Choppers
There’s a lot of issues with Choppers.
- They steer bad. I constantly feel like i’m fighting the chopper, not commanding it.
Maybe it’s camera angle, but when I feel i should be level and hover in place, I still move forwards quite a bit.
When I pivot up to reverse i’m getting vacuumed hard towards the ground, as if i’m on a leash and being pulled down.
Pivoting from side to side does not feel responsive enough, which means you hardly feel in control as momentum shifts take ages unless you’re nosediving with incredible speed.
- Infantry AA is crazy OP and bountiful
You should not be able to have both RPG and AA launcher equipped at the same time.
AA launchers need a hefty range nerf and ammo nerf. A single soldier with AA can bully the chopper back to spawn on Liberation Peak as they can cover the whole map if they’re central, and if in base they still cover more than half the play area, and are impossible to weed out.
- Final thoughts
They’ve balanced the damage output of the choppers well, at least with the base loadout available at the time. Main rockets can only deal with light vehicles and aircrafts and only tickles tanks, which is fine as I assume you can unlock armor piercing rockets later on.
The gunner is kept in check with burst only since it’s 12 rounds per reload, but if accurate is still deadly.
The air to ground missiles work nicely, but I wish the pilot could see which vehicle the gunner is locking onto, so you don’t turn away and scramble the lock. This missile could become oppressive as it’s a no skill weapon, but can be kept in check with reload time. Its dmg on tanks is 25 which is the same as an RPG, so hardly overpowered.
The main issue is general game balance around AA and then how the chopper feels and controls. It should be fun to fly, but it’s very frustrating to constantly having to fight its momentum and it’s very limiting. I’ll always believe that BF2 had the best chopper handling we’ve seen, however unrealistic it might have been. They were fun to fly, and that’s the essence, then nerf their damage output to compensate.
For now they’re a suicide pod on blades, largely due to AA and map layout, but also due to poor controls.
