rezaf
4041
Not for everyone, though.
Many pages ago, there was a semi-discussion about that topic in this very thread - albeit coming from XCOM.
I freely admit that I was often very liberal at scave-scumming in X-Com.
Eventually, I did some attempts at running an iron-man’ish game, but I don’t think I ever finished one.
When playing normally, there were times when I’d grind my teeth and accept any loss, but at other times, I’d save religiously each and every turn and reload whenever something went wrong. I do realize this might be seen as being not fun, and in a way I realized this back then by myself and changed my ways, but I’m grateful that the choice was mine to make.
XCOM tries to force the choice upon you, with the RNG seed being stored in the savegame and everything.
Still, at least noone is being forced to play ironman.
So, I fully understand if someone argues he doesn’t want to lose hours of progress at a whim because of a single fubar situation, but I don’t understand why he’d elect to play iron-man in the first place.
rezaf
XCOM is a bit less punishing than X-COM because you don’t lose your armor when a squaddie dies. And in XCOM clothes make the man. Put a rookie in titan armor and give him a plasma weapon with a scope and he can do ok. The gear closes the gap between a veteran and a rookie.
Wait, don’t you mean
"Did you play much of the original game, or just watch a bunch of videos of it, because either one is sufficient for understanding how the game plays?"
wiglaf
4045
I think (3) is by far the biggest problem, and what ultimately dooms the game. I think most reviewers flat out missed this fundamental flaw in the game. Once you learn the ideal build order, you pretty much go on autopilot in future playthroughs. Engineers, engineers, satellites, rush plasma. Every single time. What was Firaxis thinking? It’s like they’ve been spending the last 6 years trying to ruin their reputation after Civ 4 set the gold standard for turn based strategy games.
And once you learn how punishing the bizarre “Alien activation” mechanic can be on the tactical level, you start playing so cautiously there that all your tactical matches end up being basically the same thing. The game actually punishes the player for inventive maneuvering, or doing anything other than inching up one unit at a time. Don’t scout, or we’ll throw 6 more aliens at you at once and kill your entire playthrough!
Maybe what they should have done is introduce some AI to the alien commander that forces the player to adapt. As it stands, XCOM is more like a puzzle than a strategy game. Crack the puzzle, uninstall the game.
Savillo
4046
Yep. And what’s really tragic is that I recall Solomon discussing in interviews that the team felt the original strategy games each suffered from having dominant strategies on the Geoscape layer, but it seems that the same problem persists in Enemy Unknown.
Enemy Unknown’s issue is also that the strategy layer is a little too on-rails, seemingly handing out a specified number of missions and mission types each month. There’s just not enough variation to keep the strategy layer unpredictable, and thus, force the player to adapt on the fly. Random awards for abduction missions just aren’t enough.
I think this becomes a problem for two reasons:
-
The tactical maps are just way too small. Every single mission turns into a straight up firefight because the player has such limited room to maneuver. On higher difficulties, this is worse because the number of aliens per map is much higher. One move forward can “activate” upwards of three or four groups of aliens at once. I’ve seen screenshots of that graveyard map where the player spots 12 (!) aliens in her opening move forward. Basically, the board just has way too many playing pieces for its size.
-
Not enough of the A.I. units patrol and/or maneuver on the lower difficulties. On impossible, you can really see the tactical A.I. at its best. I’ve witnessed aliens flank out of view, reposition and return fire, and use abilities much more smartly. I know the game says that both classic and impossible are “unshackled,” but I’ve seen the A.I. do things on impossible regularly that it rarely does on classic.
So with an A.I. that actually plays the game well, you get a more fluid tactical experience that doesn’t just devolve into inching up the map (because on impossible, the A.I. doesn’t just let groups of aliens sit in the fog of war doing nothing once you’ve been spotted). But, the completely unfair numbers advantage at the impossible level just makes you feel like you’re getting cheated. It’s not as interesting to play as a result.
Basically, Firaxis shouldn’t have locked up the fully functional A.I. behind a difficulty level with additional stat buffs for your opponents and stat debuffs for you.
So, we’ve identified that the geoscape has an optimal strategy and the tactical gameplay has an optimal strategy. The next step is suggesting the solution.
Patch 3 has been released, among other things enabling Second Wave for those who’ve beaten the game:
Patch 3 Notes
Second Wave addition
[ul]
[li]If a player has beaten the game, they can access a variety of gameplay toggles upon starting a new game. The Second Wave option will be available on the New Game menu.
[/li][/ul]
AI teleport bug fix
[ul]
[li]Minimizes the bug where aliens teleport into the middle of a player’s squad
[/li][/ul]
Defeat screen when beating the game
[ul]
[li]Minimizes a bug that displays a Defeat screen after winning the game
[/li][/ul]
PC Only
[ul]
[li]Chris Kluwe as XCOM Hero unlock
[/li][/ul]
Thank the Jesus, second wave. I so wish they could have had this on launch.
— Alan
It’s cute how they say it minimizes certain bugs. Is this some sort of philosophical acknowledgement of the unknowable? Yeah, we fixed it, but you never know!
Probably reduces the number of instances in which it can or may occur but doesn’t eliminate it completely.
— Alan
Hey, good news! I’m about to finish my first playthrough (normal difficulty, no Ironman enabled) and this should make my second runthrough more interesting. Yes, I’m late to the party. Gaming backlog…
Giaddon
4053
Most of the second wave options seemed lame anyway. Glad they’re working on the bugs, though.
Jab
4054
Well I can report that minimizing the AI teleport issue is bs. As I just had a map where it happened twice in the same turn in the same spot.
Re: Second Wave, I remember that there were far more options people found when they looked at the files. The ones in the game don’t seem to do anything about making the game more random.
[/li][/ul]Color me surprised. I thought for sure they were holding this back to release it as part of some paid DLC package.
[/li][/ul]
Who?
Punter for the Minnesota Vikings who is moderately internet famous for his anti-homophobia letters.
And also an X-COM fan who wrote about it online. On… Salon? something like that.
— Alan
Quaro
4058
RPS: How close is it to what the modders dug up?
Jake Solomon: It is the stuff that the modders dug up, in fact. That was actually very helpful. I’m thrilled by that kind of stuff, it doesn’t bother me at all. We were all kind of laughing about it, they found it so quickly. I had to go back, because I hadn’t balanced them, some of them were broken and didn’t work. So before we even got QA on the Second Wave stuff I was able to go to the Nexus mods website and they had already posted a functionality list and said ‘this one doesn’t work, this one’s bugged…’ So I basically used the mod to [fix this]. There were even a couple of ideas they had to improve them where I was like ‘oh yeah, that’s better.’ So I used their ideas to improve some of the modes, like Marathon mode.
Imagine what the world would do with real mod support!
And nice to see Jake totally gets the DLC complaints:
A lot of people, including us, weren’t totally satisfied with Slingshot. How have you personally, or Firaxis as a whole, received that feedback? Do you agree with it?
Solomon: I think we agree with it. What it really came down to is that that was a content-heavy DLC, but it wasn’t a system-heavy DLC. I think that what people wanted… I don’t know that we were surprised by some people saying, “Hey, what I wanted was more elements in the system. I wanted more aliens and guns and items.” Whatever people wanted. I think that’s something that we agree with, and we maybe weren’t surprised by it. We just didn’t have the throughput to add more items to the system yet. A lot of that, frankly, if I can be entirely honest, is probably my fault. My design came together so late that a lot of things… We spent a lot of engineering time at the end just on getting the game completed and out there.
More elements in the system is exactly right. Glad to hear it.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/01/08/interview-xcom-jake-solomon-pc-gamer/
He was given the in-game appearance for defeating one of the Firaxis devs (whose name I can’t remember) in a multiplayer match.
I wonder why it wasn’t on launch, they even confess is the same the modders dug up, not something changed.
