Naberius_Shrike

Wargame: AirLand Battle.

I don't understand why it has so little coverage.

I stopped subbing awhile back due to the lack of quality content. I recently subbed again just to see if things had got any better but was sorely mistaken. Instead of actually coming up with interesting ideas, Ryan is milking jokes that weren't funny to begin with. It's sad because it's really all they have at this point. I can't remember the last time I've been able to sit through an entire piece of video content. They're really grasping at straws and it shows.

If you want to laugh at me because I care about the current state of Giant Bomb, go ahead. It won't change the fact that Premium content has come to a standstill in creativity and regular content has been lackluster to say the least.

Yet this is how Ryan chooses to spend his time.

Oh and I guess fuck around on Twitter and answer emails all day.

This all feels really desperate. I'm already starting to regret resubbing.

It's not that I don't get the joke. It's just not remotely funny.

@AlexW00d: @big_jon:

Both of you are acting like children. Please stop or take your argument elsewhere.

@believer258: Is there any particular reason for your aversion to vehicles? That's exactly the kind of thing I didn't understand in my original post.

@duder123: If you really like the WWII stuff you should pick up a cheap ($22.99) Logitech 3D Pro joystick and a copy of IL-2 1946. Easily one of the best flight sims out there and my 3D Pro has lasted me almost a decade with no problems.

@duder123: What games do you like flying in? I agree that BF3 jets are casualized but they're still fun to mess around in.

Do you mostly play sims?

@MordeaniisChaos said:

I enjoy it, but I don't think even BF3 has exactly "straight forward" controls. After 20 minutes of figuring it out, you can get up and down, but trying to be worthwhile in combat? Let alone avoiding death vs other (almost always highly skilled, and in BF3's case, so upgraded you don't stand a chance because they treat vehicle upgrades in some pretty stupid ways, IMO). Jets are even worse, because they aren't super useful in the ground game, and the aerial combat is, in my experience anyway, pretty hard to get into when literally all you have is the cannon and that requires you to be pretty decent at lining up shots, which isn't easy in BF3 jets.

I've had an easier time flying choppers/jets in ArmA 2, and the controls aren't swell for it even there.

Jets in particular are difficult to grasp for a lot of people because of the jets control: there isn't really a way to "turn" in BF3, and some games, not at all (I don't think I ever figured out how to in ArmA, but at the end of the day, a jet can really only correct/adjust in that capacity). Reasonably complex flight models are going to be difficult to get a handle on when you don't already have a handle on them. If you've been playing Battlefield for years and you're a designated pilot, you'll think it's easy as pie. But it's not a natural or intuitive thing for most to just pick up at ALL. So far, even with my continuing guidance, my buddy managed to take off into the ground a good few times and eventually just HALO and abandon us at the AO in ArmA 2's choppers. There's a reason real heli pilots need a decent bit of time training, especially for combat operations, even as simple as medivacs, because you need to be able to do more than sloppily and barely arrive on scene and spray rockets everywhere. Assuming again you have anything fucking unlocked. BF3 seems to make the choices it does specifically to keep unmotivated individuals from touching aircraft. Which is silly because there aren't enough pilots, in my experience

But no one wants to jump into an unloaded apache and use the pellet gun on the front until you some day manage to get decent enough with it to start getting points for it,a dn then eventually start working up the upgrades. It's not friendly at ALL to beginners, especially now, because everyone else is so much better equipped. Hard to use a minigun to take out a target with lock on missiles and about 40 times more experience and probably the advantage of a superior control set-up.

You seem to think no one ever tries to fly in these games, but they always do. Everyone always tries to fly the chopper every few months, fails at some point, or realizes "oh fuck, I have NOTHING, why should I bother with this useless thing?" after being promptly blown out of the sky by a fully operational weapons platform up against your training craft. Flying in games is always either like it is in Saints Row The Third or Just Cause 2, or it's really unfriendly to new players, and games that aren't flights simulators don't have tutorials at all. Or they have ArmA tutorials... *shudders*

I like flying in games. I'm not great at it in Battlefield, but I'm pretty competent in ArmA 2 and I certainly enjoy being "the transport dude." But if you can't understand what the wall is for new guys, you need to step back a bit and look at what the experience is actually like for most of them.

Jets in BF3 are incredibly straightforward compared to something like DCS or Falcon BMS. I have no idea what you're talking about when you say jets can't "turn". You roll to one side, pull up and apply rudder. That is how you turn in a fixed-wing aircraft. It sounds to me like you lack a very basic understanding of how these vehicles work or are too used to games like Saints Row which automatically do everything for you unless you turn off flight-assist. There are dozens upon dozens of 10-minute Youtube videos that illustrate flight basics in BF3. As for air combat being hard when all you have is the cannon, the cannon is your number one asset. So many people write it off as something weak or useless but it is how you will get the majority of your kills. Sure, it takes a little bit of skill to shoot, but so does every single gun in that game.

As I've stated previously, Jets are extremely useful in the ground game if you're smart. You have ultimate free-reign over ground vehicles and can strafe infantry running in the open. Let's assume you have a full 64-player game going. On the ground you are threatened by 32 players that all have the capacity to kill you. In a jet, this number drops to 5 (2 jets, AAA, Attack Helicopter) and only 3 if you know how to overcome Helicopters. Because you are less threatened, that probably means you're dying less. Since you're dying less, you have the ability to eliminate more targets.

As for "the wall for new guys", how do you think people that are good in jets got to that point? Everyone is new, once. They all had to learn from their mistakes, they all had to get shot down and realize what they were doing wrong. You seem to be in the same camp as the GB crew that think multiplayer games are unapproachable after a certain length of time. That isn't how things work. The reality is they play for an hour or two and set unrealistic expectations of how good they well be. You don't have to be a basement-dweller playing nothing but one game for hours on end, but you can't expect to pick up a multiplayer game once every few months and be good at it. It seems pretty messed up to think that playing a multiplayer game once every weekend somehow constitutes "effort". If people did that, they would surely not share the view that these games are somehow made up of experts.

I know what it is like to start out in these games because I had to do it once. The part that doesn't click with me is I don't have these extreme problems that most people seem to have. Almost everything you've listed seems to stem from a lack of patience or an overabundance of self-doubt.

@egg said:

Another theory I think of it is because it feels to separate from the rest of the game. Everyone else is on the ground playing Battlefield 3, and the planes are up in the air playing Ace Combat, and there is only marginal interaction between the two.

It's really only like that if you play it like that. In reality, I usually end up with more ground kills than people playing as infantry. Why is that you ask? Because you move a hell of a lot faster in a jet than you do on foot. On foot, you have the possibility of being strafed, sniped, blown up by tanks, blown up by mortars, blown up by claymores, blown up by grenades, or just plain shot by other dudes. All of these things set you back and negate all of the ground or progress you have made unless you still have a squadmate on the frontline.

In the air you have only 3 real threats: other Jets, anti-air fire, and yourself. Helicopters can be a nuisance but if you recognize the threat and climb to a decent altitude there's nothing they can do. I say "yourself" because when you fully understand all of the factors at play, a good number of your deaths are going to be from being overconfident. You're going to try and strafe that one guy you just can't make without crashing, or you try and shake that one bandit off your tail by skirting 5ft. from the mountaintop. Because you're not as likely to get shot at in the air as you are on the ground, you have far more opportunities to neutralize both enemy ground and air targets.

All in all, air combat is what you make of it.

@living4theday258: The key is to hop back in the cockpit even if your first attempts aren't stellar. I think most players just try once or twice and give up completely. It's really too bad because once you get over that hump, you start to realize all of the possibilites.

@Soapy86: If crashing is your main problem, try flying in an empty server. Even if it's just for 15-20 minutes, you will become much more familiar with movement.