New pilots are being neglected by all except the elite pilots, who destroy them.

I wish that flying could ACTUALLY be made easier for new ESF pilots.

The whole "learn to fly" argument is not good enough: How do you learn to fly, when there is practically no way to learn other than this ?

1: Spawn an aircraft.

2: Fly to any place on the map which is a front line.

3: Meet a pilot with 100s of hours of experience.

4: Bite the dust.

5: Repeat ( after an eternity of spawn cooldown ).

HOW IS THIS LEARNING ?

Sure, you steadily learn from your mistakes, but it takes TOO LONG FOR NEW PLAYERS. These players will have much more fun playing on the ground.

"Well go to VR and fly around a bit." You might say. But what's the point ? There's nothing to FIGHT in VR. It's not enough to know how to do sharp turns and all.

There is still a genuine problem with introducing new players to flying an ESF. Here are a few things which could fix it:

1: Make ESF certifications CHEAPER. It amazes me how expensive it is to get the first ranks of an Airframe AND an Defense slot item AND a Utility item. Sure the last rank's prices are justified, but the first ranks' prices are too high for a new player.

2: Reduce the cooldown timer for ESFs, at least until the Resource revamp goes live. It's hard to learn to fly when you can only pull an ESF every 12 MINUTES, unless you spend 100s of certs. Does a new player have 100s of certs ? No.


There we go. I'm getting ready to get "rocket podded" by a bunch of elitists now. Cheerio.
firefalcon124.

"Everyone who disagrees is a "bunch of elitists"".

0/10

Get with a good squad. If your thing is flying, I bet you can find an outfit or two that leans toward flying.

Profit.

Took me a very, very long time to learn how to pilot the Scythe and I'm about average. First class (and second) pilots will eat me within seconds and I still crash from time to time.

However, I'm slowly improving. The key is pretty much the same as everything else in this game, practice your control in VR, then stick with other pilots in the game. Hang back, watch them and only go in for kills when you're sure it's safe. I agree it's tough to learn as it's so easy to die and the timer is quite long.

Often the best tactic is to run away before a difficult situation develops, it's what RL fighter pilots do (the amusingly named 'pump' and 'abort').

I learned how to fly mostly in VR. I'll admit, I'm still not an ace pilot, but I'm competent enough to a point to fly around and maybe take out another esf or two

In Vr, I practiced doing the reverse maneuver going underneath the two rock arches near the center of the map. I also treated the tips of rock spires like another esf, where I would fly by it and have to drop my speed, turn around and light it up.

The game provides little to help you become better at flying, but if you play around in VR, you will at least be at the competent level to fly around. Becoming an ace pilot doesnt happen overnight

Agree with OP

Did I ever actually say that ?

No.

Now give me a constructive reason as to why these are not good ideas.

The most important cert investment's for new pilots are max engagement radar,Nanite auto repair and the racer airframe. With just these 3 things a new pilot is multiple times more survivable and effective than they were with a stock ESF. Yeah they will probably still get killed often but their ability to actually USE the aircraft is what will give them a better experience.

I don't fly, and never will, but the argument is real and the point is this...regardless if its a tank, a max, a plane..whatever, since when was it the job of vets to teach newbs how to use the weapon of choice?? Vets teach the newbs the mechanics of the game, but the learning curve to be great is up to the player not the community.

Disagree.

Then they will play on the ground. Don't dumb the air game down just because new players dont want to learn. They are neglecting the air game, not anyone else and you just said that. The problem is that they dont want to learn, you cant help them unless you provide some sort of crutch for them. New pilots should use coyotes or A2A skillpods and they'll at least get a decent amount of kills (or assists at least)

To learn the reverse maneuver, the most important thing in flying.


This is coming from an average pilot and saying that "there are pilots with 100+ hours everywhere!" is just wrong.

No its not just wrong, there are pilots with 100s of hours out there. You're wrong.

There are pilots with 100 hours but they are not everywhere all over the map, thats what i meant

as a newish/bad pilot, I don't know if this can really be fixed. Learning to manage a third movement axis will always be difficult.

the initial ranks of airframe/utility/defense slot are already pretty cheap; the problem isn't those, it's the max ranks of those abilities, and stuff like weapons and reload certs. One of the best dogfighting fits according to most veteran players is also the cheapest to cert out: stock nosegun / tanks / hover. Of course, that's also the fit that requires the most practice.

I generally think all aircraft (except maybe gals) should be more durable and have less firepower; that'd make combat more compelling and also give new players some more space to learn.

ed: as far as OP's specific suggestions, I don't think everything just being cheaper to cert is going to happen. It wouldn't bother me if it did, but it seems pretty unlikely. Reducing the spawn timer wouldn't be horrible, but I don't think it would do that much to help new players either.

That's very different from the waterson experience. Here it goes a little like this:

1. Spawn your ESF.
2. Leave your warpgate
3. Die immediately to PREY campers
4. Repeat

Outfit recruiting will help. There are lots of outfits who have air groups and provide training for new pilots ( mine included--We have a regular open training and a training/ops for our air group), but it's currently very difficult for new players trying to learn to fly to find them.

Could set up a 'fight club' style event on the server where the first one to set their opponent on fire wins. Of course, that'd be a pain to set up and enforce.

So are you saying that elite pilots never learned how to fly? That they were naturally good?

Reducing the cooldown timer may actually cause more problems. Sometimes in my Reaver, I die because of lag or some stupid mistake, and I have to wait like 5 minutes till cooldown timer. So I decide to play infantry a bit, and if I'm having fun I forget about pulling a new Reaver.

But if they reduce the cooldown time, I would'nt even try to play infantry, rather I would wait a minute and get my new reaver.

I'd come up with a new CD system.

Have the CD time of an ESF be dependant on how many Certs you've spent on it.

Meaning that if you spawned an ESF with a bunch of heavy cert investments, you'd have a longer CD than someone who spawned a completely cert free ESF.

This means that people with lower cert ESFs can spawn them more frequently, as to compensate for their lack of certs.

They'd still die a lot but it'd give them more time in the air to get better.

Its one of those vehicles that you have to have passion to learn or too many certs.

I simply found myself with about 4000 certs to blow, too much station cash, and still ****** up the cert spending a lot. (got dogfighter 3)

I don't think any new pilot should even bother trying to learn to fly until they get hoverframe 3, full auto-repair, and maybe start them out with fully unlocked engagement radar or something.

But no, you start out with no airframe, the nosegun that requires the most skill to use, level 1 fuel tanks, for which they don't know how to utilize advantageously for fighting aircraft, and no utility.

Welcome to auraxis, enjoy your flight!

Regarding getting owned by an esf pilot with 100s of hours, that's not quite true. 100s of hours is nothing really. I see people with 100s of hours who still have no idea what they're doing. I believe the issue is that there is nothing that teaches beginners how to deal with other aircraft. Many times I see people pulling the straight line maneuver and taking a full clip from anyone who has the slightest clue how to turn around on someone.

I don't consider myself an ace or anything, but I am above average, and I try to help out anyone who seems to be having a hard time, yet still is willing to learn. While learning to fly air to air takes a lot of practice, none of this practice is useful until someone steers a new pilot into the right direction. I used to be helpless until I asked for advice from a member of PREY, and then he let me fly with him for some practice. I still wasn't particularly good after my experience, however I did begin to grasp the basics of a2a, and since then I've been getting better and better. I've never laid a finger on coyotes or tomcats either.

My suggestion for the game : Get rid of tomcats and coyotes. For a new pilot to obtain these, it's expensive. For a new pilot to deal with these, it's impossible. An experienced pilot will easily tear through someone using these. Heck, I'll easily tear through most people who use these weapons. Unfortunately, these weapons make it just as easy for any lesser- moderately experienced pilot to shred through a beginner pilot as an experienced pilot with their nose gun, making things worse for the beginners. They also annoy the hell out of people like me, who aren't aces, but are still above the majority of those who use these lockon type weapons. Worst of all, people who use these weapons don't learn a single thing about flying, and in fact get worse and worse the longer they use these weapons.

My suggestion for new pilots : If you see someone who just destroys you, send them a /tell and ask for tips. Take as much feedback as you can, be it negative or positive ( Not to be a dick or anything, but try not to take all positive feedback to heart, since it might often just be people being nice. Try to listen to constructive negative feedback as much as possible instead. ). If someone who kills you sends you a tell with advice, try to listen to it if it's meant to be helpful. Not everyone is out to make you feel inferior. Some people are trying to help you out too. I, and I'm sure many others too, are willing to help anyone who asks for advice, be it with aim, maneuvers, certifications, a2a or a2g, whatever.