Air Vehicles.

[ICallIDTheft]

I'm just curious, how do most people feel about the air? I don't want this to get personal on any level so if you do want to elaborate your opinion, which you are more than welcome to do please don't start arguing with other people. Assume GC settings, so no 3D spotting, health regeneration and all the current rules.

[Digz]

Air: it isn't fun in GC.




its not played with team/squad/army experience as the other GC divisions.
Like flummi said a while ago, Air job is to engage the enemy's Air, if you win, you
get 30 or so until they respawn for real gameplay and fun (as I call it).
in which you do you're real job, which is ground support.
you can do so many other things with the littlebird and venom
most of the times they are useless unles its wake or inf...

I think jets and attack heli in GC developed with the rules and experience to the point
its not fun for most, and not played to max imo.
if one side got the sky, and this goes to ranked play too, the whole other
team is not having fun, and got no real answer to it.

and yes, it is fun if you're one of 4 guys in the air on the side that got it going for him.

[StarfisherEcho]

I lol'ed when I first read your last option. "Air vehicles leave me cold" made me think of something like

"I feel a chill when I see a jet. Death with wings, unseen, ready to swoop down and rip me to shreds when I least expect, the velociraptor of the skies! FEAR THE JET FOR HE IS COMING AND HE HAS NO MERCY"

Should have voted for it

It's somewhat of a shame that air can tip the balance so much, as it results in high stress for air players. If it were more inherently balanced like armor (ie the difference between a good tanker and a great tanker is far less than the difference between a good pilot and a great pilot), maybe it wouldn't have to be such a big deal all the time.

[matsif]

I voted for option 1, although I do believe that they are OP in some regards. It is my opinion that even with buffs to AA, without equal, balanced skill throughout air/AA defenses, air has the ability (even with at most 2 jets and an attack chopper) to rule the map relatively unchecked.

As a primarily ground player (mainly because I can't fly well enough to keep up with most pilots in organized play), I find more often than not the AA in BF games is lacking. A good jet pilot can avoid most AA without any thought about it, yet still do tons of damage unchecked. In comparison, a good tank player still can get javelined, tanked, C4ed, mined, taken out by air, and so on, while a good pilot only really has to worry about another good pilot if they know their ECM/flares and where the enemy MAA is (stingers are entirely avoidable in my GC experience). Also, one team losing an air asset with a semi-competent pilot in organized play basically means that team that lost the asset loses the map 99% of the time, while losing a tank can be compensated for.

All of that said, air plays an important role in organized play, and removing/limiting it any more than we already have in this community would be a bad move. Air power is already the most scrutinized thing in this community because of how powerful it becomes in the hands of the caliber of pilots that generally populate communities like GC, and I do sometimes agree that air players here get a bad rap because of the amount of rules in place about air power. But for the good of the community (do to most players preferring infantry play), it has to be balanced because due to game mechanics there is little that can be done by the average soldier to combat it.

[V_]

I agree with just about everything Matsif said. I can't really think of a good solution though, besides the "1 noob, 1 not" rule, which doesn't really seem to work. We've tried numerous ways to balane air in the past, but nothing seems to work. I think that during the BF3/4 interim, we try out some different settings (no air, noob air, et) and see what people have to say about it.

[Von_Krieg]

I like having air in the game. Like most things in BF3 perc's seems to make this anything in this game out of balanced. I liked that inf have AA as an option though it should be a bit more useful.

[Hgx]

I voted for option Nº1, but I also think air is OP (Atk Chopper/Jets/AC-130)
This is not our fault tho, it's DICE's fault as always.

As I always said, they don't play the game, so they can't balance it.

Why you ask?

In maps like Kharg or Golf of Oman Conquest large both teams have:

2/3 MBT
2 Jets
1/2 LAV (Golf of Oman)

MBT REAL LIFE COST:
M1 abrams = US$6.21 million (2013)
T90 = $2.77 – 4.25 million USD in 2011

LAV REAL LIFE COST:
LAV-25 = Close to US$1.0 million

JETS REAL LIFE COST:
F-18 HORNET = US$66.9 million
SU-35 = US$40 millionto $65 million
F-35A = US$153.1 million
F-35B = US$196.5M
F-35C = US$199.4M

It's not because of nothing that jets cost 10 times more than a MBT, and in BF3 we have 2 Jets in every single air map, with also 2 or 3 tanks per side. (Add some TDs for AK)

It's like having a gun that costs $2000 USD against one that costs $20000 USD.

[Fields]

Air; because I just love running frantically back and forth trying to survive a jet strafe while having absolutely no way to fight back.

Honestly, air isn't so horrible in GC with 3d spotting off and higher priority targets then infantry, but I just hate air overall.

[expandas]

I chose not to vote for any of the options.

Air vehicles are without a doubt the most powerful assets in this game. I think they would fit nicely if you instituted perk restrictions. Ban rockets pods for jets, zoom optics for helicopter gunners and reactive armor for anti-air drivers. This would mitigate the impact that ace jets have towards the ground game, discourage helicopters from hover camping, and challenge MAA drivers (who have an easier time in GC because of the lack of 3D spotting) by making them more vulnerable to conventional fire.

Once you do that, let the air forces decide for themselves what sort of uncap/theft/invincibility rules they want to implement.

[RazY70]

Didn't vote since the options are kind of biased. I mean of course Air has a place in BF provided it's properly balanced, but that's kind of a hard act to accomplish. I feel jets are kinda OP at the moment. There's no real counter to them other than another jet with a similarly skilled pilot. Choppers were pretty much invincible before they got nerfed, but they seem to be fine now

Edit: Was kind of late and I missed the part about the GC settings. My reply concerns mainly pub settings

[LoA]

Rock paper scissors. If you think that something in BF3 is OP, your team is doing something wrong.

Lets just ban everything.

[ICallIDTheft]

Didn't vote since the options are kind of biased. I mean of course Air has a place in BF provided it's properly balanced, but that's kind of a hard act to accomplish. I feel jets are kinda OP at the moment. There's no real counter to them other than another jet with a similarly skilled pilot. Choppers were pretty much invincible before they got nerfed, but they seem to be fine now

Seems like you agree with the second option. Could you elaborate why you think the poll's options are biased? If you vote for option one it means you think air vehicles improve gameplay, option two says that you don't think they improve gameplay as they are too powerful. The third option is for those people who don't care either way. I only ask as I want this poll to represent the opinion of the majority of the people in this community as accurately as possible.

[mrBLUE9]

With most of my time in GC in mind I would vote in the 3rd option, as infantry there was few times that I was 'camped' by an air asset, and it would usually mean an imbalance in the Air rooster. Now, with the game BF3 in mind I do believe the Air, and more specifically Jets, are a tad overpowered. If you ever pubbed with one side having an ace pilot and the other not you know that side is not only winning but the ace pilot is also topping the scoreboard. Which brings me to the 'chain food' of BF: every vehicle has a sort of 'predator', Infantry has Armor and Air, Armor has Air and Infantry, and for Air we gotta breakdown between Choppers and Jets. Choppers, because of its low speed, have stingers, the MAA and Jets to worry about (granted they can hide behind mountains, but they lose effectiveness in doing so), but Jets don't have anything above them, only another Jet can effectively challenge it in the battlefied, stingers don't work, since you can just turn your afterburns on and run away and the MAA is not effective if you keep out of its range, plus you can attack it coming from above without it even seeing you. So, yeah, I hope we get more ways of harassing Jets in BF4, maybe another sort of stinger with a bigger range and reload time. Or putting an anti-air missile in the tank, I don't know. Just my two cents.

[Róka]

Rock paper scissors. If you think that something in BF3 is OP, your team is doing something wrong. Lets just ban everything.

This.
Honestly, I feel it's really easy to counter. I remember back in like the first 2 or 3 campaigns of BF3, armies usually had 1 squad dedicated to AA, especially because of the options Air vehicles had back then (in GC we had 3D and Health regen for air, attack chopper gunner had countermeasures too, etc.) and as they removed all our perks (for example, rocket pod nerf AND tank/AA defense buff), armies stopped needing dedicated Stingers in multiple squads and multiple soflam+javs set-up ALL THE TIME. Right now I feel it's as even as can be besides MAAs being able to shoot into deployments' air-space, although that is sort of a counter for what people gripe about "camping outside of Stinger range" which is perfectly viable.

Ban rockets pods for jets, zoom optics for helicopter gunners and reactive armor for anti-air drivers. This would mitigate the impact that ace jets have towards the ground game, discourage helicopters from hover camping, and challenge MAA drivers (who have an easier time in GC because of the lack of 3D spotting) by making them more vulnerable to conventional fire. Once you do that, let the air forces decide for themselves what sort of uncap/theft/invincibility rules they want to implement.

Ban rocket pods and you basically have no ground support, which is what the GC teamplay wants it based on. The reason for zoom optics and "hover-camping" (which actually rarely happens except during TV fights) is because that's pretty much the only way you can get a break from infantry AA, until we get ordered to go back in and provide ground support somewhere.

Once again, right now I feel it's as even as can be besides MAAs being able to shoot into deployments' air-space and it being almost unseen because of the lack of 3D. expandas might have an idea on removing the MAA's reactive armor. I see it that that way, it's much easier for enemy air to co-ordinate strafes that actually achieve something (every typical GC match results in about only 2 deaths to each MAA) and then there's a lot more gameplay for actual air vs air and air vs ground. Jets can actually dogfight (currently there is basically just circle-jerking until someone's MAA or infantry/chopper shoots the other jet down or you go balls in and hope you take down an enemy jet before you get sliced by AA), which also leaves room for the spoils of taking down an enemy jet/chopper and being able to provide ground support before you get sliced by the respawning MAA. And you can't say it will become biased by whichever team's air takes down the other first because there's equal opportunity for both sides to arrange a strafe on the MAA and choose between strafing for a critical push on a flag or dogfight-ing the enemies.

On a side note, there's the difference between the jets (F35, Super-hornet, Flanker) which is just something to complain about until BF4(?) - Chinese jet fighters O_o

EDIT:

So, yeah, I hope we get more ways of harassing Jets in BF4, maybe another sort of stinger with a bigger range and reload time. Or putting an anti-air missile in the tank, I don't know. Just my two cents.

I wish I could tell you but I don't know if it would fall under NDA or not

Also, I don't qualify or like the poll options~

[RazY70]

Seems like you agree with the second option. Could you elaborate why you think the poll's options are biased? If you vote for option one it means you think air vehicles improve gameplay, option two says that you don't think they improve gameplay as they are too powerful. The third option is for those people who don't care either way. I only ask as I want this poll to represent the opinion of the majority of the people in this community as accurately as possible.

Because it's too deterministic on some options and too vague on the others. Every BFer would say there's a place for Air in BF. The second option says it's OP, but I don't think all aspects of it are. Plus, "ruins the gameplay" has a negative connotation, it's not limited to the ground only, and it's very situational. So there's no real good answer for me to pick from. I do think it has a place in BF and it adds to the gameplay, but I also think some aspects of it are OP and need to be dealt with.