I’ll explain each one and why they have no place in the game.
Before I begin: I am aware that you can see most of the interface by pressing the “M” button, but that is horribly counter-productive. If you have to stop every time to do that, you spend less time playing. Also, in a game like Enlisted, you don’t have time to stop every 10 seconds to check the map. Do that and odds are you’ll get blasted in the head. So, with that out of the way…
HIDDEN OBJECTIVES AND TICKET COUNT: We get off to a bad start here. Hiding these causes people to lose track of the game. A lot of planning goes on about which objective to push or defend and if you have the time or tickets left to perhaps do that extra push that can guarantee another win or if it’s better to just hold what you have. This change adds NOTHING to this supposed “hardcore” feeling of gameplay.
HIDDEN OBJECTIVE CAPTURE STATUS AND ENEMY PRESENCE: By removing this, you cause players to lose track of the current objective they are capturing. Furthermore, the enemy presence (or balance of power) indicator on the objective allows you to know if you can cap the objective or if you need more people. If you are defending, it causes you to change your priority and hold the line. Without this, you are just tumbling like a blind man in the dark. Stop constantly to open the map and check on the objective status while on a capture point and you are dead.
HIDDEN MINIMAP: This is one of the worst changes in any shooter. There is this notion that removing the minimap makes the game more “realistic” or “hardcore” (the term and notion of being “hardcore” makes me wanna vomit). The minimap is an essential part of Enlisted. Not only it helps you navigate around the map, it helps with enemy markings, artillery strikes, objectives. By taking this off, again, you reinforce that “tumbling in the dark” I just mentioned. These changes make the game more about running around and shooting whatever moves instead of giving it a focus on the objective. And speaking of objectives.
HIDDEN FLOATING OBJECTIVE ICONS: Not a lot of explanation needed. The existence of these make you know from the get go which direction you should go. And it helps to keep them monitored, although the icons on the top do that as well. What I think we could have is an option to hide them or decrease their opacity whenever you ADS, because sometimes they get in the way.
HIDDEN HITMARKER: Now for this one I could have an argument on its favour. I’d actually consider the removal of the hitmarker a good change, EXCEPT FOR THE FACT that Enlisted has the “downed state”. If your target has a chance to survive a bullet, and proceeds to doing so, you must give this feedback to the player. Otherwise, you’ll get blasted by someone you already shot down and that makes for frustrating gameplay. I’d keep the hidden hitmarker for “hits” only. But I’d mantain the ones for “enemy down” and “enemy dead”. Or if you want to keep hitmarkers hidden, then keep the message that a player has been eliminated.
HIDDEN HEALTH/STAMINA BAR: Again, another change that conflicts directly with one of Enlisted’s features. Without knowing how much health you have, it makes it harder to make the decision of either using your medkit or saving it for a downed state if you don’t consider the health lost enough to justify healing. Also, knowing how much you can still run is a must, especially since there are a lot of instances in which we are crossing open areas under enemy fire.
HIDDEN AMMO COUNT: No one will keep count of their ammo in a video game. You might be able to do so with a bolt-action rifle, but then those can reload each round individually. With a magazine weapon, that changes drastically. Especially since we keep half-empty mags.
These are my thoughts on the interface changes. I do think they are detrimental to Enlisted’s style of gameplay, since this isn’t Post Scriptum or ArmA. We aren’t going for realism or simulation here. Enlisted is still a very arcadey game and the notion that making gameplay annoying (by having to open the map constantly) or detrimental to overall tactics and match awareness (by removing all feedback) is simply outworldy. So please, revert the UI changes so we can have a balanced game mode again.
Thank you.