Xcom 2 Is Unfair
'That's XCOM, baby! Sometimes the rolls are with you, sometimes they're not.Jake Solomon, Lead Designer of XCOM and XCOM 2.If you've been playing XCOM (either the originals or the reboot series) for any length of time, you've undoubtedly come across things that make you want to hurl your computer into the sun. Missing point blank shotgun blasts, seeing multiple 85%+ shots fail in a row, taking one extra step and activating another pod, watching as your flanking shots fail to connect while the aliens crit you in high cover, the list goes on and on.But what if I were to tell you that not only is the game fair, it's actually skewed in YOUR favor.
On the August 29th episode of the Bombcast there was some pretty harsh criticism of Xcom 2 from Jeff and Brad. I haven't play the game since I beat it around launch (hoping to get the expansion soon), but I thought it was a great follow up to the first game. It had some weird performance issues (I remember long load times), and they still didn't fix some of the came. This review has been updated to reflect XCOM 2's re-release on PS4 and Xbox One, which released on September 27, 2016: Time is always fading in XCOM 2, and it's never on our side. As we train our. You have a medbay for wounds, you have a recruitment panel for losses. I would really like to challenge the notion that touching your soldiers HP bar is unfair just because you couldn't prevent it. Think how many turn based games use HP as just another resource that needs to be managed. It's not so precious. In XCOM, not even the characters are.
Hard to believe, right?Enemy Unknown/Within had hidden modifiers in place to help you along, and XCOM 2 is no different. I'm going to warn you ahead of time; some of what you are about to read is going to make all those misses seem extra impossible, especially on the lower difficulties. Here's what I've been able to dig up in the ini files and the code (using the XCOM 2 SDK):(Some of this isn't cheating, really, at least not in the 'behind the scenes' sense, but just the differences between difficulty levels like you would expect.
I got carried away and listed everything I could find, so consider it a comprehensive look at what each option actually means.) RookieNot to disparage anyone's skill level, but if you honestly are having trouble or think the game is tough at this point, then you either have monumental bad luck or are just missing something fundamental. There's no way around it; on Rookie, XCOM 2 is cheating for you, and it's cheating hard:. Rookies start with +2 HP and +10 will. XCOM's chances to hit are all multiplied by 1.2 times. The game doesn't show this, but internally all of your 50% shots are really 60%. When you miss, you are given a flat +10 aim bonus on all shots over 50% until you land a hit for each miss. This means your 50% shot is now 70% (50 base.
1.2 +10) after one miss, then 80% after two, and so on. If you get hit by an enemy, they get a stacking global -10 aim reduction on that turn, as long as you have less than five squad members.
So, each landed shot makes it less likely that they will land another. If one of your squad is killed (leaving you with less than four), or if you bring less than four units into a mission, you will see a +15 aim bonus for any shot over 50% and a flat -10 enemy aim penalty for each dead/missing unit below four. This means, if you deliberately bring only one trooper into a mission, you are looking at a +45 hit bonus and a -30 enemy aim penalty. Coupled with your flat 1.2 hit bonus (which is applied first), a 50% hit is now turned into a 105% auto-hit (except it isn't, as I'll explain later). The game will try to steer inactive enemy pods away from you as long as you are fighting at least four enemies.
You can still trigger nearby pods on your own if you are careless, but they shouldn't wander into you on their own. Can get easier missions with less/weaker enemies on them. Your troops take less XP to rank up, and various activities and timers such as building or wound recovery are faster. Various other small tweaks, such as item costs and reward increases.The hard cap for aim assisted shots is 95%. It's still XCOM, after all, so it remains possible for you to flub your shots unless it actually says 100% on it, and even then the enemy can dodge for reduced damage (which is HOT BULLSHIT I might add, but whatever).
This just makes it much more likely that you will avoid multiple misses in a row as long as you are taking shots with a reasonable chance to hit.It is possible that the AI is shackled at this difficulty level; not throwing grenades when they can, and reducing panic to just running and hiding versus friendly fire and suicide grenades, but I didn't see any explicit references while trawling through the code, so consider that hearsay. VeteranVeteran cheats, not as bad as Rookie, but more than you may suspect. Rookies start with +1 HP. XCOM's chances to hit are all multiplied by 1.1 times.
Meaning that your basic 50% shot is now sitting at 55%. When you miss, you are given the same +10 aim bonus on shots over 50% for each miss as you do on Rookie. Your 50% shot is now at 65% (50. 1.1 +10) after one miss, 75% after two, and so on.
The 'less than four soldiers' bonus is now down to +10 hit bonus (from +15) and -10 enemy hit chance (the same as Rookie). It still stacks.
The game will steer inactive enemy pods away from you as long as you are fighting at least six enemies (up from Rookie's four). Can get easier missions (the same as Rookie) with less/weaker enemies on them (more/harder than Rookie but less than Commander). Your troops take more XP to rank up than Rookie, but less than Commander. Build/wound timers are also longer than on Rookie. Item Costs are higher than Rookie, with less rewards. The enemy AI may still be shackled, but I can confirm your panic isn't.
Troopers can and will throw grenades at your own guys when they freak out.So, there's still a lot of background tweaking going on. All of your shots are still better than you think, you still get the miss streak busting bonuses, and you still get some major buffs when you have less than four units.
The game will actively try to keep the number of units you are facing at a reasonable level, but not as much as it did before. It also removes the enemy's hit streak penalty, meaning that you can and will see a lot more landed shots on a single turn. CommanderYou've got to be kidding, right? There's cheating here too? Absolutely; not even a Commander level campaign is on the level, although things also start swinging the other way as well. Rookies start with the 4 base HP, no bonuses.
Enemies are now given +1 health. No more surefire grenade kills on those early troopers!. XCOM's chances to hit have no base level modifications. 50% is 50%.
When you miss, you are given a +15 (!!) aim bonus on shots over 50% for each miss. Yes, that's actually higher than on either Rookie or Veteran, which I assume is compensation for removing the base shot multiplier. Now your 50% shots are actually 65% after one miss, and 80% after two. I actually thought this was less modified, based on how many bullshit 75% shots go awry.This is generally just good game balancing, although it encourages specific playstyles (namely, gang up on an enemy and keep shooting until it goes down) versus others (go for highly secure one shots across multiple enemies).
That could have been achieved by giving you a boost to aim the higher your base chance is (so 80+ turns into 100 and 75+ turns into 90 and so on. It would have generated less 'FUCK!' Moments as you miss easy shots, though, for better or for worse.In a way I'm a bit sorry I read this. Now I know that playing on anything up to Commander it's actually in your interest to get bad shots done before your killshot to trigger the gang up bonus.
Makes Lightning Hands even more relevant, as it's not just giving you a free shot, it's also giving you a Marked-style aim bonus on your actual sniper shot if you miss. I can't un-know this, so now I have an extra cheese tool. : Yeah, it's a real pandora's box, except with cheese at the end instead of hope. I'd already read a bit here and there about how the game (and the previous one) presents misleading information, but I wasn't aware of the specific numbers until I read this, so thanks for that I guess. But even though all of this is in favour of the player, I am still not really a fan of keeping the relevant info hidden.There's this part of my brain which feels that if you're making a game based around dice rolls, then those rolls should simply be presented honestly. Using modifiers, multipliers and whatnot is fine in essence, but I guess the purist in me just wants them to show me those actual modified odds.In fact, I think it'd be better to create various difficulty levels by adjusting everything around the dice, rather than fudging the rolls themselves.
There are plenty of things they could scale; the amount of enemies, their health/armour, the damage weapons do, the amount of turns you get to complete objectives, how smart the AI is about choosing cover and choosing who to shoot at in the first place, etc, etc, without ever having to 'lie' to the player. Don't get me wrong, I am actually really enjoying the game; I just don't believe 'variable difficulty' and 'a higher or smaller chance of succes' are the quite same thing.I guess the idea behind this is partially to create exhilarating 'holy crap I actually made it' moments for the player, leading them to believe they beat the odds, but I can't help but think it's also to mitigate the rather out of whack expectations some people seem to have of dice rolls. I'll admit I'm guilty of this myself at times; treating the higher end chances as 'this should be a succes' and then getting annoyed when a 90% shot still fails. But I try and remind myself that even that is not a certainty; I mean, if with every step I took in real life I'd have a 10% chance of falling flat on my face, I don't think I'd dare to cross the street any longer (not without some power-armour in any case).
I'd already read a bit here and there about how the game (and the previous one) presents misleading information, but I wasn't aware of the specific numbers until I read this, so thanks for that I guess. But even though all of this is in favour of the player, I am still not really a fan of keeping the relevant info hidden.There's this part of my brain which feels that if you're making a game based around dice rolls, then those rolls should simply be presented honestly. Using modifiers, multipliers and whatnot is fine in essence, but I guess the purist in me just wants them to show me those actual modified odds.In fact, I think it'd be better to create various difficulty levels by adjusting everything around the dice, rather than fudging the rolls themselves. There are plenty of things they could scale; the amount of enemies, their health/armour, the damage weapons do, the amount of turns you get to complete objectives, how smart the AI is about choosing cover and choosing who to shoot at in the first place, etc, etc, without ever having to 'lie' to the player.
Don't get me wrong, I am actually really enjoying the game; I just don't believe 'variable difficulty' and 'a higher or smaller chance of succes' are the quite same thing.I guess the idea behind this is partially to create exhilarating 'holy crap I actually made it' moments for the player, leading them to believe they beat the odds, but I can't help but think it's also to mitigate the rather out of whack expectations some people seem to have of dice rolls. I'll admit I'm guilty of this myself at times; treating the higher end chances as 'this should be a succes' and then getting annoyed when a 90% shot still fails. But I try and remind myself that even that is not a certainty; I mean, if with every step I took in real life I'd have a 10% chance of falling flat on my face, I don't think I'd dare to cross the street any longer (not without some power-armour in any case).Yeah, I'm not advocating that they should leave it buried; in fact, that's why I called it 'cheating.'
I didn't mean cheating in the sense that the game is too easy and they should eliminate that stuff, but rather the 50% that you desperately needed to land and the subsequent joy that comes from that is actually unearned. It'd be much better if they displayed the real numbers (with a 'Difficulty level' modifier or something) on screen, so you can actually feel like you got a bit lucky, versus this somewhat condescending 'Oh look at you, you're on a roll!' Vibe I get now.As for the difficulty level adjustment, a lot of that happens on top of the roll modifications.
The health is modified for both your troops and the enemies, and while I didn't do a whole lot of deep diving on the AI's priorities, the entirety of the decision making is available for you to browse should you choose to do so. I'm not sure if it contains any difficulty specific shackling, but I wouldn't be surprised and I've heard mention that it may, especially when it comes to things like grenade usage and panic mechanics.One thing I forgot to mention is that wound classification is also different based on what you are playing; I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but in general it's easier to wind up 'Gravely Wounded' on Legend than on Rookie, for instance. The extra health and steering pods away from i'm fine with, but i don't like the idea of the game misrepresenting the chance to hit.
If you're going to give soldiers an aim boost on lower difficulty, why not just surface that information?Either way, thanks for the info, I might just muck with the ini files and make that commander+ difficulty you were talking about.I agree with what said, if you're going to make a game where dice rolls are the basic mechanic then its pretty crummy design to fudge that mechanic so much. It would be like if Mario just jumped higher sometimes (obviously that would be much more noticeable than this stats stuff).Anyway, let me counteract this mostly negative post by saying that i'm powerfully addicted to XCOM2 and I love it to bits. : Yeah I'm with you there. Knowing they're modifying the rolls in my favour is actually diminishing the 'whoa I got lucky' feeling. I didn't mean to imply that they should avoid using any sort of modifiers altogether, merely that I'd prefer seeing them presented transparantly.That said, a lot of this game is all about managing and positioning your squad in such a way that I'm never in a position where a single roll can make or break me.
Xcom 2 Is Unfair President
Obviously this doesn't always work out, and sometimes plain bad luck will occur, but I don't quite understand the people I've seen online complaining about how there's no tactics to it and that it's all random luck.: Not that I am disputing the amount of luck you have or anything, but isn't it also in part because of which shots you decide to take in the first place? Most people probably won't even risk taking a 60% shot most of the time, and will only fire if the odds are telling them 80% or above (obviously making these numbers up on the spot here). It's likely people are seeing shots with high probabilities failing a lot more than they'd expect, simply by virtue of those being the only shots they take to begin with. Hmm, seeing this makes me wish they did difficulty like the Silent Hunter games: here's a list of all the difficulty options (unlimited fuel, unlimited air, no dud torpedoes, etc.), turn them on/off as you wish and as you do the 'realism' score changes.I'd like to mix and match options spread across their difficulty levels. no bonus health or will (commander). no enemy bonus health or armor (veteran). no aim modifications (legendary).
pod steering with six enemies (veteran). can get easier missions (rookie). unshackled panic (veteran). unshackled AI (commander). strategic layer (veteran). I'd be pretty shocked if any game outside little indie projects in the last decade used pure rolls without invisible modification.
I suppose this is a reveal for people who don't know how/why games are made like this/haven't modded games before/read modders notes. Very, very few games operate around true randomness. It is known, to some extent, that such a thing is a fallacy anyways. But anyways.Edit: note to self: isn't there a PoE blogpost about this?I feel I have to point out, at some risk pf appearing lame, that the use of the word 'Cheat' here is wrong vs Design. They are part and parcel of THE BALANCE SYSTEM. Only when you circumvent the system are you cheating.
(Also 'Cheating' when a system is involved, has nothing to do with whether you cheat for ease or challenge.) Your blogpost is interesting OP, but for me the deductions are all wrong (well, as regards the 'cheating for you' frame of the post). When we see a value of 0 for example, we should not read that as the 'true value' because it is not modified.
We need to respect the intelligence of the Firaxis designers and realize the value of 0 (or whatever it is) exists.to be. modified. This is a really complex thing to do! But it has a hell of a result.Looking at all your difficulty notes, it's obvious there is no pure game buried within there.
They all have 'quirks'. Every difficulty functions as it should, offering an (attempt) at different accesibility/experience levels. Because no one can simultaneously experience all at the same time/with benefit of being at the apoproate skill level, it's way too early to say how well balanced it is overall.My opinion out of the way, a thanks for posting!
I think it's really fascinating to get a look at what the designers thought was fair. It says so much about how they assume frustration works in players and the 'Swings' the devs want you to feel. It also reveals the system is not binary usually, which is very brave, and probably explains some of the people reporting back to back squad wipes even on rookie. Seems to me it's because the modifications are not meant to guarantee in most cases, only increase the odds. The 'No 100%' rule is pretty neat. : I meant 'cheating' as in 'the number you see isn't actually the number that's calculated behind the scenes,' not in the sense that they shouldn't be messing with the numbers at all.
I have no problem with them doing what they are doing, I just want that surfaced so that the 50% I felt lucky to land shows up as the 75% or 80% that it really is. The way it's set up currently, you get a rush for landing a shot that you didn't expect, but internally you are actually more likely to hit than not, and that reframes it from 'I can't believe I landed that.' To 'I should have landed that.'
It cheapens the experience a bit. You're being 'cheated' out of the gambler's thrill once you realize someone's got a magnet under the roulette wheel, making it more likely that the ball lands on black.I'd never presume to know more about game balance than a designer, only that it makes your triumphant moments a bit weaker once you know that brave rookie, who dodged those shots to get into cover and blast that alien on a 50/50 flip, actually had a very high defensive bonus from his dead friends and a 95% shot on that alien, and you just didn't know it. Good to know the game designers cared more about manufacturing contrived emotional states than creating a mechanically interesting strategy game. Bugs the crap out of me when game designers obfuscate mechanics like this in service of a certain sentiment, in this case the 'that's xcom baby!'
Crap.I would care less if they just incorporated this stuff into the actual game mechanics and didn't just lie to you. Get rid of the displayed percentages and just list something like 'poor' 'average' 'great' odds for hitting. Make the comeback mechanics a 'momentum' or 'desperation' meter or something.
It makes your triumphant moments a bit weaker once you know that brave rookie, who dodged those shots to get into cover and blast that alien on a 50/50 flip, actually had a very high defensive bonus from his dead friends and a 95% shot on that alien, and you just didn't know it.Hm, I dunno. That rookie could still die or fail to make that shot and leave his team dead. And I feel so far as the internet has spoken, that's just more common. I've seen this occur myself anyways, so the fact that when the good version happens it was secretly more likely to happen than I expected doesn't change things that much for me. Frankly, on any difficulty, good things just don't seem to happen that much!If the shot says 50%, and you feel good about making it, I'm not sure how much it matters what the truth is.
Especially considering less than 1% of players will ever know 'The Truth'. So while I can't say that you, OP, feel worse about the game now that you've seen it guts, I don't feel like that's universal. Playing on Rookie and Veteran I've landed and missed a number of real low percentage shots, as well as real high percentage shots. In game the rolls do feel to me like they swing intensely. It feels random, which is more important than the truth of the design I think.
If the game really didn't want me to lose on Rookie, it wouldn't have killed a squad of captains and majors in 2 back-to-back turns. I knew it was time to move up from Rookie to Veteran when I had two missions back to back with 100% shot accuracy. Just felt weird! As for commander. Definitely I got better at the game as I played it more but it more or less feels similar to Veteran for me. The strategic layer is where I bungled that run up.Anyways, I guess I just feel there's no such thing as pure XCOM buried in this code.
There's no fiddling with any ini values that will somehow leave you 'without your hand held'. That's just a crazy simplification of balance in my eyes! The purpose of each enemy and soldier class.
Every value of every ability, every cost of every item was balanced against these modifiers. On top of that you can't touch any combat values without touching the strategic layer values. So, while I like the idea of a 'what you see is what you get'%, attaining that doesn't mean I'm playing either a more balanced or more fun game.All that said, I'm definitely interested in playing and making my own XCOM rebalances because I think there are a world of possibilities. Flavors, more accurately. It makes your triumphant moments a bit weaker once you know that brave rookie, who dodged those shots to get into cover and blast that alien on a 50/50 flip, actually had a very high defensive bonus from his dead friends and a 95% shot on that alien, and you just didn't know it.Hm, I dunno. That rookie could still die or fail to make that shot and leave his team dead.
And I feel so far as the internet has spoken, that's just more common.It's because people complain when their 95% to hit at point blank range misses, but don't talk about those clutch moments when a 25% shot hit and saved everyone as often. It's just the nature of the internet and people in general. Of course it's going to appear as though the former is happening more than the latter, but there is no hard data to support that is actually what is occurring. : The original X-COM UFO Defense is actually less difficult than people give it credit for. It can be a hell of a meat grinder early on, even when you know what you're doing, but by the end when you have an army of psychic-powered flying soldiers with blaster launchers capable of precision guidance straight into a UFO it becomes something of a joke. In that way, it's not much different from the new ones, with their similarly limp end game difficulty curve.That's kind of the point though isn't it? To feel like you are near the brink of destruction, only to adapt to your enemy and finally fuck them up?
: The original X-COM UFO Defense is actually less difficult than people give it credit for. It can be a hell of a meat grinder early on, even when you know what you're doing, but by the end when you have an army of psychic-powered flying soldiers with blaster launchers capable of precision guidance straight into a UFO it becomes something of a joke. In that way, it's not much different from the new ones, with their similarly limp end game difficulty curve.That's kind of the point though isn't it?
To feel like you are near the brink of destruction, only to adapt to your enemy and finally fuck them up?Yeah, certainly that's part of the appeal of XCOM both new and old. I do wish the difficulty curve was a little more consistent in those games. I can't speak to XCOM 2, but there's a point in the mid-late game of Enemy Unknown and Enemy Within where your soldiers basically become a bunch of bulldozers capable of demolishing anything weaker than a sectopod or ethereal and it turns into a bit of a cakewalk to the end.
: The original X-COM UFO Defense is actually less difficult than people give it credit for. It can be a hell of a meat grinder early on, even when you know what you're doing, but by the end when you have an army of psychic-powered flying soldiers with blaster launchers capable of precision guidance straight into a UFO it becomes something of a joke. In that way, it's not much different from the new ones, with their similarly limp end game difficulty curve.That's kind of the point though isn't it? To feel like you are near the brink of destruction, only to adapt to your enemy and finally fuck them up?Yeah, certainly that's part of the appeal of XCOM both new and old.
I do wish the difficulty curve was a little more consistent in those games. I can't speak to XCOM 2, but there's a point in the mid-late game of Enemy Unknown and Enemy Within where your soldiers basically become a bunch of bulldozers capable of demolishing anything weaker than a sectopod or ethereal and it turns into a bit of a cakewalk to the end.I think I am about midway through 2 and it hasn't hit that point yet. It's more of an ebb and flow; I get better shit and bulldoze for a bit, and then they introduce a bunch of new units that force me to rethink my strategies. Seeing some of the research I have ahead of me though I wouldn't be surprised if the games end on full bulldoze mode.
Said:Hm, I dunno. That rookie could still die or fail to make that shot and leave his team dead. And I feel so far as the internet has spoken, that's just more common. I've seen this occur myself anyways, so the fact that when the good version happens it was secretly more likely to happen than I expected doesn't change things that much for me. Frankly, on any difficulty, good things just don't seem to happen that much!I can only counter your anecdotal experience with my own (which has been the opposite), and mention that people seem FAR more likely to complain about a miss then to remember all of the hits they landed.said.
Anyways, I guess I just feel there's no such thing as pure XCOM buried in this code. There's no fiddling with any ini values that will somehow leave you 'without your hand held'. That's just a crazy simplification of balance in my eyes! The purpose of each enemy and soldier class. Every value of every ability, every cost of every item was balanced against these modifiers. On top of that you can't touch any combat values without touching the strategic layer values. So, while I like the idea of a 'what you see is what you get'%, attaining that doesn't mean I'm playing either a more balanced or more fun game.I've never really mentioned a desire to find a 'pure' XCOM or even implied what difficulty I considered to be 'true' (I don't agree with people that look at it that way), but I do think that the game's fluffing of your hit percentages without telling you is condescending in a way, even if they didn't intend it to be.
Like I said, I feel that it's akin to holding a cartoon style magnet under a roulette wheel; it robs a bit of the thrill for me, but it's cool if it doesn't bug you. However, the idea that the classes are balanced against those modifiers is not only untrue but backwards: they're built the same for every difficulty level (minus a small HP change), but the hidden modifiers are tweaked to make each step down easier. The other parts of the game are fairly disconnected from the hit rolls (beyond the wound timer/classification changes), but in the end I'm not so worried about finding a game with better balance as I am with just understanding what's going on under the hood.I personally would have more fun if I knew that shot I blew was actually as tough as they said it is, but I can understand why that doesn't bother you, or why people don't care. With that being said, it seems as though I'm not alone if the mix of responses to this blog post are any indication; in fact, the almost 50/50 (ha) split between caring and not is skewing far harder in the 'care' direction than I originally anticipated.At the end of the day, I'm just happy people are having a good time with XCOM 2, at least when it isn't on fire.said. : I wouldn't go so far as to equate this with the reports of bad performance. It is absolutely clear that this game has some major technical problems, that isn't hyperbole.you hiding data somewhere:P? Yeah definitely agree, but never talked about hyperbole anywhere.
Basic point is no hard data: I don't have access to any numbers about how many copies were sold, and how much trouble every user is having, or what configurations are problematic. Duh, it's kinda busted (so many hard crashes on my machine D: ). But how busted exactly?
Anyways not the point of this thread! Don't wanna hijack an interesting mechanics post with this. Hey people are just bad at understanding random outcomes, hidden modifications or not, we're just irrational (incidentally I overheard people disagreeing over the solution to the Monty Hall problem the other day).
If people are frustrated when 70% shots miss 3/10 times imagine how little fun they would have playing the game if that 70% wasn't actually 95%. Frankly it is a credit to their devotion to the purity of the strategy that they include a difficulty mode that doesn't fudge the numbers to account for human perception. Just to chime in, I'm definitely one of those who doesn't care what they do as far as modifiers for difficulty, but don't lie to me dammit! I personally would have an option for 'base + modifiers = total' display like on every tabletop character sheet I've seen. The dodge mechanic is an invisible 'eff you' number, and it's not fun when a codex splits two extra times because it dodged and got grazed by flanking attacks forcing me to proc all three of my Run and Guns in the same turn to chase them down. And then two faceless appear one after the other because I skulljacked on a retailiation mission.
That's the 'It's Xcom, baby!' Mentality for you, I guess. Doesn't make me feel like a master tactician, but a man out of control. That enemies killed per turn stat can be quite telling if accurate.That said I enjoy the games in the new series a lot, but then I'm not above light save scumming in order to maintain personal enjoyment.
Knowing the next number is garbage lets me plan around it. It's a habit I picked up playing old Fire Emblem on emulators. So where in the config files can I change that 1.2 chance to hit to a 10?Also I have found that you can't really save scum certain things. I was shooting at a dude (with a 65% chance to hit) and kept missing regardless of how many times I reloaded the save. Another time I was trying to hack an alarm thing so I saved before I did it and kept failing that too even when I kept reloading the save.This was talked about in another thread, but like the first game XCOM2 has a seed.
Someone in the other thread described it as being that the rolls are done in advance and saved, so if you reload your next roll will always be, say, a 65 (and fail an action that needs a 66 to win). If you reload and do something different, then go back to the hack you might get a different result.In the first game there was a 'second wave' option to have a random seed so that reloading would give different results.Personally, if I'm not playing a ironman game I like the seed, as it feels like you can be more tactical if that makes sense. Like, if you know 3 steps leading up to that roll work, you can try small variations on a tactic rather than leaving it up to fate.
This is great stuff. There is an XCOM 2 SDK. At some point I want to get into modding, but there is only so much time.I actually used the SDK to pull of some of these statistics and formulas; the code is very well commented (if a bit outdated with the current balance changes, as it talks about a 20% miss streak bonus which doesn't exist at any level anymore) and uses fairly clear variable names, which is something I'm notoriously bad at (I was once told that I wrote great code, but everything I make feels like it already ran through obfuscation). It's a HUGE download, though; something like 50GB so keep that in mind.
So where in the config files can I change that 1.2 chance to hit to a 10?Also I have found that you can't really save scum certain things. I was shooting at a dude (with a 65% chance to hit) and kept missing regardless of how many times I reloaded the save. Another time I was trying to hack an alarm thing so I saved before I did it and kept failing that too even when I kept reloading the save.Well, if you are primarily interested in just playing with the hit chances, open XComGamecore.ini or DefaultGamecore.ini (I usually choose the former, which is normally in DocumentsMy GamesXCOM2XComGameConfig) and Ctrl-F for AimAssist.
That will pull up the section that contains every variable for the hidden dice modifiers, and you can change everything from what threshold the aim assist kicks in (default is 50%), to how big the bonuses is for losing a trooper.Just keep in mind that the '1.2' actually means 'multiply by 1.2 aka take 20% of the base number and add it on top' whereas every other variable (all the 10s and 20s, etc) actually means 'just add it to the base'.If you are interested in changing the actual formula, let me know and I'll try to find the file it's in, but you'll probably need the SDK to make that change. The fact that veteran silently boosts accuracy by 1.1 times the stated value makes those sword misses more unbelievable since one my rangers missed a 90% chance to hit with a sword, when in reality he had a 99% chance. Holy cow.Remember, aim assist caps at 95%. Not saying that's a hell of a lot more believable, but it's still a bit better. Also, enemy dodges (when 'grazed' pops up and you do less damage) are a separate calculation that can kick in even on shots that read 100%, but I didn't include that as I think it isn't affected by difficulty. : The original X-COM UFO Defense is actually less difficult than people give it credit for.
It can be a hell of a meat grinder early on, even when you know what you're doing, but by the end when you have an army of psychic-powered flying soldiers with blaster launchers capable of precision guidance straight into a UFO it becomes something of a joke. In that way, it's not much different from the new ones, with their similarly limp end game difficulty curve.That's kind of the point though isn't it? To feel like you are near the brink of destruction, only to adapt to your enemy and finally fuck them up?Yeah, certainly that's part of the appeal of XCOM both new and old. I do wish the difficulty curve was a little more consistent in those games.
I can't speak to XCOM 2, but there's a point in the mid-late game of Enemy Unknown and Enemy Within where your soldiers basically become a bunch of bulldozers capable of demolishing anything weaker than a sectopod or ethereal and it turns into a bit of a cakewalk to the end.I think I am about midway through 2 and it hasn't hit that point yet. It's more of an ebb and flow; I get better shit and bulldoze for a bit, and then they introduce a bunch of new units that force me to rethink my strategies. Seeing some of the research I have ahead of me though I wouldn't be surprised if the games end on full bulldoze mode.I'm pretty near the end I think, and I've definitely started to feel that 'wheels spinning' feeling a bit more. So what you're saying is, there isn't a difficultly level where all the 'base' stats are actually the base stats? I don't know a lot about game design, but isn't that odd?I mean, if I were designing a game, I'd work on balancing until I had base stats that felt 'fair' and then call that mode normal or whatever equivalent you want to call it.
Then every difficulty below that you'd get a bonus and every difficulty above it the AI would get a bonus. That's probably not the way it actually happens, but it seems the most logical. What XCOM2 has got going on implies they just threw numbers on things initially and then worked the multipliers until everything felt kinda OK. Hey people are just bad at understanding random outcomes, hidden modifications or not, we're just irrational (incidentally I overheard people disagreeing over the solution to the Monty Hall problem the other day).
If people are frustrated when 70% shots miss 3/10 times imagine how little fun they would have playing the game if that 70% wasn't actually 95%. Frankly it is a credit to their devotion to the purity of the strategy that they include a difficulty mode that doesn't fudge the numbers to account for human perception.I think the part where this entire discussion completely breaks down is because two groups of people are arguing for two different things that has to do with the same concept: randomness. I can't speak for anyone else, and I shouldn't, but I kind of will: when someone is upset that they miss 70% chances three times in a row, they are not oblivious to statistics and probability.
They just wish the part where you are playing the game would accommodate for these scenario's. But, the other person comes in and goes on to start explaining how math works. It's far less irrationality, than it is not having fun. Sid Meier realized this himself as he said in a keynote speech where he was blown away how the vast majority of his playtesters hated losing to Barbarians over and over in Civ when the game told them they had 90% chance to win.
It's not that they don't understand math, it's just that it doesn't make for a fun game. That's not to say shit should always hit, but in any - I'll say again - ANY person's game, if the game tells you you have 90% chance to win, it should round out to 90% wins. The fact you can draw the short end of the stick and round out at 50% wins, makes it incredibly frustrating, even if statistically possible. If you're going to make a game that is solely based on probability and nothing else, then statistically, some people will have an easy time with your game because they routinely get the desired outcome, and also statistically, some people will have no fun because they keep losing no matter what they try.If you're telling me you're making a game where it depends on statistics whether I will have a fun time or not, then your game is flawed.
This is what Sid Meier realized. Some players, when recorded, only had like 40% battles won against Barbarians during their playtime.
There was nothing wrong with the math, it was 90% chance to win each time. They just got unlucky rolls.
That makes for a frustrating experience. So the game cheats for the player to even out higher as you get further away from that 90%.And it is apparent in the game. I've been tracking my hits and misses in my most recent finished game on Commander difficulty (which uses cheats for the player), and they were spot fucking on when I entered the final mission. I recorded it in increments of 5% (so 4-9%, 10-14%, 15-19% and so on) and the value always ended up in there. For example, my 80-84% column has 82% success rate.
So even if the game cheats, it pans out in my own game that I play.I think the dissonance in this discussion comes from people (in my opinion wrongfully) suggesting that proper probability that doesn't cheat for the player makes for a strictly better game. I'm not saying it's bad if there are no cheats, but cheats prevent a player from being screwed over purely because of RNG purposes. I will play XCOM 2 roughly 20 more times. I might never have a bad RNG run. But, someone somewhere will only play it once, and without cheats might have his only run be totally fucked. I honestly believe with all my heart I can call that poor game design. Because if you're smarter, you can account for RNG outliers and correct them to create a more fun and challenging game.For one last example, I'm fairly sure some of the abilities do not get the cheats applied to them.
Bladestorm is one such. I have seen it proc more than when I started counting, but when I did, I reached 38. That's 38 procs of what is supposedly 85+% chance to hit and it didn't hit once.
I am on my fourth game now and got the choice for Bladestorm or Implacable again. I thought to myself, why would I pick Bladestorm? It's a dead perk. Then, I convinced myself I had bad luck and should keep trying. 9 procs later, still all misses. It is literally a dead perk in my game.
I honestly do not think that's good. That amount of bad luck is totally statistically possible yes.
And get that shit out of my game. It's not good, fun or challenging. It's just dumb. It led to me installing a mod far quicker than I thought I would. One that increases the chance to hit on swords to be more in line with shotguns (and actually still lower than those) guess what? 5 out of 7 Bladestorms hit now. Far more reasonable.By the way, I'm doing my 4th run on Legend difficulty, and how much easier this run (on a higher difficulty setting!) is than my first two runs on Commander is just actually hilarious.
Although the type of RNG responsible for that is not so much in chances to hit, but moreso map generation and pod encounters. The objective in Guerrilla Ops are generally 3 dashes away from my spawn, whereas they were 6 dashes away in my first two games. Especially 'protect the device' missions were sometimes literally impossible, whereas here I'm already there after they shoot it once. Pretty much every time. I've been watching some Let's Plays too and all I can think was: 'you guys have no idea how much worse your luck can get'.To be clear, I like randomness. But not unfiltered randomness.
This is still a videogame, not a showcase for the concept of probability. If shit gets too ridiculous to the point of not standing a chance just because of random numbers being generated, than the game should totally make up for that.
I really do not like this practice. As a player who takes joy in really delving deep on a game, and progressing through its many difficulty levels, lying to me about something as fundamentally true as a percentage is not good for me moving forward.
It builds preconceptions that actively defy both the highest difficulty and also any other game with 'surfaced' percentages, and also, you know, reality.Does this apply to overwatch as well?I'm playing on commander, second go around, and after a full game never using over-watch ambushes (because why would you?), I decided to do it on a whim with squaddies. They all had a similar chance to hit the pod, 75%, so I set three to overwatch and had the fourth shoot. All 4 shots miss and I threw my hands in the air and thought 'that's why you don't do that'. I mean, missing four 75%'s in a row is not particularly special in xcom terms, but after reading this post, it seems like it must have been rather unusual.
I would have had to miss a 75%, a 90%, a 95% and another 95%. Now, that can totally happen.
But it still seems more likely that I am missing some piece of the puzzle here than I actually just rolled that bad. : Overwatch outside of concealment applies a penalty to accuracy that amounts to a 30% decrease in accuracy against a normal move and a 40% reduction if the target is dashing. Using your example, a 75% hit chance against a stationary target is reduced to 52.5% when on overwatch and 45% when on overwatch against a dashing target.I do not believe any aim assist applies to overwatch but I don't have the code in front of me to confirm that. It's also possible that cover applies to overwatch shots, making it even less useful as a method for actually killing targets (versus locking them in place).Again, concealment negates the aim penalties, but I still do not believe that it applies any aim assist. : My only comment/question related to your response is with the avatar project. Idk about you, but I was very close to filling up the bar in the early game(2 tiles away, to be exact). I simply didn't build out comms facilities or communicate with other areas as fast as I should have, so the enemy went uncontested.
Once I poured 100% of my focus into expanding and taking out black sites/other objects, I haven't had the avatar project progress at all. The only reason I think that is so is because I am taking out a blacksite or objective every 3-5 missions now. I don't know how it works behind the scenes, but everytime I take out a black site it reduces the bar, but also says progress is slowed/halted. So I wonder if the 'timer' in the background for the avatar project is reset everytime you take out a high value objective? If so that might account for the avatar project not being as intimidating as the early game. Am I the only one who thinks its kind of unethical to straight-up lie to the player about how the game is working? I get that's it's 'just a video game,' but it really does feel manipulative and like the player is just trapped inside a Skinner box when the designers are going out of their way to trick you into being excited about epic unlikely moments.
Am omission is one thing (and wouldn't the observant player notice that they NEVER get patrolled into once there are 6 enemies on screen?), but a straight up lie crosses a line.For example, if a developer were doing this same kind of stuff in a free to play game to try and induce the player to purchase microtransactions, play longer, share with friends, etc., then we'd be pretty aghast. Is doing it just so that the player has a better experience any better? And I don't think Firaxis added this stuff to try and make more money; I think they added it to make a better game just for its own sake. But still, it's not like this lie doesn't contribute to their finances at all.I get that they did this stuff to try and curate a particular experience and to avoid issues with variance, but it seems to me like there are many many ways to go about this that don't involve intentionally presenting incorrect information to the player. To me, it suggests a lack of respect for the player as a person, like the player is a psychological black box to be manipulated because we would react negatively to true variance. And it also suggests a lack of faith in your game when you have to tweak things behind the scenes so that the player constructs a false narrative about what just occurred.
On the August 29th episode of the Bombcast there was some pretty harsh criticism of Xcom 2 from Jeff and Brad.I haven't play the game since I beat it around launch (hoping to get the expansion soon), but I thought it was a great follow up to the first game. It had some weird performance issues (I remember long load times), and they still didn't fix some of the camera issues from the first game, but I don't remember much else that I would consider really bad.Am I already looking at this game with rose tinted glasses? I think that the biggest reason that folks didn't like it, beyond the obvious technical issues, is that it doesn't distinguish itself significantly from XCOM 1 unless you have played A LOT of that game, enough to see flaws in the basic design like the overwatch creep issue and that sort of thing. If you come to it after just one playthrough or so, it seems like just a harder version of the base game with a few cosmetic improvements and a bunch of bugs. The expansion helps enormously with creating a sense of change.Also, AndyC80, have you played Terror from the Deep? Cuz talk about unfair. They got some of the worst of the bugs.
And Dan who reviewed it was notably bad at the first game as was mentioned by his previous coworkers, also played Xcom2 on easy while still struggling, wasn't all that enthusiastic about the new stuff. As the only other person who played it was Jeff at the same time and place as Dan, the staffs opinions tend to converge. (at least these days with two offices we get more diverse viewpoints).This is also the situation where the the staff is just not themselves into this genre of game generally speaking. A lot of the impetus for enthusiasm of 2012 game came from sources that are no longer there.When the main source of opinion is a person inept at the game it should perhaps be taken with a healthy dose of salt. Or at least taken into the account if it is applicable to your own gaming preferences. (no offense to Dan he is plenty adept at other genres I dislike or am not good at either)Finally visually and most importantly mechanically speaking Xcom2 is a very clear improvement over the 2012 release in just about every way.
Both games had some technical issues at launch. I largely agree with them. Though I wouldn't remotely consider it a bad game it doesn't capitalize on all the things that made the original reboot so great. My experience was really inconsistent on top of all the tech issues I had.
It was disappointing to me when it came out.I'm playing it again with the new DLC and loving it so far. This might be an unpopular opinion but I think this is what the game should have been when it launched. WoTC recaptures my love for the series in a way the base game did not. I personally didn't enjoy XCOM 2 when i played and finished it at launch. Performance was poor and it was buggy as hell, and i really hated the Avatar project's constant nagging and countdown mechanic.That said i bought War of the Chosen maybe 4 days ago or so and i have already played 25 hours and i'm having a hard time putting it down once i start it. I like the new aspects of it, and outside of a stupid progression bug i got during the tutorial it's been smooth sailing for me.That said the game is still hard on you sometimes, and there will be some missions where you feel like throwing the nearest person you can find through a wall.
But over all i think the experience is much better now and worth playing even if you have played or finished the vanilla version. Base game XCOM 2 runs like crap and the early game has a lot of cheap bullshit in it unless you already know what to do and probably still had to get lucky to survive.One of the first few missions for me was a rescue mission. In order to clear it in the time limit, I had to constantly rush as much as possible. Doing that meant that I managed to clear the mission with no turns left. This in turn means that major deciding factor for successful mission was the out come of all those 53% shots. You basically had to do everything right AND get lucky.
I don't know how Xcom 2 fudges the% numbers but that seems like bit of a bullshit for beginning missions. Few easy missions after that, I get a mission with a snake dude(tte?), bunch of those kind-of-sectoids and 2 walking tanks - all with that strict turn time limit. This was before I had a chance to develop any weapon or armor tech. Oh and the skulljack thing.I think Xcom 2 front-loaded the difficulty bit too much for the most people. This is common problem with most Xcom games as almost all of them start hard but get way easier (and offer way more tactical options) towards the end game. Also at the beginning the game does really good job of confusing you about the geoscape gameplay.
These things combined with various technical issues - it is no wonder why people got bummed out by this game. I'll take their word on the game being a technical mess at launch. I think put it very well.For me, I appreciate the simpler approach of EU/EW.
In fact, because of my comp situation, I am playing both XCOM and XCOM2 simultaneously. My personal experience with both was that they were technically ROUGH at launch. I can't say I had a better or worse experience with either personally. Both games suffered far more in the late game than early game as well, simply due to the number of enemies and allies running around I assume.Originally, I felt like XCOM had a better campaign flow than XCOM2. I think WotC equalizes things by reducing the Avatar Countdown Nag. But, still a world of difference. There just is not anywhere near as much going on in the first one.
I think for a lot of people who loved XCOM as a 'not usually my genre, but' will then be put off by the additions of the sequel. The original is just a simpler, cleaner experience.However.In WotC you can make posters and that is some next level shit. My only complaints with XCOM 2 were the bugs, which were pretty severe at launch. I literally got a migraine in the last mission because the graphics rendering freaked out and strobed random colors for more than 10 minutes.That said, I think XCOM 2 is a huge improvement over Enemy Unknown in both the strategic and tactical layers. They really did a great job identifying and addressing the weaknesses in the previous game's design. WOTC further improves the game, though it can be overwhelming enough that I wouldn't recommend it to a new player. :: I never understood why players felt pushed toward the 'overwatch creep' playstyle.
Xcom 2 Is Unfair Good
The games tell you overwatch has a flat aim penalty (though they do hide the -30% figure from you), and that it's only intended as a last-ditch option for when you're out of position with no good shots.I would guess it`s because how groups of enemies are triggered (which, while I like them a lot, might be the thing I hate the most about these new games) which can make you paranoid of being caught in a bad position, so they slowly turtle across the map instead, so that it`s impossible for the enemies to really ambush you. :: I never understood why players felt pushed toward the 'overwatch creep' playstyle. The games tell you overwatch has a flat aim penalty (though they do hide the -30% figure from you), and that it's only intended as a last-ditch option for when you're out of position with no good shots.Well. Have you ever tried the Overwatch Creep style?It's extremely successful. Doing an EW Ironman mode run right now. Very heavy on creeping:DThe truth is you can easily kite or aggro enemies into an overwatch killroom of doom and that's why Overwatch can ultimately feel OP, not the creeping aspect, but the retreating aspect. Send your first soldier out far.
He triggers the enemies. Bring him back with the second movement. Overwatch everyone. Getting stuck in a firefight? Just back up out of the enemies view. Again, overwatch everyone. They will have to come after you.
Obviously, once you are surrounded this no longer works the same way. The 'creeping wave of overwatch' is not a bad way to play, tactically, based on the games rules, especially at the beginning of missions.This reminds me of the biggest improvement from XCOM 1 to 2, which is that in the original the Overwatch shortcut was just assigned to a damned random ass number, basically, for each soldier.
They standardized it to 2 for all soldiers in the sequel. A genius addition.Oh and I forgot to say I did think their tone was a bit harsh.
Not wrong, just a little too saucy to speak to me. :: I never understood why players felt pushed toward the 'overwatch creep' playstyle. The games tell you overwatch has a flat aim penalty (though they do hide the -30% figure from you), and that it's only intended as a last-ditch option for when you're out of position with no good shots.I've been playing the Vita version a lot recently, and it totally has gameplay tips on the loading screens saying you should overwatch a lot. I'm not sure how different that version is from regular PC + Enemy Within (the camera certainly behaves a bit differently from what I played of the original PC release), but there's a tip basically saying that 'if you get low hit percentages, just overwatch and hope that the enemies move closer in the next turn', which kinda comes across as the opposite of saying there's a major aim penalty. I can totally see why they've been wary of taking 45% shots in the Exquisite Corps series if they've gotten those tool tips. It's less surprising they don't like XCOM 2 than it was that they did like Enemy Unknown.
This isn't a genre I'd consider to typically be in their wheelhouse, and some of the biggest fans of the 2012 game are no longer at Giant Bomb.This.I am a big strategy and RPG fan. I don't expect that coverage on GB (the Austin period aside). Mostly they say stuff I disagree with when they happen to dip into the genres. It's fine, but Chaser is right that XCOM 1 was a blip on this site. It wont GOTY because they got into it, and it was strange that they did.
The sad thing to say as well as that the game's biggest champion for sure was Ryan.I think they can get into XCOM 2 but if they don't it isn't surprising. 2's not perfect in the strategy layer, but way better than 1, which was so shallow and limited in much of any interesting decisions. 2 got more complex and deep in combat (with missions that force you to make more hard decisions and be more aggressive) and for some people they actively don't want that to be something that happens. If it's up to me, I want it to be deep as possible. I like to play an XCOM campaign that takes like 60+ hours.
On GB, the guys are basically shocked when anyone plays any game for more than 60 hours. So it's just a different mindset and tastes and I think you shouldn't reasonably expect it.Like says, the modding is also great for 2. I have loved it. Deserves mention and credit to the devs. I've been playing the Vita version a lot recently, and it totally has gameplay tips on the loading screens saying you should overwatch a lot. I'm not sure how different that version is from regular PC + Enemy Within (the camera certainly behaves a bit differently from what I played of the original PC release), but there's a tip basically saying that 'if you get low hit percentages, just overwatch and hope that the enemies move closer in the next turn', which kinda comes across as the opposite of saying there's a major aim penalty. I can totally see why they've been wary of taking 45% shots in the Exquisite Corps series if they've gotten those tool tips.That's weird because it's totally wrong though.
Half cover is only good for +20 defence, whereas overwatch is -30 aim. You're statistically better off taking the shot on your turn than you are shooting at the alien under overwatch as he darts into the open. 10% better off, all things being equal.
It's also why I get really annoyed if I have to overwatch a shotgun user, because they don't wait for an enemy to close in for a better hit chance, they shoot as soon as the enemy are in the open, several tiles further away than necessary.Edit: I kinda get what they're trying to say with the tooltip, though. If you have bad percentages then you are out of position, and if they move closer it'll hopefully be easier to flank next turn. That's the real key to better hit rates, though.
The closer you are to flanking the higher your chances. I played a LOT of EU and EW and I couldn't get into XCOM 2 when it came out. There's something about about it that isn't as appealing, be it the the more drab color pallete, the enemy designs, the overuse of missions with timers, or the significantly tougher difficulty curve (as far as I can tell normal on 2 feels harder than EU/EW on hard). Add in the fact that it was in a very rough state at launch and was pc only (after making a big deal that accessibility and got significant traction in the console space), well I can't say I'm surprised it got a cooler reception. While it is true that the Giant Bomb crew don't play many strategy games, that was the case of pretty much every video game video outlet I follow. For whatever reason it didn't hook as many people as the first one did.Incidentally I picked up XCOM 2 again and I'm enjoying it more this time around, but boy is it tossing me around. I've only played with Ironman on EW for a long time now, but save scumming is the only way I think I'm going to get past the story missions at this point.
Does the new expansion make the early game difficulty curve less severe? I was going to keep playing vanilla for awhile before getting any dlc, but might get wotc sooner if it makes the difficulty curve more gradual on the front end. BOTH games were rough on the technical side at launch. XCOM2, for me, was not as buggy and the worst I had were some long load times. The staff's opinion on XCOM 1+2 is pretty much meaningless to me. Watch Dan play XCOM 2 on easy for a quicklook.
I think they even try to give reviews to people familiar with games, so they picked Dan. XCOM 2 (especially the new expansion) are AWESOME if you played XCOM 1 for as long as I did. Like people said, if you went through the campaign once on easy or normal then XCOM 2 may seem overwhelming or too difficult, but those changes were 100% necessary. XCOM 1 was stale and after a while, a solved problem. One build order, one path through the tech tree, etc.
This is simply not possible in XCOM 2, less so now with the expansion.It's simply not a genre with universal appeal. XCOM 1 winning GOTY was as much a consequence of that being a weak year for games in general as it was being a game of that genre with exquisite presentation.
Remember, most tactical games use portraits, sprites and other unanimated elements so seeing a game like XCOM present as it did was really cool. It definitely got my roommate at the time (100% a Madden / Call of Duty type of gamer) to dig in and enjoy.
XCOM 2 may have had some technical issues (like I said, I had minor or no issues and I bought it at launch), but is so much a better game it's insane. : If anything I'd say that the early game in War of the Chosen is even more demanding then vanilla Xcom2. There are way more factors that can screw you up. On the tactical layer there are a few new nasty enemies, more diverse set of objectives and of course the titular Chosen that can really mess you up if you're not careful if they appear at an inopportune time.But the biggest demand on the player is definitely on the strategic layer.
XCOM 2 is a buggy mess, and it's maybe the simplest format of game to not make buggy; the first game had problems too. What's the odds of Disgaea or whatever having significant game shaping bugs in them? Like who gives a fuck about XCOM graphics, just make them worse or re-do the engine until the game isn't fucking buggy anymore. I want to play XCOM 2 but I just know that it'll piss me off too much just purely on the technical level; as someone who doesn't care about graphics or framerate much at all. That's just bad all around. Firaxis games have been launching with serious bugs for some time now. That does not do them any favors.
XCOM 2 had some seriously frustrating bugs at release and the mission timers were at times way too harsh even for experienced players. I don't like turtling in XCOM, but this felt like an extreme too much in another direction, often forcing you to recklessly rush without having an inkling of an idea if you'll make it in time to the objective. But like other said, WotC is great and they've made a lot of improvements.
They don't rely on mission timers nearly as much, there's more depth and variety, and plenty of bugs have been ironed out (still encountered some, but nothing game breaking). It also runs way better and the load times are like night and day compared with vanilla. I think they should give it a second chance for sure. : 'More difficult than any other XCOM'? I don't feel nearly as bad save scumming my way through this game, as I am doing currently.Still real fun, although I'm somewhat frightened while waiting for the other foot to drop and the game to announce 'yeah, I know you got like, nearly ten hours in this save right now and you just got magnetic weapons and medium armor and you're super happy about that, but.
Not enough comm towers. Start from scratch, good luck.' Still unsure if that happens, whether it will ruin my attempts to finish it or spur me on harder, because it IS really fun.That said, I will never begrudge anyone for disliking a game due to bugs and terrible first impression, which it seems like XCOM 2 did deliver, at least to Dan and most of the crew. I didn't whine when they criticized Fallout 4 for this - but then that was a game I also was kind of lukewarm on. So, I'd be a pretty huge hypocrite if I decided the 'bug complaint' was inconsequential in this case just because I really like the game. Besides, I have the benefit of playing the console version WELL after launch, presumably after the bigger bugs were weeded out.
I can barely stand the idea of getting a corrupt save file or a reload necessary bug and having to do A FIGHT over again. Never mind the poor souls who did Ironmans and lost their one save, tens of hours in. As much as I love it so far, I have to say that at least in the technical department, XCOM 2 got the criticism it deserved. Yeah, I was supremely disappointed by what I played of XCOM2.
It ran like shit on my PC, I found a lot of the challenge to be unfair and really frustrating, especially the new tactical world map stuff, and it didn't seem like a big enough step up from XCOM Enemy Unknown, which I loved. I keep thinking about giving XCOM2 another go, because of how much I adored the first one, and because I only played 8 hours of it, a lot of which was restarting campaigns after 2-3 hours because of one really bad mission. It's possible that I'm in a different place in my life than I was when EU came out, and I'm less willing to sink my teeth into such a brutally difficult game - I also wan't that keen on Massive Chalice, but I played a bit more of that than I did of XCOM2.I also really hated the little bit of Civ 6 that I played, so Firaxis and I aren't on good terms right now. Civ 5 is probably top ten all-time for me, and EU was my second favourite game of 2012, but Beyond Earth was a bummer, and both '16 releases were really disappointing.
I don't buy a lot of games at launch now, usually only games from developers I have a good track record with, and I wish I hadn't bought XCOM2 or Civ 6 at launch, that's for sure. It's less surprising they don't like XCOM 2 than it was that they did like Enemy Unknown. This isn't a genre I'd consider to typically be in their wheelhouse, and some of the biggest fans of the 2012 game are no longer at Giant Bomb.This.I am a big strategy and RPG fan. I don't expect that coverage on GB (the Austin period aside). Mostly they say stuff I disagree with when they happen to dip into the genres. It's fine, but Chaser is right that XCOM 1 was a blip on this site.
It wont GOTY because they got into it, and it was strange that they did. The sad thing to say as well as that the game's biggest champion for sure was Ryan.I don't buy this at all but I see how more seasoned strategy players share this opinion. EU was a success because of how accessible it was. EU isn't an anomaly and Giant Bomb definitely wasn't the only site that praised the game. It showed up on many a GOTY year lists; PC Gamer, GameSpot, IGN, Kotaku, etc.
Speaking to how welcoming it was to newcomers of the genre.To not acknowledge that is to not realize what that game did so well and what the second game failed to capitalize on. The easy to pick hard master tried and true formula is what the original reboot was able to balance so well. Xcom 2 leans more towards the veterans of the genre which isn't a bad thing but it leaves the more 'casual' players banging their head against things that they were not primed for given the original reboot's slow and thoughtful introduction to its elements.I don't see it as a time and place thing at all. It could have come out at any time (made with that certain times context in mind) and it would have done just as well. I've been playing the Vita version a lot recently, and it totally has gameplay tips on the loading screens saying you should overwatch a lot.
I'm not sure how different that version is from regular PC + Enemy Within (the camera certainly behaves a bit differently from what I played of the original PC release), but there's a tip basically saying that 'if you get low hit percentages, just overwatch and hope that the enemies move closer in the next turn', which kinda comes across as the opposite of saying there's a major aim penalty. I can totally see why they've been wary of taking 45% shots in the Exquisite Corps series if they've gotten those tool tips.That's weird because it's totally wrong though. Half cover is only good for +20 defence, whereas overwatch is -30 aim. You're statistically better off taking the shot on your turn than you are shooting at the alien under overwatch as he darts into the open. 10% better off, all things being equal.
It's also why I get really annoyed if I have to overwatch a shotgun user, because they don't wait for an enemy to close in for a better hit chance, they shoot as soon as the enemy are in the open, several tiles further away than necessary.Edit: I kinda get what they're trying to say with the tooltip, though. If you have bad percentages then you are out of position, and if they move closer it'll hopefully be easier to flank next turn. That's the real key to better hit rates, though. The closer you are to flanking the higher your chances.haha, that is exactly the experience of 'Shotgun On Overwatch' - damn it!
Just wait until he is closer! The scenario that I am thinking of though, is how reveal triggers work. Enemies will act twice. Once when triggered (they move into first position), then again as they take their turn (may move/attack). If you are overwatched you can kill them after the trigger and before they take their first turn. So for sure I agree, when the aliens are all revealed, there are many options much better than overwatch. But, when we talk about 'Creeping Overwatch' style, that usually is applied only until the reveal trigger.This was how the turn timers were used as counter balance.
They didn't want you slowly creeping up the map just killing everything once it was triggered, not even giving the aliens a chance. Definitely there is a lot to say about your squad and level of enemies etc so on for this to work, but, yeah.It's interesting to consider the original X-com approach to this, which was allowing the enemies to shoot you before they are revealed, rather than having the 'trigger' movement give them potentially significant position advantage. It's less surprising they don't like XCOM 2 than it was that they did like Enemy Unknown. This isn't a genre I'd consider to typically be in their wheelhouse, and some of the biggest fans of the 2012 game are no longer at Giant Bomb.This.I am a big strategy and RPG fan. I don't expect that coverage on GB (the Austin period aside).
Mostly they say stuff I disagree with when they happen to dip into the genres. It's fine, but Chaser is right that XCOM 1 was a blip on this site. It wont GOTY because they got into it, and it was strange that they did. The sad thing to say as well as that the game's biggest champion for sure was Ryan.I don't buy this at all but I see how more seasoned strategy players share this opinion.
EU was a success because of how accessible it was. EU isn't an anomaly and Giant Bomb definitely wasn't the only site that praised the game. It showed up on many a GOTY year lists; PC Gamer, GameSpot, IGN, Kotaku, etc.
Speaking to how welcoming it was to newcomers of the genre.To not acknowledge that is to not realize what that game did so well and what the second game failed to capitalize on. The easy to pick hard master tried and true formula is what the original reboot was able to balance so well. Xcom 2 leans more towards the veterans of the genre which isn't a bad thing but it leaves the more 'casual' players banging their head against things that they were not primed for given the original reboot's slow and thoughtful introduction to its elements.I don't see it as a time and place thing at all. It could have come out at any time (made with that certain times context in mind) and it would have done just as well.I think XCOM (remake) is very much a time and place thing, but I do agree with much of this post still.
A huge majority of those publications you listed were excited about this game due to its console-facing PR. Turn-based tactical combat on console has history, but not much at the mainstream level, and not much from western devs.
X-com had also come off a bit of a scare (people had seen the shitty cancelled 3rd person shooter) and were beyond relieved when the Firaxis version was announced. So I think XCOM was poised to surprise people and my feeling was very much that it drew in a lot of people who traditionally didn't play this genre. I had.at least. 4-5 friends where this was exactly the case.
I think EU is maybe more of an anomaly than you want to give it credit for! That said, I can definitely agree with you that XCOM2 didn't do enough to capitalize on the success of its predecessor. In fact, it seemed to me that it willfully didn't want to.It was very telling that from the start of the XCOM2 project they wanted to face PC. I have no data to prove this but my feeling is that retention on consoles was extremely low compared to what they expected. On top of that, Firaxis has been an Expansion House for years. EW, I assume, did very bad on console compared to EU.
I always thought that with XCOM2 they had to sort of 'admit' their base was on PC. Why else plan for that so loudly? Clearly they wanted to avoid the console-facing PR and image association.
Interesting questions that Jake Solomon will probably never answer. I think XCOM (remake) is very much a time and place thing, but I do agree with much of this post still. A huge majority of those publications you listed were excited about this game due to its console-facing PR. Turn-based tactical combat on console has history, but not much at the mainstream level, and not much from western devs. X-com had also come off a bit of a scare (people had seen the shitty cancelled 3rd person shooter) and were beyond relieved when the Firaxis version was announced. So I think XCOM was poised to surprise people and my feeling was very much that it drew in a lot of people who traditionally didn't play this genre.
I had.at least. 4-5 friends where this was exactly the case. I think EU is maybe more of an anomaly than you want to give it credit for! That said, I can definitely agree with you that XCOM2 didn't do enough to capitalize on the success of its predecessor. In fact, it seemed to me that it willfully didn't want to.It was very telling that from the start of the XCOM2 project they wanted to face PC.
I have no data to prove this but my feeling is that retention on consoles was extremely low compared to what they expected. On top of that, Firaxis has been an Expansion House for years. EW, I assume, did very bad on console compared to EU. I always thought that with XCOM2 they had to sort of 'admit' their base was on PC.
Why else plan for that so loudly? Clearly they wanted to avoid the console-facing PR and image association. Interesting questions that Jake Solomon will probably never answer.I'm just not seeing the time and place argument. Xcom (reboot) was successful because it was accessible and welcoming to new players.
Yes, console focus was a part of that but the game itself, ethos and all struck a chord with people that wouldn't look twice at the game if it looked something like, I don't know, Halo Wars. I don't think 2012 was a year where people had a sudden thirst for a good turn based strategy game and Xcom filled that void. I see it more as A well-made game came out and was particularly good at fostering players unfamiliar with the genre. People got something they were surprised by like you mentioned and enjoyed it more because of that. I don't think it would be any less surprising if it came out any other year. : I never understood why aliens get a free move when you trigger them. If the devs were worried about wiping the aliens out before they ever get to move, why did they add the ambush-concealment mechanic in Xcom 2?
Personally, I also wondered why the the aliens didn't just 'hunker down' or slide into the very closest piece of cover. Giving them a full free move makes it very easy to trigger a pod that then gets to sprint into flanking positions and still shoot. Making the move non-free would work, too.
(As in, the aliens only have 1 AP on their next turn after triggering).: Comparing Enemy Unknown to PUBG isn't a very good fit because I think most of PUBG's initial breakout has to do with Twitch and Let's Play personalities. Certainly PUBG sustains itself on and addicting gameplay, but it's discovery was very much a right place, right time thing. There have been tons of battle royale modes and mods before PUBG. EU didn't need any of that to break out, and was basically an unknown genre from Western devs at that time.