Next Major Update - Rumor Round-Up & Discussion (Part 1)

Game Discussion General Discussion
3298

My theory is that it was a way to test the waters for it without committing to it. The only ‘tells’ that could indicate it being ‘April fools’ is it being released the day before and its title. Outside of those two things, nothing else indicates it being a joke.

My guess is WT was planning to implement infantry in some form, probably as a way to secure points and as a more active deterrent to spawn camping and CAS, and discussions naturally turned to playable infantry. While Enlisted was always intended to be WT with infantry, the reality is the game isn’t doing too well, and is basically a mode of WT that is arbitrarily its own game, at least at this point. Initially, it was its own thing, but over time, it’s become more and more like WT.

They probably weren’t sure how receptive people would be, so they ‘announced’ it in such a way where they could move forward with it if the interest was there, and if it received backlash they could drop it and say ‘April Fools’. Seeing as how it’s almost at a million views, and my personal anecdotal experience in seeing a lot of people excited at the prospect, I imagine that Gaijin is making plans to either absorb Enlisted into War Thunder, or kill Enlisted and implement Infantry into War Thunder.

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3299

The difficulty about player controled infantry in War Thunder is…

Why spawn a soldier, instead of a 60 ton mattle tank filled with machine guns and with a huge canon?

Enlisted is not “WT with infantry”; it’s “Infantry with WT vehicles”. “WT with infantry” would hardly work, because spawning a soldier in place of a heavy vehicle is just not beneficial.

The only way vehicles and infantry can co-exist is by vehicles having very limited numbers, like Enlisted, BF, Squad or any combined arms game.

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3300

My point with saying Enlisted is WT with Infantry is that Enlisted is more or less how they would implement playable Infantry into War Thunder. It wouldn’t be in what we currently know as Ground Battles, and would be its own separate mode.

Playable infantry can work in WT, but would require a massive change to how the game works that risks alienating much of the playerbase if put into what we currently understand to be Ground Battles, so it has to be a separate mode.

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3301

Infantry in grb is going to be very annoying. Imagine getting shot by a RPG from some random window while trying to cap a point.

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3302

Why would they go through all that effort when Enlisted and WT can just co-exist though?

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3303

I mean as a British player give me an Ajax with a deployable NLAW/Javelin team over a CR2 any day

3304

When it comes to April fools they go all out. So yes making a whole teaser trailer with new assets and gameplay just to fool us is definitely what they would do

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3305

Especially when they can take a lot of assets from different games for less work.

3306

Enlisted is doing just fine. WW2 shooters, especially F2P ones with a progression system like the one in WT are bound to fetch a smaller playerbase, but 6000 player peaks on Steam alone is a good amount. Of course it is less than what Battlefield games are fetching, but those are well established mainstream games.

There are good reasons to keep the game seperated, they didn’t just develop Enlisted seperately because they felt like doing so.

  • It is way easier to balance the two games seperately
  • Each game can get a seperate ESRB/PEGI/USK/FSK/whatever-rating (12+ for WT and 18+ for Enlisted)
  • The level of complexity for different mechanics and gameplay elements can be much deeper when there are fewer aspects to factor in
  • The servers can be more specialized to reduce loads for the different games’ needs
  • The spec requirements for the two games can be kept lower as things that are needed in one game can be left out in the other
  • Development overall can be much simpler, as there are fewer things that could potentially break when working on seemingly unrelated things

Neither of those things is going to happen, it makes more sense to keep both games running seperately. Enlisted is profitable enough to keep it running and War Thunder is better off without playable infantry.

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3307

Simple, because Enlisted is nowhere near as popular as War Thunder and is dying, at least from what I hear, and, as I’ve stated before, is basically a mode of War Thunder that was arbitrarily spun off into its own game. The only things that made it ‘not WT’ was in the ‘backend’, how you acquire your units and so on. Since then, however, the game has become more and more like WT, with progression and matchmaking becoming in line with how WT does it, only with fleshy humans.

It would also greatly expand the content that can be implemented into the game. As it stands, WT is nipping at the heels of the big content that can be added. They aren’t out of it, to be clear, but if they continue pushing forward they are going to run into the issue of either having to wait for new vehicles to come out IRL, or have to start making things up from scratch, which would go against WT’s identity. I get the argument that they basically do that right now with how new the vehicles are, but there is a difference between making up stats for a classified vehicle and completely fabricating a fictional vehicle. Even going wide isn’t much of an option. While there are nations that can be added, none of them come without issues, and will run out eventually, even if they rework tech trees to allow for multiple sub trees.

They expand to infantry, however, that gives them a whole new avenue of content they can add, such as dedicated engineering vehicles, APCs, transport aircraft, light unarmed vehicles, and so on, as well as greatly expanding the amount of nations that can be implemented, with infantry being the justification. Would also have the added benefit of allowing them to revisit tiers and give vehicles hype, as now people would have to consider what is viable for top tier infantry.

It would also increase War Thunder’s market, as now FPS players would have an interest in the game, which, in turn, would increase the game’s reach. There’s a reason why War Thunder is, like, 3 to 4 games in one, and Gaijin didn’t split off its titles.

Honestly, in retrospect, it’s kinda weird they did Enlisted at all, and didn’t just implement as a mode in War Thunder. They didn’t for ground, they didn’t for naval, and seeing as how Enlisted has become more like WT over time (in terms of ‘backend’ stuff), any reason for a split has kinda just dissipated.

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3308

Most of it was just video splicing of scenes from their other titles not as much programming work as you think. The other scenes are along the same lines as you’ve seen the trailers where we see things on wires without the need of much development aswell.

This is on par with the amount of work they did for any other April fools event.

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3309

which could be the end of it for some players, because FPS games attract streamers and hackers. the former tend to influence dev decisions too much. but that’s my opinion

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3310

I wouldn’t use Battlefield as a positive comparison. That franchise has been slowly dying for years now. Regardless, that hasn’t been the sentiment I’ve heard, but maybe I’m wrong, though I’m skeptical.

Those would be good points if it weren’t for the fact War Thunder currently has Naval, Ground, and Aircraft all in one game. They follow this logic, at the very least naval would have been spun off into its own game from the outset.

As for the rating, that really isn’t as big of an issue everyone makes it out to be. There are ways to keep a low age rating if they care about it, like not having blood and so on. At worst, it would be rated T, which is what Fortnite is.

And they could arguably make more money if they merged Enlisted into War Thunder. War Thunder is an established title, and much of its success can be attributed to it being, in effect, 3 games merged into one. Adding a fourth, one that has more appeal then Naval, would expand the game’s market and increase the playerbase of both.

And, again, War Thunder, the far more popular title, is nipping at the heels of what can be added, at least for its most popular modes (Ground and Air). ‘Sacrificing’ Enlisted to expand the longevity of War Thunder by merging it under War Thunder’s umbrella is a mutually beneficial decision. Enlisted would gain access to a much wider array of vehicles, Enlisted expands its playerbase, more attention would be brought on to War Thunder and it can advertise to the FPS crowd.

I’d also hardly say that War Thunder is better off without playable infantry, provided it is in its own game mode. So long as Ground battles, as we know them, stay the same (maybe rename them ‘tank battles’ or something), nothing is lost and is only gained.

EDIT:

Don’t see why that would be. War Thunder regularly gets tens of thousands of players as it stands, and there are streamers aplenty already. I fail to see how the existence of an infantry game mode would suddenly make people quit, so long as they can still play ground as it is now.

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3311

They get more money by splitting your currency between games.

Enlisted avgs anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 players on steam alone. For the title it is that is just fine.

FPS infantry has no place in War Thunder.

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3312

I totally share this opinion.

The only way i see AI in WT Ground is beeing a IFV modification (or any Vehicle that carried Troops) that lets you deploy a small squad with some launchers that defend the area you dropped them (will mostly annoy you with taking tracks/engine) and the most use of them will be defending capture points
like the AI in the Trenches from the event.
(This could also open the Can of deployable mines)

New Door animations on their way of inviting HE shells

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Other than that they have no place here.

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3313

Completely agree. I occasionally play Enlisted too (partly to fill the void left by the death of Heroes and Generals), and it’s great fun, but I can’t see it working if it would merge with WT.
So much would need to change that it woukd basically be nessecary to make an entirely new game…

Keep FPS in Enlisted, improve that game

Keep WT vehicle focused and improve that game.

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3314
I will never let go of it, to many good memories :,)

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R.I.P. H&G in my Steam library

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3315

It was really great in the beginning. later years became a huge cash grab with terrible progression.

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3316

Yeah, for me the Downfall began with the Map reworks.
But it was still a lot of fun from time to time.

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3317

If Enlisted is truly dying as you are claiming, then what makes you think merging Enlisted into WT would bring in more players? People that play WT and are interested in Battlefield-like shooters most likely already play Enlisted and Enlisted players that are interested in WTs vehicular combat gameplay most likely already also play WT.

If you can’t see how the points I listed would be major reasons for Gaijin not to merge Enlisted and WT, then I think you are massively underestimating the effort required to combine these games compared to the rather small increase in income this merge would bring.

WTs dev team already is having a hard time keeping up with the huge amount of bugs, inaccuracies and balance problems the game already is facing. Having a fourth mode where not only aircraft have to be balanced according to the capabilities of tanks, but also both aircraft AND tanks have to be balanced according to the capabilities of infantry would be an absolute nightmare.

I’ve said this before, but not a single aspect of WT has been designed with infantry in mind. They can’t just copy Enlisteds code and paste it into WTs code either. Game development (software development in general) isn’t as easy as people seem to think, you constantly run into problems and the more features you have, the more things can and will break when working on other things.

But since most of this doesn’t matter and your main focus point seems to be WT running out of vehicles to add, let me tell you this:
Adding infantry doesn’t change the fact that the amount of vehicles that people are hyped for is limited.
Infantry isn’t going to keep the people that are only interested in the vehicle gameplay around, especially not if the infantry has the same progression as vehicles.
And as a sidenote, logistics vehicles could be added without playable infantry, but most of these vehicles won’t be moneymakers either way.

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