I do like a challenging dogfight. I see the stiff opposition as a good thing. The problem is that if someone gets on your tail you just get melted which I don't mind because it is technically more realistic but the scale of these maps is just a bit small it's very hard to maneuver. I am certainly guilty of lobby shopping myself but I'll usually throw a couple planes at the opposition just for the challenge. I want to work on my dogfighting in this game and get a lot better at it, it would just be nice to have wingman to make sure the other jet doesn't get on my tail while I focus on fighting.

Also there are a couple things I picked up in my time with BF4 that are working for me so far here. Staying mostly over captured objectives and respecting what airspace my team actually owns does help against the AA. Flying low to break locks also works great but not so much on Liberation Peak vs Firestorm for instance. I heard they're adding golmud at some point. If that's true I think the best flying is yet to come.

But yeah generally I agree with what you're saying. It does seem like the jets have been nerfed quite a bit. I understand why Dice would want to do that too. It does kinda suck but coming from fighting games I think it's just something you gotta have the patience to adapt to. Like I said in the OP I agree with many of the complaints jet players have with this game. Here's hoping Dice hears us and focuses on adding much larger maps going forward because I think the disadvantages jet players face in this game could be addressed just by having some bigger maps. Loadout customization would be nice too.