New pilots are being neglected by all except the elite pilots, who destroy them.

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Owen W., May 24, 2014.

  1. zaspacer

    I recommend new pilots:
    1) find your their faction's pilots are zerging and stick with them
    2) fly Mosquito with Needler (unlock Mag Size first with this) and Fuel Pod (unlock over time, pretty cheap): low Certs and effective right away. Unlock Nanite Auto Repair 1 and Flares 1 (use Flares on escape from Ground Rockets, wait until they are re-charged before returning to combat).
    3) keybind "Throttle [Analog]" (transitions your plane to hover and stays in it as long as you don't use forward/back or point down to pick up too much speed), "Pitch Up", and "Pitch Down" to their keyboard or mouse. Get used to all 3 of those keys while flying. Also, re-bind "Exit Vehicle" to something away from your other keys
    4) spend early Certs on "Acquisition Timer"
    5) if/when running low on Air Resources, find the continent your Faction is dominating and go there to re-charge Air Resources
    6) go into VR with an ESF, switch to 3rd Person view, go to the Tower, face the very top of it and turn sideways to it, then practice doing circles around it while trying to keep facing it in 3rd person view. You will use v-thurst, roll (roll level and use v-thrust to get altitude as you sink too much; roll sideways and use v-thrust and pitch to circle the Tower top sideways), strafe/yaw to help minor movement. This is the type of moving you will use in a hover duel with other pilots or hover positioning vs. ground targets. Doing this will help you get down the understanding of how to move and the feel of it. Doing this 5 mins a day will build your familiarity and muscle memory.
    7) Use v-thrust + forward for normal movement with speed. Use Afterburner to exit bad situation. Save Flare for exit of bad situation. If really need to add speed, roll ESF sideways or upside down: it goes faster.
    8) If running and being sniped at distance by enemy ESF, roll sideways and make slight pitch adjustments. This changes your ESF profile to verticle, and shifts your veritcal plane, making it much harder for noseguns to hit because they also fire in a vertical plane.
    • Up x 1
  2. Takoita

    I mostly agree with OP. I'm not sure about the exact measures to combat this, but (for example) enemy pilots camping your warpgate waiting to gank some unsuspecting newbies out to get some practice or just your usual air taxi happens all the time; it is usually worse during off-hours and/or low pop continents when there are fewer things for them to blow up.
  3. FigM

    the main problem here is long vehicle respawn timers. It's especially tough for newer players since their vehicles aren't fully certed.

    We need to completely redo the whole vehicle resource and spawn timer thing.
  4. FieldMarshall

    Coming from Planetside 1, i was surprised how hard it was to get into the air game in Planetside 2, based on how the aircraft handles alone.
    Most of my first tries was spawning. rolling around and exploding within 8seconds. waiting on the timer.

    In PS1 your aircraft would hover completely still if you let go of your controls. It had a Strafe Left/Right key. And it could never roll upside down.
    Its more newbie friendly, but takes away some of the advanced stuff you can do once you get good, i suppose.
    Also, 5min timers with no resource costs helped.

    Another thing is that i cant really risk putting certs into my ESF to improve my ESF performance, because i suck at ESFs, so i dont want to spend thousands of certs on it.
    Though, i feel like i cant stand up to other ESFs (when im this new to it) without certing into it.
    Then you get some sort of never ending loop, where i cant quite get into the whole airgame.

    I feel lke something should be done, but not at the expense of people who have put hundreds of hours into improving themselves.
    There should be room for new ESF pilots somewhere without having them get hypertension.
  5. Zenanii

    The core of the problem (imo) is how the whole cert progression system is implemented. I recently started focusing a bit on my TR alt and I've realized just how limited I am without certs. All the classes feels weak and underperforming. Without AP/reload speed/chassis/lockdown my prowler is just rolling certs, same deal with my liberator.
    The system should really have been focused on sidegrades instead of uppgrades, giving pros and cons for everything (flash weapon increase cost from 25 to 100, racer airframe reduces overall agility, every level of HA shield increase stenght but also increase recharge time, that sort of thing).
    Sadly I think we have come too far to change this, co sidering it would require a full overhaul of the entire cert tree.


    Getting a bit off topic here.
    Anyway, when visiting the test server I have occasionally come across pilots doing (non lethal) practice duels. Maybe the community could arrange some kind of practice session? I'm of average skill but I wouldn't mind sparring against some new (or experienced) pilots a few hours a week. If everyone agreed on a day a week, we might be able to get something going?
  6. Kurohagane

    I don't think the certifications are much of a problem tbh, they aren't as expensive as it might seem. I have a BR 33 TR that i only started really using like a month ago, and am playing it on and off, and i already have maxed FS, hover frame, most of nanite autorepair, maxed afterburners, some upgrades in nosegun ammo, rocketpods w/ thermal and ammo upgrades, and a banshee with ammo upgrades. Everything for certs. I haven't spent much at all on infantry, though.

    What is a problem, is definitely the respawn timer. ESF's are way too fragile for how long it takes to respawn one. They definitely need to fix that.
  7. Goretzu

    |
    V

    The PS2 joystick support is abysmal (honestly it's basically non-existent in a funcitonal sense), but the whole system is just badly setup. badly designed and then not configurable on top (the kill throttle switch isn't even bound by default :confused: ).

    You can get around most of the awkwardness with a combination of 3rd party controllers (how that will work on the PS4 I dunno) and practice, but a newbie is in for a torrid time if they've ever flown in pretty much any other game (or even if they haven't).