I’m seeing a lot of complaints from the upper 1% of jet players about the introduction of this setting. The common complaints I’m seeing are that it lowers the skill gap and that it trivializes the battlefield jet experience.

To be honest, as someone who is mediocre at best with jets, I don’t mind this change. I never played battlefield before bf6, so I don’t have the frame of reference of what flying was like in previous titles, but I know this: the flight experience is already rough in this game. Even with all the right key bindings and settings, hitting targets is hard and not getting locked on every ten seconds is even harder.

From a dev perspective, this setting makes perfect sense. Do you cater to the 1% of jet players, or the 99% who bring in the cash for the business? The sheer difficulty of learning how to fly the jets well (if you’re lucky enough to spam the enter button to even get the jet in the first place from cooldown) means that a significant aspect of the battlefield experience is locked out for most.

In my perspective, I think the upper 1% of skilled pilots are feeling threatened that they can’t steamroll newer pilots they way they used to. They’re going to have to try harder now because a lot more players now have a real chance. Only time will tell how this turns out. I could be wrong, but I applaud the devs for at least being brave enough to give it a try.

Furthermore, I’ve seen some proposals to balance this setting out by reducing the turning speed and overall mobility a little bit, which means the manual controls will have an edge and remain rewarding. I’m perfectly fine with that.

I know this is a loose string of ideas. I’m writing on my phone at work because I’m bored.

I agree, I've always wanted to become a decent jet pilot and this new mode allowed me to. It felt great.
I won my first 2 matches in the new Gauntlet mode.

I ain’t reading all that.

But I still crash with the new setting so that proves them wrong.

I’m rubbish at flying, so this mode is right up my street. Still can’t buy a kill though.

I think I’ve got one in a dozen rounds.

Just wish you could skip the cutscene before every round. Gets old real fast.

They shouldn't worry. I practiced a bit over the weekend and then went 0-5 in the new mode and got one kill as the copilot. It was super fun and I'll be trying again tonight. I doubt under any circumstance I'll ever hit the ground target with a bomb.

I honestly find it really hard to use - it's all well and good that I can keep an enemy jet in sight, but the way it turns is quite disorienting and it's very easy to find yourself committing to a turn that will inevitably crash into something while you're looking the other way.

It's ass tbh

I'm no great jet pilot, but it just dumbs everything down.

Knowing my planes relationship and orientation to the rest of the battlefield is always the top concern. I don’t get killed usually until a I “lose” my way dog fighting and end up somewhere over enemy territory

Its the same as ED FSA and autodock features. Its fine as a clutch for beginners. But once you get the hang of flying or docking you just turn it off perma.

I think they are overreacting and kind of gatekeeping a lot but I am also against lowering the skill gap of everything, you learn by struggling and adapting, to me this is like sbmm, you create a bunch of people that at the moment they are out of their safe bubble, they cry. I would have prefered they putting an official training ground for jets so people can fail and learn, part of people not knowing how to fly is because they don't want to sit on the spawn screen waiting for the next aircraft to be available.

Flying is easier, but actually securing a kill on another jet is really hard unless it's near perfect conditions. I'm a bad jet pilot, but I was able to get a few in the Gauntlet mode. It's nice to have the option to try jets more.

I never had problems flying them but aiming and killing things on controller is a different story. No dedicated practice mode means i'm always at the mercy of lobbies to practice shooting.

Portal and dogfighting communities exist

Ah! A fellow Elite Dangerous enjoyer! Yes this is exactly it - I actually have set my jet controls to be as close to my ED bindings as I can (switching to controller just for jets), so my muscle memory works in my favour.

Can't you hold space to skip? It works on the carrier strike at least.