Adding Personal Objectives to Helicopter PvE Mode

Suggestions Gameplay
1
Would you like to have Personal Objectives available in Helicopter PvE battles?
  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

One of the biggest problems in the Helicopter PvE game mode is the constant lack of available objectives. I just had a battle where my team of seven players didn’t have a single available objective for nearly eight minutes. This experience motivated me to write this suggestion.

I’ve seen other players on the forum propose increasing the number of available objectives in Helicopter PvE, reducing the number of players, or adding more BR brackets for helicopters.

All of these are valid ideas and would certainly help - I have already supported them with my vote. However, I believe there is a simpler (at least from a gameplay perspective) and more effective solution to address many of the current issues.

My proposal is to introduce Personal Objectives in Helicopter PvE battles. Upon spawning for the first time, each player would receive two random personal objectives, based on their helicopter capabilities. When a player completes one of them, it is immediately replaced with a new random objective, ensuring that each player always has two active personal objectives at any given time.

Proposed types of personal objectives (these can, of course, be adjusted by the developers as needed):

  • Available to all helicopters:

    • transport troops or cargo
    • capture zones
    • land on ships (if possible on the map)
    • patrol the designated sector

  • For helicopters equipped with rockets or bombs:

    • destroy bases
    • destroy convoys consisting of trucks and light vehicles, without SPAA protection
    • destroy enemy camps (e.g. tents, ammunition depots, parked vehicles)

  • For helicopters equipped with short-range AGMs (air to ground missiles with a range of 2-3.5 km):

    • destroy slow-moving light convoys protected by short-range SPAAs (up to 1.5 km range)
    • destroy stationary targets in sectors, protected by short-range SPAAs

  • For helicopters equipped with medium-range AGMs (missiles with a range of 3.75-4 km):

    • destroy slow-moving medium convoys protected by medium-range SPAAs (up to 3 km range)
    • destroy stationary targets in sectors, protected by medium-range SPAAs

  • For helicopters equipped with long-range AGMs (missiles with a range above 4 km - currently, the shortest missile in this category is the 9M114 Shturm with 5 km range):

    • destroy convoys protected by long-range SPAAs (up to 3.5 km range)
    • destroy stationary targets in sectors, protected by long-range SPAAs
    • destroy radar stations, possibly defended by missile SPAAs

  • For helicopters equipped with AAM (air to air missiles):

    • destroy bombers
    • destroy strike aircraft
    • destroy reconnaissance planes
    • destroy helicopters

  • For helicopters equipped with machine guns:

    • destroy unprotected by SPAAs convoys (e.g. fuel trucks)
    • destroy unprotected by SPAAs enemy camps (e.g. tents, ammunition depots)
    • destroy very slow, unarmed reconnaissance planes circling in designated areas

Additional details about personal objectives

Personal objectives would be marked on the map in orange, to clearly distinguish them from global team objectives. These objectives would award slightly less score - I propose around 15–20% less than equivalent global objectives. Additionally, completing them would have much less impact on ticket progression, ensuring that global objectives remain the team’s primary focus.

Naturally, personal objectives would be available only to the player who receives them. Other players wouldn’t be able to attack or interact with someone else’s personal targets, similar to how players currently cannot attack allied ground units. These objectives would also not be marked for other players, as there is no reason for everyone to see each other’s personal objectives. Furthermore, enemy units tied to personal objectives would not engage other players.

This system ensures that every helicopter, even lower-tier or underperforming ones, can contribute to the match and earn score. Currently, helicopters equipped with 3.75 km range missiles have to compete with much more capable helicopters using 8 km range missiles. This creates an unfair and frustrating experience. Often, enemies are destroyed by teammates before lower-tier helicopters can even get within range, leaving those players with nothing to do.

Possible adjustment of player count for better clarity in battles

This proposal would likely also require reducing the maximum number of players per match to around five. With the current limit of 10 players, introducing 20 additional personal objectives could make the battlefield feel overcrowded and chaotic.

From a balance perspective, this shouldn’t be an issue - I’ve personally managed to complete some battles solo, so the overall difficulty is manageable.

Reducing the player count would also help ensure that global objectives remain accessible and meaningful for each participant. The intention is not to replace them entirely - they should still remain the primary focus for every player.

Alternatively, each player could have only one active personal objective at a time.

9 Likes
2

This is a great idea, unfortunately, I don’t think this will be seen by many people. What’s so great about this is that, like in real life (I would imagine), this actually values individual helicopters’s strengths and weaknesses.

2 Likes
3

This, and more BR brackets. Someone grinding their 9.7 helicopter with only rockets can’t really do anything when there’s several 11.0+ premiums with long range ATGMs and AAMs.

3 Likes
4

From what I’ve learned on past experiences with the helicopter mode is that planes that are too fast or fly too high will be hard to intercept, especially if the IR missiles are struggling to lock on. And bombers like the A-26 have very lethal AI gunners that can’t be shot down with ease if you’re lacking any AA missile.
This is why I suggest for this mode to focus on attacker planes that have slow speeds or other enemy helicopters that are relatively slow, like Mi-4s or H-34s.

5

Also for Utility Helicopters I would like to comment on the possibility to drop AI personnel on specific points or retreive them from a pick-up point of the map. They don’t have to make anything too complicated for the initial implementation phase, I would be happy just to see a couple of 2-4 guys running from or twards the helicopter, pop in/out and call it a day. It would make this action more interesting than just: go to point A and capture it. Plus, it would make sense to lose the objective if you’re shot down, so you have to plan the extraction route accordingly so you keep your passengers safe.

2 Likes
6

I don’t know if you are aware, but this global objective is actually about picking up the agent and bringing them back to base. It’s just that there’s no infantry in the game, so you don’t see the agent visually.

When I wrote “transport troops”, I was thinking more about a mission similar to the current one with the agent, just reversed. So, you would first go to the base to “pick up soldiers”, and then fly to a designated area to “drop them off”.

If the leaks are true and the devs really are planning to add infantry units to War Thunder, it would unlock some really cool possibilities. I would love to see something even more complex - for example, you could pick up soldiers (and actually see them visually), fly to a target area, drop them off, and they could begin attacking a sector. Then your objective could shift to supporting them. Objectives with multiple phases like that could be a lot more fun. But this is also something much more complicated to code - probably impossible with the game in its current state.

Well, it usually takes years for suggestions to even be passed to the developers. So maybe someday it will be possible to visually show soldiers or agents entering and exiting your helicopter. It would definitely be a very cool addition.

1 Like
7

Might as well just cut the maximum ppl per game down to 4, and minimum 2 to start one.

But, I guess this would’t be bad, till Gaijin misinterprete it.

8

Reducing the number of players in Helicopter PvE battles would definitely help, but it wouldn’t solve all the problems. If you’re using a weaker helicopter, you would still struggle to compete against top-tier ones. They’re faster and have much better missiles, so they can clear many objectives before slower helicopters even get them within range.

For example, I’m currently playing with the HKP9A (FC), a 9.7 BR helicopter with a top speed of 258 km/h and missiles that have a 3.75 km range and a maximum speed of 329 m/s.
With this helicopter, I have to compete against top-tier helicopters with top speeds of 310–350 km/h and missiles with ranges of 8–10 km that travel at 475–600 m/s.

Simply reducing the number of players in battles wouldn’t solve this issue. Of course, the devs could also introduce more BR brackets in the Helicopter PvE game mode - that’s another idea that would help, but there are still some problems with it.

There are helicopters, even at 9.7 BR, that have access to Hellfire missiles, so the Helicopter PvE game mode is clearly not balanced at the moment.
Of course, this is another issue that could be addressed if the devs properly adjusted their BRs. They would need to rethink the Arcade BR for many helicopters, but it’s possible.
The big question is how queue times would be affected, especially at mid BRs. I assume that’s the main reason we currently have only two BR brackets.

Even all these small changes wouldn’t fix another issue: sometimes global objectives simply stop appearing for several minutes, leaving players with literally nothing to do.
You could address this by increasing the number of global objectives and ensuring that there’s always at least one active objective of each type. As soon as one is completed, the next one would immediately appear.

I agree that if all the issues mentioned above were addressed, the battles would look much healthier.
However, that still wouldn’t completely solve the problem of players competing against each other, which can sometimes lead to toxicity. New players, in particular, might still struggle to get some score before experienced players clear all the objectives. Simply because the experienced players know exactly what to do. Additionally, queue waiting times could increase significantly, which might add further frustration for players in Helicopter PvE mode.

Personal objectives could instantly solve all of the issues mentioned above with a single idea. And yes, I understand that this wouldn’t be as easy to implement for the devs. It would require some additional coding, even if much of it could be reused from global objectives (personal tasks would be very similar).

Even with all the additional coding, I believe it’s better to address multiple issues at once and create a solution that’s fair for everyone. New players wouldn’t be forced to compete against experienced ones, as they would always have personal objectives available only to them. Queue waiting times also wouldn’t be affected by personal objectives. In fact, having personal objectives would likely encourage more people to start playing the Helicopter PvE game mode.

1 Like
9

Would make my blackhawk useful

2 Likes
10

I do have a question, though. If one player overflies another player’s personal objective and SAMs, do the SAMs shoot at him ?

1 Like
11

This is how I see this part:

Units from personal objectives would be visible for other players as vehicles on the battlefield, but these players won’t be able to attack them. I would probably implement it the same way as allied vehicles works currently. Enemies associated with personal objectives will only recognize and target the player assigned to that specific objective.

But of course I understand that some players might not like this solution. In my opinion, this approach would be fine, since other players won’t have these targets marked in any way and would simply ignore them (even if they spot them on the battlefield).

The problem is that there aren’t many sensible ways to implement this part. If you make vehicles from personal objectives to attack all the players, the battlefield would be way too chaotic. And the devs would have to also allow other players to kill these vehicles. That would completely negate the purpose of personal objectives.

In the current state of the game, you see allied units on the battlefield, but you just ignore them whole the time (you can’t damage them, even if you really wanted). That’s how I think personal objective enemies should work for players who aren’t part of that objective. But if you have any other ideas, feel free to share them.