2,000 Post-Merge Battles, and a 4 Year Vet's Perspective

I recently hit 2,000 Battles since The Merge, and I thought I’d take the milestone as an opportunity to compile my thoughts on the current state of Enlisted, how far it has come since I started playing back in April of 2021, and what I think the game needs to be what I still think it could.

Let me start by saying, for those of you who are relatively new to Enlisted (started playing after The Merge), that the game has come SO far. Enlisted is, objectively, a much much better game than it was when The Merge happened. Let alone when I started playing.
Matches would start with a Ju188 dropping it’s 8 (that’s right, it used to carry 8 250kg bombs) across the entire map and Thanos snapping BOTH teams out of existence thanks to friendly fire being ON for them.
Artillery would never STOP raining down, since they had no cooldown, and oh yeah. That red warning circle? Wasn’t always there either. You’d know the arty was called when you got hit by it.
You think the AI are dumb NOW? They used to stand and spin on sandbags if they needed to climb over one to get off the rally point, or run in circles on an upper floor instead of running down the stairs.
There was no BR system. If you just started playing, you’d be in the same battles with your Kar98k, MP40, and no AT yet at all, as the maxed out sweat-lords with drum mag PPShs and late war T-34s.

But we still loved the game. Even though it was, objectively, WAY less balanced than it is now. Why? It felt authentic. The “oh sh*t” moment of rounding a corner with your Kar98k right into the face of a T-34 felt like a real WW2 moment. And SOMEONE on your side probably had a Panzerfaust to deal with it, even if you didn’t. There was an asymmetrical balance to Enlisted in the Campaign era, and it’s what made Enlisted fun back then. At least until the matchmaking imbalance started to show.

Huge numbers of players would play only the faction they had maxed out, and that caused the matchmaking to become heavy on one side for some of the Campaigns. Tunisia was unplayable for one side or the other for MONTHS at a time, because the matchmaking was so heavily one sided. It needed to change. Enter: The Merge.

The Merge was a signal to everyone that the game would put priority, moving forward, on balance over realism. No longer would a Kar98k fight a PPSh-41, even if that’s what really happened. If you want to play with your high-tier equipment, you’ll have to fight against it as well. Fair and balanced. And it was! Things needed a bit of movement, as they were either under or overestimated with their initial BR but, overall, the game had more balance than it ever had before. New players didn’t have to suffer anymore. But once balance became the focus, it was put under a microscope. The feeling of authenticity left the game, and so players started to feel the gaps in balance more than accepting them as “well that’s just how it was”. So, a choice had to be made… How do we bring balance to factions that historically were not balanced? The Americans never used an automatic rifle, but the Germans have a huge advantage at high BR with their FG42! And if the Americans get one, the Japanese will need one too (before the Americans for some reason)! Right? Enter: The Prototypes

Enlisted could have taken a different path. Asymmetrical balance could have been achieved, through faction specific squad makeups, abilities, and weapon availability that could ALL make sense in the WW2 setting. Adding to the authentic feeling of the game, rather than taking away from it. But that’s not what happened. Instead, we got prototypes. Tokyo Arsenal, Type 4, Type Hei Auto, T20, Hyde 1944, AVT-40, MG 15 and 81, RD-44, Fedorov Avtomat, AS-44. Countless weapons that never saw a battlefield or, in some cases even an assembly line, flooded into the game. What remained of the authentic feeling we used to get from Enlisted was crushed into dust.

And that is the problem I see in the Enlisted that we have now. It is an objectively better game than it once was, because of the countless issues that have been fixed, improvements to core gameplay elements like AI, maps, etc. But Enlisted lost it’s identity along the way. We lost the feeling of deep immersion and authenticity we want from a WW2 game. It has been replaced with automatic rifles, submachine guns, tanks, and planes, most of which feel out of place in the setting, and the rain of high explosive options players resort to just to get a sense of gratification from the game that USED to deliver it through an AUTHENTIC, and IMMERSIVE, asymmetric balance.

I think Enlisted needs to recapture that identity, in a big way. A major overhaul, of a similar scale to The Merge, that sets the game back on the path of asymmetrical balance instead of this “everyone gets everything, even if they didn’t” balance we’ve been feeding for so long.
Start with gunplay. Get rid of the dispersion recoil everyone hates and adopt a Dev friendly camera-based recoil model (think Apex Legends) that rewards skill and punishes misuse (i.e. trying to use a PPSh at medium/long range).
Bridge the gap between the balanced BR and authentic Campaign systems. Two queue types: Arcade Battles and Realistic Battles (steal from yourselves at Gaijin). Arcade Battles use the current BR system and presence of aiding HUD elements such as pen indicator for tank gunners and AT guns, lead indicator for aircraft and AA guns, marks from outside your squad (the little red/orange triangle pings), and normal (current) re-arm mechanics for vehicles. Realistic Battles bans all weapons that did not make an appearance in-theater. No prototypes at all. No KTH/StG or IS-2 in Stalingrad. No Pershings in the Pacific. All weapons are tied to their theater(s) of use and will queue for that theater in Realistic Battles. Also do away with some of those aiding HUD elements. No pen or lead indicators, no marks from outside of your own squad. Tanks also have no ammo count on HUD, only an ammo load (AP/HE) indicator. Planes must land to re-arm/repair. Crosshair, teammates names/markers, and hints automatically turned off.
Finally, bring some much-needed uniqueness to the factions. I have a lot of ideas for this, but I’ll save them for their own topics.

That’s it. That’s the rant. I do still enjoy Enlisted, even if I think it’s taken a poor direction since The Merge. Here’s to 2000 more battles. Thanks to everyone for letting me farm you.

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I hit 5,000 games played a couple months back, now sitting at 5,181 total. :smile: But 2k is still a lot of games played and a good achievement.

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personally waiting for “Realistic Battle Mode” or Big Action

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With historical sets of weapons and vehicles? :dromedary_camel: :point_right: :point_left:

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Yeah some times I do forget how it was way worse before, lmao the bombs nuking the entire map and both teams was hilarious ngl, what was not fun was the never ending artillery.

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Back when the Explosive Pack was a small atom bomb

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I dont care how on the very beginning it was , i know how it was before merge but i care how its now and how it will be in future, let the past go away we go forward not backwards (hope so😁) and let the past the past…

And what Myrm1don says i agree with it Rb mode and Big Action in normal battles not in custome games

Id say this is yet another thing that could be done with proper modding tools.

Rather than making massive changes to coregame that would in current situation be 3 steps back.
Aka the ass-ymmetric balance, never really worked on old campaigns such as moscow.

Historic games with tweaks in gun game to make it somewhat balanced, sure could play it everynow and then. But as there are just as many visions of such historic games as there are speakers of it, I doubt theres a middle ground that satisfies everyone.
Therefor I think the modding tools are pretty much the only option for new gamemodes.

Since theres ppl even against sbmm, that wouldnt really change the coregame in any way.
But rather it would even attempt to balance current clusterfk games.

I joined the week when Enlisted actually dropped for free on Steam. And even in my 1 year of playing, I’ve noticed a lot of changes. Most for the better. But the prototype proliferation of BR V is something I thought was unnecessary. The premiums should have been the prototypes, not the real world weapons, and I actually believe the Devs are regretting it now.

The fact they’re struggling to add new content, and even plain stealing old premiums shows it. (Maybe Germany will eventually get the Suomi in the TT).

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Well there’s a variety of it in the game’s file with a different muzzle

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At a certain point, new content should just mean new battlefields to fight on. New gameplay mechanics to fight with, not “new” weapons that are just slightly different versions of ones already in the game.

It has begun to feel like the devs just took the path of least work. The dispersion recoil system, their copy/pasting of the Ofenrohr, etc… It all just feels lazy.

Sad reality is that Enlisted doesn’t have enough players or generate enough revenue for the devs to justify bankrolling the kind of major overhauls it needs to core components of the game. AI, gunplay, matchmaking, it all needs serious work for the game to be as big as it could be.

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I personally think that asymmetrical balancing is the way to go with a game like Enlisted. There’s a lot of changes that I’d love to see that fit in line with asymmetrical balancing.

I’d also love to see a new, bigger game mode similar to how the Big Action customs are. I also think that a realistic mode would be interesting to see in the future, though personally trying to use historical squads was always something you could do but was never worth doing even back during the campaigns.

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Yeah Never forget the authentic Jumbo and M2 in 1944 Normandy.

Yeah Was very heilarious. Only a shame that most people didnt really like it unless they are the T-34.
Also, you still can get that expierence. Just go to BR3 with your rifles.

Other words for that assymmetrical balance didnt work.

No, it was because one side had better gear to the point you had PPSh41 against OP 20rd Beretta.

No, you still can do that one if you wish.

Yeah The Jumbo in Normandy was realy authentic.

They also didnt use the Jumbo in Normandy but we are selective.

We had Soviet body armour to counter OP Beretta. But for some reason, it made Soviets better.

Except they were not protos. Nice research.

But when the outdated Panzer III B, ZH (never used by Germans), outdated Beretta M1918, time travel Jumbo and M2 or the Semp entered Enlisted, it was cool lol.
Also, the ASS44 was already in Berlin before merge.

The Stick PPSh might wanna argue about that one.

Dumb.

This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.

You really went through all this trouble, being wholly and unnecessarily contrarian, with all those quotes… Just for me to not care.

Slow clap.

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People who dont care, dont respond in the first place, kiddo.

Honestly I completely agree, I mean the game is in a better state now post merge, but the identity has been lost for sure, I think maybe a hybrid BR system could work? Where each weapon and vehicle has a point value, a bit like crossout if anyone here has played that. Meaning you could bring a BR5 weapon like a PPSh drum to a BR2-3 game if you compensate by only bringing BR1 BAs with the rest of the squad.

Some very quick number to try give an example, extremely rough.

BR1 BA - 1 Point
BR5 SMG - 10 Points

Threshold for BR2 Matchmaking - 15 Points
Threshold for BR3 Matchmaking - 30 Points

etc etc, though ofc you might have to balance it per squad instead of per lineup, so people how bring multiple slots dont get penalised.

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We got PZIV E against T-28 with sharpnel in early moscow
20rd Beretta is just a exception, they want to add this weapon but don’t have the right position to place it, so it was added in lategame, it have nothing to do with the campaign balance itself.
The old campaign was indeed balanced.

Always 6x250kg. Always get your facts check before posting.

Straight-up bs. Friendly fire was on only after you crashed your plane. Only shows you were a terrible pilot if you only remember this.

Very weird statement. Arty strike still doesn’t have global cd, which means arty still never stop raining. The differences are reduced individual cooldown and overlapping arty strikes.

Oh yes. Authentic to have golden t50 for everyone. Authentic to have mkb42 vs fedorov in Moscow.

Oh shit moment when my grb39 could do nothing against t50 in its pre-buff state. Nothing to do with HA but poor game and balance design.

Really can’t take another HA rant seriously, especially when you get basic facts wrong.

was this before the addition of T-50 which included funky sloped armor addition making technically every soviet tank with sloped armor invulnerable to any german tanks ?
Ironicly they had no rush to fix it, just like PZ3J1 “APHE” is still nothing but regular AP.

Could have just added Kiraly instead. No one needed memeretta 20mag, if I recall tunisia / berlin already by that time had 40round beretta so this copypasta was completely un-necessary.
Or very least have courtesy to add it with 30 round mag but no.

PPsh that had no competitor untill the kiraly appeared, yeah sure it was balanced.
Could even say neither of PPD’s had proper counter before kiraly came.

Right.

Quite sure hes referring to that time when there was no limitation of how many artillerys there could be simultaneously.
Could be 10 simultaneous artillerys and the CD was extremely short.