I’m near the end of another run through and, at least for me, I don’t think the DLC adds all that much, the base game I love, but the DLC have not been as good in my opinion as they were for the last one.
Others of course may disagree, but for me the MEC you get from shen’s last gift is nothing special, certainly I wouldn’t burn a slot on a mission to bring him along. And Alien Hunters I pretty much straight up hate, it’s the very epitome of gamey, lazy cheese design to put in enemies that have way higher HP, get more turns for movement than anything else in the game, have the ability to warp out when injured and the weapons you get to deal with them woefully underwhelming.
TL;DR: Xcom 2 is a fantastic game, enjoy it just the way it is and if you don’t already own the DLC, don’t bother.
P.S. I only play vanilla, so others will have to comment about mods, but there are a few out now by the team that made Long War, likely those are worth checking out. And there’s been rumblings of a more full bore add-on coming at some point, hopefully that’s better than the DLC released, I should have known better than to pick up the reinforcement pack, haha
I, too, am waiting for a 50% sale and was now surprise to read that there was no controller support. I played XCom Enemy Unknown on a controller, in fact, it’s one of the few PC games where the controller is such a good fit. I would very much like to play XCom 2 with a controller. Bummer.
I’m not big on the reward from Shen’s Last Gift. But I really enjoyed the fight through the site. Gave me a challenge for a change. So thumbs up for me.
Yeah, I guess I just prefer DLC that add choices and trade offs with an eye towards greater depth.
This just feels to me like they took a lazy way to make the game harder, which from a developer stand point is absurd for them, 75% of the people who played Xcom-EU never finished it on any difficulty, 65% of Xcom2 have yet to finish it on any difficulty. Why add content that only further insures the vast majority of players never see that content?
Given these numbers adding super mutant aliens with crazy HP and movement that effectively breaks the game from the stand point of how every other part of it works feels silly to me.
1 mob left with 3 hit points. All of my squad has 60% or better to hit, sniper has 93% to hit. Entire squad misses, mob 1 shots my guy next turn from full health. Uninstall. The one thing I truly hate about both this and the first one, is that once you know how to play the game, it’s 100% RNG and has absolutely nothing to do with skill, planning, or implementation.
I understand the need for some RNG in a game like this, but this games total reliance on it for difficulty, and the fact that it becomes the entire determining factor of gameplay, makes it pointless for me.
Best then to move on to other games, this is supposed to be entertainment after all, and if it’s just making you mad then hard to call that fun.
If misery loves company you’ll love this, I played the last mission this afternoon in my run through w/ all the DLC installed, and the last avatar on the final mission was knocked unconscious, he stayed that way and therefore ceased to be target-able. As a result I could not win the game. I can handle the RNG, tactically I can plan for it, glitches like this one however are what I find annoying as there’s no planning for the game making it literally impossible to win by robbing you of the ability to kill the last avatar that wins the game.
Of course, if you where playing on Legendary, that’s a different issue. They disabled the RNG rigging on legendary, and for me it’s a fundamental part of the game’s design (and why I don’t play at that difficulty level).
With the RNG rigging (ie playing at anything but legendary) your setup (5 guys at 60% and one at 93%), in the worst possible scenario would only have a 0.0006% of missing every shot.
The whole system is FUBAR then. The percentages you see in game should be exactly what the odds are and there should be a difficulty that doesn’t modify that percentage at all so I can play on an even slate.
While I have no doubt that’s true in your case, the rigging of the RNG is one of the great successes of XCOM design for me. Randomization is useful when it creates uncertainty or unexpected swings of fate. The later is good for roguelikes and such, but for a strategy game making the uncertainty consistent solves a lot of problems and makes strategy actually possible and the weird situations like the one you describe much less likely.
Or, to pùt it in more direct terms, the RNG is as such because that’s what most players thought felt better fairer. They tweaked probability so it’s more consistent with human psyche/expectations/perception. At the expense of maths ;P
I was pretty disappointed when I saw Sid Meier talk about how they rig the probabilities in the Civ games so as to appease the player’s sense of fairness and psychology. I say fuck that, I want to see the dice fall where they may. It’s more exciting to me that way and I have a better sense of accomplishment. After all, when you play a board game the dice aren’t rigged and real life is not like that either. So I will never play a Civ game with the same sense of wonder and excitement knowing that the probabilities are tampered with.
That’s not how the game feels to me. People love to complain about RNG and I almost always write it off as someone just got a bad streak that stood out in their minds. So maybe I am a hypocrite with XCom 1&2, but no other game in recent memory do I expect to miss shots at 70%+. In Stellaris I can do 10 anomalies at 20% failure and I will fail 1 to 3 of them. The chance of failure seems to work out with what I see. In XCom, if I have 6 guys with a 70% shot, I expect 2 or 3 to hit. That’s the way it plays out so often, I come to expect to miss even the easiest shots.
Some of the new mods by the Long War guys follow my idea of what Firaxis should have done with their DLC, make the game depth greater and provide the player with more options and choices.
RPS guy even gave it an amusing name, The Wide War
Looking at Tom’s Xcom 2 stream and peaking around at a few others, it looks like the mod community has done some good work both in the quality of life and content departments. This has me really considering a new game with mods.
Where is the best place to discover popular or well rated mods (or is it just surfing Steam workshop)? What ones are folks liking here? If I am just loading quality of life mods, do I need to restart my game? Do we need a Xcom 2 mods thread?
Only just got this and giving it a go. Are there any mods out there that are recommended for a first run through or should I just play it vanilla with no mods or DLC?
You can disable the narrative content from the start if you wish (with checkbox). That should mean the missions for the hunters and shen’s last gift should never appear on the map I believe, though in my current game, I’ve left them on.
I guess the custom outfit DLC (Anarchy’s Children) can only be disabled via the steam launcher, and while I’ve never tried it, there is a slider in the options to reduce the chance of a soldier appearing with that content worn.
Vanila is worth a run , its hard to go back /stop once you start tinkering with the numbers. 😆
Voice packs , extra hats/armor/flags /colors/patterns etcs if you’re into customizing …
The "problems "most QOL mods fixes don’t really bother me .But if you jump right into legendary …then perhaps the mod that display health bars as numbers is useful…
