Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

[Kattspya]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

I didn't say low.

Ah sorry misread slow as low. I don't know why you would want to fly slow though.

Your rhetoric is inferior. I don't care about your opinion of my "style" - I only care if we're making the biggest impact as often as possible in direct support of our team's objectives.

Our "style" is supperior and I would assume we make a much larger impact.

The funny part is that helicopter time makes up only 7% of my total time played - and I'm more of an asset to a team in need than the self-proclaimed aces who really only fly for themselves.

How can I fly for myself? I'm the pilot I only get about eight kills per round. I let my gunner fsck up armour and other helos and circle the occational flag.

Apparently you've forgotten that you started this with your silly, little, personal criticisms.

Please provide me with a quote where I say something about your person.
To paraphrase Fight Club: you are not your flying style.

[Kattspya]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

Have you ever seen people playing golf (or basketball, or football, etc) for FUN or entertainment? Or for pure exercise?

If you want to show-off your skills, you're definitelly playing the wrong game. Go chase real people on more realistic flight simulators, not in silly shooters.

Fact that someone considers himself good (or best, or whatever) in BF2 air would make all those Falcon players roll on the floor laughing.

If you don't like BF2 air and you think it's too easy - go get another game which will provide you challenge you need so much.

Do you have an idea of what an analogy is?

Let's say we have a silly car analogy regarding computers. "Modem speeds compared to broadband is like a T-ford compared to a Ferrari." Then you chime in with. Ha your Ferrari will get laughed right off the formula one track. HA!

[MooneyBravo]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

Have you ever seen people playing golf (or basketball, or football, etc) for FUN or entertainment? Or for pure exercise?

If you want to show-off your skills, you're definitelly playing the wrong game. Go chase real people on more realistic flight simulators, not in silly shooters.

Fact that someone considers himself good (or best, or whatever) in BF2 air would make all those Falcon players roll on the floor laughing.

If you don't like BF2 air and you think it's too easy - go get another game which will provide you challenge you need so much.

Nice. :nod:

[vbl]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

Please provide me with a quote where I say something about your person.

After I made a small post about my score on Zatar, you started going on and on about how it's a bad score and how you're so obviously better and blaaah blaaah. I'm done discussing this with you.

I'll even give you the last word so this thread doesn't have to suffer the indignity of another one of your posts.

I would assume we make a much larger impact

[Alcorr]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

If you want to show-off your skills, you're definitelly playing the wrong game. Go chase real people on more realistic flight simulators, not in silly shooters.

Thats such a stupid statement.

Shooters are more about skill than probably any other game or sport on the planet.

Its reflexes vs. reflexes, a milisecond slower than your opponent and your toast.

Anyways, in 1.12 there was more skill involved in pilots fighting one another in the air than there is now. Dumbed down game.

In 1.12 choppers were easy to take down. Now its a joke, takes zero skill.
Dumbed down game.

You guys can post all you want about how flying a chopper is so challenging now and how its so much better and such a challenge and only the pros can fly choppers well....

But the truth remains, choppers were balanced before. The noobs complained , now we get this. I don't mind being killed a ton. I mind being killed a ton when killing a good pilot like me takes no more skill than left clicking twice.

Thats plain retardation....

This patch disgusts me, they brought down the level of skill required in everything from claymore placement, to support weps, to S2A to A2A......

[MooneyBravo]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

This topic is being beaten to death everywhere. It's like a room filled with broken records.

[WarGimp]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

Shooters are more about skill than probably any other game or sport on the planet.

Its reflexes vs. reflexes, a milisecond slower than your opponent and your toast.

Reflexes != skill
Reflexes + Knowlage(tactics) + teamwork = skill

Thanks for playing Spot the Twitch Kiddy.

[/burn]

[Bungalow_Bill]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

How hard could it be to comprehend a simple analogy within its context?

Have you ever seen people playing golf (or basketball, or football, etc) for FUN or entertainment? Or for pure exercise?

If you want to show-off your skills, you're definitelly playing the wrong game. Go chase real people on more realistic flight simulators, not in silly shooters.

Wait, so you can't find any fun or entertainment in being competitive and *gasp* .. winning? The two go hand in hand, but with a comment like that I think we all know what side of the "skill" spectrum you're firmly planted on. Tell me one game where you don't keep score, and keeping a score only has one purpose.

And really, all of that "just for fun" crap is an illusion. Even when people are supposedly playing for "fun", they're always being competitive to a certain degree (with minor exceptions of course). Even if they don't intend it that way on a concious level, because although this may be hard to believe, it's one of those things that is hard-wired in to the brain of every human being. Being competitive is a survival instinct, that I have all gamers have adopted for that sense gratification you get with superiority. EA is trying to make that elusive "win" a little more accessible to the average joe, and I can't say I blame them, as it's probably a great business move, as players like me roaming the top of the food chain are a very small minority.

And you can't really compare these technical fighters like Falcon 4.0 to the kind of BF2 flight mechanics, and in doing so really makes you look like a baffoon. These Falcon 4.0/Lock-On type elitist buggemist wouldn't stand a chance against me in a BF2 dogfight, and conversly I probably wouldn't stand a chance reciting the exact specifcations of their airplane of choice within the milimeter. So again, apples and oranges. Not to mention I don't *want* to play a flight sim, and I'd much rather line up my bomb and feel the release and use pure intuition, skill and reflexes to hit my mark, rather than read 40 pages on how to calculate an accurate firing solution for a bomb only to unleash it on some expressionless automoton, ugh. Some people may like that kind of thing, but I (thankfully) do not.

[Bungalow_Bill]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

Reflexes != skill
Reflexes + Knowlage(tactics) + teamwork = skill

Thanks for playing Spot the Twitch Kiddy.

[/burn]

If you don't like it Wargimp how about you go make Battlefield "gamblers" edition? Instead of "twitch" when you encounter an enemy you can have it so the screen freezes, and then you randomly click on one of 3 identical boxes, and if you get lucky and click the correct one and your opponent does not, you sir have just gotten yourself a frag.

[WarGimp]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

If you don't like it Wargimp how about you go make Battlefield "gamblers" edition? Instead of "twitch" when you encounter an enemy you can have it so the screen freezes, and then you randomly click on one of 3 identical boxes, and if you get lucky and click the correct one and your opponent does not, you sir have just gotten yourself a frag.

Are you honestly going to try to tell us that reflexes are the only thing that counts?
How's abouts you lay off the strawman BS?

[exho]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

Very nice put together video, like the soundtrack too :) but it is just rediculous now to have a dog fight, surface to air is fine, but the new missels are like noobtoobs in the air

[WarGimp]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

The following useful information managed to fall between the cracks of the thread's pointless bickering.

I posted some of this info in another thread, but I though it will be more useful if I post it again in a more relevant one:

Here is a list of some important features of the AA

Max speed 225 m/s (two to three time the speed of a jet)
explosion radius 4m
detection radius 1.5m (explosion upon proximity?)
maximum lock angle 120degree
maximum lock distance 300m
Time to live 12sec
Minimum distance 10m

Those numbers are all confirmed


More info regarding the A2A missiles:

All US jets/bombers use AIM 9M Sidewinder Air-To-Air missiles.
All MEC/China jets/bombers use AA11 Archer missiles.

The only difference between them is that Archer missiles have a maximum speed of 175m/s while the Sidewinder has a maximum speed of 225m/s.
Given the fact that USMC jets are slower than the rest of the jets in the game then it is fair to give them a little boost in the missiles's speeds. MEC/Chinese missiles start with more initial speeds because they move faster. This is true before/after 1.2 patch.

Before and after the patch, the maximum lock distance is 375m.

Now to the difference before/after the patch.

Before the patch the missiles had a maximum lock angle of 90 degrees. This number is now 120 degrees. So they can obviously make sharper turns.
The other difference is that they now lock on their target faster. They can now detect any changes in the targets position four times as fast.

A2A and S2A missiles have different pieces of code. DICE changed both of them after patch 1.2 and gave them similar properties. That is why the people think they have the same piece of code to handle them.

What this means is that it's a rather simple thing for Dice to tweak A2A without futzing with SAMs. This is damned good news for those who feel the current air to air missile system isn't *right*.

Instead of making endless "I hate it" posts, how about working with what we now know (thanks to Duck) to make the situation better? Maybe even have some rational discussion on it.

Reducing the tracking angle is the most obvious tweak. Not back down to 90 ('cause that didn't work) maybe 105 (splitting the difference) would be all round better?

[F-1]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

I wrote this post in another thread but it obviously got lost in another useless AA thread :)

The fundamental problem with the "heat seeking" AA is that it is not really a heat seeking AA! implementing a heat seeking missile can be very difficult and will consume all of your CPU's power! no CPU power will be left for an actual gameplay.

I am a physicist and working on my PhD so I know what I am talking about when it comes to physics. If you need to make true heat seeking missile then you need to keep a temperature map for the whole space. when you fire a missile it will keep moving along the path of highest temperature. this is a pain in the @#$%^@ for the best programmer and computer.

they way the AA is implemented in the game (before and after 1.2) is that when a vehicle is marked as "heat emitting", it can be a potential target for the AA. only jets and choppers and flares are "heat emitting" in this game. so far so good. but they way they did it is that if you fire a missile in some direction it will move straight forward until it gets within a specific distance from a heat emitting object. when it does it will just make a sharp turn toward you! before the patch, a jet could make a turn sharper than the AA. so if you made a sharp turn you could avoid the AA. no flares needed. Now the AA can turn faster than the jets. so a sharp turn wont save you. so when you think about it DICE could either make the AA hit its target or not. it is really either hit any jet or do not hit anything. now obviously it is implemented to hit anything within range, which is more realistic.

[Bungalow_Bill]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

The problem isn't how or seeks, or why it seeks, but rather what level of player interaction is required to achieve it. If you're talking realism then the whole concept of a "heatseeking" missile triggering warning alarms in the plane is ridiculous in the first place. With that being said, it's clear that realism isn't really a constraint within the BF2 world. That being said, it opens up the idea below as being perfectly acceptable from all standpoints, including reality, skill requirements, effectiveness, and ease of use.

My suggestion is simple, they need to create a whole new functionality for AA where all AA capable systems have a simple circle, a tiny bit lbiger than the size of the crosshair if you were to draw a circle around it (smaller than the AT circle). You've got to keep the plane/helicopter inside that circle for the missile to get a solid lock and then when you fire you've got to keep it inside that circle. If they go outside the circle, the missile goes limp and that is that. Player interaction is restored with the AA, it can be effective, and using it is as straightforward as aiming a gun (so the infantry only crowd should be satasfied as well). That change plus three other simple changes including: 1) balancing the J-10 to be as good as the F-18 and giving it more ammo to compensate 2) removing the whole system where missiles track other than the target you intended 3) making all AA posts (Essex included) require an engineer to repair them should they be destroyed.

I simply see no flaw with my idea, and it satasfies everyone, with the exception of the sad little portion of people that like the braindead nature of using the current AA systems. Seems like a very simple piece of code as well to tie a particular missile in to a launcher, and simply stop the tracking on that missile and disarm it when the enemy fails to keep it aimed properly.

This idea is so perfect, DICE should pay me for it, but I'm such a nice guy I'll take the satasfaction of improved gameplay as payment in full. Go ahead DICE, do it.

[vbl]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

All seems fine, except...

3) making all AA posts (Essex included) require an engineer to repair them should they be destroyed.

Definitely not. A team is lucky to have 2 engineers, and they're usually hardcore armor users. I can understand the desire to increase the "rebuild" time, but making their repair completely dependent on a team's engineer(s) is a death sentence all over again. Is it not enough that every pilot in the game has most of the AA sites memorized anyway?