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f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  Gaming  |  Topic: XCOM 2 0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.
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Author Topic: XCOM 2  (Read 178951 times)
Jeff Kelly
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Reply #70 on: February 04, 2016, 03:44:05 AM

There are two issues that keep me from pre-ordering this one.

1. I haven't heard anyone mentioning if the difficulty progression is better. The satellite rush of the original was not really fun and the game got ridiculously easy once you survived the first year or so.
2. Timed missions: Not really a fan.

It seems that their solution to people turtling up and overwatching constantly was to make most missions on a timer instead of solving the underlying issues with their game mechanics making overwatching so damn necessary. I don't like timers I play turn based exactly so thatIdon't have to rush and I'm not sure how much this affects gameplay.
jakonovski
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Reply #71 on: February 04, 2016, 03:48:44 AM

I'm in this weird place where I want to play a new XCom really badly, but then I'm afraid it'll go like the first game and I just endlessly compare it to the 90s original. And then the old games are just clunky enough to not evoke the same feeling they did back in the day.

I'll say the setting is a definite improvement, as it never really made sense why XCom was such a small time op, and even less so when you became festooned in alien tech, hovering in the air while exploding entire suburbs with blaster launchers.



Tebonas
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Reply #72 on: February 04, 2016, 03:51:29 AM

Preordered since day one, preloaded since today.

Nothing else to say before I played the game, though. Not spoilering myself too much and just wating in anticipation.
Rendakor
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Reply #73 on: February 04, 2016, 06:09:41 AM

I want to play it eventually, but I'm in no rush since it's so similar to the last one. Not that that's a bad thing, but with Hex's big PVE patch and FF Explorers (plus Fire Emblem in 2 weeks) I've got plenty to play already.

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Reply #74 on: February 04, 2016, 06:42:37 AM

I can't wait for this. I know I am spread so thin I won't be able to immerse myself into it as I should and want, but I am SO excited about this. The fact that it doesn't have too many new things doesn't bother me at all: my biggest disappointment when I finished XCom 1 was that there was no other campaign/story to play, and in that sense the Expansion was a burning disappointment. Now, here we are!

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Reply #75 on: February 04, 2016, 10:18:53 AM

Added it to my Steam wishlist so I will hear if/when it goes on sale. Unless one of you rich folks wants to send it to me. My birthday is in 3 weeks... awesome, for real

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Mandella
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Reply #76 on: February 04, 2016, 12:38:47 PM

I'm holding off for a bit while worrying about the fact that nearly every mission now has a timer is going to wreck my slow and careful playstyle.

I don't mind the occasional speed mission, but nearly every one?

Guess I'll just go play Xenonauts when I want my retro X-Com fix...
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Reply #77 on: February 04, 2016, 12:43:49 PM

nearly every mission now has a timer

Oh? Shit!

Merusk
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Reply #78 on: February 04, 2016, 12:52:31 PM

It's an enrage timer.  why so serious?

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lamaros
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Reply #79 on: February 04, 2016, 12:56:07 PM

About 50-60%.

Played a few hours, too much of it in character creation.
Sir T
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Reply #80 on: February 04, 2016, 01:05:06 PM

Mission timer is a deal breaker for me.

And my lack of cash  awesome, for real

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Reply #81 on: February 04, 2016, 01:12:02 PM

Are the timers in turns, or in actual time? The latter is a "wait until this is modded out" dealbreaker.

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jakonovski
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Reply #82 on: February 04, 2016, 01:13:12 PM

Is it a timer that just makes sure you don't screw around too long, or does it force you to use a subgroup of time optimized moves? A lot is going to depend on what the answer is.

edit: I'm assuming a turn limit here.
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Reply #83 on: February 04, 2016, 01:27:16 PM

I'm assuming it's more like an "after X turns, we will spawn the fiery chariots of alien heaven to rain down furious retribution and copious ass-fucking upon you" type of timer.

Megrim
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Reply #84 on: February 04, 2016, 02:02:19 PM

Yea it's that. You are the terrorists, and they are sending the army to deal with you, so you only have a limited window.

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lamaros
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Reply #85 on: February 04, 2016, 02:20:21 PM

Yep, its a turn limit, not a time limit. How that plays out can depend on the mission, I think. Some are "if you don't do it by X, you lose the mission" , some are "if you're not in this point by x, you're dead and only those who are survive", some might involve other things like huge reinforcements or the like, not sure.

It's great and makes the game better in my view and current experience. It means you have to take some risks, or play very well, rather than just hanging back and doing a lot of overwatching.

Enemy groups patrol now, which is also good, especially in conjunction with the starting from stealth aspect. This means that in non-timed missions you can actually wait a bit and set up some clever openings, and in timed missions you can start pretty aggressively without having to take on too much risk.

I've been playing a fair bit of XCOM recently prior to this, and so far XCOM2 is a better game for every change I've seen. I'm only a few hours in, though.

Final edit: Strategy layer and base building is much more interesting at first sight.
« Last Edit: February 04, 2016, 02:32:12 PM by lamaros »
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Reply #86 on: February 04, 2016, 03:19:50 PM

I want to play it eventually, but I'm in no rush since it's so similar to the last one. Not that that's a bad thing, but with Hex's big PVE patch and FF Explorers (plus Fire Emblem in 2 weeks) I've got plenty to play already.
I did not like the first XCOM remake, but I have bought XCOM2 and I'm looking forward to playing it after work.

Is FF Explorers worth picking up, by the way?

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Reply #87 on: February 04, 2016, 03:25:34 PM

Is FF Explorers worth picking up, by the way?

I like it but it feels very action MMO'y, for better or worse.  I'd compare it to Fantasy Life stripped down to combat, but skinned for Final Fantasy, moreso than the usual comparison to Monster Hunter.  There's a lot of kill 10 rats and grind in general.  Depends on what you want from a game like this I suppose.
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Reply #88 on: February 04, 2016, 05:14:16 PM

Mission timer is a deal breaker for me.

Agreed.

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Falconeer
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Reply #89 on: February 04, 2016, 05:29:25 PM

Premature complain after only watching the introduction: basically everything I did in the first game didn't matter. All that fighting, and winning in the end, didn't matter at all. We still lost. Mmmmmhnn dislike.

lamaros
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Reply #90 on: February 04, 2016, 05:41:10 PM

Don't know about you, but I died quite a lot first time around. Took a few goes before I graduated to victory.
lamaros
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Reply #91 on: February 04, 2016, 05:42:50 PM

Mission timer is a deal breaker for me.

Agreed.

The turn timers are reasonable, they just stop camping. It's still a strategic turn based game. They just stop some of the less thematic cheese strats.
Mandella
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Reply #92 on: February 04, 2016, 06:04:32 PM

Mission timer is a deal breaker for me.

Agreed.

The turn timers are reasonable, they just stop camping. It's still a strategic turn based game. They just stop some of the less thematic cheese strats.

I'm willing to be convinced. After all, it does fit the setting this time around.

As long as the timers aren't too egregious I can be okay with it. I was never the "overwatch camper while I alt-tab around the internet" type of player anyway. But I do hate being rushed by some arbitrary limit...

As for the "we lost" intro, well, apparently they are basing this go round on 95 percent of my playthroughs (especially Terror From the Deep -- I may not have actually beaten that one)...

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Reply #93 on: February 04, 2016, 06:24:13 PM

I think we should make an f13 character pool!

koro
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Reply #94 on: February 04, 2016, 07:01:52 PM

I can virtually guarantee that the turn limits for the missions that have them can either be removed or greatly lengthened via the mod tools.

Speaking of which, via the Long War mod guy's Steam profile:

"XCOM 2 Development Tools
406 hrs on record"
Merusk
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Reply #95 on: February 04, 2016, 07:09:32 PM

My only problem with the turn timers in X1 was they were ridiculously short for some of the missions and since nearly every map was auto-generated things got funky sometimes.  I specifically remember one mission I only found the first objective by zerg-rushing the whole map inside of the 4 turn limit. The second one was only a half turn's movement away.  Ohhhhh, I see.

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Reply #96 on: February 04, 2016, 07:41:45 PM

Is FF Explorers worth picking up, by the way?

I like it but it feels very action MMO'y, for better or worse.  I'd compare it to Fantasy Life stripped down to combat, but skinned for Final Fantasy, moreso than the usual comparison to Monster Hunter.  There's a lot of kill 10 rats and grind in general.  Depends on what you want from a game like this I suppose.
It is very grindy, and seems a good deal easier than MH. The combat is more complex than Fantasy Life; there are a lot more classes and more abilities too (plus the abilities are customizable). I only got it to hold me over until FE, and it's doing that nicely. The only missions I've repeated are the Eidolon ones (because the capture mechanism sucks) and the one to get the Onion Knight armor.

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Reply #97 on: February 04, 2016, 11:27:05 PM

Turn timers in a game like this are almost necessary, otherwise you get the "overwatch-for-50-turns" and/or "bunker up in the most defensible part of the map and lure enemy groups one by one" problems. With a timer, the player is forced to play somewhat aggressively and actually take some risks now and then. An example from another game is SR:Dragonfall, where the most memorable encounters were those with some sort of time pressure. Invisible Inc also wouldn't work at all without the alarm level going up each turn.

That said, I feel they may have gone a bit overboard. After the tutorial, all mission types so far had some sort of timer, whether explicit (you have x turns to do y or the squad is lost), or implicit (save x civilians, but the aliens will kill one each turn / protect the target device with y hitpoints and a nearby enemy shooting it each turn for z damage). Sometimes you can set up all you want, but after you engage the enemy a timer will start (SPOILER type missions), and in some cases you can also just kill every alien on the map before the timer is up to solve the problem as well.

Also, once you've dealt with the main objective, the timer typically goes away and you can mop up the remaining aliens at your leisure (exception: extract-the-VIP type missions).

Jeff Kelly
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Reply #98 on: February 05, 2016, 12:14:39 AM

"The player is forced".

This is not directed at you personally but fuck that game design mentality. If players abuse a game mechanic then firstly why do developers care if it's single player? Secondly if players abuse a game mechanic then fix the fucking game mechanic. Make it so overwatch is not 'necessary' or that it is not always effective. Make it so people have other options for scouting without one false move fucking your whole campaign. Find out why people use that particular strategy and change the mechanics accordingly.

Turn timers are the laziest "we have to teach the players how to play the game 'right' without changing anything meaningful" implementation of a fix.
Tebonas
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Reply #99 on: February 05, 2016, 12:20:46 AM

To be fair, they seem to have done other things to fix this as well. For example starting in stealth and the new ambush mechanic allow you to scout out the mob and position your soldiers prior to the first strike.

I am against time limits as well and hope there will be mods at a later time that extend them somewhat. Because thematically they fit really well, but I've already finished a mission at the last turn and lost my best soldier due to timing restraints in another one.
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Reply #100 on: February 05, 2016, 12:41:14 AM

I do NOT like turn limits, but I understand why they went that way and I can't really criticize them for it. Interestingly, in XCom 1 I couldn't force myself to be aggressive and I did play that game of turtling with constant Overwatch, then move 1 square and pass turn, then another and pass turn, so I could basically kite the enemy and make sure I would never get in trouble. While I loved the whole experience, I felt that it was hard (for me) not to play that way and that if anything Overwatch was a lazy mechanic that made the gameplay pretty stale, which is one of my constant complains about turn-based games and what makes them hard to balance for PvP.

So in short, the idea of a turn timer gives me anxiety, but I think it makes every map more like a chess problem to solve -which is not a bad thing- than an exercise in patience to make sure aliens have no fair chance to ever catch you off guard.

Jeff Kelly
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Reply #101 on: February 05, 2016, 01:12:30 AM

Having to start over from the beginning because a risky play killed your run dead is OK if you're playing a rogue-like and a whole game takes half an hour. You can't blame the player for playing extremely risk averse if taking unnecessary risks might lead to a premature end of a 30+ hour campaign simply because you can't replace your max level squad at that point with rookies and level them up again.

Yes overwatch is a lazy mechanic but if you want your players to play risky strategies you have to incentivize them or at least make it so a total loss of a squad is something you can reasonably handle in the late game. The limitation of 4 - 6 squad mates makes it so that levelling up a rookie means that you've replaced 20% of your strike team with dead weight and the difficulty curve makes using a whole squad of just rookies unfeasible in the late game. Players are simply trying to protect the 'valuable' max level soldiers because those are assets whose loss will put you at a huge disadvantage.

Just because they've painted themselves into a corner due to their limited mechanics doesn't mean that forcing the player to abandon a cheesy but prudent strategy will be the correct move. Worst case you have a lot of really pissed off players that quit your game because they had to restart the campaign over and over or you put even more emphasis on save scumming.

If you want the players to use soldiers as a resource that could be lost make it so losing them is something you can cope with.
Jeff Kelly
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Reply #102 on: February 05, 2016, 01:15:00 AM

As it stands XCom 3 seems to have taken a few steps into that direction already. From what I've heard squad members are a whole lot easier to replace than in the previous game.
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Reply #103 on: February 05, 2016, 01:31:07 AM

I am not sure Jeff. After all, if you want to play easy, you can choose the "easy" difficult setting, and the game will still work better with the turn limit on easy, than without the turn limit on normal. Again, I personally don't like the concept, but it was probably a good decision. One players can work around by accepting to crank down the difficulty setting.

A lot of times players complain about a mechanic making a game hard, forgetting they can still make the game easier yet still dynamic if they wanted without having to rely on a dummy tactic. Yet many would feel like they are cheating by doing so, while they wouldn't by abusing a mechanic.
« Last Edit: February 05, 2016, 02:29:45 AM by Falconeer »

Tebonas
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Reply #104 on: February 05, 2016, 01:39:09 AM

I also think the limits won't seem as bad once we retrained ourselves how to play the game. The "standard" way to play Xcom 1 seems deadly in Xcom 2. And not only regarding the time limits. Some enemies have to go down fast, or their abilities wipe you out!
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