ysbreker

XCOM 2

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I hit some pretty crippling analysis paralysis during an ironman run. Still been mulling it over, but also there have been a lot of games to distract me lately. I'm sure I'll get back into it soon enough though since everyone in the world but me is playing Dark Souls 3 right now.

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I really like XCOM 2 but I don't have the stamina to just churn long-play strategy games. I have played this for longer than I played the original. I'm not a thousand hour civilization kind of guy, I'm more of a 1 or 2 campaigns on a low difficulty kinda guy and poke the expansions.

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I finally beat it on (easy) "ironman" this weekend. The last mission was pretty challenging, but otherwise it was pretty crazy easy. Now that I understand what some of the less explained abilities and buildings do, I might go back and play again on normal.

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Yeah, even normal isn't too bad once you understand how all the systems work. There are a couple of difficulty spikes, but if you can get through those without too many casualties (and prep correctly for final mission) you should more or less breeze through.

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I'll just point to my previous whining in this thread and say I disagree. I found it harder than even the long war mod for XCOM 1.

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The tactical game is much harder. The strategic level however is so forgiving you wait to do any of the plot missions until you've got 3rd tier armour and weapons. I should know, it's pretty much been my current campaign. I've had 2 squad wipes this campaign (you really need to be able to abort 'escort/capture the VIP missions if you lose the VIP) and I'm still fighting.

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Man, I save scum like a mother in this game, sometimes the environmental destruction and enemy line of sight can be so random and unlucky hah.

 

I think my anxiety has increased because of the timer based mission structure as well, it really raises the stakes when bad things happen and you only have 1 turn to try to put out the fire.

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I stopped playing this game about 80% of the way through the campaign because my team was just stomping everything. So I felt like I wasn't really getting the intended experience.

Actually, now that I type it out, maybe they designed for that? Thinking I would enjoy the end of the game that way? I dunno.

 

I might start again on a harder difficulty or something when I have the time.

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I stopped playing this game about 80% of the way through the campaign because my team was just stomping everything. So I felt like I wasn't really getting the intended experience.

Actually, now that I type it out, maybe they designed for that? Thinking I would enjoy the end of the game that way? I dunno.

 

I might start again on a harder difficulty or something when I have the time.

 

I find combat mostly easy at this point, it's the environment buggy-ness that's killing me hah.

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I stopped playing this game about 80% of the way through the campaign because my team was just stomping everything. So I felt like I wasn't really getting the intended experience.

Actually, now that I type it out, maybe they designed for that? Thinking I would enjoy the end of the game that way? I dunno.

 

I might start again on a harder difficulty or something when I have the time.

 

Commander level is a bugger at the start to be honest. YOu are basically playing a numbers game against the RNG that you are only ever going to lose. At times it makes the game commit the fatal sin of just not being fun. It really needs some slight rebalancing and it still needs some very major bug fixing too (I am sick of being able to see people and flank them through ceilings. Not walls, just ceilings......... and the final mission bugs are game crippling)

 

The game does have an inverse difficulty curve though - much harder at the start than it is once you have the 3rd tier weapons and armour unlocked.It's not so much a deliberate design choice I think as it is a consequence of the game mechanisms they settled on. 

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Maybe it is deliberate, I'm beginning to see easy late game in most strategy games as essential part of the experience and same for that here.  Could be completely accidental but given the expertise of Firaxis team maybe they fully intended it.

 

I mean if I were to design Xcom (or any strategy games really), I certainly would have made a deliberate choice to over power the players in the late game.  Being overpowered within the game's context is such a good way to reward all the early decisions, a game without any of that just seem so... stressful and choir to play?

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Maybe it is deliberate, I'm beginning to see easy late game in most strategy games as essential part of the experience and same for that here. Could be completely accidental but given the expertise of Firaxis team maybe they fully intended it.

I mean if I were to design Xcom (or any strategy games really), I certainly would have made a deliberate choice to over power the players in the late game. Being overpowered within the game's context is such a good way to reward all the early decisions, a game without any of that just seem so... stressful and choir to play?

I think my problem with the early game is that the punishment to reward relationship with the tatical environment (my word that sounded pretentious!) is heavily stacked against you. As I have said before early game you can often be in a situation where you have all 4 squad members in high cover, on overwatch, before the start of the alien turn. By the end of it you can have all your soldiers dead, dying or unconscious without being able to do anything about it. Stun lancers are a particular issue I think - sometimes they do nothing, other times they roll 'unconscious' every time and in an instant you have no chance of achieving the mission objectives.

When the game is doing that it just isn't fun. At least, not for me personally. I'm also talking about Commander level, not veteran which is considerably easier.

I'm an XCOM:EU veteran with about 100 hours in the long war mod too. if I have a bad mission in either of those I always feel it's a consequence of a mistake I've made - not because I've been shafted by the RNG. That's what drives me insane about XCOM 2 despite how much I love it and readily recognise it's a much better game than XCOM:EU.

All that said the strategic layer in this game is so forgiving you can happily lose multiple missions and squads and still progress, so maybe it's just a case of readjusting my thinking for XCOM 2 and rolling with it better than I am at the moment.

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Yeah stun lancers have an 'odd' difficulty spike.

 

btw idk if you knew this but flashbang prevents their melee which does mitigate that spike somewhat but still I always empathize with frustrations against stun lancers.

 

I think on commander you can have 5th squad unlocked reliably before them, but that too relies on some meta knowledge of the game.  Then there is that factor of how lucky you are with the 5th dude cause anything other than grenadier/ranger is very sub par.  I think I restarted all my legendary campaigns if my 5th/6th was neither cause they are just dead weight for too long (unless I get lucky item drop within first 2 missions... superior stock dropping in first mission is some crazy clutch lol).

 

Also yeah I feel ya on the difficulty setting, not having reliable grenade kills in early missions do rack up difficulty considerably.

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If that means I get controller support on PC I'm all for it. :P

 

I'm glad people who havn't shelled out for the the surprisingly high PC requirements for this game will get to play it. Even if I still haven't gone back to it after getting almost all the way through and just getting so bored I didn't finish it.

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It looks like XCOM 2 got delayed to September 26th for consoles, unfortunately. Or fortunately, if it means they release a more stable game. Really looking forward to playing this on an xbox one controller. I played 2012's XCOM on PC on a 360 controller and actually preferred it to mouse and keyboard! Hoping this version feels as snappy and precise.  Anyone here planning on getting it for console?

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It sounds like there are a group of modders that are looking to implement co-op support. Intriguing!

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I started a new ironman campaign recently so I finally had a chance to check out the new DLC. Since I received it all at once I'm not totally clear on which components are parts of which DLC (and to complicate things further I also have some new mods installed from the Long War folks), but so far I'm really impressed. The artifact weapons bit is really awesome. I just wish it hadn't arrived in the form of DLC, but was part of the original core design so the gameplay could have been more tightly integrated with those systems.

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Are all the official DLCs out now?  I was going to wait until they were all out, and maybe some of the mods were more advanced, before I jumped in for a second playthrough (I actually started a second one when I decided that I really wanted to wait). 

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I want to play more XCOM but I also know that after getting back home from a bar that I will kill off too many of my dudes playing right now. The classic XCOM problem.

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