Lower the air skill ceiling

One thing that always astonishes me is how many aspiring pilots will play with music in the background, effectively removing an enormous part of their situational awareness. You can't always see enemies coming, but that distinctive sound of a scythe/reaver/mosquito will always give them away.

The only time I bother to try learning to fly anymore is when I know there are other pilots in the air who will back me up. Solo flying when you just start out is suicide any way you slice it.

If they lower it any more they'll need to put wheels on them.

Asking for something to be make less skill based, in my opinion, is dumb and just shows you to be a lazy person, had you asked for it to be easier to get into that would be another story.

This.

Have you not pulled a Mosquito lately? Mine always spawns with wheels deployed.

As far as making the air game more noob new player friendly, and just more consistent in general, I wish they would greatly reduce the resource cost and spawn timer on ESF's. Granted, what I'd really prefer if they just introduced a new vehicle that could fit this role, something like a NS fighter that handled similar to the ESF's but only had a stock nose gun and much more limited utility/defense options (if any). This would allow new players to stay in the air more consistently while also giving expert pilots more things to shoot at. Seems like a win/win.

So basically ... DogFrame 3 ESF without rocket pods. -- For once I agree with an elitist.
Let's just skip that mess entirely then and put RocketPods themselves on a Hardtimer while reducing ESF downtime across the board.

same exact result, 1/10th the developer work load.

I think one way to make the air game more accessible would be to include genuine backwards flight. All of the aircraft in the game have engines that can rotate around and there is no reason why they shouldn't be able to rotate forward. What I'm thinking is that if you hold S while the ship is throttled all the way down it starts reversing at maybe 25% of its forward speed. That right there would make flying a lot easier in just about every conceivable way.

Not really sure how you labeled me an elitist. I'm a pretty garbage pilot.

Oh dear another one of these silly threads. Why is it so difficult for some to take the time and enjoy the accomplishment of mastering a difficult aspect of a game? Guess the next thing to do will be to super glue all skilled players fingers together as they are ruining bad players experience by being better.

I am no Ace by any means, but I do like flying alot on Connery and am pretty decent. (kinda)
But the ESF are the only thing completed based on skill.
If you want to learn to fly, fly with some aces on your server and learn to fly.
I joined a couple months ago and it is not that difficult to learn to fly. the first week was hell but I soon learned.
Newer pilots can learn to fly, but the aces who have spent countless hours in the sky should be able to control them. But nerfing skill is never a good idea. Then it turns into a game run by luck and pop.

Watch videos on flying
VR train flights
Fly with good wing men
Profit

No thanks, airgame got dumbed down enough already.

Agreed. And I'm not even a good pilot. Still if I were to ever put the time in I'd want to be rewarded for getting skilled.

First of all, the easiest thing you can do in this game is to counter air. Takes little to no effort or skill.
If they control the air they most likely are a small to no threat to the ground
Also keep in mind that any Ace pilot will do even better on the ground so you are just lucky that
those pilots actually are flying, that is if you are not.

Hey elitists, you guys listening?

We don't want to take away your precious throne. You can have it. You earned it. We just want to be able to learn without getting punched the face with long acquisition times and instagibs by WG campers.

Stupid L2P fools. As soon as someone says L2P I write them off as an idiot. Everyone was new once, even you.

Instead of lowering the skill ceiling, they should introduce ways for newbies to fly more.

I have some ideas.

- Make ESFs with less upgrades and certs investment into it, much easier to spawn. This means that new pilots will be able to fly more, even though they die often.
- Halve the resource cost of ESFs with few certs into it. This will allow newbies to fly more.


What newbies need is not OP weapons or baby sitting; what they need is more time in the air!

My question is why is the skill ceiling so high on ESFs and not on any other vehicle in the game? Any vehicle you play involves only a few simple things:

1. Not doing something stupid (such as not sitting a tank next to a tower where even a medic can drop C4 from above)
2. Situational Awareness (not getting C4'd by a LA, ect)
3. Not flipping or crashing into something

However the ESF has way more things needed to be successful. In addition to those three things above you need to know:

1. Reverse Manuever
2. Map Layout (can't just follow a road, since flak will utterly wreck your day... could apply to the Lib and Gal too, but they have wiggle room since they aren't as fragile)
3. Using the right frame with the right weapons (arguably needed on any vehicle, but not as important as it is with a ESF)

The big one is that reverse maneuver. Knowing it exists is the first step. Many noobs don't know about it. Knowing how to do it is the second step.. its not intuitive to learn and takes alot of practice in the VR to pull off. Knowing how to control it is the third and last step.. this is where many get hung up on.

Before I make my suggestions and my opinions clear. I would like to ask this. Would you all want to see all other vehicles have this skill ceiling added to them? If not.. then why? And then this question for those of you who don't want it on other vehicles. Are you ok with only the ESF having it? Basically do you like how ESF are harder than other vehicles and simply wish for it to stay how it is? Now.. if you could, type up your answers before you read on. I don't wish for the answers to be skewed by my next few paragraphs. I'm sort of curious how the rest of the community feels about the disparity.

Now.. for my actual opinion on the matter. I don't believe ESFs should be any harder than any other vehicle to master. I think the only thing that should set it apart from other vehicles is the fact that it moves in 3 Dimensions. That alone is tough enough for most people to have to worry about overcoming.

How would I get the ESF's to be easier to use and close the skill ceiling? Remove the reverse maneuver. Basically when you hit the afterburner, the thrusters point backward and shoot you forward, not up. The only exception to this is when the landing gear is deployed, allowing for a quick lift off if needed. I would also buff ESF's a tad in either damage potential or survivability to compensate.

I know many of you are not going to like this suggestion. You've been perfecting your skills for months and thats understandable that you don't want that to be for not. But right now the air is dominated by a small percentage of the playerbase. As the OP said, noobs can fly in the VR and that's it. It takes tutorage and teamwork to get another decent flier into the sky. Its simply doesn't make sense to me that ESF would be the only vehicle in the game that requires that. Better yet, the only Playstyle that requires that.

Of course its not going to be the only thing to fix the problem. There is still ground threats that utterly decimate the new peeps in the sky. But the reverse maneuver is probably the nastiest hurdle any new pilot has to contend with. If they didn't have to worry about it. They could instead focus on other skills needed to fly successfully.

In addition the reverse maneuver is holding back the ESFs from many changes. I'm sure many of you would like for the ESF's to be stronger than they are against Libs. Well because of the reverse manuever, only the most skilled pilots are capable of taking down Libs. Why is this? Because if ESF's were buffed against Libs, so that average pilots are capable of engaging them, then elite ESF pilots would utterly decimate even elite Lib teams. The skill output from a buffed ESF is exponential. Without reverse maneuver, ESFs could see changes that would make average ESF pilots = average Lib teams, and elite ESF pilots would = elite Lib teams.

As for the ground debate. Making the ESF more accessible means more pilots in the sky. Meaning less shots being fired on you as you have more friendly wingmen.

I don't think they should lower the skill ceiling, as such (althuogh I'm starting to think that might be needed with current libs).

I do think they could still do a LOT to help a newbie pilots life (or lack of) though.



Personally I think a proper A2A fighter would go a long way to doing this.

so......yea lets punish team play and skill that will make the game fun!!

As someone stated before, Im quite sure the OP means the lower the skill floor as in making it easier to become a non terrible pilot.