As a veteran of Enlisted who played since CBT and as a person who likes to discuss things on forums, I can suggest a couple of things to improve Squads mechanic and WT Infantry in general.
- First of all, don’t shove it into throats of people, add a separate no-bots mode for those who want to play battlefield-like game.
In Enlisted there were two game modes from the start - Squads with bots and Lone Fighters without bots. And while Lone Fighters were less popular as it had some problems with balance, especially, with realistic vehicles vs lone soldiers balance, it still was quite good sometimes.
I would suggest making Infantry Arcade mode a mode without Squad mechanic. People who want an arcade shooter could go to Infantry arcade where there will be smaller maps, mostly CQB, only players in 16 vs 16 modes and all vehicles will be balanced by killstreak mechanic from Ground Arcade - Helicopters and BMPs should be spawned only for a minute or two, so they won’t be able to sit at the edge of the map and ruin the game for infantry for the whole battle, as they did in Enlisted’s Lone Fighters mode.
And Infantry Realistic will be with Squads, as it fits better with realistic vehicles vs infantry balance. For the ones who want more than 16 vs 16 battles, I would suggest adding an Infantry Simulator mode with rooms as in Air Sim, because matchmaker won’t ever be able to gather 64 players for a 5-minute Arcade/Realistic battle in a reasonable time in queue.
- Yes
- No
- I don’t care
- Make a better player-squad interaction (And there I will gather some Enlisted’s squads suggestions from Enlisted forums):
a) Make it simple yet useful. Just two buttons for quick commands - “Stand here” that marks a point for your bot to stand at and look at specific direction, as you already did, and “Shoot here” that marks a point for your bot to aim at and shoot at. Which can be used for marking enemy vehicles for your anti-tank/anti-air soldiers, marking windows for your machinegunner to fire a suppression fire, marking points for your mortarman (there were already mortars shown in rumors) to fire a mortar at. (because, imo, mortarman gameplay is kinda boring. You sit with your mortar and aim at azimuth and distance, thats it, better make your mortarman fire at the point you aimed at. Like, you can climb at the building’s roof and use binoculars/regular aim to mark a specific point for your mortarman, so you will be able to shoot with your rifle and use your mortarman as a support).
b) Add squad radial menu with options, such as: Shooting mode (don’t shoot, fire in response, fire at will), Give me first aid, Give me ammo (both are really useful in Enlisted).
c) Add useful voicelines from your squad via portable radio or something. Examples of such voicelines are:
“I’m down!” from a “killed” soldier.
“Sniper/Machinegun/Tank/Air is shooting at us!” When an enemy sniper/machinegun/tank/air is shooting at them. Can be shown with specific direction at your “compass” and/or voiceline of direction.
“Get down! A grenade!” When they spot a grenade nearby.
“Get cover! A mortar/artillery is working!” When an enemy mortar/artillery is working.
Generally, bots shouldn’t die in silence and without any information for the player. They should “simulate” useful turrets/combat units.
- Yes
- No
- I don’t care
- Add an ability to cooperate with players:
a) An ability to sit on ally’s tank/inside ally’s IFV/Helicopter. It won’t be useful in Arcade or even Realistic battles, but may be a neat situational feature.
b) An ability to heal your teammate and give him some ammo.
c) An ability to mark enemies/enemy vehicles for your teammates.
- Yes
- No
- I don’t care
Enlisted died because devs were busy trying to remake an economy and progression for 5 years straight, without adding features and polishing already existing content such as so-called “main feature” of Enlisted - Squads which were upgraded like… once in five years when they added an ability to order your squadmate to shoot at tank with a panzerfaust/throw a grenade at it. Thats it. Constant economy and progression changes, alongside with stagnation just killed the game. WT has 4 updates per year, at least and WT devs are actually adding small QoL features, so, it won’t follow the same path as Enlisted for sure. They just have to add a mode for all communities - Arcade Battlefield-like, Simulator Squad-like and the middle ground Realistic with Squads.
I’d like to discuss everything in the comments, I doubt devs will listen to the community as… they never did (except when they listened to it while making naval and because of that it is dead now, lol), but still, its interesting to read other people’s thoughts on this.