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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If there are only 4 Helis total, I don’t care about their BR.
One of the biggest reasons I advocate for A.I infantry to be added to the game is because of the number of objectives and mechanics it could make possible. The main purpose of a helicopter is to support infantry, which is lacking from most of the aspects of the game. We have transport helicopters like they Mi-4, or UH-1. We have fully modeled interiors but rarely ever see inside. We have cargo doors and side doors that open but nothing ever enters or exits the aircraft. Theres just a huge lack of purpose with most of the helicopters. I can’t speak for everyone, but I would even love to fly unarmed helis like the CH-47 or Z-8 if there were objectives for them like moving equipment, establishing FOBs or transporting troops. I wouldn’t even care about the abysmal grind if there were fun ways to do it.