Heli PvE Discussion

Game Discussion General Discussion
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49

Yeah it’s frustrating. There’s some genuine potential here that’s being wasted. Helicopters as it stands now doesn’t really have a comfortable place in any of the available game modes, you either get intensely paranoid in GRB/GSB of SAMs, SPAAs and fighters or spend copious amounts of time in PvE being either bored as hell or cursing at the Kamovs hoarding all the points.

Absolutely not a fun experience, not to mention you also have to deal with the soul-crushing RP grinds on top of all that, while it is alleviated somewhat by the ability to grind with ground vehicles, is rather impractical since it’s mutually exclusive with grinding ground vehicles. (unless you happen to have most of the ground tree already researched)

3 Likes
50

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can we please do something with heli pve, its insane to try and play stock vehicles in this mode, and the gamemode throws like milion people in the same lobby for some reason.

7 Likes
51

Yes, Heli PvE at top tier is terrible to play.
It’s like a tank full of sharks with not enough food for all, there is a constant stealing of kills.
Normally it takes 1-2 hours to complete a mission, with all these high tier helis we once completed the whole thing in 40 minutes.

They need to increase the number of convoys, ground battles and cap points without decreasing the reward for each action.

10 Likes
52

yeah im back on this grind again now and am not looking forward to unlocking 10.3 littlebird… it has nothing, and immediately reminds me how it went for me until i unlocked something could actually use to even grind with in pve battles, aam’s etc.

Currently grinding with uh1c xm30 since i had it from its launch but sincerely not looking forward to spading either of these 10.3 american choppers now and i’ve spaded alot of helis :(

2 Likes
53

Any body notice the AI convoy targets’ hitboxes not matching their visual model, on Afghanistan and other maps?

This has always been the case with convoys in Rocky Canyon. Consistent, even expectable. But about a month ago, when the servers were in bad condition, I had a match on Afghanistan where this happened for the whole match (Lower bracket match, Server was CIS). And unlike the usual way where the hitbox oscillates around the visual model (which serves as the equilibrium position), this one seemed to be consistent. Unnaturally so.

The hitbox consistently stayed behind the visual model by about 1-4 tank lengths! Usually, say on Rocky Canyon, the hitbox would always be less than 2 tank lengths, but constantly moving. In this Afghanistan match, however, they seemed to stay still (relative to the visual model’s position) for several minutes at each position. And was so far away from the visual model, you had to attack from directly in front to have any chances of hitting them. This only applied to the Gepard! The other vehicles in the same convoys: Sho’ts mostly did not have this mismatch, and the AMX-13s were entirely unaffected.
As for the players, most of them got understandably angry, typed some curse words and other speech in Russian, and left.

I have played more than a day of Heli EC and have never seen this happen before or since this single incident.

5 Likes
54

Sweden has one to with the HKP.4

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55

I think this was before the Mi-8 was added, but now there’s another.

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56

This is a big issue on Vietnam as well specially at lower tiers where the margin between being able to kill these gepards and not is very slim.

there’s a large desync between models when they are going over the hills etc.

I think must have something to do with the LOD’s or collision models of terrain not matching what we see so there and their position REALLY doesn’t match

4 Likes
57

I haven’t played PvE in a couple of months, but I can confirm that the hitboxes are getting worse. In the past something like autotrack/IRST (found on modern helis) would bypass this problem and always hit the taget, no matter how bad the desync was.
Last time I play not even autotrack would work, the missile would at times just hit above the target and do no damage. I am the only one to have seen this?

6 Likes
58

alot of maps the pve targets even just go under the map and can’t be targetted.

It really doesn’t help when you can critical/disable like horizontal drive, weapons, and they don’t care at all for AA

3 Likes
59

I was pretty curious about the infantry april fool joke (when i didn’t knew if it was a joke or genuinely real) because it would’ve benefited helis a LOT… early Hueys especially

Now with the SEAD event they tried to combine planes with heli for more interesting missions, so our last beacon of hope for helis is that this gamemode actually get implemented…which shouldn’t be any time soon :(

2 Likes
60

Gaijin pls

9 Likes
61

Absolutely, once I popped out of the Canyon (on the Canyon map) and an M113 shot ONE .50 cal bullet straight into my pilot’s head. Quite ridiculous.

62

Got bored enough to try it again after a year, its the biggest pile of dogshit ever put in this game. Would take me like 60 hours to spade in a heli with a premium account.

Just remove TT helis and make them all premiums at this point Jesus. Would unironically be cheaper to buy a premium 60 dollar heli on sale than to GE the mods.

63

The problem is that rewards in Helicopter PvE are limited. For optimal rewards, you want to get between 300 and 400 score every 10-minute period. Getting less than 300 can significantly reduce your rewards, while getting more than 400 won’t increase them much.

That’s because there are no direct action-based rewards in Helicopter PvE. Killing enemies or completing objectives doesn’t give you anything beyond additional score. Rewards are based on how much score you earn over time, but there’s a cap tied to your activity percentage.

It’s a very strange system that doesn’t encourage players to actively play. In fact, the best strategy is to reach 400 score in about 5 minutes and then alt-tab to do something else for the remaining 5 minutes. Then just repeat that. Even if you manage to play for the full 10 minutes and get 800 score, it doesn’t make much difference, because you won’t earn significantly more. 400 score already corresponds to about 98% activity, so doing twice as much only gets you 2% more in rewards.

Honestly, I don’t know any other multiplayer game that works this way. A game should encourage players to play more to earn more - it’s the logical way to design a reward system. But in War Thunder, we have a time-based system that works differently. It’s actually counter-intuitive, and most players never even try to understand how it works. They don’t realize that doing twice as much in a match won’t give them twice the rewards.

From my perspective, Helicopter PvE is a good game mode to have running in the background. You can watch movies, listen to music, or even work on something while “playing” this game mode. It’s also a good idea to use big RP boosters in Helicopter PvE - just make sure you get 300-400 score in each of the first three 10-minute periods.

As you can see, this reward system has many issues. If you’re wondering why the devs implemented it this way, it’s because it gives them an easy way to control the pace of player progression. With limited rewards, even the best players flying the best helicopters can’t break through that reward ceiling.

So you could say that the current progression speed in Helicopter PvE is exactly where the devs wanted it to be. But yes, I agree - especially the RP rewards are very bad from the player’s perspective. Personally, I think they should be doubled.

2 Likes
64

Yes exactly. Those greedy guys just drain the AI targets, and the game will usually ends before a large booster expires. They never realize that their rewards will not increase so much.

65

I was shocked when I mentioned the reward calculation rules in one session, and someone gaining more than 900 points per 10 minutes said that he activated boosters and needed AI targets more than his stock teammates who were struggling to achieve any kills. It seems that few players have understood the rules of this mode and reached the strategy to maximize income of the whole team.
Another thing is that gaijin always put so many people in one session. In fact the amount of AI targets and bases is far from enough to feed all those hungry players, even if the game ends in 30 minutes. Sometimes there is a 10-player team, the game ends just after a booster expires, and there are still 3 or 4 guys that haven’t reached 900 points.
The bugs of AI targets also ruined the game mode. Sometimes there isn’t a single new wave of AI targets after 5 or even 10 minutes, which ruins the current cycle of reward calculation, and sometimes AI ground attack waves and convoys appear and attack before they were shown on maps and rwr systems, leading to vehicle loss and interruption of reward periods.

It should be admitted that Gaijin has not tried to improve players’ experience in this mode. However, they have adopted numerous measures that deteriorate the player experience. For example, the banned the use of wagers, and they increased the number of players in one single session. With the era of helicopters having passed due to the introduction of advanced SPAAs and IFVs, it is certain that heli pve will fade away into history.

1 Like
66

There is a suggestion to reduce the number of players in Helicopter PvE. Unfortunately, after nearly two years, it still hasn’t even been passed on to the devs:

You can see how effective the suggestion system is on our international forum. No one cares that Helicopter PvE players have been suffering with this problem for years.

I also made my own suggestion to add personal objectives to the Helicopter PvE game mode. This single suggestion could solve many problems at once:

Maybe in 5 years, if we’re really lucky, my suggestion will finally reach the devs. But I probably won’t be playing this game anymore.

1 Like
67

Personally I don’t think the number of players is really an issue. The BR brackets, though, is a big issue. You can’t put a stock 9.3 heli in the same battle as a fully decked out 12.0 and expect the 9.3 to have even just a little bit of fun or any reasonable RP gain.

1 Like
68

If there are only 4 Helis total, I don’t care about their BR.

1 Like