It almost seems like air is hurting the game.

I don't like too much hand-holding either but the long cooldown times on ESFs make it artifically difficult for new players to learn how to fly them properly. With infantry if you die, you respawn in a matter of seconds and you can have another go so a new player can learn at a good pace. If you want to get good you can because you can keep fighting instead of staring at a minutes-long countdown timer...not so with ESFs(or any other vehicle). It doesn't help that the conventional notions of air combat don't apply in PS2 and a player has to learn the bizarre nature of hover-battles and A2A liberators.

If certs and resources become dominant factor in an engagement then Planetside 2 will be a purely P2win game, because members get more of both. New players don't start with G2A lockons.

Also whether or not someone deserves to get farmed is irrelevant to the OP's question of what the obscene amount of spawn-camping does for player numbers in this game.

"...or coordinate with nearby heavies." I'm not saying certs or resources should be the only factors as to whether an engagement is won, but I am saying that if someone is willing to spend certs and resources, you should be required to use teamwork or a high level of skill because otherwise both certs and resources are meaningless. New players start with a burster arm, and if they coordinate with other new players and nearby engineers, they can fend off an air threat. You could say that that's unfair because they had to spend 1050 infantry resources to take down a vehicle, but at the same time their maxes can just resupply into a different loadout to help their team.

Also, spawn camping is just the result of people not wanting their enemies to escape to recapture the base. It happens with vehicles and infantry, and blaming air for the spawncamping problem doesn't really make sense. Sure, air spawncamps, but so does everyone else. By the time spawncamping happens, the defending side is likelyincapable of winning anyways, air or not.

I absolutely love the whole "thrown into the thick of it" tutorial Planetside gives.I still remember my first day (after beta), hot droped into a fight between Nc and Vs. I had no chance and shouldn't even have been there. It was funny as hell, like some sick humor Sony plays on us.

It brought about a saying I'd do when ever I kill a battle rank 1 player.

"Welcome to Planetside a**hole"

I loved the drop-in the first time I played.

btw, not enough air out there. I just picked up a skyguard, and love it.

Simple fix,

Reduce the ammo for all air to ground weapons, slightly increase their damage to compensate
Limit the areas they can reload air craft, to tech plants, the odd tower and the warp gate

Make the Liberator require a tech plant to be pulled

If that doesn't work then

Reduce all air craft armour resistance to air to air weapons by 50%, so if air wants to play topgun they can and make it easier, that way the ground pounders will have less of them playing around in their game as it were.

Reduce max composite liberator tanks armour to AA slightly.

Increase the clip size of the Burster Max slightly
Increase the clip size of the skyguard and create / improve the clip size cert line to twice what it is now when maxed out
Increase the Flak speed slightly.

Then make it so lol pods no longer detonate against anything other then ground vehicles, and only do direct damage against infantry, no splash damage (unless they are next to the tank that's getting shot) no direct explosive damage, just concussive damage.

If this still hasn't effected the levels of hover spammers (libs included) make it so without hover (precision bombers) cert line aircraft fall out the sky if going less then 40% of their speed.

This is the main problem this game is facing in my honest opinion; not air, armor, infantry, resources, mechanics, respawns, or anything else, but Outfit representation, Outfit recruitment, Outfit accessibility, Outfit visibility, Outfit functionality, Outfit activities, Outfit leadership, Outfit Structure, and did I mention Outfits in general yet?

Until the "Outfit Mentality" is brought into the limelight for the new player and shown to them in an easy to access, beneficial tool; there will be new players who just do get to experience the finer points of this game. Without experienced players helping new players in their plight to learn how not to be cannon fodder for HE shells and lolpods, we will not have the ability to retain or mold newer players into effective fighting soldiers for their cause while still allowing the opportunity to have FUN at every corner. This game is not beginner-friendly unless the outlets exist for the newer players to become a part of the community right off the bat, with the tools necessary to direct them to that path as a natural part of this game.

Sure you have lone wolves and people who only like to play with friends, but for the majority of those who have never experienced highly organized or even a loosely organized group effort will never understand what that feeling actually is; sure you can run with a zerg, but can you function as a working, effective cog of a platoon effort?

Yes, this does fall in the realm of the player to direct the fresh meat to the correct path and mentor them; but a large portion of this process is needed to be fielded by better actual in-game Outfit mechanics on all levels.

Though air gets on people's nerves it's quite easy to counter. If a new player really uses his brains it takes 10 seconds to figure out how to counter it. Don't stay in large fields, if aircraft is near by take cover or be stealthy stay in the shadows and stick to trees. The leaves are excellent cover as inferred optics can't see through them. Or one tactic I use is gurella/stealth . I usually play infiltrator what I do is shoot a few tracers into the air so the ESF sees them then I cloak and while he is searching in that area i'm half a mile away before he notices i'm not there anymore. I also sacrifice yourself for the team. If you can jump from your aircraft onto another aircraft and put some C-4 on it do it. if you can hit an ESF dead on with an AP launcher but die in the process you still eliminated a serious threat. There is no I in team.

That came out of nowhere! But you do have some very solid points in there. Outfits are what makes this game good or that much better.
Anyways wont talk much about it in this thread.

All that Blah Blah Blah is Dead on the money IMO But yes, as a BR 1 pubby, without a shoulder to cry on *or loyal, understanding companion to hear my RAGE!* when every time I walk out a door to just get a face full of pods, with no champion to defend my cause and show me the error of my ways or how to defend myself, I would just toss away all my effort to learn right off the bat *exaggeration, but realistic and plausible? yes.*

They could remove air tomorrow and my gameplay experience would only improve; I wouldn't even be pissed that my SC-bought AA guns would be useless.

marketing is evil

The problem with air is that there isn't fun or rewarding counter play except for pulling more air.

Which means that air adds nothing good to the game for anyone except the person using it.

As an aside, ESFs take a good bit of skill to use properly. Liberators? Not so much.

I think they should make same exact game, but no infantry.

PlanetSide started with Tanarus after all, there was no infantry

LIbs are actually harder to use, which is despite their perceived OP´nes way more people use ESF.

I think the Libs are more an issue.

"Oh look a giant aircraft! I can hit that with my Lock-on!"
*pulls out lock on*
*lib takes notice and without a second though nukes the new guy to dust*
"Ok ill try that again" possibly even pulling a 1 armed burster max or buys the 2nd burster
*Lib lazily hovers around the area, nuking the poor new guy and even if he gets a rocket to hit it ignores it or lazily wanders off for 10 seconds, repairs and returns to continue the process*
*newbie pulls a fighter thinking* "This is an fighter plane!, this should be able to easily kill that A2G airplane!"
*Lib rolls on its back and easily nukes the fighter like its nothing*
*unfortunate newbie either*
*leaves the area*
*rages in some manner either on the forums or else where*
*gives up completely*

If you want the lib nerfed clap your hands.
If you want the lib nerfed clap your hands.
If you want the lib nerfed, and you really want to show it.
If you want the lib nerfed clap your hands.

1. Air doesn't hurt "the game".

2. Air makes "the game" less like COD.

3. COD is very popular, but if I wanted to play COD I would have bought COD.

4. I didn't want "small infantry only deathmatch killfests", I wanted large combined arms gameplay so I payed for PS2.

5. Please don't cater to COD players, they literally expect a "new" game every year, they will not stick around no matter what you do.

So no, you could justify removing basically everything but the medic class (with no shotguns) based on what would be "more popular". So please don't try to be popular, try to be PS2.

It's not an ESF/whatever problem, it's still a new player experience problem. The new tutorial does not explain how counterplay and any of the vehicles work besides the Flash - this is a huge fault in a game where counters and knowing what each vehicle is capable of is so important.

If not in the tutorial, there should be at least a big "Help" button for every vehicle accessible at a terminal, and it should stand out a lot from the rest of the interface, so that newbies press it and read what the vehicle is for and what it is countered by. This button should also be available on the death screen when killed by a vehicle.

The condition of vehicles in general is abysmal. Tanks don't have the weaknesses or strengths one would expect from a tank. Fighter aircraft spend more time rocket farming ground targets because it's easier experience with less risk than actually fighting other ESFs or, God forbid, Liberators. Liberators are the undisputed masters of anything on the ground, but ESFs generally don't go after them because Liberators have learned how to gun them down with their 105/155. More over, most good liberators these days in my experience are manned by one guy who is seat swapping, and yet balance discussions focused on them boil down to people wanting Liberators to be OP because they are multicrew capable vehicles.

Internal seat swapping should not be possible. This, by itself, would vastly improve the state of gameplay. ESFs should have limited ammunition on their ground attack weaponry, increasing the value of bases with the facilities required to enable timely ground strikes, and encouraging them to go after Liberators. Liberator cannonade should deactivate when it detects that the aircraft is rolled too far to one side, or upside down. This would make them more or less reliant on friendly elements for defense against a determined attack.

A fellow Tanarus gamer! I still miss that game.