Balance aircraft around FUN CONTROLS

Rather than trying to balance aircraft by making them as irritating as possible (And thus only making them usable by the most masochistic of players) Try designing the controls to be fun and intuitive and easy to figure out. AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, would be easy and enjoyable to use, but hard to master.

Here's a setup that would work well for fighters especially:
WASD will sidestrafe in all 4 directions with equal force
R and F will thrust forward and backward
Q and E will roll left and right
Mouse will aim up/down/left/right with equal turn rates, with constant turning when held at the edges of the screen.
Weapons of all types will have VERY SLOW PROJECTILE VELOCITY, and be VERY easy to see the tracers for.

This will make it enjoyable to evade shots, both by aircraft and troops or vehicles on the ground.
This will make it require skill to lead shots well, but also still very usable by mediocre players if they close distance or install a lead indicator system at the cost of having another module.

How many times must I hear in platoon chat "We need air, pull air!" "Ugh, I ******* hate flight controls though"

http://i.imgur.com/309rg8s.jpg

"Technical limitations"
That has to be the funniest **** I've ever read.

Honestly a great first step towards ease of use would be equalizing pitch and yaw and letting the mouse control both.

And presumably then remove all the airframes because youd not need any of them yes?

Try to understand this is a way of balancing things, like it or hate it this is what it is.

Besides, the flight mechanics to me were always very intuitive, the mouse feels like the top of a joystick, pull it left craft rolls left, pull back on it and the nose points up, push down nose points down.
Using the rudder (or tail thrusters) requires A or D, i liken this to foot pedals on an aircraft.
And i liken W and S to the thrust settings.


I think tbh the problem with the controls is theyre simply different. No1 likes change.

I pray for your sake that You don't mean to balance aircraft's capabilities by simplifying control schemes when you titled this thread.
As that doesn't balance aircraft against the ground, it just makes aircraft easier to use.
Which in turn means the A2G firepower - and lack of G2A firepower , becomes more obvious.

Edit:
That isn't to say, the controls aren't a bugger for aircraft.
They are.

What I'm saying is, balancing something around **** awful controls is a TERRIBLE IDEA!
I've played other games that did this and it alienated all but the most masochistic veterans.

Start with fun and easy to use controls, or at least challenging to use in a fun non-frustrating way, THEN balance the A2G/A2A/G2A around that... not the other way around.

Right now, most people would rather pull a Skyguard or Burster than deal with the cancer that is ESF controls

Not to dilute the point but:
Skyguards and Bursters are Ground-based AA - The Skyguard is an AA tank.
It should be the best for defending an area from aircraft one would think... or hope.

After all, we aren't all Pilots.

We have our differences on this game, man, but here we are very much in line.

Putting equal pitch and yaw on mouse movement is just rediculous.
The mouse works perfectly fine as a joystick.

Actually it is easily a technical limitation. Switching stuff like that around can be easy or nigh impossible depending on the game engine. It could very well be that to change the aircraft controls they would have to touch things that could affect the movement of infantry and tanks as well and have far-reaching consequences for other things. Considering the problems it causes and how many different developers have said it was impossible I believe that it's true.

Looking at other games, it's not dodging slow shots that makes it interesting. On the contrary, it's dodging the aim of your opponent and dodging missiles that's the fun part. Slow shots would force people into CQC hover combat even more than it already does. That's not a good thing.
Also making it require skill to lead shots and then adding a lead indicator system? Really? You require more skill with the current system to lead.

What the air-game needs, considering that redoing the current controls is out of the question, is a change to how nimble and capable aircraft are when cruising. During hover fight and the RM you already have enough speed and angular velocity to get out of your opponents crosshair and avoid him closing the distance during the maneuver. Maneuvers during cruising don't offer that, but could get it. For example with an omnidirectional afterburner or heavily improved agility while going at speeds. That would make flying more intuitive. In the early days learning to fly was just as difficult, but the A2A aspect wasn't as Naturally such improved capabilities would make them more powerful against the ground as well, meaning we would need better G2A as well. But that last is what we need anyway.

As much as a complete overhaul of the controlls could help the airgame it's simply not going to happen.

First off, it's not just about coming up with a new flight model that's fun to use on pc, it also has to translate well to controllers.
Just remember what happened the last time they tried that.
(or are we ignoring the whole console thing?)

Then there is the issue of the quirky nature of flying in ps2.
Let's be honest, compared to what else is out there planetside 2 has a sad excuse of a flight model that never offered what other games did or came even close.

BUT it was just screwed up enough to make it iconic and stand out that way.
You can't just rework the controlls, it still has to feel like it did to at least some extend and you have to do it with the same engine.
An engine that after god knows how many years still can't even handle landing your aircraft on a very minor bump. (or are bouncy castle esfs finaly cannon?)

Then there is the issue of resource allocation to satisfy the wishes of what basically is only a very tiny fraction of the playerbase.
Many people just aren't interested in flying ... shocker i know, but the main selling point of the game always have been the huge infantry battles.
Flying never was a priority resource wise ... hell we still have bugs from the very first days of the beta like the disapearing cockpit hud or the fun times where the landing gear doesn't retract.

Then there are the secondary effects of such changes.
While i would love to see a reworked flight model with new intuitive controlls such changes would have a huge impact on all of the weapons aircrafts can use and at the same time potential changes to the way aircraft behave will most certainly have an effect on all of the g2a weapons too.

It's not like that stuff doesn't desperatly need some love anyways, but the scope of the changes just drastically increased.

And finaly it's also about monetisation.
All those changes would cost quite a lot of manpower and almost certainly requires to hire new people with the necessary skills and yet it will not directly bring in any money.


We currently have a barebones dev team that even has to buy their money makers like skins and weapons as package deals from the playerstudio community (cause who can afford to keep artists on a payroll i quess).

So yeah, i would not hold my breath.
The game simply simply is at a stage where only a huge influx of players and money would allow for any of the plenty huge overhauls that are needed to get started.
But at the same time the lack of such inovation is what will keep driving it closer and closer to it's death ... it's a bad situation but one i think we all have seen before and one that most likley won't end well this time either.

It's like 2 changes they could make for an immediate improvement:
1. Allow mouse yaw
2. Make yaw strength equal to pitch strength

Suddenly everyone will be able to aim their ******* nose guns. Amazing!

No. You want to make it like you are aiming a hand gun. Rediculous! I'll tell you exactly what will happen then.

If you think getting ***** in air duels is bad now, and you think this will improve your aim and chances in air, you are in for a surprise.... a big one.

Why? Because, even the airgods tap-adjust their yaw in combat. Remove this and they will just completely facemelt you before you even find your Hoover stability and identify your targets vector and direction. Cause they have this worked into their muscle memory so extremely well. Aim isn't just about being able to fire at target, it's also about movement and vector identification, and constant leading of those movements plus range identification and drop calculation.
Also, if they don't kill you at range, they will get up close and personal and boostmanouver faster than you can yaw or pitch, and just oneclip you in 2 seconds.

You are using your controls wrong, yaw isn't for massive movements, it's for tiny adjustments.

Everything you mentioned about how much more badass the good pilots will be just highlights all the problems with air.

Vector identification, leading, drop compensation... these are all things that you can practice and get better at.
Boost manouvers are just an exploit of **** physics, plain and simple. Fix it.
One clip a target? Oops, sounds like they forgot to balance A2A combat!

Well he isn't exactly wrong tough.

Sure you can learn to lead, but then again that's an area where new pilots will always play catch-up.
Ofc new controll mechanics could also mean that even the best pilot will have to relearn some stuff ... so who knows. (just kidding it won't change anything ... see below)

The problem tough is that a2a weapons are precision tools (compared to the a2g variants) and no matter how much you change the controlls that still is a problem.

You don't just have to learn to read your opponents moves and speed (which takes ages) but also take your own manouvers into account.
And that means you have to practise the whole thing over and over again ... which isn't a big deal if it weren't for the fact that we don't have any usefull learning tools avaliable.
So no matter how much you change stuff you always will have to master what you are doing by going out there and get your face stomped in over and over.

Meaning you might even manage (altough i doubt it) to level the playing field but after a month or two you are right back at where we are now.


GREAT


I am going to assume with the whole boost being an exploit you mean the reverse manouver stuff?
Well good luck getting rid of that ... you would take the only interesting and unique part of ps2s flight model and end up with a very stale and still badly implemented kinda meh thing that i doubt a lot of people will ever find interesting.

Maybe for a new aircraft but like i said before not likley to happen.



Also getting oneclipped only happens to people you can sneak up on and that don't know how to react to incoming fire (usually the majority of people that only do a2g [tunnel vision and lack of experience])




Honestly what would help the most would be some better learning tools ... some improved version of the vr stage, maybe even instanced scenarios that people can load up for them (simple stuff, like targets that hover around or move and maybe even instructional stuff that people usually only can learn by trying to mimic youtube videos)


The difference between a skyknight and a new pilot btw is not that much (on paper)
I have played ps2 on and off for years and always had to relearn the whole flying and aiming part ... and thanks to recursion stat tracker i have a pretty good idea of what it takes.

<10% that's the innitial OH **** A TREE stage ... you can't hit anything and realy the time is better spent flying circles or doing a2g stuff.

Basically once i get the whole flying thing back under controll i usually end up with a 20% hit rate after the first week or two of dedicated flying.
At this point you will get your sh*t kicked in by anyone who is an experienced a2a pilot but you might actually kill someone if you sneak up on them.

21-22% you still will lose against a lot of people but you won't die as fast and there are actually people you can reliably win against.

22-24% basically this is where most people plateau for a while ... you ll be able to actually enjoy the whole a2a thing at this point and manage to at least be a fun fight for anyone you meet bar the top 1%

24-26% honestly that's all it takes. You ll win most fights/or at least stand a decent chance and the people that can still kill you with ease get fewer and fewer to a point where you probably know them all by name at this point. (yeah there aren't exactly a lot of people doing a2a stuff)


Seriously it's not even a 5% accuracy difference for the most part between most pilots.
The only issue is that it's extremly rough and time consuming to get the experience needed to improve even by that much.



Tl;dr.:
The flight controlls might be bad ... but people that get scared by that have 0 chance to even handle the rest of the bs the game throws at you.

Flying will always require a lot of regular practise and right now that's the one part that is even tougher to gain than overcoming the whole control issue.

What's realy needed is a way to help practise in an environment where new pilots don't end up out of nanites after 3 minutes of playtime.
Basically a set of vr scenarios that not only teach but also score and help you keep track of your progress.

I guess I should say that trying to even the playing field will only result in making the air fights feel cheap and no-skilled (Remember all the lock-on salt?) so let's just assume that no matter what we do, good players are always going to kick a new players ***.

There's nothing wrong with that, but if it's going to be the case, then at least give us controls that are pleasant to use, radar that gives us 3D situational awareness, and a lead indicator module that can be swapped with stealth or scanners to assist new players (but once you're good enough you'll want to take a more useful module instead)

3d radar, hell yes please but from the guys who just barely managed to change indicator icons on the map after years of work ... uhh hard pass.

Also i know you mean well but a lead indicator module offers no choice.
EVERYONE and i mean everyone will use it.

See my post above, even great pilots will most likley hover at less than 30% hit accuracy with most noseguns.
Now take a game that has reliable lead indicators like warthunders arcade mode ... 30% hit rate is abysmal for such a game.

So there wouldn't be any swapping trust me on that


I like that you are actually putting quite a bit of thought in this mess of a subject, but sadly it's a very complex problem that i just don't think can be fixed with the game being what it is right now.

But hey maybe i am just salty

Alright, maybe not a lead indicator module on ESFs... What about a lead indicator uplink on Galaxies?
A wing of newbie fighters with a Galaxy target tracking uplink would be a force to be reckoned with

Use the valk as platform and yeah you might actually be onto something.
One of the best things a new pilot can do in this game after all is to build relationships with other pilots (as in team up, chat, ask questions).

Plus the valk kinda needs something ... so why not go for the support/commandship route.
And it's fast enough to even stand a chance to keep up with a more or less organised group of esfs without forcing them to slow down to much.


It might still be to strong for the noseguns we have but one could maybe work around that either with a dedicated weapon system or maybe requiring the valk gunner/or maybe 2 of the rumble seats to "target paint" for the other esfs in it's squad.

While doing that, can G2A get some toys to compete with new aircraft systems that would enable any aircraft to easily pick targets & devastate before any retaliation is possible?

As anything that makes it simpler is nice & all, but don't forget you have the best set of force multipliers there: Aircraft.

I thought about that, since the Valk is kind of left out.
Yeah I really like the idea of having a gunner fire a kind of target painter that highlights an enemy and gives everyone in range of it a lead indicator. The one being marked could be alerted so they can take the hint and get the **** out of the airspace, or try approaching from a flank.

I was thinking that A2G should just be toned down a bit, but it still needs to have enough impact to deserve pulling AA or requesting air support to try and secure the air. If air cant have any tangible impact on ground, what role does it serve?

As it is, air is really only effective when armor is going between bases, but otherwise are just eating flak if they go after a base directly.