High capacity, high DPS weapons are so powerful in this game because they allow you to shredd through waves of AI - ultimately key to success in this game, wiping squads fast is increadibly important to do.
Now, not only is it extremely important for victory, it even is extremely easy to do, AI is no threat at all, thats why as long as you can keep on shooting you will wipe squads.
this even creates this need for the players to bring auto guns at all BRs, which potentially wouldn’t be a thing if AI actually had a chance at fighting back.
BR2 SMGs outperform most BR4 and BR5 semi auto rifles and LMGs.
I claim, that if AI had much faster reaction time AND better accuracy at medium ranges, they would absolutely force players to take more cover and play more carefully. - accuracy would win over pure damage output.
From BR1 to BR5, auto guns rule as kings. We had discussions about Assaulters needing to be restricted - though I believe this is the wrong approach, its AI that needs to become more deadly so that SMGs become less effective at wiping squads.
Why do automatic weapons exist?
Isn’t it just for rapid assault and fire suppression?
So all countries are developing automatic weapons
If you think using automatic weapons is as despicable as shooting war criminals at paratroopers
Then maybe you should go play Mount and Blade
At least you won’t encounter those fully automatic weapons that adapt to the times.
Automatic weapons are popular for more reasons than just this one:
The skill floor for bolt-action rifles is extremely high. Automatic weapons give you way more room for error so especially at BR I, they help beginners and lower-skill players find their way into the game.
Most objectives require you to walk up to the enemy. Players immediately associate close quarters with automatic weapons rather than the scopeless sniper rifles everyone starts out with.
These two reasons won’t be any less of a given if you buff AI.
I also think that AI buffs will INCREASE the need for high DPS. Here’s why:
When your gun has lower DPS, the best strategy for infantry combat is to determine the character that the player is currently playing within a squad and then shoot that one. You will then see one of the AI soldiers stop for a second - that’s the player going through the wild camera ride of switching between squad members - and you shoot this one next before the player can act. And so on and so forth.
If you were at higher risk of getting shot by AI while doing this, the strategy would become even less viable compared to simply wiping the entire enemy squad within <1 second. And we’d end up seeing more of the weapons you’re trying to discourage with this idea.
this is why I play lonefighters in majority, when I walk in a room with 4 players I’m lucky if I take one of them out.
I would want AI to become more challenging but I know this isn’t possible, so I’d wish to have 100 lonefighters player lobby with stable official server to support it.
The AI elements in this game are terrible. The AI is so dumb and will never replicate real players and they’re just there for you to mow down with ease, giving the player zero satisfaction. The “squads” game mode is garbage. Your dumb AI squad just gives you and the opposing player’s position away, taking the stealth/suptise element out of warfare. They should remove “squads” and just make the game “lone fighters”, or make LF the primary mode and squads secondary.
AI should be better at evasion & maneuvering but changing their aim could make them unfair. I would support them shooting more frequently just to increase the amount of suppression a squad can put out but they should be less accurate when firing suppressively.
maps: maps are too condensed and narrow. obj areas are also too narrow and this is why everyone just using the heaviest tanks they can. there are literally no chances to flank enemy. tanks generally have 1 or 2 routes to reach objective. Game gives you wide range of equpment but you have little to no chance to use most of them properly.
gunplay: one of the worst i have ever seen. they implemented absurd distance damage drop off and dispersion values rather than gunsway and recoil because that was the laziest way to do.
Funny thing is; dispersion REWARDS sweatlords not punishes them. You can shoot multiple enemies at the same time because bullets just randomly spreading from barrel. take an lmg and just casually hipfire from close distance and you are guaranteed to shoot someone. Every guns which use full catridge like lmgs and bolt actions are effective at 600 to 750 meters range but you shoot some guy just from 50 meters away from the chest and he just ignores it. This is not how guns work. Combined with map problems, there is literally no reason to use any long range infantry weapon.
ai has way bigger problems than accuracy. they dont take any cover, they cant properly react to any enviromental factors. your average bot has two random mods; being a lemming or being a sitting duck. There are no big differences between playing with aggressive monkey and playing with docile monkey. I dont even want to get into details about pathfinding. it simply sucks
Majority of the playerbase doesnt demand better ai because people who cant use arms and legs can play better than soyboys we are dealing with
proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMvikz2cA-8
Brother in arms game was and still is the best game where AI used cover effectively and other things. This was in early 2000s. Its 2024 nobody has managed to do better. Not sure if its the lack of knowledge, tech or know how.
Going back to enlisted, So far the AI is behaving way batter than last year. Yes need improvement but keep in mind we are light years from having them behaving in a humanoid way.
In this game, AI is not supposed to be a free kills farm from what I have seen so far. It is as a support tool to distract the enemy or to quickly switch from soldier to soldier. AI got a huge buff recently, and also the only buffs AI needs in my opinion is to find cover more efficiently, and to go prone whenever I go prone, because for some reason they don’t do that.
Meta? I think that may be a strong word for this game. If anything, player base shifts are what determine anything around here. Not that, that’s an issue for me. Because I actually have quite the capable group.