Heli PvE Discussion

Game Discussion Arcade Battle
83

To be fair, the game doesn’t make it easy to track these values. It really wouldn’t be that hard for the devs to add something like this to the scoreboard:

It would significantly help with tracking your score in the current reward interval. At the lower helicopter bracket it’s fairly easy to keep track of these values, but at the top bracket it’s much harder to keep an eye on everything. Dying makes it even more complicated - you have to remember both the time of your respawn and the score you had at that moment. Maybe that’s why so few players bother keeping an eye on this.

84

Hi Paul,
it is more than just that.
As Heli PVE can get boring on times, I tried to talk to several sweatlords who piled up like 800 in 6 min.
They don’t even believe it. The idea that they are on a different economy is completely alien to them. Some don’t even bother to look at their stat cards to confirm the changed rewards. They consider it a good idea to win faster. Basically, they do everything to ruin profits, including their own.
Adding that station arrival information would help only those who hardly need it in the first place. We can guestimate when we have reached 300-400 extra. But most players don’t even know where the train is driving to.

1 Like
85

This. Only a few players actually understand this and most just race each other to get as much targets as possible. At higher tiers it’s almost impossible for some players to score. It’s even more infuriating to hear the devs say that there are enough objectives in the game mode even though the map is constantly empty. And his response about Heli PvP almost made me crash out. They make a game mode shit, no one plays it because its shit, then he says “The mode wasn’t popular” well yeah, you made it terribly. Heli PVP would have been just fine if they just made more BR changes, so we didn’t have KA-50s fighting AH-1Gs. And no one plays heli PVE because it hasn’t been touched in 4 years. Players are somewhat to blame because they refuse to learn the useful actions mechanic.

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86

Actually, there are quite some people playing it, including myself. But surely, it could be better.

1 Like
87

Mi-4s vs AH-1Gs wasn’t much better.

Not being as dead as Air Assault is one thing Heli PvE has going for it.

88

BR changes would fix that issue too.

89

I would hardly call me being part of the problem I dont even play the game mode enough to pop up on statistics
If gaijin designs a gamemode poorly thats on them its straight up just bad game design to make the player sit there doing literally nothing for a whole hour just because its more ideal for grinding

90

If your previous statement is right, you definitely are.

Then you comment on the current state:

The point is, that to get even to 1600 score in 40 min will require a lot of activity on your part. But you don’t have to fight your team mates to the blood to collect those 3000 points. Even if you only collected 1200, you’d still have 92% of the income you’d get with 3000. Just kill the SPAA and the the little choppers deal with the remaining infantry. Or farm planes, if the others can’t.
Once you understand, that you will earn about x RP for 10 min of active survival, the whole game gets more enjoyable, because you don’t have to play in an elbow mentality. For me, that part is actually a good decision in the game design, because it would allow for team play. Just that the team doesn’t want to learn this, even if told in chat.

91

It is even worse than that, because the devs did not think about how the new helicopters with fire-and-forget missiles would affect the Heli PvE game mode.

Since the maps in this mode are relatively small, these new helicopters can simply hover in the middle of the map and use their 15-20 km range fire-and-forget missiles to hit everything that spawns.

There will be more and more players unlocking these helicopters and completely dominating battles with them. The situation is already very bad even when there is just one such helicopter in the match.

For example, here is a battle I played yesterday after 10 minutes:

Spoiler

You can clearly see who has the new fire-and-forget missiles unlocked.

I wrote to this player that getting such a high score makes no sense, because he gains nothing extra from it and only takes score away from other players, but he ignored me. And I understand that I cannot really blame players for playing the game. This guy was simply doing what the game and his new helicopter allowed him to do.

After 20 minutes:

Spoiler

And at the end of the battle:

Spoiler

It is completely ridiculous that a single helicopter can dominate a battle like this. The worst part is that he does not even move for the entire battle. He just positions himself in the middle of the map and, whenever enemies spawn, quickly rotates and fires all his missiles within seconds. Because these new missiles are so overpowered, he can destroy most planes and ground targets before anyone else can even get them within range.

So when I hear the devs saying that Helicopter PvE mode is perfect now and needs no changes or improvements, I seriously ask myself whether they have played even one Helicopter PvE battle recently. This statement is so out of touch that I cannot believe any player who actually plays this mode would say everything is fine. It is an unbelievable level of ignorance.

4 Likes
92

I reported a bug related to broken sector attack and defense objectives:

Helicopter PvE - All sector-related objectives failing to spawn

In my latest Heli PvE battle, not a single sector-related objective spawned. Normally only a few sectors get bugged during a match, so having all sector-related objectives broken at the same time is extremely rare. Because of that, this battle is actually a very good example of the issue.

Since no sector-related objectives were generated, strike aircraft also didn’t spawn at all during the battle, as they are tied to these objectives.

Bugs like this are honestly very frustrating. From a player’s point of view, a battle like this is basically a waste of time. I stayed until the end just to make sure the objectives wouldn’t suddenly start working later. When the first convoy reached player-controlled sectors and no sector defense appeared, it was already clear how the entire match would go. I only kept playing to properly document the problem.

What makes this even more disappointing is that the developers have stated that Helicopter PvE development is finished and that the mode doesn’t need further changes. Meanwhile, even the most basic mechanics, like objectives that are required to earn score, can completely fail.

Issues like this are one of the reasons why Helicopter PvE isn’t very popular. Even in this battle, other players were saying that matches like this simply make no sense to play.

There’s a chance my report won’t get any attention or might get closed for some trivial reason, but at least this specific issue is now properly documented.

7 Likes
93

Its been like this for 4 years. Devs asked the players for feedback, players gave them feedback, then the feedback gets ignored. We’ve got tons of awesome gameplay mechanic suggestions and those are also ignored. We’ve got a bunch of unique helicopter suggestions, but instead we got 14 Hinds, 17 apaches, and maybe a few premium helis. It’s really demoralizing waiting for improvement for helicopter gameplay. The most change we’ve gotten is fnf agms but giving top tier helis fnf missiles isn’t a fix, its just more frustrating for ground players and stock helis in Heli PvE. The overall gameplay has essentially remained the same and in some aspects actually gotten worse since the introduction of helicopters. I mean most of the problems could be addressed with little to no effort. Primary examples: The KA-50s dominating heli PvP. Could have been easily fixed by adjusting BRs so it wasn’t facing 8.0 helicopters. Game director’s solution? Get rid of the gamemode.
Low player count in heli PvE. Could be easily fixed by making the gameplay engaging. The game director’s solution? Ignore all feedback and suggestions then forget the game mode exists.
Helicopters aren’t even worth grinding or playing at this point and I’ve tortured myself through 3 whole tech trees. It’s an absolute waste of time.

3 Likes
94

Totally agree, I have the same thought, and I myself run into the same type of player when trying to finish spading lower BR helicopters that are in the 2nd bracket from 9.7 and up and honestly if you are even in a 9.7 Helicopter for PvE mode its almost useless to even bother trying to gain points because helicopters with 4km range or 5km or even 6km range on the atgms almost have no chance of even making a high amount of XP or SL with the helicopters. So yes, the Fire and Forget ATGMs have put a burden on the Heli PvE mode for the high bracket of helicopter players, that’s a fact, as you can see the numerous amount of people typing in these forum pages about this problem. If it were a dead mode or wasn’t any good, then sure, but the mode is alive, and plenty of people play it; it would be nice to see them take some action on this subject.

1 Like
95

just bring back helicopter pvp actually

96

it was pretty fun when heli’s first came out lol, I remember getting machine gun kills in the French one, as well american one with the dual high speed grenade launchers.

One of big issues is lobby size, specially at high tier should be 4 players max, a single top tier heli can basically sit in middle of map and do almost everything solo.

They SHOULDN"T but once in awhile they will and leave nothing for anyone else

97

Man I just wish the mode worked if the development truly is “finished”. I know I’ll just echo most of the posts but i must rant.

Bases stop spawning after you destroy like 5 of them, stuff fails to spawn constantly so you keep there doing nothing while staring at the other 9 players, the only consistent thing to spawn seems to be airplanes which only a few helicopters can deal with.

When something does spawn it’ll always target the first player in the match, e.g. will spawn AA right below them for a cheap kill.

The size of the matches is absolute abysmal, too many helicopters for too few tasks, it was better when the victory wages worked because at least half of the lobby would just leave at the start and you could have the entire match for yourself even.

And lastly the Up/down tier rule is completely gone from the mode, if you have a 9.3 helicopter you’ll have to compete with a dozen 10.7 and 11.3 helicopters with far superior everything. I disagree with having 3 segments of BR like was suggested years ago on this thread, I think it should just apply the 1.0 BR rule like the rest of the game does and adjust their Arcade BR for balancing of who can meet what, its the only place that uses that BR anyway.

I’ve only been playing PvE with helis that have AA missiles since the planes always show up, other than that I prefer Assault Ground for grinding modules, it’s way faster and you can make lots of points from assists by spray rocketing the AI when they spawn. Only shame is not being able to use boosters on it.

1 Like
98

The matchmaking system is forced, because it would be impossible to find a match otherwise. There simply aren’t enough players queueing up at one time for multi-hour matches.

99

I just had another battle with almost all objectives completely bugged out, again on the City map. It seems this map bugs out far more often than others, probably because it has the fewest available sectors.

Bases were bugged, sector attacks and defenses never started at all, so strike aircraft objectives were also bugged. This time, the landing objective was bugged as well, making the situation even worse than before.

The only available objectives were bombers, which we could not destroy with our helicopters, and very rare convoys that were also practically impossible to destroy for our helicopters.

In this battle:

  • We had 3 helicopters capable of destroying sectors, but the sector objectives were bugged from the start.
  • We had 2 helicopters capable of destroying bases, but the base objectives eventually became bugged.
  • All 5 helicopters were capable of completing landing objectives, but those objectives eventually became bugged as well.

We lost the battle because it was impossible to win with most of the objectives being bugged.

Replay of the battle:
https://warthunder.com/en/tournament/replay/431505902416582356

This time I did not wait until the end of the battle and simply left. There was no point in wasting time.

Screenshots:

The situation after the first convoy reached our sectors (this should have triggered sector defense, but it didn’t). All bases were already bugged at this point, and the landing objectives were bugged as well.

Spoiler

The situation 8 minutes later (still nothing happened):

Spoiler

This is when the next convoy appeared, but we couldn’t destroy it anyway:

Spoiler

Before I left, I had already wasted 30 minutes in this battle.

Spoiler

I updated my bug report about this issue, but it still has Open status, and I don’t expect it will be passed on to the devs. It’s unlikely to be fixed anytime soon, just like every other problem related to the Helicopter PvE game mode.

BUG REPORT: Helicopter PvE - All sector-related objectives failing to spawn

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