What is even the point of the helicopter? Feels like a useless feature.

[rFenyx]

You can't control the camera, it mindlessly hovers and calls out people as "suspects" that have already been dispatched or arrested. Please tell me this is just a placeholder and that we will be able to control the camera/chopper or maybe utilize sniper support in the near future.

[NorthernLight]

Originally posted by Jug:

Originally posted by Dreepa:

Lack of senior game designers defining meaning, challenge, player abilities, agency, purpose and goal of features and strategically developing them from concept to implementation.

I'm saying this without trying to be rude or disrespectful.
Just stating the obvious, even if no one wants to hear it.

I agree. No one is there to make the most BASIC questions, before pouring hours and hours of work into it: "Ok, so, how useful will it really be?" "Ok, how realistic is an overhead chopper when the mission is stealthy (3-letter tirade)?"

Makes NO sense.

Cool stuff are cooler when they have a reason to be.
And they become goofy very fast when they don't.

Aren't all the missions supposed to be stealthy for the most part? I mean they can be played as such with no issue. The suspects are on alert in that mission (there are tons of them) they aren't just not sitting around. So realistically the chopper likely would alert them to the presence but not the location of the breach team. Doesn't not affect most, it looks cool AND has a function.

I agree with "cool stuff are cooler when they have a reason to be" that kinda makes sense and is on display in the latest DLC.

The chopper is not in the entire game, just the newest DLC which is only 3 missions. It's a welcomed layer of design and makes the game feel fresh and gives those new missions a bit of a more special operations feel.

[NorthernLight]

News choppers in the sky would be cool too see as there are already live news reports on the TVs in some of the DLC missions (I won't say which not to spoil anything.) And maybe even in the vanilla game I have not noticed. Keep it coming. Purely cosmetic but would add even more immersion to the already ridiculous amount of atmosphere this game already has.

[ledypax]

I think it looks very cool, there was one point on the oil rig where it descended to my level when I was on the floor below to help find suspects.

[NvMe 令]

Choppers or intel that would help you in tracking down the last handful of civies and suspects on all maps would be amazing because its such a pain trying to chase down the last suspect holed up in a corner

[Jonboy]

Probably one of the hosts of features they never implemented.

[DuckieMcduck]

It's just for cool factor, other than that it's completely useless specially since it keeps moving.

The original game had snipers with scope cameras and they would tell you when something would enter their view (so you didn't even need to look at the camera). But the key factor about this is that they are stationary and they could also shoot suspects down.

Originally posted by NorthernLight:

Originally posted by Jug:

[...]
"Ok, how realistic is an overhead chopper when the mission is stealthy (3-letter tirade)?"

Aren't all the missions supposed to be stealthy for the most part?
[...]

Stealth is a very minute thing in these games and the characters are not marines but police officers who need to reveal their intent. If anything the chopper being so close circling a live fire zone is extremely dangerous for the chopper as it could get shot down by small arms fire.

Of course there is a stupid global suspect stress mechanic which slowly turns your average deadbeat goon into a heat seeking chaos cultist from 40k, which probably gives you this impression that you'd like to "minimize stress" when what you want to do is control the situation with utilities.

[NorthernLight]

The chopper calls out locations of suspects who are outdoors in this game (in 3 missions of this game which are all just in the new DLC.)

It only moves when the suspect becomes obscured and is no longer visible to the chopper.

Check the tablet on your chest and click the 'Helicopter' tab, there you can view the FLIR feed. How is that useless?

It's not 100% just for cool factor. That would be true if the chopper did nothing.

[DuckieMcduck]

Originally posted by NorthernLight:

The chopper calls out locations of suspects who are outdoors in this game (in 3 missions of this game which are all just in the new DLC.)

It only moves when the suspect becomes obscured and is no longer visible to the chopper.

Check the tablet on your chest and click the 'Helicopter' tab, there you can view the FLIR feed. How is that useless?

It's not 100% just for cool factor. That would be true if the chopper did nothing.

The time it takes for one to acknowledge the callout, take out the tablet, pick the camera, try to make out where in the map that greyed FLIR image refers to when the chopper is in some arbitrary position does not help much. By the time you performed that entire dance for a hint at 1 suspect you could have already cleared a room and started wedging exits to funnel the remaining suspects.

It's cool but gameplay wise it's worthless to me. The original game had the snipers show up in the Picture In Picture team cam and you could move their scopes around too, so compared to that it's basically a distraction. In that regard the helicopter feed may as well be a streamed episode of Family Guy, but if it helps you somehow then more power to you.

[NorthernLight]

Originally posted by DuckieMcduck:

Originally posted by NorthernLight:

The chopper calls out locations of suspects who are outdoors in this game (in 3 missions of this game which are all just in the new DLC.)

It only moves when the suspect becomes obscured and is no longer visible to the chopper.

Check the tablet on your chest and click the 'Helicopter' tab, there you can view the FLIR feed. How is that useless?

It's not 100% just for cool factor. That would be true if the chopper did nothing.

The time it takes for one to acknowledge the callout, take out the tablet, pick the camera, try to make out where in the map that greyed FLIR image refers to when the chopper is in some arbitrary position does not help much. By the time you performed that entire dance for a hint at 1 suspect you could have already cleared a room and started wedging exits to funnel the remaining suspects.

It's cool but gameplay wise it's worthless to me. The original game had the snipers show up in the Picture In Picture team cam and you could move their scopes around too, so compared to that it's basically a distraction. In that regard the helicopter feed may as well be a streamed episode of Family Guy, but if it helps you somehow then more power to you.

Easiest way to make out where the chopper callout is referring to is to look at the actual chopper itself. The searchlight beam is pointed at the suspect they are calling out. The position is not arbitrary at all, only when the search light is on this is true. Other than that it is circling and searching. I agree this is only really particularly useful on the missions that are at sea, Leviathan (Oil Rig) and The Seraglio (the Yacht one)

Storytime: Once when breaching the Seraglio the entire back of the yacht was flooded by the searchlight when the main party room was breached. I cannot stress how much atmosphere this added at the time, it felt scripted, kinda was but was all dependant on where the enemy Ai was in that run.

I hear all your points though and appreciate these replies. I also didn't know about the Picture and Picture stuff from earlier builds of the game before but am glad they got rid of that (for now?) as you aren't controlling bots, unless of course one day they add defusal robots or recon drones or the ability to teleport into and control other officers in a separate game mode. I remember something similar in SWAT4 i think. Is that correct?

This game is dope tho, I just finally S-ranked the mission Greased Palms (the Postal Facility one) on the weekend and found it to be particularly challenging in Singleplayer.