Reasons why flying ESF in Planetside suck (at least on Connery) for the competitive player.

Welcome to the game.

The issue you have is self inflicted. You are trying to 1v1 competitively in a game that is neither based around 1v1's nor competitive. Them gangk squads are actually playing in the spirit of the game and you are not.

Your solutions are to friend pilots and duel or make an air outfit to dominate the sky.

Air is not exempt from the games premise, nor is it balanced around lone wolves, although it's entirely doable.

....... WTF are you smoking? I can't think of an example that holds a candle to the performance gap between the best pilots and average pilots in this game. Anything that has threatened an ESF that isn't another ESF's nosegun has been nerfed. You're absolutely clueless regarding A2A.

There's a huge difference between war and a game that's supposed to be entertaining. And from the look of things, most people have stopped. How well do you think that's working for Day Break?

Ok, so what's your solution to prevent bailing? You can state "I dislike it" but without any solutions you aren't going anywhere. The devs are already trying to make using Engineer as a pilot more attractive with auto-granted level 1 nanite repair for instance, it's not exactly a stellar change and even screws over the ground game by not introducing similar feats for them, but it's a start.
My solution: upgrade the air-game so that people who have "lost" a battle can attempt to flee. Fail to flee and you go down in a ball of flame, succeed to flee and you can return for anther round later.

You don't have to believe in Noob-Tubes, just like you don't have to believe that the monitor is there: it just is.
Noob-Tubes get a lot of flak and there are a lot of badly designed noob-tubes out there, but a well-designed Noob-Tube serves as a powerful tool to get people interested in the game and teach them to get better. They are the first step to your supposed DNA: Precision and self-improvement. A well designed Noob-Tube does exactly that, it helps improve the player skill, both by keeping it enjoyable so they stay with the game and by teaching them the exact skills they need to use the more difficult weapons. A good Noob-Tube will become less useful compared the other weapons the more skillful you get.

Now if you can't see how that can work or if you only want to focus on the badly designed Noob-Tubes that don't enforce the gameplay, that's your problem.

PS2 had a bad Noob-Tube for the air-game: A2A lock-on missiles. They didn't teach you the game and they required almost the opposite techniques of what you can actually use in the game. By making Coyote's the new Noob-Tubes they helped improve this. Coyote's require less skill to begin using but are hidiously under-par compared to noseguns, at the same time Coyote's do benefit from the HF and RM techniques that dominate the air-game. In that respect they managed to make Coyotes perfect Noob-Tubes, the only problem is that Coyote's can easily be equipped next to a nose-gun, so a top-player can be adding the Noob-Tube DPS to his normal DPS.
This also shows an aspect of Noob-Tubes that you obviously hadn't considered: They don't have to immediately kill the opponent.
In the air-game most players can't see a difference in the outcome of the battle until they come within league of the opponent. Coyote's change that, since you see more progress on your opponent in the form of the damage you dealt compared to before, where hitting is much more a hit&miss situation (hah) and the result of your hits can radically change per battle, if you hit anything at all. Just the added benefit of being able to gauge the skill difference or your progress throughout the battle are massively important and great ways to enforce a feeling of progression, even if you did lose the battle in the end.

1 great player geared for A2A should absolutely lose to 5 average players geared for A2A. Arguing against that is completely silly.

It also risks skewing reliable weapons statistics, one of the metrics by which things are balanced. Some would suggest you have to shoot players in mid-air (before they redeployed, etc.) but I think that's just trying to keep the goalposts moving away from respectable gameplay.

I've infrequently brought up the idea that the Ejection System should not be an option. You either have it with you or you don't get out of your aircraft in midflight, defined as a state of your landing gear being up. Galaxies and Valkyries are, of course, exempt. The idea is never well-received. (And, yes, I know the Scythe doesn't have landing gear. That's just a graphical choice. As with all aircraft, it is able to determine situations where any hypothetical landing gear would be put into a certain state, as should a pilot be able to determine that.)

Regardless of personal opinion or preference, the only question of weapon viability is whether some gamepiece can function in a scope of numerous players and situations, that is, whether it has enough drawbacks both individually and within a group of people equipped with the same to outweigh any benefits, even compared against other weapons that can be brought to bear.

do we Play that same game? all what touch an ESF got nerfed? hmm really guy, i don?t Thing reduce lock time, increas the Multi for handguns, reduce the dps of flacks + bring an AA unit more in that game,reduce the maker for ESF to 1000M (old inf to ESF 350) ('ESF to inf 350)
that all, wasn`t a nerf of the ESF?
can i ask u now what u smoke? or dit you Play that game? you from H1Z1 but only in the wrong Forum? or you just wanna talk ****t without any idea?

i am with you, i fly anyway with engi.

So basically, flying with a wing man or in a squadron beats flying alone? and bailing out is a way to avoid death?

I can see how this negates lone wolfing as a flyer but like so many other things, the solution seems to be to reduce or remove freedom of tactical choice in the game? Sounds a bit like the complaints gainst zerging, when in fact zergs are just a tactical decision to bring overpowering firepower to a fight.

Having said that, I sympathise as I do at least have a choice on the ground as to which battle I join and whether to lone wolf or to team up, whereas I gave up trying to fly quite early on because- learning curve, quality of the opposition and all that.

Even on the ground I still find that I am most often killed/outplayed by people who have massively higher BR than me. Whilst it won't address the numbers game, it would be nice if there was some system for stopping newer players from having to go up against vets - like the WoW battelground scenarios where you can't find yourself fighting someone more than 10 levels above you.

Yes, I know there are technical, membership numbers and financial barriers to a similar system in PS2, even continents with BR limits (like extensions of Koltyr) would require some considerable investment and not contain enough players I guess.

I'll have to ask the entire enemy team to not interfere when I'm tank dueling someone.

This just seems like a stupid statement, if you are lone wolfing it then you should be prepared for exactly what you face instead of complaining on the forums. Telling everyone to "honor up" or "stop gank squads" is just stupid, it didn't work with the stop zerging posts what makes you think that it'll work with flying?
@OP

You might want to try Emerald if ya want something closer to 1v1's in the air. It won't be that much better but Connery has a particularly toxic air game.

If you are on fire, or you are down to say...like 20% of health, you shouldn't be allowed to bail. Exits are blocked!

I concur. There shouldn't be rewards (kdr stat padding) for being a BR120 killing a BR20 or whatever.


This is the only mmo I know of that lets vets destroy noobs CONSTANTLY. Its highly toxic to the new game experience. And the longer the game lasts, the more ridiculous the skill spread will get.

Maybe use Google translate or something? That might be more intelligible than this.

No, that's 100% not what I meant, it's not even close to what I meant. In fact, this is so far off that you are just making stuff up.

There's always a skill difference between two opponents. But the type of skill difference can be different as well. One player can be good in accuracy skill and get more hits, but the other player can be better at navigating the area and using the terrain at his advantage giving him a different advantage, such as first-shot advantage. Which player should win? Both are better than the other... in their own field. Even though they could use the exact same equipment and be walking in the exact same area.

But the air-game prevents any of that. Pulling off RM and HF is far more important than any other skill, so there's no diversifying, no advantage to be gained by exceedingly good in something else. You can be fifty times more skillful in 50 different maneuvers, but as long as you don't have RM and HF you'll bite the dust anyway.

Skynights do go for infantry, despite their insistence they don't. There's only a handful of players that play purely for duels, however who do they "duel"...? Oh that's right, anyone in the sky. Even the players who don't want to duel and who for instance are playing a ground support role.
And yes, you don't need to be a top skilled player to kill a ground-pounding newb, what's that got to do with anything though?

Mostly the skyknights unbalance gameplay. They don't just kill the people who farm infantry the whole time, they kill the infantry as well, and all enemy aircraft opposition... After which their own team can farm infantry freely. The fact that one team is likely to completely dominate the air around an area because of the way A2A works means that the A2G farmers on that side get a free pass to farm.
And the fact that a Skyknight does something, for instance "always going for gank squads" which is bullcrap, doesn't balance anything at all.
And you also think that a 1v5 fight should go in favor of the skyknight? How is that balanced? How is that balancing anything? Especially if it means that the Skyknights faction can then freely farm the opposition afterwards?

Lock ons were introduced around April in 2013, that's pretty far into the "end of 2012".

Unfortunately, after a certain amount of certs, the only real progress left is to farm for directive weapons, farm for auraxium armor. This coupled with the fact that the skill difference between new and veteran player is so vast means that new players get farmed mercilessly. I like the high skill ceiling in this game, but I also believe that new players farmed by veterans is a huge source of frustration for new players and is causing them to quit.

exactly what i mean:

u wanna Balance ur low skill vs a higher skilled Player, but thats a part of u and not of that game.
never, never we should Chance a game to a playstyle like this.
u know u can`t get better, (both same ESF, so same Chance), but u want, that u can kill a guy, who allready spend more time, +++ more enthusiasm than u in that game.
because of your skill you can`t, and for that u want to Chance hale gameplay of a game ?
that should`t never be a part of that game.

Yes sure, if some one better than me with the same ESF like i have, 100% same, than yep he should kill me and yes he should get that kill, because i am too bad, and the Point of all Games is, to kill Bader People ( other the Games don`t work)
thats the Point of all games, to get a better skill and kill less skilled People, for that ESL live, for that a gamer plays

I always make it a point to kill people more skilled than me, because that's how I know I'm progressing and to show that the skill they have doesn't necessarily have to be the skill I have. Killing people who are definitely lower skill than me isn't productive. And weren't you the guy with the DNA that went for as skillful as possible? You don't get more skillful by murdering someone who's less skilled than you, you get more skilled by taking on a challenge.

Now that's a bit of an exaggeration ofcourse, but it get's the point across: You only want to grief people. You only want kills kills kills. You don't care about game design, you don't care about balance, you care about your own little world and what's in it. You don't want someone to win even if he's more skillful in another field, otherwise you would have agreed with me. You just want to kill people and feel superior by using a singular method of attack over and over again.

This is why you instantly change my words from "let's make sure the air-game offers multiple ways to be skillful and that new players can actually progress and become better, even pro by introducing the right game mechanics" into "Let's make new players kill any player with higher skill". I've even specifically told you that's not the case and given you examples of how this can be achieved, yet you don't want to hear it because it touches your special snowflake feeling. You have a fear that if the air-game changes to allow for different skills to be good that you won't be that special snowflake, that you can get torn apart by people who have always been more skillful than you but had that skill in things that don't have power in the game purely because the game mechanics don't allow it... Right now.

I can deal with gank squads by themselves. Or I can deal with bail assaults and flopping fish in mass numbers. What I can't deal with is all 3 qualities 80% of the time I fly and look for air to air combat. That is entirely unsatisfying to the competitive air to air gamer.

I will define competitive as requiring self improvement through skill and some kind of challenge in a fight.

How many of your enemy tankers are able to flop like a fish and then bail out? Very few Id say. Also how much cover do you have to hide yourself from zerging enemies? The speed and openness of the air game do not allow this. So don't acting like tanking against zergs is comparable to flying against them. When flyers know what they are doing they can be very dirty in ways that leave you no chance 100% of the time because of less variables of protection for you geographically and more ways for them to cheat you out of points and kills you justly earned.

In real life when I run races and win and beat my competition I walk up, shake their hand and show them respect they competed against me. In this game when I win and beat a pilot they flail and bail out (which seems to serve no purpose other than maliciousness and Stat whoring) so instead of shaking my hand back they're spitting in my face like some child that can't handle losing.

Perhaps, Connery Air game should be seen as a dystopian world of roving biker gangs with the survival traits of The Walking Dead characters.

In other words, you can't be too chivalrous.

Join DonAlfrago's air ball and fight against the TR air ball.

I never said tank through zergs, but as a "competitive player" you should be playing the game how it's meant to be played, if you find that 8 man gank squads arebad then why don't you get skilled friends to take them out?

Also tanking is hard team based work, decked by libs, decked by harasser squads, lockons other tanks; they rely on friendlies to do anything that isn't their speacialization, but even then they have limits. Dps and damage output limits. One tank cannot best several at once from the front, no matter how good the tanker is, however you seem to be complaining that ESFs have actual limitations against several ESFs at once, wanting this to be changed so that players will be disensentivized to fly with friends, that's just bad design.

So if you want to 1v1 and duel all day then here's a tip: Duel at your warpgate with a friend.

I would never join a group that's part of the problem. (nothing personal you all seem like nice guys but I hate that playstyle.) The casual zerging playstyle that's effective because good players refuse to organize and enforce/promote a more competitive environment.