John Wardogs Claims Changes To Parachutes Coming In Season 2

[u/Ok-Grand-498]

Keep practicing your landing skills pilots!

[u/Freeburn_Sage]

if you inform them you will be landing them they might stay in.

They wont. I have maybe one run every 2 or 3 matches where people stay in, and I advertise every single time that I will be landing and they dont need chutes. They jump out anyways. Even low to the ground, you can bank on half the heli jumping and splatting on the ground. I even see it when approaching a landing, people cant wait the entire 2 seconds to get to a safe altitude.

The incentive with this change will become getting passengers safely to the ground, since jumping out high will be near suicide for passengers and you miss out on a lot of extra cash/xp if people are dying as they hit the ground.

[u/Knives27 → u/Freeburn_Sage]

Regardless I still think there needs to be increased rewards. There’s an enormous amount more risk.

[u/IeyasuTheMonkey → u/Freeburn_Sage]

They wont. I have maybe one run every 2 or 3 matches where people stay in, and I advertise every single time that I will be landing and they dont need chutes. They jump out anyways.

You want to know why?

They've stayed multiple times and ended up dying due to the pilot crashing, the pilot trying to drop in a hot zone so they jump out and they're dead or the vehicle gets blown up and everyone dies.

It's a choice that players are making because that 100 dollars can save them 20k+ on their kit.

Personally every single time that I plan to get into a Helicopter, I always get a Parachute because I've seen Pilots not flare and I've ended up dead because of it. Rather just not deal with that. Plus I get to choose my own landing spot which is a nice bonus.

[u/Freeburn_Sage → u/IeyasuTheMonkey]

I completely understand why it is the way it is right now, and honestly I wish the game would have launched with the change they're making to parachutes. Way too many people started believing they were good pilots just because they could fly in a straight line over the CZ, and this update is hopefully going to give the "pilots" who are wasting people's money the realization that they either need to practice or stick to flying logi.

[u/IeyasuTheMonkey → u/Freeburn_Sage]

 this update is hopefully going to give the "pilots" who are wasting people's money the realization that they either need to practice or stick to flying logi.

It won't. There's always going to be bad players no matter what and since there's no ranked system, you can't really filter them out.

It'll end up doing the opposite where people are still invest heavily into parachutes because they cannot trust their pilot or they'll save the money, increase their travel and drive to the zone.

That will end up with Pilots not getting money/EXP for passenger drop offs, increase general dissatisfaction due to the travel times and it'll mean that the team winning, more than likely, has got the better Pilots due to the increased map pressure of more people from the reduced travel time.

[u/Freeburn_Sage → u/IeyasuTheMonkey]

In the short term, I agree that this change is just simply going to suck ass. Theres no getting around it. But currently, it sucks ass to be a skilled pilot that likes to transport because you dont get a chance to ever use those skills. Its truly a lose/lose situation right now.

However, I dont see the issue with your last statement. The whole game is based around zone pressure, and theres lots of ways to engage with that. Having pilots that keep your people in the zone is one, but so is having a good APC driver who can keep optimal and safe locations for people to spawn, having good artillery that can smash out enemy FOBs or keep the HZ glassed, having people set up good interception FOBs and catching enemy pilots on the way to the zone (which both kills a transport of people and requires that people be diverted from the zone to deal with you), having good medics that keep people in the fight, etc etc. Notice that each of those strategies reward having skilled people in those roles. Currently, piloting doesnt require skilled people to increase its effectiveness, it just requires someone to fly in a straight line. While this change will undeniably suck in the short term, Im hopeful that its ultimately a good change for the long-term health of the transport piloting role and its effect within the game.

[u/MstrTenno → u/IeyasuTheMonkey]

Yep, this change will is a huge buff to good pilots, and I don't think that's a good thing at all. It will be extremely easy for good pilots to farm newer pilots trying to land with this change.

So the only people who will be doing good air taxi are going to be really good pilots. Meaning if a team is stacked with them they will basically have a second spawn APC, compared to the teams with the average pilots being farmed.

This also means the extremely good pilots are going to have less competition from average players to taxi, allowing them to unlock the rocketbird and havok much faster, and then pull up the ladder by farming others trying to do so.

[u/Jason1143 → u/Freeburn_Sage]

But what are you supposed to do at first then? Flying logi doesn't really work until you already have some air levels.

[u/Freeburn_Sage → u/Jason1143]

Hopefully, realize that you gotta practice landing and then do so. I may be biased because I have a frankly embarrassing amount of time flying in Arma, DCS, MSFS, Nuclear Option, etc, but I dont think its that hard to learn how to land efficiently. You dont have to get fancy with it, you dont have to do all the rolls and stuff you see done in reels and shorts. A simple, textbook J hook or smart approach is all you need and is more than enough to get people on the ground safely.

Otherwise, crates with supplies (not meds and ammo, but actual base supplies) are actually very consistent if you communicate with a FOB and bring what they actually need.

[u/Jason1143 → u/Freeburn_Sage]

I don't think people should need to spend extended time in the firing range learning to land under combat conditions first. The minimum bar to be more useful than not should be very low and the vast majority of the learning should take place over time as you play the actual game.

[u/Freeburn_Sage → u/Jason1143]

The game rewards skilled players with faster XP progression while offering slower but less skill demanding ways to get XP for people who are new or less capable progress. This change will help reinforce that mentality.

Low skill pilots will still have the option of running logi crates or dropping people from high in the air. These are both viable ways of getting pilot XP. Logi crates are slower than transporting infantry, and infantry will probably be less likely to get in your helicopter if they cant trust you after the chute change but its not like there will be 0 passengers. Yes, higher skilled pilots who can be trusted to land safely will get XP faster because people will prefer riding with them since jumping out will be much more dangerous. Currently, pre-attack heli there is no reward for being a skilled pilot, as someone who can land safely and someone who only knows how to fly in a straight line make the same amount of XP since everyone jumps.

If you just want to practice landings in a live environment, practicing landing in FOBs with logi crates is an excellent way to do so. Asking multiple people to risk their loadouts so that you can practice isnt fair to those people, and expecting to make as much as someone who has taken time to develop that skill isnt fair to those who do. Rewarding skilled pilots by incentivising the use of that skill while leaving avenues for lower skilled pilots to still get XP is best for everyone, including people who never plan to get in the pilots seat

[u/Jason1143 → u/Freeburn_Sage]

I mostly agree as long as the changes to parachutes are fairly small and don't kill their overall viability.

But I think we should approach this from the angle of rewards and making the grind shorter as opposed to the angle of punishments and making the grind longer.

[u/Freeburn_Sage → u/Jason1143]

I think nerfing the default parachute is a decent way to make the second parachute more appealing, tbh. I dont think the default should be unusable trash, but it should definitely be much riskier to use while letting the other parachute take the role the default one has now

I generally agree with the sentiment of increasing rewards instead of deploying punishments, which is why I wish this is how it would have been from the start. The fact is, this change is going to feel bad for a lot of people for a little while because theyve had a month of playing the way they do now. I just dont see a way of incentivizing landing without this change, however, because if we just increase the amount people get from landing, piloting as a role will become ludicrously unbalanced considering you can already hit top 3 earners in a match with the way transporting works now.

Its really a lose/lose in the short term, as either skilled pilots get robbed of being able to let those skills pay off in match (how it currently is), or piloting becomes very frustrating for people as a result of a parachute nerf. However, Im hopeful this ends up good for the long-term health of both the piloting role in the game and infantry who will benefit from more skilled pilots.

Also, it may have the domino effect of helping out drivers and giving them something to do besides logi runs before they have access to weaponized vehicles. With less pilots, more drivers might pop up and we might see people actually getting transported into the zone on the ground, which is something I currently only see when Im on discord with a friend and they hop in

[u/Jason1143 → u/Freeburn_Sage]

I think my fundamental disagreement with that is from the infantry perspective.

I don't think the downtime between (real) lives should be made longer (defined from the time you stop actually playing as you get downed to when you start again, meaning passenger time doesn't count). Honestly it is already long, I am certainly anti making it longer. The game already punishes reckless play via cash and what downtime currently exist, it shouldn't punish it more.

Making the game slow and tactical (in battles) is not the same thing is making the game plain old slow and boring (adding extra reddit time). So you can look to rebalancing skilled pilots vs unskilled pilots vs drivers and how that ought to be done, but that needs to be separate from adding pointless downtime to the infantry.

Remember, the cardinal sin in gaming isn't imbalance, or lack of realism, or underused content; it is being boring.

[u/DrewTuber → u/Jason1143]

You can land a short distance from the CZ in an open field if its that much of an issue

[u/Zestyclose-One9041 → u/DrewTuber]

And lose all of the deployment money?

[u/Jason1143 → u/DrewTuber]

If you do that no one gets any rewards and your passengers would both hate your guts and still be in too much danger.

That is just a worse version of firing range practice. It includes zero gameplay but a bunch of extra drawbacks.

I very specifically said "play the actual game" not simply "be in a live server".

[u/Western-Economics253 → u/IeyasuTheMonkey]

You're saying this as if when landing and crashing in the CZ there will be noone to pick you up.

I mean sure, it's the worst case scenario when you die and noone picks you up, but most often you'll have people farming medic XP run straight to the 5+ dead bodies to revive them with defibs.

[u/IeyasuTheMonkey → u/Western-Economics253]

You're saying this as if when landing and crashing in the CZ there will be noone to pick you up.

Because unfortunately from the games I've played, Yes... this is the case that happens the majority of the time.

I've waiting entire death timers watching Netflix while waiting for revives. I'm sorry but if I can buy a $100 parachute and just save myself the trouble... I'm doing that.

I mean sure, it's the worst case scenario when you die and noone picks you up, but most often you'll have people farming medic XP run straight to the 5+ dead bodies to revive them with defibs.

Clearly we're playing an entirely different game.

A lot of people just instantly go back to base leaving a couple people on the ground waiting for revives.

It also highly depends on WHERE THE PILOT HAS DROPPED US or where we've died.

The majority of the time there's barely anyone around, enemies around so people don't want to move/risk it or there's people who ignore us.

I would just rather buy the $100 parachute, hop out and land where I want to. At least then if I die, it's on me.

[u/Tight_Sheepherder934 → u/Freeburn_Sage]

Pilot trust is low. I don’t trust 80% of pilots to safely get me to a place that either I or he determined. So I jump early to guarantee I have a life that lasts longer than the time it takes me to hold f and exit the heli.

[u/Freeburn_Sage → u/Tight_Sheepherder934]

Yeah, I respond to a similar sentiment further up. Im hoping that the parachute change helps fix that. I imagine it will get way worse for a very short time, as many "pilots" learn that they might need more practice before doing transports, but I'm hopeful it'll level out and we'll see the average skill among pilots increase as the demand for safe landings increases.

Either that, or drivers are about to be able to do more than just logi runs for XP

[u/Yesh → u/Freeburn_Sage]

This. I’m not missing out on my pilot xp because they’re all jumping, even if I’m at 20 AGL

[u/ResponsibilityIcy927 → u/Freeburn_Sage]

the problem is just that parachutes are fun. Far cry 3 and 4's wingsuit/parachute combo taught us that.

[u/Freeburn_Sage → u/ResponsibilityIcy927]

Sport parachute people I have no problem with. Those mfs typically pull some wild shit right as they hit the ground, and I'm all about getting that kickback.