Why ESFs are Despised, and Always will be

There has been this constant battle on the fourms and reddit between pilots and ground based players for the longest time. It seems to me that neither side really understands the other, and refuses to see the other side of the coin. One of the biggest issues it seems, is that many vocal pilots don't understand why ESFs are so despised. They see tanks, infantry, and Maxes going on massive killstreaks, and don't understand why everyone gets so mad when they achieve the same thing. I will make another post relating to the opposing side sometime in the future, but this post will be dedicated to helping "flyboy's" understand why everyone hates them.

Why ESFs are so frustrating:
Now, i've spent a considerable amount of time on both sides of the coin. I spent the first half of my time in PS2 as an infantry player, and the second half as a pilot. I've farmed with them, and been farmed by them. One of the biggest reasons that being killed by an ESF is frustrating, is that its not a learning experience. Its the one thing in the game that you really are helpless too. Many pilots will say that Heavies have lock-ons, but the Heavy assault is one of 5 classes(not including the Max) that has an AA counter, and even then, its a counter that will only make the esf leave the battle, not kill it. With almost everything else in Planetside 2, you can learn from your mistakes. You can determine what you did wrong, and improve upon it. Got killed by a make? Learn its weaknesses, flank it, abuse its slowness, etc. It won't be easy, but you can learn to counter it. Got killed by a tank? Use cover, peak out to shoot it, flank it, learn it's blind side, etc. ESF though, swoop out of nowhere. You pull off some massive flank and an aircraft swoops out of no where and spits on you. I've done it, and I know the feeling. I'll see an infiltrator who just pulled of a very good flank, and just happen to catch the glint of it's cloak and kill it out of no where. I can almost feel the frustration radiating from his dead body. If you don't have AA, you are helpless, and even if you do, you are still helpless. Many pilot's don't realize this, and discard those who get frustrated by their ability to randomly come out of no where and kill them as ignorant infantry peasants who should learn to fly to see "how difficult it really is" before they have an opinion that matters. I am a pilot, I completely understand where infantry are coming from. ESFs are powerful, they come out of no where, you have next to no chance to survive their attack, you can't learn to compete against them, there is no strategy. There is no "Learn to play". Nothing. There are far to many pilots blind to this fact.

The Tank "issue":
Many pilots ask; "why is it that tanks can farm without infantry getting too frustrated, but when I do, everyone is up in arms?". The answer is simple. Tanks are accessible. Almost anyone can hop in a tank and farm. When someone gets killed by a tank, they don't get upset, because they know they can just grab a tank and achieve the same thing. ESFs are accessible at all. It took me months and months of playing this game to finally decide to learn to fly, and even then, it took a lot more time then many players are willing to spend. New pilots don't have to learn to fly against AA, they have to learn to deal with Ace's, who will shoot them out of the sky the instant they get into view. Due to the amount of difficulty involved in learning to fly, many don't. This is why many infantry players view ESFs who kill them as "entitled". They feel that because ESFs can kill them in a way they may never be able to, that those ESFs are entitled farmers. This may sound unreasonable, and it is. Its a kind of jealousy. This is a statement i'm likely going to be heavily flamed for, but i'll be the first to admit that its true. Before I learned to fly, I got extremely frustrated when I was killed by ESFs. A large part of that is because I had tried to fly, and could just never do it. Therefore, I gained a kind of resentment for those who could. Tanks don't have this issue.

The other reason tanks are not so heavily despised, is because they are actually enjoyable to fight, and feel rewarding to kill. If you solo a tank, it feels good. You abused cover, jumped through explosions, dodged tank shells, it felt good. You actually had fun. Looking at the sky with a lock on and waiting for the little box to stop spinning so you can click is not fun. Pulling a Skyguard and shooting at ESFs who just run 3 hex's away the instant you shoot them, leaving you worthless, is not fun. Killing ESFs is like a chore. As much as ESFs hate getting killed by AA, you have to realize, the person using the AA, isn't having any fun either. Your mere presence, requiring the enemy to use AA, is sucking the fun out of their play experience in it self. This is an issue with SOE not designing any enjoyable AA counters. If AA was actually enjoyable to use, then maybe it could be toned down a bit, because then people would actually like using it. AA has to be powerful, because its something you don't want to do for a long time. You want the esf either deterred or killed as fast as possible, so you can enjoy playing the game again. This is something many pilots will never understand, and it took me a long time to understand it. Its one of the biggest reasons Infantry despise us. We are not fun to fight.

TL;DR:
In the end, ESFs will always be despised. The reasons why are just something pilots need to learn to understand. ESFs are not overpowered. Not in the slightest. That's not the reason people hate them. They are hated because they are frustrating to be killed by, are not accessible, and are not fun to counter. This is coming from the perspective of a pilot. Feel free to disagree below.

Edit: I agree with most of what you said.

But what is a "make"?

Very good post describing the Infantry side. To be honest this is also what i feel when I run a Skyguard. I don't Run a skyguard expecting to stop an alpha strike of an aircraft because 90% of the time they come from the angle you cant see till they open fire. My role in this case is not to stop the ESF from attacking, but Make it so they don't stick around for a second pass.

Then planetside will have no air gameplay without ESFs and this is the only game that can stand out against Battlefield.
And in fact, I like ESFs (ignore my profile picture), because of the rewarding kills I get for rocketing every single one that tries to attack me.
I'm not actually a pilot with that profile picture, but I have it because it looks cool :0

Yep, 100% truth here. It's kind of dazzling that this kind of analysis can be done by a player, but not by a designated development team. Just shows once again how incompetent they are.

Most likely a typo for ''Max''.

Not really. Remember that they are busy doing a lot more things then many of the players, and don't have so much free time to analize one issue in the same position as someone who plays the game for more time then they themselves are at work designing it.

Jealousy might not have been the right word to use, but his point was more that there is a Higher entry level of skill needed to Farm with an ESF then say a Tank, so it makes sense that someone would hate the side that they feel they dont have the same "access" to when getting killed by it.

Yes they're busy ignoring other glaring issues with the game like AV Mana turrets being OP as ****, lol.

Give me a small shield that will deflect rocketspam and I'll be happy. But I'm happy as it is as well, because I have Lancer.

A friendly reminder: You don't add an apostrophe to make a plural of a word.

You seem to have ignored most of the rest of the post. I think I need to un bold that part so that people don't completely miss take what I was saying. I expected the flame anyway I guess. People will never admit to something like that, which is why I decided to be the first to admit it. Maybe I am the only one who had these frustrations due to this fact, just my opinion from my personal experience.

Well then they should hire some people that would make this kind of analysis for them. This is much important then doing actual development, and should be done before the actual development. Because this kind of analysis could influence the direction of the development.

You described the problem really well. But i think that skyguards need a little buff. Sacrificing all your killing potential on infantry and vehicles for killing aircraft and not being able to kill aircraft is frustrating. Sure, i killed a lot of aircraft, but only till 100-200 meters. Past that distance, if the enemy pilot flies high you're gonna need an INSANE leading skills (if they don't fly in a straight line). And then they can sneak behind you or do whatever they want. Liberators with shreders also counter skyguards really well. If you move to dodge the liberator DPS your turret will move and you will miss shots, so the extra mobility is pretty pointless right now.

I disagree ESFs are actually overpowered and nobody likes getting farmed by tanks as infantry either alright later.

Dumb fires and AP shells are fun counters to air.

SOE added weird drop to them and reduced velocity of the two hit kill prowler lockdown specifically because it was "too effective."

SOE could easily give the tanks and sunderers a rotary style gun for accurate AA that would be as skilful as ESF aiming. Or give HA a high velocity railgun type launcher that takes multiple hits to destroy an ESF and doesn't require any weird charge up or lock on.

I love shooting down ESFs with my Skyguard. I especially love "breaking up the party" when a swarm thinks they can run the show. Skyguards kills ESFs DEAD, with a quickness. You just have to bait them into range first, before opening fire on them.

Frankly, from the perspective of a Tank / Infantry player, I wish there were FEWER AA options available. That's right, FEWER. Why? Because the vast majority of AA options are useless. IMO there are 3 things that should shoot down aircraft: Tower Turrets, Skyguards, and Burster Maxes. NOTHING ELSE. The only exception might be the Basilisk, but it is obviously NOT an AA weapon. That means no HA AA missiles, no Walker-Gs, no Rangers, no other weapon dedicated to AA.

With that said, the Skyguard and the Burster are exactly where they should be in terms of power. However, AA Turrets need a HUGE buff. Personally, what I'd like to see is every AA Turret turned into a "Double Skyguard" with two of the SkyGaurds rotary guns. The reason is simple. Right now, AA turrets (all turrets really) are death traps. They lack the HP to stand up to even a weak attack. That is why they are ALWAYS under-utilized in base defenses. They require a gunner AND an Engineer (actually 3 engineers) to keep them operational long enough to cause any damage.

tl;dr - Strip away all of the useless AA, buff tower AA, and make people use the GOOD AA options to counter Air Attacks.

I just cant agree, yes i fly a lot but when iam playing on the ground ESF and Libs basically never kill me.

FIrst of all esepcially ESF are very vulnerable. A normal battle rifle will bring it down to 50% in one magazine. And it is just not true that it is to hard to counter, most people just dont do it. I was playing on a small fight on red ridge today when air attacks startet to increase so i pulled a Burster MAX, killed the bad pilots and scarred the good ones away.

And its wrong that there isnt anything to learn, so many people just dont get the concept of cover, it is amazing. When i see a Lib above me the last thing i would do is run the 100m from the one building to the other. Yet instead of waiting just 30sec till someone pulls AA, they just run out in the open and complain how strong the Dalton is against infantry. Same with ESF, you see them on the map and and you can hear them. So if you have to move, just wait 5sec till it has passed and dont just run out in the open in front of the guns.

And yet again small arms. A ESF couldnt even break up a fight with 5 infantry men if those just would take cover in a building and shot with small arms at it.

You seem to be starting to understand, except...

...this isn't the case, at all. People despise tanks that farm infantry as much as the despise ESFs that do it, but do you know why people more vocal about the ESFs? It's because tanks either have to take a hit to their ability to fight other vehicles, or they need a secondary gunner to pick up the slack. ESFs don't have that problem, and that's why it's far more frustrating to be killed by an ESF than a tank.

I'm not going to sugarcoat it, to even hint at "jealousy" shows that you really shouldn't have even touched on this "tank issue" due to your own bias. This single paragraph is going to end up pulling the rest of your post, which is really good I might add (A bit too simplistic in some areas, but point got through), in a downward spiral.

All and all, people's biggest issue with ESFs are that they can do whatever they want, do it effectively, and can engage or disengage at whim, all while being a single-manned vehicle.

Very well writen post. Though I don't think flyboys don't understand the frustration they cause. More likely it is one of the major joys of being a pr0-pilot.

I think you've pretty much gotten it right OP. It's the helplessness that getting ganked by air causes that is the source of frustration. I think I'd add to that by saying that I think the problem is the relative exclusivity of Air - it's not at all easy for a newer or less skilled player to hop into an ESF themselves - they just get eaten in moments by the better pilots and forced to sit through a 20 minute cool down to have another go. It's not an incentive to learn.

Personally, I think the cool down aught to go and hope it does with the resource revamp, but what I'd really like to see is a sky focussed Battle Isle/Continent a few months down the line with the focus squarely on air warfare. You'd have to ferry troops between the few bases by galaxy and would have unlimited use of air units while in the zone. It would be not only a change of pace in terms of game play but also a much needed area for players to practice flying ESF's, free of the consequences and restraints of regular game play.