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Firaxis making next Xcom

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The better game is the most important thing of course. But even in terms of realism the new one isn't any better than the original. The new one doesn't mimmick real life tactics very well. It might appear to on the surface because, hey you have to use cover and overwatch an even a weak form of suppression, but real life tactics are a lot more involved than that. Maneuver, for example, is not very much encouraged by the system(actively discouraged even, as was the point of MadMaxHellfire). And maneuvering is the main purpose of real life squad tactics.
not really. my point was that in xcox you have ONE way of playing, the one laid out by the mappers and by the obtusely restrictive ruleset. in x-com you could play it however you wanted: grenade tossing, demo charges to open new paths, kamikaze attacks, spotter and sniper, lots of explosives and forget accuracy, manouvering squads to actively seek and destroy, static fire squads at defensible crossings...
YOU play x-com they way YOU want, while xcox forces you to be played in the retarded manner he was made to.
 

Gozma

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You can play the way you want in X-Com, or you can play the right way and abuse spotting which is a comparably boring tactic to overwatch crawling.
 

asongforsimeon

Educated
Joined
Feb 15, 2013
Messages
73
The better game is the most important thing of course. But even in terms of realism the new one isn't any better than the original. The new one doesn't mimmick real life tactics very well. It might appear to on the surface because, hey you have to use cover and overwatch an even a weak form of suppression, but real life tactics are a lot more involved than that. Maneuver, for example, is not very much encouraged by the system(actively discouraged even, as was the point of MadMaxHellfire). And maneuvering is the main purpose of real life squad tactics.
not really. my point was that in xcox you have ONE way of playing, the one laid out by the mappers and by the obtusely restrictive ruleset. in x-com you could play it however you wanted: grenade tossing, demo charges to open new paths, kamikaze attacks, spotter and sniper, lots of explosives and forget accuracy, manouvering squads to actively seek and destroy, static fire squads at defensible crossings...
YOU play x-com they way YOU want, while xcox forces you to be played in the retarded manner he was made to.

I must repeat myself. How many sound ways of handling three armed hostiles firmly in cover you know? You can't simply waltz out of cover without suppressing them. And I'm pretty sure there are granades and snipers with spotters in Firaxis's XCOM. And explosives that make alien technology irrecoverable.
 

Bony

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Dec 25, 2012
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So is this gonna be an expansion pack, or a sequel? If it's the latter, I want them to get rid of that shitty Unreal "Consolitis" Engine 3 bullshit.

So have you decided on d1p yet?
 

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
Staff Member
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I must repeat myself. How many sound ways of handling three armed hostiles firmly in cover you know?

Krummlauf-1.jpg


:obviously:
 

EruDaan

Arcane
Joined
Jan 1, 2013
Messages
1,548
So now it's "The Series"?

So what's next? Terror from the Deep 2.0? Or, in Firaxis case, Terror from the Derp? Do they invent a new and mysterious and ancient (tm) and your-little-human-brains-cannot-understand-our-motives alien species as the next enemy? Which will try and conquer earth... again. How many times will Firaxis use the exact same game concept?
"Terror" was set underwater for no other reason but to provide a new setting with the (almost) excact (slightly improved) gamemechanics. What new-and-improved (tm) setting will the next Xcom provide? Just more of the same? I hope not!

And if they are going to copy TFTD - double the fucking squad dize and allow aliens to patrol the map without them getting spawned (which is a shitty mechanic anyway).
 

asongforsimeon

Educated
Joined
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Messages
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So what's next? Terror from the Deep 2.0? Or, in Firaxis case, Terror from the Derp? Do they invent a new and mysterious and ancient (tm) and your-little-human-brains-cannot-understand-our-motives alien species as the next enemy? Which will try and conquer earth... again. How many times will Firaxis use the exact same game concept?
"Terror" was set underwater for no other reason but to provide a new setting with the (almost) excact (slightly improved) gamemechanics. What new-and-improved (tm) setting will the next Xcom provide? Just more of the same? I hope not!

And if they are going to copy TFTD - double the fucking squad dize and allow aliens to patrol the map without them getting spawned (which is a shitty mechanic anyway).


I would love a TFTD remake that focused on making it very, very different from original X-COM and action on dry land in general, if it wasn't, you know, done by Firaxis. Seriously, fuck Firaxis.

Also, Firaxis need to realize XCOM is better as a pc-only game and consoles aren't where their market lies. That what dragged down the new XCOM.

I concur. Never understood why developers think is a good idea to try and push strategy gaming down the throat of consoletards. It's like trying to sell neuroscience journal subscriptions at a hell's angels meeting.


I must repeat myself. How many sound ways of handling three armed hostiles firmly in cover you know? You can't simply waltz out of cover without suppressing them. And I'm pretty sure there are granades and snipers with spotters in Firaxis's XCOM. And explosives that make alien technology irrecoverable.

Smoke. Bypassing. Flanking by way of mouse-holeing or stealth. Heavier weaponry(although like you said this is present in the game). Others as well. So really there are lot's of options than just the limited way the game wants you to do it all the time.


All options that are present in Firaxis' XCOM. Really, what game have you guys played?
 

Bony

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I'm sure next Xcom will be a refined back to roots version that will enhance on the old classic and breathe the old spirit to the genre.









The_Ministry_of_Propaganda_by_Zombiehellmonkey.jpg
 

Trash

Pointing and laughing.
Joined
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About 8 meters beneath sea level.
I'll just happily keep on tossing grenades into every barn, office room and ufo hallway my team of terrified brave troops need to recon and pretend this remake never happened.
 

kris

Arcane
Joined
Oct 27, 2004
Messages
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Lulea, Sweden
quote="darkpatriot, post: 2564431, member: 11796"]
I must repeat myself. How many sound ways of handling three armed hostiles firmly in cover you know? You can't simply waltz out of cover without suppressing them. And I'm pretty sure there are granades and snipers with spotters in Firaxis's XCOM. And explosives that make alien technology irrecoverable.

Smoke. Bypassing. Flanking by way of mouse-holeing or stealth. Heavier weaponry(although like you said this is present in the game). Others as well. So really there are lot's of options than just the limited way the game wants you to do it all the time.


All options that are present in Firaxis' XCOM. Really, what game have you guys played?[/quote]

No. you can't really bypass anyone because they spawn at the place you move to. Maps are also built in such a way that no group can be avoided. you can't sneak past the aliens to collect an artifact and leave. The only thing you can do is move around aliens AFTER they have all spawned.
 

MetalCraze

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Jul 3, 2007
Messages
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Urkanistan
ZOMG new XCom game - how horrible! Previous one was so shit almost everybody on Codex bought it and praised it!
 

spectre

Arcane
Joined
Oct 26, 2008
Messages
5,380
Is Gollop coming to Firaxis for new Xcom?
Why would he? Reading Salomon's sad, sad account makes it clear that most of the Firexis crew cannot into this whole Gollop's excum thing anyway.
 

Misconnected

Savant
Joined
Jan 18, 2012
Messages
587
Is Gollop coming to Firaxis for new Xcom?
Why would he? Reading Salomon's sad, sad account makes it clear that most of the Firexis crew cannot into this whole Gollop's excum thing anyway.

Over the years I've gotten the feeling that Julian Gollop hates Sid Meier's guts. Meier was the Suit-in-Charge on the original stack of X-Com games, and according to various people involved (Gollop included), he couldn't into X-Com back then either. Instead he was exactly the kind of handsy, sanction-threatening prick that ends up responsible for ruining games and franchises and running talented people out of the industry, we all know and love from popular industry mythology.

From various accounts it seems pretty clear that Gollop holds Meier responsible for ruining X-Com 3, the franchise as a whole, for trying to steal the rights to the franchise from Gollop (ultimately Microprose ended up buying it), and for being such an all-round massive dickbag that Gollop all but abandoned his career as a video game designer to avoid ever having to deal with people like that again.

Point being that... Gollop working for Firaxis on X-Com sounds extremely unlikely. But who knows? Maybe if I kick Gollop's teeth out he'll be so grateful he'll give me the bestest blowjob evah. That could totally happen too.
 

Gozma

Arcane
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Messages
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AFAIK basically everything went to hell because Microprose got sold to Spectrum Holobyte in '93 and they wanted to be a licensed game mill; Meier was in America while Gollop only dealt with the European Micros (who he is very complimentary of and basically attributes the strat/tactical level split to, along with programming from his bro. Spectrum Holobyte also canceled UFO Defense after 20-something months of development and it only got saved by some kind of trickery by Micro UK guys). Gollop has been very complimentary to XCOM too and I've never seen any grumbling about those Firaxis rat-finks to go with that, and he never left the industry. Shit like Interceptor came out in '98 a couple of years after Meier had already bailed to go to Firaxis.

I've never seen a real post mortem of Apocalypse I guess, dunno what Gollop "blames" that on.
 

Oarfish

Prophet
Joined
Sep 3, 2005
Messages
2,511
What PC Gamer wants from the next X-Com. Unsurprisingly, it's superficial / retarded. They are asking for scripted missions, like 'rescue the queen from buckingham palace'. Hero customisation options, so you can see them twitch with PTSD and give them hats. Squad banter and dirty foreign accents.

And if you thought that was bad, the net gen fans are asking for fucking co-op in the comments.
 

asongforsimeon

Educated
Joined
Feb 15, 2013
Messages
73
What PC Gamer wants from the next X-Com. Unsurprisingly, it's superficial / retarded. They are asking for scripted missions, like 'rescue the queen from buckingham palace'. Hero customisation options, so you can see them twitch with PTSD and give them hats. Squad banter and dirty foreign accents.

And if you thought that was bad, the net gen fans are asking for fucking co-op in the comments.

well, to be fair it's not like you could ask a great many things out of the new xcom. For good or bad, the game has enough content, the tech tree is comparable to the old one, there is some variaton in missions... yeah things like better air combat and alien base assaults, but it would still be distinctly the same game.
 

Gozma

Arcane
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Aug 1, 2012
Messages
2,951
Wha, you can ask a ton out of the new XCOM. The game has a rather good core that is larded up with shitty decisions and unnecessary development expenses. The 4-way cover system, cover destruction, the rather good AI for that system, the competent tactical/strategic dynamic... the very basic elements of the game are good, and then stuff like the "encounter system", the AAA cutscenes, and the missions that are totally scripted are bad and stupid enough to actively hurt it and undermine the good stuff. I'd like a much more cheaply and quickly developed sequel/expansion that nails down their fuckups targeted only at PC digital download with a better PC UI at a big price discount from normal multiplat bullshit retail.
 

cvv

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Another xcom. After the way they raped the original in the first game and the whole sordid history of the original I don't even care.


Holy shit, thanks for the link. Wasn't aware of this, at all. Probably because I was so sick to my stomach after the game came out I didn't even wanted to know anything more about it.

That is so fucking revealing. So Solomon actually wanted to make a great game, while Meier wanted to make a game that's not complicated. And Meier won.

I owe the guy a big apology...then again maybe not, for his weakly pussyfuck whimpering "I was so wrong, it was all my fault, now I see the error of my ways and the wisdom of my superiors". Fuck him then.

Problem is, I'm so confused now as to whether or not I should support this company anymore. I mean Civ IV is a phenomenal game, and Civ V went from terribly disappointing to actually playable so... I dunno. I guess the next Civ will make or break it for me.
 

Gozma

Arcane
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Aug 1, 2012
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Codex people harping on the difficulty of X-Com vs. XCOM drive me up a fucking tree. I know X-Com backwards and forward and close to as much about JA2/JA2 1.13; they are not hard games at all, the key exploits that make them easy (which are similar for JA2/X-Com) are about as stupid as the analogous exploits in XCOM, and it is much easier to lose XCOM even on just Classic than X-Com on the highest difficulty.

The big thing I disliked about the new XCOM vs. the old one, that I never see anyone else even mention, is that new XCOM has zero tension in the battlescape, while X-Com was, flat out, a fucking horror tactics game, and completely unique in that respect.
 

Zeriel

Arcane
Joined
Jun 17, 2012
Messages
13,376
Yeah, it's pretty obvious they went for more of a heroic, action-movie feel for the new tactical combat over horror. While there is inherent tension because it's an X-COM type game where people can die permanently, it lacks the horror-genre sense of dread over and above practical considerations. That's not all just music and artistic intent, either, you have mechanical things like how aliens are no longer unpredictable. The fact aliens are always active in the original, and more importantly, can fire at you out of the darkness when you can't see them (also giving night missions a higher level of difficulty) is a big part of that horror feel. You're literally getting murdered by intangible things you can't even see until they blow your brains out.
 

cvv

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I can see why Sid Meier made this decision: Hard games and especially complicated hard games are difficult to sell.

A correction - complicated and hard NEW IPs are difficult to sell.

In XCOM Firaxis had basically a money printing machine, a surefire success, no matter the complexity or difficulty.
All that fretting about making the game too complicated was utterly retarded, especially from the developer of THE FUCKING CIVILIZATION series, by far the most hardcore mainstream strategy game. Civ is several orders of magnitude more complex than X-Com and it sells millions of copies - because it's a well known and established franchize. Just like Xcom.

So that's the basic problem of the current mainstream game industry. Once upon a time the main overriding goal of any studio was to make a great game. Today it's to make an accessible game. It's just sad that this mental cancer caught up even with studios like Firaxis.
 

Zeriel

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I'm actually kind of excited to see what they do. They could make a rather excellent game if they wanted to. Then again, that's been evident all along. They made a good prototype, after all, then discarded it for Gears of Cover. The question is not whether they have the talent to make a good game, but whether they want to. XCOM's combat works quite well in multiplayer where Activating Aliens isn't a mechanic, there are several different approaches to killing people, overwatch is actually a fairly bad tactical decision compared to doing substansial moves, et cetera.

My wishlist would be:

* More depth in the Geoscape, less scripted levels. Where possible, make every mission a template rather than a scripted choice. i.e, don't have THE ALIEN BASE LEVEL, have alien base missions you can choose to go on that effect the pacing of the game and the enemy's strength, but aren't decisive in one go.

* Raise the unit cap. Failing that, make 6 units the baseline rather than something you upgrade to. 6 feels reasonable, 4 is just bad and encourages bitching about RNG.

* Get rid of Alien Activation, or at least make it less obvious, narrow, and exploitable. Aliens can activate at longer ranges, and don't necessarily just beeline to attack you when activated. This might lead to too many aliens being activated at once, in which case you can script in hard limits. (say, 10 aliens attack at once instead of 20).

Truth is, though, a lot of the stuff I miss about old X-COM like multiple bases and all the simulation aspects are things that Solomon and Gollop specifically point out as things they like being replaced in new XCOM by discrete choices, so they'll probably keep going in a direction I don't so much like. Oh well. The excellent turn-based multiplayer was worth the 60$ I spent on the game.
 

circ

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What PC Gamer wants from the next X-Com. Unsurprisingly, it's superficial / retarded. They are asking for scripted missions, like 'rescue the queen from buckingham palace'. Hero customisation options, so you can see them twitch with PTSD and give them hats. Squad banter and dirty foreign accents.

And if you thought that was bad, the net gen fans are asking for fucking co-op in the comments.
Looks valid to me. The missions were a repetitive joke. There was 0 customization because everyone ended up looking similar and well the same stupid voice doesn't help either. Squad banter came out in the 90's, so yeah, you would expect that to add some personality. Not to mention accents.
 

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