Balance megathread

Mess Room
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This is a recap / overview of most balance-related posts I have seen floating around on the forums. This post will cover economy, weapon and vehicle balance, nothing else. It will be a place for the community to either reinforce the following statements, or debunk them. This post may be edited over time depending on community response.

Economy

RNG progression systems, such as the random parts given by disassembling weapons, the random chance to fail a weapon upgrade and the logistics system are seen as very negative things and most players would like to see these to be removed if possible. Progression needs to be linear, not random.

1: Leveling up squads and soldiers feel about right if this was a full release, but for further alpha tests, maybe consider giving the players a leveling boost to get quicker access to the higher level gear for further testing.

2: Campaign progress currently feels just right for a free-2-play game up to level 9. It is not too slow, not too fast. Beyond level 9 however, the ammount of XP required to progress skyrockets, with level 9-11 requiring about as much XP as levels 1-9 combined and level 11-13 requires even more XP. Please make the increase of XP per level more linear, 180.000XP per level should only be required past level 15. Furthermore, XP gain could use an increase during these alpha tests as there is limited time to unlock and test everything and progress gets wiped anyways.

Weapons

3: Bolt action rifles are powerful, but do not consistently one shot kill enemies on upper body hits (not arm hits). Consider slightly increasing damage output for consistent one shot kills on upper bodies. The Mosin Nagant could use an upgrade to a newer variant with better iron sights.

4: SMGs are extremely potent, maybe even slightly overpowered. Not sure what nerf would be required, however.

5: Semi-Automatic Rifles have seen a huge damage nerf compared to the berlin test. They should be more in line with bolt action rifles, but given an increase in recoil and reduction in return, as currently they are worse than the mauser pistol (mauser does the same damage, has the same magazine size, reloads faster and is easier to aim with)

6: Flamethrowers lack range and are risky to use due to team kills and self damage. Please make the flames more consistent around corners / through doors and increase their firing range to their historically accurate 20-30 meters.

7: Shotguns are supposedly tripple barrel weapons with 2 buckshot shells and 1 slug. However, it only gets one shot in which both buckshot shells are expended, the 3rd barrel goes entirely unused. Furthermore, the damage is lackluster even if it was only 1 buckshot shell being fired. Please slightly increase the damage per shot, give it 3 ammunition, the first 2 being the buckshot and the 3rd being a bolt-action level damage bullet for the slug.

8: Weapon bashing is an extremely powerful attack that is often more powerful than melee weapons, taking down any enemy with a consistent two hits. Please reduce the damage of weapon bashing to give melee weapons a use.

9: Grenades are almost perfectly balanced with the exception of molotov cocktails. They are good area denial but lack their damage against tank engines.

10: Light machine guns, while I can’t say much about the DP, I can talk about the MG13. It is an extremely potent gun, but it lacks ammo (3x50 drums at 900RPM) and does not benefit from its bipod when crouched behind windows. Please give the MG13 4x50 ammo by default and let them enjoy lower recoil when using that bipod in windows.

11: AT rifles are clunky, heavy weapons that seem to have very inconsistent performance against tanks. The PTRS seems much more powerful thanks to being semi automatic and having 5 rounds ready, rather than being a single shot rifle. BA-11s still have way more survivability than they are supposed to have with crew surviving multiple hits from anything, but the PzB makes short work of any BP-7 you might encounter. Please fix the damage model of the BA-11, as it makes it very hard to accurately test german AT rifles, also replace the PTRS with the PTRD so both sides have a single shot AT rifle instead of one having a semi automatic.

12: Mortars, while I haven’t unlocked them myself, are a terror on the battlefield. They can be aimed using the minimap, making it very easy to accurately hit groups of enemies at long range. They are hard to counter, especially on assault/invasion maps where they can shoot from spawn, with no possibility of enemy soldiers approaching them. Please remove the ability to aim mortars using the minimap, so that teamwork would be required to accurately aim them.

Vehicles

13: BA-11 is much more powerful than the Pz3B with better mobility, a better gun and better survivability due to its crew being further apart. Consider making the T-26 the default tank and making the BA-11 either the second or third unlock vehicle as it is more balanced against the Pz2 or Pz3E. In addition to that, the MG ammunition seems a bit low, it is easy to run out of MG ammo, the HE shell is not potent enough to make up for that. Either increase MG ammunition for tanks, allow us to refill ammunition somewhere, or increase the potency of HE shells for tanks

14: Stuka and IL-2 have 100kg and 250kg bombs respectively, which feel a bit underwhelming. Consider giving the IL-2 its historical 2x250kg bomb loadout and the stuka its historical 500kg bomb loadout.

15: BF-109/Yak-1 are pretty much useless ingame. There are not enough air players around for these to be able to shoot anything, especially as the MGs/cannons are nearly useless against ground targets. Not sure how to fix that though.

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I don’t hate the disassemble of weapons as a concept, if they gave you more weapons with each drop or just more drops. I get one drop every three games maybe.

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On the topic of rifle damage:

You’re basically on point, anything chambered in a full power round should be one-shotting on torso hits. I’d argue a knockdown on limb hits, because mah realism, but I get why that wouldn’t be a great idea.

Also, semi-automatic rifles typically recoil less than bolt guns in the same caliber, because they’re usually heavier, and have a lot of springs and such. They sometimes recoil strangely, because of the varying masses moving in different directions, but the recoil itself is less.

SMGs don’t feel all that potent to me. The ridiculous random recoil and lack of controllability keep them from being OP, IMHO.

The shotgun model in game is a Luftwaffe Drilling. 8mm rifle damage on the third shot makes sense, but military buckshot loads aren’t gonna be doing much outside of 50m or so with the spread. I haven’t played with them yet, but the hit power on the shot seems right, so this may be an issue of too-fast falloff?

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IL-2 is better than Stuka, casue I use IL-2’s 7.62mm &20mm to shoot down Stuka easily, and IL-2 could drop 100kg bomb 4 times, and I think Stuka could just drop one 250kg.

BTW, IL-2 could bring both bombs and rockets in Warthunder.

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the shotgun consumes both buckshot ammo in a single hit and does not do much outside of MAYBE 10 meters. so it really needs some more power

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I think the upgrades should be more like sidegrades, light a lighter spring would give increased firerate but more recoil on the SMGs for example

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  1. RNG
    Too many mechanics in Enlisted rely on RNG. Loot boxes, loot itself, weapon upgrade and even weapon recoil. Let’s start with loot boxes, in my opinion they were fine during the tests in April. You would get a drop almost every battle. You would also get much more loot in those drops like gun, granades and bandages at once. Weapon upgrade is a terrible idea. It should be simple. The longer you use the gun, the better it gets and you at using it. Weapon recoil is quite a difficult thing. The problem with RNG there is that it instantly moves the sight to certain position. There’s nothing you can do about it. Guns should be controlable, even to some degree while at full auto.

  2. Campaign.
    In my opinion it’s too long, even for a released game. First of all, XP requirements should increase gradually, not instantly from 500 to 12000. Second, in my opinion game doesn’t feel rewarding because of it. There are many cases where the only thing you get after a finished game is a squad point, which is in my opinion often worthless because you have to rely on RNG to actually use that new unlock like increased squad size or license for the new weapon (this one definitely should go). You should be able to unlock important classes like anti tank, engineer or pilot much quicker. Game gets quite stale if after few hours you’re still running with the same squad equipped with mosins. Getting new classes earlier would also have a positive effect on gameplay. For example, currently tanks have no counter except explosives, which aren’t that reliable. Having anti tank class available at the beginning would fix that.

  3. Weapons
    I don’t there’s anything I could add. Your arguments are correct.

  4. Vehicles
    Pretty much same here. I haven’t played planes yet but as far as I’m aware, there’s no option to change your loadout. You should be able to do that before you spawn.
    Also, is there a way to reload your plane? If not, game should have airfields placed on the map.

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I agree on both those counts, but I noticed something when I went to look at the shotguns to reply. The caliber is listed as 2.03 mm, which is .08 caliber, which is #9 birdshot. A decent coat stops #8 most of the time, and it’s .09.

Maybe we just don’t have a decent buckshot load in game right now?

On SMGs, that would make sense. I wouldn’t choose to use it, the PPD already has more than enough recoil.

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I simplified the caimpaign earnings for the sake of the length of this post, but agreed.

planes have an spherical area in the sky that realms their bombs and MG/cannon ammo, but they have no way to repair. An airfield where they could repair using the repair kits that you normally use with tanks would be nice

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Even before testing the game seeing that first thing was a real blow to the potential of the game, Knowing that weapon upgrade can fail is another blow stemmed to increase the RNG progression.

I’m yet to test but really have little faith in them nailing the potential of the game by using such design (RNG), good that I saw this post the first thing.

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One of the balance issues has already been resolved, kudos to the devs!

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Which balance issue was already fixed?

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Point 2, as seen in the edit

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Updated point 2 as the old edit had become outdated.

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Even then, for gameplay’s sake, the shotguns really need an improvement as they are slower to use than the bolt action rifles due to the lengthy reload, less consistent due to bullet spread, and have less range

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I agree entirely. Give us a military buckshot load. It still wouldn’t be super lethal past 50m, but 9 .32 pellets would be a hell of a lot more effective than some shit a pidgeon might laugh at.

Increased range, separate fire for the shotgun barrels, ability to fire the rifle barrel. Shotguns fixed.

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Unlike simmilar games, like Heroes and Generals and Battlefield, the tanks here are both more realistic, more vulnerable and far more fun. The whatever that explosive is a well thought out, skill-based addition that is easy to use, but hard to master. Good player will always one shot a tank with it. The guns are pretty good, but the SVT should be buffed a bit, currently it’s weaker than German Mauser C96 which makes little sense. Also, maybe a better Mosin for Russians, kar98k has very good sight, while Mosin 1907 carbine which for some reason Red Army used in this game as main gun from 1941-1945 is really shit to aim with it’s iron sight. Maybe give everyone an unscoped Mosin that sniper uses. Also, it would be great if game had more linear progression instead of RNG-based one. As it stands, 99% of time it spams you with troopers and Mosin 1907 rifle which are nigh useless.

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Your feedback has been incorporated in the main thread

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So, now that I’ve played it, I see what you mean. That shotgun is almost entirely worthless in it’s current iteration

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Shotgun is pretty good for close quarters and in buildings, however it’s not good enough to replace the smg, and should be unlocked before the smg squad, as the soldiers basically represent the poorest quality soldiers, in all honesty, perhaps having them as your reserve unit.