Community Engagement

Suggestions
1

Why is the Community Engagement by Gaijin/Darkflow so poor for this game?
Think about it – what engagement do we get? I’ll tell you:

A) Mods Digest.
B) Forum Moderators.
C) Dev Blogs.

So the extent of engagement is forum moderators doing their jobs and moderating, someone slapping two mods others have made in to an article and calling it a day, and the only good thing but very limited is dev blogs which only occur near big updates.

I’m not counting ‘Making Enlisted a Better Place’ as engagement because:
Fixing the game is not proper community engagement but should just be a given.

What I suggest is a 3-tier Community Engagement system.

Tier 1: Boots on the ground.
-Forum Moderators actively doing their jobs – happening anyway.
-Key* Developers responding to suggestions, saying if they will/won’t be implemented or are to be discussed further internally.
-Key Developers responding to bug reports, saying if it’s actually a bug or not and if it’ll be fixed.
-Key Developers/Moderators getting involved with Mess Room and Suggestions discussions.
-Mods Digest.

Tier 2: Updates.
-MEaBPs should continue to use actual accepted QoL suggestions from Tier 1.
-Developer blogs should definitely continue around the big updates.
-Once a month, publish some game stats. It’ll be cool to see how many people play each campaign, what team is played most, what weapon is used most overall etc. You already have a lot of stats, why not use them and tell us what’s going on in the big picture?

Tier 3: The big stuff.
-Instead of just deciding which campaign to do next, make a poll and ask the community – you know, the ones who will actually be playing the campaigns or not. Sure, you can limit the options down to just two or three, and a future poll might then choose the previous-poll’s losing option anyway, but it’d be nice for the community to actually get a say in what new things are going to be added in to the game, and in what order.

-Ask us what we’d prefer when it comes to other things. E.g. Instead of just switching how the monetisation of a campaign works each time in an attempt to keep people happy, why not ask the community i.e the ones paying, how monetisation should work, what a good cost is to keep something profitable for the company yet accessible to as many people as possible. Barely anyone likes the old system, yet people also don’t like the new Stalingrad system – so why not ask the people what system they’d like to see for it. Again, can be as simple as coming up with as few as 2 or 3 systems and having people vote on it – something as little as that can make a world of difference in community engagement.

//

People are going to play more AND pay more if they feel like their voices are being heard – so even from a company’s financial point of view it’s still a better option to have good community engagement. Which begs the question:
Why is Enlisted’s so bad?

PS. This isn’t a dig or attack on Keofox or any other developer. I understand they all are trying, and do good things, and are all limited by guidelines and expectations and orders from higher-ups etc. I’m not blaming them for this. And yeah I doubt anyone of actual control over such issues will see this (and care enough to do anything about it) but it’s worth a try.

PS. 2 *By Key developer I mean people like whomever is Head of Engagement, Head of Game Design, Community Manager, people like that. Of course in theory most normal developers are going to be busy… well, developing, and so won’t have time to spend browsing the forums.

PS. 3 if you have other ideas for how they could do better engagement, please do share.

PS. 4 I could be completely wrong on the Making Enlisted a Better Place- in which case I’m sorry if I am. Personally, I just never see any of that stuff in suggestions or bug reports so if I am correct in saying they don’t touch suggestions/bug reports for it, it’s weird it’s being advertised as “your feedback” if it isn’t really.

Edit: Yes it’s entirely possible the developement team is really small. Unfortunately their employee numbers are no where to be seen so this is just a stab in the dark for if it’s a really big team.
If it’s a small team, it’s understandable and they are doing a good job as is now. This is just if it’s a big team, there’s no excuse for such little engagement. At the end of the day, there has been more ambitious suggestions made that require huge teams of devs, and this can in theory all be done by one person, so I don’t think it’s asking for too much in reality.

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2

cuz we don’t know the size of the team.

and from what we can see just for the forum, we literally only have 7 admins, which most of them are inactive for reasons,

then we ( were supposed to have 2 community managers or even more so keofox said ) yet, he is the only active one.

around 10 ( which, only 4 are ) ““active”” devs on forum,

and then, we have something around 20 people as mods / helpers which each one of them has a different task across the forum and social media.

so… yeah
i don’t really blain them for lacking of communication.

their situation is kinda like the axis forces one during stalingrad.
far stretched out for the amount of ( digital and hipotetical ) ground that they have to cover.

i don’t blain them, and would not like to be in their position.

so for experience as i use this forum from almost 2 years, i’m not having too many complains.
( and i can guarantee you, that we did not had this communication back then. there were no mod digest, not many devblog beside patch notes, no new hint on updates, etc ) so they have improved.

granted, more would always be better for us, but i don’t blain them if they decided not to.
( which to be honest, in my opinion they are already doing enough. not to be devils advocate of course. but alot of people have quite high expectations. ( me included sometimes which i tend to forget what i just said ).

4 Likes
3

Im not even gonna read that.

Name one gaming company that care more about their gamer opinion.

We live in a world where there is BF 2042, warcraft 3 reforged, diablo immortal, fifa free to play, loot boxes, skyrim VR, fallout76, COD18…
And those don’t care about players. Enlisted do.

They have already realise a lot suggestion.
And at the end that’s just what it is: suggestion. If there is alot of suggestion about AI they will put all the thing they planned to do about AI in the top of the to do list. And sometime add to the list a popular idea among the community after being discussed between devs.
That’s all.

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so… yeah
i don’t really blain them for lacking of communication."

Honestly as harsh as this sounds, that sounds like a them problem. If their staff aren’t doing the job they were hired for - why aren’t they being replaced?
Like… why is this second community manager not fired already if they’ve just left Keofox to do everything?

If anything it’s even worse; the top brass care about Enlisted so little they can’t even be bothered to ensure their development team is up to full strength.

But yes, I understand their team might be small and already stretched thin. But if it’s not, there’s no excuse really.

Unfortunately I couldn’t find any numbers on how many employees they might have; so I’m having to take a stab in the dark on how big the team really is here, especially for how big the game is and how big their publisher is.

5

ugh…

sounds like to me:

" how dare you not to overwork ".

cuz… that’s not up to them.
you know that devs, helpers, mods, admins and yada yada yada aren’t the one in charge for that?

they just do what they can.

you are kinda asking a bit too much for a group made out of 30/40 people that has to deal with more than 500k people ( maybe more, maybe less ).

well, we don’t know about that.
cuz it’s not like every devs or everyone related to the project IS in the forum.

well, more a reality on why what you are asking it’s not possible.

that’s the point

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No, unfortunately most companies don’t.

But you tend to find smaller games and smaller publishers tend to care more - as they need to, they need the money as well as tend to be made by passionate devs.

I’m putting a little blind hope and hoping they at least care about us 5%.

7

Make sandbag better, all people stay in house when ordered so, parachute , killing skull being lifted up instead of blocking view, rally point destroyed notification, enemy weapon picked up can be replenish at enemy ammo box, ofenrohr protective gear, marker for ammo box and many more.

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ugh…

sounds like to me:

" how dare you not to overwork ".

That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying, if people aren’t doing their jobs, they should be fired. At the end of the day, game developer is a job and you are expected by your employer and your customers to do that job. If you can’t be bothered, others will happily take your place. I wouldn’t want a crunch, that’s bad for everyone.

“cuz… that’s not up to them.
you know that devs, helpers, mods, admins and yada yada yada aren’t the one in charge for that?
they just do what they can.”

Yeah, which is why I said ‘PS. Not blaming keofox or other devs as they are just following guidelines etc.’

“you are kinda asking a bit too much for a group made out of 30/40 people that has to deal with more than 500k people ( maybe more, maybe less ).”

Maybe - which leads in to the publishing of stats regularly suggestion made. Keep people informed on what’s going on in the big picture; how many players, how many devs, what’s played the most etc. With stats on the big picture, people can make better-informed suggestions.

“well, more a reality on why what you are asking it’s not possible.”

BUT if it’s not… BUT. It might be small, it might not be, no one knows. Which is why I’m saying “but if it’s not small…”

“that’s the point”

What’s the point? All you’ve said is no one knows the teamsize - which includes you, we don’t know it’s a small team either. Which is why yes I said “I’m taking a stab in the dark on their size”.

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Make sandbag better, all people stay in house when ordered so, parachute , killing skull being lifted up instead of blocking view, rally point destroyed notification, enemy weapon picked up can be replenish at enemy ammo box, ofenrohr protective gear, marker for ammo box and many more.

PS. 4 I could be completely wrong on the Making Enlisted a Better Place- in which case I’m sorry if I am.

Very well. I personally never saw the majority of that; of course I’m not omnipotent but I’d expect to have seen the majority of them if they are highly-liked suggestions.

10

AI house improvment, reload for tanks, smoke artillery, plane bombing, det pack nerf, shovel, plane gunner,squad customisation, faction MG… and more… and more… and more…
Weither it was the source or not, it all has been suggest in the forum.

And you can make such a long list.

In fact at every patch you can find several things that has been somehow discussed in the forum.

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11

Enlisted devs: (((Listen))) to “community”

Enlisted devs: okay we’re gonna buff bolties to deal damage as AT rifles, so beer players that play “fo fun lmao” will be oneshot musketeers.

great

12

Yeah, I admit that I was wrong on that but I still want to point out that things like this:

" * Added an option to send the players friend requests in the battle results window."
and
“In the Practice mode of the “Battle for Tunisia” campaign for the “Axis” powers a transport vehicle has been added that you can use to drive from the infantry shooting range to the tank polygon”

Came in Making Enlisted a Better Place before several of the AI fixes did. Despite AI issue fixes being requested since OBT launch at least.

I do love MEaBP but the priorities in it are still wrong imo - thus that sentence I included of them ‘only picking random minor suggestions included as part of a bigger suggestion, but ignoring the bigger suggestion’; to paraphrase.

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Yea… I know what you are talking about.

We can argue about the priorities.
For exemple: I think AI must still be improved but this is also the most difficult thing to improved. Just look at the AAA far cry AI. It’s shit.
Some bugs and things still has to be improved. Like the very famous bipod. Trust me they are aware of it.

At the end theu have to choose a priority.
And now the game has a lot of content, and after pacific campaign, it will be faster.

Because I think the priority right now is to make the new and probably last campaign.

Make Enlisted a Better Place are small improvment to make us wait. A filler episode between major updates.
And it’s a very good stuff to show they respect the community.

14

Yeah, I sure do hope Pacific is the last one for now, as then we’d have:

Western Europe
Central Europe
Eastern Europe
Africa
Asia

Pretty much every main combat area of WWII will have at least one campaign.
That’s more than enough to switch focus to QoL, transferring mechanics, etc for a few months.

" A filler episode between major updates.
And it’s a very good stuff to show they respect the community." Won’t disagree with that. Even though this post is about asking for more in a literal sense, still got to respect what we do already have. Could always be worse cough EA cough.

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