Enlisted is a fun game. I play mainly infantry, but I do often hop in planes to deal with enemy planes, tanks, and etc. I rarely make use of my own tanks, as they are not my preferred way to play in Enlisted, I get my main tank fix from tank-vs-tank combat in World of Tanks or WarThunder matches.My main focus in Enlisted is to play infantry, have fun using iconic WW2 guns, capture/defend the objective, and I like to play to win.
I know for a fact, since my time beginning to play this game, I have had a lot of fun. I love Enlisted and its unique gameplay mechanics and squad AI system.
Ever since the beginning, one of the only unenjoyable parts of the game for me, and I know a few others at least (new players and veterans included) do not have fun when specific gameplay styles are overused and abused.
For example, you are running into the objective, and you die to an AP mine. Damn, oh well I’ll go to my next soldier.
All is well in the game
The next game you play, there are 2 or 3 players on the other team using 3 squads of 9 soldiers all equipped with AP mines. You do not have an enjoyable game as there is constantly 20 or more AP mines around the objective that you are trying to play. Having to play paranoid of the floor, and staring at the floor entirely to find hard to see mines, is not a great gaming experience. You have a bad time and pray for the next game to not be full of AP mine “SPAM”.
You log on for a few games the next day, and in your 4th match you have a lot of frustration. There is a player on the enemy team, spawning in tanks with strong High Explosive rounds, and shelling the objective from a distance too far for infantry based AT options to work. You lose a few squads and maybe even the objective, and hop into a plane. You land your bombs on the tank, and it dies. You fly back to resupply, and in the killfeed you notice that the same player is killing lots of infantry, this time with a different variation of 75mm KwK cannon (they are in another tank). You fly back over, and take out their second tank. Your team, now down a player on the ground, ends up losing another objective. As you turn to fly back to resupply again, you are shot out of the air, by the same player who you just killed twice in tanks. “Okay, fair enough he got me, atleast those tanks are gone” you say whilst choosing a spawn location for your infantry squad. Upon arriving to defend the objective, you die to an explosion, 5 of your 7 soldiers in the squad have just been wiped out. You check the killfeed, its the same player, this time in a 3rd tank, wow, this guy has 4 vehicles in his lineup, he really enjoys vehicle gameplay! As this repeats, you lose the game, as you are unable to hold the objective, as your squad is constantly wiped out by Explosives being spammed into the buildings that you cannot counter.
I could go on and on, but hopefully you get the point: you experience an incredibly unfun and frustrating match, as you barely get to play as your squads explode to artillery, AP mines, Tank HE, plane bombs and rockets.
Surely there must be some solution that ALL parties involved can agree upon to eliminate un-enjoyable experiences from a video game we play for fun.
Solution 1: Limits to abusable gameplay strategies
Explanation: I personally despise when strategies and weapons or characters in games are hard-nerfed, rendered completely unplayable. Thus, I am a big advocate for limits to powerful strategies. For example, you can bring 3 squads of 9 soldiers. However, you may only bring 3 grenade launchers across an entire squad. Maybe there is a limit to how many active Anti-Personnel mines you can have active at a single time. Lets say 2, or 3. Placing a 4th mine, will make the first mine harmlessly explode. Thus, it is impossible for a single player to use ONLY grenade launchers and AP mines, thus they must interact with more of the Enlisted sandbox instead of relying upon a singular, low counterplay gameplay strategy.
Perhaps you could limit how often a player can spawn one of their vehicles. Their Panzer III N is destroyed by the enemy. Outside of the usual “rotate 3 squads” system, that Panzer is placed on a 5 minute cooldown timer, or something similar. This means that a player cannot simply rely upon that tank, and must interact with more of the Enlisted sandbox. It is after-all, a COMBINED ARMS game. It should not be possible to ONLY play as a single arms type for the whole match. Free-to-play players can only equip a singular vehicle to their roster at all times (tank, plane, apc, bike), so why are paying players given such a huge advantage that allows them to spawn only as a vehicle. There is a team wide limit of 2 tanks, 1 attacker plane, and 1 fighter plane. Surely this is done to balance out the matches, as if there were 8 tanks rolling around at one time, that would be a pretty powerful strategy. So why is one player allowed to take up one of the 2 slots for tanks for the entire course of the match?
Pros: Games become more enjoyable overall, as you are not constantly met by a singular gameplay mechanic.
Cons: Players using only a singular strategy will have to adapt and interact with more of the sandbox, potentially being limited upon content they “paid” or worked hard for.
Solution 2: Many people have suggested that the main problem with explosive spam is the maps that are played upon. This would require maps to be looked at on a case-by-case basis and adjusted accordingly. Reduced sightlines for tanks would require them to be closer to the action, giving them a vulnerability for other players to combat them more effectively.
Pros: Maps are improved, reducing the effectiveness of safe “grey-zone” vehicles, and pilots in the air are rewarded and satisfied with high payload payoffs, as they can flex their skills over other pilots in landing accurate rockets and bombs in harder to hit areas.
Cons: This would be a slow process, and a lot of developer time and manpower to adjust every single map in the game
Solution 3: Reduce the effective damage and radius of explosions
This would have a few effects on gameplay
#1 Infantry will feel less bad, as enemy explosive fire will massacre less soldiers at a time
#2 Skilled tank/plane or other explosion users will still reap the rewards of many kills with accurate payloads
#3 Defending or attacking of objectives would give more agency to the infantry inside those objectives to eliminate enemy soldiers that are hunkered down inside, or repel attackers breaching the perimeters. Players would feel more freedom to make proactive plays in and around objectives, as the looming threat of exploding would be less
#4 Tanks specifically would be required to close the distance on objectives, reducing the effectiveness of “grey-zone” abuse, as they will need to attack into objectives from different angles with HE shells, rather than exploding an entire building objective of soldiers inside.
Cons: It would be very difficult to find reasonable values for the damage and radius of high explosives to obtain a reasonable adjusment for gameplay. Most explosions in the game do more than 250 damage, compared to soldiers having 10 or 13.5 hp. Examples of “Explosive resistance perks” would require an absurd number (87% - 95% or more) reduction in explosive damage to have any effect at all. (250 * 0.125 = 31.25, 250 * 0.05 = 12.5 which is still enough to kill a non-vitality soldier). Adjusting the damage and radius of explosions to values low enough to matter may be TOO HARSH of a nerf to explosions. I dont advocate for the REMOVAL of explosions from the game, I personally just believe they should be limited to some extent.
Solution 4: Reduce the number of HE shells in tanks and reposition resupply zones closer to the active battle areas.
Pros: This encourages tanks to be used a lot more against other vehicles, and have less luxury to fire off random HE shells to fish for extra kills. Tanks that do use up their more limited supply of HE shells would have to be more actively engaging in the battle area, moving closer to resupply their HE shells to support an infantry push.
Cons: Tanks will become more focused on their role of fighting enemy armour, as opposed to being used primarily as low effort objective clearers. Perhaps in addition, maps can be opened up a bit in the playable areas, to allow for tanks to take flanking opportunities more often - and teams can play together to secure their resupply zones.
Solution 5: Planes must make takeoffs from carries or runways, protected by heavy AA pieces to prevent spawn kills. Resupply areas positioned further away from the play areas, or perhaps upon landing the plane.
Pros: Planes are less effective at strategies such as “kamikaze plane cycling” to get around the need to fly for resupply, reducing the pain of infantry suffering from constant rocket and bomb barrages. Furthermore, planes that control the air space (thus not needing to take-off / land) can hit ground targets more frequently compared to planes that lose out on dogfights etc. Ace pilots are rewarded heavily for controlling the air space
Cons: Plane gameplay may become boring as resupply trips take longer, however, planes will be better protected from enemies as their heavy AA (ai npc) emplacements can protect them (the same way the naval AA cannons work on Pacific maps.
Solution 6: Before spawning a tank, plane, calling in an atrillery strike, or using powerful infantry equipped with grenade launchers / flamethrowers etc (other powerful infantry weapons) - players must acquire a certain amount of score to “call in” those infantry support options. It would not need to be something crazy. This would reward players who can earn 250 or 500 score (examples) as quickly as possible in battle. This can be by building rallies and other fortifications, capturing/defending objectives, and eliminating enemy soldiers. This would effectively reduce the spam and uptime of powerful vehicles, oppressive artillery strikes, and devastating Grenade Launcher options. Perhaps with these limits, these options could even be BUFFED and made more powerful, to truly feel like “earned rewards”. This would also mean that enemies eliminating these from your team would be truly devastating, as such a powerful unit is lost (and not instantly replaced). This idea is similar to how some other games handle it, wherein a player that is having a good game is rewarded and allowed to spawn as “a Hero” figure (eg; LotR games where a player can become Legolas or Gandalf, Battlefront games wherein a player gets a chance to upgrade to Darth Vader etc. etc)
It is a well known fact that a large part of war is the logistics and available manufacturing / manpower available. This gameplay would more accurately reflect military decisions such as "providing a tank to this offense/defense would be worthwhile, compared to the current system of seeing entire panzer divisions of tank corpses littering a battlefield.
Solution 7: Improve the effectiveness of anti-tank and anti-plane options in the game
This is my personal least favourite solution that is commonly suggested. Yes I agree, that we only have 2 options for eliminating planes (AA guns built, and a use of allied planes) and these options could be expanded / strengthened. On the other side, we have about 18 or more ways to kill tanks. I dont personally believe this is the issue though, as it is not super difficult to eliminate a pesky tank on the battlefield. The problem arises that this player can immediately just spawn another tank and continue using only 1 gameplay strategy.
Pros: Infantry would certainly have an easier time eliminating tanks and planes
Cons: Those vehicles can be immediately replaced by the enemy cycling, or another enemy player choosing to then spawn in a vehicle
Sitting on an AA-gun is very counterproductive, and frankly boring to stare up at the sky waiting for enemy planes to fly overhead. Time can be more productively spent defending or attacking the objective.
