"Planes are OP" threads are based on nothing but emotion

Battlefield V General Discussion
1

No matter when you log onto the forums there’s always a thread on page 1 asking DICE to nerf planes.

Pilot is the least effective class in the game, by far, and instead of using overly exaggerated hyperbole to prove this I’m going to show you data.

Score Per Minute (SPM) and Kills Per Minute (KPM) are excellent indicators of how effective any player is with any given class, weapon, or vehicle.

Using my stats on BFV Tracker, and comparing KPM and SPM for each class it’s clear the weakest class is pilot.

As a pilot, my SPM is 399.50, which puts me in the top 4% of all BFV players. My pilot KPM is 1.07, which puts me in the top 0.4%. Therefore, averaging 1 kill a minute and 400 points per minute makes you quite good as a pilot. A friend I game with who rarely flys averages 156.45 SPM (seems horrible) but it still puts him in the top 22% of all pilots. His pilot KPM is a measly 0.32 yet that puts him in the top 12%!

Let’s look at other classes. My most used class is medic, I average 535.20 SPM, way more than I do as a pilot, but it only puts me into the top 8%. I average 1.05 kpm as a medic, about the same as I do in a plane, yet it only puts me into the top 17% of all medics.

Tanks never get the same hate as planes, yet the data shows it’s by far the more effective vehicle class. I’m not a great tanker, I average 413 SPM (more than I do in a plane) and it puts me in the bottom 31% of all tankers. My KPM is 0.87, which is an abysmal bottom 43%. Yet if you had those same stats as a pilot, you’d be considered a great pilot.

I can also include other classes, but for the sake of making this too long, I’ll summarize and assure you that pilot, as a class, averages the least amount of points and kills per minute in comparison, and it’s not even close. Go on BFV tracker and have a look for yourself, look at all or your classes and see how they stack up to pilot. The data doesn’t lie.

If planes were truly OP, then the top 5% of pilot SPM and KPM would be much higher than it actually is. By the looks of this forum, you would believe that average pilots have 600 SPM and 2 KPM.

For some reason, planes just induce rage. It’s not uncommon after a good round in a fighter, I get messages in my inbox threating to report me, or wishing death on me or my family.

2

Compared to how you can fight against them or avoid them, they are op.
You can easily avoid or fight against tanks or infantry but planes, especially bombers, you cant. You cannot see them, you cannot hear them. If you somehow hear them, it is too late to move before millions bombs hitting you with massive blast radius.
At least that is how I have experienced planes.

3

Planes have plenty of counters. Stationary and Mobile AA’s, Fliegerfaust, and of course, other planes. Now a good pilot, like a good tanker, or a good infantry player, will be extremely difficult to kill, but not because whatever they are using is OP, but rather because they are skilled. If planes were indeed OP, then they wouldn’t average the lowest SPM and KPM out of all the six classes. Like I said, planes induce rage, because most players don’t know how to fly, or even use AA properly, so they feel hopeless against a good pilot, especially because a lot of players are obsessed with getting revenge kills and going after the person that just killed them. A pilot goes 50-5 on Iwo Jima and someone makes a thread on here screaming at DICE to nerf planes. Someone goes 50-5 on Operation Underground with a thompson, or STG44, or Type 2a, or Lewis Gun, and no one even notices.

4

planes always have lower spm because of the fact they can’t play the objectives
With that in mind, pilots still make it to the top of the scoreboard with insane scores

5

It is true that planes can’t capture objectives, however, planes also have access to flares, and spot flare assists, which drive up SPM, and they also destroy more vehicles than their infantry counterparts. You get points for disabling parts of vehicles as well as 250 points for destroying one. Its hyperbolic to argue that planes consistently make it to the top of the leaderboard with “insane scores” because the data does not reflect that. Tankers and assault players end up at the top of the leaderboard far more than pilots, and yes, the data backs that up.

6

Putting bombers in a game where infantry captures small objective areas is just bad game design, it will never work without either making the planes useless or making the gameplay awful for infantry. They should never have done this, it failed in BF1 and they just repeated it in BFV.

And the missing sound from planes just make the whole thing even more stupid.

Choppers in BF4 works better than planes in BFV, at least you can hear them most of the time and you have a chance of avoiding them (and choppers can get ridiculous scores in BF4).

7

Thank goodness there are plane-free maps.

8

Is there any data available that would suggest that planes are OP? Or do we just hate getting killed by them because we lack the skill to counter a good pilot? Getting 0.32 KPM as a pilot placing you in the top 12% of all BFV pilots strongly suggests otherwise. All of this rage and complaining about a class where most players get one kill every 4 to 5 minutes is irrational.

9

I just played a breakthrough round on Hamada map. Two pilots , one was 77-1 and the other was 55-0. The one death came because he told everyone he needed to get the roadkill with the plane, it came at the close of the map.

10

I played a round of breakthrough on Panzerstorm on Sunday and the top score was my clanmate who had 92 kills in a tank. Another one of my clanmates got over 80 kills on conquest with the model 37 shotgun on Operation Underground. Are those OP too?

Those are called good players that no one attempted or figured out how to stop. I guarantee if I was on the opposite team in a fighter, they wouldn’t have went 77-1 and 55-0.

11

God forbid someone is good with something in a game where its rarity and value means its supposed to be good in good hands.

I will conceed that planes should make more noise, as they ARNT exactly super sonic, but the rest can quite frankly take 30 minutes to cool off before posting ‘‘PLANE OP NERF!’’

12

Any decent Pilot I have seen has 1.5+ KPM.

For a Player who plays all classes, your Pilot KPM/SPM is fine at what it is, but it does not represent what skilled Pilots achieve.

Leave this aside, that’s not what I really want to say.

For me the OP aspect lies in the imbalance of MAA v Air and a couple of broken plane load outs (rockets especially). Outside of that I agree that most people over-react.

13

This was something DICE never learned from in BF1. I have seen players spawn Bombers in BF1, bomb the nearest objective in Operations, get 5 kills, crash and die, rinse and repeat again. This required no skill.

14

The only thing I disagree with you is that pilots that have 1.5+ KPM represent less than 0.1% of all BFV pilots. 0.1% is the lowest value that BFV Tracker records, so the number is probably much lower than that, suggesting that 1.5 KPM for a pilot is “decent” is hyperbole at its finest. The data suggests that the overwhelming majority of pilots struggle mightily in the KPM category, where most only get one kill every 4 to 5 minutes. As for the British Rockets, yes those are OP as they are bugged, any inexperienced pilot can hop in a Spitfire VB and OHK a tank with those. The rockets on the BF109 that require 3 strafe runs on a tank require much more skill. MAA and SAA only seem imbalanced because most players don’t use it properly. This stems from their lack of flying experience, as they don’t know the player on the SAA or MAA who waits until a plane is well within range before they engage is the biggest surface to air threat to pilots.

15
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Your spending to much time on pointless statistics while this part says the most what airplanes atmost bringes to the game. They are just antifun for many ppl .

17

Is the word, and it’s true.

18

Battlefieldtracker does not provide the whole pool of players, its only a fraktion of “queried” profiles which were searched by players.
Then there are profiles which are private, these profiles also dont get into account when you compare Top 4% or Top 0.4%

19

Let’s put it this way, you put half as much effort into learning AA as pilots put into learning to fly, you’ll be able to shoot down 99% of pilots before they can even locate your SAA.

20

BFV tracker provides an adequate sample size. The overwhelming majority of players are tracked by BF tracker.