The only time heli PvP was good was before EC was implemented, because the game was balanced. Sure, Mi-4AV wasn’t able to go toe-to-toe against a Viper, but they didn’t have to. The complexity of maps like Rice Terraces made sure helis could sneak around and win by objectives. At the end of the day the Hound has 96 rockets and 4 Falangas, it could cause its fair share of damage to AI. And the Huey vs. Hind dogfights with cannon pods were surprisingly fun. There weren’t air-to-air missiles, fire-and-forget or proxy-fuzed ATGMs. Even the first AAMs were almost balanced by IRCM, flares and HIRSS. It sucked to be on a heli without flares, but as long as you had them an R-60 or AIM-9L could be flared off if you paid attention.
But now? After Gaijin powercreeped everything to hell and back and raced to the bottom to find the worst starter heli for each subsequent nation? No. Playing a PvP mode with that Swedish Huey is a fate I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. And high tiers, where helis have AAMs with IRCCM? Hard pass for me.
It would be the simplest, most straightforward improvement. Rewards are already soft capped by the useful actions system, so it’s not like people hogging kills would get to grind faster, it would instead mean more targets for everyone else.
well, there’s a certain demographic from a certain part of the world, (that also happens to cheat a lot), that buys the KA-50 as it’s truly the best helicopter to spam for rewards, and they fly it in, and wipe everything, thus nobody gets rewards.
The useful actions should be a bonus for teamwork or “useful actions” I’m sick of playing for a long time constantly to get shafted by gaijin.
Like I can spend 3 hrs in a sim match, with premium time, and barely get 1.25 modifications for a vehicle if I’m lucky and am at the top of the team. Meanwhile, it should be 2 modifications at the least and somewhere between 400-600k silver for being 1st on the team with a win (if in a premium heli / premium time) and trickle down from there. Which is what it first was, gaijin saw a surge in the mode being played and blamed it on the rewards, then they tanked. I think now you’ll get about 325k at max, which makes it worthless.
I could play ground and average between 86-136k silver a match or naval being 100-168k a match.
also after not playing heli pve for so long, i feel like the mode became even worse, before i atleast could queue up and see a match where there was like 4 peeeps max in a lobby, today i queued into two different matches and saw like 10 people in 1 match twice
i decided to stay in the second one, and here came the second issue, every heli which is in the 7.7-9.3 bracket, doesnt have irst autotracking, which makes it borderline impossible to hit the moving sniper convoy gepards because they are desynced from the client-server side, and either the hitbox is ahead or the model is ahead, which makes it a guessing game, with IRST autotracking you atleast force the server and the client to resync again, but without that, good luck attacking convoys on stuff like afghan.
I honestly think because heli pve is arcade gamemode, every heli should get irst autotracking, or atleast the ones in the gamemode should
It was the best gamemode back then IMO. Massive maps (and smaller ones suitable for low tier gunshipping: City) Competitive gameplay, long matches, decent rewards.
No balance between top tier and lower tiers though and ka50s especially 52s just the strongest and easiest to learn and do well in. Would or could have been amazing with more brackets to have slow low tier helis with guns and dumb rockets bracket, ir missile heli bracket with more objectives and missions for helis with not so good loadouts, helis that have gunner lock and true top tier. Maybe even with maps that scale with higher brs. 4 Brackets. Thats all it wouldve taken. Apparently impossible to implement. Or test. Snail sez: No players. No Shit? Hordes of ka50s can just maul on starter helis match after match and people getting frustrated with it. Which was completely understandable. → No one plays it
Now it’s gone. For whatever the pve mode is supposed to be: Boring af, everyone leaves 30 min in, capped rewards that make it pointless to do more than average, fighting ai that just spawns right underneath you with no warning or oneshots you in dusters from 5 km out if you don’t pay attention. Insane spawncosts for some helis that sometimes make you question if you will make it out with a net positive in sl or if you should just leave before the server decides to spawn some more ai right underneath you. Premium helis with good loadouts and high top speed (aka russian helis) that dont play to spade like the ka50s still killing all the ai making it hard for others to do well.
From my most liked to i thank god for every second i dont have to play that boring crap to spade half a module in 1,5 hours playtime.
And yes, i spaded the mi4av free to play and researched two whole heli trees f2p back in the old pvp. Better experience than this. by far.
Good post, but to say all the problems came from the KA-50 is just not true, sure it was slightly more seen than the Tiger UHD (or whatever the German top tier is) as it has spammable IR seeking warheads that landed with deadily effect.
I do remember that Eurocopter Tigers were hunting everyone down with their Mistral/PARS, but they weren’t as frequent as Ka-50s, nor as frustratingly annoying as Ka-50s
I spaded my Mi-4AV, Mi-24A and Mi-24V in that game mode. I don’t care how many times do I get slapped by the Ka-50 but damn does it feel better to obtain 30k RP from just dying 30 times (/s)
Not sure i understand you right, which do you prefer?
Anyhow im quite sure back then you still got way more xp because it wasnt capped over time intervalls. Sucked ofc if you were hunted constantly in helis that cant do anything to a ka52 and through the stupid spotting system back then you were autospotted across the whole 50 km map if you finally managed to kill one of them making revengekills easy af and hiding impossible but still. I felt it was way more engaging actually fighting real players than just random ai thats either just sitting waiting to get shot or oneshotting you from 5 km out in a duster without rwr warning obviously because it has no radar still shoots with laser precision from 1 km further than any radar aa.
PVE sim was good like that at first, but it was “too profitable” so gaijin nuked it, since if you spent 3 hrs in a single game, you’d make between 300,000-500,000 k silver, and 50-80k rp, if you were actively killing things, the way it should go back to, since there is so few targets!
Far too often now there are too many players and not enough objectives, especially apparent at the top bracket. I would really like to see them add a mid bracket between the early and late heli, as well as increase the ticket count and objectives so that it gives more variation.
I would also like to see them either remove canyon altogether or rework the ai on that map, as they seem to glitch through the ground, bug out, and also have the highest pinpoint accuracy with their mgs/aa that make any approach within 4km pretty much insta-death, even if maneuvering.
Also, after last update I have noticed that some of the aa don’t even show they are firing either with gun firing or from tracers… you just simply tank shots that you cannot see, perhaps a desync issue idk.
yeah pars were my favorite too. Bullying ka50/52s that were targetting each and every low lvl heli that werent even a threat to them or influential to the match outcome was my full time job. and it was more or less balanced between the top tier helis. especially now after the beamriding missiles nerf where u cant just spam all of them and guide them like 8 beads on a string but need to rely on 2 (or maybe 3?, didnt play the vikhr slingers in some time) each would have their advantages. Targetting multiple enemies at once and hide with the pars and spikes (which can be easily dodged if you know theyre coming for you especially when shot from more than 4 km out which is (or was their approx booster distance) shooting the vikhrs with proxy fuze and good speed over long distance (or dodge these close to the ground to disable the proxy fuze) or one of the best back then, the ah mk1 with the star streaks as the fastest a-a missile.
Just the us apaches were seriously suffering in the air to air department, to which i seriously hope gaijoobles finds a solution better now than later (yes yes the oh so op agm114l’s with the longbow radar would be oh so op but its no problemo amigo if theres numerous planes in game now that can do exactly that but they can shoot their whole ordinance top down right after spawning 20 km out conveniently at 2 km altitude in ground rb, like just popping in with full view of the whole battlefield, out of range for most ground based aa, with ordinance that is fire and forget, has ios and enough range to spam from spawn. or they can easily go around the battlefield in 30 seconds and shoot from a completely different angle)
“Too profitable” Haha yeah if thats not a good reason to turn a already boring and pointless gamemode to shit. also 300-500k sl and 50-80k rp in three hours is yeah…not that good anymore compared to how many matches you can play in that time in ground rb and get way bigger rewards. But whatever theres absolutely no reason to play heli pve if you dont have to spade a heli, and if you are in that unfortunate position it really makes you question your life’s choices.
Saying the UHT was a match for the Ka-52 in PvP is copium, Vikhrs outranged PARS (and ATASK) by 3,000m, the Ka-52s radar gave you Arcade markers and there was something like 6-8 months between the Ka-50 being introduced and PARS being made IR F+F (they were SAL before).
Vikhrs were outrageously broken and destroyed 3 gamemodes at the same time (ATGMs could be 1st spawned in GRB and had to be patched out because of them, Heli PvP was now a lost cause and USSR had a 100% W/R in Ground Sim for years because there was nothing comparable)
I played Heli PVP religously and can assure you the PARS were absolutely comparable to the vikhrs in strenght. Just a very different playstyle where you needed to be much more stealthy, skim the ground and find routes to strong positions where from you could attack but hide behind terrain to dodge the return fire. If you could lure them to get closer than 4 km they were dead no matter if they climbed to shoot over your cover or not. at least back then pars were close to undodgeable when their booster was still on. while even then (Before the missile changes) it was not impossible to dodge vikhrs as long as you stayed close to the ground so they had to score direct hits.
But yeah as you said the arcade spotting definitely made it much trickier and on desert maps with very flat terrain and no other cover close to impossible. On vietnam, gl to the kamovs, especially the ka50s without aa radar or thermals.
EDIT: Partly, obviously thes required at least some ka50/52s in your team that knew what they’re doingto keep enemy kamovs with their ufo climbrates from just top down shooting the whole map. On the other hand climbing up to 5 km alt and just deleting ka50s from orbit without them ever knowing what hit them was fun af. Unfortunatley took way too long to get up there ;-)
You never encountered a decent Ka-52, granted most Kamov pilots were absolutely braindead. You could in theory do something on City using the skyscrapers and buildings to get close but you could just abuse standoff range with Vikhrs as the map was so small. Vietnam/Zhengzhou/Tunisia/Afghanistan = gl lol.
The 52 didn’t have to be stealthy, there was no punishment for just space climbing and raining down Vikhr missiles and with no missile physics it wasn’t hard to land direct hits at ppl flying low trying to avoid/disable the proxy through the 25m limit.
The Vikhr was the reason this mode devolved into hover parties and boosting.
Well your missing the fact, if you fly low enough the Vikhirs switched to direct hit mode, and then you of course required a direct hit to kill the enemy.