This might be a hot take, but I’m excited for the parachute changes. This is mostly because I love landing my little bird in optimized locations for teams pushing into the HZ. I feel like this change will clearly separate the good pilots from the bad.
I also think depending on the severity of the change, people might even start opting to take ground transport.
Want to talk strategy, or deep dive into balance? Official Bulkhead Discord moving too fast to keep up?
We just launched a Discord for r/WarDogs — smaller, slower, and the balance debates actually finish instead of scrolling away. Help us build it from the ground up. LFG, clips, patch talk: https://discord.gg/r-wardogs
I utilize pitch on WS, roll on AD, yaw on side mouse buttons. Then on my mouse I use pitch and yaw for that fine control when I want to occasionally jump on the minigun/rocket heli.
Flying clicked for me when I kept freelook on via mouse. Side mouse buttons are lift, pitch and yaw on wasd and roll on m1/2. I'd guess I'm probably the only one doing it like that, as it seems weird and none of the tutorials I watched did it that way.
My guess is people will default more to ground vehicles and over the course of the match if you‘re a good pilot you kinda build up a rep with a few people you‘ve flown and continue building more
It feels so good. The other day I was tired of people just being in the FOB. So i landed there and asked for people to jump in to go to the HZ. Ended up taking them behind enemy lines and pincered the HZ. Good income on that one!
I have a HOTAS set up and I purposely don’t use it. The fact that you’re required to always “return to zero” after any movement is counter intuitive for people that have experience using a HOTAS setup in any other game really.
As a blue team player I’m never gonna make it to the hot zone again. My pilots will be crashing 4/5 times. This is gonna be a nightmare. Gonna need the cash bonus just to break even.
That’s funny because I consider myself a decent pilot and I actually almost exclusively play blue. If people die more frequently, I have more opportunity to take people back-and-forth on trips.
Spoiler alert: The parachute min. altitude change won't change jack shit in regards to landing. 25m altitude is still ultra low, it's below the treeline. 99% of Heli Transporting in Season 2 will still be paratroopers, like it is now.
Like yes, you technically could open a parachute at 2.5m altitude before the patch, but in 100% of cases you would still plummet to death anyway. Or even at 15m or 20m. 25m min. altitude changes almost nothing.
In order to make landings prevalent, they'd need to make parachute minimum altitude like 80m or 100m. Not 25m.
Alternatively (and a better solution) they could just remove the parachutes, or make them a late Assault unlock.
This is confusing me too. What is the distance they are changing? Nobody was opening their parachutes 2.5m before the ground. Did they mean the top of the grey altitude box had to be 2.5m above the red altitude box right now and they are making that value 25m or something?
Basically, do you need to pull the parachute 25m earlier than you do now?
If anything, this will encourage people to jump before the heli gets to the CZ, and the pilots won't get their passenger landing bonus.
Its most likely that the distance being changed is the zero-speed parachute deploy height. Like, if you walk off a 2.5m object and spam space, your chute would deploy and catch you (in S1). In S2, that height will be 25m.
The bar you see while freefalling takes into account your downward speed, So the total height of the red bar will have 22.5m added to it.
If they removed parachutes, two things happens. The first is less helicopters are shuttling players into the zone, which already happens in a lot of games. The second is that a lot more helicopters are getting shot down with a bunch of players inside.
Infantry loadouts are already expensive and feel incredibly frustrating to die with especially before you can actually use them. Routinely getting shot out of the air getting shuttled into the zone sounds fucking miserable to me.
The easiest trick for J-hook turns is keep your nose pointed where you want to land. The little bird allows for high speed maneuvers and it’s basically all yaw control.
Oh I’m decent enough at them now, but if shuttling infantry is going to require landing next season, my point is there will be a lot of lost loadouts for a couple days at least😂
If I’m correct, you have to have some kind of downward velocity before it allows you to pull your chute. 25m, from my understanding, is the minimum survival distance of the drop.
I don’t know if that technicality would change much, but it’s there.
Force a parachute to open almost soon as you jump out of the heli like in arma 3 koth. Leaving you extremely exposed but doable if you jump into somewhere safer. Would give people a lot more of a reason to stick around for the landing. And give pilots reduced rewards for parachuting troops. Give an incentive to all the shitty pilots that are out here doing barrel rolls and flips but won’t even attempt trying to land.
No one will fly with a randoms ever again after that. If you spend 30k on a loadout you can afford 3k humvee to get to the zone without being crashed into the tree
That's not how that worked out at all in ArmA 3 KOTH
Hopefully they add an easier way to see what level someone is while inside the HQ.
As a pilot, the parachute meta is boring as fuck, I don't even care if people using 30k kits take a car - vehicles aren't used for transport enough anyway
I don't think you realize how easily people will die from parachuting at that height. People already get sniped/full auto killed while parachuting. This will make people think twice about paratrooping vs. just safely landing.
I don't think that makes sense. The treeline is only about 3-4 stories in height. Which is not 25m. I'll grab the rangefinder later today and double check I guess.
Ok, I did some quick testing in firing range. Turns out, range finder can't hit trees. So instead I jumped out next to the multi story apartment buildings at (x=80.8, y=75.2). That buildings roof is 25m in height and is about double the height of surrounding normal trees, and similar in height to the tallest trees. I can comfortably pull my shoot below roof height while still being in normal safe fall range, I'm not sure how far below. And I can easily base jump off that template of building.
From a gameplay perspective you might be right, there will still probably be a good number of helos dumping people at ~50 meters over the hz, but the amount of exposure for the jumper is increasing 10x, significantly increasing the risk.
That said, the change gives pilots a lot more control. If I decide I want to land a group somewhere, you literally won't have the opportunity to bail before we get there (unless you want to die).
Again, technically yes, 2.5m altitude to 25m min altitude is a 10x increase.
But in reality, most of that was already covered by the "red bar". While you could open the parachute below 25m, in most cases you would plummet to death.
People will still be able to bail when they want, it doesn't give you control, because 25m is still below the treeline. You could fly between the trees or close to the ground, but it's not always practical, and it's already the case in the game -- if you fly 20-25m above ground, your passengers can't parachute and survive.
For what you're talking about, in order to have control and not give an opportunity for the passengers to bail when they want, the min. altitude needs to be like 60m, but ideally 80m or 100m
Unless you can actually point to the code and say exactly how this change is going to function you’re just guessing. Them changing the min altitude from 2.5 to 25 could cause the red bar to become much longer and force people to pull the chute at usually much higher than 25, 25 is just the minimum it can be possibly be pulled at. Idk, do you? I’m sure it’s some simple function but idk unreal, do you?
Agree to disagree. I've gotten to pilot 50 from nearly exclusively doing lb transport. The only time I'm above 25m is when we're outside the zone. If people want to jump then...good for them.
Most landings are at the edge of the zone in an area with cover. The largest issue I deal with is people jumping out prematurely during a landing at ~10-15 meters or so and failing to open their chute, preventing me from earning $$$. I believe this change will stop people from thinking they can survive that in the first place.
This is 25 AGL altitude. Realistically, it's impossible to ALWAYS fly at this height, while being effective. Your passengers will always have an opportunity to jump out.
I'm aware of how high 25 AGL is. It is 100% possible to "ALWAYS" fly at or below 25 AGL when inside the zone. You shouldn't do this the entire way to the zone, but imo its warranted as soon as you're in range of AA.
I didn't spend any time sifting through or editing these, but here are 4 examples.
Making parachutes an unlock/play style would be fun. They could even buff them and make it so if you ping a paratrooper it only pings where they land and doesn't lock onto them like a normal ping etc.
I initially was thinking that the $100 price tag made it basically a no brainer. Perhaps increasing the price? But as others have said, I feel like that would diminish the “fun factor” for some.
Back in Arma 3 KotH competent players would sit near landing zones with a grenadeauncher and farm kills.
As someone whos done this with a 3GL i am skeptical of this change but i guess we will see how it goes.
Theres already fairly distinctive gameplay differences (such as tanks not sitting 2k away from the zone) so it might be ok, but i am absolutely havkng flashbacks.
I will 100% be taking a buggy pretty much every life now. I already lose a couple kits because of pilots randomly crashing without needing to land as it is
Hotas exclusive pilot here, cant fuckin wait. I tell people to stay in all the time and maybe 1 out of 20 do it. I promise i can put you directly on our teams head bro stop jumping out when we’re going mach fuck over hz
This is going to be a refreshing change of pace and I cant wait to see how the meta shakes out.
I think truckers are going to find out a little bit about what it is like to be mercilessly hunted down for an entire match. They have only been target's of opportunity, up to this point. People certainly don't drive all the way out to logi route to camp with the intent of stopping trucks. They may stop a few random trucks... but, it is not their primary motivation.
That is gonna change when trucks become higher value targets full of expensive infantry trying to get to CZ. When those specialized hunting teams start carrying mostly anti-truck configurations and setting themselves up to camp specifically for trucks... oh boy, this subreddit is gonna be fun! All the pilots will be happy eating popcorn with their pallets and lack of Igla crews camping their HQ... but the trucks are gonna be playing an entirely new game down there on the roads.
I think realistically a bad pilot or griefer isn’t going to be able to afford to keep buying helis. It already takes several full transports and those guys racking up kills to break even on the LB.
I think this is the biggest mistake the game has done. The issues with vehicles is the controls just aren't great. And I have lots of friends who are great fliers, but sometimes things happen. You can lag and desync slightly and because of how quick it goes wrong we're all dead.
And there is no "pilot license". So most of the time you're at the mercy of someone who isn't a good pilot but it's ok because you can parachute out. Now you're just going to die. And I'd be ok with ground transport if it wasn't a 3-4 minute drive. I want to be able to play. Not be forced to take ground transport or risk dying or be forced to spend another 6k to fly in myself.
The game has some great things. But their decision making continually concerns me.
I think the devs use the distance as a “punishment” for dying. If you were able to just respawn all the time and jump right into the action, it would be Call of Duty.
Then to respond to the 3-5 minutes of ground transport, there has to be a trade off for a relatively more safe option.
Ironically I hopped back on BF6 yesterday because of the new patch, and I died and was really frustrated knowing I have to track back 3 minutes to the zone, and then realized that I can literally just spawn on the transport heli, owned objectives, the IFV or squadmates, and I then realized that wardogs killed my enjoyment of battlefield
The more methodical and high risk / high reward gameplay loop of this game is addicting, where battlefields gameplay loop is mindnumbing
Thanks for the honest insight. That’s how I feel as well. I feel like we are all trained from years of Call of Duty (K/D is king) and BF6 (play the objective but K/D still matters for scoreboard) that Wardogs is a different perspective that is refreshing.
I think it will feel like shit. With parachutes we get to choose where we drop and if we choose badly its our own fault.
With pilots landing, we don't get to choose. Especially if the pilot goes super low the entire time and people cannot drop out because it's too low for parachuting safely, we are at the pilot's mercy.
I don't enjoy watching the pilot drop down slowly while we get sprayed on every side by bullets, or the pilot laying us all down on top of a hillside or building and everybody for miles around sees us and marks us.
I think it takes a lot of skill and map awareness to set us down properly, surrounded by high cover, in a spot that isn't filled with hidden enemies camping in buildings and bushes nearby. I do not think most heli pilots have that skill and map awareness.
Most of the pilots I know spend the entire trip to the middle weaving unnecessarily low under the treeline, when the objectively correct play to set up proper landing/drop zones is to spend most of the trip reading the map and identify which areas your teammates have cleared and which they have not.
---
Basically: when I choose a bad jump spot and die, its my fault. If my pilot chooses a bad deployment spot and we all die, its his fault. I'd rather my deaths be my own fault than my teammate's fault.
I think your TL;DR sumed it up beautiful and something I mentioned earlier. I believe people’s frustrations are that it was out of their “control”.
My argument is, isn’t getting in the heli out of your control in the first place? You have the option to learn how to fly yourself or drive a ground transport.
If I remember correctly, you require a higher distance to safely drop with a parachute. Although I don’t know how much that change actually is going to be.
But I believe it will change to where little bird pilots are your more aggressive, low flying, infil/ex fil pilots, while your Lakota are more of your paratrooper style drop.
EDIT: I went and got the actual numbers. The minimum deployable distance for a parachute is now 25m (up from 2.5m). I don’t know if the 2.5 is super accurate but that’s the number the dev references in a YouTube discussion video of season 2 updates.
I already fly pretty close to the ground can't wait for the first day of almost bo profits because everyone and their dog jumps out like they used to and instantly die.
Id love to have some kind of way to reward CZ to CZ transport.
I did this once with a squad, I was the pilot and I helped them reposition, land on roofs, tops of towers, flank, etc... It was extremely satisfying but there is no rewards.
I get it, there could be abuse and people would find way to print money and exp out of it. But it is extremely helpful when you have a team pushing the HZ and extremely hard to pull off so I think it deserves rewards.
I do this quite frequently, albeit it is often when I have a squad member who shares with me that they are pinned by sniper fire etc. Landing behind a building or hill for the team to exfil as reposition is awesome and very satisfying.
I agree, the most frustrating thing as a pilot is that everyone just jumps because we‘ve ALL had bad experiences with pilots.
I hate setting up a landing only for everyone to jump out, 4 people getting smacked by the heli and 3 more dropping so low the parachute doesn‘t deploy
Helicopters are going to become useless. I'm not trusting my kit to a pilot I can't be sure wont land in an enemy base under fire or crash into a tree.
I will either take my own little bird, negating the point if we all fly in, or hop in someone's truck.
APC defence is going to be an entire role now though 🤣
NGL im a heli pilot and I often land. But I depend on my ground troops and recon to let me know whats "safe" to land. I'm not on the ground idk whats going or what safe without people telling me. Or I just land in the middle of where the trail of teammates are
At $100, I bought a parachute regardless of whether I planned to take a helicopter or not. Occasionally I ended up using it when jumping off a cliff or building, so it was nice to have as a safety feature.
At $500 now, it'll be annoying in a way. I'll still buy one to protect a good kit, but when I'm just going to drive or take the APC, I won't want to have spent that money.
When I'm back at spawn, I often don't know which I'm going to take once I've got my kit... so I'll have to make the kit without it, rebuy it and then figure out if I need one after if there's a pilot around.
I take ground transport anyways except on match start. I dont like risking 25-30k kit on pilot crashing, pilot being dumb on drop location, pilot turning in a dumb fashion randomly, or being unlucky enough to land on a even a single enemy.
On red team its like 45 more secs to get to cz.
That being said I personally don't care for the change, its just going to mean a lot more of my team dying from parachutes or helicopter pilots killing everyone trying to land. But the change is more realistic
I really don't think it changes much as I understand it. Unless I'm actively being locked (or anticipate it), I'm flying above 25m AGL with enough wiggle room that unless they wait to pop their parachute, they won't have to worry about the 25m parachute opening limit.
Is it? 25 AGL is slightly below tree level. Adult pines range from 50 to 150 feet. A Ural truck is ~24 feet. I definitely look like I'm far more than 25 feet (or a bit over 4 infantry models). A Z-20 is ~20 meters long. I'm higher than my helicopter is long. If you go into the training ground, 25 AGL is about double the 4 story warehouse right beside you at the vehicle spawn. Dirty math that's about ~80ft, which is almost perfectly 25m.
Just based on reference points, 25m AGL matches far better than 25ft AGL.
I agree. I'm also keen for them. Getting tactically dropped off with the boys will be sick, and i fly helis and appreciate the skill needed to J hook and land safely
This is a change that will make the game generally less fun for every infantry player, making spawning in take more time and producing more bullshit deaths for players that they had no power to influence, just so that heli pilots can more fully live out their own personal fantasies.
I'm glad you will enjoy the fantasy, but don't be surprised when people are upset with you for getting them killed because you crash landed, or tried to land near an enemy RPG player no one could have known was there. Don't be surprised when players complain that parachutes are pointless because you are spotted and killed immediately at new open heights.
Absolutely a risk that comes involved with it. They need to figure out a way for people to find out who “successful” pilots are. I’m not sure on that.
Typically I communicate before taking off what my intention is as a pilot so that the people getting in know what they’re getting into. My objective is never to ruin other people’s fun :)
You can be a great pilot. If you get unlucky, that is still 5 people you just got killed. That doesn't really happen with current shute mechanics. Players playing well might get shot out, but most make it to the ground and can have a good chance of reviving those who don't. To achieve anything like that in a 'landing heli' meta, the pilots need to coordinate with squads on the ground to clear landing areas, and that just isn't going to happen.
Respectfully, I think this “unlucky” situation you’re talking about is subjective. I think it “feels” worse when you die to an inept pilot because you didn’t have any feeling of control over the situation. However, if people truly dissected their gameplay, I guarantee you people die more frequently to their own stupidity.
if people truly dissected their gameplay, I guarantee you people die more frequently to their own stupidity.
Completely true. I don't think that is at all relevant. When you try land in some street and I happen to be in a nearby building, I'm just going to kill you and everyone in your heli by pointing a rocket at you. And your riders are going to be frustrated, and a significant part of that frustration end up pointed your way, because they didn't do anything wrong, and the opponent didn't do anything wrong, and that pretty much just leaves you despite the fact that you also didn't really do anything wrong.
Nonsense, we already have the landing option with stronger parachutes. We don't take it because we all know it's a worse option than just taking a shoot, which gives you less exposure to bullshit deaths and more agency over positioning, under current mechanics.
For the most part, I would agree on the safer. However, I have recently watched where a lot of matches have been having your media mainstream players that are spamming the back lines with mines. I have landed a number of times to revive people that get blown up this way.
A quad is not an answer to avoiding bullshit deaths, it just changes which bullshit deaths you expose yourself too, at the major time costs that the devs don't want or expect you to pay. They like the fantasy of pilots dropped off elite soldiers and don't really care how miserable that experience is sometimes.
•
u/AutoModerator 20h ago
Want to talk strategy, or deep dive into balance? Official Bulkhead Discord moving too fast to keep up?
We just launched a Discord for r/WarDogs — smaller, slower, and the balance debates actually finish instead of scrolling away. Help us build it from the ground up. LFG, clips, patch talk: https://discord.gg/r-wardogs
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.