What direction is Enlisted taking?
With the bombardment of impact grenades and the proliferation of experimental weapons, and weapons that travel through history (due to merge), this game has lost all historical accuracy (and the keywords on the game’s official website have removed that as well).
While this doesn’t please me, however, it’s not necessarily a bad thing for the game itself (but still, for now).
I realize that it’s very difficult (for Darkflow) to make both game balance and historical accuracy perfect at the same time, which is why many people are against historical accuracy. Obviously Darkflow wants to choose the former and drop the latter, but the current fact is that it’s neither.
Why is merge a failure?
Forget historical accuracy for a moment. With the introduction of the BR mechanic, it looks like the game is more similar to WT, but it is far from replicating WT’s success:
- WT’s different modes could satisfy either casual players or those who love historical accuracy. Despite this, WT is still widely criticized, but since its mechanics are almost unique in the world, players have to accept them.
- The crude matching mechanism (123|345) makes BR1 and BR4 almost meaningless, while the BR3 experience depends on luck. In contrast, WT’s room divisions are much more detailed, with decimals making them more precise.
At the same time, it is not appropriate to copy the calculation of taking the maximum BR value in WT, because now when a player develops a high BR weapon, they must replace all of their squad weapons with high BRs before they can engage in combat - otherwise they are forced to face high BR opponents while they only have a large number of low BR weapons and a small number of high BR weapons. This certainly increases the pressure on players and reduces their incentive to develop new weapons.
Meanwhile, infantry weapons differ from tanks: sometimes, low-BR tanks are not able to inflict even the slightest damage on high-BR tanks. But this is not the case with infantry weapons, one or two high-BR weapons cannot create a crushing advantage, and this is something we need to consider.
I’m certainly not saying that simply averaging out BRs is good, which would create even bigger problems. However, I have a tentative idea: perhaps multiply the number ratio of high BR weapons to low BR weapons and the square of the size of the BR difference for each group within the squad, then average those products, multiply by some correction factor (which would require DF testing) then add the average BR and round up. This should be better than the current algorithm.
(In short: average BR, but increase the impact of high BR weapons, a bit like a weighted average)
The Cost of Giving Up Historical Accuracy - and Remedial Options
From a balance point of view, the disappearance of HA makes the game’s historical maps of places like Stalingrad and Berlin look ridiculous: the mapmakers made an awesome effort at authenticity, but their efforts are now backfiring (except to the satisfaction of HA relics like me):
On historically accurate lines of attack, one side, offense or defence, would have had an advantage due to terrain and buildings, introducing BR balance in this case would not have helped, the game would still be unbalanced, and Confronted mode might have been a better choice from this point of view as both sides could have taken advantage of these advantages.
DF had the opportunity to ensure both game balance and historical accuracy, but it decided to drop the latter to enhance the former. But the arbitrary strategic point design takes away the former as well: in many maps, why would two armies fight over an open point or a broken house that doesn’t make the slightest bit of strategic sense? Such a design sends either the attacker infantry squad or the defender infantry squad to hell, or both at the same time, and puts a smile on the face of the tanker and the airplane pilot.
Why should we choose Enlisted out of so many WWII FPS’s?If I want casual gameplay, BF5 seems more casual; if I want historical gameplay, HLL, Sqd44, RO2, etc. are all available. By observing the players around me, the most appealing thing about this game is only - the thrill of slaughtering ai, which significantly reduces the player’s frustration, which is really smart (unfortunately the ai is not too smart).
What is the cost of giving up historical accuracy? It means that a large number of the game’s early supporters will be unhappy with the game - because the game used to advertise historical accuracy for a long time.DF is stuck with the percentage of the existing playerbase that supports HA to make their decision, but they don’t realize how important it is to those potential HA supporters (who may have left the game or have not experienced the game) Someone once sarcastically commented on me being a new player (that was a year and a half ago), but he didn’t realize that I have CBT friends (now, he doesn’t seem to have played it for a long time) and have often exchanged words with him about the game, and it was his words that made me download Enlisted.
The advantages of this game over PS (Sqd44) and HLL are obvious: better graphics, more realistic vehicle damage mechanics from WT, ai squads, mod editor, etc., but DF didn’t capitalize on it. They don’t care about HA supporters, even though they are also a large part of the FPS player base. (And don’t give me the Custom rooms, it can’t even be used to complete events and DF won’t be working on any more game mechanics regarding HA on it)
I don’t want to discuss much about what mechanics HA should have here. There have been countless valuable suggestions on the forums over the years about this that have not been taken on board, and I’ve made a few suggestions. Sometimes, just studying the mechanics of RO2 or any other HA featured game can be a basic solution to these kinds of problems already!
Tommy did a great Big Action Mod with a rudimentary mod editor, and some of those mechanics would take a “professional” DF developer 5 years (at their current pace) to complete. Why can’t they do better? Perhaps free-to-play games are naturally incapable of going the historically accurate route - then I wouldn’t mind paying another company a small fortune.
This post isn’t all criticism. df does often take our suggestions (unless they make them less profitable XD), such as suggestions 3 and 5 made here:
However, paratroopers and motorized units seem a bit weird and out of place on the existing small battlefields. Bigger battlefields go well with historical accuracy because it’s easier to reduce the problems caused by weapon imbalances and enhance tactics through offensive route design.
Even without HA, larger battlefields are very interesting. However, large battlefields require appropriate victory mechanics, command and point distribution systems, otherwise armies will be scattered and make the game a walking simulator.
In PS (Sqd44), large battlefields still look empty in 80 player games. And HLL solves this problem by actually shrinking the battle area through strategic point setting, somewhat on the entertaining side and reducing the tactical. A 50 player + ai squad in Enlisted would definitely solve this problem! (But please let the ai be smart)
Finally, a question for the HA naysayers:
Does HA really hurt game balance or casual playing mod?
Many people are against HA on the grounds that “the game is not a history simulator”, and it is true that there are limits to HA, and different people can accept different limits. hll is light HA, ps and ro2 are a bit heavier, and games like arma are extreme HA. for most of the HA playerbase, light HA is enough, but we don’t mind more of it. After all, it wouldn’t affect the original modes, it just needs to add more modes.
WT’s three modes (with gradual increments of HA) will basically satisfy the needs of most players, including the HA playerbase. At the same time, historical accuracy and game balance and playability are not naturally hostile. When weapons and vehicles are historically accurate, it’s true that they are unbalanced, but we can create another kind of imbalance to solve that: I’m talking about the game mechanics and map design through which asymmetrical combat is achieved.
In fact, DF has been using game mechanics to mask their poor map design and weapon loadout balance: just by simply increasing or decreasing manpower consumption. Of course, that’s too sketchy. Many people can’t see this and can accept this shoddy trickery, but claim that HA hurts game balance. That may be valid, considering that DF is not competent enough to accomplish something … But we should hold DF to a higher standard:
It’s time to stop enriching themselves with Premium squads! They should do something really interesting, something closer to artwork.