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

[knightley]

It's more that your soldiers, rookie or otherwise, have less than 100% hit chance when shooting at a critter in the open 10 meters away from them that bugs me. The rest is just crying about probabilities being random.

True randomness isn't 'fair' btw.

Of course randomness is not "fair". Who cares about fair, game does not necessarily need to be fair but is supposed to be fun. And I believe people are complaining because the way it is implemented diminishes the "fun".

For an AAA tile, it is really either ignorance or laziness to use a mechanism which behaves like a basic RNG. There are many relative easy ways to improve on a RNG. One can only wonder why they did not do it.

Things like "stick your shotgun into an enemy's face and then miss it" sucks big time no matter how it is justified. I think it also happened in the original, but among all the things they have cut and changed, they decided that one should stay? What a BS.

 

[Zewp]

It's more that your soldiers, rookie or otherwise, have less than 100% hit chance when shooting at a critter in the open 10 meters away from them that bugs me. The rest is just crying about probabilities being random.

True randomness isn't 'fair' btw.

Yes, but if four of you soldiers with aim percentages varying between 60% - 90% all fail to hit a single target, and then immediately after that same alien and his buddy both manage to hit your soldier standing behind full cover, then things go a bit pear-shaped.

 

[Kaucukovnik]

The game feels incomplete. The endgame is lackluster and while the scientist lady says the aliens give us no other choice than use those terrifying new powers, on screen all we can see is an already subdued invasion and a huge immobile ship doing nothing. It's not about the difficulty. If that endgame one saucer per month had aliens that 1-shot any of my guys, it wouldn't feel right either. Also, you always perfectly know what you can afford and what you cannot. I feared every monthly report in X-Com. In the new one, not so much. "Give me the cash already. Bye, Mexico! Six more countries can leave like you until I need to care!"

X-Com endgame: "Finally! You have all you need to do that final assault and end the hell of this invasion."
XCom endgame: "Um....you can move on and finish it, nothing else prepared for you here."

Ominous 1080p cutscenes do nothing unless the gameplay backs them.

Something tells me the proper endgame is going to be a DLC. After DX:HR, this is another blast from the past plagued by bullshit DLC. DXHR had those unbalancing weapons, and a mission that is pretty much the biggest tie-in to the original game, as DLC. XCOM sells two .INI edits as preorder bonus and tactical map variety seems to come as the next one.

This is the best X-Com remake so far. But unlike DXHR, I'm not sure how much I'd enjoy it if I wasn't a fan of the original. It's more like a showcase of what X-Com is about, rather than an X-Com game itself. Most sub-optimal options and technologies have been cut, reducing the gameplay to an optimized speedrun.

 

[JrK]

Newfags are crybabies who don't understand probability and the ways it fucks you. News at 11.

 

[Galdred]

In normal, the RNG seems to cheat in your favor. That is, if you perform badly (shot just missed, one guy down), the RNG will be skewed on your favor.
End game aliens do not benefit from any RNG help, but they have much better aim :
A sectoid will hit 25% of the time one of your guy in high cover, while a muton elite will hit 50% of the time or something like that.
There is no penalty for long range in this case (ie all shots beyond short range has the same probability of hitting), so being hit by an alien very far away has nothing to do with the RNG being fair or not, but with the combat model.

 

[Zeriel]

I remain amazed at how many people are infuriated by this game's RNG, but were perfectly fine with it in Civ 3-5, et cetera. And in any case it was almost never the exact reason you lost a mission--if the outcome of a single shot will screw everything up or ruin it, the strategic approach was just bad.

 

[spectre]

At least you could turn it off in Civ. Also, it doesn't really compare, because in Civ you weren't restricted to only six units - bad rng results could be mitigated by just building moar pylons.
That said, combat mechanics are notoriously shit in all Civ games, so it wasn't really a good example to emulate.

 

[Gord]

Yeah, RNG can be a bitch. I just had the two most WTF is that shit I don't even, rage inducing missions in ~40 hours of XCOM.
Basically everything I did that had a probability below 80% would fail, while almost everything the aliens did would succeed.
Lowest possible damage all the time, aliens scoring one critical hit after the other.
I got almost no crits, even sure-fire situations, like close-range attack with my assault would only produce a normal hit (if at all), while my guys dropped left and right.
First mission was a large supply UFO, although in that case I made the mistake of sending maybe one or two soldiers that were too low level.
Second mission was a fucking medium scout I had shot down and they still managed to screw me up.

FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUuuuuuu......

 

[Zewp]

I remain amazed at how many people are infuriated by this game's RNG, but were perfectly fine with it in Civ 3-5, et cetera. And in any case it was almost never the exact reason you lost a mission--if the outcome of a single shot will screw everything up or ruin it, the strategic approach was just bad.

Not necessarily. In many cases you are forced into taking risky chances, or else risk having a shoot-out with aim percentages of 10% - 30% in long corridors. This is especially true of story missions such as the Alien base and the bigger alien ships you shoot down later.

Also, from time to time you'd inch your entire squad forward slowly, then suddenly have about ten aliens pop up out of nowhere, although I think this might be a bug more than anything else.

Anyway, I'm pretty much done with the game. I congratulate Firaxis for making what is actually one of the better TBS games in recent years. Just a pity it's not really such a good Xcom game. It's too much of a game, whereas the original was more of a simulator. I had a lot of fun with it, but I'm going back to the original Xcom or one of its many spin-offs. Maybe I'll start properly delving into Xenonauts now.

 

[kris]

I remain amazed at how many people are infuriated by this game's RNG, but were perfectly fine with it in Civ 3-5, et cetera. And in any case it was almost never the exact reason you lost a mission--if the outcome of a single shot will screw everything up or ruin it, the strategic approach was just bad.

It is because of the game limits. That you are limited to just 6 guys out of some 20ish and can always only send one team. with that in mid your top soldiers becomes much more valuable and you get more of an attachment. so suddenly losing your top two guys is a disaster in one way or the other, losing your top squad makes people rage-quit.

 

[Zewp]

That's another issue. Especially on Impossible difficulty, losing members of your top squad in one mission often meant you lose the game. Last time I tried, lost 5 out my 6 best soldiers in a terror mission, and it turned out to be such a setback I lost the game. Granted, I lost them due to some stupid tactics on my behalf, but still. Having cyberdisks wipe out 3 of your squad members in one turn while you didn't even hit them the previous turn simply sucks.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

That's another issue. Especially on Impossible difficulty, losing members of your top squad in one mission often meant you lose the game. Last time I tried, lost 5 out my 6 best soldiers in a terror mission, and it turned out to be such a setback I lost the game. Granted, I lost them due to some stupid tactics on my behalf, but still. Having cyberdisks wipe out 3 of your squad members in one turn while you didn't even hit them the previous turn simply sucks.

Sounds like this game was made by and for people who would obsessively reload in UFO:EU. In an UFO:EU iron man run soldiers are more like ammunition to expend than cRPG party characters.

 

[Gozma]

I kinda wish they hadn't given powered up soldiers statistical upgrades at all (like they still have the same HP and aim) but only gave them the little card gamish options to "break rules" like Run & Gun. That way rookies can still fill basic roles like damage or cover destroyer effectively and you never really need a team of all or almost all high level super dudes that can do like 300% of rookie damage or blow up shit up on a 10 tile diameter sphere. And given rookies more options in general like suppression so that the beginning of the game isn't so shallow.

If I were gonna mod the game to something that could stay fresh a little longer I'd do that plus make it so enemy spawns can get bigger than three. A UFO map that had one patrolling spawn of, say, eight enemies that turn one spot on the map into an instant set piece would be immensely better than boring rote map crawling to easily gun down three groups of three. Having lots of small groups makes detailed map knowledge of spawns really important and that's fucking stupid.

 

[Zewp]

Agreed on the rookies thing. About mid-game they become almost entirely useless unless you send them out to level in a squad with higher levels.

It's also clear that most of the design decision are geared around consoles, such as the 6-man squads, two moves per turn, etc.

Also, they should really fix the vertical movement. To say it is broken is an understatement. I lost so many soldiers due to them moving behind buildings instead of climbing on to them when I try to move them.

 

[Gozma]

I dunno, I think those ideas (bigger single enemy groups and whole-game-useful rookies) have nothing to do with console friendliness. The "only groups of three" thing is almost inexplicable to me honestly once you are familiar with the game. The only thing I can think of is that they were actually being too devoted to the original game by trying to make fog of war scary, in that you might accidentally get another spawn on you going for a flank etc. When the core ruleset of their game (like the alien discovery move-but-can't-shoot thing) makes it not work and trying it actually detracts from elemental features like the directional cover thing since you always want to stand still and mow the little groups down as much as is feasible.

 

[Gord]

I don't know, but mid-game more than 3 aliens can screw you up fast on classic and up.
Two groups of Mutons with berserkers and/or some heavy floaters can cause severe problems, esp. if the RNG decides to be a bitch.

 

[Gozma]

Obviously there would have to be significant rebalancing all around to go with any major system change like that.

 

[Zewp]

I don't know, but mid-game more than 3 aliens can screw you up fast on classic and up.
Two groups of Mutons with berserkers and/or some heavy floaters can cause severe problems, esp. if the RNG decides to be a bitch.

Even worse is when you're forced to clump soldiers together because of sparse cover and then enemies start lobbing grenades.

 

[Gozma]

Separate issue but the bombard ability that lets three or four late game enemy types throw grenades as far as they can see is also pretty stupid and gives you yet another reason to stand still, concentrate firepower, and do all fighting as single-turn-annihilations instead of real set-piecey fights because there is nothing you can do to avoid getting grenaded (like suppression, smoke grenades, etc.)

 

[Angthoron]

I guess the only way to avoid being 'naded should be by not stacking up your dudes.

That should be theory. I posted about how a fucking Thin Man chased one of my dudes all over the map and 'naded him no matter what I did earlier, though.

So yeah.

 

[Gozma]

The AI has a decision branch to throw grenades or have thin men spit if they would otherwise need to take a very low-percentage shot. So thin men will usually spit on a guy that is hunkered down in high cover, for example. That's a separate decision branch from throwing grenades at people that are bunched up.

There may also be a pretty cleverly evil decision branch where, if several AI enemies with grenades are around, they will coordinate to all throw grenades at one guy if they see there is someone they are guaranteed to kill by piling up multiple grenade hits. Thin men will also spit for guaranteed kills, including spitting on critically wounded people. That's fine but you don't have any other particular tactical recourse for bombard grenades besides alerting groups one at a time and killing them before they can do shit, like an MMO. Thin man spit is different because it's a damage-over-turns thing and you can medikit it.

 

[Gord]

Has anyone noticed a bug where (possibly equiped) items go missing since the last patch?

A few times over the last days I wondered why I suddenly didn't have some certain item left to equip although I was convinced that I should have. Anyway, I guessed it might have just been an error on my side.
Just a few minutes ago, I build some carapace armor (engineering reported 10 before). Then, when I wanted to send my guys to the next mission, engineering suddenly said I had only 9 (should have been 11 now - wtf?).
Also, some of my soldiers that were all equiped with lasers and armor on the last mission, suddenly used standard gear again (which is probably where those items vanished).
Looks as if they lost their gear during level up.
Now, losing the gear alone would be ok, unfortunately the shit is fucking expensive in terms of resources.

 

[JrK]

It is possible a wounded guy got returned to duty and got his equipment back. And you need to unequip unwounded soldiers if you want their stuff on other soldiers.

Otherwise it might be a bug. I know of a bug with a mod that assigned a second item slot on heavy armours, which would delete an item when a support got the extra item slot.

 

[Zeriel]

I remain amazed at how many people are infuriated by this game's RNG, but were perfectly fine with it in Civ 3-5, et cetera. And in any case it was almost never the exact reason you lost a mission--if the outcome of a single shot will screw everything up or ruin it, the strategic approach was just bad.

Not necessarily. In many cases you are forced into taking risky chances, or else risk having a shoot-out with aim percentages of 10% - 30% in long corridors. This is especially true of story missions such as the Alien base and the bigger alien ships you shoot down later.

Also, from time to time you'd inch your entire squad forward slowly, then suddenly have about ten aliens pop up out of nowhere, although I think this might be a bug more than anything else.

Anyway, I'm pretty much done with the game. I congratulate Firaxis for making what is actually one of the better TBS games in recent years. Just a pity it's not really such a good Xcom game. It's too much of a game, whereas the original was more of a simulator. I had a lot of fun with it, but I'm going back to the original Xcom or one of its many spin-offs. Maybe I'll start properly delving into Xenonauts now.

You actually have a lot of control over avoiding firefights, though. You can go heavy on... er, heavies, and hence have most of your shots be auto-hits (rockets not having a to-hit roll other than the small chance of failure). Explosives blow up cover, making subsequent shots almost guaranteed hits. The only exception I'd offer to this and a genuinely dumb method of balancing was the Muton Elites that had an innately high defense (and hence automisses) even in the open at point blank range.

I actually feel like this is the classic rookie mistake in the new XCOM--not realizing that getting into protracted firefights is asking to lose. Any time you start exchanging potshots you're just counting the turns to inevitable failure.

That said, the game has lots of issues and was a big disappointment to me. I just have to make a distinction between "not the X-COM sequel I wanted" and difficulty. The game is if anything too easy once you understand how to play it. The problem (for myself, anyway) lies not in the RNG but all the missing features, scripted missions, lack of indoor environments, etc etc on and on.

 

[Zewp]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/209812/?snr=1_4_4__103

Adding more useless shit to the game, I see. Ever since finishing my Ironman playthrough I've had no desire to continue playing this game, and them trying to sell me more scripted missions and pre-designed characters really isn't going to change that.

How about making a DLC that actually adds to or enhances the gameplay? Something that is actually worth buying?