How are more casual players supposed to compete with experienced ESF pilots?

Well, here's the thing - and understand that:

1) I have nothing against you or how you choose to play the game and

2) I'm saying this with no teeth in the air game - I have no interest in flying.

He is entitled to use lock-ons.

Whenever he wants.

Against whomever he points at.

At all times, all day, everyday.

He is entitled to it. He has the right to pull and use lock-ons at all times against all opponents.

It is part of the game and it is a legitimate tool for him to use.

It is a legitimate tool for him to use irrespective of your approval.


This debate has been raging on pointlessly since game launch, and most probably before then. And here's a shocking fact. Refraining from lock-ons will NOT make him a better pilot. It will make him a better reverse-maneuver nose-gun dog-fighter, but in exchange, he's going to flip his desk and rage tell every BR 5 who shoots him down with a lock-on.

Here's another shocking fact, using lock-ons, does not make him a "scrub", as so many "elite" pilots like to term it. It never ceases to amuse me how often the term gets misused, so rather than vaguely recommending to read up on the term like I normally do, I'm simply going to quote right from the source:

http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/intermediates-guide.html

"Introducing...the Scrub

The derogatory term “scrub” means several different things. One definition is someone (especially a game player) who is not good at something (especially a game). By this definition, we all start out as scrubs, and there is certainly no shame in that. I mean the term differently, though. A scrub is a player who is handicapped by self-imposed rules that the game knows nothing about. A scrub does not play to win."

Emphasis is mine.

Every single pilot, yes, that means you, and you, and you, who expects everyone else to play by their cute little air bushido rules,is in fact a scrub. Planetside 2 knows nothing about cute air bushido, or A2A lock-ons being bad, bannable, illegal, dis-honourable, socialist, lazy, whatever weapons. No such concept exists in Planetside 2. Planetside 2 knows only that if you get hit with a lock-on and die, you die and the guy with the lock-on gets a kill and wins the engagement. And if he feels pretty good about himself for killing you with a lock-on, he's fully entitled to that as well.

That is that.

When I started in the airgame...I had a mustang with a 1.25x optic and a dream.That dream materialized into a fully certed Reaver,which I pull whenever I'm tired of fighting on the dirty fookin ground that is covered with dead NC corpses and PPA Magriders.

Funny, because I (as a learning pilot) got locked on by 'pro' pilots from iNi, Mercernaries and the frikken annoying ZAP/Dasanfall outfits on Emerald.

Just spam coyote missiles. Lots and lots of coyote missiles.

Why do you even fly then? That's a crutch, when you should only be using your knife for everything.

Pull a Gal and Skywhale the ESF's the death.

If enough people did this, the 'skygods' would leave the skies. They can't solo a Gal (especially when rammed) and they typically run solo.

In all honesty the maneuvers ESF's do need to be simplified so that the vehicles are as easy to jump in as a Tank or Sundy. The Lib and Gal are already like this. There's no reason one vehicle in the game should take hours of practice and tutors to be effective. So until then, I tell new pilots to skywhale. Makes for some hilarity and a good spawn point.

Here is the thing. When a lot of these "Vet Ace" pilots started flying, there were no real defined flight tactics that pertained to Planetside 2. Everyone was used to either Planetside 1 dog fighting, or some other flight/space simulator game they may have been playing previously. So since during Beta, and probably for a few months after release, a lot of pilots were learning how to effectively fly using Planetside 2's physics and flight model, so the standard dog fighting you are used to seeing, is probably what most pilots tried to follow at first. After a few more months, as more pilots started unlocking air frames, weapons, utility, etc, they started to realize that the standard dogfighting format is too slow in Planetside 2, so now what players call "dog fighting", is really just hover fighting.

Every pilot had to learn how to fly when they first started, just like you are right now, and it wasn't easy for most people. The difference between the Vets and you, are that you are coming into the Air Game after tried and true ESF tactics and maneuvers have already been defined, and are used on a constant basis. This is sort of a double edge sort, as the down side to this is that the learning curve for newer pilots is a lot more steep than it was during Beta and launch. The upside to this, is that there isn't really anything else to figured out in terms of "how should we fly in Planetside 2", as most pilots have paved the way for all of that, and all you have to do is learn the existing pre defined tactics, and just practice them.

To sum it up: Every pilot started in your shoes, so try not to feel bad. It took most of us weeks to learn all of the useful maneuvers and months after that to perfect them. I am still perfecting them and no where near "Elite Pro Ace MLG bro" status. But I am proficient enough to get some kills, avoid getting killed (mostly) and provide enough assistance to my Platoon to be somewhat useful. Just search youtube for videos, study everyone's techniques, find what works for you and just go to VR and practice them. Once you practiced them, practice them some more. You can't expect to master something you have never done, in the span of a few hours, or even a few days. It's an ongoing effort that takes dedication. The best thing you can do, is to make sure your keybinds and mouse sensitivity are setup and are comfortable to use, beyond that just fly. You will get there man.

They should simply reduce the effectiveness of certain certifications.

Currently there is no reason to take dogfighting frame. You are pretty nimble with hover frame, and the current way to do airbattles favors the increase in thrust capacity hover frame offers rather than higher agility. But there's more! Hover frame is also much better to fight ground units! So Hover frame trumps dogfighting frame twice, and speedframe is great for ganksquads and people who avoid hoverbattles.

Things like this need to change. Dogfighting frame should be the best for, you know, dogfighting and airbattles. Hover frame was build for ground support to allow ESF to loiter in the area more easily. Hover frame should lose it's extra thrust or something, or dogfighting frame should get better advantages to be the best option for air battles. Allowing Hover frame to be the jack-of-all-trades in ESF combat is detrimental as everyone uses it.

Or increase your skill with noseguns through the roof.

Why do you expect to take on someone with lots of skill with none of it?

Air game is high skill ceiling. Something in this game needs to be FFS.

Considering how dumbed down the flying actually is in this game compared to flight simulators and flying model aircraft and multi-rotors in FPV, you'd be surprised at how easy it is to reach the skill ceiling if you just practice at it, how do you think the top pilots are so good?

You can solo a gal without gunners easy.

Takes bloody forever, but it's relatively easy to out dance them.

Helps if you have Rockets or Hornets to augment damage. A2Am's are also good.

Coyotes are crap against skywhales though, and default noseguns are best for sustained DPM IIRC

Hover frame should reduce gravity and increase brake efficiency.

That would remove the benefit of added VThrust (it'd get a small benefit) but would be able to actually hover.

They'd need to refund it, but some might still use it.

Just hit 'em with A2A or Coyotes. Shuts most of them up pretty quick, and it's easy to ignore a hate /tell. A kill is a kill, and there's nothing stopping you from using them other than the enemy, and you want to kill the enemy.

Also never fly alone, most of the 'good' pilots you see only seem good because they stick to flocks of ESFs with a 4-5 fighter average. It's not entirely their fault since a lone ESF is often picked off by ground fire pretty quickly, but you're better off just hanging around with friendlies and learning from them if you're ever in the air.

Now this is very true. And under the current mechanics.. a good bit of advice.

But issue at hand is replace ESF with MBT. A newbie taking on a vet tank to tank is going to fair alot better than if he tried to do it ESF to ESF. In fact all it takes is a bit of certs to get on equal footing and while they may still most likely lose, they'll at least live long enough to learn from any mistakes they made (barring running into mines or getting C4'd).

With a ESF.. it takes.. like you said, practice in the VR, watching videos.. ect. And that right there is the problem. No other vehicle requires that. Anyone can get in a tank and go. Anyone can get in a Sundy and go. Heck like I said, even a Lib or Gal can be easily flown once someone knows the controls, which doesn't take terribly long (I don't mind it taking slightly longer than a tank due to being in three dimensions).

The thing with using crutches such as A2AM's and yote's is that they never train your nosegun aiming ability, they're only there as a safety net for sucking. So if you really want to learn on how to effectively use noseguns, don't use crutches.

But if you are entirely up there just to "fly", then by all means use whatever you want.

If you dont have time to be good at chess but you really want to play chess, do you then go enter chess tournaments?

If you are no good at golf, and really dont have time to become good would you try out for the PGA?

Why does everything have to be EZ mode?

Couldn't it just be that flying isnt for everyone?

Well, fortunately, your prayers have been answered, because SOE makes more money if everything is super EZ mode and so they made coyotes and they made a2a missiles.

You don't need any practice to be a pro with these weapons.

So just buy coyotes or A2A missiles. Learn to push with the coyotes, or dodge while reloading the A2A missiles and you can kill anyone with very little time spent.

Why is that a problem?

Isnt it a good thing that there is SOMETHING in the game with depth?

Should everything be mastered in a few hours?

Would that provide good replayability?

I mean if it was as easy as beating a 2 year old at chess what would be the point?

Are we such a simple folk that we cant ever have anything complex?

Is that to be the future of all PC games?

Are we to be ruled by the ignorant masses?

What happened to consoles are for casuals and PC games are deep and take some figuring out, which is what makes them great?

Why does everything have to be made for 12 year olds?

Why is it so horrible to lose to someone who is better than you?

Isn't that what keeps you coming back?

The flight game has already been dumbed down to the point where you literally do NOT have to AIM.

How much easier should it be?

Should we have autopilot and all you have to do is lock your enemy like an A2A missile and then your plane will just auto-follow the enemy?

Why not give people aim bot auto pilot and all they have to do is spot a target with free look and push the button and the plane will fight for them?

The only question is 100% accuracy, or do we leave it up to the random number generator.

Should we even make people target the enemy plane with the mouse? That seems kinda difficult and hard to learn. Be better if we just used TAB and let that auto target the nearest enemy plane.

So you just get in and push the green autopilot button and then go for a ride.

Would that be easy enough?

I'm guessing it probably would still be too difficult for most.

Why do people like you, who admit that they don't fly, have any opinion on how the air game should be?

Because the reason I don't fly is because the current air game is trash.

I love flying, I'm a pilot in almost any game that allows it. But PS2 doesn't have flying. It has stupid ballet dancing and spastic flailing about as sky knights do their samurai honor hover duels or endless rocket podding of bases. I want to dogfight, real dogfights, I want to weave through the canyons of indar or dive through the branches of hossin as I've got a bogey on my six trying to get a lock so he can take me out. I mean hell at the very least PS2 could have Battlefield 2142 style helijets, but nooo, all we get is the current trash where every fight is literally just spinning in circles as you stare at each other.

I Dogfight in my trusty lib with my trusty TB... (they cant say nothing they rarely do either cause it aint eazy but very very fun!)
You really have to utilize cover dive crazy for it, hide behind it and wait for them to come finish you off... the greedy ones die first!