Air is not OP, the REAL reason people want to nerf air...

Air is an excellent ingredient of Planetside 2. It is aesthetically pleasing and has an important role to play in the overall game.

Right now though it is just too dominant and completely dictates the gameplay flow to everybody that doesn't fly that isn't in a Biolab.

I'm sure there will be changes soon. Hopefully most people will appreciate that the changes are necessary for the overall health of the game.

You can still have viable air in this game without it smothering everything else.

Everyone knows vehicles are broken in this game. Air, Ground, it doesn't matter. It is a precipitant of the "Free to play" model. The more stuff people have access to leads to more people buying upgrades for said stuff. Its very simple, yet short sighted. The Liberator is ridiculous on so many levels, Rocket pods are ludicrous and HE rounds are the MOST destructive thing in the game (regarding repelling player population and money for the devs).

There needs to be a more rock/paper/scissors approach to vehicles
Lightning > Infantry (HE)
Tanks > Lightning (Armor Rounds Only !)
Liberators > Tanks (Anti-Armor Only !)
Fighters > Liberators
AA Max / IAA nfrantry / Skyguards > Fighters

Right now it looks like this
ESF/Libs > ALL

its not a fight, its like you herd me, but didnt understand.
Its a mindless zergy cluster **** with lag.

If you call that a fight, all power to you.


Air farms only happen to the oblivius zerg who will not do anything about it.
Those havent got any sympathy from me, especially in this kind of game

It is, but it's great for the zerg it attracts and the ESF that comes with it.

exactly my point, and funny enough, mindless zerg presets it self like such a juicy target, and then whine how something is so OP.
They just dont realize how their actions make them strategically weak.

Its like sending some zergligns at the deployed tanks in starcraft

Whiners, and nerf this or that guys on this forum would be like ideal enemy...

You obviously don't have a full understanding of the game dynamics.....

I'm not sure how infantry dispersing changes the balance of aircraft. It just means that there will be less to kill and theoretically less unhappy people to complain about being rocket-podded. The ESF will always be able to rocket pod the Sundy and the guys around it, or the lib will be able to shred the lone tank, or the column of tanks on the road.

An increase to burster magazine sizes and a decrease in the number of magazines for the burster should even things up when it comes to burster vs ESF. I'm not sure what can be done with those ground to air missile launchers; they are trickier to balance.

Personally, I wish they'd given HA's some kind of NS-10 burster. As we know from dual burster MAXing, a single arm is probably barely adequate to scare, but if people had access to them early on it would tip the scales only as long as people decided the NS-10 was better than being prepared for enemy armor.

The number one phenomenom of Planetside (both 1 and 2)

Everybody thinks everybody else is "the zerg"

But...they are!

ok explain it then, i am all ears

yes, but there are differences between zergs.

Zerg that is effective, and the mindless zerg.

To me this game is like starcraft.

So lets say 2 players are playing stracraft, one is the Zerg and other plays Terran.
Terran player has understanding of the game, and zerg player do what looks cool to him, but really doesn't have a clue of what he is doing.

Nooby Zerg player finds zerglins fun, and spams them, so terran player makes air units which obliterate zergligs, and zerglnigs cannot fight back.
Nooby Zerg player instead of countering it, goes to the forum and starts whining how air units are unfair, and should not be able to kill his zerglings because he likes them.
He doesent understand game, and place it has for zerglings, he just wont to use them no matter of the domino effect it would made that zergligs are good versus anything, or that everything else is not effective against zerglings.


That sums it.

Air is extremely OP.

Burster maxes, which are timered units bound to the scarcest resource in the game, have no verstality, no maneuverability, and no ability to engage targets other than aircraft, cannot kill competent liberator pilots. The liberator is far faster and more maneuverable, and can easily engage infantry, tank, and aircraft targets - and can easily run away from burster maxes (or even the more lacklustre skyguard) - or if it's a 1 on 1 fight, the lib can just mow down the max effortlessly.

Until ground based AA can actually kill aircraft, airpower is severely overpowered.

The real reason people want to nef air is quite simple: spamming rockets and looking in the direction of another in 3rd person to lock on a2a missiles requires zero talent. Yet, something that requires zero talent effectively ruins the majority of the game for the rest of us.

Why this will never be fixed? SOE wanted PS2 to appeal to as many people as possible, so they made the game as easy to play as possible. Of course not realizing the detrimental effect this would have on overall gameplay.

All I see everywhere is 15-20 or more air pilots bombing the **** out of 5-15 ground players who obviously have a crappy air craft.
They pull out their max, however, it dies in seconds because the bruster doesn't do **** for damage.
To say "have 10 on a hill"
lol, what kind of pilots are you fighting? If they saw the 10 there, they can easily bomb the **** out of it, maybe 1 pilot dies, but all the MAXes are dead.

If otherwise, they're just too busy or sleepy(since it's so boring bombing the **** out of infantry all day and night) while the MAX peck at them to death. Which is highly unlikely, unless the pilot was really sleepy.

The anti air needs a buff to where they actually do damage.
7-10 maxes against ~5 air, that's not bad(the enemy air can still easily get away and they still can easily kill the MAX if they really wanted to). But when everyone on the other side is doing it, that doesn't even remotely harm their air.

Nicely said. I'm for air combat and air having a role. I've always thought air should be hard counters to air, hard counters to ground vehicles, but not completely hard counters to infantry. Air should also be a primary transportation of choice, capable of air lifting the largest amount of soldiers. And if you don't want that airship carrying 30 soldiers to blow up, you would need air escorts. Imagine the air battles, it would've been fun.

But air right now are being used to farm infantry, that's where the complaints come from, and yes it's overwhelming, overpowered, and air gets their enjoyment out of making the game absolutely miserable for everybody else. Imagine air with weapons that are good at single target vehicle kills, but not so good at splash damage kills, that would've made infantry not as vulnerable. Imagine the specific air vehicle good at countering infantry are built like a helicopter, like in the BF3/BC2 games, where helicopters fly rather slow, have to circle, and get rather low to make those machine gun shots work. But that also puts them within range of rockets and infantry fire. That's called balance, and a rather good balance at that.

Air being able to hover right now, performing great bombing aim, having great splash damage, then being able to fly above the reach of any and all guns and rockets when in trouble are just setup wrong. Liberators are built wrong, they should not be built like an aircraft carrier in the sky with the amount of hp and armor they have.

I know people like to cite that well in real life, air rules, blah blah. Yeah but this is a game, games need balance or eventually people stop playing. When people stop playing, even those who like air superiority would stop having fun because there wouldn't be enough people on the ground to farm. I've always thought that air should be very good at countering air, good at countering ground vehicles, but air to infantry should be limited. Air against infantry should be difficult, as with the helicopter example. Without a doubt SOE will make further tweaks because they just won't stand having the majority of their playerbase, which are ground players, get too frustrated and leave.

Pretty much that. The only counter to aircraft that ground has is either a max which can't kill anything in the air and thus ***** itself fully on ground, or someone who's spent 1000 certs on a very ineffective weapon vs aircraft along with a pack of others. If you can fire an AA turret at a base at a target, overheat it, hit every single shot, and your target is still flying then AA is underpowered beyond reason. And I've done this. From both sides in the AA and above it I still find it pathetic.

burster maxes and skyguard are counter to ESF, not libs, ESF are counter to libs, otherwise there would be no point to libs.

Libs are ment to break the zerg if they have undisputed air, libs are anti zerg mechanic.
If some random noob could use a terminal, and without any skill, positioning or anything could spawn a burster max, and auto kill that lib, lib would lose its meaning.
Ground AA is soft counter to libs at the most


When you say ESFs destroy your burster max, i ask how many ESFs, because i am sure 2 guys of equal skill, max will pwn ESF.

You canot expect to solo 10 ESF with max, and since max is able to enter buildings, buildings are also his armor against air, while pilot uses maneuvers as armor.
Weapon that would deny any chance that pilot with his maneuvering skill evades would be overpowered as hell, and this is what most whiners wont in skyguard whines.


Air just destroys foolish infatry, not aware infantry, and if you are destroyed by air over and over again, you are foolish

Well....... I wipe out entire squads easily. you know why?.. none of them have AA. ppl think AA is optional. WRONG! start using those damned skyguards and bursters and G2A missiles and walkers. i promise you ESFs wont bother you anymore.
I rarely see any of those so STOP BEACHING*.

"..is because the majority of the players want"
^^^I think you can only truly speak for yourself. This topic has a lot of threads and they seem to be popular. By this mere fact, one can assume this has multiple viewpoints connected to it.

" much more catering to the current demographic community of Planetside 2."
^^^ Where are your numbers supporting this claim? How do you know what the majority wants?

"And THAT, folks, is where most of what the majority of players are looking for is."
^^^Do you have insider information? I do not see proof here.

"All in all, what I'm saying is that air is probably the most key tipping factor in any skirmish on Planetside (II);"
^^^ As it should be, we agree here on this statement.

" (Because fighting on the ground is a lot more fun than running a flight simulator where you're very likely to be outnumbered and out-gunned"
^^^ Personal statement at best.

Your argument is based off of the "majorities wants", yet you do not know who the majority is, Nor do I.

I can use fancy colors, too.

Air is overpowered because the only ground-based counter to ESF is for a team to pull multiple AA max units. A single AA max unit is little more than an annoyance to an ESF unless that ESF is hovering at low range and, even then, the ESF can likely still get a pod volley fired before disengaging. If an ESF is traveling at high speed and doing runs (you know, like a "fighter" should be forced to do in the first place) it will require several AA maxes to get enough hits on a ESF to make it reconsider its attack path.

Liberators, in the hands of any half-decent pilot, are virtually immune to all forms of ground-based AA. Between the damage they front, the speeds they can travel at (nearly the same speed as ESF) and the ludicrous amount of armor they boast, nothing short of a half-dozen AA maxes will push one single lib out of the immediate area. If the enemy is fielding multiple libs, your maxes are dead, your everything is dead, just go to a different continent or log out of the game and wonder why a project this big could be this horribly balanced.

ESF can competently fight Air-to-Air, Air-to-Infantry, and Air-to-Armor all with one loadout and a single pilot. AA maxes, the only potentially viable ground counter, must be pulled in multiples and are only marginally effective against ESF and otherwise a free kill for everything else in the game.

Liberators are only ever threatened by enemy air and otherwise free to farm everything in sight.

The rules of Plane-Side2 are simple: Bring more aircraft than the enemy, and win the game. Nothing else matters. That is the very definition of overpowered.