1722

Fair enough. Not like anyone ever said balancing choices in games is an easy thing.

I find plenty of choices in this game both tactical and strategic that require me to mull over which way I want to go.

1723

I’m in the middle on this. There were definitely choices where I couldn’t imagine choosing the other one would be better, but there were also enough that were tougher to choose. It could also be that we are sometimes blinded by our play style and that causes us to think a choice is more one sided than it really was.

1724

I really like this game however I think the design is pretty flawed overall, even compared to the first one. This is from my experience with my C/I campaign which I think I’m 2/3 complete (I’ve run out of research at this point and it feels like I could hut the final mission at any time, I’ve also seen all enemies I think).

I don’t like the way they treat wounds and armor. Armor no longer prevents you from getting wounded, it only mitigates some of the damage (unless you have crazy high armor). Therefore if you take even a single shot you’re risking losing that guy for a few weeks, so your play style is forced into the mode of “KILL EVERYTHING BEFORE THEY CAN SHOOT”. Which is what I’ve been doing and while I do enjoy even that, I’m missing a good chunk of the content. At this point I’ve killed maybe 8 bezerkers, I have no idea what enrage really does. I don’t let them live long enough or if they do live I’ve put a mimic beacon down to prevent me from getting shot or charged at. A lot of the enemies I don’t know what their attacks are. I think I’ve killed 4 sectopods and only once did one shoot at me (it double shot my specialist from a bad mistake I made and killed her). I don’t know what the other attacks are from it.

I find a lot of weird descisions that seem to be only made for a one time payoff. Blade charge a muton with your Ranger?- you’ll pay for that once and then NEVER SEE IT AGAIN BECAUSE WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? It seems like there’s a lot of interesting tactical mechanics that the game doesn’t let you see because it’s forcing you to play so conservative with your troops that you don’t dare let the AI get a legitimate shot at you.

I didn’t know that the husk of the andromedon didn’t have a ranged attack until I hacked one and discovered I only had a melee attack. I never let one live past one turn to find out or it could ruin my game.

I really think they should have made your guys more durable and forced you to take wounds by either making armor mitigate hospital time or forcing you into a much larger squad like longwar did. Couple this with larger engagements and voila! You have more interesting choices and you actually will get to see the things they put in the game. I think their “That’s XCOM BABY” is hurting their design.

1725

I’d like to see a slightly different mechanic in play with injuries. If I’ve made the conscious decision to make my specialist a healer I would like to see that fully recognized in its effects. For example, if I managed to fully heal back an injured member of the team I think it would be nice to see that reflected in reduced injury time back at base. Seems only fair.

Just as it strikes me as more fair and in line with the design of concealment that I should not have a timer start on my team until concealment is broken.

So, while I don’t disagree there are tweaks I’d make, there are to any game, I find this one much more engaging and tense on the tactical level and vastly superior in the strategic layer than the last one.

1726

Yeah, wounds are a bit odd. If I’ve taken less than half damage I don’t expect “gravely wounded”. It’s not horrible, of course; obviously in real life you don’t take a gunshot wound and come back the next day and moreover the game is obviously encouraging you to maintain a reasonably large stable of troops, but it’s just strange in comparison with most other games that model wounding.

1727

I was thinking about my next game after this one and I was going to look for a mod that changed healing to something like that. I rarely spec my guys as healers or even bring a Medkit now because if I’m taking hits I’m screwing up. I’d rather take the rocket exo suit that guarantees I can blow up a packs cover.

That coupled with increased pack sizes would go a long way towards what I want.

1728

The healing kits supposedly use nanotech. My immediate thought would be that it completely heals via nanomachines. Bones knit, tissues healed, the whole nine yards. But no. It’s just a nano-bandaid.

1729

Yep, the damage and armor treatment of XCOM2 is not as good as the original.

I’ve been playing iron-man with the mod that allows you to eventually buy up to 8 squad slots. Running with 4 psionics actually means that my squad size is now 12 because of the extra dominations. Aliens don’t stand a chance.

I’m still not sure how someone is supposed to lose the game. I’ve been pushing the avatar countdown to the edge, using it like spare credit cards to give me a 20 day extension to my research. I would have thought that the count-down would have picked up from where it left but no, I get a free 20 day grace period every time I let the boxes fill up. My map is filled up with facilities I could take down straight away but now I just use them judiciously to stop a countdown with about 4 days to spare. I’m pretty sure that this is not how the game is meant to be played but hey, it’s iron-man.

1730

I’ve seen a number of youtubers who really milk that avatar countdown right down to hitting a facility/blacksite less than a day from a loss. I’m sure this will be patched.

1731

On commander it seems like the count down after avatar bar completion is only 8 days, which is a huge difference. It is very possible to lose if you play it to close to the line and cant unlock a blacksite in time.

1732

It’s set higher on Legend. The highest of all of them I think. Commander is the lowest. When I checked the .ini, I think Commander had 12 or 14 days as the baseline. Must be some random variance.

1733

I’m on commander and I’m pretty sure is around 12 days for me.

1734

Everything in Legend takes longer and costs more. I’m assuming that’s why it gets a higher doom timer. My first playthrough on Veteran, I was getting about 20 days. Commander, well, I don’t have a great sample size, but I did get 14 once.

1735

Going back to the health thing, I’m pretty sure there’s a mod that makes it so soldiers aren’t considered wounded unless alien attacks have penetrated their armor and gotten to their base health. Makes sense to me.

1736

Okay, I take the good game back. The thing is now, later in the game, repeatedly hard locking my computer after missions.

Like can’t even control-alt-delete, have to press the reset button, fucking up my computer bad.

1737

Sounds like a hardware issue. I haven’t read a lot (any?) reports of that sort of thing happening. Is your video card on the way out, maybe? Bad stick of RAM?

1738

If it is a hardware issue, this is the only game of many that I play that has the issue.

1739

I’m actually sadder than I am angry. It is genuinely making me nervous about playing the game, because it seriously fucks with my computer. I had a hard time getting it restarted the last time it happened. It locked everything up, and I had to restart twice to be able to log in to windows.

I miss XCOM, but I’m not sure I can keep playing it if it is going to do that. :(

1740

Is there a reliable place to buy a cheap key for this game? I don’t really want to pay 60 bucks.

1741

http://www.cdkeys.com/pc/games/xcom-2-pc-cd-key-steam

Ordered from there myself, as did a few other people here IIRC.