I have to say, after playing this event with some buddies, this is EASILY the best thing added to WT in a long time. Something actually new gameplay-wise with potential applications in wider gamemodes in the long run. Everyone I played with was talking about how this was the most fun they’d had playing WT in years.
Now thats not to say this was perfect. There were some clear issues quite frankly.
- Spawncamping from the soviet team is incredibly easy to perform and night uncounterable for the americans.
- Preset loadouts, while useful for those who dont typically do any form of ground attack or have the vehicles unlocked, also limit player creativity and adaptability to the game-mode.
- Some of the SAM sites were effectively out of bounds, which made them very hard to strike, as you’d get spawned flying away from them while you were trying to line up a strike due to hitting the map borders.
- The shilkas seemed a little too good. It may have just been bad luck on my part, but anytime you got anywhere within ~2-3km from a Shilka, you’d be killed outright or at the very least crippled to a point where you were borderline combat ineffective. This wouldnt have been a problem if it wasnt for the fact that the shilkas sometimes turn off their radars, making them almost impossible to spot until you’re already being fired at when you’re already dealing with evading superior enemy aircrafts and the S-75, making many deaths to them feel very random and unfair.
I do want to dedicate a little extra on the Shiljas though. I very much like that they felt deadly, dangerous, and they did their jobs well. I dont want them to be nerfed to the levels seen of AI SPAAGs ingame atm, and I actually dont think its necessarily bad they turn off their radars and the likes, as that would be tactics that would be performed irl. The issue imo stems from the faft that they are laser accurate with or without the radar and there is no effective way to mark their approximate position for our team long term, or even to decern their position a bit more accurately as the game drags on. Flying around looking for the next objective and suddenly exploding due to a stream of 23mm shells hitting your pilot square in the jaw despite no RWR warning and with no way to provide long term intel to your team regarding potential threat locations just seems like theres a bit of an RNG death mechanic to the mode.
The above complaint may simply be due to limited experience with the mode though, so I’ll definitly keep playing and hoepfully get a better idea around how I feel regarding the current implementation of the SPAAGs in the SEAD mode. Generally speaking, atm I think I ratger these AI SPAAGs to the ones we have in-game in all other gamemodes, but I think they still need a little more work to get them just right.
They should feel dangerous, not unfair, and atm I’m leaning towards them feeling a bit more like the latter.
I havent yet tried the helicopters, so I dont wanna comment too much on them. What I can say is, I’m interested and optimistic in their inclusion, but atm not sure how they’d be effective in the game mode. The TOWs and Hydra-70’s theyre armed with seem to be subpar for the threats at play, and the games end too quickly for things that move as slowly as they do. We were using them as a glorified TGP at first, using it to easily spot SAM sites, but once we got a better hang of the gamemode, we stopped running them entirely.
Overall very positive, a fantastic step in the right direction despite some teething issues. I look forward to playing this some more, along with me being a bit more (cautiously) optimistic about the future direction of WT!