Flight School Week 2!

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by WycliffSlim, Aug 7, 2014.

  1. WycliffSlim

    Here's the REDDIT thread. Or... here's a copy past that may look terrible because reddit to forums.


    FLIGHT SCHOOL IS GO!



    What is flight school?

    Flight school is a community driven event that is intended to help new and intermediate pilots get their feet wet.* The goal of this program is to create a larger and more prosperous airgame in Planetside 2. While many of the lessons will focus on flying ESF's attention will also be payed to our larger cousins the Liberator and Galaxy as well. This program will not be exclusively about 1v1 dueling. It will also encompass general maneuverability and lessons on how to engage any type of target you may encounter. Later classes will also include an emphasis on group flight and skirmishing on a larger scale.

    What is flight school not?

    Flight school is not intended to be an event purely for people interested in becoming ace dogfighters using only noseguns and AB pods. Future classes will cover topics such as anti-armor, anti-infantry, evasive flying, and nearly every other aspect of flight in Planetside. Attention will be given to all weapons systems including... lockons and coyotes. While many of the instructors may not personally agree with the state of these weapons we all recognize that they are in the game and new players need to be made aware of their strengths, weaknesses and uses. To be perfectly blunt much of our goal is to get people to understand the joy of hover fighting with noseguns but we understand that it may not be for everyone and we have no desire to try and force our style of flight on others.
    That being said, most of our classes will focus primarily on improving and learning to use the nosegun for dogfighting as this is simply the quickest and best way to improve at flying. While doing practice duels it will be expected that no lockons are being used unless otherwise stated by an instructor(this is purely to give everyone an even playing field and there will be duels and practices where lockons are allowed). However, what you do on live server is 100% up to you and no judgement will be made while in flight school.
    This is intended to be a common place where everyone who loves flying, or thinks they might love it, can come to learn. While discussion is fine attacking other players for how they choose to fly will not be tolerated. To any experienced pilots reading this who are going to attend please follow these guidelines. On a more personal note I'd like for this program to be a way to break down a little bit of the absurd wall that's been built between "sky knights" and "peasants". At the end of the day we all play the same game and want it to succeed. Stop acting like petty children. Sorry... went on a bit of a rant there. Moving on!

    When is flight school?
    The second class will be taking place this Saturday, August 9th at 2PM EDT(Time Zone Converter[1] ). It will take place on the Public Test Server so make sure to have it updated. We will be using Teamspeak for communication and it will be extremely helpful to have it available to listen even if you don't have a mic. I've set up a new TS and we will be using that one for the foreseeable future. The TS can be joined at, pbro.tserverhq.com. This class will be covering more fundamentals and going over some of the points from the previous class. We've changed a few things up that I'll talk about later further down and we think it's going to give everyone a better experience. After this class I hope to have most of the organizational details nailed down pretty well and we can get into the meat&potatoes of flight school which is going to be having names you recognize come in and teach you how to fly like they do. Not naming any names but there's been rumors that a certain Professor of Reaverology may be making some appearances.
    Moving forward classes will be following the same general format. They may change between Saturdays and Sundays depending on instructor availability and the precise time of day may change but it will usually be around noon-2 EDT as this accommodates the most international time zones.
    If you intend on attending this event please fill out the short survey HERE[2] in order to help us get an idea of how many people will be attending as well as what times and days will work best for people going forward. If you can't attend this class but are interested in attending future classes please take a moment to fill out THIS[3] form so that we can try to get a better idea of people's interests and availability. Spoiler Alert: They're the same form. But again, please fill it out if you have any interest at all in the program. This is going to give us an idea of how large classes will be and what people are interested in. This is the same general form as the last time but filling it out again will continue to give us a better idea of what times work as well as how many people will be attending.

    What is the future of flight school?

    While at the moment classes will only occur once a week we do have some big plans in the future. Details haven't all been worked out but while we'll still have larger weekly classes individual instructors may be able to set up short periods of time talking about a very focused aspect of flying that a small number of people can attend. These would be something like mini-seminars and would occur throughout the week based on instructors individual availability. If there's a large community interest I'd also like to have a couple of different times set up over the weekend to accommodate people in different countries. At the moment these are all just ideas but one's that I and others are willing to follow through with if there's enough interest in the program.
    No matter what happens we hope that this program will be a way to help introduce new people into the flight game and build a better community overall.

    Some administration things and also a logo competition

    Firstly we will still be needing dedicated pilots of all kinds to volunteer time to help teach classes. If you're interested in helping you can contact me in one of three ways. Please don't try to communicate through in-game messages as it's just a royal pain to use for anything serious. In addition, I will be holding a meeting tomorrow(Friday) at 6PM EDT in my TS for instructors so we can iron out a few more details and discuss things. Hopefully many of the instructors who helped last time will be able to attend and anyone else who is interested can make an appearance. Starting with the next class I'll start posting a list of the people who will be teaching the classes so that you can all show them your appreciation in-game by shooting slightly fewer lockons at them ;).
    Reddit: wycliffslim
    Twitter: @wycliffslim
    Email: wycliffslim@gmail.com[4] This is the best one as it's the easiest for me to check and respond too
    I will also be streaming the event at http://www.twitch.tv/wycliffslim[5]

    The final item of interest is that we will need a Flight School logo. So, with that in mind I'm holding a competition amongst all of you Photoshop wizards out there. You can submit your concepts in this thread or contact me with a link(imgur plz) in any of the ways listed above. The winner will get a 1500 Station Cash code! I got several really nice submissions last time but since there was only about 3 I've decided to let the competition go on for a few more days. I'll announce the winner sometime next week when I make a post for the third flight school.

    What changes have we made?

    Last class was a nice start but between what we observed and the feedback you all gave we're going to be making several changes to make the experience better, Flight School 2.0 if you will. We're all very excited about these changes and feel they will help make everyone have a more enjoyable time.
    1: Class sizes will be smaller. We got a larger turnout than we were expecting last time(which is great) but it made the groups get a bit large. This time we're going to be breaking everyone down into much smaller groups. Hopefully this will make everyone feel more comfortable, able to learn, and a bit easier on the instructors.
    2: We will not be running public squads. This got far too confusing and resulted in people who were not in TS just wandering around in confusion.
    3: The smaller sizes will allow us to run practice drills more easily so we'll be doing more focused flying and practicing specific things.
    4: Finally, we're going to be more mobile and try to split up over several continents to give everyone room and minimize griefing.

    With that all out of the way I think we're done here! Hope to see you this Sunday. And until then, stay DANGEROUS!!

    *Flight school is not responsible for any injuries that may occur if participants literally steer their aircraft into water.
    • Up x 3
  2. Jur270

    i will glad to join
  3. Aegie

    Very cool, kudos to you and your mates for trying to putting something like this out there.

    I think this kind of this is among the best experiences a game like PS2 has to offer. It would be great to see other dedicated players putting together similar events/interactive tutorials for other aspects of the game (other vehicles, classes, etc.).
  4. Lightwolf

    Your disclaimer is incomplete. It doesn't mention anything about when trees attack your aircraft. They just appear in front of you unless you cert into tinfoil hats.
    I hear you can alternately cert into the "gitgood" cert line, but that seems like too much work.
  5. WycliffSlim

    I like to try to avoid scaring new pilots too much. We've found that talking about trees causes many of them to start to break into hysterics.
  6. EliteZeon

    I attended last week and I gotta say, my flying has improved significantly. Though that said, I started off as a complete noob and evolved into complete scrub. Now my air survival time has gone from 30 seconds to about 3 minutes on average... hell just last night I managed to shoot down my first lib... but then later I crashed into another scythe on accident... the other pilot wasn't too happy about that.
    For the most part trees and dogfights scare the living crap out of me though... and any form of flak or retaliation... but oh dear Vanu the trees... make them go away please... make them go away... the trees... they're everywhere!!
  7. WycliffSlim

    Unfortunately we can't do anything about trees :/

    Glad to hear last week helped though and hopefully you can attend again and keep improving!