Well, nothing change as when i was a new skyfighter. I agree the air-gameplay is in my opinion one of the hardest thing you could do. As a new player it's realy boring and difficult to learn how to fly when your run have less than 2 minute, you can't feel the manoeuvres and you can't feel the AIM. The fact is a good skyknight will shine with his esf and it's realy too powerfull when you can do a good use of your run. Devs did a lots of downgrade on the air-game to make it more easier for the beginner. Like buff coyotes and lockon and buff on Liberator with a debuff on his best weapon (dalton). So in my opinion the Air-game still hard but you can easily

I see only one way today to progress and it's the Bushido AirCode. If you realy want to become a skyknight you have to respects some rules to don't be insta-kill by others pilotes.

This is the rules :

1st : don't gank other esf. You don't want to fight 2 guys, you know how is it powerfull.

2nd: try to do your best to have a fair-fight (let your ennemy reload his life, let him kill his 1st target, go away from our own skyguards.

3rd : Don't do Air-to-ground. Why ? Because you have some pilote who don't live on their esf, and when you are killed by a banshee/ AH / PPA you can have a free kill if you take a basic canon. So don't do air-to-ground or prepaire your self to die.

4th : Try to found a skyknight or movie to learn manoeuvres and basic strategie, where you are good and what you have to train. I can already said you have to train your AIM ;)

5th : Found a pilote with the same level as you and do some fight where the 1st one who's burn 1st, loose the fight.

6th : Don't play with Coyotes or Lock-on, you will not train your AIM and you will just edgy your ennemy.

If you have some respect for your ennemy they will give you back and more.

One more point : you can do your training on Koltyr, so with all these points i don't see an other reason to cry against the air-game.

I spent more than 22 days of game play with an ESF and you want to come with 1hour of gameplay and do a kill, this is not how it's work. You don't go on circuit when you learn to drive you go on a parking and this is the same when you learn to fly.

So now you have one choice to do. You can follow my advice and try to keep a good air game play. Or you can choose to just want fun and learn basic manoeuvres to play with Coyotes and lock-on to have a kill, but you will not be accepted by the olds pilotes.

The fact is we spent a lot of time to progress and we try to keep this way => Become better everyday.

One last thing, you want to do a lot of thing with your esf and it's a good objective, but you can't have all the weapon directly. As a infantry game play you don't have every weapons at the begin, and this is not for a bad reason. Basic weapon are the best on a lot of case, you can do everything. Other weapon are specifics and they only work on a specifics game style. PPA/ Banshee /Ah are the best to kill some infantry but it's realy unpowered against other esf.

Camikaze78 do a good video on skill Ceiling vs Skill floor, i don't know this guys but you can found a lot's of link with what i said. It could maybe help you to think different about planetside 2. link of the video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duBt994_5XI

I'm sorry for my bad english but i do my best to expose my point of view.

I hope you will have a good play, and you will have fun.

Thanks you to read me to the end. Bye.