I do not like flying ESF because of V-Thrust and Airbreak.

I really like this idea, the current ESF's are kind of an odd vtol, heli-plane hybrid with some physics warping capabilities. Adding in significantly faster air superiority fighters might be an interesting idea. However; the game as far more serious issues than this - we need the content we were promised or ppl are just going to leave - we need strategy, win-states, intercontinental lattices and whatever that makes the game more rewarding and meaningfull than k/d, certs, leaderboards and vtol yolo. AND the engine/servers can't handle it. In fights of any good size players render when you are almost past them as it is with current ESF speeds. With fast flyers forget about it - you will see them render behind you when you have passed them with 100 meters.

Im not a good pilot, actually i suck in flying. But i like how flying feels in planetside you can do everything it also feels very natural i think.

I'm trying to figure out how it's awkward to people. I actually learned the RM before I knew what it was because it just came naturally to me. I'm guessing people are trying to learn it before they really understand the basics of flight in PS2, which would probably be really frustrating.

With the ridiculous resource system we currently have, there's no better time to experiment and learn it since you can basically chain pull ESF's and not have to worry about being destroyed by BR100's thus losing your precious "pricey" aircraft. (Unless you care about your K/D, then I guess don't risk flying at all). Mind you, there's always VR, but soon enough "Live exercises" are better then VR.

Also, this thread is ******' massive, what the hell has even been said, heh.

There's two possibly options there.

1) It is very easy to learn and isn't awkward at all and there is an internet-wide conspiracy to claim it is for no obvious reason.

2) Or for some reason you didn't find it so.

Personally I think it's probably the latter.





But to come back to the point if you found it easy and non-awkward would you have any issue with making it so others found it easy and non-awkward to learn too?

I like the idea of a new A2A figther, but you're right it would be limited by the engine and couldn't be "jet-like" as such, just more "jet-like" than the current options.

It could be significantly faster (in top speed and acceleration) and be more agile than the current ESF though, and likely more fragile too, but weapons balanced against that and for A2A. The Wasp in PS1 being the rough model I think.

No, I think it should be easy to learn. My only concern is whether or not forcing it through simple mechanics would cause unwanted side-effects, or make it work completely different. What if they made a key to actually fly in reverse, and then people starting to exploit that to do some really crazy advanced stuff? Then we'd be back here again, trying to figure out how to make that easier to learn.

I think right now the RM isn't as difficult to learn as people make it out to be. We know what it's capable of, and it's not really that hard to explain, so I don't think that is really an issue. As has been pointed out many times already, even if you made the RM automatic by holding reverse, that still wouldn't stop experienced players from stomping newer players in the ground. It seems like people have latched onto this notion that the RM is causing the skill gap, and that simply isn't true. At best, making the RM easier to do would just help new pilots to farm infantry.

And forumside =/= the internet. I think it's entirely possible that people here are wrong, and that there is some sort of hive mind thing going on. Trends do happen on forums, and appealing to the popularity of something is a fallacy because of that sort of thing.

Yeah you have a point, but it is diffcult to know without trying it and trying various methods.

I don't know about it being difficult as such, which is why I prefer awkward, because it is not massively difficult if you know it exists and/or watch a video etc. about it, although it remains awkward I think. However for a complete newbie they wouldn't even necessarily know it existed - a bit like throttle analog and being able to stay crouched when firing a Pheonix (or the myriad other things a manual might help with).

I would imagine (if nothing changes) the PS4 version will have this complain massively, as console players tend to be less forgiving about all manner of things.

No, Player A has 50 skill because they use RM. Player B is identically skilled at everything except RM, so they have 40 skill. What you're calling "awkwardness" is the probable reason Player B hasn't figured out the RM skill component yet.

Depth doesn't care about whether something is awkward. In fact, calling something "awkward" is uselessly subjective. What matters for game depth is player skill, and the awkwardness only increases the gap between newbie and expert (and that gap is depth.)

Do bad newbies dislike this? Absolutely, it means they aren't being handed a free win and they actually have to develop skill in order to win. But smart newbies like it because they know that's what makes games worth playing. The core of what makes games fun is pattern master (Koster, 2003), and that's just another way of saying skill mastery (the ability to recognize patterns, and make decisions to achieve the best outcomes.)

Once the patterns are fully mastered, the game stops being fun. Since game depth is a measure of how long it takes to figure out the patterns (Sirlin, 2002) this implies game depth is the maximum length of time until the game stops being fun. Which is why the smart newbies prefer these types of games, even while losing, because they understand that even when they make it over the initial hump there will be a lot left to learn.

Your idea that any (never mind many) ESF pilots become a great pilot without having a clue how to RM is..... possible, but in reality rather ridculous.

Once two players have mastered anything it then becomes ONLY about how good they are at using it.

So as I have said (and as you and your quotes have unintentionally agreed with me), by removing the awkwardness nothing would change, except to improve accessiblity.

A very accurate pilot who leads and lands all shots can be highly successful without RM. For a long time I enjoyed good success without RMing at all (in part to deliberately test how important that skill actually was.) I'm not sure why you word it "have a clue" what RM is. Of course they'll have a clue that RM exists after having flown against pilots doing unexpected maneuvers. But we're talking about players who don't know how to use it themselves, even with that clue. And if those players have a high amount of skill then they can achieve pretty good success purely through accurate air-turreting.

Two players haven't fully mastered a skill if fights are coming down to how good they are at using that skill, obviously. True mastery of a skill is perfect play (and obviously at that point it's not a measure of how good they are because they're playing perfectly.)

What you seem to have difficulty understanding is that what you're calling "awkwardness" is a learned skill. Removing that awkwardness removes skill, making the game shallower. The difficulty of executing the controls in a way that causes the right reverse thrust maneuver is why it's a deep skill factor. If you simplified it to "S = reverse" then much of the difficulty would be lost and the result would be a shallower game.

They could remove this RM mechanic tomorrow and all the people crying about the ESF will still get stomped. Except they wont have the option to fight back.

But they will still be beaten all other things being equal, by an equally skilled pilot that does know it.

And conversly a more skilled pilot will still win, all things being equal, when both know it.

Which again shows the total and utter pointlessness of it being awkward to learn in any and every context except reducing accessiblity.

I just spent an hour reading through this whole thread. I've never seen such heated debate on absolutely nothing.

The game's air gameplay is not going to change significantly, and if it does, the game will nosedive like Star Wars Galaxies did after the patch. Game-changing balancing like that needs total consensus to even have a chance of working, and this clearly does not.

I'd also be hesitant to make the air game more accessible by holding people's hand with in-game mechanics. A good tutorial would be preferable.

The whole "Reverse maneuver and vertical thrust make them game so awkward and make the game worse!!11!" spiel is ultimately just a failure to grasp that something being unintuitive does not equal something being awkward. This game's incredibly unique airplay should not be changed because "real life is da best".

Did you every play atmospheric flight in SWG?

No.

Unfortunately, I never got to play it at all, but the story of its decline is famous. Definition of an epic fail.

I assume atmospheric flight would be stuff with X-wings and the like in planetary locales.

SWG was/is the poster child of bad decisions (and to some degree like PS1 being a bit ahead of its time - it is sometimes glossed over that stuff like NGE occured because it was losing players at a high rate), but I have to say some of the latter additions (even though they a best could really be called Beta) showed would could have been.




Neither of those really show it off though, there was a youtube video of some atmospheric PvP somewhere, but it seems to be gone.

To be honest I don't see making PS2 air more accessble as anything like NGE, CU or Trials of Obi-wan, so much as atmospheric flight.

Unless you're emerald NC, than you'll NEVER have indar locked. In at least a week of playtime since restarting 3 months ago, I've seen the NC lock indar once.