It has been a pleasure to read not only your questions but also your feedback and suggestions too! We received more than 2500 messages and have tried to pick the ones that are the most relevant and interesting at the current stage of development for Enlisted.
Don’t feel bad if you haven’t found your question this time! There are so many that we will have enough for a dozen of these digests. We’ve saved all of your questions and will publish the most interesting in the next developer’s Q&A, if you like this sort of format of course.
GAME MECHANICS
— Are there plans to add female characters to the game?
Yes, we have plans for historical squads where women actually fought.
— Are there any new soldier classes to look forward to? For example, medics.
We are considering different versions of new soldier classes, which may appear in the new Enlisted campaigns, but it’s too early to say what kind of classes they will be.
— Will it be possible in the future to upgrade weapons not only through the improvements mechanics but through the addition of add-on modules?
There weren’t many weapon modules during WWII, but for the examples that existed historically, we plan to add them to Enlisted in one form or another. Right now we already have sniper sights, bayonets, mounted grenade launchers, and rare modifications like the Pedersen device.
— Is it planned to implement replay mechanics to the game?
Yes, but not in the near future. Right now we are working on some more higher priority tasks.
— Which customization options will appear first? Options such as uniforms, weapons, faces and player names.
We will start with the most highly requested customization option- the ability to change the names and faces of your soldiers. It will come soon enough.
— Is my campaign level or skill affecting the opponents I fight against in battle?
Not for now. All players will be matched into the same battles because we are balancing weapons and vehicles in the game so that even the most upgraded tank can be destroyed by the same explosive pack, and one lucky bullet will kill a 5 star soldier all the same. However, we have plans to implement matchmaking based on the campaign levels. It will work as follows: the matchmaker will try to find enough high-level players to gather them into one battle - but if it fails to in a certain amount of time, the level “fork” will expand up to the current state - all players against all players.
Thus, it will be possible to play with experienced players, if there are enough of them, without greatly affecting the waiting time in the queue.
— Would you like to make it possible for a global queue, i.e. the ability to search for a battle in several campaigns and get into the first one found?
We are discussing such a possibility.
GAMEPLAY
— Could you make it possible to directly select a particular soldier from my squad? Right now it’s not very convenient to switch randomly.
Yes, we are working on a better way to select a soldier. Additionally with the improved system, switching will not throw you over to a badly wounded soldier, giving priority to soldiers who are in better fighting condition.
— The mechanics of picking up a weapon is currently not very convenient, you have to spend a couple of seconds on this. Are there plans to improve it?
Picking up weapons from dead soldiers was never welcomed by the sides during the war - although situations in which it had to be done happened all the time. In the game, we want to emphasize this by making picking up weapons last on the list of options for replenishing ammunition. For example, we will motivate engineers to install ammunition crates, and we will continue to develop similar mechanics further.
— Do you plan to add bipod mechanics for machine guns?
It’s already there! The mechanics to mount weapons, including machine guns, is working if you approach a suitable surface or lie down and press the mount button (it is displayed in the tooltip). The angle of fire will be limited but the stability of the weapon will greatly increase.
— Will rank V for soldiers remain the highest in the game?
At the moment we have no plans to increase the maximum rank of the soldiers but after the fifth rank there will be another level of upgrade - veterans. But it won’t work quite the same way as the ranks. Stay tuned.
AI
— Do you plan to further improve AI soldier commands? Right now it doesn’t allow you to do everything you would like it to do.
Of course! We have already talked about it in the past, for example in this article. But this is a lot of work and will take some time.
VEHICLES
— Will you give pilots a parachute?
This will appear in the future. But as of right now, the zone in which you can bail from your aircraft is quite small and outside of it a parachute won’t save you, for now we are directing our efforts to higher priority tasks.
— Why are armored vehicles so hard to control? Moving, aiming, and shooting requires serious coordination and experience. That’s not what I see in War Thunder, for example.
It is difficult to control a tank in real life! Especially a WWII tank, which was a mass-produced weapon designed for maximum efficiency at minimum cost. Guidance gears are not as accurate as you might wish for, observation devices limit visibility, and powder gases after each shot make it difficult to be inside. However, such vehicles are capable of leading an entire team to a capture point alone, covering it with their thick armor and destroying dozens of targets along the way.
In Enlisted, a military shooter about soldiers, this level of interaction with vehicles is a perfect fit for the gameplay! Armor and aviation are implemented in our game with highly detailed models and damage mechanics, but they are not the main strength on the battlefield. The most usable and versatile asset on the battlefield is of course… infantry!
In War Thunder — for example, in the simulation mode — these features are also present, but just not as noticeable within the framework of large-scale tank battles, huge targets and distances.
For sure, we will continue to improve the usability of the controls, modify the damage of both ground vehicles and aircraft, as well as fix the various bugs that you have reported.
CAMPAIGNS AND MISSIONS
— How many campaign levels and missions do you consider enough to have a campaign completed in terms of content?
This is specific to each campaign. We try to add as much weapons and equipment as possible from the battles of a particular campaign, as long as they don’t mess with the balance of the game overall. The current campaigns are expected to have over 40 levels in the final version.
— Apart from the already announced campaigns, what other campaigns will be in Enlisted?
We can’t reveal any specifics yet, but we are planning campaigns in all the key WWII centers, including, for example, the Pacific.
— The extra mission goal of the “Invasion of Normandy” airfield is interesting. Can you tell us what it showed in the tests? Should we wait for more extra mission goals, or even major ones, other than just capturing a point, like having to spin up a machine, or break through a wall with continuous damage?
There will absolutely be new extra mission goals! We are currently working on them and will tell you about them later.
— Based on what, do you choose weapons and equipment for campaigns? For example, the M4A3E2 “Jumbo” was not used in the Normandy landings, but it is present for the U.S. side in the campaign.
The first weapons and equipment that appear in the campaign are those that were historically used in the battle on which the campaign is focused. They have absolute priority. However, there are situations when one of the sides clearly lacks some tool for good balance. Therefore, we use the following principle of adding content: if equipment and weapons existed during the battles reflected in the game’s campaign, they have a chance to appear in the campaign itself. To put it simply, the same Jumbo was created during Operation Overlord, which is the theme of the “Invasion of Normandy” campaign.
— Can you tell us about the balancing of missions?
We study battle statistics and player feedback. Based on that data, we make changes that should better affect the balance in each specific situation.
There are many factors at play when it comes to balancing missions, such as the number of reinforcement points, the time it takes to capture points, the location of respawn points, location geometry, and more.
— I really enjoy playing multiple campaigns, but it takes a long time to level up everywhere and is a holding back factor for me. What’s your opinion on this? Would you like to add something to make it easier for the active player to enter a new campaign?
On the one hand, we want players to be able to start playing any available campaign right away. On the other hand, we don’t want the campaign levels to go by so quickly that the player won’t have time to try out the gameplay of new squads, weapons, and vehicles.
At the moment, we already have a Premium account that speeds up progress in all campaigns. We also plan to add boosters to the pool of Battle Pass rewards. We are also considering in the future, adding a system that will speed up the unlocking of content in new campaigns for those players who already have high levels in other campaigns.
COMMUNICATION
— Will the game be available on Steam?
We have no plans to release Enlisted on Steam for now.
— Will there be personal statistics or leaderboards in the game?
We have such plans, but we will tell you about it in a separate devblog.
IT WILL BE DONE!
We hope you’ve enjoyed reading through these short questions and suggestions to which we have a general answer - let’s do it! In the near future, or a little bit later, we will implement the following in Enlisted:
- The ability to destroy a rally point remotely, without having to return to it.
- Choice of language for the combat commentator.
- The ability to try out a premium squad at the practice range without buying it.
- Improve the Academy interface, and in particular, add a link to the squad the soldier is assigned to.
