Gozma
Arcane
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No, that was a proto-internet rumor. I think I would have discovered it when dumping 20 million in supply ship loot onto the open market every month if true
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X-COM Firaxis - XCOM: Enemy Unknown + Enemy Within Expansion
- Thread starter Peter
- Start date
No, that was a proto-internet rumor. I think I would have discovered it when dumping 20 million in supply ship loot onto the open market every month if true
I must have the shittiest RNG then...because I miss every shot unless the chance is >65%...it's still a fun game...but it's annoying having most of my guys die due to bullshit rolls rather than bad positioning...not much I can do when 4 guys can't hit one Sectoid -_-
- Joined
- Oct 30, 2009
- Messages
- 6,747
Yes and big yes.
Way better than the Codex gives it credit for. I can only guess they're basing their opinion off the fact it has cover and a console release, or they're basing it on the demo which was two scripted tutorial missions on the easiest difficulty. On classic difficulty even sectoids are dangerous and I was having pretty steady casualties until the mutons came out. Met mutons in two missions so far, both times involved my last survivor running back to the skyranger and bugging out. The AI has been pretty on the ball too, haven't noticed any horrendous moves, and it's pretty good about moving to better cover and taking a shot, or trying to break suppression if you're suppressing a unit, or whatever. The times they DO do silly shit is when they panic/retreat. Once in a while if you're doing particularly well and wipe out a bunch of aliens in one turn, the survivors will fall back and hide, and usually aren't as good about returning fire or picking the best cover at that point.
Is it better than the Codex gives it credit for or is this just the MHC-Steam-bro talking?
Lack of random maps may be a bummer later but I haven't had any repeats (In-game, played on maps I've seen from videos) yet in 6ish hours.
Sounds cool. Will give it a spin, and will pay money for it if it is as good as you say.
sser
Arcane
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- Mar 10, 2011
- Messages
- 1,866,938
As an avid fan of the original and tactical games in general, here's my take. Also, I'm playing Impossible/Ironman.
- It is not a $50 game. It has $50 aesthetics, but it is not a $50 game. In fact, I seriously would consider this originally being much cheaper a real possibility -- it being bumped up after the first-person XCOM fell through.
- The game is shallow and really can't be compared to the original. It can't be compared to a lot of its peers in the genre, to be honest. It is amazingly simplified and the gameplay leans more toward rogue-like than tactical.
- The move system has tons of flaws. You simply have zero control over movement. The game just gives you a path and your soldiers run through it. Huge problem. If an enemy is on Overwatch, waiting for people to run by, and you want to avoid it by entering a room through the back, I found the game wouldn't let me. It always sent the path forward in a way that would get me shot. In another instance: after a Thin Man dies he releases a cloud of gas that poisons anyone who walks into it. I wanted to run up to better cover that was near the gas, but not in it. Well, the pathing would only take me right through the gas. I could either move to the right and then move up, sacrificing my usage of abilities, or I could just run through the gas. Brilliant.
- The shooting system is fucked. Shooting is always "all in," there are no variances (snap shots, auto shots, aimed shots, etc.). This actually makes the game play out like you're rolling dice for everything you got. For example, in the original: let's say you have an enemy in the next room. There were a number of ways to shoot at it and then move back to where it would never return fire. Not so in the new game. If you and another enemy are on opposite sides of a wall, and you shoot and you miss, well too bad. You're fucked. It's literally all in all the time. Like playing craps and betting all in with every throw. This gives the player really bad feedback, IMO, because you will feel incredibly screwed over when your guy somehow missed a dude standing in the open five feet away... It also makes a panicking squad, and they will panic over the dumbest of things, really horrific and damaging. The designers didn't seem to understand that if A) Having limited the squads to 4-6; that B) a guy shooting his own guy is huuuuge on the outcome of the fight. Soldiers and firing have no agency -- they are locked in, meaning if a panicked soldier shoots he will shoot at something. Panicking soldiers in this game are about as damaging as having a missile launcher squaddie mind controlled in the original. In fact, it can be so bad, as panic spreads like wildfire over the simplest of events, that I don't even know what gave the developers the idea that the player would see "mind control" as some horrible thing in comparison. But none of the bad feedback and designs here are as bad as...
- The cover system. The cover system reveals the game as one, big, giant RNG. I honestly thought cover would be something that would solidify damage numbers, making cover a sort of ugly face for a war of attrition, thus increasing the value of flanking. It would make sense that if you were behind full cover and got hit the damage would be modified to some extent; whereas if you got hit behind half-cover of behind no cover you were opened to all kinds of nasty modifiers like crits and what not. Nope. If you get hit behind cover you're still apt to take full damage or even be one-shot by a massive crit. In my above assumption, cover would be hedging your bets; in the actual game, cover is just another roll of the dice. Here's the bigger problem: it doesn't feel like cover has any consistency whatsoever. I've had guys in full cover get crit-killed by an alien shooting clear across the map. I've had my guys flank and shoot at the backs of aliens and miss, only for the aliens to turn around and one-shot guys behind full cover. No matter how much you leverage yourself into "better positions," no matter how much you outthink the AI, you are a slave to the RNG. I actually had a mission just a few moments ago where I missed every single shot fired. All of them. The enemies, by comparison, were 5/5 on hitting guys behind full cover.
There are a bunch of other issues with the game, but that's most of the design parts I disagree with. A lot has been left unsaid about some particularities.
Oddly enough, I'm still having fun for now in that repetitive, grinding rogue-like way. I can tell the game won't have lasting power, though. It is really, really terrible if you compare it to anything else, but it is passable on its own. Aesthetics are decent, pacing is alright, and the difficulty is ramped. Honestly, I'm sure I'm enjoying it because I'm a sucker for absurd difficulty (Ninja Gaiden 2-type). If I wasn't such a masochist for bad games and hard difficulty I probably wouldn't like this at all. And also because the dearth of TBS games is just that bad. There's so little out there that this is what it has come down to. The game provides tactical problems and difficulties in its own way. It's kinda like a card game played on a boardgame, more or less.
Summary, whatever.
Rating: it's a twenty-dollar game/10.
- It is not a $50 game. It has $50 aesthetics, but it is not a $50 game. In fact, I seriously would consider this originally being much cheaper a real possibility -- it being bumped up after the first-person XCOM fell through.
- The game is shallow and really can't be compared to the original. It can't be compared to a lot of its peers in the genre, to be honest. It is amazingly simplified and the gameplay leans more toward rogue-like than tactical.
- The move system has tons of flaws. You simply have zero control over movement. The game just gives you a path and your soldiers run through it. Huge problem. If an enemy is on Overwatch, waiting for people to run by, and you want to avoid it by entering a room through the back, I found the game wouldn't let me. It always sent the path forward in a way that would get me shot. In another instance: after a Thin Man dies he releases a cloud of gas that poisons anyone who walks into it. I wanted to run up to better cover that was near the gas, but not in it. Well, the pathing would only take me right through the gas. I could either move to the right and then move up, sacrificing my usage of abilities, or I could just run through the gas. Brilliant.
- The shooting system is fucked. Shooting is always "all in," there are no variances (snap shots, auto shots, aimed shots, etc.). This actually makes the game play out like you're rolling dice for everything you got. For example, in the original: let's say you have an enemy in the next room. There were a number of ways to shoot at it and then move back to where it would never return fire. Not so in the new game. If you and another enemy are on opposite sides of a wall, and you shoot and you miss, well too bad. You're fucked. It's literally all in all the time. Like playing craps and betting all in with every throw. This gives the player really bad feedback, IMO, because you will feel incredibly screwed over when your guy somehow missed a dude standing in the open five feet away... It also makes a panicking squad, and they will panic over the dumbest of things, really horrific and damaging. The designers didn't seem to understand that if A) Having limited the squads to 4-6; that B) a guy shooting his own guy is huuuuge on the outcome of the fight. Soldiers and firing have no agency -- they are locked in, meaning if a panicked soldier shoots he will shoot at something. Panicking soldiers in this game are about as damaging as having a missile launcher squaddie mind controlled in the original. In fact, it can be so bad, as panic spreads like wildfire over the simplest of events, that I don't even know what gave the developers the idea that the player would see "mind control" as some horrible thing in comparison. But none of the bad feedback and designs here are as bad as...
- The cover system. The cover system reveals the game as one, big, giant RNG. I honestly thought cover would be something that would solidify damage numbers, making cover a sort of ugly face for a war of attrition, thus increasing the value of flanking. It would make sense that if you were behind full cover and got hit the damage would be modified to some extent; whereas if you got hit behind half-cover of behind no cover you were opened to all kinds of nasty modifiers like crits and what not. Nope. If you get hit behind cover you're still apt to take full damage or even be one-shot by a massive crit. In my above assumption, cover would be hedging your bets; in the actual game, cover is just another roll of the dice. Here's the bigger problem: it doesn't feel like cover has any consistency whatsoever. I've had guys in full cover get crit-killed by an alien shooting clear across the map. I've had my guys flank and shoot at the backs of aliens and miss, only for the aliens to turn around and one-shot guys behind full cover. No matter how much you leverage yourself into "better positions," no matter how much you outthink the AI, you are a slave to the RNG. I actually had a mission just a few moments ago where I missed every single shot fired. All of them. The enemies, by comparison, were 5/5 on hitting guys behind full cover.
There are a bunch of other issues with the game, but that's most of the design parts I disagree with. A lot has been left unsaid about some particularities.
Oddly enough, I'm still having fun for now in that repetitive, grinding rogue-like way. I can tell the game won't have lasting power, though. It is really, really terrible if you compare it to anything else, but it is passable on its own. Aesthetics are decent, pacing is alright, and the difficulty is ramped. Honestly, I'm sure I'm enjoying it because I'm a sucker for absurd difficulty (Ninja Gaiden 2-type). If I wasn't such a masochist for bad games and hard difficulty I probably wouldn't like this at all. And also because the dearth of TBS games is just that bad. There's so little out there that this is what it has come down to. The game provides tactical problems and difficulties in its own way. It's kinda like a card game played on a boardgame, more or less.
Summary, whatever.
Rating: it's a twenty-dollar game/10.
Well thanks for warning sser 
waiting for Xenonauts instead.
waiting for Xenonauts instead.
Zboj Lamignat
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2012
- Messages
- 5,875
Finally more detailed impressions from someone who doesn't have a track record of being a turd slurper, thanks!
Multi-headed Cow
Guest
This is gonna be one of those posts.
Your range of movement is determined by squares (Though I'm fairly certain things like height don't impact it), being sent through the front entrance when the game says you can go through the back may make sense if you can only reach that point by going through the front entrance. Unless you hit a freak situation where you were on the side of a building, say front to your left and back to your right, and even though you had a full range of movement available on the back-side the path always routed you through the front. If that was the case then all I can figure is your "Back range" must've run out one square before where you wanted to move, and where you wanted to move could only be reached by going through the building. I've never had a situation like that happen.
For thin man poison clouds, yeah. It's a shame you can't move within your non-dashing zone to fine tune your move action, but I roll with it because what the hell, that's how the game is. Dumbed down popamole movement also makes you decide if you want to run through that poison cloud to line up a better shot/do something useful, or avoid it and do something less useful. C&C
Yep, dice rolls can fuck you. It can be difficult to recover if you lose a high percentage roll you put a soldier in danger for. I feel screwed over, but not in an abusive way. The game lists percentages, and if you only managed to get a 95% chance instead of a 100% chance to hit then there's still a chance things could go badly for you. My protip for getting around this is stay where you have better cover and use those 45% crap chances and try to keep your squad spread out enough for flanking. Doesn't always work out due to dice rolls, but that's what this game is.
Panic is horrendous, yes. That's why veterans are so important since they get increased will from levels, and partially why the upgrade from the officer school that automatically upgrades all rookies to squaddies is so useful. Aliens don't outright panic, but their equivalent is getting spooked and your soldiers will yell they're falling back. They do dumb things while falling back and are usually easy pickings.
And just for the hell of it, there is one class who can fire then move (Or fire and fire, fire then reload, etc). Heavy weapons second level ability called bulletswarm. Makes firing a single move action. Doesn't invalidate your complaint but there is a class who bends that rule, sorta like how assault can move twice then fire sometimes.
You said you were playing on impossible in the screenshots thread, was this coming from an impossible game? 'cause while I've lost soldiers in high cover (And killed aliens in high cover, height difference impacts accuracy too) I've never had anything like what you said happen. More often than not if I lose a soldier who was in high cover it's because multiple aliens fire at him in the same turn, the first alien(s) missing and destroying the cover in the first shot, following alien mopping up. The player can do the same thing with laser and plasma weapons if you take those lower percent shots.
If this was on classic, then I dunno what to say. I've had tons of casualties but haven't felt I've been fucked by the dice any more than the aliens. If it was on impossible, then I'd say you're playing a difficulty mode called impossible and to cut that out.
Jake Solomon take me away~~
Your range of movement is determined by squares (Though I'm fairly certain things like height don't impact it), being sent through the front entrance when the game says you can go through the back may make sense if you can only reach that point by going through the front entrance. Unless you hit a freak situation where you were on the side of a building, say front to your left and back to your right, and even though you had a full range of movement available on the back-side the path always routed you through the front. If that was the case then all I can figure is your "Back range" must've run out one square before where you wanted to move, and where you wanted to move could only be reached by going through the building. I've never had a situation like that happen.
For thin man poison clouds, yeah. It's a shame you can't move within your non-dashing zone to fine tune your move action, but I roll with it because what the hell, that's how the game is. Dumbed down popamole movement also makes you decide if you want to run through that poison cloud to line up a better shot/do something useful, or avoid it and do something less useful. C&C
Yep, dice rolls can fuck you. It can be difficult to recover if you lose a high percentage roll you put a soldier in danger for. I feel screwed over, but not in an abusive way. The game lists percentages, and if you only managed to get a 95% chance instead of a 100% chance to hit then there's still a chance things could go badly for you. My protip for getting around this is stay where you have better cover and use those 45% crap chances and try to keep your squad spread out enough for flanking. Doesn't always work out due to dice rolls, but that's what this game is.
Panic is horrendous, yes. That's why veterans are so important since they get increased will from levels, and partially why the upgrade from the officer school that automatically upgrades all rookies to squaddies is so useful. Aliens don't outright panic, but their equivalent is getting spooked and your soldiers will yell they're falling back. They do dumb things while falling back and are usually easy pickings.
And just for the hell of it, there is one class who can fire then move (Or fire and fire, fire then reload, etc). Heavy weapons second level ability called bulletswarm. Makes firing a single move action. Doesn't invalidate your complaint but there is a class who bends that rule, sorta like how assault can move twice then fire sometimes.
You said you were playing on impossible in the screenshots thread, was this coming from an impossible game? 'cause while I've lost soldiers in high cover (And killed aliens in high cover, height difference impacts accuracy too) I've never had anything like what you said happen. More often than not if I lose a soldier who was in high cover it's because multiple aliens fire at him in the same turn, the first alien(s) missing and destroying the cover in the first shot, following alien mopping up. The player can do the same thing with laser and plasma weapons if you take those lower percent shots.
If this was on classic, then I dunno what to say. I've had tons of casualties but haven't felt I've been fucked by the dice any more than the aliens. If it was on impossible, then I'd say you're playing a difficulty mode called impossible and to cut that out.
Jake Solomon take me away~~
Mary Sue Leigh
Erudite
I never got how this cover worked very much in the demo levels. It seems you can basically always attempt to fire, even through solid walls, but the chance of hitting anything may suffer? It does seem like at least they nailed the difficulty of the highest setting in the original pretty much - your own squaddies never make even the surest shot, aliens can pull a longrange snipe shot out of their a--'sses pretty much all the time 
Fart Master
Savant
- Joined
- Oct 10, 2012
- Messages
- 241
I never got how this cover worked very much in the demo levels. It seems you can basically always attempt to fire, even through solid walls, but the chance of hitting anything may suffer? It does seem like at least they nailed the difficulty of the highest setting in the original pretty much - your own squaddies never make even the surest shot, aliens can pull a longrange snipe shot out of their a--'sses pretty much all the time
Cover doesn't mean shit. All it does is give you an accuracy penalty against the target, you shoot through solid objects like cars and rocks constantly. Glad I didn't pay for this turd.
Multi-headed Cow
Guest
It's exactly that. There's some slight LOS but they're really generous with it. If a soldier and an alien were on opposite sides of a corner of high cover they could fire at one another, and pretty accurately. If they were on opposite sides of a piece of high cover and weren't sharing a corner they couldn't fire at all and probably wouldn't have LOS either.
A thing that can fuck you is rushing a soldier up to the opposite side of a corner an alien's on, you'd think that would be accurate but the worst I've seen it is something like a 65% chance to hit. Then if you miss you're right on top of the alien, who is free to move to a piece of cover that puts your character into a flanked position (Which increases chance to hit for that alien) and fire which will have a hell of a lot better chance.
But, BUT! There are ways to make that more favorable. If you've got a heavy soldier in the area, the heavy could use suppression on the alien which reduces the alien's chance to hit and gives the heavy a free attack if the alien attempts to move. Even if you don't have a heavy for suppression, putting soldiers on overwatch after a failed charge can either deter the alien from flanking your soldier or possibly kill it with a reaction shot. Aliens will be jerks and will fall back and use overwatch as well, so if aliens moved back into the fog of war and you know vaguely where they're at you could either send up a sacrificial soldier (Preferably using a two action dash, dash gives you a defense bonus which helps against reaction shots while dashing) or an assault that has lightning reflexes which causes the first reaction shot against that soldier (Either per mission or per turn, I forget) to automatically miss. Overwatch can only trigger once a turn, so once someone draws their fire you can do whatever else you want. I used that to capture an alien a few missions back, he was hiding behind cover using overwatch since I had him suppressed, so I dashed my sniper past his view to draw his fire then moved my taser soldier up and tased his ass.
MAN I SURE DO LOVE TALKING ABOUT XCOM.
EDIT: JESUS IT'S ALMOST 6AM TIME TO STOP SHOOTING ALIENS
Surf Solar
cannot into womynz
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2011
- Messages
- 8,838
How many different items/weapons/armours are there to be bought/made? I mean the stuff you need the scientists for. I so far saw only one heavy armor in the preview videos, some laser and some plasma stuff. Is that all or is there more? What exactly are the autopsies or interrogations doing? Just like in the original?
Also - are there many of these "rescue that VIP guy" ? Because I hate such stuff. :<
Also - are there many of these "rescue that VIP guy" ? Because I hate such stuff. :<
spectre
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2008
- Messages
- 5,637
I found a legit-looking way to run it on XP. Will try and test it myself when I have time (probably tomorrow or the day after)
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2964408
Repasting, in case some retard decides to pull it down.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2964408
Repasting, in case some retard decides to pull it down.
KawaiiSara said:
Multi-headed Cow
Guest
No idea on a complete list as I've only barely made it to laser weapons before things got too bad, but you can research laser stuff (Rifle, sniper/shotgun, heavy/interceptor laser are all different techs), plasma stuff, carapace armor, skeleton armor (Less HP than carapace, gives a defense bonus so you're less likely to be hit, also has a grapple for speedy access to high ground), titan armor (Powered armor), ghost armor (Limited cloak), archangel armor (Jetpack armor). Then there's psi shit somewhere and some side-items like the super taser, alien scope, medkit, etc. I believe some of that can be further upgraded with a building you can research. And various interceptor and satellite upgrades. There seems to be a fair amount to research and you want most of it.
Autopsies and interrogations are prerequisites for some techs and can give you "Credits" toward other tech. Like interrogating a sectoid will give you a bonus to research laser weapons faster and crap.
There are multiple escort missions, and the missions themselves are scripted but when you get them isn't. You only get escort missions from the council, unless you count terror missions which I wouldn't since if you "Save" a civilian there it instantly runs off the map and doesn't need escorted. Mission types I've seen thus far are abduction, terror, UFO (Landed and crashed) capture, base assault, escort, and bomb defusal. I've had probably 3-4 escort missions in 6-7 hours of play. You control the VIP you're escorting, so that's nice at least.
Surf Solar
cannot into womynz
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Very nice, thanks for the summary!
zeitgeist
Magister
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- 1,444
Tons of menus and submenus and Tetris inventory navigate very well on a modern controller with shoulder buttons/triggers actually. Most recent tactical jRPGs are much more complex in terms of features and presentation than this game, for example.
Gozma
Arcane
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- Aug 1, 2012
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I was worried about this but I think they actually give you a fair number of tools to manage shit, between the RPG skills and because they have the capture>kill>explode system. Once you have the squad of 6 and several levelled up dudes it is really rare that you never had a chance but to roll the dice - because it's a turnbased game you usually form plans like "I will take these 3 50% shots, then if none hit I will commit to burning a run & gun, or commit to shooting a rocket". This also kinda prevents the "creeping blob of guns" problem I thought the game would have, because just moving up in a loose blob generally only gets you OK shots at units in mostly full cover with no damage to rely on.
I think impossible might always be a problem just because the early game doesn't have enough choices on the battlescape to avoid randomness (4 identical rookies go) yet if you lose even half your squad in the first couple of combats, losing out on promotions etc, on impossible you might lose the game. Like getting killed by a hobgoblin on D:1 in Crawl.
Surf Solar
cannot into womynz
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So I listened to some music of the game extracted from the demo files and thought "woah, they totally ripped off the Deus Ex: HR soundtrack. Then I noticed it's the same composer for both games. Not sure if I like the way the "epic" music goes in this one, but it's better than I expected.
fizzelopeguss
Arcane
I AM FUCKING STUCK IN THE SQUAD PANEL/CUSTOMIZATION THINGY, WHAT'S THE KEY TO GET OUT!?!?!
Zboj Lamignat
Arcane
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- Feb 15, 2012
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- 5,875
Press O on your gamepad
hoverdog
dog that is hovering, Wastelands Interactive
what, the game does not have a base support of Win XP? 
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- Jan 28, 2011
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- 100,704
And Dishonored didn't? The "ITZ ALL ABOUT THE MARKETING" explanation doesn't cover the difference between two heavily marketed games.
Trash
Pointing and laughing.
It kills of my squaddies something fierce. I'll give it that. I still don't like it.
Why? Because it lacks everything I loved in UFO: Enemy Unknown. From basic gameplay to squad equipment to base invasions to unit stance to artstyle to time units to autofire to interceptions to, well, I can go on and on.
And somehow it still somewhat saddens me as I also have very little hope for Xenonauts.
Why? Because it lacks everything I loved in UFO: Enemy Unknown. From basic gameplay to squad equipment to base invasions to unit stance to artstyle to time units to autofire to interceptions to, well, I can go on and on.
And somehow it still somewhat saddens me as I also have very little hope for Xenonauts.
Lightknight
Liturgist
- Joined
- Nov 26, 2008
- Messages
- 705
No it didnt.
bonescraper
Guest
I lost my waifu, Maria Ozawa, my best fucking soldier, because of a goddamn glitch. Fuck this game.
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