There is nothing wrong with playing Ace Combat with Novice/Arcade controls.

What's most important is that more people are playing Ace Combat. What does it matter what controls they use, or what difficulty they play on?

I've played Ace Combat 7 over 110 times. I bought the game for both Xbox and PC, along with all of the DLC content. I've S-ranked every mission on every difficulty, and I have spent all of my time in Ace Combat playing with Novice controls.

Why? Because they are the controls that work for me. I grew up playing games like Star Wars: Rogue Squadron on N64 and Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge on the original Xbox. Those games did not have simulator-style controls, and I would not have used them even if they did.

I can't undo 25 years of muscle memory just to play on Expert because of a vocal minority of toxic fans... and why I should I? I bought the game, and I played it to death. Come September, I'm gonna pre-order Ace Combat 8 and play that as much as I can, and Ace Combat Zero too. That's all that matters. People in this community need to stop dunking on players for using Novice controls and just be glad that more people are enjoying the game that we all love.