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

I can't speak for others. But personally I have no problem with people bail assaulting if they're looking for more points off a C4 kill. That's a good reason. I'm talking about all the people I see, which seems like the majority who redeploy constantly to either inflate their stats, ruin mine, annoy me/upset me purposefully, or ruin my meager cert game from A2A. (I don't know which one it is but regardless I dislike all those reasons)

I run engineer personally because until I reach my potential as a pilot I'm totally not conerned about anything else. On console I ran bail assault a lot on purpose and NAR (this was before the built in radar detector) but only bailed out when I knew their were C4 targets beneath me I could take out for additional points. Never to be malicious, or stat pad (like I said the c4 kills were for certs not stats). Most of the time on PS4 I'd take the death unless it came from lock ons. On PC I always take the death so far as I run engineer 100% and don't believe in redeploying much since air locks got nerfed and g locks seem to be less of an issue since now I can dodge them into the ground unlike what I could do with a controller on PS4.

From 10PM Pacific until x amount of time from what I've seen and from what I've been told by everything I've talked to that gank squad goes completely unchallenged. Nothing poses even a slight threat to to it so I'm not sure what you're talking about. It's like we're playing two different games. That or you're talking about two different situations. One specifically referencing Don's squad (monopoly) and another talking about pre 10pm where I'm sure there's multiple competing gank squads (still not happy about that) as they're very few if any good fights that take place outside of a mass horde, along with the hordes not wanting to even break up and fight in lesser numbers even when they can handle doing so.

I can't tell you how many times I've tried to bait pilots away from their gank squads only to see them turn away once they've realized they've traveled to far away from the nest or until they bring like their 7 friends with them because they've noticed I'm watching and stalking them for opportunistic kills (because they'res so many).

I don't even retreat to friendlies most of the time. Most of the time I'm just trying to lure and bait them into 1v1's or 2v1's (against my favor) with no allied support and they still seem to be allergic without the help of the entire freaking squad.

Of course I can't speak knowing everything about everyone being relatively new. But from what I've seen the patterns of that particular squad, like most squads seem to be primarily to just gang up on one area that's easy to take, farm it dry, and then move on to another small area to farm. I'm sure there's exceptions and abnormalities and bigger fights they voluntarily partake in but that seems to be the general theme of Connery.

Personally I'm the opposite personality, I like throwing myself into a hives nest of like 8 enemy pilots and taking out 3. Problem is when they're all coordinated and eager to kill the 1 I stand no chance. That's all fine and well and good except for all the points I brought up previously that you can look back to for reference in case you're wondering why I get ticked off from it.

There's no good reason to have 5 pilots target a lighting, 9 pilots target 4 pilots with similar skill, running away from 1 single flak turret, avoiding a 9 vs 4 fight at times because you might lose a pilot. Losing some pilots in a fight is good for training purposes. I think risk creates strength and skill.

As a Connery pilot for 2 years and BR113 (you alluded to coming from PS4 so you're probably relatively new), there are competing Air squads (even terminology is suspect here) post 10PM Pacific as a lot of these "gank" squads are Chinese/Korean/some Japanese. Of course, it shifts around when key players log in or out. For example, on Sunday or Monday, Layru (who usually flies VS) organized multiple major TR Air squads to challenge DonAlfrago which was scoffed at by TR command. We had some epic Air battles post 10 PM Pacific over Indar.

I can't speak for your play style. You simply have to adapt.

I've seen the Koreans. And from what I can tell they usually run in 4 man squads roughly, with no more than 6. Don runs an average of 7 with the ability and eagerness to pull in 12 should he get closer to an equal numbers fight.

As for the TR battles vs Don. Yah they happened, and they were started by me. (lol). Layru helped me get to know the community better after I got a little mouthy on the in game chat system. Most of those fights that occured between Don and Tr pilots lead by Layru/me were about 70% mic less people, all of whom I've never met before. Literally the only guy with a mic is me, Layru, and some other guy I met here on the forums.

So what is this great challenge your speaking of? I still haven't seen it. I'd like names if you got it. Because both those you listed are no challenge to 7, potentially 12 highly organized and communicating individuals that can outnumber their opponents always, and are eager to do so even if they can win with less.

Also what TR command? Every time I play TR looks like a broken mess in the skies, with absolutely no organization whatsover. The entire server has rolled over to Don post 10pm because they see no chance in winning at anything.

You know what would be really cool. Is if half of you guys decided to fly NC and purposefully fought each other at least form time to time. But from what I've seen you're very anti that kind of situation.

Well, at least it seems like you recognized your issue. It all gets summarized in one word "Connery". That being said, the ganksquads on connery are so terrible you should be able to take them on. Sure maybe not 7 on 1, but certainly 3-4 on 1.

I can take on really terrible pilots of 3 grouped up as of recently. However organized pilots that are mediocre or better on average of 3+ I cannot. Perhaps that a limitation of my personal skill, or better than what you are thinking of right now, or both. I'd love to see someone else do it though against the organized gank squads.

TR was losing the alert so Tenecris ordered (command chat?) TR to kill Layru.

[MORI] runs superior gank squads. I've seen up to 12 to 24 over the summer. Don's forces were decimated each time. [BURT] runs Air when convenient. Recursion players were running a healthy TR Air squad for two weeks or so. I've been stuffed by TR gank squads many a time when hunting Prowlers or cores.

NC may run smaller squads at 3-8 Reavers like [56RD] but they sometimes expand especially when Air Zerging a base. NC had healthy Air earlier this summer with Mauiwowie, Avattz, and others [666] were consistently flying.

I can't speak to cohesion or coordination or access to mic. I don't think that was a contention your original post.

I haven't noticed these Mori people nor definitely have not seen them in large numbers. But if they are outnumbering you greater than like 1.3 to 1 ratio's that would be the one time I'd be willing to fly in that kind of group.

I thought Recursion were those guys who left the server? Also are all these groups the 10PM or later people or the pre 10pm?

Also what's your IGN if you don't mind me asking so I know who I'm speaking to?

[MORI] was flying aggressively from May to August. They were so dominant that I wonder if they were the reason Don switched to ground game for awhile. No joke. (Yeah, proves your point but as you can see it goes to any faction). I bet you might have not posted this thread if you saw how TR's [MORI] dominated Connery air space. Some Recursion people have been popping in. They were flying for a few weeks then they left. It's slow season now so your sampling might be off unless you include the whole summer.

My name is Cyropaedia.

I am like the ultimate air sampler because I lone wolf hunt cores deep in TR/NC territory (more than a thousand core kills) and I also fly with Don when Air squads go head to head.

Off topic but did you know Mori was like an ancient Japanese Shogunite Clan that was mostly Sea fairing? That's kind of funny they're flying instead of playing a game with naval combat.

No actually I totally would have posted this if Mori was the one doing it. I fly all three factions, historically I've flown scythe the most but enjoy Reaver and Mossy most. I'm pretty unbiased when it comes to judging people for steadfast reasons. I hate when I hate and I like what I like. So yah If somebody takes Don's spot and does the same tactics I won't like that equally as much. I might even dislike them more than Don's squad if they're douchbags as at least people in Don's squad seem nice.

So yah same thread. I tried not to make the thread specific to a clan because it seems like a server wide, perhaps game wide issue. (again it's an issue to me I understand other people enjoy constant gank squads and that my opinions are of a particular preference for competitive play)

There's two people in that transaction: The guy who bails and the guy who shot him. So if "money talks" it would be a 50/50 deal. But your logic doesn't hold up. In PS1 the bail-assault wasn't there, and in PS2 they are now introducing mechanics to make bailassaults less interesting. So you are barking up the wrong tree.

Besides that I already tried to tell you how money talks: You want as many players as you can get because more players means more money. You already said you want the game to cater to you and to you alone ("But them Devs want the game to be mainstream! The horror!"), so you are heavily biased and don't have the game's best interests at heart. You don't want the game to be engaging or fun for the general populous, you want the game to be fun and engaging for the top players and nobody else.
Now as I already explained, a mainstream game doesn't mean that low skilled players should be on-par with high-skilled players, we have only one weapon type in the game that uses such as system and they are called "G2A weapons" because the skill floor and skill ceiling are practically touching each other. But you do have to give everyone the tools to enjoy the game. Noob-Tubes are perfect for that, since they should be designed to teach the new player the game but eventually have the power of the Noob-Tube fall behind playing with "normal" weapons because of the glaring faults you can introduce to a Noob-Tube.

Are Skyknights achievers? Partially, they do go looking for those high-scores (which beats the whole reasoning of "but we don't do it for them stats"). However they also stick to one thing and one thing alone: Aircraft. They often don't hunt other achievements.

Are Skyknights Explorers? The earliest one's might have fit in that category, finding how to use RM and HF to their advantage. That's long gone, since the explorers who join the aircraft combat haven't been able to find alternatives to change the air-meta, so the Skyknights we see are there because they do one thing over and over again without exploring for alternatives. An Explorer also doesn't necessarily want to have top-notch level but enough skill to get around the game and explore, again completely different from the Skyknights. Just look at this thread where the Skyknights boast about their cunning constantly.

Are Skyknights Socializers? A tiny bit of yes, they do form guilds and relationships with other Skyknights and they will help their own to improve... Although "their own" is a limited group of players, and anyone else is insulted, degraded and thought off as inferior.

Are Skyknights Killers?
Oh yes, definitely yes. They want to dominate, they want to taunt, they want to kill. As the players in this thread already testify: They want to be able to win 8v1 combat.


Now most of the game isn't automatically geared to killers. While it's fully possible to sit around smashing people in a tank by sitting somewhere at a safe distance and lobbing shells at them it often puts them at more equal footing the moment you get into a tank fight, not to mention that getting killed by infantry as a tank is an immense dent in your feelings of superiority.
But then you have aircraft. 95% of the time when you are engaged by ground weapons you can just escape it and quickly move to another area and fight there, and which player group is going to use G2A weapons? Not the Achievers, there's not really much to achieve by scaring off an aircraft when it can either come back or farm somewhere else. Moving the problem around doesn't solve it. Explorers? There's nothing to explore with G2A weapons, at best you can find explorers that put mines on airpads or stab aircraft in the back when they think they escaped. Socializers? Nope. Killers? As if, you can't really do anything, the only killers using G2A weapons would be groups that for instance move to the warpgate to kill players as they exit.
Which leaves having to go toe-to-toe in the air where the killers thrive. This problem wouldn't be too severe if aircraft couldn't curbstomp ground units so hard. However since they can it gives Killers an even wider audience to grief when they hunt down infantry and tanks on the ground who most of the time can't even protect themselves. That's the purest killer motivation right there, killing players who can't properly defend themselves.

yes thats why i Play, thats why i come online in waregames. i want go online and **** up other Player.
if i don`t, so i wold Play : ANNO2016 or like this.
but no, i Play a WAR game.

the other Point is, you guys talk like.
Skygnight`s search a game, go online and be a PrO in 1 min..... because they have Advantages.

but there isn`t a Advantage for any Player. All got same Chance ( oh no, the older People got it harder than now).
the only Advantage is the Skill what some Player have ( it`s like Job, some one be a Boss, some one be a worker,and u wanna Balance it?)

Sure some adjustmens, ok for a Game
but really, Chance hole gameplay? for what? that that game goes die?
we see it to time, the chances, gives People a boring Feeling ( low skilled and hight skilled Player ).

Demigans and others have probably already pointed everything that is flawed in the game to appease your disappointment, but still, I'll add my touch :

1 & 2 - Yeah, that's the matter of MMOs, on massive maps, with hundreds of players. It's not an arena shooter, you won't fight only against few people, on a specific server, with competitive rules. We have mechanics with this game, we play with them (cheaters apart), and that's it. Everything else is linked to the behavior of players, which you are complaining about. But whatever you do, they will play as they wish to. Changing the game mechanisms won't help in this regard...

3- ... Except maybe preventing people from bailing while they're damaged, like in PS1. But you can "bail" from every vehicle at any time, in any situation. The only difference in the air fight being that you're... in the air. So you fall down, you survive if you're a LA, thanks to the jetpack, or you go full sprötch on the ground with any other class. It's still a little better survivability than escaping from a burning tank, sundy, or anything else, because there you'll be on foot, which is slower than a fall from the skies, meaning you're an easier target (and you're probably in the middle of a bad spot if your vehicle has been destroyed).

Why couldn't you escape your ESF and be able to from the other vehicles ? Should we change that to make bailing impossible ? Only when HP>50% ? Only while you're static (which would require a specific action/mechanism in an airplane) ? Only when in a transport vehicle (sundy, valk, gal, harrasser passenger seat) ?

Lots of questions and complications, just to make ESF-kills more rewarding ? It could be worth it for airplayers, I honestly can't weigh the pros and cons as I don't fly myself. But from a G2A support point of view, it would not change a lot of things, as G2A already barely destroy ESF at first. The only thing often unavoidable is an AP shell straight in the cockpit. No reaction time, no bail, full reward for the killer, full punishment for the prey. But much harder to land than any other "standard" option, albeit quite easy with some practice and good positionning.


So, why the hell are you playing this game ? I wonder. You're a competitive player (I respect that), you like fairfights (why not, but as already stated, this game is far from fair, in your perspective of the word). You know that making friends and the like is a reasonable solution (I see Taemien coming with his speech about it), but it seems to not answer your matter of competitiveness. You're also aware that you personally want a competitive environement, despite everything that opposes to that.

Here some advices I'm willing to expose. Why not change your way of thinking about what is competitive and what is a reward ? You're not happy with the fact that people flee, bail, don't engage you or attack while they outnumber you. Right, then why don't you consider the fact that making them flee, bail, and chase you in number is a victory in itself ?

Even if you're not playing in the grand scheme of things (like protecting a zone from enemy's ESF), they left the sky for a moment, they are not a menace for anyone else until they repair and come back (which is too fast, as many other topics suggested, but that's another point). If you were playing as a G2A support, believe me, you would be happy to see them fly away. Your job is done. Accomplishment, self-reward, even if it's not in shiny XP or any game-achievement.

About gank-squads, if luring them in a trap doesn't work, or if you're not willing/able to do that, your options are : fleeing, fighting a desperate fight. The first solution fall to the previous advice. You escaped many ESF, they chased your for no reward, lost time and then went away. It's a tiny victory, for yourself by surviving, for your team by making a squad focusing you with no real outcome, but a victory nonetheless. If you decided to compete against this impossible fight, don't you consider that you did your best to survive the longest you can, damaged them as much as you can ? Maybe the other time you will be able to fly right into their formation, disbanding them, making them crash in themselves or in mountains. There is little margin for improvements in such fights, but I've always found them intense and interesting by the manoeuvres it imposes you to execute, while damaging the enemy as much as possible.

On this point, you would like to improve your skill in an ESF. But it seems that your sole scope of improvement lies in 1v1 fights or any honorable fight from your point of view. This game have a little place for such things, but the biggest part is more about "when and where" than "who". You could probably improve your skill in the meaning of picking better fights. Fights you'd know that the enemy can't escape. Fights you'd know that you can lure the enemy into a trap. Fights you'd know would help your team whatever is the outcome (counter-groundlolpods being the easiest way to do this if there is none to few G2A support). By the way, if you're already strong with an ESF, you'll have a better spent time focusing on the tactical field of improvements rather than in the pure ESF handling field. Anyway, it wouldn't prevent you from finding an honorable fight from time to time. But it clearly would enhance the time where you feel useful, that you did something good, for yourself or your team. And suddenly, every little disappointement vanishes when compared to all you do well all the time.

If you keep your actual way of thinking, I'm afraid you won't find any fun nor pleasure. This game is just not designed for this, and won't ever be. But you can adapt yourself to this game, to find another way to have fun, to improve yourself, maybe in a way you've never explored before.

Honestly, that's such an incredibly rare occurrence. It's like pulling teeth trying to get TR pilots together. So many players that have been here forever see the ******** in the air and just don't want to deal with it. The few good pilots TR and NC have like to go solo and teamkill you when you interfere with the best of intentions. It's just a ****** up mess. If you're after "amazing air battles", why run around in such a zerg? It's no better than a 96+ camping a spawnroom or 1-12. And those massive TR fleets.... They're not an air squad, they only form when we have Indar and only fly above a zerg. At least in my meager 500 hours of flying that's the only thing I've seen.

Layru is a seriously cool guy. He was absolutely kicking my *** 1v1 so I congratulated him, started chatting, and fly with him whenever I can. He doesn't play TR as it's usually over-popped, I won't play VS because of the gank squads, so we go NC and get murdered by VS 2 or 3 vs 8.

Hes a cool guy, as I've mentioned above. He's willing to go up against overwhelming odds and fight for the least populated faction with the fewest pilots in the air. I've got a lot of respect for him, but absolutely zero for the rest of your crew. Step out of your easy bubble like Sneakysnipes1 suggested and be a part of the solution. A few of you guys obviously have the skill, I just don't understand why you have to be such pu$$ies about it and zerg like you do.

Last I checked, Planetside 2 was a massive multiplayer combined arms game with Zerging as the modus operandi (whether you like it or not).

Well, tonight on Connery at 1 AM Pacific. I was rolling with BakaRaymoo (ground force AA/Valk) and DonAlfrago in trying to defeat the TR [MORI] Air squad (Swordaction, TheivingTR). It was pretty even.

You can't call us vags when Connery VS and TR are enjoying the massive air battles.

So the rest of the time it's cool? Glad we're on the same page finally.

As for zerging.... It's not the go-to tactic for anyone with any sort of sportsmanship. I like a good challenging fight, it's clear you guys don't. Sad to say my opinion of y'all hasn't changed.

Oh sure, if you want to see it, I'll shamelessly plug a friend.
https://www.twitch.tv/discostoff2
Awesome guy, language is eng or ger. You can see past recordings or look at his stream, you'll probably find it educational and amazing.

MAG. I never got the chance to play it, had gotten extremely sick and by the time i got better they had taken MAG offline. All my friends from DUST514 played MAG first. Very sad.

Oh nooos! I need the approval of the subjective opinions of a whining and "fair fighting" Random Forumside poster! My feelings are so hurt. I need your acceptance. I beg you! I see the light...I implore all to fight "fair"and handicapped by random forum poster opinion and dispense with all forms of mass combat or smart tactics!