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

[WarGimp]

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

Playing last night was quite interesting. For the first time since 1.2 came out, I was able to spend some quality time with attackchoppers. I did quite well, thanks. Sure, I got shot down a couple times, but I didn't feel robbed or cheated. I felt that I'd screwed up and had to try harder the next time.

Somethings of interesting note:

Cannons are now great for chopper to chopper fights. At one point I instructed my gunner to "screw the TVGs, get ready with the cannons" while closing with an enemy Cobra. I saw him launch his TVG, I jinked, and closed distance. We tore him out of the sky with cannon fire before he was reloaded. It was a perty cool action-movie moment.

Later (and this was kinda fluky), we nailed an F-18 with those same cannons! The enemy fighter was coming in dead on. I thought about PW's vid and knew we were in serious trouble. I pulled up hard and my gunner started firing... Boom, dead F-18! He must have been badly damaged before his run, but it was still hella fun moment.

We also had 2 instances where enemy planes crashed into the harddeck while trying to come after us. They just got a little too agressive and missed the fact that I was intentially puting trees between them and us.

My observation: While choppers did get a fairly serious wackdown from the patch, it's not nearly as bad as some people are making it out to be.

I felt tested for the whole round. Big challenge factor that kept me and my gunner coming back for more. And what the hell... flying bellow treetop level is fun. I actually prefer grasstop level.

[Blades]

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

so true. So boring now

helis very easy to take out as well beacuse of how weak they are

who ever says it takes skills is just bs. SOOO boring takes no skill. Just like the ground AA. point click hit hit hit hit hit hit hit hit hit hit

And the AA missles can make turns and changes anything anyone trys to do. Theres vids around the web showing the AA zig zagging along in circles and still hits its target. If anyone wants to see it just post. If you just get a lock on at any place you will hit

LOL i cant believe people are disagreeing with you. Doesnt take any skill at all. Anything you try to do doesnt matter beacuse once locked you get hit


"The trick is, when you get locked on, do some 90º up and down, left and right, all this while barrel rolling. 1 Missile will you max."


not true.. Rolling/turning/ anything you get hit.. You people must not fly

I was once in a BH and a stray missle came at me and i released flares. It went past my windshield and it was going FUKIN SIDEWAYS! i saw the length of the missle. that was retarted

[tsh2005]

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

All the fancy features you can bring to light doesn't change the fact that a player can score more points more easily in a jet or helo than a player in any other vehicle.

Once the game changes enough when that isn't true and pilots become the lowest scoring players in the game, then it's nerfed. You can't argue it's not fair when aircraft still domintate. So they get shot down a lot more frequently, big deal, they still own everything on the ground cept AA.

again re read post. And to correct you i now get more points and see people get more points in tanks/apcs. So no idea what game you are playing

gussing once again small servers wiith larger maps and no one is even trying to take out the air

[vbl]

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

My mate is an excellent attack helicopter pilot, and together we do very well, even post patch - you just have to be more cautious and mind your ranges. I went 32-4 on Zatar gunning, which has a load of AA. We just inched along with our ground troops instead of flying around attacking everything.

[WarGimp]

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

My mate is an excellent attack helicopter pilot, and together we do very well, even post patch - you just have to be more cautious and mind your ranges. I went 32-4 on Zatar gunning, which has a load of AA. We just inched along with our ground troops instead of flying around attacking everything.

Yeah, exactly.

Hehe, I'd love to have seen the faces on some of the enemy players last night when I came in using a friendly tank for cover... He was on a crest, so I was litterally able to hide behind him. Popped up 'n said "Hi" with a whole lotta cannon fire.

On the flipside, I had a hugely amusing moment where I was flying up a road and got rammed by a buggy. Didn't see him coming so I didn't have time to pull up. Just WHAM! Laughed me arse off. Fair trade too. The buggy was fully loaded. Our 2 deaths to their 3... yeah, I'll take it.

I've also had to watch for arty more. When you're that close to the ground, and arty strike can really mess ya up.

Anyway, point is that I feel like I'm adapting. Choppers (especially transports) could use a bit of un-nerfing, but not much.

[Twisted-]

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

This is the biggest problem I have with the current air to air. Not only can I no longer really feel respect for anyone that shoots me down air to air, I can't really take any pride in my own kills. Before the patch I probably got shot down in air to air battles about once a week, usually because I got complacent and did something dumb like flying in to reload even when someone had a lock on me. Occasionally I would come across a good pilot and we would spend most of the round dog fighting having really good, even battles. When that happened it was a blast, and I could really respect them as an opponent. Making a nice move to get position and bring them down was a great feeling; and on the flip side, if they did it to me I would always throw them a compliment. After 1.2 this no longer happens.

This is the exact same way i feel, prior to 1.2 if someone managed to get me to the stage where my jet was on fire and losing health and i had the chance to bail, i would simply go down with the jet out of respect for the pilot shooting me down because if he did manage it he would have been working hard for several minutes.

Post 1.2, i no longer feel the need to go down with the jet due to the fact anyone can shoot down anyone. So many peope are talking about so many other things in this thread other than the actual point of it. I have no issue with the Surface to Air missiles, however i feel the A2A has ruined dogfigting for me no longer do you have to work for your kills. Now you can just lock/fire missiles then look for the next target.

The funniest thing is when you look at all these people whining about PW in this thread and how they reacted to his original thread about AA, nearly all of them would have said PW was only whining cause he couldn't go 60+-0 anymore. The main point us pilots are making is not that it's too hard to fly but that it's far too easy to kill air targets now, we preferred having to work for our kills. I find it funny that alot of the people in this thread complained about pilots being able to go 70-0 before the patch which was the cause of the change in the AA/A2A. Now what i don't get is why are they trying to fight to keep the A2A changes when now it's even easier to get those scores.

I don't really see modern air combat being a fair argument due to the fact if it was modern air combat a pilot with <10 hours experience isn't going to take out a pilot with 100+ no matter if missiles are 100%.

[vbl]

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

Anyway, point is that I feel like I'm adapting. Choppers (especially transports) could use a bit of un-nerfing, but not much.

Sometimes I wonder if life wouldn't be better if they removed the weapons from transports and just upped their armor. It's a little divergent from reality, but it'd make them more useful for A>B movement.

[imported_Tumbler]

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

again re read post. And to correct you i now get more points and see people get more points in tanks/apcs. So no idea what game you are playing

gussing once again small servers wiith larger maps and no one is even trying to take out the air

Sorry flying has becomes so difficult for you, somehow I'm able to dominate in the air still, I do get shot down, but it seems fair. Considering how fast I can repair my vehicle, how fast I can rearm and the fact that i can lonewolf the whole time it seems like a short life span is balanced.

[WarGimp]

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

Sometimes I wonder if life wouldn't be better if they removed the weapons from transports and just upped their armor. It's a little divergent from reality, but it'd make them more useful for A>B movement.

Meh... I'd much rather see them ramp the skycow's guns up to a level compairable to the pre-1.2 BH while leaving the armour alone. That way, you've got something that can still be used as a stand off tactical support platform, but you'd have to be careful with it or you're going to get shot down.

But that's just personal preferance. I don't feel that the current transport situation is worth complaining about... I still get my guys where they they need ta go.

[Chris_Redfield]

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

The funniest thing is that people advocate teamwork while crying for a Rambo weapon that needs one solo soldier to operate with a 100% effectiveness.

Welcome hypocricy.

Anyone been dogfighting in Warrock?

The dogfights suck there, but the missile lock system is rather good. Basically you have to aquire a lock by keeping the target in the HUD. When you fire the missiles off, you have to keep the plane in the HUD until the missile hits (with a 90-100% efficiency). Same with ground defence (Avengers).

[Twisted-]

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

The funniest thing is that people advocate teamwork while crying for a Rambo weapon that needs one solo soldier to operate with a 100% effectiveness.

Welcome hypocricy.

Anyone been dogfighting in Warrock?

The dogfights suck there, but the missile lock system is rather good. Basically you have to aquire a lock by keeping the target in the HUD. When you fire the missiles off, you have to keep the plane in the HUD until the missile hits (with a 90-100% efficiency). Same with ground defence (Avengers).

Now thats an idea i would like to see in the game, however i don't see EA making such a change to the engine sadly.

[Chris_Redfield]

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

Damn, forgot. It takes about 2-3 seconds or even more to aquire a lock. But yeah youre right about EA.

[Kattspya]

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

My mate is an excellent attack helicopter pilot, and together we do very well, even post patch - you just have to be more cautious and mind your ranges. I went 32-4 on Zatar gunning, which has a load of AA. We just inched along with our ground troops instead of flying around attacking everything.

Let's imagine that your pilot got ten kills. That makes 42 kills total divided by two equals 21. 21 kills per person. That isn't a stellar score by far and I'm guessing that you usually do worse.

Do not forget that the helo gunner should get double the score of any single vehicle for it to be worth it. Otherwise you are just wasting space.

And to those who say that flying the helo is easy how come I've only seen barely ten really good (the kind of good that nails single infantrymen with one or two FFAR's) pilots so far in this game? How come I've only been ripped apart by helos a couple of times? Not once have I seen a helo that couldn't be taken down with a .50 cal. I would estimate that more than 70% of the helos pairs I come across fail to nail me on the first pass. I almost never se a helo that has mastered the "art" of circling so the gunner can open up with the cannon.

More or less wtf are some of you talking about?

[Bungalow_Bill]

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

DICE still has a chance to make amends with the community with the 1.21 hot fix. I know they've still got that old AA code tucked away, and they should consider reverting it back to 1.12 for the time being till they work up something a little more balanced and complete to implement to make everyone happy.

I mentioned this on another thread (on PBF), where basically, the way I'd like ALL AA missiles to operate is a circle like the AT rocket, but smaller (smaller for the ground AA, and much larger on the aircraft), where you've got to keep your target inside the circle to acquire a lock, and continue to keep your target continually in the circle while the AA tracks otherwise your missile will lose its target and crash.

That brings the skill back, and gives people something a little more concrete to work with other than the admittedly vague techniques you could use to make S2A and A2A hit with a fair level of accuracy in 1.12. Not only will it take skill to keep your target centered in the tiny circle while the missile does its magic, but it'll give your victim a chance to fight back by either a) getting out of range, or b) doing some wild flips ect.. to physically make them harder to keep inside that little circle.

And FFS nerf the J-10 down while you're at it please, because when all other planes are equal dogfighting and achieving the holy grail of "air superiority" becomes that much more fun and fair for both sides. And don't forget to make the AA require an engineer to be repaired, and remove the AAs ability to acquire a new target at random like it does now and then I could consider it to be just about perfect in terms of balance. Most importantly, skill is required.

[jakswan]

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

I just happened to go 70-0 that round, as I had the J-10 and that's an "I-WIN" button versus any other plane in a dogfight, unless they catch you with flares down. I guarantee if an F-35B had gotten on my tail and I had my flares up they'd be dying. That's not so much a product of my experience though, but rather the huge difference flying in a J-10 makes.

The enemy pilots didn't engage in violents manuevers to try to escape me, but it would have made absolutely zero difference, as a previous poster said I kept far back enough where I could've followed them without being forced to emulate their movements. In 1.1 you had to get closer to make missiles work, and that made dogfights even more fierce as when you're right behind a plane following them perfectly is a challenge.

I don't honestly see how certain individuals can proclaim that dogfighting in 1.2 is better than 1.1, because for me in 1.2 I can't get my heart in to it like I used to. As if the "soul" of dogfighting is gone.

Err 70-0 how come you started flying a different plane then?

With you on the J10 mind the Eurofighter what is that going to be like, still in principle fine. Choppers with you not got a prob too harsh for them and it needs a tweak or two.

AA leave as is, I miss the dogfighting, yes, but it gives some pilots a chance, if there is a decent pilot on the server I get shot down I can accept that even if he'd never beat me before.

The video is flawed beyond belief how anyone can take that as an example I don't know. I mean some of the pilots you put a lock on them and they fly without a care in the world.

Seems to me from your comments PW that your a bit of a Planebuff, what's your stats, cos if you don't play at all on the ground you hardly be remotely be qualified to comment on the overall games balance.