are always going to be the main target...

Dome shields.

But the pilots lobby got them removed from consideration. So now buffing AA is the only reasonable fix left to bring any kind of balance back to Air vs Ground. Presently air can only reliably die to other aircraft, whereas ground troops and vehicles can die to ground troops and vehicles and aircraft.

Also in order for AA to deter aircraft, the troops in the area that AA is needed must spend more resources and invest more certs in the AA simply to deter aircraft. Since as all the pilots like to point out, you need more than 1 or 2 AA users to deter aircraft.

SOE needs to balance this mess they have made, or there will be even less players in this game.

Horrible idea and again you still completely fail to see why that is a horrible idea and why ground based AA is as buffed as it needs to be. You need to have friendly air vehicles, to defend and attack enemy AIR, that is the correct answer. You only need 1 burster for an ESF, but for a Liberator you need 2-3m, that is balanced. or you can have a friendly AA ESF or Liberator cover your ground troops from Air vehicles, that is the best option...

This game isn't for everyone. I do not have any issues with Air vehicles and neither do any of the players in my outfit, but that is because we always work together and we pull Air vehicles to defend our ground based troops, because that is how you balance a squad and when you have a balanced squad Air vehicles generally are not a threat...

I did not have any issues with air vehicles until January. Since then the ratio of air vehicles to ground infantry / vehicles has changed dramatically.

So as I stated in the OP playing AA sucks and it is presently a constant need, that is very unrewarding to boot.

What are people not understanding?

I am more then open to other ways of getting things back in balance, but do not go outdoors, and bring an AA zerg are not realistic fixes. Neither is "well just deter them so they go away for 60 seconds." this is a FPS wounding things is not why people play.

I am sorry, but no, thats the problematic answer. Tuned up to eleven: Hey, nuclear missiles aren't overpowered, you just need nuclear missiles yourself to counter them. hmm seems the Infantry, Tanks and Aircraft do not seem to want to play anymore. Weird, but there IS a counter against nuclear missiles, its nuclear missiles, so nothing wrong...
It might be the thing that works, but its the thing that destroys the point of the game: Have a good time.

In games, the answer to "what works best against "A" ?", should never be "A".
Its problematic with mages in fantasy games, its problematic with every game where some players want to have fun, instead of a hardcore competition, where only winning counts.
It might work when the overpowered thing can be brought down only very hard, but it is very limited, but with things so durable and easy avaiable as aircraft (3 Person vehicle, costing only half of full resources? A team can pull 6 of them in a row if they want to...), that cannot be the answer.
I'd guarantee, if in any big battle half of the people playing infantry of one side would go Liberator, That battle would be over. (Just imagine 6 more Liberators in the Air...)
They don't, because they want to play Planetside, not Airside I guess...

Which doesn't mean Aircraft shouldn't have a place, I like targets, but they cannot be the Superweapon AND its counter, especially when playing Air isn't something thats as easily accessible for all (For example, driving a Tank doesn't kill you everytime you steer wrong).

IMO allowing vehicles, especially lightnings, would go a long way towards getting more people to pull aa. It's why pulling a max for burster duty isn't usually so bad, because you can switch back to AI as soon as the aircraft run away to another fight. But if you pull a skyguard, you can be stuck sitting around on that thing with nothing to do until your timer is up and you can pull another vehicle.

Teamwork is OP. Join a squad and deal with the Aircraft Via teamwork. Problem solved my lone wolf friend.

Another "bring an AA zerg" useless reply..............


PS. nice assumption, it's a wrong assumption though.

Hmm... maybe because that's 50+ AIRCRAFT PEOPLE and you're 1 AA PERSON. Infantry expect to be able to take out an air zerg by themselves, but they're going to need friends like the aircraft do.

The point I was making is the infantry choose to be farmed by trying to farm others. You can interchange vehicle for infantry in any part of that in any order. If infantry choose not to be farmed or farm, they can use a Galaxy to bypass the whole mess and drop directly on point.

You are not a zergling. You are much more and I applaud you for it.

I know you're busy as a Lib sky-overlord, but could you please take a moment to actually read my post, my liege?

no

Go fly an ESf before you act like you know anything. See how much fun it is to get hit from render range by skyguards you cant ever see. See how much fun it is to have invisible infantry htting you for 40% damage with locks that are not dodgable. Try to fly near the crown when an enemy faction owns it, even if it isnt close to being under attack.

Yeah go fly an ESF for a bit, try to participate in ANY kind of large scale fight. THEN come back and tell me how useless G2A weapons are.

You dont even need flak or lock-ons to deal with ESFs, just shoot them with your small arms. Hit them with a dumbfire and insta kill them.

I have killed more esfs with my machine gun as infantry in the last 6 months than i have been killed by rocket pods.

Same goes for a liberator. I'm betting you get shot down by flak within 30 secs of sighting the enemy.

Air is a problem when populations aren't even or close to even at a fight. The problem lies with players wanting to steam roll and are awarded for that type of behavior. Most of the time that air is a problem, the base is pretty much lost and redeploying to a rear base to be outnumbered again isn't going to help much. People keep f*gging up small fights and fights where they already have overwhelming pop with air because it is safer for them and potentially gets them more kills before dying. Zerging needs to be discouraged because there will never be pop balance. The game is becoming pure spam and it's making me sad because I still remember all the good fights that used to happen. After over a year of playing it is sad that the quality of the battles have gone down hill.

Maybe SOE will buff galaxies next and we can just ram all the other air until the skies are clear.