Commanders! Your written experiences from the frontlines across social media platforms are always interesting and useful for Developers, Community Managers, Helpers & Alphas, since these help to inform us what we could do for longer-term plans, as well as the smaller quality of life updates you’re used to seeing.
However, we also understand that we could do better to describe our plans before we publish them during updates, and that’s what this new series of dev blogs will be for - a report of the current situation by your Community Managers; a SITREP.
Fasten your seatbelts; this will be a long one - there’s a lot to say!
Disclaimer:
We are happy to be able to share development updates before the dev blogs, dev server, and update itself, but please note that anything mentioned in this news may be changed, delayed, or canceled. Enlisted is constantly being developed, and as with any game, delays or other unforeseen circumstances may occur. Thank you for your continued interest in the game!
Reflecting on the “Jet Power” major update
The major update’s main feature was of course the introduction of a new type of vehicles - jets. Developers were especially eager to see how they were received in terms of their gameplay impact, so we’ve been monitoring your thoughts ever since.
As a result, you will have seen our responses to said feedback and constructive criticism; namely updates 0.6.8.57 and 0.6.8.59. The Kikka now has the largest single bomb in the game of 800kg, and the Me 262 A-1/U4 has had its belt changed not just once, but twice (the first being between the test server and the major update in response to early feedback from you).
Some other concerns we’ve seen revolve around the power of the US jets, namely the Meteor F Mk.3 and the F-80A-5, and their ordnance relative to other factions’ jets. Developers have heard, and solutions are being discussed, alongside monitoring the longer-term views of players towards jets and how they impact gameplay.
We’ve also seen some comments wondering if this is “the end of WW2” in Enlisted due to the presence of jets. However, World War 2 is and will remain the focus of the game, and this won’t be changing anytime soon!
Maps and missions
In other news, developers are happy to see the increasing popularity of the Seelow Heights map after the vast changes in the major update. They intend to complete more of these in future updates, alongside new maps of course, as they recognize that some missions could do with a facelift. In particular, Kahif Cave Village was already eyed up as one to make big changes to for a future update, based on our collected statistics as well as your thoughts over a long period.
But that’s not all – some of you will have noticed now-famous developer “SnowieW” on the forums, who is actively reading comments on the forum regarding adjustments to maps in a special thread. If you’re strongly into gameplay and maps, we encourage you to leave constructive and detailed thoughts, making them as specific as possible, on that thread. Do note that posting there is not a guarantee of a change being made, but the more popular a suggestion appears, the more useful it is for developers. We’re delighted to be able to have this improved dialogue over the many maps of Enlisted going forwards, and the onboarding of the next batch of Alpha testers soon will help immensely too.
Regarding the “Testing expanded BR for maps” experiment, we want to first thank you all for participating and leaving your feedback. Through tests like this, we can get a grasp of what the entire playerbase feels about certain things, especially regarding topics we knew could see strong variation in opinions from different corners of the community. In fact, this is exactly what we saw – some of the most engaged-with posts Enlisted has had in a while; both in terms of “likes” and “upvotes”, as well as in terms of comments and debate. All this proves it was necessary to undertake a test, though, many of you wondered why we had to do it this way in particular.
The decision to put the test on the live server was not a light one. We could not put it solely on the test server for the upcoming quality of life update since that would prevent console players from experiencing it, and therefore we’d be excluding a large part of the playerbase from providing feedback. It’s also worth remembering that this option requires downloading a separate client, which the majority of the playerbase don’t do, and therefore even those on PC would see largely empty battles for this test, which provides fruitless data for developers. We did not do an in-game event for similar reasons, and also the fact that it would take extra developer time to implement, quality-check and more; time which was already planned to be used for many things in future updates. Therefore, an in-game test for 1 week was the best option.
As the test has recently ended, developers will need some time to analyze the thoughts and decide on a plan. It is quite evident though from your feedback that at least certain maps will need to be adjusted regardless, and what changes occur will need to be accompanied by some of the map-related promises on our roadmap – more about this later.
Battle Rating changes
The Battle Rating changes we can see were in fact one of the most popular parts of the “Jet Power” update - both in terms of equipment and vehicles, as well as in matchmaking. The former is something we hope to do more often going forwards, and thanks to all your appreciation and new ideas for a possible second iteration of changes, it is much more possible. The +1/-1 BR matchmaking is something we know players have wanted for a long time, which developers are happy to implement with the increasing success of the game. We know there is more that can be done to help improve matchmaking, some of which are on the roadmap, but we’re glad to see this start is appreciated!
Customization
Developers were happy to see lots of positivity around the latest quality of life update, Making Enlisted a Better Place №68, especially around the new customization possibilities. These improvements require a high level of intricacy, hence they take time, so observing it being worth it in the eyes of players is great to see!
However, there were 2 main things we picked up on from your comments; one being that you would prefer there to be a way to match it to the campaign you’ll be playing in, to avoid situations like where your white APC, designed for the snow, is too easily spottable in desert terrain. Developers will consider what can be done about this. The second is that despite these popular changes, there is still room for some more iconic insignias as vehicle customization. This is something we’re taking a look at as we speak!
Roadmap
Aside from the major update itself, we see lots of player comments asking about features specified on our last roadmap, and when they will be appearing in the game. To update where we are so far, we’ve just released the “option to postpone booster activation” with the “Jet Power” major update.
But what’s coming next? Developers understand that one of the most desired roadmap features is the “preferred map system”, and we see many of you hoping for it soon. It is also what the community have quoted as very important to them in regards to the test of expanded BRs for maps recently, since it would add more freedom – players who want to have some influence on which missions they fight in could do so, and those who wouldn’t want to play something different could avoid it. Hence, developers have placed priority on this feature, and it’s in the internal testing stage now!
We’ll reveal more about it in a separate dev blog, but to give an indication of the plans for now, it will have a “like” and “dislike” options (with which you can show your approval for certain missions or lower your chances of seeing them, which is also useful information for developers). A “ban” ability (where you can remove a few totally) is also being considered.
Similarly, we hope to release the “reworking rules for groups”, so that we can improve matchmaking further, as well as the “penalties for deserters” roadmap points, at the same time as the “preferred maps system”. This triple-whammy of requested features we hope will do a lot for players and their game experience, and we are working in hopes to bring it all forward soon. The “ability to invite friends to ongoing battles” is currently in the works too, but is taking a bit more time than we would like, so there is a chance that we will shift our focus to something more important for now with the view to release it later.
Regarding “ability to change soldier voices” - we can see how much players desire other nations in Enlisted, both in terms of soldiers and equipment. As a result, we’re going one step further than what was originally stated on the roadmap – we will be giving players the ability to change the nationality of their soldiers through adjusting their voice, name and head! We’ll give more details closer to the time regarding how it will work, so stay tuned! Note that this feature will not be available for gold order troops and event soldiers, for obvious reasons.
Everything listed on the roadmap is still planned as promises, but to avoid making this dev blog even longer, we’ve picked out just a few of the most in-demand points. We’ll likely cover the progress of others in future SITREPs. We will be showing the progress and updates on these through this dev blog series. It may also be time for a new roadmap soon, after most of the remaining plans there have been completed.
AI squadmates
A while ago, we had some discussions and made some proposals for developers regarding the most common issues with the AI. These were incredibly constructive, but it’s a complex topic, with a number of upcoming changes, such as those that affect the priorities of the AI in battle, that will likely go through various iterations in response to your feedback through future updates.
With that in mind, the developers have, for now, identified 9 main areas listed below, all representing consistent causes of frustration among players. Due to how popular improvements in this area are to the community, developers are happy to put some focus here.
These include:
- AI squadmates randomly rushing forward ahead of the player
- AI walking in front of the player when aiming or shooting
- AI interfering with an engineer constructing a structure
- AI prioritizing extinguishing themselves rather than moving away from the fire
- “Flicks” towards players by AI in an unnatural way and killing them instantly
- Shooting through opaque assets, such as through bushes and smoke
- General pathing (ongoing, thanks to your continued bug finding efforts!)
- Not hiding behind cover adequately despite being commanded to by the player
- Not being able to successfully follow the player’s path and picking a more dangerous route instead (e.g. not going through windows, not over sandbags, etc)
The top 4 listed above are already in progress while 5-7 will receive some general improvements you should also notice soon (which we await feedback for, since these in particular will definitely need to go through a few iterations of updates). Points 8-9 are other ongoing fights which you may also see some improvements for going forwards – but due to their intricate nature, we cannot confirm every instance will be “fixed” yet.
Squad experience
In the coming quality of life update, the long-awaited balancing in experience requirements for various squads will arrive. Squad experience will then be based fully on that squad’s place in the research tree, and any legacy squads will also follow suit.
Closing words
The entire Enlisted team would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to every one of you for playing the game, leaving feedback and reporting bugs to us. With this new experimental dev blog series, we aim to ensure you’re kept more regularly up to date with information; our “Operation Transparency”.
In fact, to help support this, we’ll also be changing around our official Enlisted stream schedule on Twitch – Community Manager MajorMcDonalds will be talking on Friday evenings about this dev blog series, answering your questions and working with you all to gather feedback for developers in a more personal setting! This will be every Friday from 17:00 UTC to 19:00 UTC on the official Enlisted Twitch channel.
Commanders - you’re all caught up. Now lead your soldiers to victory!
Cheers,
The CM Team
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