X-COM Firaxis - XCOM: Enemy Unknown + Enemy Within Expansion

[Lonely Vazdru]

I managed to play and finish Enemy Unknown when I was 7 or something, without reading any manuals, and never having to wonder for more than 5 seconds or 1 mouse click 'what does this button do'.

 

[Spectacle]

UFOs interface is much better than what we get in most games these days. I blame consoles.

 

[Black]

I don't think consoles are really to blame for this one.
"Even" on the Dex we've had lots of people for whom FO1 and 2 were too inaccessible.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

FO1/2 had a pretty much fool-proof UI/rules work, and that is saying something for a 1997 game, when UI usually were total crap back then.

Looking at those original XCOM UI shots though, it looks like a total mess. I'm glad XCOM is finally arriving in the 21th century with all it's necessary (UI) improvements.

 

[Monk]

Well, I played the game when it was released and had a blast. The whole world had a blast. Now, almost 20 years later we should be swimming in equivalent or even better games. Except we're not. Because gaming industry became a joke. Like music industry. Like movies industry. So of course I'm butthurt to see all my major sources of entertainment being turned into shit. And this Nth dumbed down remake of a game, just like the Nth remake of a movie or uninspired music cover pisses me off because it clearly indicates that things are not getting better.

"Better" is probably not important if we already have something that's close to "perfect," as some point out. And there's another version mentioned earlier that's like the original.

To be over-dramatic, this is akin to the sequence in the original "Time machine" movie, when the hero discovers that the men of the future have let humanity's best books rot in their shelves and became a bunch of morons.

But that's because they weren't taking care of "humanity's best books" rather than writing new books.

Then that would also be you being raped, not only the franchises. As for being free to replay the original, guess what : I'm sick of replaying the original X-Com ! There are only so many sectoïds you can kill in that grocery store before permanent brain damage. It's been almost twenty years. FFS

Now, that's a good point! So, you're "sick of replaying the original X-Com". Are you looking for something different?

 

[Monk]

Of course there's butthurt over remake even if the first ones were already perfect. Because we'd like the same X-COM as before, only with inproved graphics and maybe terrain destruction - but only to make it even more deadly and tactical.

Is it too much to ask?

How about the one mentioned by Haba, i.e., Xenonauts?

 

[Haba]

Just by looking at that screenshot I can spot several glaring problems. Imagine you never played this before and were faced with this interface for the first time. No context help meant you had no fucking idea what the buttons were for or what those colored numbers and bars meant; low resolution meant the interface took up about 40% of the screen; no minimap meant it was pretty to get lost in bigger maps; and so on. All these conclusion were taken just by looking at that screenshot, I'm pretty sure I could find several more by playing.

You are either an utter retard or a very poor troll. Either way, welcome to my ignore list - you'll be in good company.

I was in the primary school when I first played UFO. I had absolutely no problems playing the game without having a look at the manual (which I probably wouldn't been able to properly read anyway). Nor did I have problems completing the game without online walkthroughs or guides.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

So, you're "sick of replaying the original X-Com". Are you looking for something different?

Yes, you totally got it. I'm gonna play some Zelda now.

As for the rest of your points, just like for this one, I don't know if you're being deliberately obtuse or just blind. Either way if you don't see or refuse to see the decline in games complexity, it's not some random poster like me who's gonna open your eyes. I wouldn't want to anyway, shit wouldn't taste any better for me if you finally recognized it for what it is. I guess I'll keep my butthurt and you'll keep your simple mind. I envy you in a very condescending way...

 

[J_C]

Almost everything released after 2000 ? Don't get me wrong, I love xcom and it's easily in my top 10 but saying the interface is one of the best ever is just retarded.

http://xspblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/xcom_ufo_defense.jpg

Just by looking at that screenshot I can spot several glaring problems. Imagine you never played this before and were faced with this interface for the first time. No context help meant you had no fucking idea what the buttons were for or what those colored numbers and bars meant; low resolution meant the interface took up about 40% of the screen; no minimap meant it was pretty to get lost in bigger maps; and so on. All these conclusion were taken just by looking at that screenshot, I'm pretty sure I could find several more by playing.
Can you imagine any of these shortcomings in a modern game ? Saying it's one of the best interfaces ever in gaming is just retarded, and justifying that by saying it's "amazingly elegant and responsive" is not much better either.

Jesus fuck, why did I opt to see ignored content to see what you could possibly have against this?

1. Context help is for retarded people or retarded UI designers. If you need to say "PUSH DA BUTTON RICKY" on every button, you or your audience has serious brain damages. For XCom, it's absolutely unnecessary, to anyone, ever. Even you, as dumb as you seem to be.
2. I measured it, it's about 20% taken by GUI. Been playing too many shit games if you think it's overlarge. Examples of games with far bigger UI are fallout for starters, probably most classic RPGs and strategy games.
3. Minimap? Who gives a shit, it's not a freeroaming RPG. If you get lost on an XCom map you are probably clinically brain dead.
4. Modern games great UI. Who has a good interface? Bethesda? Bioware? Are you shitting us? Consolized interfaces are the most insidious shit imaginable.And there's many good points to XCom interface as well.
For example it is very smart about not letting you misclick. In other games you might accidentally move but it's smart enough to select the nearest character if you click very near to a character. I'm sure that's stopped me from dying many times.

Similarly it won't send your character a million miles away if you click an area that's near but behind a wall, unlike every shitty bioware RPG ever made.

And if you scroll far away and click to move it will skip the intervening movement and go right to the edge of the screen, so you don't have to watch a lengthy walk.

All of which makes you the low point of the board so far in saying dumb shit.

What the fuck?
1. Why is context help for retarted people? It might shock you, but there are people who are not a genius like you when it comes to X-Com, so a little help, maybe a tooltip would come in handy at those buttons.
2. I agree with that.
3. Are you retarded or what? X-Com is a turn based tactical game, that is why it needs a minimap, like every strategy/tactical game. So, you know, you can take a look at the map and see where the friendly/enemy units are.
4. Why the fuck are you bringing up Bethesda and Bioware for example? They make "RPGs", X-Com is not an RPG. Starcraft, Total War have better modern UI.

 

[zeitgeist]

 

[Average Manatee]

Thanks to the feature of popping up the red notification icons to let you jump to any spotted enemy (possibly the smartest idea ever), along with showing enemy movement during alien turns if you can see the alien, I find the minimap 99.9% useless. Why look to a minimap to find enemies when the UI lets you jump back and forth to every single one your squad knows about instantly?

 

[Black]

Jesus fucking Chrystus.

 

[Marobug]

Jesus fuck, why did I opt to see ignored content to see what you could possibly have against this?

1. Context help is for retarded people or retarded UI designers. If you need to say "PUSH DA BUTTON RICKY" on every button, you or your audience has serious brain damages. For XCom, it's absolutely unnecessary, to anyone, ever. Even you, as dumb as you seem to be.
2. I measured it, it's about 20% taken by GUI. Been playing too many shit games if you think it's overlarge. Examples of games with far bigger UI are fallout for starters, probably most classic RPGs and strategy games.
3. Minimap? Who gives a shit, it's not a freeroaming RPG. If you get lost on an XCom map you are probably clinically brain dead.
4. Modern games great UI. Who has a good interface? Bethesda? Bioware? Are you shitting us? Consolized interfaces are the most insidious shit imaginable.

And there's many good points to XCom interface as well.

For example it is very smart about not letting you misclick. In other games you might accidentally move but it's smart enough to select the nearest character if you click very near to a character. I'm sure that's stopped me from dying many times.

Similarly it won't send your character a million miles away if you click an area that's near but behind a wall, unlike every shitty bioware RPG ever made.

And if you scroll far away and click to move it will skip the intervening movement and go right to the edge of the screen, so you don't have to watch a lengthy walk.

All of which makes you the low point of the board so far in saying dumb shit.

Oh god.

1.Do you know what makes a good interface ? If you can use something without having to learn it's interface then it's a good interface. Context help would make everything much easier, saying that's for retarded people is the equivalent of saying a good interface is for retards.
2.You are comparing an old game with other old games. In case you hadn't noticed we were comparing xcom with modern games.
3.That's not just case of getting lost. Wouldn't it be better if you could just click in the minimap and go the place where you want to move the camera instead of scrolling your way there ?
4. Consolized interfaces like Civ, AoE, starcraft, homm's interfaces ?

All of which makes you the low point of the board so far in saying dumb shit.

You totally broke my feelings there

 

[ChristofferC]

1.Do you know what makes a good interface ? If you can use something without having to learn it's interface then it's a good interface. Context help would make everything much easier, saying that's for retarded people is the equivalent of saying a good interface is for retards.

I just want to point out that this idea that an user interface is good as long as it is easy to learn is patently wrong and so called "usability experts" are ruining user interfaces for serious users. Interfaces that you can use without having to learn anything are good for retards but bad for efficiency. Luckily you can still get decent user interfaces under Linux!

edit: You can make an interface that is both easy to learn and powerful, but most "usability experts" only go for the easy to learn part.

 

[mr.doo]

1. Have you played the game there's like 5 buttons. With good design like XCom's they are not needed. I can't remember last time I did a tooltip in any program except on the new and horrible gmail interface where they replaced the text with retarded icons, or shitty microsoft products.
3. It has a minimap, it's just not on the screen at all times. You can't see the enemies unless they are in your LOS.
4. Because starcraft is even less comparable, and it's not modern. For a shitty RTS with no LOS a minimap is crucial, but for XCom it's almost superflous. It's called the Tactical Map, not the shitty pseudo strategy map. You have to carefully look at terrain not quickly see if an enemy came into range and was automatically made visible.

1-5 buttons ? I can count 14 in that screenshot alone. And how you are still refuting something so obvious is puzzling to me.
3-Still, it would be useful to navigate in the map instantly.
4-That's not the point. The discussion was about comparing modern games with xcom and you came up with your "consolized interfaces" bullshit. Saying modern games have a shitty ui just proves you're some retarded kid who obviously has no idea how games were 15 and 20 years ago.

 

[Marobug]

1.Do you know what makes a good interface ? If you can use something without having to learn it's interface then it's a good interface. Context help would make everything much easier, saying that's for retarded people is the equivalent of saying a good interface is for retards.

I just want to point out that this idea that an user interface is good as long as it is easy to learn is patently wrong and so called "usability experts" are ruining user interfaces for serious users. Interfaces that you can use without having to learn anything are good for retards but bad for efficiency. Luckily you can still get decent user interfaces under Linux!

edit: You can make an interface that is both easy to learn and powerful, but most "usability experts" only go for the easy to learn part.

Your point being, if you can make an interface easier to use without having to sacrifice it's efficiency you shouldn't do it because that's for retards only ?
Because I don't see how context help would be bad for anything, other than actually making everything easier to navigate for newcomers.

 

[Average Manatee]

1.Do you know what makes a good interface ? If you can use something without having to learn it's interface then it's a good interface. Context help would make everything much easier, saying that's for retarded people is the equivalent of saying a good interface is for retards.

Needing to read a tooltip isn't having to learn it? If anything very descriptive icons + obviousness of what the buttons does is a much better method. Doing being a better way of learning than reading. Context help is for retarded people, if I and numerous people can figure it out when we were younger than 10 then anyone who can't is probably unable to read anyway.

2.You are comparing an old game with other old games. In case you hadn't noticed we were comparing xcom with modern games.

Yes, unfortunately the last game in Xcom's genre was... probably an Xcom remake. So there isn't much comparison to be made among new games, other than that new games of OTHER genres are pretty shitty and still getting worse

3.That's not just case of getting lost. Wouldn't it be better if you could just click in the minimap and go the place where you want to move the camera instead of scrolling your way there ?

It would be nice, but hardly needed when we already can jump between soldiers.

4. Consolized interfaces like Civ, AoE, starcraft, homm's interfaces ?

All of which are entirely different from Xcom. Most of them also pretty crappy (through their own efforts, not as a result of consolization).
1-5 buttons ? I can count 14 in that screenshot alone. And how you are still refuting something so obvious is puzzling to me.[/quote]

1-5 buttons ? I can count 14 in that screenshot alone. And how you are still refuting something so obvious is puzzling to me.

Is there more than 5 buttons whose function isn't so painfully obvious by their icon that even you understood what they did in under 10 ms?

 

[Marobug]

Needing to read a tooltip isn't having to learn it? If anything very descriptive icons + obviousness of what the buttons does is a much better method. Doing being a better way of learning than reading. Context help is for retarded people, if I and numerous people can figure it out when we were younger than 10 then anyone who can't is probably unable to read anyway.

Jesus. Everyone can figure them out, sooner or later. If you had tooltips anyone could figure them out instantly. Is it that much information to understand, even for you ?
Also "very descriptive icons" ? I highly doubt everyone figured what each icon was for exactly without clicking on them and without knowing jackshit about the game.

Yes, unfortunately the last game in Xcom's genre was... probably an Xcom remake. So there isn't much comparison to be made among new games, other than that new games of OTHER genres are pretty shitty and still getting worse

Are you seriously saying the interface in new games (regardless of the genre) are getting worse since the early 1990's when xcom was released ?

It would be nice, but hardly needed when we already can jump between soldiers.

Yes but for instance, if you had a minimap you could get rid of two buttons immediately because switching between soldiers wouldn't be needed.
Another of xcom's problems when it comes to the interface is that there are too many buttons and they are huge (because of the low resolution).

All of which are entirely different from Xcom. Most of them also pretty crappy (through their own efforts, not as a result of consolization).

Are you saying the interface in those games is crappy while agreeing that xcom's interface is one of the best ever ?

 

[Infinitron]

Some of you people have a serious problem with your rose-tinted nostalgia glasses. (In some cases it's more like rose-tinted retinal augmentations fused to the optic nerve.)

 

[J_C]

. (In some cases it's more like rose-tinted retinal augmentations fused to the optic nerve.)

 

[ChristofferC]

1.Do you know what makes a good interface ? If you can use something without having to learn it's interface then it's a good interface. Context help would make everything much easier, saying that's for retarded people is the equivalent of saying a good interface is for retards.

I just want to point out that this idea that an user interface is good as long as it is easy to learn is patently wrong and so called "usability experts" are ruining user interfaces for serious users. Interfaces that you can use without having to learn anything are good for retards but bad for efficiency. Luckily you can still get decent user interfaces under Linux!

edit: You can make an interface that is both easy to learn and powerful, but most "usability experts" only go for the easy to learn part.

Your point being, if you can make an interface easier to use without having to sacrifice it's efficiency you shouldn't do it because that's for retards only ?
Because I don't see how context help would be bad for anything, other than actually making everything easier to navigate for newcomers.

I guess I don't have a point. I'm just ranting in general!

 

[Syril]

Baldur's gate had a much better UI and more pretty also, not mentioning the inventory.

These kind of UI's are 100000000x better than the shit we get today.

 

[sea]

Baldur's gate had a much better UI and more pretty also, not mentioning the inventory.

These kind of UI's are 100000000x better than the shit we get today.

It's called "we need this to be readable on a 20 inch TV from 3 meters away, and it has to be compatible with a gamepad." PC-centric interfaces can and do exist, but unless you have a guarantee users are using a keyboard and mouse, it's hard to make a UI that takes advantage of that. Spending extra time to make a mouse-and-keyboard-driven UI for the PC version would be awesome, but when you consider it probably means recreating many of the art assets, redoing the scripting and programming, tons of extra QA, splitting the codebase more than necessary, etc. it's also completely understandable why developers don't do it more often. If you have gameplay functions that tie into very specific aspects of the UI (like camera angles or the assumption that only one unit can be selected at once) it's going to be even more of a challenge and may require rethinking the actual gameplay itself.

Of course, I'm not happy about that, but I do think it's unrealistic to think a console game made in 2012 is going to have the same UI as a PC game from 1993.

I just want to point out that this idea that an user interface is good as long as it is easy to learn is patently wrong and so called "usability experts" are ruining user interfaces for serious users. Interfaces that you can use without having to learn anything are good for retards but bad for efficiency. Luckily you can still get decent user interfaces under Linux!

edit: You can make an interface that is both easy to learn and powerful, but most "usability experts" only go for the easy to learn part.

I see your edit, but it's worth reiterating that the two goals are not mutually exclusive. I haven't seen much evidence of videogames being ruined by usability experts either (that seems more confined to the general software industry, smartphones etc.). Even if you have a complex interface, being able to enable or disable different functions, use hotkeys, nesting information not always needed, or providing information contextually can all make a UI that is both powerful and approachable. That said, as a rule of thumb I do think it's worth making sure that a UI is no more complex than it needs to be. Functionality is one thing, but clutter is another.

 

[Infinitron]

It's called "we need this to be readable on a 20 inch TV from 3 meters away, and it has to be compatible with a gamepad." PC-centric interfaces can and do exist, but unless you have a guarantee users are using a keyboard and mouse, it's hard to make a UI that takes advantage of that. Spending extra time to make a mouse-and-keyboard-driven UI for the PC version would be awesome, but when you consider it probably means recreating many of the art assets, redoing the scripting and programming, tons of extra QA, splitting the codebase more than necessary, etc. it's also completely understandable why developers don't do it more often. If you have gameplay functions that tie into very specific aspects of the UI (like camera angles or the assumption that only one unit can be selected at once) it's going to be even more of a challenge and may require rethinking the actual gameplay itself.

Of course, I'm not happy about that, but I do think it's unrealistic to think a console game made in 2012 is going to have the same UI as a PC game from 1993.

Or you can give your game to Nixxes, who I hope will become the go-to company for making your game PC-worthy.

 

[sea]

Or you can give your game to Nixxes, who I hope will become the go-to company for making your game PC-worthy.

Nixxes are nothing special. They do a good job, to be fair, but looking at Deus Ex, it took petitions to get proper keybindings, FOV options added in, the ability to disable object highlights, etc. I'm sure they have some native PC gamers on their team, but I haven't seen much that suggests they are fundamentally smarter or better at what they do than any others (the only difference being that it's what they've been paid to do). Plus, partnering up with another developer is an added cost and not one that's convenient for everyone (or even most).