Hi
I care about history in WW2 games. If you don’t, feel free to not read further.
I also really liked Enlisted when it started and have been playing since 2020.
This will be my diary of the first games after the “merge to save the game”.
Game 1. Assembled a BR 5 Germany lineup.
Result = Tiger 2, Panther, STG, IS-1 in Stalingrad.
In Stalingrad! The most famous battle if not of all history, then of WW2.
The city that they so painstakingly recreated (see here).
I genuinely feel sad for the level designers who put so much soul and effort into recreating Stalingrad as it was in 1942.
Oleg Vovk, Eduard Borisov, Artem Glazov and others, I am truly sorry.
Naturally, I will always quit this kind of sacrilege matches and I don’t care about penalties because I’m not having fun, I’m being offended and annoyed by this match.
This feels more insulting to the history of Stalingrad that the likes of Red Orchestra 2 respected with the representation of the battle.
With this kind of setup, we may see a future where we fight in Stalingrad with AKs and T-72s against Leopards where the map, uniforms are 1942 but the weapons being 40 years later.
Even though the game mode was shitty Conquest and I got uptiered to Germans with BR 3, the match was quite enjoyable. Bolt actions, lack of Fedorovs/MKBs was nice.
I guess I can turn a blind eye to PPS-43 (which obviously was never in Moscow/Stalingrad), because Maisky Forestry technically can be somewhere in USSR in 1943 (though then why would we still see T-28s), but at least it didn’t make my eyes bleed like the Tiger 2 in the streets of Stalingrad.
This is just being dramatic.
The devs have clearly made a rule that if it existed before May 1945, we can add it. And that’s fine. I like seeing diversity in weapons and vehicles.
That said…
They should go back and introduce that soft rule that was supposed to be included. While I am somewhat ending up where I want to based on my setup, I would like the equip mostly British gear and end up in Tunisia (and so on).
That would also make having hundreds of squads actually useful, since we could then use specific squads to influence the matchmaker.
How tf would I know? I just play a few titles I like, I’m not a researcher.
Anyway, Enlisted in 2020-21 was almost IT for me. Then they started going the wrong way, and now they’ve gone the insanity way, as far as I am concerned.
Because I assume such game doesn’t exist atm. Since WWII isn’t that popular theme as it was 15 years back.
I believe some compromise was inevitable if it helps game in long run.
Is merge in good state rn? Definitely not. But I do believe this game would have been in way worse state if devs continued to release semi HA campaigns. We had only 6 campaign. Imagine if we had like 12 of them. It was unsustainable.
The MM and balance is mostly completely broken rn. But it can be easily tweaked according to feedback and mostly pure datas from live server. Test server can’t never simulate true behavior of players on live servers.
And if this merge thingy will be successful and saves the game, we can eventually get official HA mode similar to ones in WT.
I really do not understand what’s the point of bitching on things which will not change anyway. The old enlisted is gone, get over it.
I still believe the new enlisted has great potential.
For me personally no potential/balance/health of a WW2 game matters if it has Tiger 2 in Stalingrad.
That’s a fail and I will not play that, healthy or not.
Now, on a more game-dev side:
It was obvious from the very start.
Splitting the playerbase is not affordable even for giant titles, let alone more indie ones like Enlisted.
Look at what BFV (2018) did: you can’t choose the faction, you can’t choose the BR/tier, every weapon and vehicle are viable against each other.
You play any faction, you unlock stuff for another faction, just by earning XP.
And nobody died, everyone played and had a good time (except the history of WW2 again).
I have no idea why Enlisted was done on the WT model in the first place.
we don’t need to be able to choose faction
we don’t need to play faction X to progress faction X
we don’t need to have new players get destroyed by Tigers and STGs without adequate weaponry
The solutions from the beginning were on the surface:
put all the players in 1 pool and matchmake them for team balance, without picking factions
let the players use earned XP to unlock what they want in the faction they want
lock equipment to maps/eras so that Pz 2s don’t fight IS-2s
don’t push the “progression” system where every new gun is better than the previous and every gun needs a counter (even if it’s fake) from the opposing side.
And it wouldnt work.
A true historical Moscow for example but with same Enlisted foruma (no restriction/ spam and people can freely choose factions) would let to the same result we had with Moscow until they add the F2. People would queue the easier faction and the worse faction would get clubbed and turned into bot farms. But the concept of limiting stuff in Enlisted is always met with mixed feelings.
You cant make historical liberal shooters because a shooter cant be balanced in a way as e.g. strategy games are with ecnomic and quality etc. Jams were once tested and even though they happened like 5% of the time on BA rifles only (I never got jams tbh), people did not like them and I cant blame them because this makes shooting too much RNG-like (even though I liked it).
i’m sorry, but the way i understand what you’re asking here is… even more randomness and more people quitting the match because they don’t get to play with the faction and weapon they want.
you also ask for a “counter” for every gun but also want things to be historical, is the historical need of yours skin deep only? because if you want a pure historical WW2 game you’re also asking for either a very limited (probably none actually) battlefield where both sides are equal, or else one side will be usually overpowered comparatively.
i kinda understand your frustation of having one thing you like changed to a different thing, but come on, your ideas are arguably gonna be suck more for everyone else than it currently is.
They lied about the Stalingrad pack before alongside the engineers. ATGMs weren’t added in War Thunder at first but they did anyway later on and they continue to add more modern stuff like helicopters and drones even though we have yet to get to FPV kamikaze drone territory
And changing sides in BFV? You literally could play as the same guy in different faction, he was just renamed and put different outfits on himself.
I guess making 20 different human models in AAA game is too expensive for them.
look, i get it, you are an appearance purist. just quit enlisted and play something else then, if there’s anything else like this. unless your intent is to purely whine and vent, then go ahead.
