XCOM: Enemy Unknown

[GuildBoss]

BTW, I LOVE the fact that the “Guile haircut” is in this game. What a great nod to fans of the original.

I must be getting old… I didn’t even notice! Thank you :)

[Sepiche]

I do think that Firaxis should have introduced some way to recoup after a wipe. Losing veteran soldiers will outright end your game. Some (expensive) way to get slightly better soldiers would be really nice.

You can get quite a few vets as mission rewards.

[Dejin]

The way the combat works now, if the aliens didn’t get to scurry away when you find them, you would be able to blow them away pretty easily.

Yeah. Both those options suck. I was skeptical, but I think the scurry move is a good call.

I agree. I suspect the reason it’s there is that for atmospheric reasons they want to show the aliens poking around looking at corpses or whatever they are doing when you first spot them. But if once they finished playing their little animation the aliens were still standing their next to each other out in the open, it would make it too easy to toast them all with a rocket launcher.

So basically they play their mood setting animation of the aliens doing creepy stuff, and then have them scurry off to reasonable defensive positions before you get a chance to shoot.

[peterb]

I’ve haven’t had a bad terror mission yet, actually. Just lucky, I guess.

I actually found the pre-Berserker terror missions to be easier than average, because you get to find out where the enemies are by the civilians that they kill.

[krayzkrok]

I do think that Firaxis should have introduced some way to recoup after a wipe. Losing veteran soldiers will outright end your game. Some (expensive) way to get slightly better soldiers would be really nice.

Sure if you take all your vets out on one mission and lose them all, but who does that? I normally take just one or - if I have several to spare - two, and fill the rest out with lower ranks and rooks to help level them up, and also not to put all my eggs in one basket.

[Woolen_Horde]

Finished the game on Classic-Normal. I want to do Ironman, but I won’t touch it until there’s been one or two solid patches first. Too much misery being discussed.

[SorenJohnson]

I once read a nice article about this from one of the Civ developers.
He said they initially had this implemented in Civ2 (or 3? I think it was 2).
And people complained about it in doves. One dude appearently took the time to make a thousand tests with one particular combat and wrote them: I repeated this exact combat a THOUSAND times, and lost each time. Your RNG clearly is broken.
Eventually, they just dropped the saved seed in a patch - why not just let people play the game the way they want to play it?

I can see this as an option you can turn off somehow (maybe just before starting the game, like Iron man), but otherwise, yeah, it’s just a slap to the face (Achievement unlocked!).

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rezaf

Actually, it was Civ2 AND Civ3. We put this feature into Civ3 and then turned it into an option in a patch as there are strong arguments either way. Many years later, I talked to Brian and discovered they had the exact same experience with Civ2!

[Grifman]

Man, assaults with the “automatic reaction fire at all units within 4 squares” ability just tear up terror missions. Open a door, Chyrsalids attack, pop pop pop, all dead. So awesome.

Is there a potential problem with running out of ammo? Will they switch to pistols if they do?

[triggercut]

I once read a nice article about this from one of the Civ developers.
He said they initially had this implemented in Civ2 (or 3? I think it was 2).
And people complained about it in doves.

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rezaf

“droves.”

And wipe the spittle from your chin. It’s unbecoming.

[mystery]

Interesting bug this evening:

A female squaddie bugged out after a fellow soldier died. Her random action was to move – and she decided to run up a ladder on the back of a semi tractor trailer. She made it about halfway up, screaming and blubbering, and then something in the game stuttered, and she started from the bottom of the ladder again.

Wash, rinse, repeat, until I started to go a little crazy from all the screaming and crying, and had to force the game to close.

[ElGuapo]

Man, it’s everything I’d imagined it to be. X-Com, remade, streamlined. There are, however, a lot of things I miss. A lot of things. Lighting up the night with flares. Intentionally shooting out walls. The auto cannon.

And brutally hard. I think I’ve lost a troop every mission and been wiped twice.

[Giaddon]

Is there a potential problem with running out of ammo? Will they switch to pistols if they do?

I don’t know if it consumes ammo, but if the soldier has an empty chamber, they still fire as normal. Magic!

(And awesome!)

[Jab]

I decided to give on my ironman classic run for now and dropped to normal. I was just having too many cases where the cover and camera system were getting in my way to enjoy it. At least on normal, having a mistake like that isn’t usually fatal.

I really hope that Firaxis is planning on DLC for X-Com, to add in more equipment or even alien types.

[Murbella]

I like this game but i’m not sure it is worth playing in its current state.

Too many bugs (right now i have the save game bug where my save games are in random order so it takes me 5 minutes to find the right one whenever i try to load a game) and too many annoyances.

Someone needs to make a mod to make accuracy less stupid so situations where you miss an enemy right in front of you or an enemy makes a one in a million shot are actually accurately represented by the hit chance. Obviously sometimes you get unlucky, but if it happens enough it isn’t bad luck, it is bad game design.

It is a shame because in this day and age of raping old classics for a quick buck, xcom is actually a pretty good sequel. I have enough games (borderlands 2) that i don’t have to put up with this crap though, i can wait for them to fix it or a fan patch.

[ArmandoPenblade]

I agree. I suspect the reason it’s there is that for atmospheric reasons they want to show the aliens poking around looking at corpses or whatever they are doing when you first spot them. But if once they finished playing their little animation the aliens were still standing their next to each other out in the open, it would make it too easy to toast them all with a rocket launcher.

So basically they play their mood setting animation of the aliens doing creepy stuff, and then have them scurry off to reasonable defensive positions before you get a chance to shoot.

This also avoids the old problem of having to scour the map for extremely well-fortified (but also well-hidden) aliens for hours on end. Now, they can get into a defended (or even hidden; I’ve definitely had enemies scamper into complete invisibility during their “oh you found me!” animations) position AFTER being in an easy-to-find location.

I do agree that the whole RNG not allowing for save-restart play is sort of obnoxious, although most of my playtime being in Ironman mode has negated that :)

[zombo77]

Hit the jackpot in my normal/ironman game. At start of the last mission my sniper got stuck in the ceiling, I barely made it to the end without him and then ran into that scripting bug.
I think I’m gonna start over on classic and try to restrain myself from reloading when things don’t go my way, ironman would be great if the game was not full of bugs.

[TimJames]

Whenever I get frustrated with XCOM’s interface, it’s nice to know I can go play Torchlight II for a while and decompress with a decent mouse and keyboard interface.

[Blips]

UGH. Useless noob soldiers in the field can’t shoot worth shit.

[geewhiz]

I am curious as to how the game is selling on both PC & Console.

[Murbella]

Wonderful. Got the “no input works” bug. Pushing any hotkey has no effect and clicking any button just makes the click sound but no action. Can’t switch members, can’t do anything. And seconds from finishing this ufo mission too.