X:COM 2

[Taleric]

Sound pretty good :). I did enjoy the recent ones. Hopefully it does not borrow too heavily on the art and models so it is very fresh. Doubt I would get it till a sale but it will be fun to watch.

http://steamcommunity.com/games/200510/ ... 1446278391

[Sarudak]

I'm interested in seeing what they do with it. The concept is interesting but is likely going to push them quite a bit away from the traditional xcom strategic gameplay. Staples of the game like abductions and terror attacks don't make a lot of sense. Neither does interception of enemy craft. It seems like the concept will push them into a more linear story driven campaign with even less strategic management when I really wish they would go the other direction. Either way too soon to tell if my concerns are well grounded.

[Wafflewaffle]

Weird thing is? Pc exclusive! Dont get me wrong im a strong believer of the PC master race, but XCom Enemy Unknown fitted amazing in tablets and consoles because of the simplicity of its controls and the complexity of its mechanics. And so it was that it reached pretty much every gaming console made by humans on planet earth. Thing is I dont know why they would make it Pc exclusive this time around. Firaxis isnt known for pushing graphics far enough to require PC power, neither does XCom have any inate PC specific mechanic that would require keyboard and mouse... so color me intriged. Really like the previous title and i am greatly looking foward for this one.

[FlowerChild]

Weird thing is? Pc exclusive! Dont get me wrong im a strong believer of the PC master race, but XCom Enemy Unknown fitted amazing in tablets and consoles because of the simplicity of its controls and the complexity of its mechanics.

Whoa now..."complexity" is a very strong word to use there :)

Don't mind me, I'm just the grumbling old man in the corner going on about how "back in my day we had rule books <this> thick", and the dumbing down of games in general to cater to the mass market. I liked the new XCom, to be sure, but think it only had any real depth in comparison to the most superficial of old school tactical games. Despite the overall lack of polish that made it kinda "meh" overall, I actually found Xenonauts to be a much more interesting game in terms of mechanics.

I can't even come up with a decent old school example that I'd consider to be more shallow as my mind keeps wandering to longing for the days of Jagged Alliance and such. Something like Commandoes would be more shallow I guess, but that was basically the beginning of the end IMO ;)

[Wafflewaffle]

Whoa now..."complexity" is a very strong word to use there :)

Yeah maybe complex is a little too much.

I was born in the 90's so i live through the great classics, but was too young to experience them. Had to make an efford to go back and play old rpgs like Fallout, Xcom and Baldurs Gate, and what i found was a lot of Hard and not a lot of Complex. I do crave a turn base tactical RPG from time to time, but like RTS's they are a dying breed.

[Sarudak]

I really liked xcom because of the way they simplified the game. I remember spending so much time in the original going on so many missions each of which involved huge amounts of inventory organization and logistical troop movements. The new xcom really cut down on that. They simplified the stats enough that I could actually understand what was going on without a spreadsheet. But they kept the things that made xcom really great such as the fragility of your soldiers and the strong sense of limited resources in the face of an ever growing alien threat. Plus the game was actually hard. The biggest thing I miss is the loss of options over the strategic aspect of the game. Other than that one aspect in my opinion the new xcom is better than the old in every aspect. Which is reflected in that I finished the new xcom twice but was never able to complete a game of the original.

[AdmiralJonB]

I've been wondering if they're looking back a bit at the X-COM: Apocolypse game http://store.steampowered.com/app/7660/. At least parts of the trailer reminded me of it.

[MoRmEnGiL]

Xcom is still popular only because of the Long War mod. Up until the announcement of xcom 2, 19 out of 20 posts in /r/xcom were about long war and not vanilla. The xcom devs are well aware of the popularity of the mod, Jake solomon himself praised it, and said it made the game better in every way. In fact the recent official Firaxis o'clock streams featured beaglerush on the xcom spot, and he played long war as opposed to vanilla. Why am I mentioning this? Because that is the direction I wish and hope they will take with xcom 2.

If any of you hasn't tried out the long war mod, head over to nexus and download it asap, it makes xcom 10 times better. And this is something I have only ever said for BTW. (for minecraft, not xcom :P)

[Wafflewaffle]

Because that is the direction I wish and hope they will take with xcom 2.

One can only wish! Long war made Xcom harder and more interesting in everyway. I do think it highlighted some of the game's weakest points like map design and the "MMO style cluster mod pull"® way of fighting the Aliens.

Fuck now im downloading Xcom again, i fucking love/hate that game...

[MaxAstro]

I'll chip in an agreement - Long War is a 100% improvement on vanilla X-Com, and it's awesome that the devs are willing to admit that.

There's no way X-Com 2 will fully embrace the Long War philosophy; I don't think that level of brutally hard game has the same degree of mass market appeal. But hopefully it will move in that direction, and the promise of increased mod support fills me with enthusiasm as well.

Hopefully there will something in there for those of us who do love a brutally hard game. :)

[Sarudak]

Classic ironman was already quite difficult. It took me many tries to beat C/I with the expansion.

[MoRmEnGiL]

The difference is, C/I vanilla's difficulty comes from the randomness of the game, the player has limited tools to work with, and often it is just down to the rngesus to bless you. I/I in vanilla (enemy within included) is 4 dudes hankering in heavy cover every turn (heavy shoots and hankers down with bullet swarm) and 2 snipers picking off enemies slowly. Tedious, prone to getting randomly screwed, and not much fun.

What long war does is it ups the difficulty a lot (wait till you meet pods of 7 chrysallids with sprint and lightning reflexes, or 80 hp Berserkers, or heavy floaters with 50 hp and 80 effective defence :P) but at the same time it gives the players a ton more tools to fight. So instead of praying and spraying, you have a wealth of options, and good planning is what leads to success, instead of luck.

Can you tell I love LW already? ;] I highly recommend it to anyone who has the time to play it (It is much longer than vanilla Xcom, where I often finished a campaign in a couple of sittings)

PS: Whenever I mention "vanilla" I mean the full unmodded game, with expansion. ;]

There's no way X-Com 2 will fully embrace the Long War philosophy; I don't think that level of brutally hard game has the same degree of mass market appeal. But hopefully it will move in that direction, and the promise of increased mod support fills me with enthusiasm as well.

Well that is obvious, but the more of its philosophy they embrace the happier I am :)

[Wafflewaffle]

Strangely enough Long war is to XCom what BTW is to Minecraft. Been a while that i havent played LW, the newest version has a ton of interesting stuff.

[MaxAstro]

The latest version has full voice acting for General Van Doorn. This is clearly the most momentous addition that has ever been made to the game.

I don't know how the aliens believe they have any chance of conquering humanity now that Peter "The General" Van Doorn has more than one line of dialog.

Clearly X:COM 2 doesn't take this gaping plot hole into account.

:)

[MoRmEnGiL]

Yeah I'm a big fan of the new voiceovers, they bring a much needed air of freshness to the game. Firaxis themselves game the modders all the required info on how to make new voiceovers and insert them in the game so as to sound similar to the others, hehe.

[devak]

I'll only play it if they fix the randomness of the first.

My most hated moment was a fight where a 1HP brute (or whatever their name) took 5 guys to kill, at 90% accuracy. Because a giant hulk of flesh and metal can apparently easily hide behind a tiny stump while being flanked from both sides. I hate that half the time 80-90% accuracy means nothing. I hate that the enemy gets the first turn always, putting Crysalisks in my face in an instant and killing half my team before i can even make a move. Planning your exploration when against the clock is stupid. It should be a game about taking the right position, not about gaming the system of aliens getting first move.

I also hate the mind control. Walk into the final chamber of the final mission, hey instant 4-man mind control. Never had problems with it ever before, suddenly a new threat when you can't make adjustments.

[MoRmEnGiL]

To be fair, in the temple assault you should have ghost armour and ghost grenades, there is absolutely no reason the ethereals should even know what hit them or evem mc one guy, much less four..

[devak]

To be fair, in the temple assault you should have ghost armour and ghost grenades, there is absolutely no reason the ethereals should even know what hit them or evem mc one guy, much less four..

Probably, but i never used Ghost armor once. Never saw (or had) a need for it. Mind Control was never a problem before (usually 1 or 2 enemies at a time that were easy to nuke in 1 turn). In fact, the entire level was not a problem at all, i got through without needing much healing et all. The ethereals at the end was the very first time i ran into that very problem. I managed to win (losing 3 or so guys in the process) because i had invested a ton of money and Melt into genemodding my Psy soldier. She almost single-handedly won me the battle.

I stopped using grenades and shotguns about a quarter into the game. I used a mech once (just to see what it was like) but barely invested in it. I invested a lot of money into getting powerful weapons. I stopped using Shotguns because they weren't reliable at all against my enemies: An assault would easily run into a situation where range was preferable, and the rifle is a very versatile weapon. I used 2 Assaults, 1 Support, 1 Heavy and 2 snipers (One with mobility perks like shot+move, other with Squadsight). All had standard-issue armor item, the assaults and snipers had Scope, the heavy a grenade and the Support healthkits.

I never bothered with Shivs and never felt that i needed them. By gaming the Alien First Move system i could usually deal with various attacks. My snipers could deal with any serious threat (Including mind control) before it became a threat. The rest could easily survive even powerful attacks because of their high armor.

I could probably have improved my strategy (at some point i failed to notice the importance of more engineers) and equipment, but my strategy worked for the entire later half of the game, until
the very last part of the very last mission.


To be honest, i hope XCOM2 fixes quite a few of the problems i had with XCOM though i don't expect a perfect game. I hope it fixes the crew roster. IMHO, bringing new guys along at various points was outright suicidal while it was often hard to tell up front whether it actually even remotely close to "safe". Especially with 4-men crews, new crewmembers massively hurt the team. I don't expect a system that makes it a breeze. There should be a bit of risk. But once i had my SG1 and SG2, i never bothered with training any new people.

[logorouge]

Sound pretty good :). I did enjoy the recent ones. Hopefully it does not borrow too heavily on the art and models so it is very fresh. Doubt I would get it till a sale but it will be fun to watch.

http://steamcommunity.com/games/200510/ ... 1446278391

Eh, reminds me a bit of UFO:Aftershock. Maybe they'll manage to nail the reverse-Xcom formula this time around. (Wasn't a fan of Aftershock afterall)

All this talk of Xcom and Xenonauts just happens to be 50% off. Time to give GOG my money. :P

[Sarudak]

@devak What difficulty were you playing and ironman on or off?

[MoRmEnGiL]

Some new details about the ranger class:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/06/09/ ... -ign-first

[MoRmEnGiL]

And about the specialist:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/06/10/ ... irst?watch

[devak]

@devak What difficulty were you playing and ironman on or off?

standard settings, so i believe normal without ironman

[Wafflewaffle]

standard settings, so i believe normal without ironman

*Gasp*! There is a filthy casual among us...

Just kidding, playing that game in classic or above can be infuriating! I believe the worst part of XCom randomness come from the fact that you dont really know why your shot is 64%. Apparently Xcom 2 will tell you what raises and lowers you aim % in any given shot.

[SpaceGuyR]

The hit/crit breakdown (as well as descriptions of buffs/debuffs/abilities) is already available by F1 or a '?' button while aiming the shot, but having it visible all the time could let you compare different targets a bit easier.