Official word on air gameplay?

I never understood this attitude that people can walk into the game fresh and expect to compete with people who have put 1000s of hours into one skill set. If players really want to become decent at one area of the game then they must invest time and effort into learning what works. The only other option is to remove any aspect that requires some kind of skill.

All that said I can sympathise with the OP, it is frustrating to get endlessly killed over and over again but I think that is a mechanic that is designed into PS2. Every aspect of the game seems designed to frustrate. TTK in everything, tank, aircraft or on foot is so low that you just die constantly and there is seemingly little you can do to change it.

'Skilled' ESF pilots can't really do anything either, they cannot go near the front lines because they will be ripped out of the sky in no time. All they can do is patrol quiet areas in the hopes of finding stragglers.

The game needs more depth and harder skill trees if it is to appeal to long-term players but I sense that what the developers want is a constant stream of newbs.

I think the difference here is that it's not the amount of Certs you put into something, it's the amount of time. And that's fine, that's skill. However, with Air game in particular is so vastly different from say, tanking, or basic infantry fights. With tanking and Infantry fights, it's pretty much a linear skill curve, as steep as it may be. You start playing, get killed a bunch, but you get better and you can actually compete with people of all skill levels as you get better and better. Air, on the other hand, has a huge skill 'wall' that is entirely dependent on mastering specific maneuvers and skills that, due to the crazy stupid flight mechanics, no new player is ever going to be able to grasp or even imagine on their own. Until they take the time out to go and study these maneuvers, they are effectively useless in the Air. This is the reason Air is so unwelcoming to new players, and I think until we can truly separate the Hover/Flight modes so as to restrict Air to maneuvers that make physical sense, it will stay a hostile breeding ground for the 'Air master race'.

I think the unofficial word is "go **** yourself pilots are the biggest whales we have!"

No idea what the "official" one is though ;P

But don't you know? The flight engine is "unique" and those who can't master it are just "hitting the skill ceiling" which is why they have to use "crutches" to kill anyone.

(did I use my ESF pilot BS-talk right?)

..i'll give you a official word on air gameplay : grab a valk , grab a gunner , hit a dogfight. ..i mean that serious.

This is true and IMO is a good thing because that way players will experience the point of view of infantry at least at the start of their game. But it doesn't change the fact that once you have accumulated enough certs to cert your fighter decently, you're still going to have a ridiculously brutal first experience in the air, regardless of how certed your ESF is. Even if you spent 1000 hours on the ground you're still a newbie for the first few hundred hours in your ESF, and the air newbie experience really needs to change in my opinion.

Ever since I started running a skyguard, I loved seeing these gank squads people talk about, I wipe out whole air squads while they are chasing down one or two mossies . Only eventually one will decide okay we better shoot that thing on the ground that's killing everyone.

So yeah solution? If you see a large amount of air stuff, rub your hands and get a skyguard, so you're pilots can have the air for a bit.

The problem for BR1 pilots is that there's so little middle ground between winning fights and getting shot down. They shouldn't win a lot, I'll agree, but they need to survive longer so they can actually gain experience. The best solution, if it were possible, would be to compartmentalize the airgame more. Newbies need to be able to find a relatively safe fight and not have to worry about a gank squad crossing half the continent just to farm them. I've got no idea how to make that happen, but the ESF's ability to be everywhere at once makes it hell on newbies.

It doesn't work quite like that. To match a high skill player with just their Noseguns, the lower Gank Squads normally need a LOT more members... but if they use Tomcat (or Coyote), then it gives them a "Duel Boost" and they don't need as many players. The Duel Boost comes specifically because it improves their Aim (Tomcat and Coyote) and Range (Tomcat).

That Duel Boost isn't usually enough for a single low skill pilot to make a difference vs. a high skill pilot in a 1-vs-1 duel. This is because in 1-vs-1 duels, both players have to worry about dodging. But in Gank Squads vs. 1 player, only the 1 player and one member of the Gank Squad have to worry about dodging. So the other members of the Gank Squad can use the Duel Boost weapons to insure they Aim well and can take out the target. That's why I said Tomcat is better for lower skill players in Gank Squads than it is for just them alone.

These Gank Squads can range from 2 ally ESFs to a MASSIVE swarms of ESFs. But they usually are seen as 2-5 ESFs. A Gank Squad of 2 medium skilled players can still get wrecked by an Ace (he will dodge and they will have a hard time hitting him, until he takes them out), but if they have Tomcats (and use them properly), they stand a much better chance to win as they can ensure better Aim against the Ace. Likewise, even a Gank Squad of 5 low skilled players can either lose to an Ace or lose half their Squad to an Ace, because he can Dodge so well or use other evasion like heavy Terrain, and he can pick them off. But give those 5 low skilled players Tomcats and the knowledge on how to use them, and it become very hard for that Ace to win.

The MASSIVE swarm Gank Squads are pretty rare, and while they can often kill any Tanks (including solo Skyguards), Sunderer, or ESF they spot; they typically are composed of very low skilled pilots; with very cheap Loadouts; and they usually die off fairly quickly because either (1) they run into heavy AA (which lower skilled players typically don't know how to deal with), or (2) their formation gets more spread out and higher skilled enemy ESF players pick off the ones that wander or linger.

They could add a "you are in an unauthorized area" pain grid for any unit traveling 2 hexes deep beyond their factions territory (or covering whatever space you wanted, such as doubling the current one around the Warpgates). It would hurt the "sandbox" feel of the game, but it would give new pilots a safe zone to use.

Right here's my problem and why I want the air fixed - I work for a living. I literally do not have 100s of hours to invest. I get maybe 1-2 hours of play a night IF I decide to do nothing else with that days time off.

Not like I can't fly an aircraft - or even a helicopter in games - just not whatever the hell our aircraft in PS2 are supposed to be.

EVERYTHING in PS2 needs to be accessible to newer players - lest we forget without people coming in the game will die, and new pilots trying PS2 will take 5 minutes at it, see how elitist and frustrating it is, and go play another game.

this is terrible idea...

the ps2 air game is in a pretty bad state right now for those of us who dont like getting their balls hit by a hammer over and over again to learn how to play. the RM although not complicated is in a bit of a mess, its far to unintuitive to execute reliably for new players and its become the be all end all of air combat maneuvers (not to mention the game proper mentions NOTHING about it), anyone trying to suggest simplifying its execution is berated by the elite pilots in most instances.

Well of course, they're worried if we use "crutches" we'll "lower the skill celing" and other such nonsense words/phrases the elite ESF pilots use to avoid their KDR dropping below 5 xD

in its current state its like asking infantry to take 20+ hours to lean how to circle strafe reliably...

Yup lol xD

Basically we have a large group of players being shafted because a small group of players are having their fun their way and don't want anyone to share.

Which to me, is a bit selfish

Connery air game right now is VS gank squadrons of 12+ scythes that will go anywhere on the map, then send you hate tells for several minutes after they shoot you down telling you how bad you are. OR you can fight on the NC - TR side where the meta is RAM THE GUY!

You don't like the "theme" (the fluff behind how it works) or you don't like the "mechanics" (that it should exist or how it functions)? It's just the idea of a "No Fly Zone" (which already exists over each Warpgate).

It's not a "terrible idea" in terms of failing to function: it works to create an affect. But you may feel that to implement such an idea in the game is terrible and should not be done.

If you object to the theme, we could just as easily have auto-mated G2A Missile turrets that hit Air moving a certain distance into enemy space. Or we could have each base have a Shield Generator that covered the area deeper inside a faction's territory, and knocking out those Shield Generators opens up more Air space. You could create the fluff through any number of ways.

If you object to the mechanics, we could leave it as is. Or we could modify it to have varying tiers of softer negative effects with things like add an XP modifier that hurt kills deep inside a factions territory, or make them ALWAYS show up on radar in those areas (even on the big map) so its easier to avoid them or hunt them down.

As I said, we already No Fly Zones in the game, and nobody is complaining about them. Also, most players probably find enemies who travel deep into their faction's territory annoying: Infiltrators hacking Base Turrets, Snipers camping Terminals, ESF Aces and Gank Squads camping enemy Warpgates, a couple Squads on an elevation with Burster Maxes camping a Warpgate, etc. And the lattice already ensures that most people who travel into enemy territory don't actually help their faction (though I've seen it done effectively during the Pumpkin hunt by disrupting Pumpkin farming within a faction's borders)

There are actually many ways that SOE could limit the effectiveness of Aces in air. Far beyond just tinkering with weapons or flight mechanics. Things like offering XP bounties on specifically named High Threats, offering an "air channel" where all pilots on a faction would coordinate or a "pan outfit channel" where all leaders of an outfit could coordinate (and from their these leaders could disseminate info to their outfits, or brings info from their outfit and communicate it to other outfits), etc.

no matter how you slice it damaging a player for flying outside of am arbitrary zone that is not the map itself is a bad idea, it will only induce rage.

Wow, removing airbreakes and the "Reverse manouver" lol.
Because ramming helps new players so much?

One of the biggest problems is this attitude that new players should get a bounch of freebees.
Ramming has become very popular and supported as a combination of trolling experienced
pilots but it is very contra productive for the learning curve for said rammers.

Most of my kills are kills I get while in flight mode and because of my experience with leading,
it's the same for most Aces and the misinformation and lack of knowledge from players with
more opinions than experience is very misleading.

It is hard to get into the game in any game, however, dying in an ESF means it takes a while
to get back into the fight and you can only spawn a few ESF's until you run out of resourses.

Learning a game is part of any game, it is overcoming the challenges that makes a game fun,
interesting and worth playing for a lot of players. Make it too easy and players just get bored.

Because changing the flight model to something more conventional will suddenly make flying super easy to pick up and master. Go watch War Thunder arcade matches and you'll see how most people will choose to fly: turnfighting in massive furballs with no regards to energy management or the fact that most planes weren't actually built to turnfight.

Changing the flight models to something closer to reality will make the difficulty ramp less steep, but it will still be plenty discouraging to people who aren't going to try hard to learn how to fly no matter what kind of flying model is in place.

And you know what the funny thing is? Both WT and this game suffer the same problem, and it's not flight models. It's that they don't bother to teach people how to fly their planes properly. WT has an extremely scarce tutorial and then a short list of maneuvers without any explanation on which ones work in which planes or when to actually use them in combat. I had to go on Youtube to watch tutorials made by more experienced fliers on how to manage energy and do maneuvers in WT, and then I had to go practice them in-game.

And that's how I learned how to fly (albeit horribly) in Planetside 2, and it was all about the reverse maneuver and hoverfighting instead of climbing and diving. The game did not teach me, I had to go out and learn it from outside sources, then practice until I had something resembling the RM down. I even bothered to a probably-too-simple tutorial on how to do the RM even when my computer was practically a potato.

Many people will not take that step, and honestly they shouldn't have to in either game (I'll just talk about PS2 since it's the relevant one here but it applies to WT as well). The game should go out of its way to teach people the ins and outs of flight mechanics, not simply hand it off to Youtubers and guide writers. It should at least promote said people and their work by linking to their material on official outlets. It should host "learn to fly" nights that outfits are usually left to organize by themselves for their members. It should be promoting and supporting its flight models, not just acknowledging them.

And even though I'm arguably a better pilot in WT than in PS2 (not only because I'm massively out of practice), I would hate to see conventional flight mechanics added, especially if the differences between aircraft were as not-drastic-enough as they are currently. I'm glad that flying is closer to Battlefield's choppers than Battlefield's jets (which by the way is a total borefest).