It's often claimed that the devs have stated that they don't want to do active crashes (hardware falling from the sky) as they want all the ingame events to be player driven. I looked for the source of the claim and couldn't find it, so if anyone could find that I would appreciate it.

That said, I really like this discussion because the current compromise that the game has is pretty lacking imo. Players are already directed and found in high densities based on spawn location and loot location. Players have optimized the metagame of chopper crash looting for the current patch and will do so for subsequent patches. Currently, the chopper crashes are just a loot lottery for the lucky player. They do not last long enough in the current patch to be worth fighting over even on a highpop. A loud and visible 'crashing' event would make the crashes less luck-based and actually force players to think about how to approach the scenario.

Say a chopper crashes next to you - you could loot it immediately and bail, you could take your proximity advantage to find good overwatch and wait for other players to show up, you could just run away. The player who sees the crash happen from a distance will know when/where the chopper spawned, and understand that they will likely be late to the party, lessening the disappointment of running up to a chopper and finding scraps. Perhaps the far-off players could post up at a chokepoint and hope to ambush the looters as they make they way away from the crash. In the same way that the topography and layout of NWAF directs how players approach looting, the increased player information given by a 'cinematic' crash would allow for more interesting player choices regarding how to approach said crash.

The flipside to this is that loud dynamic chopper crashes are really, really gamey. I'm sure you have all seen the airdrops in H1Z1 or legacy Rust where the entire server seems to show up to a drop and it turns into a cherno deathmatch on steroids. It feels forced and gives a huge advantage to the players who already have endgame gear. It turns into a who-can-camp-the-longest game with the victor being the player(s) who hold fire the longest.

I don't think there is a clear best choice when it comes to how to implement these events. It will have to be a compromise between pure player agency and random gamey-ness. Personally, I would like to see the full 'cinematic' crash, together with radio distress calls both during and after the crash. Make the crashes last longer, and potentially have a more constrained loot pool (I doubt a russian military chopper would be carrying seven e-tools, but I've seen it ingame). They should be quite rare events that lone wolves and groups alike can get excited over. They should not be easily understood, quantified, and metagamed. An ideal scenario would be one where the crashes are as unpredictable as human players.

anywho, that's just my rambling. What do you guys think?