[ESF] New Coyotes + Default Radar = Utterly Broken

There are modern systems that utilise lots of dakka, no flak.

But what I meant with the Dalton (bad wording again) is a dalton with pre-nerf velocity. I don't know if you ever experienced that, but it had insanely fast muzzle velocity. Hitting anything was easy. As for the pheonix, it would need to be different; faster, longer range, high AA damage and less ground damage to avoid incorrect use. Even if it wasn't a ohk, it would set them on fire or something.

We just need weapons that don't scale up like they do in the current game. One lockon is annoying, but easy enough to ignore, but more gets ridiculous. One AA cannon can ruin our day if you're not careful, but add three or four and it's an instant death.

The benefit is becoming proficient with an aircraft that is capable of doing things that conventional aircraft can't do, IE exert control over the Y-axis of the plane. This allows you to perform maneuvers in and out of combat which traditional aircraft simply can't do due to the laws of physics, which to me and many others is an attractive goal. The idea of being able to defy gravity with hovering is a big part of the appeal of an ESF, and the fun.

And it's not a magic word, you didn't get my point:

What I am saying is that because of the futuristic concept of these aircraft, you are given new capabilities in the vertical domain which demand a greater degree of mastery than normal compared to say learning to fly a jet in BF3, (which I quite honestly thought was boring and put you in way too small a space on those maps).

In fact, there is almost a real-life comparison to make with the British-made Harrier jump-jet. Those pilots have to log some serious flight hours compared to other aircrafts to learn the hovering maneuvers, because of the level of precision that is demanded and how dangerous it is to make a mistake.
TLDR: Greater capability comes with a greater learning curve, hence the difficulty.

Funny you should say that, because IME trying to get friends to play this game, one of the biggest turn-offs is how hard it is to "get good" at it.

To put it bluntly, if this game were for casuals, SOE would never have implemented the directives system. Matt Higby (RIP) and team put together a game that for all its faults, appealed to all players to get better and offered good rewards for doing so. And IMO this is the main reason PS2 is so much fun to play, the high risk/investment - reward dynamic. The flight system is just an outgrowth of their design philosophy.

By the criteria that pilots capable of appreciating the fact that having an extra plane of control in the Y-axis enables you to fly in a totally new way. Being able to fly more like a dragonfly compared to a hawk for instance, is a lot of fun. You're suddenly not limited to flying in circles like in a WWII era dogfight, there are many more options. As someone who plays a lot of flying games I'm surprised you don't get the attraction.

I said literally none of that. Did you even read my post? I never said anything about players running a flight school, I said they should consult the top players on the design of new flight tutorials and make an AI ESF with certain movement patterns to fight against (a "ghost"). But by all means, keep misquoting me if it makes it easier.
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You keep repeating this nonsense. The fact is that air is VERY accessible to nearly the entire playerbase:

Just because someone doesn't fly an ESF does not mean they don't fly a lib, a galaxy or a valk, or serve as a gunner in any of those vehicles which all have very crucial functions. So non-ESF players are in the air, getting XP, all the time despite the illusion of "empty skies" you are trying to push here.
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Yeah, I miss the higher shell speed. Nowadays it's just too hard to use.

You keep repeating this nonsense. The fact is that air is VERY accessible to nearly the entire playerbase:

Just because someone doesn't fly an ESF does not mean they don't fly a lib, a galaxy or a valk, or serve as a gunner in any of those vehicles which all have very crucial functions. So non-ESF players are in the air, getting XP, all the time despite the illusion of "empty skies" you are trying to push here.
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No, YOU are the one repeating nonsense. Being a gunner or a passenger is not being an active part of the air game. It's being a supporting or passive part of it. Only the pilots are really doing the active part. And that is the part that is nearly inaccessible.

And you are talking out both sides of your face. In one breath you talk about how hard it is to fly in this game, and in the same post you call the air game totally accessible. It's not. You KNOW it's not because you ramble on ad nauseum about how awesome you are for mastering its ridiculously complicated flight model.

Is there something to be said for complicated flight games? Sure, if that's what you're into. War Thunder and IL-2 have some VERY detailed simulator modes. Planetside 2 is NOT a game that is meant to have that level of complexity.

Repeat, since you seem not to get it yet: Flying in this game is a pain in the ***. It is such a pain in the *** that most players don't bother with it. Yes there are planes in the sky, but most players are only there incidentally - getting ferried around, or gunning for a teammate. Most players do NOT spend much time piloting because it is a pain in the *** and it pisses them off to get in a plane in a game where EVERYTHING else is intuitive only to discover that airplanes feel like a boiling acid enema.

AGAIN: Troops move like you'd expect. Flashes, too. Harassers, too. Lightnings, too. Sunderers, too. You get in a plane? Not even close. The "holy hell flying a plane is ridiculously hard" bit is out of place in a game where EVERYTHING else makes sense and plays pretty much exactly like you'd expect it to. And, unlike ANY other item in the game, they are the one thing where the controls cannot be freely remapped in any way you choose so that you can make controlling the plane work the way you want to control it. For example, even after years of players asking for this you still cannot map your yaw to the mouse.

That one item makes it so that, of all the items in the game, planes are the ONE case in which you can scope in on a target but NOT adjust your aim the way you do in every other situation in the game. It breaks consistency of gameplay on top of being a giant pack of hemorrhoids.

Just admit that you're an elitist ESF jock who actually knows what a pain in the *** flying is, and lying and claiming the air game is accessible to all. It's not. You've admitted what a pain in the *** it was for you to learn to fly in this game. At least accept that the very accomplishment you are bragging about proves that you KNOW how ridiculously hard flying a plane is in this game and you know EXACTLY why most players don't bother to fly a plane.

And finally, AGAIN: This is a GAME. It needs to make Daybreak money. To do that it has to be accessible to all those wallets-on-legs that pay the bills to keep it profitable enough for Daybreak not to shut the game down. Telling the player base that, as far as the air game goes, they can go F themselves is NOT the way to keep customers, and it does NOT get people to spend money on a full third of the game's content.

So please: stop blowing smoke out your brown, puckered hole about how "accessible" the game is when you KNOW it isn't, and stop acting like having flying be a pain in the *** is somehow a good thing, when as a practical matter it is not.

My bad. I am lumping all direct fire AA under the heading of flak. Walkers may not technically be flak, but they're in that "point the gun and fling bullets at the plane" class of AA weapon.

PS2's flight mechanics are not unique. In fact there is a combined arms game that has planes, VTOLs, hover tanks, tracked tanks, wheeled tanks, mechs and infantry. Here's an example, it's not exactly the same, it actually has control inputs that make sense but you get the idea.

The little rant about chess: false equivalency. PS2 is not chess, none of the hypothetical changes in chess you brought up bear any relation to the changes in air, at all, in any way.

You can't expect flight skills to transfer from... Yes. Actually I can, I can expect whatever I damn well please. And BTW, they would if the control scheme wasn't arbitrarily terrible.

Map hacks and auto-kill weapons? Meaningless hyperbole, make a point that isn't BS.

Flight isn't generally inaccessible unless it's implemented badly. Properly implemented mechanics are easy to use and hard to master. PS2 got one of those.

And, new players are turned off of flying because it's hard to learn 3D movement!? I just... Really guy? I was rocking Wing Commander, Descent, F-117, red baron and on and on when I was in middle school. It's not rocket science. It's a mediocre flight model with a control scheme that ignores one of the cardinal rules of flight based games: ALL THE CONTROLS ARE CUSTOMIZABLE AND MAPPABLE TO ANYTHING YOU WANT.

The most enduring accomplishment of "top pilots" in this game is to make playing in aircraft a ridiculous chore that any sane person will avoid like the plague.

The high bar for good piloting skills is precisely why I like this game. Not everyone enjoys playing the same game over and over again if they become good at everything right away. Some people enjoy a feeling of gradual progression - start at the bottom, and work your way up with practice. The longer it takes to become good at something, the more play time the game has to offer.

If there's no challenge in achieving something, then it's not worth achieving.
Of course no everyone wants to bother training and putting in effort, that's why there's infantry game.

Just don't try to turn air game into infantry meat grinder

That would make lots of sense if not for one thing: The difficulty in progression in flight is solely because the flight model sucks. You say if there is no challenge in achieving something then it's not worth achieving, but that only makes sense if the challenge makes sense. There's a reason "slamming your face into a spiked wall" is not an Olympic sport. Sure, mastering it will be a challenge, but why the hell would you want to master it? It's a process that sucks. Same with the PS2 flight model.

And your "not everyone wants to put in the effort" bit is a great example of victim-blaming. If the flight model made sense then it would be fine to say that it's just something that takes time and practice. That's not the case here, though. The current mechanics basically ask players to strain to learn something so ***-backwards and counter intuitive as to be ludicrous. I hate to break it to you, but claiming to have mastered a crappy mechanic is not exactly a 100% positive thing. It's like claiming you are pro at eating buckets of garbage. Sure, you worked hard at it, but it was a system that didn't make sense.

This is why you see so many people go to VR training, eagerly load a plane, crash it because the mechanics make NO SENSE, repeat the process several times trying to figure out what went wrong, and then give up when they realize it's not them, it's not that they don't have reflexes, it's not that they're bad gamers. It's that the mechanic sucks and it's not fun for most players to beat their heads against that spiked wall.

All these changes that ESF pilots are pissed about are happening SOLELY because the devs realized how inaccessible the air game is and are doing the only thing they can, because recreating an entire flight model is just not a good use of their time.

Hey guys, Kahman from Cobalt.

Actually, this change of meta would be welcome.

Yeah, there are some really good pilots flying up here. That's great. And, I assure you, you'll still be great pilots.
But, this is a video game, not a 1v1 duel-style-hardcore-ilovehonour-naruto video game.

Many pilots worship the idea of 1v1 ==> stop this ********. You are in a faction : clear the skies for **** sake. You have allies on the ground whoneed some cover and who need to not be farmed by banshees, ppa, airhammers or libs.

The new meta will encourage gank squads. Yes. But I'll rectify something : THE NEW META WILL ENCOURAGE SQUADRONS.

Stop flying solo. Gather some pilots from your outfits, gather some friends. Start flying together and start making some real tactical flights and air combats.

This meta change will allow me to train my outfit pilots and to have a chance to get their place in Cobalt's air space.

Remember 2012, remember early 2013 : you could see air zergs.
Now, look at 2016.

Bring life back to air, and make some teamfights.
Planetside 2 is not a video game for lonewolves. It's a videogame that emphasizes the idea of teamplay, of massive teamplay. Deal with it.

You didn't have to do that previously either, lockon distance and all that stuff is still the same.

It does help new players, situational awareness is one of the things new players lack because they haven't memorised engine or weapon sounds and sometimes are unable to determine if a distant aircraft is friendly. The radar wasn't buffed or anything, it's still the same. Is it very good and everyone was using it before? No. It's useless to good players with good awareness but good for new players, making it free and default was a very good choice imo. Not sure why you're so upset about this, i guess it will be harder for you to farm new players now.

How does giving new players better awareness encourage "gank squads"? Sorry to have to break the news to you, this isn't a 1v1 duel simulator but a team game.

i dont know about the coyote sure its a lock on weapon and it doesnt really require any skill but it was mainly been implemented for the new guys and so for the default radar,because a newbie doesnt stand a chance against a pro pilot that knows how to move.

In infantry it doesnt really matter you will respawn but planes cost resources and giving them a chance to fight is FAIR,plus a pro pilot can just use his skills to avoid them even with radar so DEAL WITH IT AND STOP CRYING

Also i doubt that any of you guys would like to find a new game and be like oooo there are planes?! i LOVE PLANES LETS PULL ONE and then be shot out of the sky by the veteran pilots before you can even realise where you got shot from

What you just described is exactly the experience I had when I first started flying. Only the difference was that I knew I was bad, and didn't blame the game or the flight controls for being "broken".

Seriously, these are fighter jets from the future, what did you expect? Bunnies and sunshine? Noone is flying Hello Kitty blimps around blowing kisses at each other (although this is a good idea for another game entirely)

However, as I said in a previous post, it is true that there needs to be an actual tutorial about flying in Planetside 2. None of the current materials even comes close to being adequate.

THIS. SO MUCH THIS. Thank you for posting.

The flight controls are not broken. They perform as intended. The mechanics of flight just suck. You can make a sculpture out of horse crap and it is still horse crap.

Nobody is saying that hopping into a plane for the first time should mean you are the Red Baron. Everyone sucks at the beginning. The problem is that the process of going from suck to pro is stupid because the flight model is stupid. Dude, you're playing an online game. Do you really think that none of the players of this particular combat game ever played a dogfight game before? The reason the skies have so few planes in them is that the flight model sucks.

sure a tutorial but do you really beliebe that a tutorial can get you ready for what you are about to face in the real action? not 1 in a million i talk from 3 years expirience.

To be honest i am glad they placed the guide

Coyottes are still the same. Same damage, same lock radius, it's just that they are not affected by stealth anymore.

No reason to cry. SPECIALLY FROM TR WITH STRIKER, USING THE EXACT SAME MECHANICS !!!

They got a considerable buff to their projectile speed. ATM they are virtually impossible to dodge, whereas before you still had a chance if you were quick enough. Basically before if you could hit a liberator size target you could hit your coyotes, whereas now it's more like hitting a galaxy. Or a fleet of galaxies. etc.

What like almost all TR weapons? Oh look my crazy RPM spam means the probability of me hitting the target is greatly increased along with my percentage of getting that headshot, I won't even go into the Prowler lockdown gatekeeper 400m+ away ********

The gatekeeper is the only effective AI,AA and AP weapon in the game

Having played for an hour today to test the new stuff out I came to these limited conclusions.

I think the radar is pretty fine to be honest. I had no trouble sneaking up on other ESFs with stealth, which is what you should all be using since this patch because being highlighted 600m is just too risky to take anything else, but I don't feel salty or anything when another stealth aircraft jumps me. Feels pretty nifty to be able to see the libs and galaxy and A2G ESF on the radar.

Lolyotes are OP now. There's no doubt about that. It's a combination of velocity, reload speed and rate of fire. I'd recommend making the reload speed much longer than it is now, or reduce it's rate of fire. It's such a burst cannon now, and you can use it multiple times in dogfights or just chasing something. Stealth should also go back to negating them.