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Idle Thumbs 250: A Palpable Dream

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Idle Thumbs 250:

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A Palpable Dream

This week we dream of success in the face of almost certain failure. Of reaching out and, just for a second, really feeling like you've achieved something. A soldier in XCOM 2 lasts long enough to top the squad leaderboard, long enough to earn a permanent seat on the transport ship, long enough that we recognize her trademark smirk, but no longer. In NBA 2K16, a five foot eleven kid gets drafted out of high school, makes his family proud, and even plays in a few games, before his teammates conspire against him and sink his career. A video game podcast produces 250 episodes over eight years.

Games Discussed: XCOM 2, NBA 2K16, hard games

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The start of XCOM2 is absolutely brutal. I had a few outright wipes and restarted 6 times until I got the hang of everything on Commander/Ironman. After you start getting better weapons and gear and know what to expect form the new enemies (Stun Lancers were my bane) it really starts to even out. I was also lost with the whole Avatar Project thing, thinking I was doing everything wrong or totally missing certain details as it ticked up constantly,

when it's really not that big of a deal. You can push it until it's full and then until the final day after the doomsday counter the starts ticking down before tackling a red base or story mission which should reduce some of the progress.

I don't think that's a spoiler so much as information that's not really explained to you outright, thought I should tag it nonetheless.
 
Early on I'd say flashbangs are invaluable, and mimic beacons remain overpowered until the very end. They are a serious get of out jail free card.

 

And if you're having a lot of performance issues, I'd consider capping the game to 30fps. I had a much better time after doing so, consistency beats the occasional 60fps with constant drops and hitches, plus then I could comfortably increase all the details except MSAA.

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I got really excited by the NBA 2K header because that trilogy of 2K episodes from a while back are still some of my favorite nick moments.

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Important PSA: concealment in XCOM 2 is for setting up a perfect first strike on the initial group of enemies, not for bypassing them completely. It's actually a bad thing to slip past too many enemies, because spotting them in concealment technically still counts as them being spotted, so they'll seek you out once you're revealed, unlike unspotted enemies. After a series of attempts to stealth entire missions, which all went down in flames with a dozen enemies closing on my squad, I've come to agree with the PC Gamer guide that staying in concealment for too many turns is probably even worse than losing concealment early to a bad move, because the latter allows you to overextend yourself without it being reported to you as such.

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Important PSA: concealment in XCOM 2 is for setting up a perfect first strike on the initial group of enemies, not for bypassing them completely. It's actually a bad thing to slip past too many enemies, because spotting them in concealment technically still counts as them being spotted, so they'll seek you out once you're revealed, unlike unspotted enemies. After a series of attempts to stealth entire missions, which all went down in flames with a dozen enemies closing on my squad, I've come to agree with the PC Gamer guide that staying in concealment for too many turns is probably even worse than losing concealment early to a bad move, because the latter allows you to overextend yourself without it being reported to you as such.

 

That's a good point. I'd generally set up ambushes on one of the first groups I came upon after experiencing something similar when trying to sneak it all the way. It might be doable on the small number of missions where your goal is to grab something and manually evac, but the vast majority of them require you to eliminate all the aliens as a mandatory objective (which feels a bit at odds with the whole guerilla tactics vibe in XCOM2), and you're much better off not getting gangbanged by a dozen of them at once.

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How is the performance of NBA 2K16 on PC nowadays? The game was weirdly buggy upon launch, much more so than NBA 2K15 in my opinion. The commentary (which is absolutely incredible, by the way) would just cut off randomly at some point, and only come back after half-time, maybe. The game would also frequently get stuck in time-out animations, forcing you to watch the players backs or the weird miming coach for an infuriatingly long time without being able to skip that shit.

 

The Spike Lee stuff was absolutely hilarious and completely pointless. Because of the story you were made to play a few games as a high school hoop god, which would have been fine, if you hadn't turned into the shittiest player ever to be drafted into the NBA after that. No matter how well you played the game, there was no way to be the promising newcomer the commentators were always going on about. Basically, the story forced you to become a huge disappoinment, but never acknowledged you being a disappoinment once you became one.

 

The gameplay is still absolutely the best, though.

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I feel like an inflection point with the accessibility of first-person controls is Minecraft, which has ensured tons of kids today know how to use WASD/dual analog controls. It would probably be nice if conflict-free first-person games like Gone Home and The Witness included simpler controls when possible, but I'm guessing the next generation is going to intuitively understand first-person movement the way the previous one intuitively understands platform game controls.

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Could the game that Nick was trying to remember at 31:20 be the excellent Invisible, Inc. (aka Austin Walker's GOTY 2015)?

The new theme is pretty Wizardesque :tup:

 

I figured that Nick was just talking about Xenonauts and mistaking a simpler visual design for a simpler mechanical design (which is definitely not the case, Xenonauts is much more a direct update of the 1994 X-Com).

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Important PSA: concealment in XCOM 2 is for setting up a perfect first strike on the initial group of enemies, not for bypassing them completely. It's actually a bad thing to slip past too many enemies, because spotting them in concealment technically still counts as them being spotted, so they'll seek you out once you're revealed, unlike unspotted enemies. After a series of attempts to stealth entire missions, which all went down in flames with a dozen enemies closing on my squad, I've come to agree with the PC Gamer guide that staying in concealment for too many turns is probably even worse than losing concealment early to a bad move, because the latter allows you to overextend yourself without it being reported to you as such.

I didn't mean to suggest I've ever tried a stealth playthrough of an XCOM 2 level (it never occurred to me actually). But on this note: What's the best way to end concealment? I don't feel that I have a good handle on this. Is it better to end via Overwatch (for some reasons) or by proactively firing? I'm probably missing something about this, but it feels like only the first soldier to open fire out of concealment actually gets a bonus, because after that soldier fires, the rest of your squad is spotted. It feels like there's something about this mechanic that is more significant than it has felt to me, so I must not be taking full advantage of it.

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I didn't mean to suggest I've ever tried a stealth playthrough of an XCOM 2 level (it never occurred to me actually). But on this note: What's the best way to end concealment? I don't feel that I have a good handle on this. Is it better to end via Overwatch (for some reasons) or by proactively firing? I'm probably missing something about this, but it feels like only the first soldier to open fire out of concealment actually gets a bonus, because after that soldier fires, the rest of your squad is spotted. It feels like there's something about this mechanic that is more significant than it has felt to me, so I must not be taking full advantage of it.

 

It is always situational to me based on my squad and the enemy types.  If I'm facing all unarmored soldiers and I don't want to try and get a Skullmine off for some free intel, then I'll overwatch a majority of the squad and lead with either a sniper or grenade.  If there's armor involved, then I want to hold back someone who can take out the armor, and another person to finish the enemy off.  If I want intel, then I want to make sure that my skullminer is in a position to likely reach the enemy to mine, and that there's still another unit left to watch that person's back (and I don't want to overwatch too many in the squad as I don't want to accidently kill everyone).   I usually try to get my skullmine off as early as possible in a mission just so I don't forget. 

 

It can also depend on if I want to hack a robot enemy or dominate with a Psychonaut.  Those can also affect how I break concealment.  On city maps, I also always try to find one of the lookout towers to learn what its bonus is, as sometimes that can affect how I want to break overwatch (there are tower hack bonuses that let you re-enter concealment or get your AP back). 

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I didn't mean to suggest I've ever tried a stealth playthrough of an XCOM 2 level (it never occurred to me actually). But on this note: What's the best way to end concealment? I don't feel that I have a good handle on this. Is it better to end via Overwatch (for some reasons) or by proactively firing? I'm probably missing something about this, but it feels like only the first soldier to open fire out of concealment actually gets a bonus, because after that soldier fires, the rest of your squad is spotted. It feels like there's something about this mechanic that is more significant than it has felt to me, so I must not be taking full advantage of it.

 

My hot tip was more in reference to Nick talking about reloading over and over to thread the needle between two patrols without being spotted. The game tempts you into thinking that you can stealth missions, but you're actively screwing yourself over if you try. It's really one of several ways that XCOM 2 fails to explain itself properly—I almost think that just rebranding "concealment" as "surprise" or "ambush" would solve the miscommunication there.

 

After having beaten the campaign once on Veteran, I've found that it's best to break concealment by getting everyone in a good position, preferably with a height advantage and high cover; put them all in overwatch except one; and then blast the group of enemies with a grenade or a heavy weapon like a flamethrower. There's going to be a -10% penalty to accuracy from overwatch, but it's better than the accuracy penalties for firing at an enemy in low or high cover (-15% and -30% respectively). Only the ranger has a class skill that gives them an accuracy bonus for attacking from concealment, I believe? I could be wrong there. Generally, wiping out whole groups of enemies the moment you break concealment becomes much easier once you get sharpshooters with Killzone (free shots at all enemies within a cone of vision if they move or take an action), the specialist ability that lets you give another soldier a defense bonus and free overwatch, and spider suits that put you on top of buildings or hillocks without using an action. I eventually had one soldier, a sharpshooter with a scope and the biggest extended mag, who could singlehandedly kill up to six soldiers in a single turn thanks to Killzone. It was extreme.

 

For non-timer missions, though, it's much more feasible to use concealment for a snatch-and-grab. My best mission was a facility assault where I broke concealment with a rocket to the side of the building, set the demolition charges on the pillar inside, and evacuated on the third turn. My only "flawless" mission rating!

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Nick´s story about NBA 2K16 sound like a pitch for either a comedy or horror movie, where a random person is draft in the NBA because he was either mistaken with another more famous our skilled player (or could it be a basketball version of the Akira Kurosawa´s movie Kagemusha, where Nick´s character act as double for another player) or because it is one of the "be careful on what you desire" and he got draft but forget to ask the genie to have the actual skills to play.

 

Also from what I could understand, Nick didn´t finish the story mode and based on what I heard about it, I can´t wait to see him comment about that...

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They should just let Jon Bois write the career mode stories, his Breaking Madden and NBA articles are fantastic.

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They should just let Jon Bois write the career mode stories, his Breaking Madden and NBA articles are fantastic.

 

Hah! I actually thought briefly about his NBA Y2K series (a beautiful and weirdly tragic look at how important talent is for making a sport good to watch and play) when Nick was talking about being this basketball superstar who didn't actually have any chops...

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I figured that Nick was just talking about Xenonauts and mistaking a simpler visual design for a simpler mechanical design (which is definitely not the case, Xenonauts is much more a direct update of the 1994 X-Com).

 

Yeah this was my thought as well. As far as a low investment tactics game with a great board game-y feel I definitely recommend the game Julian Gollop recently made, Chaos Reborn.

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I didn't mean to suggest I've ever tried a stealth playthrough of an XCOM 2 level (it never occurred to me actually). But on this note: What's the best way to end concealment? I don't feel that I have a good handle on this. Is it better to end via Overwatch (for some reasons) or by proactively firing? I'm probably missing something about this, but it feels like only the first soldier to open fire out of concealment actually gets a bonus, because after that soldier fires, the rest of your squad is spotted. It feels like there's something about this mechanic that is more significant than it has felt to me, so I must not be taking full advantage of it.

 

According to this RPS guide there isn't any overwatch aim penalty when you fire from concealment: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/02/12/xcom2-guide-tips/

 

Since the game doesn't actually explain that anywhere, I have no idea whether that is true or not. But if so it is always a good idea to fire from overwatch. Otherwise after the first shot the enemies will run to cover and be harder to hit. Even if it is not true it is still probably worth it just because the aim penalty for overwatch is less severe than the penalty for firing against a target that is in cover.

 

Using your concealment effectively to setup an effective ambush as usually the difference between having to deal with 3 enemies at once instead of 6 in my experience. So it seems important to me!

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I didn't mean to suggest I've ever tried a stealth playthrough of an XCOM 2 level (it never occurred to me actually). But on this note: What's the best way to end concealment?

 

So, after playing more, my conclusion is that it has to be related to the timed missions with specific objects. In other words, if you need to hack a thing, or rescue a VIP, I think concealment partially exists to let you get closer to/potentially complete that objective before combat breaks out. If I break concealment prior to some of the mission objectives, it can be difficult to slog my way up there while fighting off reinforcements. Easier to stay concealed, kill the timer, and then kill the dudes. 

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I feel like an inflection point with the accessibility of first-person controls is Minecraft, which has ensured tons of kids today know how to use WASD/dual analog controls. It would probably be nice if conflict-free first-person games like Gone Home and The Witness included simpler controls when possible, but I'm guessing the next generation is going to intuitively understand first-person movement the way the previous one intuitively understands platform game controls.

This is an excellent point. However, I feel like the audience ceiling for these story games is potentially large. I hope developers can break into a larger audience. It's going to be an uphill climb for the general public not to immediately associate video games with violence exclusively.

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It probably grew out of Weinhandler, but every time it shows up that Germanic accent reminds me of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force plutonians.

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I didn't mean to suggest I've ever tried a stealth playthrough of an XCOM 2 level (it never occurred to me actually). But on this note: What's the best way to end concealment? I don't feel that I have a good handle on this. Is it better to end via Overwatch (for some reasons) or by proactively firing? I'm probably missing something about this, but it feels like only the first soldier to open fire out of concealment actually gets a bonus, because after that soldier fires, the rest of your squad is spotted. It feels like there's something about this mechanic that is more significant than it has felt to me, so I must not be taking full advantage of it.

 

I always put all but one soldier on overwatch and lead with a grenade/rocket. Splash damage + armor shredding usually means that the rest of my squad will just eliminate the enemy group before they get a real chance to act.

 

Central does indeed lament the loss of his sweater, but I think Nick confused him and the medical guy with regards to him being a former alien ally.

 

Oh, and your game doesn't count if you don't play with this mod installed: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=622790698

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