~ Why the Valkyrie sucks / is amazing Explained in 90 Seconds ~

The valkyrie fits well into a role - but there seems to have been a lack of communication as to what that role was, exactly. It seems most people expected a medium dropship (faster than the galaxy and a bit less durable) and now feel the valkyrie is terrible because it's bad at that role.

The valkyrie functions as a cheap, "poor-man's version" containing several functions of other vehicles at lower cost both in resources and in cert investment.

The question at this point should not be "is the valkyrie useful?" but, is this what the planetside 2 metagame actually needed and is this the correct way the vehicle should have been implemented?

That and it just recently came out, so doubt people would know after 1 to 2 days of using it.. Its a new vehicle and all.

You're very, if not too good at this

More people should fly the cert pinata Valkyrie. Everyone should fly them. Laugh at the farmers noobs in their superior crappy vehicles!

While it can be argued that it is a cheaper alternative to other air vehicles while also having the downsides of being cheap and nasty, it doesn't really work because with the removal of spawn timers and the resource overhaul you can chain-pull other air vehicles (which are substantially stronger in their intended roles) without too much difficulty. It doesn't even matter if the air vehicle you just pulled can only do one thing, because that is more than any Valkyrie is capable of doing effectively. Or at all, really.

Add the fact that with all the cert pinatas Valkyries out and about it is much easier for other air vehicles to pull their own weight and, well, you get a bit of a disaster until everyone realises how much they get killed in it and stop using it after a few days.

Having only flown it in PTS (haven't had a chance yet live), I can only go based off what my outfit has mentioned.

From what I've heard, they beat back a 00TR advance using them, and are making great use of them as (what else) a light, cheap, rapid response transport.

But I can't go into greater detail as I was not there.

Truthful - weak, fragile troop transport = happy light assaults. However, I pose to you the following scenario:

You are a light assault with C4 (or an engineer with a bunch of mines) and notice three sunderers on the minimap. You're not in a squad or platoon - it falls to you to save the day. You must suicide bomb each. This will probably require 3 aircraft in a couple of minutes to be chain-pulled by you.

YOU MUST RISE TO THE MOMENT FOR HONOR AND GLORY!

(yes the sundy is cheaper, BUT HONOR AND GLORY!)

Who you gonna call?

Val-kyries!

If there's a sundy bus,
in your neighborhood,
who you gonna call?

Val-kyries!

If there's a chain of tanks,
you gotta drop em all,
who you gonna call?

Val-kyries!

Daaah na daaah na daaaah na daaaah na,
I ain't afraid of no sundy.

Daaah na daaah na daaaah na daaaah na,
I ain't afraid of no sundy.
Yeah yeah yeah yeah!
Who you gonna call?
Val-kyries!
Lemmi tell ya sumthin'
Bustin sundy's makes me feel good!
I ain't afraid of no sundy.
Don't let that spawn live, no no!
Val-kyries!
When they set up outside,
unless you don't care 'bout the base,
I think you better call,
Val-kyries!
Who you gonna call?
Val-kyries!

Exactly. 100 certs for parachute and squad spawning is not to be dismissed!

Wait a moment, there's metagame in planetside 2?

That's news to me. Why wasn't anyone informed of this?

The devs only posted it on Reddit and Twitter.

On Topic: I think people expect too much from Valkyrie's durability. It seems to play decent in areas with more vertical cover and shorter lines of sight.

I've C4ed several hovering Valks as an LA, and nailed them with dumb fires all the time. Cert piñata indeed.

HOWEVER - A pilot who knows how to make use of such a manueverable craft I can see making good use of this thing. All it really needs is afterburners and I think it'll fit perfectly into the game. The guns are pretty terrible - it's slow as molasses. but with suicide tactics in mind, yes, it's great for killing Sundies and armour. (as in getting troops where you need them)

Then again this is noting the Galaxy isn't able to do, just cheaper.

I've had great success with the Valkyrie as a cheap troop transport. Drop a few heavies and one engineer with annihilators in some of the big Hossin trees and you can do hilarious things to armor zergs.

I actually saw this happen yesterday. A VS convoy was being bombed continuously by suicidal C4 Valkyries.

The NC's fervour was somewhat frightening.

It need to be resistant to light arms, needs to be faster and needs to protect it's cargo(people).

You would deprive an honest infiltrator of his shooting-passengers-out-of-valks youtube montage?

*plays sad violin music*

can't you seeee? can't you see how an infiltrator's life and livelihood would be RUINED by such a change!?

There's nothing amazing about it yet. And yeah actually a Dev did say it had 2 roles: cheap Transport, & Spotting.

Phatasm utility could make it amazing though, atleast at Spotting.
....albeit incredibly short lived as soon as it did anything else but spot, thus pissing off the wrong people...
(cloaking is only effective as long an NO ONE IN THE AREA suspects there's a cloaker in the area.)

I had fun with it. My favorite way to kill was to drop out as an LA on top of vehicle zergs (I'm basically two homing C4 strapped to a red package) and go for grouped up tanks. Drop down, shoot some engineers or something, die, and then respawn back in. Pretty fun, but its not an easy thing to learn how to fly and I can see vehicle stealth being a default upgrade for most people.

I think they can manage haha

The Valkyrie information page states that it's designed for a "low and slow" approach, which makes the rumble seats seem pointless, since your passengers won't be able to shoot at what you're using the terrain to mask yourself from. Not to mention that the thing's simply too wide and unwieldy to maneuver easily, the passengers are supremely vulnerable, and the fact that it's basically lunch meat for any semi-competent ESP pilot or Liberator/Galaxy gunner who has the luxury of flying higher....

The phrase "designed by committee" comes to mind. The Valkyrie seems to fail at everything it was meant to do.

Personally I feel the valk would benefit from a stealth mode kit option or something of the sort to make its current tradeoffs a bit more viable. If it were given too much value it's resource cost would need to be increased too, though, so I am unsure if that'd be in the interest of the devs considering the current "poor man's version" pricepoint, etc.

Though one could just make a nicer version of the valk with a stealth module just cost a few extra resources, and boom, multiple versions of the same vehicle. >.>

It's not fast or thin enough to be able to fly stealthily at low altitude, it's not resistant enough to resist a hot drop, it's not stable enough to be able to provide fire support.It fails everywhere.
To me it needs a slight raise in price and a "huge" upgrade in everything that will make it work in what it's supposed to do.

Yeah, it seems like they were either going for some sort of pseudo-helicopter as a strong Heavy Weapons Platform, but we already have Lib, or a nice fast, sneaky, dropship. They split the difference, and now its mediocre for both.