BRING BACK THERMALS!

1. That looks like a wall 0 text.
2. Why should everything be able to kill everything?
3. I can kill ESFs 1v1 in one shot, saying can kill does not mean it is absolute.
4. A lot and I mean ALOT of people don't know how AA works. You don't just open fire at max range, or not lead your target expect hits and call it bad. Who exactly pulls AA except people who don't fly?
5. Just get 3 dudes with AA lock ons and put a beacon outside of a fight, you'd be surprised how easy it is to kill ESFs like this.
6. If A2G only farms small fights, isn't that more a scaling issue than it is an air OP? I mean they are often completely locked out of big fights, why is that?
7. A2A IS a high skill, time investment practice, why should low skill counter high skill investment in learning to fly? That also makes no bloody sense.

This really sounds like you're still salty about air killing you, you being unable to counter them and devs give you justice in the form of a nerf that infantry also whined for. Don't worry bae, I'll A2G you. <3

1. You ain't seen nuthin'..... when I'm up to 13-15 paragraphs, with multiple sections of bullet points, THEN it's a wall 'o text! Even this post is likely to turn into something approaching one as I demonstrate, in detail, why you're wrong and full of ****.

2. This is Planetside 2 - it's a game. It's designed to be fun, not realistic. It is not "fun" to be killed by something over and over again, when you've got no counter to it. Besides... everything can kill everything with the proper skills/loudout..... with the exception of air. Air can kill everything. Infantry can kill infantry and tanks, but not air. Tanks can kill infantry and tanks, but not air. What the **** makes you lot so special, huh? You still haven't answered that.....

3. If you're doing it HA, you're a liar. Or the ESF was already damaged or (more likely) dumb as pig**** - either way, doesn't count. If you're doing it MAX, you're a liar. If you're doing it as Skyguard, you're a double-liar. Hell, even if you're doing it as A2A ESF, you're probably a liar. The ONLY time this happens reliably with with MBT main guns (where VS are kinda nerfed already) and dumb-fire RL's and even then, either you got lucky or (once again) the dead ESF was dumb as pig****.

4. I don't fly, so I pull AA a bunch and you know what? I think I've got a pretty good idea how it works. I don't (usually) stand just outside the spawn-room. I try to use appropriate camo's and find nice hidey places when possible. I don't blaze away at max range. I wait for my target to get (reasonably) close and slow down to commit to an attack run before opening fire. I lead my targets and generate a reasonable amount of hits. And despite all that, I still get WAY more deaths to ESF's while doing AA than I do kills. Even the "deterrence" is both fleeting and temporary (assuming the pilot doesn't just gib me - any vaguely competent A2G ESF knows that a single lock-on is no threat and will simply tank the damage, watch the rocket trail, gib me with lolpods then go repair.). On top of that it's straight up boring - especially when you don't know if he's repairing and coming back or has ****** off to another base leaving you standing there watching empty skies like a moron. And don't even get me started on Liberators who'll just fly in, face tank three skyguards, insta-gib one each run with CAS/Dalton then wander off to repair at or around half health.

5. If you do that you MIGHT kill an ESF. If he's stupid and doesn't take cover when he sees 3+ lockons. But it's not three guys. It's at least four, because without an engy to keep you resupplied, you're gonna run out real fast and, without a decent AA option, the Engy is useless as crap except for providing ammo. And even then, there's nothing to stop the air dude from just moving to another fight for a few minutes leaving you there wasting 4 dudes time (compared to the single ESF dude who's just farming elsewhere, not bothered in the slightest), wasting your setup time, wasting more time when you eventually get bored waiting and redeploy to the fight, and then the ****** comes back! and you have to do it all over again. That is ******** game-design.

6. Yes, it's a scaling issue, but only because G2A doesn't have any killy potential against air. And don't give me "locked out of big fights". I see plenty of battle-gals and liberators face-tanking whatever AA is around. Sure, they have to repair more often, but it's not like they're in any danger unless they get really unlucky or really stupid. Even moderately competent A2G ESF's can pop over a hill, spam lol-pods for a kill or two and duck back down without too much risk. I seldom see big fights where there's a bunch of AA just sitting around waiting for a lone-ESF to turn up. And if that's the case, know what, you deserve to be locked out, because multiple people are doing nothing but sit around picking their noses in case a threat appears, while contributing nothing else to the ongoing battle. In addition, I seldom see any big battle without at least some air hanging around. So your argument is bogus. Again. Hope you're used to that, because I'm not done.

7. I made no argument that A2A wasn't a skilled profession that should be rewarded. Nor did I suggest that low-skill A2A should be particularly viable. In addition, it's extremely uncommon for G2A to particularly interfere with A2A except in large fights, and in those cases it's the responsibility of the A2A pilot's allies to suppress the G2A. All I said is that, in almost all cases, A2A pilots are going to be found in or around large fights where there is most likely to be other air stuff to shoot down. That means that A2G farmers are perfectly safe to farm non-96+ fights almost at will, simply because the non-A2A AA options are complete crap.

And don't give me that crap about A2G being "skillz". I've tried it. It's not. Sure, I'm not as good as a proper pilot. I can't circle-strafe around a target, dealing unstoppable death from above, getting dozens of kills a minute or whatever. And if a proper A2A skyknight shows up I may as well just hover in place and wait for death. But nothing stops me making strafing runs, getting 0-1 kills, repairing, doing it again, moving on to another base if they pull any AA, etc. etc. and ending up with a 5+ K/D (which is good for me!). It's just not fun, and I feel like a complete ****** doing it, and I can't stop the feeling that I'm driving badly needed new players away from the game, so I don't do it. Eventually, when Aircraft are like the only thing I haven't fully certed and auraxiumed etc. I'll probably go back to them, but even then I'mma start with the Galaxy and the Valk, and I'll STILL feel bad about Libs and ESF's.

you know I do kinda have brief moments where I feel for the plight of esf pilots, but my undying hatred for how stupidly strong liberators and galaxies are quickly stops that sensation and replaces it with pure rage. Thermals should stay dead, there was never a reason for them to be in the game in the first place.

I think the thermals needed some balancing and are better now, but it does feel as though the change is wholesale and i think they should refund certs for those who bought the scope based on its original design, as they are no longer useful. Depending on the situation air could be a big factor on a battle especially if ignored. Options exist to pull counters to air threats. Heavy infantry could quite effectively deal with any vehicles particularly air, with lockons and dumbfires. Other classes are less effective but still potentially can do some damage with the archer and recently added rocket rifles. Skilled heavies can dumbfire esfs or hit them with AP rounds. AA Max units, rangers and skyguards all deter air and can finish them if damaged. It seems that everyone on the ground wants air to just explode the moment they set eyes on it. Every vehicle except maybe a flash has some form of anti air weaponry. Yes aircraft can fly away and repair but that is risky if other pilots are around who can track them and destroy them while they are grounded. Air seems to have been nerfed alot lately and is more useful for those doing repair directives than actually getting kills. Air has also had reduced splash radius and damage for a while. I think the re introduction of some sort of thermal imaging with a different range would be a good idea seems like the community already knows what would make the game better? Reducing some weapons effectiveness against air may be an answer, two lockons seems harsh for an esf given its inability to see where the threat is. For those saying flight is too fast for thermals, ESF's can hover more akin to helicopters which are equipped with thermal imaging and in real scenarios have a major impact on the battlefield. Seems as though daybreak is dumbing down the game. Perhaps if they gave air the ability to change loadouts in the same way as maxes or infantry can this would seem fairer?

You know, in 2014 when air was even more OP than now I was also on the forums writing about how bad the G2A was and how far superior any aircraft weapon was.
Rocketpods that could set an MBT to burning with top-shots? check.
Noseguns that could deal almost as much damage per magazine as current rocketpods? check
Daltons that used the C4 explosion (not damage)? Check
Zephyrs that were better AT weapons than an anchored Prowler? Check.

That said, just because they've been nerfed doesn't mean that the G2A is suddenly OK, or that the A2G is suddenly OK. If something is three times as powerful as it's supposed to be and you bring it back to 1,5 times as powerful as it should be it looks like a huuuuuuge nerf, but in reality it's still 50% more powerful than it's supposed to be.
Ofcourse, rather than admitting something like that you have to take a few shots at me.

Which is pure and complete bullcrap.
Air has been nerfed, and justified. All you see "but tha nerf!", but you don't recognize what good gameplay or balance is, and if you did you would realize that the A2G vs G2A game is still horrendously skewed.

As for your "there's a variety of G2A answers".
There's a variety of pistols available, and pistols can hurt Harassers! So pistols are the answer to Harassers! Really!
If you realize how stupid the above sentence is, and I really hope you do, then you should realize how skewed the G2A game is as well.
Here's the list of reasons why G2A is bad:

• Aircraft are the lowest used in the game (due to the horrible way the A2A system favors a small group of players and makes it impossible for the average player to join it). This means there's the least targets to pursue
• If you do attack an aircraft, it's 100% up to the pilot if you kill him or not. You can have 50 times more skill and aim than your pilot opponent, if the opponent just reacts properly (and you don't need a lot of skill for that) he'll have a guaranteed escape.
• You can kill enemies by stacking multiple G2A forces, this doesn't guarantee a kill and you are now sharing kills even though you are attacking the lowest populated group in the game.
• If you've deterred or killed an enemy, there's no guarantee when the next enemy will arrive. While infantry are guaranteed and even vehicles will be present in nearly every single battle, aircraft may stay away for hours, or the next one may arrive in the next second. You don't know and there's no way to find out.
• G2A is overall weak against anything else than air. Meaning that G2A becomes useless when aircraft aren't around. This means that G2A is never pulled pre-emptively since you are basically nerfing yourself for something that might not happen for an hour. It also means that you are a really wanted target for anyone to engage.

Yes, and still these children get their way and keep their powerful aircraft.

You know what the difference is between you and me child? I use reasons, I back my arguments. All you do is scream "but 80% sit in hexes while the next base needs reinforcements! These guys are bots!". This is not only wrong, it's not even an argument. Especially considering that farming aircraft often don't even bother to know if their actions really do something or if they are just farming.

This isn't CoD, and it's not becoming CoD. The fact that you think it gets closer to CoD already shows your inadequacies.
But how about this, you make a list of all the things that make CoD what it is, and then list all the changes that make Planetside 2 more like CoD than it was at launch. That way you could man up and actually prove your theory, rather than spout complete and utter nonsense.

Have you ever wondered why this is? All you've done probably is see the statistic and say "see! Infantry farm infantry!"
Which is bullcrap.
There's plenty of reasons why vehicles score less infantry kills. For one, infantry avoids vehicles like the plague because infantry can't really go up against tanks. You have a choice: Engage another infantryman where you have a (relatively) 50/50 chance of winning, or you engage a tank where you have a teeny tiny chance of winning, and that's very dependent on the class you picked. 95% of the players will choose to attack the other infantryguy, because they want to have that satisfaction of a win rather than the dissatisfaction of trying to engage a vehicle over and over again with little chance of actually killing it.
Additionally bases are designed to segregate infantry and vehicles, because infantry can't stand up against tanks. So for the big battles around the points it's mostly infantry fighting infantry. This increases the amount of kills for infantry, but that doesn't mean that tanks are suddenly weaker.
Add to that the fact that when infantry engages vehicles, the fights take longer than infantry fights. With infantry vs infantry most fights are done under 2 seconds. With infantry vs tanks the infantry will constantly be hugging cover, a single miss of a tank often increases the TTK above those 2 seconds. And when finally either the infantry or tank dies (with a high chance that the tank will simply drive out of effective range or into cover for repairs) it has taken such a long time that vehicles can't possibly keep up with the infantry kills.
"But what about farming vehicles, those kill infantry by droves!"
Yes exactly, that's the power of vehicles. However consider this: At a 96+ fight you might find up to 20 vehicles, in the meantime there's 76+ infantry running around shooting each other, respawning and doing it over again. This means that vehicles simply kill slower because of a lack of vehicles being present, as well as the longer fights required to actually get an infantry kill for most of the vehicles present.

Because vets are so omgleetskilled that they need thermals, but the newscrubs don't need it so the newscrubs are at an advantage...?
Come off it you moron and go QQmore. Seriously, if you needed thermals to begin with you didn't deserve the kills.

Wow, that's a lot of text, I have actual things to do so I'll be brief.

1. Air has been nerfed more than anything. Game is failing, coincidence? Maybe

2. Go fly an ESF and see how fun it is being locked onto as soon as you hit an enemy hex. And if there is flak don't even bother, just crash and pull a harasser (the esf replacement). Getting kills in an ESF is HARDER than getting kills as a HA on infantry.

3. Roughly 5% or less of your forces can be dedicated to AA at any given time and virtually shut down 100% of air attacks effectiveness in a given hex. Lock-ons have the benefit of being scrub proof as well. Remember the Stryker when it was released and the TR owned the air? This is a far smaller number of total forces to combat a threat than say what it might take to take down an armoured assault.

4. The bots in this game are horrible and deserve to be farmed. That doesn't need backing up, git gud, children don't spend money on f2p games (thats why they are playing f2p duh)

5. You say infantry can't go up against tanks and yet literally every time I pull a tank i'm primarily dealing with infantry sprinting as fast as they can in droves to c4 me. This isn't my fault they are suicidal lemmings, that's just Planetside and the bots that play it.

6. Anyway I don't NEED thermals, I wanted them so I purchased them. Now the devs have taken that away with little reason or need, this annoys me so I voice why I no longer finacially support this game. Bad development.

7.Seriously Demigan, go try and get kills in an ESF all night one night with rocketpods on Indar during primetime and tell us how many you get. I bet I can beat whatever you can come up with with just a knife. ESFs are pointless, they do tickle damage to everything except other ESFs and infantry and have very little health.

Mate fly a ESF with libs aronde who use daltons you find out soon why most ESF pilots hate libs just as much as ground troops

1. rood, but whatever.

2. Again, why should everything have a counter everywhere? That simply makes tanks less tanks and more resource pool. It's no fun being killed as infantry with infantry weapons if I main infantry right? So where's my counter
Tanks shouldn't be insta-gibbed by C4, if you take that into account, tanks are suddenly harder to counter, kinda like air?
Air is actually in a better spot than tanks are, being able to avoid their antis with the drawback of their antis being able to take off half their health in less than a second. Air isn't special, you're just not seeing it.

3. PFFFFTTTT. It's called a decimator and this skill called "aim". Thing is, aim is a lot more than pointing gun at target and shooting, it's also leading, predicting which way the target would go, I'll tell you right now, 10k vehicle kills, not more than 20 were c4. (which is funny considering I use C4 for infantry) it really is not hard to kill an ESF that bugs ya.


4. a. If you don't fly then you don't know what it's like to fly, don't tell me you get how it works simply from watching an esf move backwards.
b. If you think ESF pilots shrug off a lock like it's nothing then you're also wrong.
c. Just fly, you will get a much better understanding of how an ESF moves and how to counter it.

5. No, the pilots that saw 3 locks often think it's a swarm and take a different flight path that's terrible for dodging regular AA lockons. It's because the event is so ******* rare is the reason they die, isn't that stupid?

6. K, big ships can contribute to big fights, ESFs do only to little fights.
Again, 3 dudes can lock and killem, one dude with good aim can kill one, one guy in a skyguard keeps it out, etc.
Maybe you should fly and see how it is on the other end.

7. This seems really confusing then.
You're saying that because A2A is always found in big fights, where A2G esfs are locked out of, A2A esfs will never encounter the small fights where there are plenty of G2A esfs? How the **** do you think air works? AA ESFs scan multiple hexes at ******* once, they look for and destroy A2G ESFs because it's not the entire map they have to scan, it's the front line, that's all they have to look for because as soon as they're done killing the ESFs in one area, they move on for something ELSE they can kill, being specialized in A2A you'd think that you wouldn't wait around for the next dalton lib and actually go out and kill the ****ters. And another thing, you can't always just counter G2A, you just said you can sit in the spawn and shoot out, locks go 450 meters LOCKING DISTANCE, that's not even how far the missile travels (fun fact, about 1.2k meters or at least from eyeballing it).

Know what? Forget it, it's obvious you think from touching it once, you know everything about how it all works together, guess I'll just play paladins for 2 seconds and ****post on how barrik is op, maybe say the flareguns and magscatter is OP too, in fact I'm gonna trial the serpent and say it's bad from my limited 30 minute interaction.

1. Clearly your grasp of cause-effect and logic are extremely poor. The game is failing for lots of reasons and I very much doubt air nerfs are among them. After all, air players are a tiny proportion of the total playerbase, so even if they removed it (which would be bad!) the playerbase wouldn't change much. Far more likely causes of failing game is: 1) lack of meaningful long-term goals and metagame, 2) lack of depth / shallow gameplay leading to repetitive grindy borefests, 3) already niche game with high barriers to entry reducing player acquisition and retention. Oh, and 4) invulnerable air****ters screwing over starting players who have absolutely no way to respond or counter them.

2. As noted in my post, I have. I'm bad at it. I don't even bother to aim at a target most of the time. I just spam lolpods / LPPA in the vague direction of the spawn as I zoom past and hope for the best. And I can still end up with like a 5+ K/D and reasonable KPH which is just bloody bonkers. An actual pilot who CAN aim is generally a nigh-invulnerable skygod, so don't give me that ********.

3. As noted repeatedly, all over the place, G2A is both exclusive and inferior to other options. As such, it will ONLY be pulled in response to air, at which point it still can't even kill the air, just "deter" it. The air, which is extremely mobile, just moves off to another fight, unbothered, leaving the G2A with nothing to do. Face it, the base relationship is broken. Or sthu. I don't care, either will do.

4. I'm not even going to respond to this point, because the attitude on display is downright disgusting. You should be ashamed of yourself.

5. If you bothered to read the post, I said that infantry can and does go against tanks. And when it doesn't go about it like a moron, it can actually WIN *shock-horror*!. What it can't go up against is air. As usual. Because airscrubs are "special snowflakes" that aren't allowed to get shot at and definitely aren't allowed to actually DIE to those filthy, ground-dwelling peasants.

6. That is the dumbest reason ever not to support the game. It clearly hasn't bothered you that much or you wouldn't be playing any more and hanging around the forums crying that your ez-mode-farm got nerfed. Besides... you had them for ages and they well justified the cost, returning many MANY times over the certs that you invested in them. And you know what.... even then, I'm not opposed to the idea of a refund - it's not what you bought, and you don't want it any more. I'm fine with that, because I'm clearly a bigger man than you. If they fixed the A2G-G2A relationship, I wouldn't even mind if old-thermals were put straight back into the game, that's how big I am!

7. I have, it's easy. I'll probably get more kills on the ground too, even with a knife - I'll also accrue a lot more deaths along the way - and I won't upset nearly as many people because they've at least got a chance of fighting back. So take your lame-*** strawman argument, set it on fire, and shove it up your ***.

No, I never said other weapons are not capable, I just said ranger buff helped the overall balance.
The other weapons aren't crap hence your metaphor is invalid.

Yeah so how exactly is that helped by nerfing them all?

Yes this is a problem, but again, how is this helped by nerfing air?

Ok I'm not bothering with the rest of your river of tears, because this alone proves how off you are.
The walls weren't always there, in the beta and for quite some time after release, many bases were open to vehicles and you could actually capture points from inside of them, put sunderers anywhere, etc. This was clearly a mistake and fixing it one of the few things SOE did well. Now you think you could do it better? No. Just no.

No amount of "utility AV" or other "balanced" crap can fix the inherent disbalance ensuing if you took away the best weapon from infantry - being able to hide in buildings.

1. Huh?

2. Because everything DOES have a counter everywhere, except air. And don't make stupid arguments about infantry not having a counter to infantry... every infantryman has a counter to other infantry. It's called a gun. Wake up. And yes, tanks should be killed by C4 - know why? Because this is a game, not reality. If you're a solo tank, it's your responsibility to watch for dudes sneaking up on you. And if you don't, it's your fault. And if you aren't solo, your allies and your team's infantrymen should be killing C4-jihadi's because watching your flanks is their job. And even when you yourself list the special qualities of air, you then go on to say that they're not special. Umm... I never asked this before, and I probably should.... are you "special"?

3. If your ESF is getting repeatedly shot down by dumb-fired decimators, UR DOIN IT RONG! The one-and-only time I have ever been shot down by a dumbfire was when I decided I was an awesome skyknight (I'm not) and hovered above a base spamming my lolpods. It was dumb, and I got punished for it. I didn't do it again. Clearly, you haven't learned the same lesson. Moving on, I dunno about you, but I get plenty of ground vehicle kills with C4, even running solo. It's not hard, lotsa silly people out there, you should try it. But wait... oh look... almost never an air vehicle. What a surprise.

4. I have, I'm bad at it, and I still got plenty of kills doing it. Sure, if I was good I'd have gotten more kills, and I'd have done it faster, but fact remains A2G is a low-skill, low-risk, high-reward game for ***-hats.

5. Soo.... in summary you're saying that the pilot made a mistake and, because all pilots are clearly superior beings, they shouldn't get punished for it? Huh. Clearly I've been wrong about my gameplay assumption that getting killed was most likely my fault all these years. Who knew!

6 & 7. Again, I have. Wasn't hard. Was fairly rewarding. Felt like a ******-bag. The rest of your argument was complete bollocks, but at this point I'm provisionally convinced that you are "special" so I'm not going to waste any more time reiterating the same points that you seem to be overlooking. I somehow doubt you have the capacity to look outside your own, teeny-tiny universe centred on you.

Good day to you, sir.

1. Still rood.

2. Because this ISN'T reality, we toss balance out the window eh? And why shouldn't you be watching out, keeping an eye out for sneaky ESFs eh? Plus my gun doesn't kill people instantly! How can anyone say this is a good anti-infantry counter when it doesn't do it's job immediately! blarg blarg, sarcasm.

3. You assume I'm not the one shooting rockets. Hell, I thought the 11k (yey) vehicle kills told you who was shooting and who was the shootee.

4. No ****, you touched it once, killed bad players and died to a dumbfire. I could go out, play heavy, kill several bad players and then only then get countered by....what exactly? I mean playing heavy is pretty low risk, high reward as well, I got 1166 effective shields, a long range gun, a rocket launcher for insta-wins, lotta ammo so I don't run out and medkits for hp all the time. How the **** is that not bad but esfs are?

5. Pilot made the mistake of flying towards rockets he could never possibly avoid because he was not running flares, same way you died to a pilot because you run out in the open. Seems fair to me.

6-7?. k, you can feel like a dickbag, I don't mind it. I'll simply continue what I'm doing, killing air bads and killing ground bads with an AH or bannedshee or a PPA scythe

forgot to say, I play a lot of infantry and tank, and have been doing so since I started playing in 2013 (appart from a break from the game), and as an infantry, I NEVER had an issue with tanks with thermal.

Thermal also helped spot enemy vehicles, like hidden sundies, but since you can't see infantry anymore, and cant' zoom, good luck with that too

Let me be short. You have not the slightest idea what you're talking about.
That you think ESFs can 1v1 skyguards is hilarious.
It was technically possible before the nerf - by hitting 4 hornets in the REAR of the skyguard before the skyguard shoots back, which requires the skyguard to be absolutely unaware of the loud engine noise behind him. But we don't account C4 and mine kills for aircraft either, which is similarly rare.

Both infantery and vehicles are easily able to kill aircraft.
Those AA weapons are a "deterrent" because aircraft KNOWS THAT THEY WILL LOSE THE FIGHT AND DIE if they don't run.

Since they removed infantry from tank and ESF thermals the game is hardly worth playing for me now. I had just under 30,000 Air Hammer Thermal kills and 20,000 using the stock viper and thermals. You know me by SYSOP1 the mass infantry farmer. I also have 5 characters that are in the 20-30:1 KD range


Bring back Thermals.


M30 Mustang AH
B++
Kills: 29,743
V. Kills: 3,051 N/A
Deaths: 3,826
KDR: 7.774
Accuracy: 50.157% D
KPH: 62.400 B++
VKPH: 6.400 C**







C75 Viper
B**
Kills: 20,727
V. Kills: 3,699 N/A
Deaths: 1,781
KDR: 11.638
Accuracy: 34.204% C
KPH: 47.500 B**
VKPH: 8.500 B*

M30 Mustang AH categorize 32,779 29,731 3,825 7.773 B+ ↑3.97 50.159%

It actually didn't, but it did help keep the skies a bit clearer.

They are crap, I explained to you why.
Funny though, you don't give any explanation for them to be good. What reason are you going to give? "They deter their targets, they are deterrents, so they work perfectly! Not crap!"??? That's what I expect of you now. It's not that far from "there's options, so it's all good baby!", while completely disregarding that the options are crap.

Because this isn't a single problem.
On one hand you have the OP weapon systems and capabilities of aircraft. When engaged you can't dodge or try to avoid getting your face shot to pieces.
On the other hand you have the terrible state of the A2A game.
Now what you are saying is "keep players in the air-game by overpowering the A2G domain", which is completely ludicrous ofcourse. A good solution would be to make sure the aircraft aren't OP (and their counters are put in line with every single other weapon in the game: Killers that require skill to use), and to change the A2A game by adding to it. Currently the only real option is hover-fighting (HF) combined with the reverse maneuver (RM). Any movement outside of hovermode gets you killed as there are no viable maneuvers to pull off during normal flight to shake off your attacker.
By all means, keep the HF and RM capabilities, they are a staple to the PS2 air-game now, but other maneuvers need to have similar advantages. That way there will be masters at different tactics and the air-game will open up to more players. It will also allow for battles to end with one player escaping, meaning that the results of a loss don't need to be "respawn". And that's something that's unavailable in the air-game while everywhere else it's almost constantly used.

Because air needed to be nerfed regardless of the power of G2A? Because by nerfing thermals it's a bit harder for aircraft to engage ground forces, and ground forces have the teeny tiny option to actually escape the crosshair of an ESF and get out alive? It's not much, but it's an improvement to the "oh damn, and aircraft is on me, I might as well give up because I'm/my vehicle is dead unless my team happens to have enough G2A firepower, which is a stretch to be sure".

Yes, those walls weren't always there, and SOE "fixed" it by segregating the vehicles from infantry. Which was a mistake. They should have made it possible for infantry to combat vehicles and let the vehicles remain powerful against them. That doesn't mean that all buildings need to be removed, only that there need to be ways in and out and that vehicles should be able to get on top of points in most bases, or at least secure the building it's in.

Ok, where did you ever come with the idea that all the buildings would be removed? I said specifically "remove the walls so the vehicles can enter the bases". For it to be a base, it needs to have buildings. So yeah, there will be buildings.

And yes there is a ton of "balanced crap" that can be introduced to allow infantry and vehicles to go toe-to-toe. I already told you the reasons why vehicles are overpowered now (not to mention back then they had far bigger AOE explosions), and I adressed those problems.
Naturally you have to invent something to get your way. I say "remove walls" and you make "remove buildings" from it. Isn't that dandy! How about I suddenly say that you are trying to buff air with OHK superweapons instead of trying to reinstate Thermals. Would that be too obvious?

I often tell myself it's a good behavior to discuss in a very educated way because this community is already too toxic.

But I've been reading tons of b******t about thermals lately. Some players should either feel ashamed for defending something that has been obviously imbalanced for years, or they are completely ******.
There are dozens of videos proving how thermals have been used for years for the mere purpose to spot infantry from ultra long distance and then obliterate it with devastating weapons. Thermals were a straight upgrade that made a powerful weapon even better without any downside, without any possible counter and just for 200 certs. Guess why since thermals have been changed the A2G farming (one of the most hated parts of Planetside 2 since day 1) has dramatically decreased.
The fact someone in this thread says the counter to thermal was "to play other games" is probably the most stupid thing I've read since beta.

I'm not saying the new implementation of thermals is good, and there were probably better ways to balance this. But the old thermals should NEVER come back. Any pilot with a pinch of skill will manage to get some kills anyway.

I'll keep this short. From a game developer's perspective, this was a really dumb mistake switching from thermals to 'threat detection'. This significantly reduces the game's fun factor, and completely defies the entire premise of having combat 'in the future on Auraxis'. It doesn't make sense that we would have LESS targeting capability in the future than we have today. My guess is that some Dev got to make this decision that either has no willpower, bows to complaints from whiny sub-humans, or just can't play air.

Dev's that don't fly air, shouldn't touch air- its mechanics, its weapons, or its sighting capability. Also, just by glancing at a comparative analysis of the new updates it becomes apparent that Dev's have a bias against Vanu. 'No bullet drop' is not an excuse to lower weapon effectiveness by such a wide margin. Hopefully, someone will have enough common sense to fix this, and take a true and objective look at the vehicle and empire balancing systems game-wide. Also, I really hope they don't listen to players that whine about losing when they should have lost by all logical reason. This brings back memories of Planetside 1, where BFR's were instantly nerfed because players screamed "Oh no, I got killed by a big F**king robot, they shouldn't be able to do that".

=_= really people?
Conveniently naming thermals "Threat Detection" is a really transparent excuse to take out air to ground effectiveness and shut up players that speak loudly, but have no clue about game mechanics.

Something that would be more logical, in my opinion, would be a thermal shielding option for infantry. It wouldn't be such a transparent excuse and players that were complaining would finally have a thumb to suck on, while the real players could actually play effectively.

Enough said.

Reading this garbage is funny. I can pretty much always tell who plays certain aspects of the game and then the forum warriors who just talk about playing the game like they know some secret of how the game is broken and only they can fix it. LMFAO.

LaughingDead don't waste your breath. Most of these clowns are bads that couldn't figure out how to use the already in game mechanics anyway.

Let me put it out there for your analysis, ALL YOU BADS GETTING FARMED ALL DAY. I have 6x more G2A kills than I have deaths from A2G... but yeah, AA is useless and A2G is broken OP. Oh and this is without nerfs to thermals. Uh huh. Tell me more stories about how ****** a player you are then demand nerfs. It makes my day.

Half the guys on this forum need to spend as much time getting good as they do pissing and moaning about how OP whatever the last thing killed them was. The forums might actually be semi constructive.

keep thermal change, increase lock on time by 1 second for ESF, reduce flack damage for Valkyrie/liberator by 50/20%

you harass a fight till all the tanks start becoming skguards and all the maxes start becoming bursters, putting a strain on the enemy for resources, then you either take your most mobile unit in the game to another fight and repeat, which you can do now if you focused on solutions rather than whined, or you can switch to the flak resistant aircraft for sustained support.

this game isn't hard, stop acting like that changes in an ESF. Anyone with a brain knows you're full of it.