Recently returned to Enlisted again, played a lot more, and decided to compile my honest feedback:
I have played a great many shooters in my life, some were good, some were bad. I am extremely good at Enlisted, consistently do very well, have an extremely high win rate. I’ll try not to make comparisons to War Thunder here as perhaps it isn’t fair to DF to be compared to the failures of Gaijin, but I will have to make comparisons to shooters.
Let’s start off by talking about dispersion. I abhor the very concept of dispersion in a shooter, it is a terrible and atrocious mechanic. It is also RARE in shooters, at least noticeable dispersion. It is not a good method for balancing firearms, it just makes them silly, unrealistic, and frustratingly RNG.
I cannot tell you the number of times that I have lined up a shot on someone who is stationary, using a semi-automatic rifle, aimed directly at his face, only to watch my bullet fly off 1 foot to the left or right and miss entirely. This isn’t fun. This isn’t a good feeling. This is a terrible feeling.
I remember loving the MG42 and other similar MGs back when they didn’t have dispersion, they were fantastic, albeit a little too strong in CQC. Then you added dispersion, and now I genuinely despise using MGs.
Dispersion isn’t how you make things balanced, it’s a terrible bandage on a problem that could be solved in a thousand different and better ways. If you have ever played any other shooter in your life, you can probably come up with several. Better recoil simulation? Restricting the MG42 from aiming while standing/moving? Post Scriptum’s MG42 was actually quite difficult to use from the hip, because it had a lot of recoil. This is faaaaaar more preferable to just replacing the barrel with an overcooked noodle.
Another question, Why does mounting your weapon (using bipod) increase your dispersion? That makes 0 sense, I would have expected it to be a bug but it still hasn’t been fixed after years. I imagine many people don’t even know this, or haven’t noticed it, but yes, mounting your firearm increases dispersion drastically, it is actually better to stand and aim, than to prone and mount. If this isn’t a bug, it is an incredibly moronic design choice that should be corrected immediately.
Ignoring real life, because even pistols have less dispersion at 50m IRL than our M1 Garand does in Enlisted, so it is obviously hilariously unrealistic. The Semi-autos are already arbitrarily nerfed in the form of damage, M1 Garand 30-06 magically doing less than Springfield 30-06, so why does there need to be dispersion added on to that?
It is ultimately a silly and terrible design choice, use literally any other tool to balance your weapons, NOT dispersion. I have never seen a dispersion mechanic in a game that I enjoyed.
Next topic:
I recently played a game called ‘Easy Red 2’, which is a rather small and obscure game, but it is effectively Enlisted, without the grind. I previously used to look at weapon models/animations from games like Battlefield V and gave Enlisted the excuse of “Well BFV is a triple A game, so they have far better funding and resources, Enlisted can’t do that.”
But since playing Easy Red 2, I noticed that it has the best model/reload animations I’ve ever seen in a game. Ever. Their reload animations are better than even Battlefield’s, with an insane amount of detail.
Have a look for yourself:
After seeing this, I was instantly embarrassed for Enlisted, because frankly our weapon models look like absolute garbage comparatively, and our animations are janky. Clearly it is well within the realm of possibilities to have weapons/recoil/animations that actually look good without spending AAA money, so why not put in the effort and do that? Game would be a lot more popular if you put in the extra effort.
The final issue with Enlisted, is just one of map design. Defending is faaaaaaaar worse than being on offense, much easier to attack objectives than to defend them. Why? Because of the grey zone. The attackers being able to basically go wherever they want, behind the objective, and shoot at people coming out of their spawn, is exceptionally strong. Meanwhile the defenders are confined to a 5x5 square box that if they leave for 3 seconds, they instantly lose, with cap times of objectives varying wildly from map to map for some odd reason.
Some maps, like a few of the pacific maps, have MASSIVE areas where attackers can go. In many cases they can even put rally points Behind the defender’s spawn points. Which is insane to me, meanwhile the defenders are still confined to a tiny play area.
Thus why tanks camping in the grey are annoying. Because defenders physically cannot reach them. My recommendation to fix these issues is simply to expand the playable area, and increase the size of the objectives, while increasing the time it takes to capture them.
Look at any other shooter of this similar genre, from battlefield, to easy red, to every game inbetween. The maps are large. Not post scriptum, squad, or HLL large (which is too large imo), but they are very big, and give you the freedom to go where you want.
Just because you make defenders confined to tiny areas, doesn’t mean you are encouraging them to play the objective, because even now people just camp wherever they want and don’t do the objective. So making the maps larger will not make this a worse problem. It will remain the same issue.
Fix the Lunge mine, it has been broken and useless for far too long now.
Remove carrier takeoff from Japanese aircraft and the corsair because it’s terrible and does nothing but make American air power far better by default due to merged aircraft not needing to.
Nerf AP mine capacity, make it so only engineers can carry AP/AT mines (or something they can build, like a mini minefield), because the sheer constant spam of AP mines is obnoxious. I had a Berlin match (I still won) where every single death I endured was because of AP mines. Literally stepped on 6 in a row at one point, on the entrance of a bunker (no other way in), and I cannot even see them because they are beneath rubble and bodies.
Give the Type 99 LMG its scope, because atm it is worthless. Far harder to control than the Type 96, far worse sights, and just generally not worth ever using.
Increase speed of the toggle-lock bolt animation on weapons that have it. In real life, using a toggle lock bolt won’t blind you, because the toggle is far faster than the eye can reasonably perceive. It will not cause you any issues of visibility until it locks open (when you can’t shoot anyway).
MAKE THE GUNNER ON THE SD.KFZ 251 HALFTRACK ACTUALLY USE THE GUNSHIELD PLEASE.
Reduce the obnoxious overheat speed on the MG42/34 emplacements and Halftrack MG, because it should not be overheating after 5 bullets. I’d rather have to reload after 250 rounds (fortress belt) than deal with this awful overheat mechanic.
PUT DOWN THE WINDSHIELD ARMOR PLATE ON THE M3 HALF TRACK PLEASE.
And make the M2 .50 cal on the M3 actually do .50 cal damage. Genuinely ridiculous how it can take 2 or even 3+ shots to kill an enemy with a .50 caliber round. Especially considering all it takes is a single panzerfaust (or AT rifle) (or a dude shooting through your dumb open windshield with an SMG) to wipe out your entire vehicle.
