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Topic: XCOM 2 (Read 187607 times)
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Strazos
Greetings from the Slave Coast
Posts: 15542
The World's Worst Game: Curry or Covid
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So, I've been restarting my hard-mode ironman run. A lot. Like, repeatedly, because I'll do well for a few missions, and then I will uncover an extra pod at just the right time and BOOM, two dead XCOMs and thing collapse from there. Still love the game, but FFS you get fucked by RNG sometimes. Also, lancers you uncover without being able to kill before their turn - that full-run + unconscious shit is obnoxious. Had one yesterday that crit in back-to-back rounds and one-shotted two of my XCOMs, and dodged two point-blank Overwatch shots. R-R-R-REROLL.
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Fear the Backstab! "Plato said the virtuous man is at all times ready for a grammar snake attack." - we are lesion "Hell is other people." -Sartre
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Khaldun
Terracotta Army
Posts: 15182
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Doing Ironman now and finding the same--absolutely brutal RNG stuff now and again.
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Threash
Terracotta Army
Posts: 9171
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The problem is that early game is brutal and purely RNG based, followed by a more balanced and fun midgame that doesn't last terribly long, and a one turn every pod no matter what's in it third act victory lap.
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I am the .00000001428%
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Fabricated
Moderator
Posts: 8978
~Living the Dream~
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It still has the previous game's problem where in Kevlar your guys go down in a stiff breeze, but if you survive to plated armor/magnetic weapons and aren't complete shit at the game your soldiers' survivability skyrockets.
Like yeah in plated/powered armor you're still TOTALLY killable but you usually need to really, really fuck up. Like, letting 2+ enemies get flanked shots on a single soldier or having the RNG just utterly shit on you by having bullshit where enemies target some solider in high cover+hunker down and somehow chain crits back to back to back or something.
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"The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist." - George Bernard Shaw
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Strazos
Greetings from the Slave Coast
Posts: 15542
The World's Worst Game: Curry or Covid
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I'm not even opposed to XCOMs dying...but in the early game, if I lose my sniper and specialist, there's not a whole lot of coming back from there.
I also need to rush those squad size upgrades - a 5th soldier would make a huge difference.
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Fear the Backstab! "Plato said the virtuous man is at all times ready for a grammar snake attack." - we are lesion "Hell is other people." -Sartre
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Sophismata
Terracotta Army
Posts: 543
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I'm not even opposed to XCOMs dying...but in the early game, if I lose my sniper and specialist, there's not a whole lot of coming back from there.
I also need to rush those squad size upgrades - a 5th soldier would make a huge difference.
I lost everyone except my ranger at some point. The game is still recoverable, don't get too attached to your guys. You can always find more recruits. And when I ran out of recruit money I was able do to those missions to pick up some new blood. Once you get magnetic weapons the game becomes a lot less swingy.
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« Last Edit: February 27, 2016, 01:13:06 AM by Sophismata »
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"You finally did it, you magnificent bastards. You went so nerd that even I don't know WTF you're talking about anymore. I salute you." - WindupAtheist
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Strazos
Greetings from the Slave Coast
Posts: 15542
The World's Worst Game: Curry or Covid
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Had a supply assault mission last night. One round left to just do 1 damage to a trooper...and whoops, the truck two of my XCOMs are taking cover behind blows up, because someone had shot the trailer like 3 rounds prior (nothing was on fire).
I accepted that, though, because my SGT Specialist was still alive plus one other; the dead were just rookies who had miraculously made it through a prior mission.
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Fear the Backstab! "Plato said the virtuous man is at all times ready for a grammar snake attack." - we are lesion "Hell is other people." -Sartre
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El Gallo
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2213
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"I've made a huge mistake" should be the motto of this game.
Replace "enemies spotted" with that. And every time you miss a 90% shot should be "COME ON!"
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This post makes me want to squeeze into my badass red jeans.
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Samprimary
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I hate pods. It's the one remaining impediment to this game's greatness.
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Threash
Terracotta Army
Posts: 9171
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There is a mod out that activates all pods at once when you aggro one, you'd probably have to mod in some benefits to your side too but it turns the missions into rolling fights instead of single pod engagements.
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I am the .00000001428%
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Strazos
Greetings from the Slave Coast
Posts: 15542
The World's Worst Game: Curry or Covid
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I just hate when pods, which you do not have LOS of, activate inexplicably on the enemy turn.
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Fear the Backstab! "Plato said the virtuous man is at all times ready for a grammar snake attack." - we are lesion "Hell is other people." -Sartre
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Fabricated
Moderator
Posts: 8978
~Living the Dream~
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I love the extra map parcel mods since they actually make the maps feel a lot more random but whatever places the pods seems to have uh, issues with them. Should've taken screenshots but I keep having multiple pods crammed onto rooftops and the top of semis and other weird stuff.
It's pretty funny when I have a battle scanner reveal 3 pods on top of a building and then I grenade the floor out from underneath them and between the grenade and fall they all die. I've had a single grenade result in 8 kills.
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"The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist." - George Bernard Shaw
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Strazos
Greetings from the Slave Coast
Posts: 15542
The World's Worst Game: Curry or Covid
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So for now, I think I've finally turned the corner - I managed to rush magnetic weapons and plated armor, while keeping at least a few XCOMs alive. Now at the point with both squad size upgrades, fully kitted out in magnetic weapons, plus a few EXO suits. Powered armor is unlocked, but lol 300 supply. Unfortunately, I have a "Very Difficult" supply raid pending, so of course that could make or break the team.
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Fear the Backstab! "Plato said the virtuous man is at all times ready for a grammar snake attack." - we are lesion "Hell is other people." -Sartre
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Khaldun
Terracotta Army
Posts: 15182
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I thought my latest Ironman attempt was going down in flames when I got a mission to escort a previously captured trooper and it was basically a trap (or that's the way the map played)--when I engaged one pod, I had four of them right on top of my squad--a sectopod + officer + shieldguy; two archons and a muton; andromedan plus two sectoids; officer, lance, exec squad. Specialist misses the shutdown of the sectopod and I thought, well, here we go, everyone's dead even with magnetic weapons and plated. I killzone the sharpshooter--there's a good cone that gets most of the regular ADVENT troops. That's two moves. I have a ranger scramble to better cover and drop a mimic beacon. Three. Psionic goes for domination on the Andromedan--if that fails at 74% I'm really, really screwed. She gets it. Four moves. Grenadier hits the archon/muton group with a plasma, takes half the health off of all of them. Five. 2nd Ranger goes Reaper, kills an archon, kills the muton, shoots the last archon. Six.
Lance moves to attack the mimic, gets killed by killzone. Exec squaddie shoots mimic and misses. Officer goes overwatch. Shield guy shields everyone up, officer shoots mimic, sectopod kills mimic and then targets my guys with the big gun. Sectoid 1 tries to free up the Andromedan (I think--I've noticed they usually try and fail to do something to dominated aliens) and the other raises up the dead mimic (!) as a psi-zombie.
So wow, I'm still alive, surprisingly. I have Kool-Aid Man go all Oh Yeah!!! to the overwatched officer and the shield guy, who are standing right next to each other (kind of a benefit of the map shape--it has forced all these troops into a kind of kill-funnel). Officer misses on overwatch shot, Kool-Aid kills the shield guy, shields go down, officer is wounded. Psionic lances the sectopod and finishes off the officer, who is in line with it. Grenadier hits up the sectopod and shreds it some, it's at about half health. Specialist does capacitor, that brings it close to death. Ranger 1 kills the sectopod. Sharpshooter takes out exec squaddie. Ranger 2 takes out the sectoid who made the zombie. Suddenly it's only one sectoid left.
I really love it when you're in a situation like this and you find a way out--it almost makes up for getting screwed by the RNG now and again. Moments like this are why I love this game so much.
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lamaros
Terracotta Army
Posts: 8021
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Yeah, if you have dominate and a mimic you can pretty much aggro everything without fear.
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Strazos
Greetings from the Slave Coast
Posts: 15542
The World's Worst Game: Curry or Covid
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You know what's a bit lovely? When you stumble across a pod which includes a Sectopod, you're not sure how you're going to take it down but you start with your sniper...who promptly executes it with a superior repeater. Twice in one night, actually. And those were not the only executions.
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Fear the Backstab! "Plato said the virtuous man is at all times ready for a grammar snake attack." - we are lesion "Hell is other people." -Sartre
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Samprimary
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Snipers get all the scopes, extended magazines, and repeaters in my games.
Rangers get all the laser sights and auto-reloaders.
Specialists get the stocks.
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Merusk
Terracotta Army
Posts: 27449
Badge Whore
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My snipers get the low end reloaders because a sniper with squadsight is useless the turn they have to reload. I gave one of mine a hair trigger, too and it was the best investment ever. I had to go with an advanced reloader and magazine to keep up. I had laser sights on one but I think that was overkill.
Rangers got Repeaters, Scopes and Triggers.
Specs got stocks, scopes and low-end magazines.
Heavies got Reloaders and high-end magazines. One always carried shredder ammo and had the shredder perk. What's armor?
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The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
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Threash
Terracotta Army
Posts: 9171
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Patch today fixed a bunch of stuff and nerfed mimic beacons hard.
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I am the .00000001428%
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Khaldun
Terracotta Army
Posts: 15182
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Glad I finished my Ironman run before that happened.
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Merusk
Terracotta Army
Posts: 27449
Badge Whore
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This game was fun for the first run, but I can't find a reason to do a second run. It was far too on-rails vs. open-world for me. You MUST do this, now you MUST do this, this MUST happen or you lose the game now.
I didn't find it interesting because the timer limited your ability to play more than anything. Plus the lack of Random UFO-type encounters meant you were very much meted-out how things were going to play. You knew you were getting 2 combats a month and had to fit research, new facilities, and network expansion within that framework.
A few weeks later I'm finding I rate the game itself only about a 6/10 even though the combat and soldier classes were superior to the original.
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The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
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Tebonas
Terracotta Army
Posts: 6365
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There is a solution for that - mods.
The first mods I installed was a mod that extended timer limits and one that extended the Avatar Counter, and I never looked back.
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Samprimary
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I think we'll be giving XCOM 2 a raft of shit not because of any core weaknesses of its gameplay but because it has necessarily stuck with iterative improvement, so a lot of the gameplay is stuff that a lot of us have already burnt out on. We're all mostly tired of the nancy mess of avoiding pod popping and the reluctance to move boldly on account of it.
But XCOM2 will be infinitely superior to XCOM1 even for us, because unlike the first it is built around modding. Long War 2 will be a glorious thing. A glorious, glorious thing.
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lamaros
Terracotta Army
Posts: 8021
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I'll play again when a truly great strategy layer mod comes out. My mod working has shown me that that is actually a pretty big multi-person (or a true obsessive) job.
As it is the game stagnates badly and becomes busywork after the first third in later playthroughs. It needs a bit more expansion variety and some more simulation in the strategy level.
Still a terrific game for what it is, though.
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Tebonas
Terracotta Army
Posts: 6365
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What really annoys me in this regard is the fact that from a certain point on you only get high level replacement soldiers of a fixed class. So you can't replace key members of your squad if they are killed later in the game (especially not Psi Operatives - because there are no Rookies anymore). Talk about busywork, waiting months until you finally get the class that you need.
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Fabricated
Moderator
Posts: 8978
~Living the Dream~
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XCOM 2 is fantastic. If you're burnt out on the battlescape stuff then XCOM is not for you because that's the point really.
The Geoscape definitely has a lot more to do with less downtime but good fucking god does it get spammy at times. No no, please, stop spamming me with fucking events and missions- I've spent 3 combat operations and 2-dozen notifications trying to SCAN SOMETHING FOR THREE DAYS.
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"The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist." - George Bernard Shaw
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Samprimary
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What really annoys me in this regard is the fact that from a certain point on you only get high level replacement soldiers of a fixed class. So you can't replace key members of your squad if they are killed later in the game (especially not Psi Operatives - because there are no Rookies anymore). Talk about busywork, waiting months until you finally get the class that you need.
wait, you can't recruit rookies after a certain point?
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Threash
Terracotta Army
Posts: 9171
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You can always recruit more rookies, they get refilled at the same time as the supply drop happens.
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I am the .00000001428%
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Samprimary
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yeah I thought they were always available at will from a pool in the Armory — pick a rookie for 25 a pop (or 10 with the relevant continental bonus)
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Threash
Terracotta Army
Posts: 9171
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40 in legendary :(. You CAN run out, but only until the next supply drop.
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I am the .00000001428%
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Tebonas
Terracotta Army
Posts: 6365
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Oh, I see! I think I never risked a second glance at those buttons at the bottom. I should play around less with mods and get to know the base game better, it seems.
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Samprimary
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One of the things you get really used to in short order is always staffing the GTS with rookies to give them an auto level up to squaddie. It also permits to stack your deck heavy on Grenadiers and Rangers — which I think you want at least a two to one ratio over Sharpshooters and Specialists.
Grenadiers are awesome and stack very well and carry you very well through the game.
Rangers are invaluable for concealment scouting pods (they are THE way to manage pods in the game) and they are very cheap to do the specialized upgrades for, since you only need the shotgun upgrade (and can slum a regular upgraded rifle until you get them) AND you can completely ignore swords.
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Polysorbate80
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2044
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Finally discovered how easy it was to change one of the things that irritates me most about the game: giving everyone more than one grenade is just a change in a text file. Because how can you call yourself a goddamn Grenadier when you only get to carry two? That launcher they're waving around should hold at least 6 (I see there's an entry for clip size for the launcher; I didn't play with that one since having an at-will reloadable grenade launcher might be *too* overpowered)
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“Why the fuck would you ... ?” is like 80% of the conversation with Poly — Chimpy
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Khaldun
Terracotta Army
Posts: 15182
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I love using swords now and again, though.
Bladestorm is sometimes a life-saver.
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Fabricated
Moderator
Posts: 8978
~Living the Dream~
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Bladestorm causes really hilarious bugs when enemies are dumb enough to run by your ranger to get to other people.
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"The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist." - George Bernard Shaw
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