Changes to Air on pts

Calm yo **** and get Coyotes, if you wish to use LPPA and fend off aircrafts as well. Jeez.

Seems a bit suspicious.
Turning Lockons into only usable by spam zergs if you got 2 other buddies with lockons to help you.
And everyone rushes to the shop to go by their Coyotes...
Smells like League Of Legends F2P Cash-Grinding.

lol and you just figured? for how long you're in Planetside 2?

As for Tomcats nerf, people asked for it since forever, even Higby admitted that they planed it to be more anti-lib and anti-gal weapon. I will adapt, even though I paid real money for it three years ago.

Oh stop it. They have been changing weapons since the game was released. Get used to it or stop buying weapons with cash.

Higby and SOE PS2 Designers had very little clue on the A2A Game. Trying to figure out and follow their plans for gameplay balancing is 17 steps in the wrong direction. They were great at getting the game launched and adding creative stuff, but then they fell off a cliff in terms of their awareness of much of the game's meta and they were abysmal at balancing. They also had no awareness for other units like Infiltrator. None of them played as these (it was sad to watch on streaming of them playing as these), and they were out of their depths and far behind in terms of knowing the gameplay. I would totally hire Higby and crew to *make* a MMOFPS (eternalcrusade should have snatched them up when they exited SOE/DBG), but I wouldn't put them in positions of deciding on adjusting the game and its meta well into post-launch.

Who needs an anti-Lib and anti-Gal weapon for an ESF?
1) there are not enough Libs and Gals in the air to justify a dedicated Wingmount for them (if they make A2AM terrible vs. ESF [which is a very bad idea], then they should just make it a weak Lockon vs. Air and Ground Vehicles)
2) default Nosegun (which is THE #1 used Nosegun) is already good vs. Libs and Gals (and just about anything is good vs. many Gals that have no crew in them)
3) if A2AM were chagned to be extremely good vs. Libs and Gals, then Libs and Gals are gonna get wrecked and that's a mess for Libs and Gals to deal with (plus no more Gal drops means Hardcore Organized players will have to learn how to actually play the game). And if Libs/Gals don't get wrecked by the new A2M, then what's the point of it: just stick with Default Nosegun.
4) ESFs are primarily concerned with (a) dealing with enemy ESFs (who are their #1 threat), and/or (b) either farming the best, and/or (c) using Weapons that let them engage the most variety in targets at an effective level. This is why currently AI Nosegun (NC, VS), Default A2A Nosgune, Rocket Pods, Hornets, A2AM, and Fuel Tank are all popular.

*shrug* Y'all are all welcome to come fly Valkyries with me. All the sentiments in this thread are experienced over the course of a single session of a Valker.

The comical amusement at the "I AM ZE Skynight! LOOK AT MY NOSEGUN AND TELL ME HOW FAST IT SHOOTS! VALIDATE MY CERT CHOICES WITH DUE REVERENCE, OR I WILL RAEG ON REDDIT AND PREVENT YOU FROM GETTING ANY BALANCE CHANGES FOR ANYTHING THAT SHOOTS AT ME!"

The Incessant Victimization complex of Libbies "NO NO YOU CANT TOUCH ME. NEVER. ANYTHING THAT THREATENS ME THAT I CANT REK IS HERESY. I R SKY KING! MY FIRE SUPPRESSION MEANS I AM GOD. DALTON MEANS YOUR GENERIC CLAPTRAP VEHICLE DIES!"

The Smuggery of the Galaxy: "No, I R Skyking. You can wail on me for 4 minutes with 3 skyguards and I will laugh at you as I tie up 5 people as a repair team trying and failing to do the Libbies Job. AT LEAST ONLY I CAN CARRY MAXES. Anything that can move people that is faster than me makes me angry!"

The Futility of the Valkyrie "I'm the only thing in the sky that people ignore. I can get you inside the point, under the skyshield, and even land on the sundies! I can do it faster, quieter, and more directly than any other aircraft in the sky. PLEASE SPAWN IN ME! I CANT CARRY FIRE SUPPRESSION OR FLARES OR CONTRIBUTE ANY OFFENSIVE POWER! PLEASE SPAWN IN ME! I HAVE A CHOICE BEING BETWEEN INVISIBLE OR DIEING SLIGHTLY SLOWER!"

My main concern with the A2A changes is that the stealth nerf is being blanketed to all craft.

There is a certain air frame that needs the ability to hide completely :/

I think ESFs and Valkyries should have it be 50-75m absolute visibility for max stealth :/

Oh come ooon! I'm here since Beta and you're telling me this...

Libs are not harmless against ground and air targets both alike. With a proper gunner they might snipe an ESF or tankbust it before it does any significant damage. A single ESF won't do much unless it's a pro or lib is a newb. If it gonna take 9 missiles to take down a lib I bet you don't even imagine for how long it gonna take, lib would most likely hit the afterburner and go deep into it's territory where you most likely will get ganged by enemy ESFs. Also default nosegun not gonna be effective as Locust and equivalents, cuz damage dropoff. Or you trying to get fight liberators at close range? Cuz that's certain death.

There are plenty of Libs I've seen yesterday. They sure can take a punch and to deliver many more in return. Things will be fiiiine. Though I'm still hoping for Spur rework.

Meanwhile, Vektor is the AA best weapon. Specially against ennemy libs.

For long range yes. Though my fellow lib pilots preferred not to encounter tank buster lib in close range.

For Spur I still hope it to be more like A2G weapon with splash to work against infantry and to have separated camera window or switching to gun optics when engaging free look gun control, so cockpit won't block the view. This gun is totally not for AV or AA purpose.

Ahahaha man you are funny! Ok, let's be serious. I will count how many times i died from Vektor. Hmmm let me think. Its something between zero and zero. Yeah, exactly! Zero times! Best AA tho for sure.

I'm just sayin. I think Higby is great on many levels. I am a genuine fan of his work... but not at tuning the game

Agreed. Current ESF players either run from Libs or rush to engage them. The ones rushing to engage are skilled pilots who don't need A2AM vs. Lib and probably won't bother running it if it's just anti-Gal and anti-Lib. And the ones running will only use A2AM if it helps them win vs. Libs.... and if it helps them win vs. Libs then Lib players are gonna complain because now any ESF can take them down. I just don't see a win scenario for the player community there.

I've almost never been Tanksbuster killed, especially in a surprise attack. I hear it and I jink. I've been rammed and killed by Libs plenty though: ESF are just too loud to themselves (I think they need to nerf the sound volume of ESFs to their own pilots).

I've definitely been OHK Daltoned a lot. And I think that's a major problem of them Lib. *Not* that it can OHK or duel an ESF (I think the current Libs and it's duel ability with ESFs is quite good), but that the Lib is balanced around that OHK, and only a small % of players can actually aim well enough to do it. I think the game would be better if they made both the average Lib pilot/gunner and the average ESF pilot able to duel each other more reliably. That goes for Air in general: the skill gap is too high.

Yeah, if the A2AM needs 5 to kill and ESF, it seems like it would have to take a lot to kill a Lib (unless they make Lib intentionally vulnerable to A2AM). And trying to use an A2AM on a Lib seems like suicide anyway: hold still and the Lib will Dalton you.

But the big mag Noseguns all have 0.5 Minimum Cone of fire. While the default Noseguns all have 0.3 Minimum Cone of fire. It will hit the target less at range (maybe not a Gal since it's so huge), and also if the ESF holds steady and keeps trigger on target for long, it is running the risk of eating a Dalton.

And no, I don't like to take on Libs close unless they don't know what to do and I can ride just above and behind their back and dump Hornerts into them. But if they roll or turn well or show the right moves, I bolt and begin evasive moves right away: don't want a dangerous Lib up close.

I just don't see that many Libs. And then I do, it's either easy ones I don't need help killing, or scary ones (often in pairs) that fly right up to our Warpgate and I don't want any thing to do with those.

I said it often; Going back towards "nerf X" mentality will return us to the endless re-balancing cycle where developers put all their attention on balancing and not on new content, and unfortunately we've been there before and despite it, we're still complaining about balance, as we forever will. We should just learn that each faction has powerful weapons and deal with them, since that's what asymmetrical balance is about.

But I couldn't help but smile at reading the Light PPA splash radius reduction... So I'm still part of the problem...

A2A got nerfed against ESFs? I'm one giddy skyknight.

The velocity nerf on the Saron is kind of pointless, but I'm liking the changes to the other noseguns.

But this is a constant needed thing... you cannot say that the "nerf X" has not had some good in the game (though at times too much of a good thing is bad for you). Can you honestly say that the ZOE was fine in its intro state? The ravens? GK? Striker? The player base makes note (reads as LOUD NOISES!) of things out of tune, and the devs choose to acknowledge or ignore them....

The same thing is happening here, I cannot say the air game has been anywhere near where it should be... however.... there are a few changes in this iteration that will nigh kill the motivation for most to enter it...

A near triple TTK for the "crutch" is not going to help... and given the new pricing no "newb" is going to be able to buy something to take the edge off the already titanic disadvantage they have.... heck, even mid level pilots wont be able to close the gap... So far as I can tell... these changes leave the Air game in a worse state for anyone who is trying to get into it.

But I will hold that judgement until there is data to back up my hypothesis... If this changes the air to air game, it will have little effect on me aside from the fact that I will no longer have a guaranteed means of bringing down a single ESF if I so chose...

Hear that? It's the sound of the Skill Gap w-i-d-e-n-i-n-g.

As a Skyknight, do you really want a game that consists of easy Farming/Griefing for you, interrupted very infrequently by the odd challenging duel? And do you enjoy the Farming or the Griefing (or the stat padding) aspect of hunting down lower skilled ESF players more?

^this.

Either Wrel is a lover of Skyknight's Farming/Griefing (and lower skill pilots being grounded), or he has no clue about balance.

It really is painful to watch SOE/DBG try to balance. And chase the greater population demographic of potential (and current) Players out of their game.

I agree with you in that the balancing is draining their time and keeping them from working on the type of content they truly shine at as a Developer: new and creative content. The game is at its most impressive when they are spending their time on making and launching new outside-the-box ideas. (though fixing falling through the floor on entering the game is probably pretty unimpressive to most people, so fixing basic bugs that affect all players should be added to their Scrum Product Backlog too: SOE/DBG have a long history of blowing off bug fixing).

It's not that balancing (especially the kind they do) needs that much time (for other people), it's just that they specifically struggle with it (it's not their forte) so much that it ends up taking them forever... leaving OP warping stuff (or UP unused and pointless stuff) in all the time... and then at the end it's just a seemingly blind-stab-in-the-dark change.

LPPA was a pox on gameplay across certain engagements. It's better for the game for the LPPA to have worse AI and better A2A properties.

The Vektor is literally a Basilisk on araxium infused 'Roid rage.

It's pretty ******* scary against air targets... Assuming you can hit.


When the devs first took an actual look at the statistics and realized "Oh ****, Liberators are like, hardly even a blip on the stat radar", they proposed giving the mechanics now thrown on the Spur to the Vektor instead, a feature it had in beta.

Instead, in favor oh Higgles yacht collection, we got a worthless new gun with the sweet mechanic our Vektor was promised, and the Vektor got shafted with a ****** RoF buff.


The problem is, the Liberator lacks the maneuverability to hit anything but a neigh stationary Galaxy with it's nosegun at any decent range. Even with max airframe, you just lack the pitch and yaw speed to keep your nose on target.

At close range it's somewhat doable, but the problem is at the ranges you can hit with the Vektor, you might as well just close in and get into Tank Buster range.


It's bad against ground targets because it forces you to hover in place, which has death written all over it for any pilot with more then 2 minutes experience. It's one redeeming quality is it's strength against ESF's and Liberators at medium range, but instead of getting the mechanic that compliments it, SOE cashed out and screwed us over with the Spur.

Just keep distance. Got 6 libs in a row yesterday with it.

How is what I said supporting a farming playstyle? Anyway, to answer your question, I prefer good duels, always have, always will.

The skill gap isn't being helped by A2AMs in any reality, if that's what your point was. If anything, they're actively making it worse because aces are better with them, and better against them. That leaves the oh-so-great equalizer tipping the scales further in the ace's favor rather than the other way around. By making them a big-game weapon, you're killing two birds with one stone. You're giving people that rely on them as A2A primaries a kick in the complacency, and a giant hint to hone their nosegun skills, as well as providing ESFs a viable means of fighting Gals (something that was sorely needed).

I bear no sympathy for those that refuse to learn to play A2A-ESF. The skill gap may widen for the first few weeks until the people who previously relied on A2AMs either man up and learn to handle their nosegun, or drop out of the air entirely, and that is a good thing. If they stick it out, they'll become better pilots, if they drop out, the average skill level of pilots in general will rise. Both are positive.

If you expect to hold your own against a pilot who has put months into ESF training on your first day out, you're delusional. If you expect the game to give you something to negate all that training and skill, you're even more delusional, and worse, you're self-entitled. Learn to play, or don't, but don't expect the game to give you a fighting chance if your skill isn't enough to do so in the first place.

Flame away, kids.

You should know better... the scythe is by far the best ESF.

The Valkyrie still sucks! HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA! XD