[Video] Sky Knight Bushido - Air Game thoughts

Don't press any button but afterburner: Nothing happens, no fuel expended.
Press a directional key and afterburner: Afterburn in that direction.
So press forwards and you afterburn forwards.
Press space and you can afterburn upwards
Press space and forwards and you can go diagonally upwards
Press A or D and you can either make a U-turn or make a sideways dodge in that direction. Maybe you could switch what would happen by pressing X.
Hit the brakes and afterburner: Slow down even faster, if you were hovering/moving slow enough you can even go straight backwards, etc.

That would already be an improvement over the current mechanics, but it does not really improve the fighter-style combat, it only allows players to get to VTOL faster and more intuitively use RM maneuver, especially in the case of the Scythe where the engine position isn't visible.

I think that 3rd person should actually be removed, or have a vision much more behind the aircraft. Right now it's angle gives you far to much extra vision compared to cockpit view, this kind of discrepancy is just too much.
An alternative that was proposed was allowing things to only show up in 3rd person if it's also visible in the cockpit view, which I like as well.

Well, I see you're making less and less sense as your posts go. You don't seem to be following what you said earlier.

Seen enough of you to know you'll die before you realise you're wrong. Good night

Alright sweet demigan.

Reverse maneuver is a maneuver to turn yourself 180 degree. That's it. In fact, it's not even really a maneuver. Any kind of pitching while slowing down is a "reverse maneuver".
That's ALL it is. You can add voodoo magic to it, but it's not even applicable unless you get hit from behind. And even then, it's just a way to turn 180 degree - nothing less, nothing more. REVERSE maneuver should of gave the hint away.
But nice try guessing there, at least you learned something hopefully.


And you really don't seem to understand how this goes. I'll give it one last try for you, but honestly, I think you're way out of it for some reason. You've nearly always opposed to me - but I could always follow some kind of logic, even if twisted. But right now... it makes me sad - honestly (I've enjoyed somewhat a little tiny bit bantering with you).

Anyways, it would raise the skill floor because there would be more things to do. That's the whole concept. The simpliest thing would be a 2 dimensional game where all you do is go straight. Everything you add on top raises the skill floor. And adding an omni-directional afterburner would basically make the skill floor sky-rocket. I would personnaly enjoy that kind of mechanic I think. But I know new players would just get turbodunk'd even harder.

Now, if you still don't beleive me. Which for some reason I think is the case. PLEASE go to www.reddit.com/r/planetside and talk about your idea. From me to you, I dare you to make a simple post to as a suggestion to bring omni-directional afterburners as a way to close the skill gap. And that's coming from me to you sincerely - no games - make that reddit post. There's actual pilots over there aside from me, and devs will actually see it so all the better for you.

Just because you make me sad today - allow me to give you a piece of knowledge.

Although the engine themselves don't turn, you can tell you've gotten into "hover" mode with the scythe when the trail left by the wings disappears. It's just another way to see it - less intuitive - but there non-the-less.

I know that there are ways to discern if you are in hover mode, but they are far less obvious and easy to spot than the big turbines the TR and NC use, and it's also impossible to see how far they are in turning making it tougher to gauge how long it'll take before you can do the VTOL tactics you want. That's why I said "the engine position isn't visible" and not "it's impossible to see when your engine's are in position".

That's like saying that banking is just a way to turn. You are completely ignoring all the combat capabilities and advantages you can gain by using the maneuver. But that was to be expected from you, why actually give an argument if you can just state some partial fact and conveniently ignore the rest eh?

Skill floor: The minimum requirement to use the vehicle/item/weapon/ability with effect.
Would you require less skill to become effective? Well yes, since there are more ways to be effective.

You have a bad concept for skill floor. The skill ceiling goes up because there's more things to master, but in general the skill floor will go down because there is less kill required to be effective. Mostly because the effective combat maneuvers will have a lower skill floor to master anyway and that same skill floor would be seperate from the skill of your opponent. In other words you can become effective and do something despite having a lower skill. Your chance of winning remain lowered, but you won't have a guaranteed death on your hands just because you are lower in skill.

But we aren't talking about a 2D game where you can go straight. We are talking about a 3D game where the only effective method of combat is a high skill floor maneuver, while every low skill maneuver is either ineffective or inferior.
By increasing the effectiveness of the low skill maneuvers and adding a high skill ceiling to them you increase the combat effectiveness of inexperienced players more than that of the current high-skill players.

It would make the skill ceiling sky rocket, hopefully so high that no single person can master everything. This creates a balance between preferences, playstyles, skill and tactics.

You would personally know it because you are making wrong assumptions, as I've pointed out already.

Strange that you are the only one here who even challenges me on the skill gap, and even with completely wrong idea's about the skill floor and how it would be affected.

Besides that, your experience would be invalid either way. The addition of these mechanics mean that your flight experience is no longer valid since the A2A meta would be changed heavily.

Still dare you to go spout that non-sense on reddit. I'm done arguing with you. If you thought jawaland was a magical place... Oh boy you hadn't yet seen demiganland. That place defies reality.

Once again: I dare you to post on reddit.

Honestly, aside from the first few times you're flying, it really doesn't matter. It's literally only usefull for maybe your first hours of flight. That's about it. And even then... not really.

So because you can't come up with arguments against my statements, you now say "well post somewhere else because here it somehow does not mean anything"? Good job man! Great deflection!

98.7% sure he means you'll get laughed out of reddit...
I have no part in this arguement
*flies away*

People used to laugh at the notion that the world is round, does that mean that being laughed at makes you wrong? Especially on the very internet where subjective opinions are often weighed more than actual facts.

Oh, it makes perfect sense when you realize I am drawing a line between "manners" and "honor." Honor isn't a custom of manners, especially between combatants. There is no "polite" or "respectable" way to attack someone. Honor is an oxymoron that attempts to make civil that which is inherently uncivil.

You have attempted to equate honor with manners and education, which is a false equivocation. Honor has nothing to do with manners or education, or civilized behavior. At all. In fact, honor makes war worse by prolonging a fight with unnecessary custom and deference that merely serves to inflict more casualties. It was a sense of honor that made men stand in nice orderly lines and await to be shot to death. It was a sense of honor that convinced men it was OK to shoot each other with pistols so long as they both gave each other equal opportunity to kill one another, which more often than not resulted in both their deaths.

Honor is an idiot's culture, a romance of violence. Crush the enemy swiftly and move on. Don't toy with him or defer to his weaknesses. Destroy him outright and move on to your objective. If that means using "cheap" weapons and tactics, then use cheap weapons and tactics. If that means exploiting a weakness then exploit the weakness. Don't quibble over honor. Just win.

This wouldn't work, as esf's don't go fast enough without afterburners to really lose anyone, and a back and forth like this would result in both players simply running out of ammo before anyone could get a kill. The current reverse meta is fun and engaging, it's just hard to get into. The ability to react directly to what your opponent is doing, and see someone maneuver, is much better than simply getting on someone's tail and that being the end of it. Further, this gives an outnumbered pilot even less of a chance, since facing and simultaneously dodging enemy fire is only possible with the current system.

As for lockons, they are perfectly acceptable for locking a fleeing esf, you shouldn't be able to dodge that. However, using them in hover duels is stupid, and even worse, locking fighters in groups. Like coyotes, they're difficult to counter, and dumb down combat. 1v1 their ok... 2v1 they give a substantial advantage over noseguns. I'm hopeful the reduction in damage will help keep them as openers and finishers, not primaries.

They don't go fast enough with afterburners to lose anyone. At most a Reaver can gain maybe 50 meters in one afterburn over the other ESF, but he has lost almost all that distance (if not lost more distance) by the time he can afterburn again. So per afterburn cycle every ESF either gains or loses 10m, which is practically nothing.

So basically with the current system you can't escape anyone (which is already evident), and the only way to survive is to be better at the VTOL combat, IE kill your enemy rather than escape.

By getting out of your enemies vision and having both the thread of potentially being able to retaliate or the possibility of putting distance on them you already have a superior position, since all the time spend looking for you is time you can put distance on your enemy at 55,55m/s (200KM/H), so every second is already more valuable than any afterburn cycle can give you without using afterburn after your maneuvers.

It is actually the only way a pilot could potentially survive a gank squad without resorting to RM... And since RM is still completely available, alongside several other pretty nifty combat maneuvers that could give at the very least equal measures of dodgeability+combat effectiveness, you've just expanded the amount of ways any player, low or high skill, can now dodge.

And really, if you are outnumbered you should have a high chance of dieing.

You can't guarantee 1v1, and this is an MMOFPS and you assume you'll have more 1v1's than unbalanced numbers battles? By creating a healthy environment with lots of viable combat maneuvers that can be used for different goals (escape, dodging, engagement) you make it much better than it is now.

Haven't dared posting on reddit yet?

http://stats.dasanfall.com/ps2/player/Shiaari

Doesn't seem to work so well for you now, does it?
I won't start debating with you, got enough of those. I'll just stick to - honor or not, you're not destroying crap from what I'm seeing in your profile. Might want to re-think your strategy because whatever you've got right now ain't working.

I find PS2 Reddit to be fairly toxic. Politely, I could call it a scene of manic energy. More crudely I could call it mostly aggressive, myopic, adhd, knee jerk, fanboyism. I also think the whole Reddit thread structure of fragmenting threads is a mess for long long threads. And the "what's hot" topic ranking reinforces the traits I listed above.

That said, I do think there are some small number of more grounded and thought out people (and good individual posts) on there. But it's typically lost among the noise. I also find the manifestation of (much of) the Dev presence there stifles developed discussion.

The actual moves would be more intuitive individually, because they are each composed of basic move inputs. Even new pilots could understand the idea of adding thrust to any single-keybind directional movement. What we have now with a non-intuitive and cryptic free-swinging Engine that players have to figure out how to get and keep in hover is a mess.

I agree with you that there would be more moves possible, but each would be based on a more simple control scheme. So we would be narrowing the "breadth" (complexity of basic movement inputs) and increasing the "depth" (possible manifestation or combinations of those movements)(NOTE: I am not using "depth" here as meaning overall "richness of play experience").

This concept of Breadth and Depth can be seen in Street Fighter 2 and Magic. Magic is a game of limited breadth (only 7 card types: Creature, Artifact, Enchantment, Plansewalker, Land, Sorcery, Instant), but massive depth (staggering number of manifestations of each card type and of permutations between different numbers of cards). Likewise in Street Fighter 2 there is a limited breadth (only 9 different directional inputs and 6 different attack buttons), but massive depth (large number of manifestations of different moves based on combinations of direction and attack inputs). In both games you have a system that is "easy to learn and hard to master" because they have narrow breadth, but great depth.

Street Fighter 2 does confuse new players with some of its "Special Moves", which are non-intuitive and cryptic (and some difficult to physically pull off)... like the free-swinging Engine of the ESF. And it could be debated that it's these non-intuitive and cryptic (and sometimes difficult to physically pull off) moves that provide a "user overwhelmed" hurdle that makes these games more "fun" or spreads out players along the aptitude curve. And while I do think such games and gameplay is neat, I don't think it fits in a non-skill segregated, mass audience, massive players in a shared world, PvP-only, combined arms game. Especially in a Unit like the ESF, where it's high speed and lack of access to cover makes its effective play space relatively small (it's a big continent, but for ESF-vs-ESF it's smaller than a single large base is for an Inafntry.

I am not sure why people seem to have issues with the movement system.
Sure it feels a bit wonky, but it is rather easy to learn ... what on the other hand isn't is aiming.

I still don't understand why all our noseguns are precision tools, while all the a2g options are splash based.
Reversed it would probably cause a hell of a lot less rage on the forums, well probably not but here is hoping.


As for the bushido topic:
That's easy ... flying usually for most isn't something you do from day one.
At least i didn't.

I think most of us started with the idea of learning how to use the esf or lib by watching others excell with them and hoped to achive the same or surpass them.
Which takes time and dedication ... A LOT of time and dedication


Then there is or was (now it's a bit less so since most people use stealth) of q spoting every enemy pilot you see.
There aren't a lot of people up in the sky and even less of them are dedicated pilots, that you are likley to see every playsession ... so you start to remember names, form rivalries, measure your groth vs others and cower in fear of the people that are simply out of your league (yet).

This ends up with a certain comradery and voila a few unspoken rules later skyknight bushido is born.

There are about as many rules as pilots ... but honestly the one thing to take away from my post is that skyknight bushido has only one rule that is the same for all pilots:

We all fly because it's fun to us and we want to get better at it.

The idea of 'honubrul' combat has been around for literal decades. I've seen it as far back as the mid 90s playing Diablo 1 and in MW2 (MechWarrior 2). I'm going to speak from a MechWarrior perspective because that is where I saw it the worst.. and it hasn't changed much in 20 years.

In MechWarrior.. mainly 2, 3, and 4. You had this idea that pilots should always avoid shooting the legs. Legs destruction usually meant instant Death. So this subculture of only going for torso and arms emerged.

One thing I started noticing in MW3 was that pilots weren't running armor in the legs. You see, there was 3 HTAL displays that showed the condition of you and your target. The one most people ran was default, which was a 3d representation of the mech. With each part turning more and more red as it took damage.

Most others ran the wireframe which showed each part in blue, green, yellow, or red to display damage. I ran the one looking like a bar graph. It was the most accurate as it showed you how much armor someone had in green, which turned red as they were damaged.

These honubrul duelist anti-legging people had ZERO armor in their legs. They were taking the extra tons of armor and using it for heatsinks, weapons, or armor elsewhere. Exploiting the 'bushido' style rules of no legging.

I legged the fuq out of them. The tears were delicious.

You see.. all is fair in love and war. Always remember that. Whenever someone tells you that you have to play a certain way because its honorable, not cheap, and makes you 'better'. Keep an eye out. Most likely they are simply trying to exploit the general community.

I've found that if someone complains how you killed them. You did so effectively. Remember when you beat someone. You bested them. That means if a lockon takes them down, you were the better pilot. Don't get wrapped up in what your opponent thinks about you. Use their hatred, bias, and arrogance against them.

Gank them with numerical superiority.
Use lockons to disrupt their duels.
Bail to fight another day.
Finally RAM them if they best you in a 'duel'.
Then RAM them again if they get back into the air.
Then again until they run out of resources and become grounded.

Do all the dishonorable sh-t they tell you not to do. Because when you do, you exploit the weaknesses they are trying diligently to hide. And when you do best them, and they get upset, understand that their anger will rattle them and make them easier prey.

At the end of the day, it isn't about who's the better pilot. Its about who's able to capture that continent. Never forget the bigger picture. PS2 is a MMOFPS, not a 1v1 duel. If people want to treat it like a duel. Exploit them, because that's exactly what they are trying to do to you.

The Samurai went extinct for a reason. They got used to killing each others' peasants. When they fought a foe that could think.. they faded from history. Bushido in PS2, is the way to defeat.

and that, is why you're still bad at flying - and nobody's gonna help you do anything about it as long as you got that attitude.

Good luck