4021

Yeah, it feels like a game with canned missions that are just shuffled about randomly until you hit a research threshold and unlock a special mission or two. How many times do you want to play the same missions? It really lacks replay value unless you like going for achievements, a better score, etc. – things that have never motivated me in games.

If Firaxis has editing tools they should release them. Modding will keep this game fresh and sell more copies, expanding the market for DLC, expansions, and sequels.

4022

Well it looks like Firaxis took away modding the executable. Every time I make changes to the XComGame.exe I’m required to be online with Steam when I start the game and Steam thinks it’s the first time I’ve run the game and it changes the executable. I can not get the game to run offline after making changes. Anybody else have this problem?

4023

Fools. Do they not realize that Halflife and Valve never would have become what they are now if it hadn’t been if it hadn’t been for mods? I’m pretty sure that Halflife sold way more copies due to mods than any DLC would have been able to.

4024

There are a few things that hurt the replayability of this game. I don’t think many of them can be blamed on streamlining.

  1. Low number of maps. YMMV on this-- I thought this one would bother me more than it does. I’ve played through 3+ times and all of the maps used in regular missions are familiar to me now, but they can still have different enemy types and positions. The maps are small, usually only containing one or two buildings, so I’m actually not sure how they would sensibly break them up into chunks for randomisation. The crash site maps are pretty samey and boring, but I doubt I could tell if those were randomised.

  2. Contrived nature of the geoscape/campaign. At the start of the game you have a series of events that are the same every time… abduction, interception, then later a landed UFO so you can recover an intact power source. Aliens are also introduced in the same order every time. The more simulation-based campaign structure of the original game kept things fresher.

  3. Low number of viable strategies. This is a double-edged sword, though, because actually having a strategy is a lot more important in the new game.

  4. Fixed research tree. Yeah, but the original game was like this too.

  5. Static missions. This is the real killer for me, and why their DLC strategy is so ridiculous. The council/plot missions are the same every time, down to enemy placement and reinforcement points. You should not be able to memorize missions in an X-COM game. Even Cydonia, the only plot mission in the original, was still randomized.

4025

Multiquote mania!

Think about it this way: X-Com had unlimited squad size (as far as the transport allowed). This meant that, even if - for whatever reason - you had no seasoned personnel available, you could always just bring a human wave of newbies with you, maybe even fully counting on losing half. This allowed even strong opposition to be tackled by a large enough number of green troops - in XCOM, with the 6 men squad, such approach is impossible. I guess it is possible to come back to a degree by making clever use of your six green guys, but you can’t do the human wave thing.

While I wonder what’s taking so long with the former, I seriously doubt the latter will ever manifest itself. If I end up being wrong about this, I couldn’t be happier about my own error, though.

Completely agree, but …

Modding was/is no priority for Firaxis, that’s what they said.

Yeah, the only reason imaginable to me would be DLC milking … but they only announced two DLCs, and the one they detailed isn’t exactly ambitious. With as many players as this game has, if the game had a map editor, the complaint about limited number of maps would be invalid in no time. Looking at FFH, just imagine what kinds of mods people would make with full modding capabilities.
Since XCOM is mostly sprint rather than marathon, it’s also quite dangerous to wait too long with this - the host of people will have shelved the game for a very long time if they take years to release modding tools like they did with Civ5.

My mileage does vary. The limited map pool did bother me even during the first and only full game I played. It’s not a game-breaker by itself, but annoying and unneccessary.

Couldn’t agree more - welcome to the club.

Yepp, making far less, but more meaningful decisions means wrong decisions can screw you. This can even happen much later - I becan focusing on satellites too late and once the pacing picked up it was very hard to even remain afloat. And you can die a death by a thousand cuts, losing a veteran on this mission might not seem so serious, nor losing another one there, but at some point not having those veterans will at least make the game a LOT more difficult, maybe even impossible.

But the original had more optional stuff. For example (I hope I’m not misremembering this), you could get good results from researching alien commanders after the first one.

rezaf

4026

Yeah, it’s true. Everything you research in the new game gets you something, whether its equipment, a foundry project or research credit. There are no dead ends or wastes of research time, which could also be seen as a plus.

In the original, interrogating captured squad leaders gives you information on the alien mission types, engineers give UFO class data and medics give you info on other alien types (as though you’d captured/researched them). These little things are definitely part of what I love about the original, but they can also be seen as flavor at the expense of gameplay and I can understand why they didn’t make the transition.

4027

Nice. ‘I don’t agree therefore you must be insane’, pot calling kettle much? That much defensive postering…i don’t know, i must have hit a nerve?

Ok i never said it was ‘Trivial’, i said it is a shame it was not as good (or better. There is a thought to dwell on and savour!) as the original. I’ve played enough X-com (and games in general), and watched enough of the new Xcom to be perfectly happy with that statement. This new Xcom is not as good as the original game.

Having said that, i fully understand this is a different game, with different design, different structure to the gameplay, different player involvement, different lots of stuff. It’s a different game, and as a different game is not a bad one. It’s just not really that new version of X-com many were hoping it would be.

I’m pretty excited about the modding prospects, that could save it, in terms of people talking about it in 15 years etc? But yeah, my hunch was correct and most likely it will be xenonauts that will likely be that new X-com game us x-com fans have been hoping for all these years. We’ll have to see. If not, we still have the peach of a game that the original game still is.

4028

He is not pot kettling you. He is pointing out that you have weirdly strong convictions about a game you haven’t played. There is a difference between saying I have read a lot and watched a lot and this game isn’t for me and I have read/watched a lot let me tell you what playing this game is like.

4029

No. Believe it or not, I wasn’t trying to be insulting. I find your actions genuinely insane. It’s inconceivable to me that someone would watch 40 hours of gameplay from a game they are interested in, rather than just play it themselves.

4030

Played a new game after downloaning the expansion, and oddly i got 2 new maps in normal missions, and even a new rescue mission, to rescue and escourt a scientist to safety, with all new dailouge talking about where they come from. I"ve played twice and seen none of this content, and the option to trigger the DLC mission is still untouched…

You would think they would let people know about the new random content…

4031

I don’t know about whether the new maps you’re seeing are truly new, but I’ve gotten that scientist/origins mission before.

4032

Yeah, I had the escort mission for the scientist too. It’s not new.

4033

I liked this game a lot but there was such a gulf between normal ironman and classic ironman that I quit and probably will never pick it up again. I got so fucking frustrated with it…so easy to have a smooth run just go to complete shit on a bad dice roll.

4034

Did you play much of the original game? (X-Com Ufo Defense/Enemy Unknown depending on where you live in the world etc).

4035

Yep, I was assaulting an assault ship, made my way to the inner room, and then 3 elite mutons popped. I only had lasers and chintin armor at that point. They cornered me on the right side of the ship, and wiped the entire squad. Frustrating, sure, but that’s how it goes sometimes in this game.

I’m not done this classic ironman run, but once I got plasmas + titan armor, the difficulty level went way down, and I haven’t had a squad wipe since.

Prior, I had about 3, with about 6 missions where I had to run back to the landing zone and abort with whoever was left. The best wipe was on a terror mission, where 4 solders died, but I got the other 2 back to the evac area (had to sprint), only to have the turn end and watch 2 Chrystalids (sp?) charge and kill them both.

4036

Has this come to tablets? Seems like it would be a good fit.

4037

I did and I remember it being tough but I also remember gaming that difficulty with judicious save/load. If it had an ‘Ironman’ setting, I didnt use it.

4038

These kinds of comments puzzle me.
If you have a low frustration tolerance, and the game allows you to play without iron man, why the heck would you punch yourself in the face by chosing the mode that will frustrate you the most?

rezaf

4039

I read a study a while back about how people with children report lower day-to-day happiness, but higher overall life-satisfaction than people without kids.

It’s like that.

4040

Yeah, i used to force an ‘Ironman’ Mode, but i never managed to complete the game like that! Exploiting the save/load was a big part of the game. I would create a save just before my skyranger landed at a particular mission, then save once in mission prior to leaving the skyranger (once i had done all the inventory switching needed). Then i’d keep a couple of save points when in the strategic layer. But my point was that X-com has always been about that random dice roll that wastes you, it’s part of the ‘fun’ or some such. Maybe your not into that anymore?