Proposal to reduce Heli PVE Matchmaking player count per battle

[ Would you like to limit the Helicopter PVE matchmaking to a specific number of players?]
  • 7-8 players are enough (for a trial period), I don’t think the race for targets will be an issue.
  • I prefer 5-6 players, otherwise there are not enough targets for all.
  • No - I don’t mind competing for targets, I want to stay as it is.
0 voters

Hello.

As the title suggests, this is a proposal to improve Helicopter PVE Matchmaking and gameplay all in one, swift proposed change.

This may sound surprising, but I found during my time playing Heli PVE mode that matches with a large population of players to be too crammed. In this situation, we have the following issues:

  • all players will end up competing for a rather limited number of targets on the map at a time

  • the matches can end too fast

  • players in fast helicopters or with long-range weapons will get most of the kills, while the others will struggle to perform a kill or two

  • players will leave the match early to have matches with more room for activity

Most of the time, this is how many players will decide to continue on average after ~30 minutes of battle:

Based on my experience so far, I see no reason to allow more players join an existing match due to the reasons mentioned above and I believe that it will be better for everyone to limit the player population to 6 people/match. This mode can be completed even in 3-4 players, but in this case the duration of the battle will be also extended (if people are willing to sit in the battle to the end of it).

5-6 players will be sufficient to end the entire match in 1 - 1.5 hours if the players are effective enough, while 7 or more players limit will already make the mode boring and each player will start competing with the others for targets, but this is not up to me to choose.

Thank you.

2 Likes

Honestly I think they should make spawns more frequent and also reduce amount of convoys, or even completely remove them. Make it so there is always at least 1 attack/defend event (One with arrows on the map). Or 2 stretched far away from eachother so one guy won’t be able to take everything for himself so easily. If attack events will be #1 spawn priority, game will end quickly enough without getting boring.

1 Like

Just like with top tier Air RB, reducing player counts is a bandaid solution. Not a pointless solution, mind you, but the real issue here is that the gamemode itself has been basically abandoned. There are not enough targets to go around for everyone, they can take a ton of time to appear, sometimes AA spawn behind or below you, and the game ignores that you are a stock AH-1F, you still have to deal with SAMs and gepards while being notoriously slower than other top BR helicopters because of the BR bracket.

Reducing player count will just make the distribution of score per player better, but again, the real issue here is the gamemode itself.

3 Likes

That’s true, but at this moment it will just help the mode in this state. Too many people on the map and the battle becomes crowded, making some players to not even encounter a target the full match. I didn’t see an issue with having less players either, I always managed to finish matches even in 2 - 3 people (but in these scenarios, at lower levels, expect the battles to go longer than 1 hour). It’s an easy fix to make the mode more enjoyable, rather than overhauling the entire game mode (which requires development resources I doubt Gaijin would be eager to allocate soon).

And it’s true there are other issues of this mode for Heli PVE, but I couldn’t post them all in a thread since it gets rejected by moderators. So I created separate threads, each one tackling one issue at a time, in order to be compliant with the Forum rules.

3 Likes

I have the same problem with suggestions. It’s hard to focus only on one aspect because there’s so much that needs improving. The suggestion guidelines say to include as much information as possible, but when you do it for Heli PvE, you have no choice but to list several problems and solutions with the game mode. The guidelines also say not to create threads for existing topics. There would need to be like 9 heli PvE topics to cover all of the problems and all the possible additions to the game mode.

  • New maps
  • New mechanics
  • New objectives
  • Bug fixes
  • Enemy spawn rate
  • Objective spawn rate
  • BR changes
  • Matchmaking changes
  • SPAA Nerf
1 Like

I think just simply making the min player requirements to start a gameplay to 2 will do most of the jobs, but indeed there are toooooo many players and too few targets.

1 Like

It’s astonishing that this suggestion was added back in 2023, gained support from almost 100 players, and still hasn’t even been forwarded to the devs.

We’re now in 2025, and the Helicopter PvE game mode still suffers from the same issue. This suggestion would be one of the simplest ways to improve the lack of objectives for everyone in Helicopter PvE.

Personally, I think the minimum number of players in this mode should be set to 2, and the maximum to 5.

Two players are enough to win the battle if they know what they are doing (it took us almost two hours to win this one):

Even the Helicopter PvE win rates show that 4 to 10 players are just too many, especially at higher BRs:

It is very rare to lose battles these days.

From the devs perspective, it’s just a matter of changing two values - a very easy fix that wouldn’t require any additional coding. The only problem is that the devs need to actually hear about this suggestion first.

Putting 10 players into the same battle just doesn’t make sense. It’s frustrating that, after all these years, this issue still hasn’t been addressed, and Helicopter PvE players are left to suffer because of it.

1 Like