The current state of ESF dogfights

Perfect example, lol.

BTW... as a mossie player I dont think the reaver is superior...
The balance between the mossie and the reaver is quite good actually. Just the scythe is stupidly overpowered.

Soe will never balance the air game or go the way of a skill based reward system. The problem with Planetside is that its an open world fps and that mean that the average baddie goes up against the mlg ladder leader and you know how that ends. Now there is nothing what the baddie can do (except to ged gud) except fall for SOE´s well thoughed trap.
Buying unblanaced weapons to be able to compete. Those weapons are not really good by themselfs and a skilled player takes those users out really fast , but as soon as they come more players into the fight , it changes. The more lock ons which are beeing used the more likely is the chance that the side with more of them wins and people see that so they buy it , and with soe adding more of those weapons it gets more and more unbalanced. SOE does not care for fair fights , they care only for the moneyZ

My personal opinion of the issue is how heavily relied upon hover air frame is to effectively complete the reverse maneuver during a dog fight. IMO, hover airframe should have its reverse maneuver benefits(Air brake and hover) added to and evenly dispersed amongst all three airframes.

Each frame will provide better air brake and hover thrusters that matches the current state of hover airframe.

Then, hover airframe should just provide exactly its name--decrease how quickly it falls from the sky(sorry I don't know the word for that) and let it be the go-to frame for Light PPA/Banshee/Air Hammer. Followed by dogfighting being the frame it was designed to be and Racer will be respective of its name.

Be careful what you wish for. Ace pilots enjoy stomping a few greenhorns, but even the best of them aren't going to be able to take on 20+ enemy pilots that are getting free ESFs.

There aren't the only one. My own plan for entering the air game at this point is to simply wait until all the current aces have gotten bored and left. There's a wonderful dream I have of being able to fly in contested airspace for more than about 15 seconds.

A beautiful dream...

You cannot blame a company for the attempt of making money with their product by adressing a big group of potencial customers. In this case casual players.

It's just sad for the players who tryed to play the "old style" when skill did matter and when it was fun to improve and stuff.

Its especially sad that the mechanics for a very nice airgameplay were allready there. SOE gets rid of them steb by steb.

Now the poor skillless devil can use his credit card to "compete" with a better player.

Perfectly what SOE wants - but that is how a good game dies.

This is pretty much how I feel about current ESF dog fighting air game, however it's getting even worse now because I've been off and on in the last 3 weeks maybe played 3 days total. Now when I get into the air people are just in squads of 3+ all using tomcats and it's just GG to the entire air game. I can easily adapt to that play style but that's not what I enjoyed about the game so I'm getting more and more less interested in PS2.

Coyotes and Tomcats just completely drain the fun out of the game although I'd say more-so the Tomcats. I recently got some Coyotes and they make things a lot easier and OP. I can see why so many people use them now, it's gotten to the point where rank 5 fuel pods are a waste of your time unless you don't miss shots with your nose gun and even then its still an up hill battle.

And as far as ESF balance everything to me feels alright except Scythe Hitbox, dog fighting evolves completely around nose gun accuracy. Fighting a Scythe in a dog fight is like shooting at paper. But nowadays I guess the game is about making Coyote Reload Speed and just spamming Coyotes or maybe just maxing out lock-on time tomcats, so this issue is going out with window just like the air game and my time logging in.

So, interested in opinions on how crazy I am for preferring the rotary to the needler for dogfights. Really pigeonholes me, though. Of course I might be forced to switch back regardless, at least until the rotary's UI is fixed. The reload circle doesn't display and my HUD ammo counter isn't updated properly.

I've been playing a lot longer than my forumside account would imply, it was a while before I figured out that the forum had its own registration, thought the login was just bugged on my browser/computer/area code.

Well, that pretty much depends on your playstyle. When u are jumping ppl alot at very close ranges, the rotery might be preferable for you.
On the other hand, for me it does not feel like the roterys TTK is much faster than the Needlers, due to the fact that its easier to hit with the needler (higher velocity). And when it comes to a hover fight vs a good guy with a standard nosegun you will feel like flying pants down

My dogfights or general airplay just consist of lock on's and liberators.....its becoming so dull

Last chart I saw of rotary vs default cannon use the rotaries were still more popular, even after the rotary nerfs. VS were an exception, rotary and cannon were about equally popular. Because of the Saron hype train I suppose.

I find that even at -100 m/s velocity I can still hit long distance shots with the rotaries, but I ended up going to with cannon because of ammunition capacity and new medals.

The main problem with Dogfighting airframe is that it improves yaw instead of pitch. So it actually does more harm than good when it comes to precise aiming and winning maneuvers

Wouldn't exactly describe what I do as jumping, in hover fights I tend to focus on getting out of the enemies line of fire and trying to hit them from pancake.

Allowing to rebind yaw & roll will make dogfighting easier for many people!

Flying was so much fun earlier in the game. Now its just tomcat and coyote heroes flying in groups. Whats so wrong with aiming? If you cant you will die. Just waiting for the day they give aim assistance or you just have to tab through the infantry and press mousebutton. In my opinion they ruined flying completely. I could just eat my keyboard when i see these lowbird coyote/tomcat ganksquads.

Aim shouldn't be the 1st requisite for be a good air player. The PS2 air game doesn't ask for any maneuvre, just improve you aim and dodge and now you transformed everything, ground and air, on the same FPS. I still try help the faction using ESF because I invested money and time on him before realize how "fly" doesn't apply in PS2, 1 year ago. I'm back now and nothing changed. It is more like a space ship.

I fly simulators since my teenage and have real flight experience today, but I just can't enjoy the air game here because the battle is so distant of anything you can call "fly" which I logoff everytime that my attempt to do something significant with my Mosquito fail.

The air game is basicly who already know how to aim and when fire. It is only experience and follow the same build, nothing more. That's why what you ego-players like to call "baddie" don't enjoy and don't try improve the own air game. Is boring. Theres no room for "a play" or tactic.

I back to play just to stop again, and is sad know I have some money invested here.

It's not. Run coyotes or A2AM and you don't need to aim at all, plus you out DPS the 'skill based' nose guns.

Every time I get killed by A2AM I seriously question why I even play this game, I really hope someone releases something better so I can move on.

I use those weapons because they allow me try maneuvres, and I can't accept which a technological air machine still need to use a common weapon to control the air. You can stop in the air, gravitate, but can't use a tech weapon?

I hate the FPS feature of the air game in Planetside 2. It should be a flight game, like the tank is close to real and the tanks really have their unique characteristics. You can't do so much different moves with the PS2 vehicles compared to the real, but aircrafts...

Re-posting my comment from the Coyote thread:

"Just because coyotes are dedicated A2A doesn't mean they should be the only viable A2A.

What about nose gun + Coyotes vs nose gun + fuel tanks? They're both dedicated A2A so that cancels out, and it's 1 v 1.

The only difference is that Coyotes were designed to be easy to use and nose guns hard to master. So, beyond the Coyote skill ceiling (which is low) nose gun should win every time. Otherwise, what benefit do you get from practicing?

A balanced easy to use weapon should start being more effective for low effort but should top out in effectiveness much earlier and still get beaten. The difference is, as someone else said, they do 50% damage in the fight instead of 5%. So 2 v 1 is doable.

This does not seem to be where Coyotes are currently balanced because lots of higher tier pilots use them."


The massive variation in hit boxes is probably the next biggest issue.

One day somebody's going to explain why fuel tanks are considered "A2A".

All those aircraft trying to fling fuel tanks at each other for a OHK right?

Fuel tanks aren't anything by themselves, and I didn't say otherwise. But if you bring any non-A2G nose gun AND fuel tanks, you're clearly built for an A2A role.