Valks do have a ton of versatility to them, they're actually going to be one of the harder targets for an esf to take out if it's full, you have repairing engies, striker heavies, a gunner with a high dps nose that can swivel and aim on a dime and you have higher armor with the ability to safedtop people. Now there were these setups I'd run with friends, basically a "trap" setup, you start with a base ant, looks like a nub ant, put it behind enemy lines, have 3-4 heavies with one engie, nanite auto if no engie (and fire suppression, not sure if ants have that though) and we basically rolled around luring in armor or air to try and get a "free kill". We got several ESFs, melted tanks in some cases because we were chased, dropped off and got behind the tank and some libs. A valked with an infil gunner, several engies or maybe a heavy pilot with engies could go behind enemy lines, be an immortal son of a *****, drop some dude to place random tank mines or c4 some armor, infil could hop out and hack a term to spawn a sundi to make a new AV nest, all while being a pain in the valk. The 550 cert hellion is basically a slightly slower vulcan, you gib VERY fast, or you can go lomg range and use pelters or go with TV, cas for infantry, there is a LOT of stuff you can do with the valk, a lot of it is tactical use not straight combat use.
I think the issue that makes the air game very punishing and even to a degree boring for those who are not very good at it. Is that it's not a very versatile medium at the moment. Air vs Air is in most cases fight or die. If you run your enemy will taste blood and chase you down which isn't to difficult because the difference between ESF's and Frames are so small you will rarely get a noticeable advantage beyond direct air combat and ground engagements. And beyond direct killing stuff your interaction with others is minimal unless you are in direct contact with an organised group. The air game is as one always have to remember badly built VTOL's that can't really hover properly nor can they fly properly either. They are kind of in a constant state of falling and also very unstable due to this. What makes it harder is that the idea in this game is that everything is supposed to be able to do as many things as possible so they are quite difficult to balance without doing extreme changes. So yeah currently a lot of the Air play is L2P, Git gud and what not and learn to think outside the box. That is how the Reverse manoeuvre came to be it wasn't even intended from the start and pilots found the air play to stale and boring and then discovered it and baam change was made for a while. There are still fun moments to have. I suck at flying but still i find moments of joy although mostly farming ground because they rarely pull AA
What this guy is saying is: I'm stupid so I think controllers are better than mouse+keyboard. Look at how good my argument are, they are nearly worth consideration; just not quite. Also, I don't know why you are so intent on getting rewarded for doing nothing. If they change the air to make it more noob-friendly by dumbing it down, this'll be one bigger step towards the end of this game.
You don't now about that because I'm not intent on getting rewarded for doing nothing. If that's all you can get out of all the reasons, arguments and idea's I've said so far than you are really trying very very hard to misunderstand everything that touches your beloved farmtools, willingly or unwillingly.
Whether it's somebody like Dark Elf on the ground, or this guy https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF85lEAHZut_TPjL_cQx3Hg in the sky, well..... Although you would consider most of his vids "sky knight" A2A, I think a few minutes watching would probly enlighten a lot of people. No, it would not actually help a new player, might excite them, but is enlightening to those who have flown a bit and are interested. Unlike an above post, esf's are neither clunky nor poorly designed. They are the glass cannon in this game, and especially in swarms, can be very effective, and just flat fun to operate. With fuel tanks, even more so. The three esf's are all different enough in their handling and frames, they all have adv and disadv...but not quite as much as empire spec main battle tanks. Adds flavor. Imho, the biggest challenges for newer pilots are situational awareness and aim. Unless at flight ceiling {where you cannot interact with ground generally}, then you can potentially, and quite often, have enemy abv and below you, 360 in every direction...you simply cannot hide from potential enemy in the air. Fancy maneuvers don't mean nearly as much aim, and not getting ***-ganked. I have watched some of youtube above....tell me you can tell the new, versus experienced pilots when engaging, in vid...you can tell, for example, some players aren't listening very well or looking around at all...and it's not that this guy wouldn't wreck em, even if they did...but situationally, they were dooomed...... no other reason.
These "glass canons" work in two ways: Either they are almost uncontested and can farm to their hearts content, or they are contested and move somewhere they can farm to their hearts content.<-- Bad design. Extremely bad design, some of the worst design possible in a game. Also a "glass canon" isn't a glass canon if it has the durability to get out alive and return later. Imagine if artillery had the durability combined with the speed and agility that allowed it to escape from an enemy MBT. Sure it could maybe die in 3 hits, but since it's tough to nearly impossible to kill the artillery in 3 hits (let's say it's got the size and speed of a Harasser) it's capable of escaping with almost a guarantee. ESF have enough durability and speed to almost always escape. The only exceptions are when there's multiple AA sources that waited for them to get extremely close, even then the environment can still give them the escapes they need to survive. And "multiple AA sources" means about 3 Skyguards, most other AA does not have this strong an effect. Hell the Burster MAX's have an even more terrible COF and are basically shotgun AA. So yeah, once again I've not only said "hey aircraft are badly designed", I explained it. You just say "well they are glass canons" and then gloss over the fact that you can't even explain why they are glass canons. You probably think that they are glass canons just because they have a relatively low TTK compared to other vehicles and lose health at a relatively fast pace... Compared to the other vehicles. But compared to their speed and agility the TTK's are too slow and will not be fast enough to get you a kill. That's actually one of the biggest problems that G2A faces when engaging aircraft: It's not the skill of the G2A player that determines the outcome, it's almost 100% the skill of the pilot that determines if the G2A player gets a kill or not. That's bad, bad game design. Humble opinion denied, situational awareness and aim are not the issue, having flight mechanics that punish the player for 95% of the normal maneuvers you can pull off in an aircraft is the issue, having the only viable flight mechanics be hover fighting (not necessarily VTOL fighting but hover fighting) and a wacky loophole maneuver in the way these aircraft can fly is the rest of the issue. You can tell because these players do not hover fight. In other flight games I am good, I mauled half a dozen players in a row in GTA5's flight system, because I have wonderful situational awareness combined with knowledge on how the plane's work. And those planes work as you expect! But PS2? The system is convoluted, punishes you for practically every normal maneuver you can think off, has a narrow amount of maneuvers that do work which are all tied to the wacky way the hitbox system works (Hover fighting) and a loophole in the flight system (RM) and worst of all you can't learn it by simply playing the game. Oh sure you'll hear one or two anecdotes of players who did. But the evidence is there: Almost no pilots in the air, a select few players who learned it, mostly through being taught and hours of training with a friend before beginning with learning through fighting in the regular game.
As an average to slightly above average pilot, I can say that esf air has it hard. Not just because of other air being piloted my the typical MLG try-hard +20 to everything crack head gamer, who will rather bail out than die in their bird because k/d is most important to them (they also whine like crybabies when you use A2A lock on's), but the biggest threat to air is ground fire. Specifically Flack fire from bursters, turrets, and vehicles. Then there is the G2A lock on's to contend with, such as ESL's, Annihilators, and The Swarm (which, if I ever meet the dev that made that weapon, I will punch them in the face for it). Plenty of good air to air fights ruined by ground forces. Some places you can't even fly over, even at ceiling, without getting locked onto by someone or a few of them. You learn that Esamir is horrid when it comes to flying BECAUSE of the G2A is so easy to catch you while flying. Then there is the environment to contend with. Hossin is perhaps the most dangerous to fly low on because of the trees and cliffs and like. It also happens to be the most fun to fly through too. The thing is, air in Planetside 2, and even in Planetside 1, has always had a steep learning curve. I still wonder, and toss out reports on some pilots, who's aim is so good and perfect, while moving about like they have a sever case of Parkinson's so you can't hit them, but somehow they are able to land every shot on you while you move about as erratically as possible too to avoid being hit too. Some folks are just that good because they have dedicated their existence to being that good in a game, while some are just naturally gifted like that. Flying is fun, and it feels rewarding when you can take down another pilot, especially one that is being a jerk MLG try-hard, but it isn't going to be easy, or cheap. Best thing to do is try flying around in VR to get the feel of the bird, watch videos on how to dog fight, figure out what load-outs work best for you, and if you can get a wing-man, get one.
I agree with Demigan, even when just shortening his response to just the fragment quoted above. The reason being two-fold: 1. Combined Arms MMO Mechanic PS2 is a (a) Combined Arms, (b) non-Skill Segregated, (c) MMO. It *must* have large numbers of players able to access and provide competent results with each core Unit type (including specifically each core role of that Unit), or else the Combined Arms counter system fails because there is insufficient bodies to cover each role. It's like having Scissor, Paper, Rock... where you play a "best of 10 game", but players can only choose Paper once in those ten games. It compromises the reliability and viability of balance systems within a pan-Unit Combined Arms Game. In many other types of games, these high skill floor elements would not be a huge problem , because those games segregate players by similar skill, and/or they don't have Spawn Resource Cost hurdles or other types of downtime Hurdles (you just hit rematch). 2. Combined Arms Theme PS2 is a Combined Arms Mass Audience MMO. It sells new players on the dream of them being able to access and reasonably play each core Unit type. To make any of the core Units basically unusable without the user consistently experiencing total failure over gross prolonged periods (in this case high frequency of exposure to "sudden and violent death" combined with a Resource Cost based downtime lockout system) is a massive assault on player expectations, which causes widespread confusion and frustration (unhappy players), and compromises the viable commercial success of the game. And for whose benefit is this Unhappy Player component being created? At least in some other parts of the game, these types of negative emotion are tied to some P2W aspect. Not that P2W is pretty (it stinks), but at least it's the Dev Company getting profit in exchange for making their game less appealing to (and potentially losing) many players. P2W at least in theory might help fund the Devs, and fits at least in some ways with the likely goals of the Dev Management/Owners: profit. But in the widespread Unhappy Player inducing Air game, DBG isn't even making a cent. They are literally putting a giant Stick (punishment) in their game with no practical purpose toward their own goals. It's for the joy of a small handful of players. PS2 Devs aren't even charging Aces more for creating and maintaining a nice playground for them to Grief. As a Designer, you should ask yourself why you are putting Sticks and Carrots in the game. If they have no practical purpose, or their purpose does not suit your company's goals, then why is it there? And if it's there to serve some single Designer's (or a Cabal of Designer's) pet goals, then the Dev company's management should identify this and remove it or get adequate compensation from the single/cabal Designer. Somehow the Piper is paid. Somehow the credit/debit tally is balanced. To allow a Stick to remain in the game that does not benefit the company is either ignorance (if unrecognized by Designers) or embezzlement if single Designers keep it in to benefit themselves. Any time Devs maintain a playground for a small handful of players to Grief, they should charge the Griefers for it. Becayse the Devs are keeping in a massive Stick and driving down potential revenue. And they should charge for that hit to revenue (for those doing it), or promote/market it as a feature to attract potential players who want to do it. New Player Continent having handfuls of players going there to Grief new players is another great example of this. PS2 Devs should either stop this, or they should get DBG paid for it. (and there are plenty of ways to stop these carrots... I can name them and implement them in-game in short order, with some wiggle room for unexpected outcomes and follow-up adjustments to address those)
So after training and flying for a while, watching some of pro pilots do stuff and learning from numerous training videos, I've finally become a good pilot. Must say, it's one of the most fun aspects of the game once you get the hang of it, but the problem is that there's absolutely no guidance for new players on piloting ESFs, and the only way to get good with them is to watch tutorials made by pro pilots or get an experienced pilot who will teach you, and don't even get me started on having to re-bind your Analog Throttle key, learning how to do Reverse Maneuver (Since there's no way that new/inexperienced pilots will ever grasp such a thing alone even when they get good, you have to learn from your betters for that) etc. Including the fact that there's nothing like it and nothing can prepare you for it, it's impossible to learn unless you get some help, and hard to master, which turns off all but the most dedicated people and the most fanatic pilots who want to master the system, since for the everyone else, it's more trouble than it's worth for an activity that you won't do much. If they added an in-game flying tutorial on how to practice your ESF skills or added an in-game manual that links tutorials for new and experienced pilots alike and with other stuff like recommended keybindings, performing maneuvers... we'd see more people in the air, who will get better over time (and feel like they're accomplishing something, so they'll stay in the sky) without changing anything within the system. It'll be easy to get into, hard to improve, and very difficult to master. Best of both worlds, people who just jumped in can enjoy it, but those who mastered it will also hold an advantage over others, but not immediately auto win because even beginners will know a few tricks and will be able to successfully fight back and at least deal a little bit of damage, so maybe we'll see decent pilots take out skyknights once in a blue moon. This is easily the worst post in this entire forum, period. Why shouldn't the air game be easy to get into (but still hard to master)? The guys who are good at it have more targets to shoot at and will still continue to be good, and the "scrubs" can enjoy the air game. Why should pros have the gigantic advantage of knowing and perfecting maneuvers, while people who spent hours in it don't even know them, and have need to find info OUTSIDE THE GAME or seek someone's help just to get outside noob level? That's unfair BS, they should at least be given a chance. But of course, most skyknights are so far dug up their own *** they barely even care about anything except dominating noob pilots and ground plebs
Maybe I'll derail it a bit but why does the vehicle stealth completely shuts down engagement radar? I run it just so I can understand that I'm about to lose a plane and mentally prepare for it. Yes, the cases where engagement radar actually helps are common - but my skills only allow it to be 'death incoming' radar. I don't know, vehicle stealth could lower the range of engagement radar to 100-50 meters max, instead of "sorry, you brought a useless upgrade to the fight" type of thing.
In what way would you change the airgame? Give concrete examples plox. If you can't give concrete, general ones summary? But i want to add: it is no good way of thinking. You recognized that the so called "casual" pilot has almost no chance at all to compete with more experienced pilots. So, the skill ceiling is too high, you said, let's capp it. Let us tailor the whole airgame to more casual gamers who will be gone the next day anyway to play another casual game. I think that is insane and a great portion of game devs destroy whole games by this way of thinking. It is a quick money grinder, but it is not what makes people stay at it, on the contrary, it produces flat games which get boring and die out really fast. It is a current desease in game industry and i hope it will soon be gone. So the only thing agree is with you is recognizing that there is a problem of new players finding it hard to get into flying in PS2, and i agree. The airgame can be pretty inaccessible. I would maybe just devote some tutorials for this, where a voice tells you about certain stuff, like that there exists hover mode, etc. But by all means it can't be the solution to destroy the current airgame just because there is this problem. Btw.: i am one of those peope who started flying really late, with all the experienced pilots already in the skies who had years of experience before me, and i got bashed alot by them, but it was simply one thing which kept me at it which was the fun and the fact that it takes more than the usual stuff to get good at, and it was funny and a great feeling to just fly and see giant battles from the sky. So i just kept flying by this simple fact: it was fun. I am glad that there exists this part of this game where there is an incredibly high, never fully to learn high ceiling. I would count the airgame as one of the top 5 most unique things since the invention of FPS shooters. Tailoring the airgame to a dumb or too self-convenient crowd will just destroy everything about games today imo. It is such a bad meme going around in the games industry currently and i hope it will someday stop destroying whole games.
This i largely agree to. But the issue is quite easy to see as well. The air game is to narrow to 1 dimensional in how it works. it follows the same balance thinking that ground Vehicles vs infantry has and that doesn't really work since air is so very 3 dimensional compared to infantry and ground vehicles. The sky ceiling is to low making areas like southern Indar a deadly place for Air to move and makes it hard to move around front lines like air is supposed to. Functionality currently the design makes the ESF's into unbalanced vehicles that either wreck everything or can't even lift of the ground. And in the Air if you see hostile ESF's it's fight or die the option to flee is very limited because no ESF can really outrun the other. Nor is there an option to cert into such things. ESF's are very limited to hover combat regardless of A2G or A2A there is no option for them to do more mobile combat or to specialise into one type. Liberators are in a very similar position as well and i very very rarely see Liberators these days and there used to be a lot of them once. :/
I Valk and Skyguard. I intentionally interrupt ESF fights on a regular basis and tip them in my teams favor, even if I get an occasional nasty tell aftewards. Why? Because I'm thinking long term. That ESF I save or give an advantage to is one that will probably either reduce or damage the other air targets, or save my Valk from another ESF. Also, Swarm missiles are actually, the best for pilots, since they give you more opportunities to dodge or destruct the missile. And as Skyguard, I take offense to your notion that we all just spend our nanites wailing at targets at the renderbox. Some of us take great pride in our positioning and ambush doctrine. Hell, if something is far enough away and is heading away, I will ignore it unless its shooting.
Well mister fart, you already start with generalizing me as a ground player and trying to make me look ridiculous instead of making arguments. Good job! You just proved you are an ******. That said I've already made countless of posts on how to improve the air-game. If you have any imagination at all you could already read what I want in my posts: Make fighter-style combat just as viable as VTOL combat. Improve the amount of viable maneuvers you can use in the game. Increase the amount of scenario's in the game, right now it's "meet more skilled player, you are dead", where are the alternatives? Where's the "gave my enemy the slip and escaped" option(s)? There's half a dozen ways you could add that to the game without making it a guarantee that the lower level player can escape. If you can't beat your opponent in a straight fight you should not automatically lose, you should be able to use different tactics to get ahead. "get ahead" could just mean "escape", it could mean "die together in a ball of flames", it could mean "I knew I had some G2A/A2A support nearby and used that to even the odds". There is barely any of that right now. Another thing: Right now the air-game is dominated by a few because of the whole "practically no viable maneuvers except for some obscure one's". By adding more viable maneuvers you open up the game for more tactics, you give the average player a chance to join and become good and defend themselves. Of course this is the point where you'll likely go "but if you add more maneuvers the top players will just have more ways to outmaneuver you!". Because that's the kind of moronic thing that many of your caliber immediately spout. Well in the long run you are only slightly right, in the short run it means that the top-players will fall behind in the A2A game. The top-players are in a comfortable position right now where they are only challenged by other top-players, anyone not dedicating their life to the air-game is just some certs waiting for them to pick it up. This is especially true since there is no way to become a top-player in the G2A game since no single G2A weapon is designed to work solo. Anyway, the top-players are in a comfortable position: They have a strong tactic below their belt and can use it. They have no reason to diversify in the beginning because it would put them at the same level as the average player, and they want to simply beat them. So the average player can either try to beat these top-players on their own VTOL and RM field, or they can develop their own strategies and tactics based on the newly improved flight system. This means that by the time these maneuvers start to pay off the top-players are only the professionals in the VTOL and RM field, but we now have new professionals in the fighter-style combat that can rival the VTOL and RM combat. The best scenario would be that players need to constantly change their playstyle to the situation to get an advantage. Switching from VTOL to fighter style and back, and switching between different methods of VTOL and fighter style to add even more diversity and options. How to achieve this? The easiest solution: Omniversal afterburner. The input of your keyboard determines the direction of your afterburner. You press space? You afterburn upwards. You press C? You afterburn downwards. You press forwards and space? You go diagonally upwards. You press A? You make a hairpin turn (alternatively you afterburn sideways). You press S? You can make a powerful brake, or if you go slow enough you can even go straight backwards. What would this do? Well first off all you would be able to do the Reverse Maneuver... While going forwards at 200Km/H. The Forwards maneuver would also be possible (Reverse maneuver makes a circle upwards with the nose to the center, Forwards maneuver would make a circle downwards with your nose to the center). You suddenly have many more maneuvers you can pull off besides RM, and you can switch between VTOL and fighter-style combat in a flash. Of course this still means that without afterburner the VTOL combat styles are still superior to the fighter-styles, so some upgrades to the maneuverability would be welcome. This actually is a perfect point to also talk about G2A weapons. Aircraft encountering G2A weapons is not fun because the entire idea of using speed and maneuverability to dodge shots is completely and 100% absent in PS2. Well it's there, but not with G2A weapons. Flak, lock-ons and spray&pray based weapons dominate the G2A scene and make sure that aircraft are hit no matter what they do. This is also the exact reason why G2A weapons cannot kill aircraft solo: Since hits and damage is guaranteed, the damage and TTK are modeled to always allow aircraft the option to escape. Because giving a guarantee of a dead aircraft "just because you came within X distance of G2A" is a terrible, terrible game design and they prevent that with this TTK model. Unfortunately that limits the aircraf interaction with G2A to "kill them before they kill you or afterburn away". Ground vehicles can maneuver, use their speed, maneuverability and the terrain to dodge. Aircraft can only hightail it out of there or blow stuff up when engaging ground (and somehow this is seen as the highest skill vehicle in the game). Another problem is ofcourse that this TTK model is so wonderfully based on a solo G2A weapon. It's easily circumvented by simply using multiple G2A weapons at a time, giving G2A the strongest force multiplier in the game in groups. Especially since aircraft aren't used a lot by players (not for lack of wanting, but because of the screwed A2A balance where top-players dominate everything and the average player can't really enjoy anything and the screwed G2A balance where they are either uncontested of fleeing to a region where they are uncontested). Is a system that says "you can either farm uncontested or flee for your life" a good system? No, it's not. So... G2A needs an overhaul. Like ground vehicles, aircraft should always face some G2A no matter where they go. And like ground vehicles the use of terrain, positioning, speed and maneuverability are the key factors when dealing with G2A. The best scenario should be that a single aircraft can fly over a region with 20 low-skill G2A sources (assuming it doesn't hug them and he picks the right maneuvers) without any damage, but at the same time get stomped into the ground by a single G2A source that has the skill to predict his movement. The solution? Heavily reduce the flak detonation range (instead of the +/-8m distance it should explode at 0,5 to 1m distance), remove pray&spray weapons (rather than firing 50+ rounds for 10 seconds before a reload, fire small volleys of 4 to 20 rounds) and change lock-ons to be less fire-and-forget and need more aim. Lock-ons would require an entire new set of paragraphs to explain what could be done to them, just accept that they could be improved to actually require skill. Maybe I mentioned that, but what I meant is "let's reduce the power gain per extra skill the closer you get to the skill-ceiling". This is how all good skill-curves are made: At the beginning each extra bit of skill gives lots of power in return, but the higher you get the less power you get for each bit of skill you earn. Also as you might have read by now, my idea's would increase the skill ceiling by diversifying the skill ceiling into different things you can achieve. And in fact the current tactics would be improved even more since the RM could be applied during much more diverse maneuvers for different effects. Also simply capping the skill-ceiling wouldn't help one bit. We currently have a system where to compete you have to master the exact same maneuvers and tactics as your opponent, there's no room to diversify, master a different field or change the battle. It is insane that you think the game should be tailored to a tiny portion of the player base, or that average players who hop to other games would be bad, since a similar amount of average players would hop from other games into this one. Keeping a game, especially a F2P game, alive is done through the average player. These players provide the background, the context, they help complete the game and in a F2P game they offer the highest challenges without the developers requiring to build expensive and time-consuming AI's. So to keep the game interesting, including the air-game, we need to have average players everywhere. On the ground and in the air. And what's more: If you can make that gameplay interesting, these average players will stick with the game for longer, and the game will live longer. Your are completely ignoring the reasons why people play games and are completely ego-centric. You think that you can bind players by purging the game of the average player, by making parts of the game inaccessible or unplayable by them. The opposite is true: The more average players you can bind to your game and keep into your game, the more players will cross the treshold of average to higher-skill. The more average players that get invested, the longer the game will live. Just to reiterate: By creating a low skill ceiling to enter the game and having a high skill-ceiling to reach, with lots of seperate skill levels to reach in between, you can create the most optimal game. The best game teaches you to become a top-player by simply playing it. But the air-game as it is? It doesn't do that. And considering the impact the air-game has on the game, as well as the lack of air-game in the supposed combined-arms combat that PS2 offers, the game suffers in the current form. The necessity of tutorials are a giant warning sign saying "this feature isn't correctly designed". Good games can be both learned and enjoyed through simple play. Even if you die a horrible death because you didn't understand it at the beginning, you should still enjoy it somehow or say "ooh, so that's what I did wrong". You had fun, most other people didn't. That's why the skies are so empty, and not for lack of trying. Every time I log on I see a bunch of new pilots try their hands at aircraft, and they all quit. Why? Because of a bad G2A and a bad A2A design. By all means, the air-game should not be dumbed down. VTOL fighting and RM are unique to PS2 and should be elevated to actual features rather than happy little accidents in the game code that are mostly obscure on how they can be used. That does not mean that VTOL and RM should be the only things to do, the air-game should be expanded even further, add low-skill floor maneuvers for both VTOL and fighter-style combat that preferably have massively high skill ceilings. Tailoring the air-game to only cater to the average player (again you are an insulting little egocentric brat even though you've shown you can be reasonable in this very post) destroys the game. Tailoring it to everyone, from the twelve-year-old who managed to get the game running while his parents weren't watching to the grizzled veteran of a hundred games who plays E-sports for a living, that's the way to go. If all of those players can enjoy at least 80% of the game, and that last 20% can be circumvented or avoided, you have succeeded.
I feel we're getting a little heated here. Perhaps instead we should focus on ways to make the learning curve more gradual and rewarding for ESFs, Perhaps a "Wingman" ribbon, in which pilots in a squad earn ribbons as other pilots within a 500-700m range earn kills? This would encourage people to stick close to and cover each other. This would lead to people bringing new pilots into the ESF playstyle and community more readily, rather than having them just "Go on reddit" or become disenchanted with the air-game meta because they die on their own so much. It would perhaps encourage air swarms tho.... so it would need to be limited in how much it can be given in a day or how often it can be received.
^ holy wall of text, no way I'm reading all that, but I will say, flying has a very steep learning curve, and anyone talking about using a controller, or wondering if anyone else is using a controller, has not even started to climb it. The only way to learn is seat time, and I mean in combat, not VR. You need to adjust some settings, like checking the invert vertical fly box. It also helps to have a mouse with thumb buttons for pitch up and pitch down, to remap Q and E to roll, rmapping eject from E to `, spot from Q to Tab, and show scoreboard from Tab to \ Invert vertical fly should be made a default setting IMO.
Ui, that was alot to read phew. As always, it helps to be concrete and now i understand a bit what you were saying earlier in those general terms. So what i got from your post is this: more viable maneuvers: -> Omniversal afterburner (new afterburner type for players to choose and which goes in the direction either w, a, s, d) => seems cool, it should not directly interfere with the old afterburner type, cause that would brake the airgame as it is, too big of a change, and why brake something which is so cool g2a overhaul: -> reduce the flak detonation range (and adjust TTK i think, not sure though if that was written somewhere) -> lock-ons require more skill by the ground player by holding his crosshair on target => hm, actually a buff for the air, oi :O - skill-curve adjustment: here i think you was not concrete enough, but i understand that it may be an annoying curve. You just said it needs adjustment somehow, but you didn't say how. I read that you wanted that at the beginning, but the skillceiling should remain. My curve went something like this: <- 20 days -> 0 to 1 skillpoints (got killed left and right) <- 40 days -> 1 to 3 skill points (auraxed the weapons) <- 15 days -> 3 to 4 skill points <- 10 days -> 4 to 4.5 <- 30 days -> 5 skill points, with open end => so here, as was mentioned alot already, a tutorial is good. How can you explain hover mode for example. Maybe by some constant peep sound pulling attention to the player? Or by an HUD indicator spamming the screen? Tuto seems best solution, if it is ingame it is ok. About tutos: multiplayer games often need one imo, cause the situations are always non-linear. In singleplayer games you control the way the player learns much better, but in multiplayer games the way of learning will be pretty much random, dependent on the situation the player gets in on his non-linear way of playing the game. Maybe i am wrong here, but an ingame tuto is imo generally no sign of bad game design. If stuff is just a bit more complex than pointing crosshair, or requiring single key presses (which can be displayed in HUD), then this is needed imo. Anyway, i understood much better now. Peace out dude. P.S.: i read that stuff about egocentric brat and i found that funny
That really depends if they would increase the skill to lock on to air im convinced they would also make such a lock on and hit way more rewarding damage wise. Prepare to burn
Awareness is only sustainability, aim is the determining factor here. Air is the only place where you have to lead in 3 dimensions
