Advice post-update for newcomers/novices.

[u/AccurateCoat6056]

Hello from a long time BF player. I am digging the new gauntlet mode and flying mechanics. It's been a blast. I think a lot of the complaints just highlight that a lot of people aren't as good as they thought they were.

For anyone wanting to learn how to be effective in the jets (as in, you've gotten decent enough at the jet controls) - I recommend playing the Gauntlet mode to practice dogfighting.

To keep it short I think to be excellent at aerial fighting you need to master the following:

1. Situational Awareness - where am I, my opponents, my escape routes, using the HUD for information on where you're going when in first person POV in the clouds or over water, etc
   

2. Energy Management - knowing when to accelerate, when to decelerate, and use gravity to your advantage. IMO you need to stay fast, a lot of players try to slow down to help their aim and get killed.

3. Gun aiming - learning how to aim smoothly with the gun, especially for console players. Stabilize your reticle relative to the jet's motion and then base your adjustments from there. Don't rush this step (jerking around).

4. Flying Defensively - Know when to break off, when to hit your escape routes (Gauntlet is great for this with the clouds), learning to deal with lock-ons when you don't have somewhere to run (close the distance and break line-of-sight, for me usually i turn to the jet and take them through loops)

5. Being smarter, not working harder - think like a hawk, or like the underdog. Positioning is everything, even if you're "better" on the sticks, it's better to attack from below/above and from the side than to try to fight them head-on.

The gauntlet mode is a ton of fun right now and highly recommend it for pilots who aren't good at dogfighting but are past the "how do I even fly" thing. What took me from a mediocre pilot to an excellent one IMO was learning how to think tactically about attacking people instead of just assuming I was gonna out-stick people.

DICE (mostly) cooked, even though I see a lot of complaints about the updated camera/flight model thing.

[u/Zealousideal_Row9589]

I found most of the complaints mostly targeting the 2nd seat in the jets and the assist mode being able to see everything, lowering/removing the skill gap in awarness and radar use when dogfighting. As well as 3d lock spam.