Many War Thunder players have at least heard, seen, tried or at least suffered in Heli Enduring Confrontation. The alluring nature of a helicopter-dedicated mode with Arcade flight model, Air Sim-esque gameplay and Air sim-esque rewards surely attracts a ton of helicopter enthusiast (or players looking for a more diverse CAS option) among the playerbase. I mean, who wouldn’t want to grind their Valkyries as quick as possible, in a game mode that offers a lot of in-game rewards comparable to a simulator game?
Unfortunately, Heli EC - especially their first game mode, PvP - wasn’t the sunshine and rainbows players expected. Veterans from 2019 will remember how screwed and downright unplayable Heli EC PvP was, especially with the introduction of Eurocopter Tiger HAP/HAD with their 20G Mistral (which was nerfed), and the notorious Ka-50. Imagine fighting advanced helicopters with unflarable AA missiles and Vikhrs in a helicopter as miserable as a Mi-4AV or H-34.
A lot of players were left unsatisfied, proven by multiple posts criticizing the horrible state of Heli PvP (including myself) and long story short, it was removed and replaced with Heli EC PvE in 2023.
However, the question of “Has Heli EC PvE brought anything meaningful to the problem in Helicopter grinding?” remains.
The answer was “It did, for a while”, until players realized how half-baked the game mode is. Bugged objectives, targets not respawning, unclear boundaries between what rank and what BR can you face Rolands in, and more things that makes the mode second-to, if not as frustrating as Heli EC PvP, such as the fact that Gaijin picked Rocky Canyons as one of the maps in the EC’s map pool.
Heli EC PvP was - in its latest state - unplayable. No BR bracketing was personally the biggest problem I have encountered in this game mode, as one of my first experiences in playing the game mode was getting sniped by Ka-50 in my Mi-4AV. I managed to create countermeasures against these menacing machines (sneaking, launching salvos of rockets to detonate Vikhrs, and more), however it didn’t increase the odds of winning a battle against heli like Ka-50s.
The suggestion that I propose to Gaijin, is
- To bring this game mode back with BR bracketing to ensure that earlier generation helicopters won’t face advanced generation helicopters with proxy fused ATGM and/or AAM; a similar system to Air Simulator’s BR bracketing, if not Ground Sim’s vehicle grouping
- Then, use the Heli PvE-sized maps and difficulty parameters to compensate the helicopter’s capability in each BR bracket.
This might be a problem since Ka-50s BR is at 11.0 and it is on Rank 6, which means that it can still be a problem against other 11.0 helicopters, but Gaijin can simply raise the BR of this thing to 11.7, on par with its Ka-52 brother and Mi-28NM rival. Although, this might be a problem for other 11.7 helicopters. The solution to this is simply to
- Add Hellfire Lima (AGM-114L) to end-game helicopters, as a counter to Vikhrs;
It has LOAL, proximity fuse, sufficient range and a lot of platforms can equip this ATGM. Note that this particular suggestion will create another problem (imbalance) in other game modes (such as Ground RB or SB), therefore I personally think that this is another problem that requires further research.
Let’s say that Heli EC PvP was removed for the reason that it is already dead, too toxic, too grindy and not amusing anymore to players. What should Gaijin do to the PvE game mode? It’s actually a pretty simple solution with a very difficult problem solving; bug fixing.
Heli EC PvE is riddled with a quadrillion of bugs and emptiness, one of the example is ground objectives not spawning. I had a match where no convoys spawned for the next 10 minutes, no offensive and bases spawning for another 10 minutes. I have yet to found the reason to this problem, so I have no further comments on this particular matter.
(here’s one of the funniest bug in Heli PvE that has been fixed [probably], I introduce you “target spawning outside map boundary” bug)
The other infuriating bug (to me) is the “Land on any pad” objective bug. Have you ever capped a zone and when you return, you can’t finish the objective “Land on any pad”? Congratulations, you are now one of the many players that are frustrated with this bug.
- I have made a report about the “Helicopter PvE Capture Point Bug” bug in fact, although it was in an older version of War Thunder (last update), unfortunately no devs had bat an eye through it. I guess it wasn’t comprehend enough and needed more proof or something.
Then, the emptiness. Personally, I think Gaijin only need to
- Increase the spawn rate of each objectives or diversify the objectives that needs to be finished. I don’t think borrowing objectives from the old Heli EC PvP would be a large problem, no?
As frustrated as a player can be, I can only hope that the developers will be able to tackle these problems soon. A lot has been poured into making these two game modes and unfortunately problems still persists in these game modes and none of them are getting taken cared of. If reviving Heli PvP is a no-go, then at least fix the Heli PvE game mode, for crying out loud.
Lastly, pardon my horrible grammar and english as I am not a native english speaker.