Right now playing Stalingrad with Full Access and Premium Account leads to a dilemma compared to older campaigns: You progress WAY too fast to be able to equipt your troops accordingly to the guns you unlock and to level them up. So either you run out of orders really fast or you will progress through the campaign without every investing in the gear you’ve unlocked.
Both options don’t appear the way you would imagine the gaming experience to be intended. Which makes clear that the economy isn’t working properly. I tried to play reasonably, only equipped a few soldiers with Explosion Packs or better weapons, tried to place soldiers in my squads that provide a benefit and still drained myself of all my orders I had saved for so far during other campaigns and with Battle pass.
In my opinion if you’re a paying customer for Full Access AND Battlepass, you should never run out of orders even while making sure that you upgrade your squads whenever you unlocked the possibility. The order income should therefor be able to keep pace with your campaign progress as well as squad progress.
According to Keofox you level up to 8 times faster in Stalingrad with Full access (x4) and Battle Pass (x4) yet the orders income isn’t adapted equally. Naturally the devs also dont want you to be able to farm orders after buying access to a single campaign that you could use for all other campaigns but I really wonder why the new Full Access sale model hasn’t also seen the introduction of speed up orders progress (equally x4-x8 and no limit of silver orders per battle) BUT limit the usage of these orders to the Stalingrad campaign only.
Not to mention devs NEVER updated bronze weapon order economy after the new weapon upgrade mechanic… Unlike bronze troop orders after the academy removal.
yes, they need to stop being cheap in about order gains.
Stalingrad has an issue where it almost needs a separate currency/ economy because the cost of things and rate of earning are broken compared to the other campaigns. When the change was made to get meager returns on selling stuff back that was the nail in the coffin.
Tbh, as a full access player, I find Stalingrad quite relaxing.
Starter weapons are so good that I don’t actually feel any need to fully re-equip my squads as soon as a new tier of weapons becomes available. Sure, I’ll buy some and put them in service, but unlike Normandy or Berlin where the meta requires you to spam as much lead as possible (hence full auto squads it is, or full SA as the bare minimum), bolties remain both strong AND fun even mid-campaign and later (and dirt cheap to upgrade).
Granted, I had large reserves of silver, but I don’t feel I have noticeably eroded them since starting Stalingrad.
I very rarely meet “endgame full auto squads of doom” (MKB and such), outside of the ongoing event.
The concussion issue has now decreased to bearable levels.
Bipod issues remain, but the relevance of BA makes my playstyle way less dependent from MGs (see point 1), so whatever.
4X progression is AWESOME. Good match? Bad match? Win? Lose? It DOESN’T REALLY MATTER, you take away a ton of XP anyway. A booster is never really “wasted”, even in the worst circumstances.
Makes going back to old campaigns kinda sad
Vehicles are in a good spot IMO, still fun to use but not match-carriers alone. (Planes DM is still too spongy tho.)
When Stalingrad launched I had around 350 silver orders, spended exacly 250 to have everyone with an mkb lmao, tnt pack, extra ammo and a tnt mine.
I m having issues convincing myself to do the same on the soviet side with the current silver income on Stalingrad. So yeah. I agree
Soviets in Stalingrad are actually like berlin axis was, it’s a challenge, the only thing botlenecking me there is the silvers I need to equip them with worst weapons.
I can only assume that Stalingrad was an attempt to drain veteran players from their huge stacks of silver orders.
Since I joined the game just a week before the academy was replaced by the current model I never had the possibility to amass hundreds of orders myself, spend approximately 80 soldiers and weapons silver orders for playing through Stalingrad with the Axis and now am completely dry of any silver orders savings I had - even without actually equipping my best Stalingrad units.
I have about 4 PPSH and 2 MKbs so far and to be honest I don’t plan to play the Soviet Stalingrad campaign nor level any further my Axis units until the income disbalance is solved, nor buy another campaign with a similar sale model that doesn’t provide an adjusted orders income.
While I agree that the new bolt action gameplay is fun and effective enough on its own I rather go back to those older campaigns I haven’t mastered yet and enjoy the slower progression where you can actually watch your squads grow until you unlock a new one to max out.
To me it appears like the only way for me to play the soviet Stalingrad campaign would be just with plain stock units and never spend even a single bronze or silver - until you completed the entire campaign to finally start equipping your units. And that feels just like a waste.
As a premium account player, I can tell you that nonetheless tier II and III squads upgrading is so slow that by the time you max out a squad, you have at least two new squads unlocked and waiting to take a place in your lineup.
Well yes, but actually no.
I see as an absolute positive that starter stuff is good enough that you don’t NEED to upgrade your whole lineup as soon as a new gun becomes available. New unlocks aren’t bread to finally save you from starvation (at the cost of draining all your money), they are surplus candies you can choose to taste when you can afford it.
The point is not so much the speed up progress - I’m a “the journey is the reward” guy but I understand why people would like this faster progress - but the lack of orders to outfit your newly unlocked troops accordingly.
I’m also a premium account player, maxed Normandy Allies and Axis so far and never felt what you described to be a real problem in normal campaigns (I also dont use premium squads except for fun as I feel progress is fast enough) but with Stalingrad it’s simply too obvious because the (already lacking) order economy wasn’t adapted even in the slightest for Stalingrad.
When you unlock 3 new squads after a single battle you get adequate squad progression points but you will never make it to fill these new unlocked positions or guns with the silver or bronze orders you unlocked in that battle.
And who can afford that except for veteran players who sit on piles of orders?
If new players are left out of that luxury to try out new squads when they would want to but know its a stupid investment then it’s a questionable sales model.
That new campaign sales model combined with the “new” orders economy brought the campaign to a point where you might as well just let the players start at a completely unlocked campaign tree and then just grind for all the MKbs, PPShs and troops you want. To me that turns the early to mid level troops you unlock during Stalingrad to mere placeholders you better not invest anything.
Well, you’re not wrong, in fact any player with a grain of sense for economic planning is probably doing that.
Say, in example, no actual point in spending silver to replace ALL your starter Kar98s with Mannlichers (Ok, a few guys here would do, but fetishists are a separate matter XD).
