Horrendous at PlanetSide 2, but why?

If you think/find yourself in short range fights (10-20 feet) more often, go with a 1X or 2X red dot sight (I prefer 2X ). Also, if your the spray and pray sort (as I can be some times) get the laser sight. It will help with hip fire accuracy.

They dont make you a bad player but using better sights makes many people into better player.
The 1x sight is better in with respectt o every variable.

And the better sights are really cheap cert wise.

VS Engineer default weapon is beast. Get laser sight on it and when you're in close combat get all in their face and keep running without right clicking. Due to the fact that if you right click (scope) your sensitivity is halved you will quite often just outrun their aiming.

Also laser sight is great for nonscoped firing.

Being someone who goes on 10+ killing sprees (but also death sprees because I am determined to blow up that Sunderer) as an Engineer I'd say that positioning is your best weapon. Since you have unlimited ammo you can go stab people in the back as much as you want and keep doing it until discovered. Attack from angles they don't expect or aren't looking. Always try to kill the person you start killing, because if they discover you and only one person starts shooting you soon a lot of people will start shooting you.

No thet dont. There litterally is NO benifit over a 1x scope.
They obstruct more view and they needlessly jostle about.

Don't save up, get a sight. I would suggest the 2x reflex as the most flexible sight.

Each to their own sir.

sights and scopes are purely preference. I prefer irons, but then again, I am very used to them RL.

If they had an actual ACOG RSO type sight...... with a chevron, yeah - that ..

IntrepidElas, I was in the same spot. The nanite armor is an excellent investment for the 1 cert, past level 2 it's effectiveness is debateable. Definately change out those iron sights ASAP, I use a 2x reflex.sight (It's a red dot style sight) and using that has helped immensely. I'm also NC, which didn't help the situation at all, because thats what my outfit picked. I was atrocious at first. I believe my K/D ratio was .042 at one point. Between the use of the reflex sight, getting a burst fire only gun (cause I would spray and pray like crazy) and learning to never be in the open I die a lot less now. You have to have situational awareness in this game because of all the other players, as others have mentioned. Stick with it, find a good outfit to maximize your support capabilities and always roll with them at all times. Don't ever try to lone wolf it in this game, it doesnt work out unless your a good infiltrator. It gets a lot better, and a lot more fun as you get more involved with an outfit. And remember theres akways someone out there that is worse than you =P.

Is it at all ranges that you find this, or at specifically long/short range?

There is a bit of lag in the system: you will tend to see yourself dying before you see the last couple of shots that actually kill you. Thus it can seem that enemies need less shots to kill you than you need to kill them.

If you can get a headshot in, go for it, but don't hesitate to try to get it. Unless you can physically poke them in the eye with your gunbarrel, controlled bursts are generally better than hosing around on full auto.

Its fine if you simply enjoy the look of the iron sight - thats 'to each their own."

But I was correct and you were wrong - there is NO benefit from the iron sights.

Are there any benefits to upgrading sights beyond the better zoom and different crosshairs?

As a Terran with a K/D ration of something like .35, in my experience whoever sees, fires, and hits an enemy first wins. Infiltrators at point-blank ranges with handguns can chew up heavy assault *if* they shoot first. In the time it takes me to see them in the corner of my screen, turn, and press my mouse button, I'm dead. There are no exceptions at any range.

The TTK for infantry is too doggone low, IMHO.

I am afraid you are wrong my friend. I am not sure if it applies to all weapons or not but I do believe assault rifles and light machine guns have higher accuracy while moving when using iron sights.

I tire of reading BS like this. VS and NC are dominating on Woodman. They usually have all 3 continents, while TR has none. Now I'm not crying about TR being underpowered, because it isn't. Its just... it sounds like you are crying about TR being overpowered.

I think the reason most PS2 players are worse at this game than other shooters is that most PS2 players are getting <30 fps in battles.

Yeah you picked like the only server that isnt 24/7 TR zerg town.

Reddit Picked TR. Total Biscuit picked TR. The T9 Carv picked TR.

TR isnt overpowered, but due to sheer numbers and map design, TR is the strongest faction.

I think this has some truth, but I wish it didn't. I don't like that headshots are so important in this game. In real military training, they don't stress headshots because in the real world headshots are *very* hard to make under combat pressure. Also, in this futuristic setting with high-tech ballistic helmets, I'd expect headshots to be less critical. I wish they'd remove the head hitbox, lower the damage for headshots, or shrink the hitbox for the head to about 1/3 what it is now.

Infiltrators flame away.

I'd love to spend certs on my guns, but since I give a lot of playthrough on all classes, it would require an insane investment to kit up my LA, HA, Engy and Medic... :[

Vanilla iron sights vs everyone else's weapons with doodads makes for very different gameplay. Though I suppose it encourages me to engage in situations to my advantage, instead of running off Rambo-style.

Tbh the biggest things are going to be FPS, ability to read situations and shooting mechanics (muscle memory etc).
If you're consistently getting like 10fps, don't expect to do that well, you need to be able to read the situation and be able to outmaneuver multiple people consistently or outshoot them. The biggest thing though is situational awareness and not being caught off guard or surprised which can be hard to do in this game.

Post like this prove how awful people are at playing.

If you can't hit a guy playing VS, the problem is that you are not very good at FPS's.

First if you learned on an xbox, forget all your "skills", the console fps's are horrible compared to playing with a mouse and keyboard. You will be completely dominated by vet PC FPS players.

Second if you learned via single player FPS games again you will be awful, AI bots only teach you how to kill bad AI.

It takes a lot of practice to get good at head shots and reaction time. I have been playing these games for 20 years now, I'm really good, I got that good only with time. I'm not saying it takes 20 years, but expect a few weeks of being awful. Learning how to move to avoid fire, react when you are getting hit from a flank, when to charge in, are all skills you pick up with experience.

I would go with the most accurate faction gun you have, and try to shoot for the neck while constantly moving yourself. The VS light assault is excellent for this and I find it far superior to the TR and NC counterparts even without certs. With time you will go from dying to every 1-1 to winning 2-1 and 3-1.