Author Topic: XCOM 2  (Read 52163 times)

Offline Aklyon

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Re: XCOM 2
« Reply #90 on: February 12, 2016, 08:58:32 pm »
Sounds like the terrain deformation is a lot better in this one too.

Brings back memories of the original, where I translated "stop the aliens from terrorizing City X" to "rocket launchers for everyone, leave a huge glass crater in the middle of City X".
If you give everyone an EXO suit (or a WAR suit), then everyone can, infact, have a rocket launcher, unlike in EU. So if you really need to blow up the map, 5 war suit grenadiers with the right perks and a medic in warden armor means at least 15 explosives from the grenadiers alone (1 x2 grenades, 1 rocket each), plus 6 extra grenades if you didn't give them other items instead, and a medkit in the medic's second item slot.

The downside is that you don't have any swordsmen or snipers in that squad (without increasing the squadsize via .ini edit), and your one medic needs to not get killed/panicked/mindcontrolled.

Offline crazyroosterman

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Re: XCOM 2
« Reply #91 on: February 12, 2016, 09:05:03 pm »
Sounds like the terrain deformation is a lot better in this one too.

Brings back memories of the original, where I translated "stop the aliens from terrorizing City X" to "rocket launchers for everyone, leave a huge glass crater in the middle of City X".
If you give everyone an EXO suit (or a WAR suit), then everyone can, infact, have a rocket launcher, unlike in EU. So if you really need to blow up the map, 5 war suit grenadiers with the right perks and a medic in warden armor means at least 15 explosives from the grenadiers alone (1 x2 grenades, 1 rocket each), plus 6 extra grenades if you didn't give them other items instead, and a medkit in the medic's second item slot.

The downside is that you don't have any swordsmen or snipers in that squad (without increasing the squadsize via .ini edit), and your one medic needs to not get killed/panicked/mindcontrolled.
that sounds absolutely hilarious.
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Offline Draco18s

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Re: XCOM 2
« Reply #92 on: February 13, 2016, 03:29:55 pm »
[I prefer the determinism of something like Bionic Dues
Yeah, same here.

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I prefer combat to be more predictable.  I don't mind an element of chance, but this feels too swingy.

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: XCOM 2
« Reply #93 on: February 13, 2016, 03:33:28 pm »
I prefer combat to be more predictable.  I don't mind an element of chance, but this feels too swingy.
It does sound like you can make build choices for predictable damage, though. In theory, that's enough for me.
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Offline Wingflier

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Re: XCOM 2
« Reply #94 on: February 14, 2016, 02:47:22 am »
Generally speaking, I enjoy the fact that the XCOM games, this being no exception, mirror reality in that most attacks are percentage driven, based on the situation.

Don't get me wrong, a lot of the time that chance is still 100%, like a shotgun at close range or a sniper against a target out in the open. Sometimes you just have to manufacture your "luck", either by blowing out the enemy's cover, or with the aforementioned weapon upgrades and guaranteed damage mechanics the game has to offer.

Either way, there is still an aspect of luck, and in that way it mirrors reality. I believe the game is designed in such a way that you are expected to lose a squad member every few missions, and/or to have occasional mission failures. It wouldn't be much fun if there were no chance of failure. Trust me, I tried playing on Easy and it got boring fast.
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Offline Shrugging Khan

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Re: XCOM 2
« Reply #95 on: February 14, 2016, 10:43:22 am »
Now that people have played it:

I played a lot of XCOM:EU/EW, later tried The Long War, and found that I couldn't play the vanilla games any more because that mod just made everything so much better.

Can I still have fun with XCOM2 or would it be better for me to wait for the DLCs to be done and the modders to get to work?
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Offline TheVampire100

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Re: XCOM 2
« Reply #96 on: February 14, 2016, 04:25:48 pm »
I never played Long War but XCOM 2 is a lot more complex than the first game. There are more different mission types, weapons can be customized with different moduls to your fitting, there are different ammunition and grenade types (something I found in XCOM EU lacking), more different aliens. However, the weapon collection itself does again not seem very big but this can somewhat be excused because you can fit them with modules to personalize them. Thereare soem cool modules like "does always damage, even when missing" or "has a small chance for instakill".

Offline Wingflier

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Re: XCOM 2
« Reply #97 on: February 14, 2016, 06:17:37 pm »
I played Long War, which was a great mod,  and I would say that XCOM 2 is still leaps and bounds superior. Not only in the game mechanics themselves, but in the pacing of the battles and the campaign, which really moves itself right along in a very impressive way. Long War was intentionally... Well long. And there's no problem with that, but the game could often get bogged down with grinding or intensely difficult missions that took incredible amounts of caution and time.

XCOM 2, more than any other reboot of the original series, really refines the formula. It keeps what makes it great, it removes most of the pointless baggage.

Some diehard purists may be put off by this, but it seems like most people have been very happy with how the formula was redefined. If for no other reason than creating a sequel which was just more of the same would have been somewhat silly.
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Offline Mick

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Re: XCOM 2
« Reply #98 on: February 14, 2016, 07:31:43 pm »
Thereare soem cool modules like "does always damage, even when missing" or "has a small chance for instakill".

Those combo well together because the insta-kill can proc off the guaranteed damage. If you use poison ammo rounds, each poison damage will also proc an insta-kill roll.

Insta-kills are extremely helpful against end-game aliens that have like a billion hit points.

Offline crazyroosterman

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Re: XCOM 2
« Reply #99 on: February 14, 2016, 08:51:30 pm »
I played Long War, which was a great mod,  and I would say that XCOM 2 is still leaps and bounds superior. Not only in the game mechanics themselves, but in the pacing of the battles and the campaign, which really moves itself right along in a very impressive way. Long War was intentionally... Well long. And there's no problem with that, but the game could often get bogged down with grinding or intensely difficult missions that took incredible amounts of caution and time.

XCOM 2, more than any other reboot of the original series, really refines the formula. It keeps what makes it great, it removes most of the pointless baggage.

Some diehard purists may be put off by this, but it seems like most people have been very happy with how the formula was redefined. If for no other reason than creating a sequel which was just more of the same would have been somewhat silly.
to be fair purists have probably either just kept playing the original xcom or xenonauts I doubt they would have stuck around after the first remake.
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Offline Shrugging Khan

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Re: XCOM 2
« Reply #100 on: February 14, 2016, 09:23:37 pm »
To be honest that whole possible-insta-kill and guaranteed-damage business sounds very gamey, gimmicky and immersion-breaking.
But then again, the character customisation and the new guns all look completely ridiculous.

But that's just from seeing pictures. Has immersion been downgraded?
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Offline TheVampire100

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Re: XCOM 2
« Reply #101 on: February 14, 2016, 09:47:16 pm »
What do you refer to, when you say "immersion"?

Offline Coppermantis

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Re: XCOM 2
« Reply #102 on: February 14, 2016, 10:11:09 pm »
To be honest that whole possible-insta-kill and guaranteed-damage business sounds very gamey, gimmicky and immersion-breaking.
But then again, the character customisation and the new guns all look completely ridiculous.

But that's just from seeing pictures. Has immersion been downgraded?

Hardly. Only a few of the options are silly, like the monocle. Most of them are cool and very befitting a guerrilla resistance force. While the end-game tech is all fancy, it's no more outlandish than what was in the first reboot game. In the early game, with the Resistance Warrior pre-order pack, I was able to make my guys look like something out of the French Resistance during WWII, which was awesome.

In my opinion, the whole resistance theme makes a lot more sense than what was going on in EU, and so I'd actually say that the game is more immersive. Making contact with local resistance forces and being the ones attacking from stealth, taking what you can from the aliens is better than the arbitrary mechanics in EU.

As for the guaranteed damage, also not really. The insta-kills are rare (the absolute best you can get is 15%, and those mods are scarce late-game items) and the guaranteed damage is trivial. Mostly you give it to lower-ranked soldiers whose Aim stats suck so that they're not totally useless and can possibly land the killing blow on an alien and rank up a little faster.

The only really significant damage guarantees are grenades/explosives (which were almost always guaranteed damage in EU anyway), heavy weapons, and an ability for the Grenadier to expend a lot of ammunition in exchange for 100% hit chance.  Those are hardly immersion-breaking.
« Last Edit: February 14, 2016, 10:12:52 pm by Coppermantis »
I can already tell this is going to be a roller coaster ride of disappointment.

Offline Shrugging Khan

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Re: XCOM 2
« Reply #103 on: February 14, 2016, 10:25:51 pm »
Well, in XCOM:EW/EU all the tech was pretty accessible to imagination. You handled most of the game with ballistic weapons and explosives, followed by direct energy weapons. The aliens had weird plasma weapons and you'd later get them too, but that was pretty much the strangest thing. That, and all the auxiliary equipment, always followed simple patterns that are known in the real world. Obviously within an abstract framework that most games use (I somewhat hate the concept of hit points), but we're so used to that...anyways, in The Long War you can modify your weapons in a number of ways: Accuracy, magazine size, AP ammo and similar things. All reasonable enough. There's also some stranger stuff like boosting damage on beam weapons, or increasing critical hit chance...but it's still something proportional, and fitting to the mental framework of the whole system.

But firearms that are guaranteed to deal damage, or have a situation-independent probability of instantly killing anything from the smallest to the largest foe?
That kind of mathematical black magic really itches. Doubly so if the items in question are a "repeater" and a "stock". The what? How is that supposed to work? Is this the game design way of saying "phug anything resembling coherent world design, have some game mechanics!"? Even discounting the immersion factor, how is this supposed to work out for game mechanics? These bonuses are completely disproportionate to the nature of the weapon, and put immense value on just being able to fire as often as possible.

And I still can't get over the implications of such technology. Why train expert soldiers, why give them a variety of weapons? Why not make weapons with larger ammo pools and higher rates of fire in order to better exploit the insta-kill potential? The projectiles don't have to individually hit or penetrate enemy armour, it'll be sufficient for them to go in the approximate direction of the enemy. It's pointless to have big guns or accurate shooters, so just send out a hundred redshirts in a 19th century line formation and have them spray wildly in any direction the enemy may be in.

Think further! Why have artillery, tanks, cruise missiles and guided bombs? The wars of the future will be fought with clouds of tiny bullet-lets...and stocks. And "repeaters".

Alright, I know it's just a game. But that's silly.

I just had a skim through the XCOM2 wikis, and I can already see that I won't be liking it. Maybe it's for the wrong reasons, but the realistic-ish immersion factor provided by The Long War isn't there, whereas a much more game-y "just because" mindset seems to be more prevalent. Shame.
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Offline Coppermantis

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Re: XCOM 2
« Reply #104 on: February 14, 2016, 10:53:41 pm »
Well, in XCOM:EW/EU all the tech was pretty accessible to imagination. You handled most of the game with ballistic weapons and explosives, followed by direct energy weapons. The aliens had weird plasma weapons and you'd later get them too, but that was pretty much the strangest thing. That, and all the auxiliary equipment, always followed simple patterns that are known in the real world. Obviously within an abstract framework that most games use (I somewhat hate the concept of hit points), but we're so used to that...anyways, in The Long War you can modify your weapons in a number of ways: Accuracy, magazine size, AP ammo and similar things. All reasonable enough. There's also some stranger stuff like boosting damage on beam weapons, or increasing critical hit chance...but it's still something proportional, and fitting to the mental framework of the whole system.

But firearms that are guaranteed to deal damage, or have a situation-independent probability of instantly killing anything from the smallest to the largest foe?
That kind of mathematical black magic really itches. Doubly so if the items in question are a "repeater" and a "stock". The what? How is that supposed to work? Is this the game design way of saying "phug anything resembling coherent world design, have some game mechanics!"? Even discounting the immersion factor, how is this supposed to work out for game mechanics? These bonuses are completely disproportionate to the nature of the weapon, and put immense value on just being able to fire as often as possible.

And I still can't get over the implications of such technology. Why train expert soldiers, why give them a variety of weapons? Why not make weapons with larger ammo pools and higher rates of fire in order to better exploit the insta-kill potential? The projectiles don't have to individually hit or penetrate enemy armour, it'll be sufficient for them to go in the approximate direction of the enemy. It's pointless to have big guns or accurate shooters, so just send out a hundred redshirts in a 19th century line formation and have them spray wildly in any direction the enemy may be in.

Think further! Why have artillery, tanks, cruise missiles and guided bombs? The wars of the future will be fought with clouds of tiny bullet-lets...and stocks. And "repeaters".

Alright, I know it's just a game. But that's silly.

I just had a skim through the XCOM2 wikis, and I can already see that I won't be liking it. Maybe it's for the wrong reasons, but the realistic-ish immersion factor provided by The Long War isn't there, whereas a much more game-y "just because" mindset seems to be more prevalent. Shame.

Well, you do you, I guess. I understand the weird disconnect between the names of mods and their function, like how a stock adds damage on a miss, but that doesn't affect immersion for me at all. In terms of the actual mechanics, I don't see how a chance to insta-kill is any less immersive than a critical hit. You got a good shot off and damaged something that destroyed the enemy in a single shot.

I mean, things in XCOM have always been way more durable than they should be, what with the hit points you mentioned hating. You shoot a guy point blank, he's not going to just stand there and take it, he's going to die. In one shot. As far as I can tell without knowing the devs' intent, that's what the insta-kill represents. Get a good shot off and hit a real tank in its ammunition load and it could easily be rendered combat-innefective, lose its crew, or otherwise be destroyed in one hit. The weird stuff like insta-kill being triggered by poison's DoT is indeed strange, but that is a very specific and fringe case.

The modded stocks could be explained that they make the weapon easier to handle, improving the soldier's ability to hit in ways that inflict superficial wounds even when they fail to hit in a way that does "significant" damage. In this sense it's the inverse of the dodge mechanic.

As for why we don't just give everyone these things, it's because we can't. XCOM doesn't have a hundred redshirts to throw at the enemy. Sending that many rookies at any mission would probably be a lot more effective than the kill-teams we have, but that's impossible. Like I said, this is why I think XCOM 2 is more immersive than EU/EW. In the new game our limitations make sense, but in the first one, when we're allegedly an organization backed by the UN or whatever, we should be able to do as you say and drown them in bodies. And that game didn't even have the mods you say wreck the immersion, which we also don't mass-produce because they're alien technology that we don't have the resources or the knowledge to make, so we have to steal their good gear from them.

The only thing I agree with you about is what the mods literally are. A repeater conferring this chance doesn't make much sense, it would be more logical to be conferred by a soldier ability, a type of ammo, or something else. And maybe stuff like the final bosses being susceptible to these shouldn't be the case from a gameplay perspective, as it's fairly anticlimactic, but I would view that as even more immersion breaking than the current system. It's not uncommon for bosses to be immune to many effects in games, because that would often times allow silly amounts of cheese, but arbitrary immunity to effects doesn't make a lot of sense.
« Last Edit: February 14, 2016, 11:04:48 pm by Coppermantis »
I can already tell this is going to be a roller coaster ride of disappointment.

 

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