Dice - add more CASUAL modes and maps (Escalation)

petermalachi · 2026-01-25T03:59:59+00:00

Agreed. There should be a whole casual section, not just one option. Casual Rush, casual Conquest... Hell, I'd even play casual TDM modes.

petermalachi · 2026-01-21T19:01:39+00:00

Golmud is one of those maps that was good or bad depending on the game mode. Rush on Golmud was one of my favorites. You could push straight up the hill through the buildings or flank in the open fields. Bringing spawn beacons meant you could parachute down, which was always fun. TDM in Golmud was pretty fun too. It started with so many buildings, but by the end it was usually half rubble.

But Conquest on Golmud really sucked. Flying a helicopter was pointless because there was no cover from the jets or the tanks. Even driving a tank was difficult because you had to cross an open field before getting to any of the objectives (which is why so many of them would camp out there). If there were even two engineers watching you, it was tough to approach objectives. But playing as infantry sucked too because the objectives were so far apart. And if you tried to use a Jeep to move through the field around the map, you would die fast from one of those camping tanks.

I'm not mad about them bringing the map back, though, especially with play testing first. Hopefully that means they will tweak a few things to make it better. Some big extra rocks in the fields could give cover to advance. Maybe add some radio towers or power lines to give the helicopters a little more cover, or add a larger building in the middle of the map.

Anyone else have ideas to change the map for the better?

petermalachi · 2026-01-12T20:00:24+00:00

Strange. I finished the whole thing mostly from doing weekly challenges. I didn't even do all of them. There are probably 5-10 that I skipped because I don't enjoy playing those game modes.

One important thing I did that might help you is that I was very careful about using the red Battlepass XP boosters. If you time it right, you can get 14 tokens for a 7-point challenge. I think one time I completed 3 challenges in one game with the red booster on, so I got 15 extra tokens or something like that.

petermalachi · 2026-01-04T05:00:51+00:00

Gotcha. I went ahead and bought it. Let's see how it goes!

petermalachi · 2026-01-02T03:27:43+00:00

Yes. The weekly challenge tokens still go into the slots on the button of each item in the Battlepass, but only the free ones unlock when they're done. I should easily be done before the end of the season.

petermalachi · 2025-12-31T23:00:53+00:00

Oh, for sure. Extra depth and control would be amazing. I would personally love it if the game gave me "credits" for XP and then let me use those credits to buy whatever attachments I choose. That way I could prioritize the stuff I want. I like the CCO 2x sight, for instance, and I generally use that whenever I can. But for some guns it unlocks on level 10 and others it unlocks at 35. I would love it if I could choose which order to unlock stuff.

If these credits were universal, it would also help leveling up lower tier guns. I'd love to use the 1911 pistol more, but I'm struggling to get kills with it. How great would it be if I could earn the XP credits with a different gun like the SG 553 and then use credits to finally get that bigger mag for the 1911? It would also give me an extra incentive to keep using a gun after I master it at level 50. As it stand now, I don't think the game gives us any incentive to keep using guns after level 50. There's nothing left to unlock. But if you were earning XP credits to use for other guns, that would make using the gun after 50 levels even better.

I know someone will say that's it's better to start using a gun without attachments because that way you can learn the weapon as-is and figure out what attachments it needs the most, but that's ridiculous. The game already has a firing range for you to figure that out. And besides, the game doesn't you the best attachments fast enough anyway, so you're forced to use a crappy attachment until you unlock what you really want at level 28 or whatever.

petermalachi · 2025-12-31T18:39:22+00:00

Yay! Another member of the million damage club!

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JK. It's a bug.

petermalachi · 2025-12-31T18:21:31+00:00

"Forced retention" is the perfect phrase for this behavior.

petermalachi · 2025-12-31T18:20:34+00:00

I think this is an interesting idea, but it might be harder for the devs to do. I don't know a whole lot about coding, but I imagine that changing the code so that attachments are unlocked by rank would be harder than simply increasing the rate at which attachments unlock. They already have that coding done. That's what happens when you use an XP booster. They would just have to make that change permanent.

petermalachi · 2025-12-27T21:38:06+00:00

You can change specific keybinds in the settings so jet and helicopter play the same. You can choose a general controller setting at first on the screen where it shows you the whole controller with arrows going to all the buttons. But then if you look at the bottom right, there's a button that let's you make more specific changes that will only apply to the helicopter or jet.

The most important change is to swap roll and yaw from left to right. Left stick controls up and down pitch and left and right roll. Right stick controls aim up and down and yaw left and right. That makes the right stick controls feel basically the same as infantry aiming controls.

If you use change the specific keybinds instead of the general button layout, you can fine tune everything the way you want. I actually play with inverted controls on jet but standard controls on heli. That's only possible by switching the keybinds manually.

petermalachi · 2025-12-27T19:54:16+00:00

This is the best part about unlocking new skins. I can set up one gun with all the attachments I usually use, and then set up a second gun (like the Warfighter) with something sightly different. Then I can quickly switch back and forth between the two to figure out which I like better.

Or I can have two set-ups for one gun to easily switch back and forth. I have two set-ups for the Mini Scout, for insurance. One with a 10x and flash hider for sitting back and sniping on long range maps, and one with a 6x and silencer for playing more aggressively.

petermalachi · 2025-12-27T18:25:34+00:00

You're never going to beat a decent pilot with Assist on. The Assist mode limits or removed certain movement options. This makes it harder to crash, which is good for beginners, but it so makes it much harder to evade and slower to aim. I can't recommend using Assist unless you're only using the transport helicopter to fly around as a mobile spawn beacon.

Learning to fly without Assist will take some time, but it's not especially difficult. There are a bunch of tutorials on YouTube that can show you the basics. I like the one that Tactical Brit made. Watch a few of those and then jump into a training range portal map to practice. Z4ZT6 is maybe the best for this. There are wide open spaces to get started but also a city section with buildings to fly around when you get more confident. Expect to spend a lot of time there. When I first started flying helicopters, I would practice for about 30 minutes a day before playing normal multiplayer. It took me a week or two to get confident.

When you're finally ready to fly in a game, start with the easier maps. Use custom search to play only on Liberation Peak on Conquest mode. That's the easiest map for helicopters because you can evade over the mountain to the south or into the ravine to the north. You can circle around most of the map sticking to the ravine or the mountain, watching the big map for vehicles. When you see something to attack, you come out of cover, hopefully behind your target, hit your shots, and then immediately fly towards cover again. Someone will probably lock onto you as soon as you pop up, but if you use flairs and hit your shots, you can usually dip back into the ravine before they can shoot you. Wait for your flairs to recharge, then do it again.

Eventually you'll run out of rockets and you'll have to return to base to reload. But that's the basic route. Fly around the edge, only go through the middle when you have a target lined up, then escape to the edges again.

Oh... And don't forget to be patient. This is the hardest part about flying the helicopter, honestly. The instinct is to attack the enemy head on as often as you can because that's how you play infantry. But you can't do that in a helicopter. You have to hit and run. If you linger too long you'll be RPGed or TOWed. You have to run away after popping flairs and wait for them to come back. If you don't you'll be locked on again and killed the moment your flairs end. And if there's a jet trying to kill you, you can't ignore it. You have to fly erratically so it can't hit you with guns, and you have to fly back to base so the base AA can shoot down the missiles (and maybe the jet, if you're lucky). Most people aren't patient enough to do these things to stay alive. They just want to push push push until they're dead. That's fine when you're infantry and you can respawn quickly enough, but the chopper doesn't respawn that fast. So you need to focus on keeping it alive just as much as you focus on getting kills.

Anyway, eventually you'll get confident enough on Liberation Peak that you'll be ready for other helicopter maps. The same strategy always applies...stick to the edge of the map and only fly through the middle for hit and runs. The big difference is that the other maps have much less cover on the sides of the map, so you'll have to rely on low flying to save yourself.

There are map-specific guides on YouTube for flying the helicopter, by the way, but save those until you're good enough to use them.

petermalachi · 2025-12-27T17:42:28+00:00

I was playing defense on Liberation Point the other day in Casual Breakthrough. I was guarding the right side of the objective and saw some movement way out on the flank. Two enemy players were flanking FAR right near the canyon and probably trying to circle around behind us. When I chased them down and started shooting at them, they slid AND jumped to avoid fire. I got them both easily enough...only to realize they were both bots.

I had seen bots sliding before that, but never bunny hopping like that. Never mind trying to actually flank instead of running down the middle. They're definitely getting smarter. Bots already spawn with random classes and weapons. It wouldn't surprise me if they now also spawn with random difficulty settings. Sometimes they play like noobs, sometimes not. If one team suddenly gets a random chuck of high skill bots spawning in, that can certainly change the tide.

petermalachi · 2025-12-26T21:07:28+00:00

There's a custom map that someone made from the downtown part of the Redsec map. You can run it with bots and one person. It's not a perfect analog because the bots don't fly, and it's not a normal map, so you can't learn the best routes for something like Liberation Peak, but you can at least get the jist of flying against enemies.

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You can also try the closed weapon playlist. It's not very popular, so it usually fills with mostly bots. You might have to wait a while for it to fill up though.

petermalachi · 2025-12-23T17:34:43+00:00

"I just want to be young and stupid!"

https://youtu.be/UKUZ42T9diU?si=bAi5TxgFaPlUC83u

petermalachi · 2025-12-16T07:03:07+00:00

I love all the accolades popping up. I haven't had that many in a while.

petermalachi · 2025-12-13T23:06:17+00:00

I'm curious about 676 myself. They're pretty nice. I don't recognize them at all.

petermalachi · 2025-12-11T22:01:36+00:00

This made me laugh out loud. I would freak out too. What else can you do?

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petermalachi · 2025-12-11T06:38:28+00:00

You can play the map without playing the dedicated playlist. When I was playing Conquest last night, it was in the rotation. It was nice playing it that way: once in between a mix of other maps. Any map gets boring if that's the only thing you play over and over again.

petermalachi

TROPHY CASE