BRING BACK THERMALS!

Every ground player tells me how easy it is to fly easy mode, i dont think we need to nerf any g2a weapons i think the game was fine with thermals and removing them was a bad ide but it was a easy way for devs to blanket help the sheep since they hate air they have been giving the ground peeple new ways of fighting but have barly changed the air game game, they might have done a lot to change how IR worket like adding thermal shields that would work instant of your nomal shield . or redusede IR signture for for som classes, threat vision should show anyone whos a threat to you

With the exception of learning the basics of flight, A2G is easy mode. You control everything from the engagement, and even if G2A weapons attack you it's 90% up to you if you die or not, and the simple act of "point at a portion of the sky and hit afterburner" will save you in almost every single G2A engagement.

You... think the problem is G2A power...? The same G2A power that you can escape from in every single aircraft by simply flying in any direction but over the G2A source? The same G2A power that you can hover above, get surprise-attacked and still escape with your life? Yes you say that it doesn't need a nerf, but you allude the idea that if something had to be changed, it's G2A power.

Removing thermals wasn't the greatest idea. They should simply have nerfed how easy it is to spot players. Rather than the giant neon "shoot me" sign that thermals was just a light visional aid like a small glowing wire-frame around all your targets. However, compared to leaving thermals in as they were and giving them another role, changing thermals was the better option.
Because while you are complaining that this was 'to blanket help the sheep' it was actually a change to blanket-nerf the sheep who completely relied on a no-skill scope for their kills.
Also let's get one thing straight, everyone feels the devs are favoring someone else. I've seen Wrel be made out to be an infantry player that only favors infantry, an aircraft player that only favors aircraft and a tank player that only favors tanks. Well here's a newsflash: The fact that everyone thinks they are being set back means that he's actually doing something with all parts of the game, and he apparently plays all aspects.

It's the same with my idea's actually. Even with the same proposal I've been made out to be an infantry-only player or a vehicle-only player. Which makes me feel that I'm in the right ballpark considering PS2's jaded and full-on "no one ever favors me" playerbase that looks for trouble.

As for your idea at the end. Thermal shields that work instead of your normal shield? Yeah that's a straight-up nerf that no one would ever use. "hey guys, here's a protection against thermals, it's just going to cost you 50% of your total healthpool, and it's going to be the most important part that actually regenerates after getting hit". I mean really? That's your idea of "balanced"?

As for threat vision showing anything that's a threat. G2A shouldn't even pop up then, because it's not really a big threat is it? What with being almost guaranteed to escape it if you just react quick enough. But this only opens a terrible topic: What's a threat to you? Many air-players will tell you "small arms is dangerous!", while in effect even an entire platoon shooting an aircraft simultaneously will have a hard time downing it since it can get out of effective range within a second. LA's with their rocklets? Those rocklets are so short-ranged and deal so little damage it's in practice not even useful to try unless your target is nearly dead anyway. What about dumbfires? In theory they are terribly dangerous, they can almost OHK you and one can actually OHK you! Ofcourse the range and speed on the weapons is terrible and the rocket drop means your target has to be almost on top of you and hovering about to have a real chance of getting hit, which is basically doing everything that an aircraft isn't supposed to do but people do it anyway because of the immense power it gives them. So are they a threat or aren't they? This list can go on and on about what's a threat, but the devs aren't going to spend time selecting and discussing what's a threat or not, especially not since they would have to make separate threat-visions for separate vehicles. A Skyguard isn't a threat to an MBT now is it?

And those who rely on farming by way of thermals can play numerous other games which require no skills whatsoever. Quit your whining and learn to shoot without it.

O do tell what games ar you speaking of where there combined arms with thust vectoring jets and future combat with large maps ? plz tell

Try starcraft..... you want planes to be hero units and ground dudes to be unnamed grunts from the sound of it. Combined arms should be like starcraft to a point with counters air was too strong vs marines so the nerf....

The only ones whining are the infantry whining about Thermals in the first place, don't come on Planetside 2 and ruin the vehicle experience, just go play Call of Duty if you can't handle being killed by air, besides there is a wide range of G2A to choose from. I am actually killing infantry just fine without them but I'm making a point for the principle of it, which most people seem to agree with. If you play Planetside 2 expect to run in to enemy air at some point. As I said before at least make Threat Detection viable (because there's no need for it with Zoom and Night Vision) by showing Maxes and Heavy Assaults because they're a threat to vehicles, all Heavys have to do is point at an air unit and have the missle lock on for them it's really not that difficult to deal with air, especially with proper teamwork which Planetside 2 is mostly about.

I actually JUST started playing Air.. the day after thermals were nerfed..
Imagine my disappointment after watching all those cool youtube videos pick off squads of lemmings with ease.. to a broke *** system that only highlights turrets and vehicles.. especially when those ground troops can switch to an G2A Heavy or AAMax at a Sunderer and put some heat on the ESF with ease.

I don't think they were OP considering the above statement.. it still takes a bit of skill and luck to put heat rounds on target and not get picked off by A2G or a Lib/ESF over your shoulder. Same with the 6xHSNV scope.. it helps immensely but it won't protect you from threats not centered on your reticle.

If changes were necessary I would suggest making them require charged capacitance to use like the Infiltrators Hunter Cloak that way the pilot isn't flying around full thermal looking for gibs.. they would be regulated to seeking potential hotspots to engage and have a 4-10 second thermal engagement window to acquire and lead specific targets before the capacitance wears off and the thermal camera would need to recharge. If you really wanted to balance the ESF make it use the same capacitance as the Afterburner..

So you would basically have two options.. no thermal and have a quick afterburner egress. Or thermal with a continually decreasing pool of afterburner egress potential.

And why the hell aren't MAX units highlighted? Am I to assume that a giant mech unit creates no heat signature?

It doesn't matter.. I'm about to Cert Into tomcats and harass the hell out of your Liberators & Galaxies anyway, because; bump your feelings.. the Air is mine to control for the New Conglomerate.

Or with NO NERF.. add a body-heat stat to infantry soldiers.

While standing, crouching, or walking the body-heat stat returns to neutral after a period of time displaying them on thermals much like they do now.. BARELY. (5%)

While walking and ADSing without firing.. their heat signature would build or (dwindle, depending on previous actions) slowly to a certain overall percentage. (20%)

While firing it should spike to (50%) and add (1%) to the overall heat signature.

and while running build to the maximum heat level.. (100%) which should still be MUCH less noticeable than a glowing MBT or other vehicle.

Certainly, that opens up new potential for implants.. and other such things to cool the infantry soldier down in the midst of combat operations.. much like the Army Combat Sweater did(n't) do in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Oh do tell what games are you speaking off where we can find a combined arms game with thrust vectoring jets, future combat and large maps without horridly designed thermals? PS2 just had those infernal no-skill things changed, which was great!

You are being a hypocrite. You are telling other people to go somewhere else despite that even for infantry combat PS2 is unique in it's blend of COF+recoil mechanics and large-scale combat that you can hardly find anywhere else, not to mention the classes warfare. Also you are throwing people on a heap, automatically assuming people who are against thermals as they were are all infantry-only players. Which is bullcrap. I'm an all-rounder, having tons of time in both vehicles and infantry, and I recognize that thermals as they were, were nothing more than cheap cheat visions. I could understand if the thermals highlighted infantry to make them easier visible, but the thermals we had was nothing more than a giant neon 'shoot me' sign over everyone.
Ofcourse the most pathetic part of the whole discussion is the people who actually can't function without the old thermals. If you can't even spot your target without thermals, you never deserved a single kill with them anyway.

You would think that thermals or zoom should be attached to the vehicle and not the weapon itself. Like the Reaver has that sensor pod thingy on the nose whats in there is the sights are on the gun?

Well, sad to see thermals removed from the game. I was kind of hoping for additions in the manner of thermals with zoom.

Now the game is mostly won by the team with the most population imbalance, since no vehicles can identify the zergs to make a difference. Really the rocket-pod + thermals combo was something interesting in ESF base defenses, and a reason for maintaining air superiority.

But I also think the 500m max range on AA turrets was a bad nerf.

If like you say that its ok to tell air to **** off but not the ground peeple who were the reason why they nerfed the IR in the first place there loads of other games that dont have air farmers why cant ground go play that if the air is such big issue here, but when they say go play other easy ground air to ground farmer games, and i ask what games, com on its not hard to back up what you say ok? unless there no games like that, i only did minor a2g farming bafore the nerf me being almost only a2a the farm for me has not changed you see they removed the IR not the infantry that waddles out of the same building and dont carry lock ones or even one burst mex ,

You know, that esf pilots can use implants which shows someone who damaging or spotting you. And also infantry fights need a balance. I remember lots of situations when good 50/50 fight becomes a completely trash when one farmer comes and kill everyone with banshee(or other weapon) and termal optics or rockets with termal. Only one thing there is stupid: treat optics on cobalt gun and canister. For what? To kill flashes? (empty flashes, lol) It should be refund. But who cares...there is a lot of traps for noob in ps2 (like 6x scope on jackhammer )

And also most of you crying about lock on... Did you heared about flares? You just want comfortable farm without any punishment. You know, that most of infantry players have much more dangers in battle than good esf pilot? So youre just bad pilots or farmers. and ofcourse youre not playing infantry or bad in it.

Please.
Learn.
To.
Use.
Sentences.

I don't like to say to air to **** off. I also don't say to ground to **** off. I've also mentioned that the Thermal change might not have been the best choice, but it was a better choice than leaving it as it was.
There are loads of other games that don't have air farmers, but there aren't any games that have PS2's size, scale and tactical considerations, regardless of how effectively little considerations there are in the end. So no, these ground players can't just go play somewhere else. Besides, you really want to say "well if air is overpowered then players just have to play another game where it isn't"?
You are specifically asking me to help you find a game where aircraft can farm ground players? Seriously, any game that allows such a game model needs to have some serious updates to remedy that. The fact that you are asking for games where you get a massive advantage for playing a single aspect of the game already shows what kind of player you are: One that no game needs or wants. Stop gaming, you are one of the big problems of gaming today. Self entitled, assuming that games have to be tailored specifically to them and blatantly asking for more power for the aspects you play, rather than asking for rebalances and improvements to gameplay overall.
And your last sentence... "you see they removed the IR not the infantry that waddles out of the same building and dont carry lock ones or even one burst mex"
You are actually saying that they should have removed the infantry that doesn't carry G2A weapons, rather than the IR scope? Besides that Thermals weren't removed but re-purposed, this takes the cake of weird idea's. Not only is it a self-defeating idea, since you want to farm infantry but you are asking them to be removed so you can use your IR scope that is now useless, it even screws over 99% of the gameplay you can have.

Why are you trying? Air ****ters gonna be air shiiters. There's no educating people like that about "greatest good for greatest number", or balance or anything like that. You'll wear out your keyboard, patience etc. trying!

I think a great many of us in the air are concerned with how this was done. There doesn't seem to have been a great deal of consultation or forethought put into this.

One may say that this was to prevent a major backlash from what is a minority of the player-base. Note that many people pull aircraft - very few of them are actually what I would term "Pilots" - not as a measure of me being elitist, but making an assertion as to how often they fly, their skill level, etc.

But what angers pilots the most - across platforms, because remember, Libs, Valks, and Gals all use thermals as well - is that rather than a balance or an adjustment, the entire premise of the optic - its focus, utility, and capability - were completely changed to a format that no one uses them for, and that no one truly needs them for. We do not, and never have, needed additional sighting optics to see Tanks, Turrets, and other Vehicles. They generally make their presence very, very apparent to us in the skies, and we can generally track in on them because they are either shooting at us or are rapidly moving and firing on ground forces.

This was not a balance adjustment. This was a complete re-purpose. In such cases, cert refunds are traditionally offered, and would have gone a long way to assuaging the easily foreseeable angst. This does not seem to have been considered by the Dev team.

The lack of a refund is thus instead perceived by pilots as a punishment. The attitude of some infantry centric players of "Well, good, you deserve it for farming" is not helpful or constructive.

I will continue to maintain that Thermals do not in and of themselves cause farming. Rather, they enable rapid target acquisition that improves farming. This is fertile ground for actual balance adjustments, particularly to ranges, which could have made the equation an almost equal risk proposition if air were forced in close enough, particularly for Lib and ESF pilots.

The response instead was to completely cave in and eliminate it as a mechanic. This in turn makes pilots feel as if though they are un-wanted or are being "persecuted" by the developers. I don't comment or hold position on that, because I recognize that air farm can be aggravating and infuriating.

But Planetside 2 without effective air units isn't really Planetside at all, now is it?

Think on this for a minute: Nearly every class, vehicle, or role has something. Something simple, something fun, something enjoyable. Something cheesey and annoying as all hell, which can be detrimental to the overall gameplay of others, yet still has some redeeming tactical value. Galaxies have ram-kills. Heavies have the best weapons and shields. Engineers get versatility and explosives, and can easily abuse this to nail sundies and end fights. Infils can camp terminals. Light Assaults get their C4 cheese.

Tanks have HE Cannons. Flashes get cloaking and shotguns.

Is ESF spam excessive? No doubt. But taking away a core tool used to engage in its cheese activity, without first attempting to rebalance and even nerf it, seems excessive, and has had unintended consequences for other non-cheese aircraft, particularly the crewed aircraft, where our quality of gunners is not always constant - thermals are indeed very useful for Valks and Gals for giving a baseline assistance and floor value for gunners, helping the casuals or unskilled ones that we occasionally get perform at a semi competent level.

The minimum action I am requesting are as follows:
1) A complete refund of certs for Threat Detection Optics
2) Threat Detection Optics detecting all maxes and heavies, at all times. Such players, whether using dumbfire, IR Lock (Strikers) or SACLOS (Masamune, Phoenix) guidance, AV Max weapons (Particularly VS Lancer-esque AV MAX weapons) are potential threats to aircraft at all times, launcher equipped or not.

MAX suits merely need to run back to a terminal to become Burster maxes on demand. Expecting aircraft to simply ignore them while they run back to a terminal is simply unreasonable and infuriating. The fact of the matter is, I already, as Valk, destroy all MAXes on sight precisely because of this - AV Maxes can and will effectively engage my Valk in its envelope, and if you're going to give me an optic that looks for "Threats" then you'd better include anything that can kill me - which is everything, including pea-shooter infantry. But I'm willing to make concessions.

Even as a primarily infantry player, I can understand your frustration. I don't think the change was well thought out and the new optic serves no real purpose that I can see. In addition, even though those optics have probably paid for themselves dozens of times over, it still wasn't right not to offer a cert refund when such a radical change was implemented.

While I can see that pilots may regard the lack of refund as a punishment, and perhaps pilots currently feel "unwanted and persecuted", but try to see it from the other point of view as well.... with G2A being utterly ineffective, with infantry and vehicles have no effective means of fighting back against air, with the only real counter to air being more air, the existence of A2G spammage (and it's been around for a long time) has often felt like a punishment or persecution for infantry or vehicle players who didn't want to invest the substantial amount of time it takes to become even a half-way decent pilot. I'm not trying to justify the nerf - I think it was wrong - but please understand that infantry and vehicle players have been feeling like you are now for a lot longer.

In a properly balanced A2G / G2A dynamic, I would honestly have no problem with the existence of thermals. Hell, I'd actively support them - they serve an extremely useful purpose especially at night! They were the go-to sight for a reason. But we don't have a properly balanced dynamic. I don't think that the thermal nerf was appropriate - I think they should have balanced G2A instead but, in the absence of a proper G2A balance, I can't help feeling that a thermal nerf helps a little. At least, when I decide to try some AA, and put a camo on, and hide in a non-obvious place, I'm not immediately and obviously a target even before I've fired a single rocket or flak-round.

I agree that most things have something cheesy about them, but what you're missing is that, in most of those cases the player on the receiving end usually felt like he had a chance. If you notice it coming, you can sometimes avoid a ground-humping Galaxy. If you pay attention, you can reverse and put a tank-round straight through that annoying C4-fairy. Engies turrets are powerful, but a single decent sniper can put nearly all the turrets on the field out of operation. The same isn't true of A2G spammage. There simply isn't "a chance". Unless the pilot's careless or an idiot and let's you get a lucky dumbfire onto him, and that only works on ESF's.

I don't think that it's feasible, simply on a technical level, to identify specifically HA's on the scope. MAYBE MAX's is doable, I dunno. But I'd far rather they spent their time fixing the real problem.

I support the return to proper thermals, I really do. This new version is a bad joke that should never have existed. I hope to learn flying at some point, and I'd like to have them. But before that happens, G2A NEEDS TO BE FIXED.

I didn't much like having my claymores or ARs or AV mana turret nerfed (or the upcoming nerf to my C4) but you gotta roll with it. Sooner or later someone works out that the killing is just a bit too easy. Granted, they didn't take any of those things away completely but then I guess they just weren't that OP to start with.

Btw, what were flyers using thermals for, other than farming infantry? (genuine question - never thought to ask before).

I use them to highlight stuff under tree canopies.. contrast your lib or mossy or scythe against the ground/sky.. and to pick out potential targets of opportunity or threats on approach or egress (depending on pressure).

I still believe the solution is to put up your own air or AA to deny the farming of sundy's/grouped infantry. I fully support bringing infantry back into the thermal view at a fraction of the glow of a Turret/Vehicle.

Or maybe they should change the sundy deployment shield so that no one can shoot into it and never destroy a sundy.. maybe that'll keep the snowflakes from melting.