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

I loved PW's 2 part video, or atleast I would have had he not actively avoided chasing the other planes nearly every single time he saw it. Yup, thems some 1337 dogfighting skillz yo!

Hey Chris... ya see, this is a PW slam post.
:p

He does have a valuable point, tho. PW didn't chase other planes. He said so himself awhile back. It wasn't worth his time.

That was a big problem with the dynamics before. Bombing was easy and safe. Dogfighting was dangerous, hard, and you only got one measly point.

That's why virtually no one did it.
Hehe, and also why I've got such an amazingly crappy plane KDR. If no one else is doing it, you can bet I'll give it a shot.

Can you honestly say you did a lot of air to air in 1.12?

Point is, this has changed. Air wars now rage. Pilots chas eachother all over the skys. Chopper pilots are nervous. Down below you've got more stuff going on. It's improved the game for the groundpounders. Hell, I actually saw a perty good armor battle going on without them just getting bombed on Oman the other night!

[[GU]LIZARD{GEN}]

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

I never said it should be left alone either and neither did he. The old one is better then this. This is completly unacceptable. Lets face it BF2 has had its share of issues and bugs. AA is over-powered now this is true. Its not over powered in a sense they should really change it, but theres TO much AA. In alot of maps theres Linebackers + Mounted AA on top of buildings Ghost Town is a very good example of this. Lets look at Dragon Valley as well AA that can pretty much lock onto you from 3 or 4 positions no matter what side of the map your on. Then theres the linebackers which is now like trying to match the SeaWizard, only its harder to kill.
The guns do need to be repaired. They should be just like commander assets. Your team has to repair them if they get damaged, not wait 10 seconds for them to respawn and jump in again. To many people jump in one fire and then jump out. Then a plane sees this he flys down to get him a kill him and theres no one there. He blows it up anyway and the next run the guys back in it.

Little things that bug me like the fact now AA spins around and does little zigzags all over the place. You would not see a missile spin around a target unless it was a defective missile, and its almost everytime with the Seawiz.
Another thing that bugs me is how sometimes well almost all the time a missile will be following something and sudden come sideways into the front of my helicopter. It happend today on the carrier on wake when I was in a cobra. It was on an enemy plane sudden the missile just shoots side ways and hits me. Speaking of which now everytime a missile chases something it has a really weird shape to it is if its trying to go another direction but can't.

There are tons of small things this patch brought that is pretty lame. Claymores are now at every flag, land mines are now just stacked infront of the security office. The fact Support is the most played class in the game suddenly just because you can run around basically kill anyone in your sight. Not to mention the fact you can rearm grenades and just toss. It does sound like I am whining, I guess. I am not I just don't like the new changes. I didn't complain about the other patches I just do not like what this one brought.
I don't suck or anything at the game I still do pretty good my FR hasn't went down any. I am still owning the helicopter its just a loss.

[Chris_Redfield]

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

Hey Chris... ya see, this is a PW slam post.
:p

He does have a valuable point, tho. PW didn't chase other planes. He said so himself awhile back. It wasn't worth his time.

In both videos the "why" part of the chasing is explained. PW explained why he didnt chase the jets in his bombing video, which BTW is a "bombing video" afterall. Now, in the 2nd video. Why should he chase them? 2-3 seconds of HUD sight, lockon, shoot, and thats it. No chase. Thats the point.

Once again- his first video is stricktly concentrating on ATS. Hell, if youre making a video of baking cookies, youre not going to waste the time on showing how to mix Margaritas..

That was a big problem with the dynamics before. Bombing was easy and safe. Dogfighting was dangerous, hard, and you only got one measly point.

Yeah, I know. People needed some stimuli to dogfight. More than else it was personal satisfaction because in air youre 1 vs 1 and your kill has another meaning. But yeah, most people loved the ribbuns n meddels!!!111

That's why virtually no one did it.

LOL. Remember these shouts?
"GET THAT JET OUT OF THE SKIES!!!"
"WHY ARENT OUR JETS DOING ANYTHING!!!"
"DO WE HAVE A GOOD PILOT OR NOT!!!"

I have seen many ATS orientated pilots, less 50/50 orientated pilots and pure ATA pilots. Always a pleasure going against an ATA pilot...

Hehe, and also why I've got such an amazingly crappy plane KDR. If no one else is doing it, you can bet I'll give it a shot.

I dont dig for points, so I could careless. I give people the benefit of the doubt unless they seriously fuc k up un a conversation. If a bomber was causing ****, you can bet I was up there. If I didnt kill, I delayed. I could get a bomber from 60 kills to 20 kills without killing it once. Pure pursiut and fracking up its flight pattern was enough. Mostly I just got the bomber down though.

Can you honestly say you did a lot of air to air in 1.12?

Whenever I switched BF2 on it was because of ATA. I got bored with most of the game pretty quickly. I started playing the game on day one when the Demo got out. I had a busted leg so most of the summer it was reading, playing anyway. I even got a joystick as a present directly because of BF2. In any case. The first games were adjusting to the flight. After bombing games it was stricktly dogfights. I engaged 95% of the time I saw a jet. The other 5% was when I saw a tank entering my teams flag area or other problems. Why else did I have the need to make extensive researchon differences between the jets in BF2. Extensive received ownage makes a guy learn new things and start thinking outside the box

Point is, this has changed. Air wars now rage. Pilots chas eachother all over the skys. Chopper pilots are nervous. Down below you've got more stuff going on. It's improved the game for the groundpounders. Hell, I actually saw a perty good armor battle going on without them just getting bombed on Oman the other night!

Tried WarRock air combat, where pilots engage because they have 100% missiles, they have these maps where you can see 20+ jets airbourne. Boring as ****. All you need to do is chase a jet for a couple of seconds and thats it. No sir, this fighter here needs a dogfight after which his hands are shaking and he feels dead tired . In a sense, I dont dogfight for the kill. I remember this one fight where I chased a guy for 3-4 minutes, it was great, I thanked him for a good dogfight and he responded that it was hell, all this time and not a single kill. Cat and mouse play would be great for some, but I have never liked cheesy kills.

you made mention in that last post of yours that a single bombing run from a jet isnt likely to disable or destroy an apc or a tank... however most of my deaths in armour have in fact been from being bombed - i find that its also a great way to know when you're up against a quality pilot, because it takes a good eye to be able to drop your bombs directly onto a target!

Yeah, most of them bombers (unless they fly a BOMBER, I should have been more specific) intuitively aim and mostly miss. There are a few who know what they are doing (PW). This is what you get when you play in a specific server where the server vets meet.

[DrJambo]

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

"2clickstokill" method to take down someone

You talk about the skill level of the AA site users! lol. Isn't that what pilots have been doing to ground forces ever since day 1? On top of that they're likely to take down more than 1 person, including a few easy prey fresh spawners. I'm not aware that dropping 5 bombs (essentially carpet bombing!) bases was particularly skillful in the grander scheme of things?!!? Especially when in pre-1.2 they couldn't retaliate with any degree of effectivenes. I've done it, he's done it, you've done it.

[Chris_Redfield]

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

You talk about the skill level of the AA site users! lol. Isn't that what pilots have been doing to ground forces ever since day 1? On top of that they're likely to take down more than 1 person, including a few easy prey fresh spawners. I'm not aware that dropping 5 bombs (essentially carpet bombing!) bases was particularly skillful in the grander scheme of things?!!? Especially when in pre-1.2 they couldn't retaliate with any degree of effectivenes. I've done it, he's done it, you've done it.

Pardon me, theres a lot more to it that clicking twice to get a kill when it comes to bombing. As I said long time ago. Maintaining effective skill level and operating effectively is EASY. However, think back when first started flying. Driving a car for some is a matter of subconcsciousness, its automatic. When they first sat behind the wheel, it wasnt so.

[Mandos_2k]

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

K/D has nothing to do with playernumbers. 32-player maps has a higher survivability that 64-maps.

I think that's only partially true, as on 64 player maps stationary AA emplacements and A2A units don't grow in numbers. It's more or less the same. Take Gulf of Oman as an example: the 64 and 32 player sized maps are pretty equal. At least from an air-threats point of view.

But nevertheless, I've never claimed to be an elite pilot nor have I claimed I would own planewhore and I don't see why the fact that my K/D ratio is worse than planewhore's makes my arguements worth nothing. That's just an ignorant dumb view.

It was terrible that non flaring and hovering helicopters would be missed. I would be quite satisfied with the current AA if it didn't ignore flares and wasn't as bugged.

EDIT: The same also applies to planes i.e. non flaring and non evading jets would be missed. I would be satisfied with a mix of pre and post 1.2 AA.

Basically that's what I wrote all day long. Pre v1.2 non flaring jets would be missed as good as always and a decent pilot could stay in the air the whole round, if he didn't do something stupid that let him crash.

AA and A2A missiles still have their issues (bugs and they still need some balancing tweakings), but it's definitely going towards the right direction. You share that opinion at least partially, planewhore not at all and the only reason I can imagine for that is, that he doesn't like to be shot down (or whatever else; don't care).

I would however prefer a skill based AA. There have been a number of suggestions about that in various threads. My suggestion would be a really powerful cannon on the tunguska/linebacker/chinesethingy

A skill based AA would be nice, indeed. But I don't think that would be possible at all. At least for missiles, as the process of gaining a lock is plain simple. If you add anything like a minigame or whatsoever to let skill fluid into it, it would just become far more unrealistic which in return would much people let scream I guess.

Though your suggestion with cannon based AA would be nice. That needs skill as you have to aim. :)

Air to air combat is a joke and it's way to easy to shoot down jets without exerting any effort on the AA.

Maybe that's a matter of taste. In a modern war game I think it feels right when air-to-air combat ends quickly. I played simulation-games like EF2000 (the DOS version back then ) or Falcon 4.0. There air-to-air combat ended relatively quick too. I admit, that it was way more different than in BF2, but to spend up to 20min. in a FPS for a cannon dogfight with an equally skilled pilot isn't what I'm expecting when launching BF2. It's fun, yeah, but not everytime you take-off. I would reinstall Falcon then.

My beef is not with plane/helo vulnerability its with the autoaim nature of the AA. Combined with the buggy behaviour ATM it makes me want to scream.

The buggy behaviour is really a nasty problem. Like planewhore mentioned: A2A missiles that "magically" miss enemy air assets and go straight for friendlies or start circling like crazy is annoying.

But I don't thinkt hat anything can be done against the "autoaim nature" of AA missile weaponry. At least I have no idea what could be done that's still reasonable to let skill come into the process of gaining a missile lock...

The part about the dogfights got me.

Also "lying" about your survivability doesn't help much. I've had it with people who paint a better picture of themselves on the forum. I've grown tired of people who say they're so good and when you look at their stats they have jack sh!t.

The point is, that I never claimed to be an elite pilot and I never mentioned I would have an superior K/D ratio. Planewhore just started to insult me and stated my arguements were worth nothing "because I'm a total n00b" which whether is true nor justified. That's just stupid.

I've the same threats in the air as planewhore and everybody else, thus I've experienced similar situations and I don't have the feeling that the new AA changes have such a major impact that flying has become useless or less fun. In fact I think that all those new threats and fast deaths improved my gaming experience. I even die more now then pre v1.2, but I've more fun while flying too, because of that. Those new real threats are thrilling imo.

There is bugfixing needed, but it's pointing to the right direction.

You said planes was more or less invulnerable and judging from your stats that isn't the case by far.

I said that planes were more or less invulnerable to AA weaponry, which was true. Unlike planewhore who says, that AA weaponry was very good and "all those n00bs" just couldn't use it effectively.

When I died, then mostly while trying to shake-off a jet, another jet shot me down or I simply rammed anything while bombing. AA was pre 1.2 no fear as it never hit. And if I with my "appearant" "super-inferior-skills" say that, you should think about it a little more closely.


cheers
Mandos_2k

[DrJambo]

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

Pardon me, theres a lot more to it that clicking twice to get a kill when it comes to bombing. As I said long time ago. Maintaining effective skill level and operating effectively is EASY. However, think back when first started flying. Driving a car for some is a matter of subconcsciousness, its automatic. When they first sat behind the wheel, it wasnt so.

"There's a lot more to it than clicking twice to get a kill when it comes to bombing".... Ok, you didn't finish there.

Anyway, let's analyse right down to the bare bones -

Troop using AA:

• Spawns and makes way to AA site avoiding danger of being killed en route.
• Nips in an out of AA site trying to kill jets while trying to prevent himself being targeted by their autocannons.
• Tracks jet - jet drops flares.
• If awarded second chance, tracks jet and clicks twice launching AA.
• Possibility of jet kill (pretty poor with 1.12, significantly better with 1.2).

Jet pilot bombing base:

• Spawns, enters jet and makes way to base avoiding danger en route (very little with 1.12, significantly more with 1.2).
• Assumes flight path to maximise spawn kills and / or people waiting for jets/choppers or AA site.
• Click once dropping 5 bombs.
• Strong possibility of 1-5 kills.

Veer off, reload, rinse and repeat. You even get your targets in vehicles and AA sites nicely highlighted for you!

Main difference I see is pilots click once for 1+ kills and AA sites click twice for possibility of 1 kill.

[Chris_Redfield]

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

Main difference I see is pilots click once for possible 1+ kills and AA sites click twice for possibility of 1 kill.

Fix´d.

I cant argue the rest, except...

Possibility of jet death

If the AA has a lock on the jet and jet has dropped the flares, the jet is dead.

[DrJambo]

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

Wow, agreement Chris - finally. :)

If the AA has a lock on the jet and jet has dropped the flares, the jet is dead.

Not necessarily true I'm afraid. Sometimes, for whatever reason, jets take 3 hits as do choppers - perplexing I know, but it is indeed the case. Also sometimes locked-on missiles fly off inexplicably to hit friendlies and sometimes, albeit rarely, they just plain mess up!

[Chris_Redfield]

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

Wow, agreement Chris - finally. :)

LOL

Not necessarily true I'm afraid. Sometimes, for whatever reason, jets take 3 hits as do choppers - perplexing I know, but it is indeed the case. Also sometimes locked-on missiles fly off inexplicably to hit friendlies and sometimes, albeit rarely, they just plain mess up!

[/QUOTE]

I know, but rare cases. Whereas bombing has everything to do with players skills and experience. If hes a rookie, he will miss. if hes good he wont (most probabably).

[WarGimp]

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

I know, but rare cases. Whereas bombing has everything to do with players skills and experience. If hes a rookie, he will miss. if hes good he wont (most probabably).

That sounds like a perty flat learning curve to me.

One you get the technique down, can you really say it's hard to do?

[WarGimp]

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

Something just occured to me. All this time we've been talking about relitive skills and no-one has mentioned the bomber's real power... Ei, the back seat boy.

Those laser guided missiles are killers... and you get 5 of 'em. They're almost assured hits when fired from a plane piloted by someone who knows what they're doing. They're deadler even that the attackchopper's TVGMs to any armour on the ground.

They also extend you're operational capacity greatly since you've only got one load of bombs, but you've got 5 missiles.

Does anyone actually practice their skills lining them up? Do people even bother to wait for a backseater? Why have I never seen a pilot talking about laser guided missile tactics?

[Chris_Redfield]

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

That sounds like a perty flat learning curve to me.

One you get the technique down, can you really say it's hard to do?

Unfortunately no. I mean, theres no way it can be challenging because
*The targeting areas (mentioned) are known, so approach to them is almost automatic, flight pattern evolves with skills and creating a flight pattern is a part of experience.
*Moving targets move too slowly to not to be targeted with relative ease
*Targets (people in tanks and APCs) usually wont see the approaching jet
*Overall, approaching to the target, aiming and releasing the bombs is identical movement.

To some extent, it cna be compared to sniping a running target, in the end youll develop a high hit probability and it wont be as hard as it used to.

Theres nothing you can do about it though. Or would some people "patch it up"?

Dogfights on the other hand is a totally different deal. You can plan an approach, but once you ring the buzzer, its chaos.

[Chris_Redfield]

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

Something just occured to me. All this time we've been talking about relitive skills and no-one has mentioned the bomber's real power... Ei, the back seat boy.

Those laser guided missiles are killers... and you get 5 of 'em. They're almost assured hits when fired from a plane piloted by someone who knows what they're doing. They're deadler even that the attackchopper's TVGMs to any armour on the ground.

They also extend you're operational capacity greatly since you've only got one load of bombs, but you've got 5 missiles.

Does anyone actually practice their skills lining them up? Do people even bother to wait for a backseater? Why have I never seen a pilot talking about laser guided missile tactics?

Yeah, unfortunately people just dont know how to operate thhem. Theres 2 ways-
*Wait for a lockon
*Guide to the target
In order to use the first one effectively, ones pilot must be a teamplayer, which is rare. To use the second one effectively, one must have a pilot that likes to approach with a falling angle.

I can say I developed a nice set of skills and usually got half of the kills the bomber got. Those are not that hard to use once you start thinking outside the box and wont rely too much on the lock-on. And they have a WONDERFUL splash damage. In some cases you can do as much damage as those 5 bombs.

[DrJambo]

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

I guess the next question is how long does it take to become a proficient bomber? Is it really that hard a skill to learn in BF2?

I've been labelled an poor pilot by Kattspya and would clearly be a "noob" by PW's standards , and yet I find flying and bombing using a mouse and keyboard relatively easy. As I stated before, the majority of my deaths (~90%) have been from the initial learning period and then crashing when I run out of space with my mouse!

Granted with fighters, bombing has to be a bit more precise than with the bomber - but with 5 bombs it's ironically much more difficult to miss than score points from kills! Therefore I ask you, is it that skilled in the first place if an "alleged" noob like me and / or Mandos can get positive kill:death ratios of 2-3 ?

As I highlighted in the post above comparing an AA site user and a bomber pilot, I find bombing considerably easier than trying to shoot one of the buggers down from an AA site without first being autocannoned.

Only the increased danger in 1.2 has changed things.