Silva
Arcane
Mods are for pussies. Real men play vanilla.
Fuck PS4, there's no mod for it damn it
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X-COM XCOM 2 + War of the Chosen Expansion Thread
- Thread starter Morgoth
- Start date
ArchAngel
Arcane
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Fucking game gives some and takes more. After my saving of the campaign by managing to do the Blacksite mission I continued only to get a fucking Dark Event mission where I need to destroy a thingy and there are 4 packs on the map (11 total enemies). 3 packs (or 8 enemies) are standing or patrolling next to the device. And I still got only 5 guys in the team. So I wait until one of the packs moves out of the vision and attack the two packs that are left. I only manage to kill 2 out of 5 enemies and in enemy turn other two packs also move into range and one of those is flanking me as well. Also first mission where advent fields heavy stun troopers. And I make a mistake of not trying to immediately evacuate but decide to try fighting for one more turn. In the end I lose 2 soldiers, 2 more injured, I do destroy the objective but one of the lost troopers had both my freeze grenade and mimic beacon and the other was my Lt Ranger (my strongest character).
You are right, I forgot to mention it. I play with it ofc.
ArchAngel
Arcane
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Because Firaxis jews didn't also update vanilla Xcom 2 with engine and UI improvements. I guess for now this is all I got until LW2 that supports WotC is released. Or Battletech or 1.7 patch for E:Vikings.
You are a butthurt edgelord hater, but in this specific case you are absolutely right. They should've update vanilla with fixes, that was a pretty bad and sad move by them.
ArchAngel
Arcane
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I don't need Pavonis to make LW2 around new mechanics, chosen and shit. They could turn all that off and just make sure it works with new codebase that has engine improvements. I would be happier with that anyways as new mechanics are worse then LW2. Only new mechanic I would like them to take is ability for SPARKs to mod their weapons.
Parabalus
Arcane
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That's a pretty good list, probably worth it to install most of them.
Did you try out the full A Better Advent instead of just the AI? Installed it in a late run and it seems pretty good, but only had a few missions to play.
ArchAngel
Arcane
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A pro tip for those playing on hardest difficulty, if you get a horde mission find a nice spot where Lost cannot reach you and farm them until you get bored. Each 3 Lost kills is worth one standard kill and xp keeps coming even when your trooper reached next level. If you manage to get enough xp for multiple levels all you need is to bring same soldiers to next missions and they will level up again even if you fail those missions.
This trick is used by speedruners to get to captains and colonels fast so to overpower the aliens fast.
This trick is used by speedruners to get to captains and colonels fast so to overpower the aliens fast.
So just placing one guy on top of a ladder allows you to farm Lost XP indefinitely?
Do the lost also give AP for being shot from above forever then?
Except for killing the Chosen which rewards 5 AP. So keeping them alive till their 4th bar is kinda rewarding.
You can snowball pretty hard in this exp.pack, even my sergants are wrecking havoc with end game gear.
ArchAngel
Arcane
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They do give AP forever but reloading guns takes 1 AP :D (unless you got a order that gives you that any hit on lost is a headshot that lets you snipers murder any number of Lost with a Pistol)
EDIT: Ah you mean AP as ability points, not Action Points :D
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It is 2 ability points total for all soldiers on the mission?
How do XCOM get ability points except for ganking chosen?
J1M
Arcane
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- May 14, 2008
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- 14,740
How foolish of me. I thought killing a chosen in their chamber would result in winning the mission, as indicated in the mission objectives. Instead it caused 2 enemies per turn to spawn and severely punished my (correct) strategy to spread out and use the whole arena.
I've got nothing against a challenge, but when killing your last opponent causes you to be quickly overwhelmed it should be foreshadowed. This reminds me of that poorly tested bullshit on the last map in XCOM 1 where my sniper got stuck in the ceiling and was unable to move to the final confrontation.
I've got nothing against a challenge, but when killing your last opponent causes you to be quickly overwhelmed it should be foreshadowed. This reminds me of that poorly tested bullshit on the last map in XCOM 1 where my sniper got stuck in the ceiling and was unable to move to the final confrontation.
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I take back what I said earlier about WotC - It's not the worst thing ever, but it's still not exactly "good". I installed some much needed QoL and bugfix mods and those helped a lot but...
- The Chosen talk too much. Everyone talks too much and of course it often can't be skipped because Firaxis are idiots
- They had this long and still only halfassed the QoL features that mods have provided almost since day 1, if you're going to add a target preview do it like Gotcha does it goddamn it
- Do psi attacks ignore armor or do they not? My Templar didn't ignore armor on MECs. Bug? WaD? I'm sure we won't be seeing any hotfixes anytime soon because Firaxis are idiots
- The new armor pieces - Anarchy's Children and the faction armors - are shit. Still no fully covered necks, again something that was fixed by mods early on
- The photo feature is bullshit and you can't even disable it
- The Lost by themselves are bullshit but I admit it is fun seeing them beat on ADVENT or revealing the Assassin (Great AI there guys...)
- Animations, even with Zip Mode and Stop Wasting My Time, are still too drawn out
So in essence it dumps a bunch of questionable RNG elements on a game that was already largely defined by its RNG - Something that wasn't the case in UFO - and it can result in either something funny happening or a complete wipe. I still stand by my argument that Firaxis should not handle the UFO IP.
- The Chosen talk too much. Everyone talks too much and of course it often can't be skipped because Firaxis are idiots
- They had this long and still only halfassed the QoL features that mods have provided almost since day 1, if you're going to add a target preview do it like Gotcha does it goddamn it
- Do psi attacks ignore armor or do they not? My Templar didn't ignore armor on MECs. Bug? WaD? I'm sure we won't be seeing any hotfixes anytime soon because Firaxis are idiots
- The new armor pieces - Anarchy's Children and the faction armors - are shit. Still no fully covered necks, again something that was fixed by mods early on
- The photo feature is bullshit and you can't even disable it
- The Lost by themselves are bullshit but I admit it is fun seeing them beat on ADVENT or revealing the Assassin (Great AI there guys...)
- Animations, even with Zip Mode and Stop Wasting My Time, are still too drawn out
So in essence it dumps a bunch of questionable RNG elements on a game that was already largely defined by its RNG - Something that wasn't the case in UFO - and it can result in either something funny happening or a complete wipe. I still stand by my argument that Firaxis should not handle the UFO IP.
ArchAngel
Arcane
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LW2 not only fixed terrible combat design of 4 troop rng early game + explosives blowing everything up all game but also changed retarded mission timers of vanilla xcom 2 into something better.
My last L/I campaign ended after I survived a lot of RNG bullshit and then ended up in a "very difficult" council mission with 12 turns fighting Sectopods and Andromedons with Magnetic weapons and Predator armor. I rage quitted after I somehow beat a lot of that shit but lost to that bullshit timer.
Or a mission before that one that put an Andromedon next to a device I am supposed to protect that killed it in 5 turns...
My last L/I campaign ended after I survived a lot of RNG bullshit and then ended up in a "very difficult" council mission with 12 turns fighting Sectopods and Andromedons with Magnetic weapons and Predator armor. I rage quitted after I somehow beat a lot of that shit but lost to that bullshit timer.
Or a mission before that one that put an Andromedon next to a device I am supposed to protect that killed it in 5 turns...
Regarding starting with Lost and Abandoned, I think it is worse than starting without it:
- You get a reaper for GateCrasher, which really helps set ambushes, and fight better than your rookies.
- The assassin is guaranteed to have overwatch immunity, which is a real pain to deal with...
- I prefer starting with Resistance Ring over GTS now, because it levels rookies faster, and I am not guaranteed to have a Sarge when GTW comes online anyway, even on legend with the atrocious downtimes we have with fatigue and wounds.
- The mission itself gets old.
Some QoL features are good still, like the alertness preview (even though as every fireaxis features, it can fail you at the most inconvenient times).
But I completely agree on Chosen talkign too much and seeming like Pokemon's Team Rocket or any other recurring cartoon vilain.
The problem with Geoscape was the lack of player agency and alien activity (it really felt like picking a mission among 3 more than aliens doing stuff, even though the Avatar project was a step in the right direction), not the lack of conversation.
The chosen and covert ops do improve that a bit, though.
The photobooth would have worked much better as random press coverage with a random photo of your guys instead of something you are supposed to spend time on (to serve as a mission "log" that would help you recall how the campaign went). I guess it serves as a good meme generator on reddit.
- You get a reaper for GateCrasher, which really helps set ambushes, and fight better than your rookies.
- The assassin is guaranteed to have overwatch immunity, which is a real pain to deal with...
- I prefer starting with Resistance Ring over GTS now, because it levels rookies faster, and I am not guaranteed to have a Sarge when GTW comes online anyway, even on legend with the atrocious downtimes we have with fatigue and wounds.
- The mission itself gets old.
I like the extension overall, but you raise good points:
Some QoL features are good still, like the alertness preview (even though as every fireaxis features, it can fail you at the most inconvenient times).
But I completely agree on Chosen talkign too much and seeming like Pokemon's Team Rocket or any other recurring cartoon vilain.
The problem with Geoscape was the lack of player agency and alien activity (it really felt like picking a mission among 3 more than aliens doing stuff, even though the Avatar project was a step in the right direction), not the lack of conversation.
The chosen and covert ops do improve that a bit, though.
Yes, Anarchy Children was a dumb theme to begin with. Mods have much better armor, especially late game, where the stock helmets become retarded in design?
The photobooth would have worked much better as random press coverage with a random photo of your guys instead of something you are supposed to spend time on (to serve as a mission "log" that would help you recall how the campaign went). I guess it serves as a good meme generator on reddit.
The missions with Lost and Avdvent can be fun, but Lost alone get old very fast, especially since farming them is the optimal play.
Space Satan
Arcane
For me WOTC's main problem was unskippable dialogues. Missions are intense and after failing numerous times at commander Ironman I decided to stick to Classic for a while. I an ok with lots of restarts but listening for several minutes in every second mission unskippable dialogues and alien introductions is a torture.
Granted, it won't make a big difference for spec op 1, but it will make Spec Ops 2 arrive much later, as you'll have to excavate and build a second room, no?
That said, it is probably true it makes the start even harder than GTS if you get your sergent on mission 3, but I really hate having to build the GTS first for a single upgrade.
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ArchAngel
Arcane
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After a bunch of restarts on L/I I did turn of L&F and this was my exp as well. You can get Sgt and 5th squad member before mission 4 if you start with GTS and put an engineer in it as well.
Biggest advantage of not playing L&F is your faction soldier is randomly assigned and you can start with a Templar that is by far most OP class in the game (at least in this part of the game). Mine got to cpt rank fast and even got bladestorm unlocked :D
With 100% hit no amount of Lost can attack him (ranger specialized in swords somehow can miss sometimes)
Indeed, Templar with bladestorm was really fun to use. The only "issue" is bladestorm making him run out of targets to rend
What I like about the Reaper is his ability to make avoiding pod activation trivial as long as he is cloaked. It makes it much safer to use melee characters and flanking maneuvers. As strong as the templar can be, he won't help me manage the frustration of the pod activation system, which makes the game really more enjoyable to me.
Do you use mods to buff XCOM to make up for dynamic pod activation? When I played with all pods active, I founded it very hard without expanding the starting squad.
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Pavonis has a lot of good ideas that are hampered by the fundamental capabilities of the engine. Much like the people who modded Civ5 and 6, actually.
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