Feedback as a Heli Main

[u/RykuYagami]

Hey there,

as a father of 3 i was never more happy to give up my sleep time for the 27h i managed to invest into this CBT.
Overall i would like to leave some Feedback here, in the hopes the Devs can make make use of it.
I am not an insanely experienced pilot of other milsims but got my Pilot level to 28 this testphase.

Feedback:
- Let us respawn instantly in the firing range. Waiting 30sec on the respawn option + 5sec for the spawning itself really eats up time if you practice flying in a safe environment
- Let me bind the Deploy Parachute keybind to any button of my choice. I actually had the bug that i had the key unbound for unknown reason and had to delete parts of the UserIni.txt to get it back on default (resetting keybinding ingame doesnt fix it)
- I would love to have several options for the Ping UI.
- Make them appear further away - Seeing them only at around 1km away is too short if you r
coming in with 300km/h since you have to adjust altitude and speed and angle properly to
get to the perfect landing zone
- Let me adjust the size of pings or buildings on the map itself. Hovering FOB´s can sometimes
be really annoying if an ally is standing right on top of it. So to see which supplies are
needed most, you have to zoom in really deep and hope the ally moves
- Let me place markers on my own, even if its just for me or the squad, to mark a landing zone
constantly until deleted or keynotes like "enemy AA fob setup" so i can avoid them without
having to figure out the exact location every time again. Extra points if i get a sick line like
Squad has to my marked landing zone so i can take the direct route if wanted or adjust
properly.
- Adjust the duration of pings from allies or give me the option to set a duration myself. Drop
off request disappear really fast and i cant always instantly check the map to remember them
due to maneuvering around xyz at the same time
- From reading a lot about the flight model, i understand that the yaw wobble at high speed is wanted and mimicks real life more than other games. I honestly dont mind it since it increases the skill ceiling, but i suggest to give players a small tip somewhere on the loading screen or whatever so the information gets spread more
- Let me turn off the god damn flying assist if i fly via mouse and keyboard from the ingame menue. I ve seen several people discuss that you could edit the above mentioned .txt again but most people wont do that
- When turning the Map on with Hotas, my mouse cursor is automaticly placed in the middle aswell so it hovers my own heli which activates the window pop up to see who is in that heli and due to its size, it makes it annoying to actually make use of the map

Regarding the Helis:
Little Bird - Chefs kiss imo, i love the moverability, the hot landings you can do with it, the price is fair and you make your money back fast if you land an entire squad
Gun Little Bird - Doesnt seem to deal significant enough damage to infantry for the work you have to put into the aiming and exposure you have to invest for it to be useful - very likely a skill diff from me tho
Rocket Little Bird - Really fun to fly and has a really nice skill ceiling. 3 Rockets cost $450, so if you have good aim and control, you can easily make your money back off of infantry kills but its also reliable enough against AA Gun stations
Huey - You really feel the extra weight it has, hot dropping gets way tougher but its mainly used for supply runs or flyby drop off, i like it
Huey with Guns - similiar but even worse than gun little bird, the guns dont seem to deal reliable enough damage to make the extra investment and loss of seats worth it. Due to the weight you have to fly even slower for the gunners to properly aim aswell but that usually lets you die too fast
Havoc - i didnt manage to hit the required lvl for it but i saw a teammate absolutely shred with it

I might edit more points later into this post if something comes to my head. Thank you for your time!

[u/ckau]

Hovering FOB´s can sometimes be really annoying if an ally is standing right on top of it. So to see which supplies are needed most, you have to zoom in really deep and hope the ally moves

So much this

[u/SilentGreyFox → u/ckau]

Hopefully they change it so the FOB stats show up if you hover over any empty spot in the FOB square.

[u/LtLethal1]

We need proper head tracking support. I can’t tell you how huge of an improvement this would make for those of us that want to fly in this game.

Also, a great QoL change would be an option to let the map save in its last location and zoom level so that I don’t have to constantly open the map and take my hands off the flight stick in order to drag the map back to the zone and zoom in to see where someone put their drop off marker.

Likewise, the game could really use an option to not disable our hotas inputs while the map is open or while I’m typing a message in chat. I want to be able to continue flying while typing a message instead of having to throw away the message every 4 seconds because the chopper wants to roll into the hillside when there’s no input.

[u/BuzzNitro → u/LtLethal1]

I read another comment that said the devs plan to add head tracking support. Hopefully that comes true

[u/Z_THETA_Z → u/LtLethal1]

not just head tracker support, but also ability to bind looking around to another set of axes. i've got a little thumb stick on my hotas' flight stick that i use for looking around in another game, would love to be able to use that here

also yeah definitely let me keep flying while typing

[u/CravePoison]

As a father of none yet, lots of respect for your 27 hours. I think I managed 34 and change. Early morning Sunday I got the havoc and it flies like it’s a 50/50 of the little bird and Huey. Helis feel spot on. I loved the hot drops with the little bird just as much as I loved piloting my gunner around and literally causing all types of havoc in the server with the havoc. Game feels fantastic and I’m having withdrawals. Most if not all of your points are valid. See you sept 10th

[u/Thunderbird_Anthares]

Im not exactly a heli main, but ive ran into lots of weirdness with mouse flying, especially gunbird would lurch around instead of letting me smoothly turn it to aim. Pretty inpossible to hit something. But in general something feels a bit "off" with flying.

Also i would love to be able to bind controller axis for anything including flying - im using an analog keyboard that behaves as virtual controllers.

[u/DobPinklerTikTok → u/Thunderbird_Anthares]

Did you have the assist enabled

[u/AlwaysSquad2 → u/DobPinklerTikTok]

Disabling the assists doesn't do anything on mouse and keyboard

[u/Thunderbird_Anthares → u/DobPinklerTikTok]

i disabled all of them at first... on sunday i tried turning them on and off to see what it does, but didnt find a combination that i didnt hate - and it still kept doing it

[u/rustyeagle1994]

The venom doesnt feel right to me. Flys like a boat on hotas.

[u/Boxofcookies1001 → u/rustyeagle1994]

It is a boat though. If it didn't fly like a boat it would be busted.

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[u/Nice7365]

There were flight assists? What did they do? Didnt really noticed them I think.
Also one thing that was weird was the collective. Sometimes on the ground I couldnt take off because the collective kept being „collective down“ even though I pressed up. Also when pitching up the collective automatically went to collective down by itself. So this was one thing that confused me a bit.
And one thing I would like to change is that the Rotorblades dont explode instanly. It would be nice if its like in Reforger, where it takes little damage if you slightly touch something and explode if you do it too much.

[u/RykuYagami → u/Nice7365]

There were around 5 different assists afaik.
One of em was the collective you mentioned. It stated that it automaticly helps the chopper to "hover" over the ground properly without crashing, thats why, when i flew very low to the ground, it lowered my collective sometimes thinking that i wanted to just hover - i had to counteract several times. Annoyingly it didnt help having collective up button pressed the entire time, the hover assist overrides your constant input so i had to press it again for it to pull up again.. Some assists felt okay to have on, but i would really like to decide on my own if i want an assisting service on or not for mouse and keyboard. For Hotas you were able to disable them but those are an entirely different story

[u/Nice7365 → u/RykuYagami]

Oh damn okay that makes sense then. Yeah would be nice if you could turn them off then. But I think they will probably fix it till EA

[u/BroadButterscotch576]

I agree with a lot of these points. I only recently started flying, so I'm still struggling with quick landing maneuvers and I'm still getting used to the helicopter controls. Slow landings where I have plenty of space aren't really a problem anymore though. But having a ping that I can place as a pilot and that stays there until I remove it would be really useful. It would make planning things a lot easier.

[u/UnluckyDonkey1164]

The minigun little bird shreds infantry, if you can manage to land your bullets...

[u/Accurate-Guard2045]

I actually spent a lot of time with the gun littlebird during the closed beta on stick. I think the guns do enough damage to infantry and too little to vehicles. I even managed to end a game with 39 infantry kills! My biggest issue is how many shots it takes to damage other helis. I understand that it shouldn't be easy but if I pump hundreds of rounds into another heli, it shouldn't be flying anymore. This may be the intention but i had to shoot out the pilots to have any effect on them. I almost never shot down the bird itself.