Is infantry combat evolving to hipfire preference?

Personally I've noticed that the most successful people during a battle will be the ones with advanced laser sight weapons and soft point ammo.

With these new bases like on esamir, infantry engagements seem to be mostly close quarters.
Weapons like the Jaguar, MSW-R, and TAR have pretty good ADS at esamir distances, and amazing hipfire face **** in CQC.

Most engagements that are longer range than that are usually dominated by vehicles.

I own all the good super accurate carbines, LMGs, and ARs, I just really never need them.

If I were a full time pilot I would probably use the T5 AMC for when the OCD's come chasing me into the wilderness I could snipe their *****, but I don't pilot and the hipfire magic jag is almost the perfect choice.

Maybe Hossin will present more ranged infantry combat?

Until recently I used the eridani & only hip fired. Now using the solstice sf & its nice to scope & hit more medium range targets but I'm still hip firing it in CQC situations & it works well even without a laser sight. My personal feeling is when in a building or other more confined close engagements hip firing is a lot easier. So yeah it should probably be everybodies preference for close
Quarters stuff if it isn't already.

You have highlighted a problem I hadn't noticed until you pointed it out. But it's true - I even do it myself on some classes. I do think that battlerifles, carbines and, to some degree, LMGs have little place on the battlefield when shotguns and smgs dominate at close and mid range (if you're not a spaz) and vehicles dominate at long ranges. I still think this game needs some sort of suppression mechanic for further balance weapons (no suppression on smg/shotgun, some on carbine, some more on rifles and tons on LMGs and sniper rifles).

Framerate trumps every attachment in CQC.

Soft point ammo, unless recently changed does not make you do any more damage at close range, it only reduces the effect of drop off up to medium range which is silly since bullet speed suffers.

Since the games seems to insist on having random fps drops when I click ADS now, I imagine I am not the only one to prefer hipfire weaponry.

Soft point ammo reduce the damage drop-off in exchange of less bullet speed (source : http://wiki.planetside-universe.com/ps/Soft_Point_Ammunition)

and most of the fights are from close to medium range, so most of people choose hip firing (no time lost to bring visor, and no loss of field of vision)

Short range combat has always been dominant in PS2. Because of this game having no tag mechanic everyone and their mother can abuse the zig zag and literally run in circles while their opponent empties their magazine and in turn is killed. As much as i do it myself, it's incredibly cheap abusing the lag compensation and network latency on top of the engine's "ghosting" hit registration. Technical issues aside, you then come across rechargeable shields, instant medic revives and weakened drop off damage preventing this game from having significant and meaningful long ranged infantry engagements.

When heavies with SMG's start getting really popular, you know there's some problems.

This.

As much as I like arma-style firefights in terrain, it always comes down to spazdance hipfire smg meltface dps hipfire lolol. So um.. get yourself a shotty or smg and join the clusterf*ck.

Laser sight all day everyday. Also Light assaults have been hipfiring with adv. laser since forever, this is not news to anyone.

Actually, CQC LMGs (MSW-R, Orion, Anchor) have more or less the same damages/mag and DPS than SMGs and are more versatile.

Laser sight turn the damn thing off and it still gives bonus?

I think its a bit sad in some way i really miss aiming in this game.......and to some extend with these very high rate of fire weapons sometimes it just turns to spraying bullets since you got a solid chance of still getting the kill.

My light assult is really the only class i use a weapon with aim on.
Fly somewere were they wont see you and start picking them down.

But yea for cqc you still need a hipfire weapon.

More than anything, this boils down to the VERY HIGH TTK this game offers by default.
Im over-simplifying but it goes down like this:

Low TTK -> Aim beats Evasion. Get good aim and dropp mofos. Skill-based game.
High TTK -> Evasion beats Aim. Dont care about aim so much, but get good at cqc dancing-moves (adad/circle-strafe/bunnyjump etc.). Dumb-a** game.

Lower the TTK in ps2 please :}

The anchor/EM1 has more damage / mag than the NC SMG's.

But they also have noticably worse hipfire accuracy, even with adv. laser, which is why I run SMG on my HA.

It's mainly a gameplay choice, like every CQC AR/carabines that have better DPS but less damages/mag than 2ng generation SMGs.

huhu, aim in a low TTK? You mean, spam in the general direction.... Would you really aim in this "high TTK game", you'd have no problem following moving targets....

NC doesn't have an LMG as damaging as the Orion/MSW-R, so if you don't enjoy shotguns, the SMGs make some kind of sense for NC Heavies. More than for the other empires anyway. The Cyclone does slightly more damage in the first 15m than the MSW-R but quickly loses out due to 4 tiers of damage degradation.

The paradigm right now seems to be ADADAD dancing with SMGs or other CQC weapons that let you walk faster during hipfire. It's incredibly annoying. I always try to either ambush people with shotguns or kill at medium range. If I know someone is "good" at ADADADing like a madman I go heavy with the medusa magic grenades (concussion).