The devs will write their own story

Mess Room
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I’ve noticed some back and forth about fair vs unfair practices with the recent update. There’s no TL: DR for this one so move right along if you wish, but I’ll yap a lot now, so I don’t feel the need to going forward.

Now I’m a total noob in Enlisted, given that I’m still on PS4 and it only came out hardly two weeks ago.
I’ve managed to kill myself (and probably a few teammates too) several times with a flamethrower and explosives, even took my team’s P38 out of the sky with our own artillery strike (if only I could get that right deliberately with the enemy team).

There’s been a few frustrating matches where we haven’t been effective for example in dealing with a tank and some bloke with a name resembling something along the lines of the ultimate-neckbeard took out four of my squads with the same tank and nobody could seemingly be bothered to even mark him, leaving me blind in my newly spawned tank, only for it to become a pressure cooker for my rookie tankers. Good thing I wasn’t on comms since all the alcohol in the pandemic to date wouldn’t have washed everyone clean from my colorful language, throwing internal tantrums because I can’t get physical hold of the punk to suplex him and pee in his ear. Funny how sometimes grown men like myself can instantly resort to the emotional intelligence of a 1-year-old with a dirty diaper when we play these things. You snap out of it once you realize that maybe your team’s just a bunch of new noobier noobs than you in this match, also having to figure out everything still just like you had to. Maybe they’re just having the same match you were when you were trying to get out of that ditch and aim the darn machine gun at Gunther the lone Wehrmacht soldier running across the field on your 1 o’clock, with you totally oblivious to the destruction that two enemy tanks are causing your team on your 11 o’clock, almost like Groot at the beginning of Gotg II.

I’ve been on that perfect spot on D-Day too, where I managed to get on a hill and have the advantage of seeing all the enemy squads and tanks advancing down towards the fight before they have a clue where I am and when they see me it’s too late - I’m sure they wanted to suplex me too. You know your team got you there, and now you’re taking off the pressure in turn. When teamwork happens in Enlisted you can feel it and the game gets that feeling through for me personally like none other, one of the first that gets that feel I’ve been looking for in a WWII game for years. Even when we lose the match, still having that comradery of turning the table with the other team upping the fight in turn. It’s a great experience to have when you take that break from reality to momentarily live in a historical event you weren’t actively a part of in real life, and probably wouldn’t have wanted to be, but nonetheless.

When people care about why they do what they do, they create amazing experiences.
It’s only when they care, that they have that intuition that’s granted by the connection to their audience, that they continue to stay in touch with the value that earns them the fair rewards that they’re due.
The experience I’ve had in the short time I’ve spent on the game was great enough to make me fork out bucks for a 90-day premium account, the 360-day deal was probably a smarter choice cost-wise, but I’m not completely without cynicism yet since there have been a few red flag alarms going off for me personally perhaps carrying over from WT. Yet I choose to give the devs the benefit of the doubt on their primary intent with this IP being value. While I must add that the discounted prices, felt closer to fair for what I would return to pay for a temporary boost and supporting a piece of digital entertainment.

There are enough examples out there of what happens when the primary motivation for what you do shifts from value towards numbers and other rewards, or what I’d call chasing the needs. Whether these are the needs as in Mazlow’s hierarchy or Money as a currency to obtain them, they can never be a target since they’re the RESULT of delivering value to others that they e.g. feel is worth parting with their money for.
The moment you chase one, the other areas suffer hence the quote “some people are so poor, they only have money”. You won’t stop chasing, sustainability becomes survival mode and profit becomes greed.

I can bring up the example of a certain bunch of Polish devs that shifted their primary focus from value to money, ended up making millions in the short term, but halved their share value, and ended up losing even more millions in the long run… but I won’t… oh, oops I already did. Loss of purpose was clear there, even in the application of some features or lack of connection to their customers, clearly, a part of their team didn’t care about what they did anymore and who could blame them (although it goes both ways, up and down). Imagine the state of the code - resulting in easy wins being difficult to achieve almost a year later - but nothing is set in stone and things could always change for the better if they look inward and change their ways instead of finding external solutions like Agile - which is only going to be a new tool to do the same stupid thing if they don’t change their motivations and create unity first. If they pull it off, well people are capable of more than they give themselves credit for.

Treat either staff or customers unfairly and they’ll hang around only until something better comes around. It’s difficult to connect to a purpose of a company when leadership only cares about numbers, then I’m there for my salary or my temporary comfort, then I’m just a dev, I can promise you busywork will increase and value output will slow down a bunch since there would be much less unity, passion or mindfulness, and more forced pandering to nonsense from everyone with their own agenda. Give me a just purpose to connect to and care about, and dev is just my title and tools, while I am a problem solver, creator, and innovator who will break down walls with my team to make your vision a reality if you’re a leader who cares.

Spend more time working on overcomplicating systems and you end up spending less time on delivering new value and experiences that keep people coming back for more. Many of us will see through manipulation tactics like frustration, others may take a while to catch on but when they do it’s over.
I don’t think the ones who will spend money just to feel relevant by winning at the flavor of the day are the ones who will stay loyal but the ones who will spend money because they recognize fair value are - not only do they result in ongoing revenue, they spread the word too.

It’s nice to earn that new gun or level but it’s the experience that brings us back. Yet the devil’s in the details, If that causes it to become ridiculous to earn decent progress, the balance in the battles will likely become a mess and many will get frustrated and leave.

Keeping in mind that you can’t please everyone and probably don’t want to, there are certain crowds you wouldn’t want to serve or pander to - but be unfair with your premiums and eventually many of the intended crowd will go elsewhere. Be fair and many will willingly support you. Even if they drop off because life happens, they’ll likely spread that word of the pleasant experience they had.

In the detail, this battle for the right balance is hard but with the right intent, the devs will nail it.

If they don’t and they primarily chase numbers, they have a new short-term flavor for a year or five.

If they primarily focus on value and earn those rewards, they’ve got a long-term IP here that could live on for ages.
I’m rooting for this one at the moment because if they didn’t care, the experience wouldn’t have been so great, or at least it wouldn’t last very long. So let’s give them a chance and space to find that balance.

That should be enough with the mushy stuff then - for now remember what I’m momentarily thinking about doing to you when you take out my tank on the battlefield.

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that’s alot of text for just expressing a few bad matches of console gamers, and attack the free to play model ( perhaps more devs telling them what happened to others ) more respect for customers

although i suppose it can be summed up with:

( nothing personal )

but, you do have a point.
i’m sure it’s just a matter of time ( i mean, i hope )

although, not to be the devil lawyer ( like someone called me ) but,

more often ( included my self a while ago ) always tends to see things gray when in reality they are not.

it’s often easy to point out negativities but it’s not the main point.

people often forget hat DF has a very small number of devs Aided by Gaijin. which at the end of the day, no doubt they are trying to sell a project. otherwise they wouldn’t make it in the first place. matter of point is, i don’t see on a daily people thanking for all the content that has been putted out in 6 months. because in my opinion, they actually did extraordinaly many things compared to the past schedule. ( more precisely, during CAT and CBT for experience ) so they are not really lazy.
they do care about the project, they DO take in consideration feedbacks but there is just so much work to do, and not many people behind it.

just think about it, in one updated, they managed to include smoke rounds, one whole campaign, shovels and even new types of vehicles. ( yes, technically from the leaked data, those were already done and ready to be delivered ) but nontheless, still all bugs and hotfixes that they release, they are trying to do their best.

this does not come with the other " edge " though. it seems that priorities are premiums squads and despite make promises, some of them are not reality. ( just like squad behavior subbordinates command from dev blog 1. ), orders not being delivered, models that are still a shit in terms of damage models.

but for the rest, they are working on it.

one critique that also people tends to forget, and always make mistakes with it, " this is wt "

well, it’s bloody not. it’s much, much user friendly, and i really like this game. i’m not biased, because it doesn’t take you half of a second to see me ranting on something, but nontheless they do listen, and they do care about the title.

( not for everything though ).

so it’s more or like your take on the game.

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There are a lot of different perspectives and opinions offered but if there is a take away it probably comes back to the game design and appropriate planning.

The size of the DF team is a lame and abused cop out. Too many times have I seen this plastered over various fora. The problem is a lack of solid research into the subject matter, and then an almost infantile attempt to please every inane suggestion rather than sticking to the plan and just communicating with the audience in a thoughtful manner.

At the end of the day the Dev choices for game design thusfar have been questionable, and there are gross inconsistencies between their Campaign paradigm and the actual forces and equipment within them. That’s not an arduous research task by any stretch of the imagination, and neither is implementing incremental unlock trees based on authentic and historically accurate equipment (even if you include a few esoterics for flavour).

Moscow and Berlin were less traumatic from that perspective, but Normandy and Tunisia struggle under the lack of common sense and historical misrepresentation.

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I’d like to reply to this full thread properly and closer to home so will definitely do so once I have a moment to do so thoughtfully. Just to clarify below Erika

It was definitely not aimed at console gamers since I have no interest in the platform wars (while at the same time I understand that there are human quirks that manifest differently on them), but rather an attempt at expressing that we’re human and could probably catch ourselves doing the same things we get frustrated by, so I hope you saw the humor in it. Definitely not taken personally, It could be shorter but sometimes the more abstract discussions provoke more thought, and besides I felt like yapping. So just to clarify what seems to be a misunderstanding - we’ll just sort that out with our tanks one day I’m sure (I may die 50 times trying but I’ll get there).

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Agreed, although I can’t comment on the specifics of the campaigns since I haven’t experienced Moscow or Berlin. I’ve experienced it many times with teams complaining that they’re spread thin but it also begs the question on what we’re focusing on as a team and whether we’re swapping cause and effect. Does our current work align with our current strategy to make our vision happen. Which features would serve to sustainably realize the experience we’re trying to create now and which ones can we leave for later as well as sacrifice.
The last which is sometimes hard - LittleJohnny_CBT’s suggestion for a snot bubble carbine was liked by sgt_bum_destroyer, cpt_airborne_killer among others and there’s opportunity for a premium weapon here, but when we say yes to this who are we saying no to - a very extreme hypothetical example yes, the ones closer to reality will take a lot more thought. Does this align with fulfilling a purpose of creating eg. a high paced, accessible yet grounded in reality WWII experience or are we pandering to the wrong crowd and filling our backlog with unnecessary distractions thereby taking time away from meaningful thinking.
There’s so many smart-working concepts, frameworks and tools out there e.g. the four types of work and three ways mentioned in, The Phoenix Project, including, automation and the theory of constraints, validated learning from Lean Startup, all of which will fail through our own sabotage if we have quantitative instead of value targets. But when we get it right and we’re busy, then you know we’re really busy.

At the same time, I must concede Erika’s also right about praising what’s been done well, considering myself who’s a coach on this kind of stuff, still f’ing up way too many times and not giving enough praise where it’s due. We need to acknowledge problems without being consumed by them in order to find and focus on the way forward otherwise we’ll smack head-on into them all the time. I think a dev’s life in the build-measure-feedback loop can be extremely difficult when iterating based on customer feedback, especially in the early stages.
Theory is one thing, but taking in some really nasty comments out there like we’ve seen in many forums and social media must burn enough to make any team feel like saying f off and build your own sh@%! sometimes.
It’s been a very good overall experience with this game, actually, it’s been a while since an experience has hooked me, the devs have created something awesome, but at the same time, a cheeky plead to please not let a bad revenue or progression model ever poison it from staying great.

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+1 everyone