Except, again, X-Com, unlike TFTD, always reset itself to beginner almost immediately, and as noted by that wiki-page, you couldn’t get base-attacked unless your base had been scouted. I doubt mine ever were, as UFOs tended to have a bad time.
meeper
3662
Sorry, I wasn’t trying to call into question your precious childhood memories. I was just trying to offer up a tidbit that I had read somewhere. If it’s not relevant to your particular experience, fine.
Giaddon
3663
Firing up my ironman campaign is the most emotionally traumatic experience of my day.
Not at all, I suspect it’s quite relevant… In fact I think that’s what my friend did, actually, intentionally let himself be scouted. Ordinarily we could stay ahead of the curve.
People should also stop comparing the geoscape in xcom to X-com. Apocalypse happened and had a greatly improved geoscape. Going back to worse than x-com after playing apocalypse hurt, big time.
Compare sending a fighter to attack a battleship in xcom to mobilizing everything that can fly or drive to attack an alien mothership as it drops a huge godzilla’alike alien, buildings being destroyed in every direction as energy beams miss their target.
rezaf
3666
I also faced some base assaults in the original X-Com - though they weren’t exactly commonplace, there was a real danger of them occuring.
Despite the difficulty setting, I guess, at least I’m sure I had to face some in the original DOS version.
It’s part funny and part embarassing that they never managed to fix the bug all the way through to version 1.4.
But I played a number of games in the Windows version as well (which supposedly fixes it), and I didn’t notice a higher amount of base assaults there either.
TFTD was a different matter, though. Even though of course it’s a copycat game for a large part, back then it catered for most of my wishes: More of the X-Com experience, without too many changes. Yeah, the underwater physics weren’t rendered very realistically, but it’s kinda hard to hold that against the game, especially since most of twenty years later, XCOM doesn’t have a very sophisticated physics engine either.
Yup, the difficulty was sometimes a bit high, but I was a fresh X-Com veteran, so I didn’t care.
I loved little touches, like there being weapons useless in above-ground missions, and I was quite fond of the art direction.
Heck, I even loved the large missions, though I won’t deny in retrospect that a couple of things - spearheaded by the notorious cruise ship terror missions - were a tad over the top.
rezaf
rezaf
3667
While the things Apoc brought to the table were great, most wouldn’t fit in a global geoscape game. But in general, I completely agree. Even though it ultimately fell short of it’s goal by having to scrap many promising ideas again from the production version, it at least aspired to have (more or less) exciting systems interacting which each other in various ways.
I do agree with the notion prominently featured in this thread that simplified CAN be a good thing, but in many respects, Apoc was intended to work exactly the other way, and that can be a good thing too.
Too bad the art direction was so horrible…
rezaf
“Baby steps” I suppose. First they need to reach again the level of features the had in the original game, and after that, do an even more improved version.
robc04
3669
Kevin VanOrd in his XCOM review at Gamespot articulated one of my main gripes. He states, “As you close in on the game’s final hours, you’ll have discovered that managing the fog of war is as vital as performing the right actions once combat has commenced.”
I think this hits the nail on the head. After the first handful of missions, one of the major sources of difficulty is not uncovering too many aliens during combat. Your own impatience is your worst enemy, which encourages a mode of play which starts to get tedious. In this case failure doesn’t seem like a consequence of bad tactics (although being impatient is a bad tactic) but from a lack of discipline to take it slow.
This is my experience on Normal, and that’s one of the reasons that having a terror missions or the bomb missions are interesting: they actually provide some kind of time pressure where you have to balance speed with safety. Of course, you don’t want to end up like Valkyria Chronicles where speed trumps all else. I’m sure there’s a better middle ground though.
My understanding is that on higher difficulty levels, enemy units actually patrol and respond to hearing nearby combat even if you haven’t woken them up yet. In that case, there’s a little less benefit: if you’re in their general area, they’re going to engage whether you uncover them or not. You can maybe give them one extra turn by waking them, but not much more.
It also kind of makes the sniper scanner useless as it just wakes enemies up.
Sepiche
3672
In my experience it doesn’t activate aliens, only entering their sight range with a soldier will. Same with the stealth suit… if you activate it and then walk in range of aliens it won’t activate them immediately.
That’s a dubious claim. Remove the bugs and mechanical quirks and it’s interesting, but I don’t think it’s in any way better.
I don’t know, I’m pretty sure I’ve thrown it, spotted aliens and had them discover move.
What a stupid mechanic though.
Sepiche
3675
I’m positive I’ve thrown it, spotted aliens, and not had them discover move. :P
I think the mechanic works fine. Sometimes it’s your troops that go too far and run into another enemy patrol so you have to be cautious, but it’s just as often a patrolling alien group that runs into you and then activates. I think people are just getting hung up on what seems like an unfair extra move the aliens get when they activate, even though that’s essential to the games balance.
Right, but I think the patrolling thing only happens on Classic and Impossible.
On normal, you should only ever uncover new ground with the first action for the first character that moves on your turn, so you can get maximum fire on the enemy before they can actually return fire. The only thing that prevents this are impatience and the layout of the cover in the level, where sometimes a very careful crawl is not possible.
It still works for me, but it does feel very game-y at times, and I can see it becoming very annoying eventually.
Sepiche
3677
So we judge games based on how they make the lower difficulties easier now? The AI is also designed to pull punches in general on normal mode, but we all know that’s intentional to make normal easier… just like the patrol mechanics. On the intended difficulty levels where the AI isn’t hamstrung, the mechanics work fine.
Well, it just means you’re actually playing a substantially different game depending on the difficulty level, so you need to judge them individually.
You also have to decide which one is the “intended” balanced experience. You can argue that “normal” should be the baseline. I intend to do a Classic playthrough eventually when I’m done with my first Normal run, but I think a lot of people (especially reviewers) won’t.
Sepiche
3679
But what’s the point of a reviewer complaining about a mechanic if it was intentionally made that way to make the normal game easier and it’s “fixed” on higher difficulty?
Moreover on normal the AI will never actively control more than 5 units IIRC, so it’s a bit of a moot point. If you are on normal and run into 2 or 3 patrols, a lot of them are going to run back and wait. It’s really not necessary to go slowly on normal as you’ll never be overwhelmed like in classic or impossible.
Savillo
3680
Sure it is. I don’t mean to derail the conversation here, but Apocalypse added a lot to the Geoscape to make the city of Mega Primus feel alive. Having corporations, some of which control manufacturing and transportation vital to the X-Com organization, in addition to a city government controlling funding is just one thing. You could become supply constrained based on the weekly shipments or your own destructive actions in the city. Losing a corporation’s support was always a concern (especially Megapol, MarSec or Transteller!) beyond just having less money. Corporations made basic equipment and even time into resources. That alone is a huge improvement.
Not to mention improved interception combat and crafts with customization. Anyone remember upgrading engines, cargo space, or adding in special equipment in addition to upgrading weapons systems? It felt like a mini-space sim with just enough options to not feel overwhelmed.
And a Godzilla monster tearing through the city? Just awesome.
The one thing Enemy Unknown takes from Apocalypse is the multiple, simultaneous missions (in Apoc, its the three UFO dropships placing aliens around the map; in Enemy Unknown, it’s the abduction missions).
Even if the Gollops couldn’t put everything into Apoc that they wanted, it was still a big step up from the original game.
