[Vehicle] Do any of the SOE developers pilot?

This is both out of curiosity and the current state of air game mechanics at the moment.

Because air combat in an mmo shooter has been done so much and is so easy to make flow with the rest of the game (sarcasm)

As a curious question, what is broken in the current air game mechanics? And no, I believe that none of the developers are frequent pilots.

Depends on who you ask. Some will go into full-blow rant mode about how ground can't counter air, air is too adaptable, blah blah blah. Others will tell you that air has plenty of counters.
The 1st are mostly ground players.
The 2nd are mostly air players.

There's pretty much a dev for each niche. I'm the one who fails at grenades and tends to get more teamkills than enemy kills.

A dreaded specialty.

So they are balance issues and not mechanics issues? Oh, I thought the Reverse Maneuver had finally been scrubbed in favor of making the game easier or something.

So if the issue is related to ground based counters, what are the specific issues on a per unit basis? Because comes in many forms and not all are created equal.

controls for air its so wierd

Disclaimer: These are not my opinions but ones I think air haters have in
-ESFs too good against ground (Rocket pods, AI noseguns
-Flak UP
Lib hate has been pretty much eliminated by the recent nerfs.
I can't really think of anything else right now.

I know that feel.

I tried getting into Red Orchestra 2. Pushed into a building with friendlies, we got pinned down inside it. Tried throwing a grenade out the window, it just bounced off the wall and killed everyone in the whole room.

I never launched the game again out of the shame of that moment.

You can change controls in options. Note that in ESF you need like 20 buttons, try to place them more comfortable. Im sure you wont

and the Reverse Maneuver is pretty much a bug that became an accepted mechanic instead of being streamlined like skiing in tribes.

just for anyone else who doesnt get what I mean "skiing" in the old tribes games relies on an exploitation of the game's physics engine caused by a player taping the jump key while descending a hill, their momentum would accumulate and they would whip around at a good clip. It was fun but it was a bug. instead of leaving it as a bug in the later games, they made it a mechanic that didn't require hours of pointless practice exploiting this physics engine to actually be good at combat. it even got so bad people were downloading and making custom scripts in game to accomplish skiing.

its pretty much a dead ringer for what they need to do to the reverse maneuver to make air combat accessible for inexperienced players. why they haven't tried yet is beyond me.

Curious, pretty much every dev that ever talks about their ingame experiences keeps saying they're terrible. Are there any devs that boast about how good they are?

Higby
ever saw the screenshots of his auraxium, farm sessions with Close to 2 Digit K/D's?

I feel bad for you. I excel at nade throwing :c
Then again 15% of my kills are TKs o3o

WG parties c:

Isn't that normal for NC players?

Pretty much. If the RM and hoverfighting were embraced instead of left alone then some positive changes in the air-to-air and air-to-ground relationships might happen.

But I'm more interested in hearing about devs that drive tanks.

NC throws the best WG parties c:

Mostly the air to air balance is what pilots hate. Specifically tomcats and coyotes.

The air to ground balance seems to be ok. Both sides say the other side has it too easy, which is usually a good sign.

Oh, and also the anteres/locust/ncsomething cannon is kind of bad. But I don't know if you can fix that, how much design space is there with another a2a machine gun