I'd say bf2 simply because bf2 is my fav game and i can get 40+ kills in a chopper no deaths. (thats my record)
Actually, maybe UT2k4 would be best. Noclip-style flying is, well, very intuitive. And it makes it easy to ascend-descend simply by aiming down and accelerating. It involves the least keys, in general (you don't need ascend-descend keys with it, really), and that's a plus.
you know what? i have an idea. (sort of related) Have an aircraft that is pretty much a flying equivalent of a jeep with 1 or 2 mg slots, make it immune to crashes (pretty much a damned jeep as i was saying), and make it so that it dies from 1 rpg shot NO MATTER WHAT. This is the noob training craft (call it the recon air vehicle or something) And have all vehicle weapons damage aircraft, including mgs (1/3 dmg modifier? hell, it makes sense that way.) my 2 cents.
battlefield: desert combat mod had the best choppers, they were ridiculously hard to learn but extremely lethal and mobile once you learned them. i believe the mouse controlled tilting forward/back and leaning left/right, the up/down keys controlled elevation, and the left/right keys controlled rotation, thus in order to move forward you had to tilt forward slightly and increase the rotor power, which is highly realistic (think of the mouse as a joystick, and the up/down key as the throttle, and the left/right keys like foot pedals) and unlike a lot of the games that have come out in recent history, which have taken a carebear approach to them. i reiterate: if empires mod has choppers, they need to be insanely difficult for new players to learn, it gives people who master them a feeling of accomplishment... they should not be easy for novices to control.
I agree completely. We DO want more players to play - but we also want to KEEP veterans around. Give the veterans something that they can master and be proud of - while simultaneously giving the n00bs something to awe at and look forward to.
Ok lets make it difficult, I ban you the second time you grief by wasting recources by crashing a ultra expensive plane.
The problem is that learning the super-secret techniques that would, in your view, be essential for competence at certain parts of the game does not magically convey that ability to the rest of my team. In other words, even if I learned how to use your ultra-elites-only helicopters, I would still be stuck, in most games, playing alongside and against players who would never be able to use them to even a basic competence level. That sucks. It just isn't fun. All the important things in the game should have a basic competence level that is very, very easy for anyone to pick up within, say, half an hour of starting the game. Beyond that, success should depend mostly on strategy, planning, working with your team, thinking quickly and so on -- not on being the OMG ELITE EXPERT at the controls. Frankly, I don't care who's better at the controls. I'm not interested in playing a game that's decided by who has spent more time mastering unnecessarily-complicated controls. I want a game with strategic depth, one that rewards teamwork and planning. Being good at the controls should be as minor a factor as we can make it -- I should be able to start up the game and assume, generally, that everyone whose name is not emp_recruit is roughly equally good with the controls. That way, the 'important' things -- the things deciding the game -- will be teamwork, strategy, planning and so on, not which team has more players who have wasted hours learning unnecessarily complicated VTOL handling. TL;DR version: The game should be about knowing where to fly your VTOL, not knowing how to fly your VTOL.
there is a saying that applies to all practices: Keep It Super Simple. The gunships should be very easy learn but they should have a high degree of momentum once they start moving so they are not able to dodge Anti-air easily. However, many people should understand that there are cases where it is easy to be able to use something, but hard to be good at. this should be one of those cases, where an experienced player should have the upper hand, but by no means be able to take out 3 enemies of lesser skill. As has been stated, this is not a flight simulator. This game is also by no means Air based; so we can not have them untouchable. Overview: Keep them simple and keep them in check.
I'm not just another drone for the commander to order around; I am a one man army when, in certain circumstances, given the right conditions, can completely alter the way the game is played for both teams. I know a lot of other people feel that way too. I refuse to play a game where individual skill does not matter. VTOLs shouldn't be flying platforms of death which can be activated with the press of a button. I want to be able to perform precision strikes and avoid AAA with lots of practice, and having complicated controls is usually essential for this. It's really the same with artillery tanks right now. As a commander I prefer my artillerymen to be experienced veterans and I micromanage them as such. When you get a newbie in an artillery tank as a commander, you facepalm; should artillery be made so easy to use that you can just open the map and click on a spot to bombard? No. The same argument can be made for VTOLs. Commanders should work closely with their team to make sure that they won't get people in the VTOLs who will just fly them carelessly over a field of flak guns or lawn dart them. To a lesser degree, it's the same with many of the tanks. The only real exception is the NF heavy tank. any idiot with a basic understanding of how guided missiles work can easily destroy anything in a NF heavy. Cannons are still somewhat difficult to shoot at a distance, and you must carefully manage heat. Antitank MGs are hard to shoot if you are moving over uneven terrain. Nothing should have an easymode. I don't play games which can be mastered in 1/2 an hour (at least not for much longer than a half an hour). And for your information... There were plenty of excellent pilots in desert combat; the steep learning curve did not discourage anyone who mattered.
Has it occurred to you that there might be a middle ground between Falcon 4.0-style and "flying platform of death"
Individual skill does matter, since your ability to plan or react quickly and your ability to work with your team are also individual skills. And I don't want to play a game that's divided into people who "matter" and people who don't. That's no fun. I want to play as part of and against entire teams. Slaughtering novices and noobs gets boring after above five minutes. I don't want to play a game where the controls are made artificially difficult just so a handful of people who wasted the time to overcome that pointless difficulty can feel they're WOO ZOMG AWESOME by beating up ineffectual opponents and negating half the players in the game. I don't want to play alongside or command teammates who are artificially constrained by an unnecessarily difficult interface. When I win, I want to know that I did it because my team planned, outwitted, and out maneuvered the opponents, not because I'd wasted more time practicing than them or had more zomg awesome players on my team. There isn't anything particularly fun about playing a game with mismatched skill levels, is there? Curb-stompings are not interesting or exciting. Therefore, everything in the game should be as easy to pick up as possible -- we should try to design it so it is very easy to be competent. I dunno. Maybe you love the idea of being a "ONE MAN ARMY" splattering noobs on the walls. Maybe you find curb-stompings fun and exciting. Personally, though, I find the game most fun when everyone who is playing is good at it -- and that means that we should avoid 'artificial difficulty'. Skill will still inevitably matter to an extent, but the basic controls and interface should be as easy as they can possibly be.
main point was to make aircraft maneuverable, rather fast but with low hp/armor. Being hard to hit but fragile is way better and more fun, i hate idea of flying tanks. /btw We need joistick support
Well as I said, everyone here that wants hard to learn plane controlls should not cry if admins kick/ban them for griefing cause they lost planes that are more expensive than a composite heavy... Cause that will happen, like it does with tanks and people that just waste them.
What many of you do not understand is that complex controls are essential for advanced techniques. I would love for the controls to be simple, yet allow for lots of room for mastery. It's not going to be both, just one or the other. There are never solutions, only tradeoffs.
Are current vehicles' controls hard to learn? Hmm... Let me see. Forward, reverse, turn left, turn right and handbrake. No. Are the vehicles still hard to keep alive for a long time? Yes.
