ESF vs. Infantry Balance.

Getting the balance right between the Air vs. Infantry game is tough. Right now aircraft end up being good at everything because their load outs are not specialized. They need to be retuned to focus on countering specific things. Be it Tanks, Infantry, or other aircraft. Once that is done lock on launchers and bursters can be tuned down as well.

[jamesgeorgi]

I think the Valkyrie should take its place in Close Air support. They should expand on its current abilities. I imagine having the option to remove the rumble seats and replace them with rocket or gun pods would turn it into a gunship kind of like the Huey in Vietnam.

[NuclearNuke]

Flying aircrafts in Planetside 2 has the most difficult controls I ever encountered. Idk how anyone can fly steady, let alone balance the aircraft and easily aiming at infantry to shoot to kill...

[KrimsonStorm]

Give a class the ability to have an air shield, similar to how ants can build the large anti air shield. A deployable that costs nanites that maybe isn't that expensive to cert into that gives decent protection from air until too much is inflicted and it explodes. Alternatively we could have an anti air shield mitigator, so air can still do damage, but will do LESS every air shield it goes through.

[Andoulline]

I always were of the mind that the AI noseguns could be simply given to the Valkyrie instead of the cas. Since the cas is pretty much useless, and the valkyrie is a 2 man vehicle so it wouldn't retain the one-man murder aspect.

Plus it's much easier to shoot down, even if it has stealth/others since it's slower movement and bigger profile.

[siratthebox]

How to balance inf vs ESF:
Literally spawn a single shield sunderer, use the guns on it, when the ESF pisses off because you hit it a few times, go do planet side things with your sundi.

[thetayz]

Late-night Banshee / PPA farmers were some of the most malignant tumors to ever infest this game. I shudder to think how many newbies quit after hours of being harassed by A2G ESFs and 3rd-faction Libs flying around ruining fights their team isn't even involved in by murdering all sundies.

[zacpackman]

as a primary inf player i find esf's the most fustrating thing to fight aganst. it would be better if there is a one hit esf killer. as i have no hitback to esf's

[plasticpeon]

RIGHT ON! Not many has touched on this subject. Great video.

[Lauscus]

I think CG touched on all the major points of this issue. Anti-air is too static and puts you in a position where you can no longer fight enemies on the ground because your guns don't do decent enough damage (sometimes a skyguard can kill stuff but it's impractical). CG makes the great point that as soon as you pull that dual burster max, the ESF can just go somewhere else.

Hell, I've been up against pretty damn good pilots that know that in a 1 to 1 trade the ESF will win, AND your MAX costs more auraxium. Often they've been farming for so long that if they die they can just pull another ESF and come right back.

The problem here is that ONE ESF can cause so much havoc and now'a'days there is a general lack of newb pilots willing to take to the skies so usually that one ESF is gonna destroy your intimate 12 v 12 base fight.

For the giant fights at amp stations and tech plants there are usually enough players there that 2-3 of those 50+ people will pull some anti air cumulative enough to almost one shot your ESF if you're not being careful.

It's those 12-24 fights that if you gave up 2-5 people to do air defense (against usually an empty sky because that ESF goes away until it calms down a little, will cause you to lose the base since the enemy faction has pop on the point.

CG is trying to show you with his air farming montages that this is kinda f'd up. I've never ever liked VTOL style ESFs in this game since day one mainly for this reason. It's clearly imbalanced. I know people would hate it if we took the VTOL out of these aircrafts, but the controls are too stable. Let's be real, you can hover over bases and easily keep your crosshair on little tiny infantry targets without having any recoil- no shit you're going to get tons of kills. At least keep some of that (you're flying in the air) type of crosshair wobble so infantry can at least react.

I'm glad he put this video out.

[awylh]

ESF vs. Infantry was balanced by getting rid of infrared vision. It's now MUCH harder to see infantry running around on the ground from an ESF.

[namename]

Seeing this video and the comments as someone who just started ps2 again after 5 years makes me think a developer must have found this video and its comments and taken it to heart.

[kingnight]

2 years later this is still a dam issue.

[shadow]

what do you think about the nerf to the thermal sights?

[angelmin]

I can't fly because of the controls so I won't talk about how easy or hard the ESFs are to fly. Roll the aircraft with the mouse? Excuse me?

But as a person who primarily plays infantry, I can say ESFs are generally very annoying, but it really depends on the pilot.

I'll mostly be speaking from my experiences playing BF1 since that's the only BF game I've played so far, of relevance.

But the worst part is how they can do everything easily and get away with everything because they can fly away from AA and apparently lock-ons too. So, like the Heavy Bomber from BF1, some pilots are capable of getting killstreaks of up to a hundred if they play carefully. And this is not okay.

At least in BF1, there are different kits for the same plane e.g. attack plane has anti-infantry which drops grenades, and anti-tank with a strong anti-tank gun instead of machine guns.
At least in BF1, AA is very strong so pilots have to focus on AA guns or avoid a whole part of the map.

But in PS2, AA guns are not as good against ESFs because they're pretty inaccurate at longer ranges, which greatly limits range, and ESFs are way too fast anyway, so they can just escape!
I can't even spawn sometimes because they just hit-and-run the Sunderers while we're attacking their base.

With the other aircraft like the Valkyrie and Liberator, they can be easily taken down by coordinated AA and missile fire so it makes the pilot more careful and they learn to avoid them, or tell their gunners to shoot the AAs first before going in. But the ESFs don't have such a big problem with AA because speed.

So the main counter to aircraft, is not very viable against... aircraft. At least the lighter, more annoying ones.

[DeusJensenGaming]

and I'll admit I bought a skyguard out of frustration

[tragsweg]

In my oppinion, another Problem is that auraxium an esf does not have enough aa weapons.
(aa lock ons and coyotes don t count for that)

[BIGESTblade]

I wounder if flying filth really don't understand why I hate them so much that every time when I see more than 1 ESF flying around I pull an AA MAX. Unlike other factions, TR AA MAX is actually a very deadly thing. Not boring for me at all, to making them suffer is actually very satisfing They either come down on the ground, or I will not let them approach the base. The day when their anti-inf is nerfed will be the best day of my life, my hatred won't go anywhere and I still will fuck them up whenever I can, but least I wouldn't have to worry about them killing everything if I won't shoo them away.

[SirMandokarla]

This entire video made me livid. Nothing that was said - everything said was perfectly in line with things I agree with. I just *hate* ESFs so much.

[highgrounder]

I know this is an ancient video by now, but whats the name of the song? I've been looking for it for years by now

[biome]

ALso, the best counter to a ground farmer is an esf. even if they have tomcats/coyotes, default nosegun has much better dps and they will be just hovering pointing at the ground so it is not hard to chunk half their health before they can even fight back