X-COM XCOM 2 + War of the Chosen Expansion Thread

I had a similar experience, although I guess even more bullshit insofar as you can consider random explosions at least part of intended game mechanics. Enemies can fall through the world geometry and still be considered alive. If this happens to you on a "kill all aliens" mission you will automatically fail since you can't kill that last alien. Was responsible for my only mission loss on my L+I campaign.

That's basically what they did with Civ V in broad strokes, and I guess why a lot of people hate it. They removed (at least initially) a lot of management complexity, and added in Panzer General combat as a trade. Panzer General combat (i.e 1UPT) didn't work in Civ either, so it was a pretty bad trade. I guess that's the new Firaxis trademark: streamlining so heavily you start removing stuff that was considered core to the original experience.

Oh, and for the heck of it, here's my end game screen, though I have nothing to add re: XCOM 2 that hasn't already been said.

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Wonderfully shows the XCOM learning/skill/gear curve actually.

Early game: "30% hit chance against a trooper at point blank range? WTF?"
Mid game: "I killed a pod in one turn before they could react. Is that good?
End game: "I killed something called "avaturd" before it did anything. Was it supposed to do anything?"

RNG, something you only aknowledge during the first months of the game.

 

It could be that, or it could just be the classical issue we are aware of with games where 90% of players don't even finish a game, so early game enemies will all always be the most "deadly" in a counter like that.

I remember World of Warcraft had a similar section on their website, and the most deadliest enemies outside of certain raid bosses that were designed to be wiped on ad nauseam was the legendary Hogger, a level 10 elite NPC you meet within hours of starting the game.

 

I don't want to be "that guy" but I see the people that are calling the game "easy" are not playing Ironman. Sorry, but that defeats the whole point. Even the feeling of "if I do a wrong move here I'm fucked for good" changes the whole experience a lot.
I would like to ask an honest estimation of how many times you people reloaded a failed mission/turn in your campaigns but I can understand non-disclosure.

 

Check my spoilered image above and you'll have my answer re: reloads.

Truth is XCOM 2 has a weird difficulty curve that doesn't change much on the respective difficulties, L+I after first few months really isn't very different from C+I. To be fair, this problem was also there in EU, but if devs talk a lot about fixing a problem and then make it worse one has to wonder what the hell is going on.

Incidentally, just saw this on the XCOM reddit. It's a good read:

http://www.pentadact.com/2016-02-25-solving-xcoms-snowball-problem/

 

Wow good for you man. How many hours did you spend doing that? I'm honestly curious. I would also like to know the amount of retries.
I do find it to be quite the achievement to be honest so I'm willing to praise you

 

Probably about a week of solid play. I only played on L+I. If I had played on Commander or non-Ironman first I'm sure the L+I run would have been quicker and smoother. I didn't play it as religiously as I did EU when it came out, because of all the performance issues. (What can I say, some things take me out of the immersive experience of gaming as we know it.) Probably the biggest thing that made the game relatively "easy" for me was having played hundreds of hours of EU, though. The game was a solved problem that we all already solved in 2012. All that was new and challenging was the first few months, timers, and some new geoscape stuff.

The "rough beginning" bit was exactly like EU/EW Impossible, though, so suffering through that was familiar.

 

From what Steam says, I've 231 hours in EU/EW with 4 wins in Classic/Ironman plus a couple that I just didn't finish. I stopped approximately 1106 hours before getting "burned" as we all know.
In XCOM 2 I've 46 hours and I still struggle around the 1/3 part of the game. My latest campaign seems promising again, but I still can't say that I'm comfortable with any situation

 

I'm enjoying XCOM2 and I think all the consoltard rhetoric is a bit silly, but this part of the interview is hilarious:

Audibly thinks! He was thinking so hard you could hear it! And he was thinking so hard because this was the first time in the course of making two games he thought about letting you shoot, then move. (which was a perk in XCOM2012, so not sure why he didn't think about it then).

 

But you can already do that with the ranger(provided you kill someone) or the sniper (Death from above, or serial). Basically, it allows you to "kite", shoot and get out of harm's way.

 

I must say Run and Gun, Implacable & Untouchable are a fun combination. Made great use of the plasma shotgun in my playthrough. In fact the top end of the ranger tree is all fantastic, point blank rapid fire rarely backfired on me and has no cooldown.

 

I killed the second avatar who was surrounded by mutons by running & gunning, shooting him twice with a high crit shotgun (rapid fire), then skedaddling to cover (implacable). The rest of my team, including a permanently (balance? what balance?) controlled Gatekeepercrusher, killed the mutons and another pod (capacitor discharge - 3 dead snakes).

 

It's the moving up to point blank range that tends to backfire.

Clearly the answer is to give the aliens all those perks. Muton walks up to you, fires twice, runs away behind full cover, and is then invulnerable to your first shot.

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I'm joking, but I miss Muton Elites and Ethereals from the first game. It was fun having enemies that were truly tricky to kill if you got unlucky.

 

I never saw them put the most ridiculous ones on aliens, but lightning reflexes was a cute add for sure.

Heh, imagine an avatar with all the psi ops abilities.

 

I dunno, they'd still die in one turn. Even with that "stasis yourself when on the death's door" thing.

 

Dying in one turn is pretty reliant on RNG on Legend. If they teleport the wrong way you might be out of luck.

 

You have many tools to deal with that though. Blaster bombs, null lances, high-movement units, grapple hooks, even grenade launchers will help in a pinch. The only time Avatar lived more than one turn is when I foolishly moved my assault in what I thought was a better position on top of one of those pillars and then realised he couldn't reach him.

 

Armor HP mechanic was removed so your soldiers spend time healing and you are forced to use more than 6 soldiers. In Xcom EU/EW it was super easy to keep everyone out of sickbay as soon as you got access to mid game armor.

 

That was a cool link, someone needs to send that link to Jake Solomon on twitter or at least to some overhaul mod makers.

 

As of armor mechanics - it is still a retarded solution. It would be better to keep armor as armor and rule a minimum 1 damage if shot would do less damage than armor rating.

 

This game can be surprisingly fun at times.
After pinkpowerranger Volourn's shamefur dispray in my first attempt, I decided to replace him with Codexia the potatoranger. Because if there is one thing potatos know, it's bringing a potato slicer to a gunfight, amirite?
And boy did that wingless hussar on foot rock! Thanks to untouchable and bladestorm she sliced her way through one pod, the adding second and the faceless trying to hug her in the end, without ever being in danger. With a little help from Kaiserin's killzone of course. And now she haz RAEPer.


Yeah I know, on higher difficulties it would have probably ended in a horriburu gangrape. Just leave me my short moment of triumph.

 

I find it hilarious how with rapid fire you can fire twice even if you only have 1 ammo left

 

All special attacks bend the system rules (you can reload your sniper rifle for free during overpowered Serial attacks and then use a pistol).

 

Well Serial does not say you have to do a kill with Rifle so I don't see that as bending rules. But firing a shot with non-existing ammo is stupid. Even in Xcom EU/EW that didn't work.

 

It's bug. It should be darkened with tooltip it needs at least two ammo. Then again, you see using burst of shots...