[Discussion] Balancing Vets and Newbies ESF Pilots, in a different approach.

no idea why were you stating the obvious but good job on that capt'n obvious.

Mentioned in the thread is time and location to practice.
That's the key from perspective.
Having space to learn to fly, to learn to maneuver under, over and around things without aces in the air would go a long way towards getting new recruits up to speed.

The best way to close the gap was abandoned, and it was to reduce the importance of vertical thrust in air-to-air combat, forcing all pilots into more conventional turning fights.

If it were me I'd severely reduce the effectiveness of vertical thrust, dramatically reduce downward pitch, and force pilots to bank and turn like aircraft do in real life. Also, I would make airspeed a greater factor in determining lift. That would go a long way in closing the gap, because it would completely--and I mean completely--reconfigure the way air combat works in PlanetSide, and put the old vets back to square one.

How can they "Get away" from other ESF's with the same exact Physics as their ESF has??

WHY would they try to "get away" in the first place? ...what makes Newby pilots newbies is that they don't have every name in the air memorized so they don't know which one to run away from in the first place. Therefore this is secretly another buff to Veteran Air Chavs and actually a NERF to newbs.


There's been much better proposals on this issue. You should have just searched and bumped the better ones.
Prime Example: The best threads talk about Acquire-Time and even stuff like linking acquire time directly to Loadout choice, eg: Rocket Pods = LONGEST cooldown time, most resources to pull. EXT Afterburn & Stock nosegun? = 1 minute cooldown & 2x Flash resource cost to pull. Wanna use Coyotes?...same as Rocket Pods timer b/c that crap is cheating & no fun to play against. It could even be broken down to individual Upgrade Tiers, IE: a few points in Tomcat Range? ...No prob, yours will be ready again in 2 minutes. MAXXED certing in Lockon speed / Reload? ... GT*O and enjoy your 7 minute warpgate AFK ya Lamer!

and that'd be hella boring mate, what's the unique selling point for esf in this game if your idea was implemented ?

" -in a different approach. " notice this sentence in the title ?

It wouldn't just reconfigure air combat, but it would make a dramatic change to the current Ground/Air balance that I feel would be welcome. Liberators and ESFs could all have their original launch data values for their weapons if they had a limited time-on-target.

While every aircraft being seamless VTOL worked in Planetside 1, the much shorter TTK in Planetside 2 means it really... doesn't. By reducing the power of vertical thrust and tying lift to airspeed, you would make hovering a much less viable tactic, meaning the aircraft would have a much smaller window to engage the ground targets - thus justifying the high power and high indiscrimination of their weapons.

The only aircraft that should be able to hover as the game allows now are the transports; the Galaxy and the upcoming Valkyrie. Though no doubt these transports manned and gunned hovering is a nuisance, they simply can't bring the pain that ESFs and Liberators can to the ground and would be easier to chase off in a meaningful way.

People seem to miss the part where the New Players of today are the Veteran Players of tomorrow.

The investment into your "rig" should give at best 20% improvement over somebody with no investment, per what the Devs said was their intent long and far ago. The skill given from your hundreds of hours should give you the advantage over the "newb", and your cert investment should give you the advantage over somebody with the same skill.

And your approach is different in that it does the exact opposite of what you said it would do. It buffs the Br100's !!!

I can't figure out what's a worse experience. Flying with a joystick or flying with the mouse. What do you think.

Boring is subjective, that's what.

It's already boring.

How much can you really help new pilots, I mean really help them?

- Lock ons don't help they are just a crutch than means they don't have to learn how to use a nosegun which is better for them in the long run.

- Coyotes which where meant as a more noobie friendly weapon are still in the hands of a more experienced player going to be better as is every weapon intended for a new player.

- Top pilots will ALWAYS utilize a tool better than an average or bad player, anything put in to aid them will ultimately only benefit the top pilots making the problem even worse

- Continent locking will actually hurt new pilots. Previously they could go to a more quiet continent and find somewhere where they are not getting harassed by lock ons or flak every 10 seconds

- Other games can have systems in place where you are matched against people of equal skill. In Planetside you are all thrown into the same grinder whether you are the best or worst player, you're all free game for anyone. This makes it very hard for a new player to get to grips with the game as they are getting owned from the players with hundreds of hours experience

The only thing that will help a new pilot is the patience and perseverance to not rage quit from the learning process

My solution that I proposed earlier in this thread would be to tie ESF timers and cost to the number of kills in the vehicle. Essentially making it so inexperienced people could pull it more often, and experienced people could pull it just as often as they ever had.

Nobody is going to get better at Planetside 2's air game without prodigious amounts of dying, and making that dying less painful (not having to wait a half hour for a new plane because of timer/resources) makes it more accessible.

This. Dying isn't the problem, having to wait forever to get another chance is what eventually makes you say, "the hell with it," and go back to your Annihilator.

Holy rerollers, Batman! That's a great idea.

I'd be rerolling my pilots every 200 kills.

That would be good don't get me wrong. Problem is there is so much harassment from top tier pilots flying round in groups, so much AA spam from the ground that they will die so quickly only a few have the patience and perseverance, maybe even stubbornness to actually want to learn.

Finding yourself in the death screen constantly having not done very much is disheartening at the best of times, but the air game here is brutal.

Suggestion:
Maybe a dueling arena in the VR where you can 1v1 dogfight new or more experienced players that are scaled to your personal experience.

Jumping in the deep end when you can't swim is bad, getting in the shallow end and paddling is a better approach

If it's so obvious why complain about something being op, we already know it. Just follow the model and realize this cycle takes place 24/7.

not sure which part of my post indicates any form of complains, please point it out and enlighten me.

d

different people, different perspective, what you deemed it might help the BR100s are what i say it'd help the BR1s.

we already has that, it's called pts.

That is a bloody good point