1661

This might be true in a sense, but you could say the same about the support personal behind the front line soldiers in a military. In a sense the support personal aren’t in as great a focus and get less attention, but you’d certainly notice it if they weren’t there and they add a lot of value to the total package (the whole is greater than the sum of its part). Please note that i am not downplaying the role that non combat personal play in the modern military machine.

If you remove the geoscape, xcom basically turns in to a typical turn based strategy game.

1662

I suppose you wanted to say “simplify it or flesh it out a lot more”.

First, I don’t agree that it was the weakest* part of the game. It had management of:

base construction (where, when, how many, what type, what expansion of module, internal organization of them)
hiring troops, personnel
research, manufacture
selling/buying stuff, transfer between bases
ufo interception, launching missions

All having to take care of the budget (income vs expenses) and the nations priority that affects base locations and missions priority (look out what nations have which status, which gives more money, etc)

In other words, while it wasn’t the heart of the game, it was a substantial metagame that gave a good context to the campaign and the missions themselves. At least, to me, it gave me the illusion of being in charge of stopping the alien invasion, in a way that I wouldn’t have if I wouldn’t have control of building bases all over the globe, hiring personnel, manufacturing new ships, researching new weapons, etc.

And second, I could only agree with your sentiment of “simplify it” if in exchange they would raise the complexity/detail of the tactical missions, but it isn’t the case here. They simplified both the geoscape and the tactical battles.
I’m not sure how you can be glad that they changed it (by simplyfing it), if by your words it seems you didn’t think it was meaty enough in first place.

edit
*well, technically you are right, it was the weakest part, but that’s because the game have only two parts, if one part it’s 65% of the game and the other is the 35%, the latter one will be the “weak” part. Not that part was bad or undercooked.

1663

I just want to clarify that when I referred to the Geoscape above, I just meant what decisions you could make on the spinning globe. I agree with TurinTur’s summation of the entire strategy layer.

I do feel that you have more choices to consider on the globe in UFO Defense than in Enemy Unknown, though. Things like sending out multiple interceptors or not, deciding between competing missions (each on their own time scale) and how respond (should one team bunny hop? should you split into two teams to make sure you get to the sites in time? etc.), sending out crafts to patrol for alien base locations, monitoring detected UFOs to look for patterns – those seem to be gone this time around.

I tried, but I don’t think anything on the globe in Enemy Unknown is interactive. You get what boils down to a multichoice prompt and a bunch of “yes or no” prompts.

1664

Is there night/day cycling in XCOM? The biggest tactical challenge I had on the Geoscape in UFO: EU was if I had to send the Skyranger out from a base in say Europe to East Asia to respond to a terror site and got there at night time, what do I do. I can try to wait until day, potentially risking the terror site vanishing or the Skyranger hitting bingo fuel. Or I can throw my squad into a night time meat grinder, which always means more casualties. Decisions, decisions!

The other thing that was quite fun was trying to scramble air patrols around an intact, landed UFO with my fast, low fuel interceptors, while the skyranger lumbered over. And if another UFO popped up while all this was happening…more decisions!

I’m happy for Xenonauts to give me that fix though, and enjoy XCOM for what it is. But I did like the old Geoscape.

1665

You know what would I like? More options in how, when and where is done the tactical mission.

Like having some control of where to land the transport with the troops, or doing a split insertion, or the option of doing a paradrop insertion, or having the option to wait x hours when you reach the crash area (to wait for the night, maybe?), etc

1666

The night/day cycle is there, but I’m honestly confused by its implementation. Sometimes I feel like my team has no visibility restrictions on night missions, making them play out just the same as day missions. Other times (usually crash site missions in wooded maps), I feel that the fog of war is more present than it would be during a day mission.

What I do know is that true line-of-sight appears to be out (facing is not so important for visibility, only for determining whether a unit is flanked or not). Soldiers appear to have a large peripheral cone (I only once had an enemy sneak up from behind me, and it had to use a special ability to do so).

Not to mention that aliens do not seem to engage your soldiers until you’ve found them (I suppose this is so the game can play the little reveal cinematic?), which has two effects: 1) aliens get a free move during your turn (the reveal shows them spotting you and then moving to cover), and 2) you won’t have to worry about plasma fire shooting out from the dark, beyond your visible range.

1667

Several of the fixes, improvements and tools done in JA2 related to Field of Vision / Life of Fire would be nice to be implemented in the tactical battles of Xcom.

1668

I found the decision making on the geoscape really tied the game together. Finding the perfect spread of radar coverage and assault locations made each playthrough more unique.

It let me try strategies that while not ideal gave each game a flavor. I really enjoyed two “manned” bases one in Mexico one in south west Asia and a bunch of radar/interceptor unmanned bases.

1669

Jake and Garth in a multiplayer battle. It’s been said elsewhere, but these guys really do seem like the chillest devs ever. I’d totally love to play one or the other in a multiplayer match. This video had me laughing out loud with all the shit talk.

1670

LOL@ Jake telling Max about the upcoming tweaks to cost so he could take all the over powered units if he wanted.

1671

Yeah, that was great. Thanks for the link, even though it just makes the wait even more unbearable.

1672

I just noticed this unlocks on Steam in “one week and 12 hours” which puts it at midnight PST (2am CST) so I guess I’m taking off the entire day instead of taking off at noon for a half day. :)

1673

Great video. Didn’t like them saying “look for our review of the game” at the end, though. Game journalists should just stop doing reviews if they’re going to hang out with developers and get exclusives like this.

1674

LOL sure.

1675

The general advice on this forum for young people looking to get into the video game business is don’t do it. The pay sucks, the hours are long, and it isn’t nearly as much fun as looks.

Any young person watching the XCom developer videos is going total ignore that advice. Hell this 50 year old wants polish up his resume and get a job making video games at Firaxis. They get paid to do this!!

1676

Yeah, it definately seems like some developers might be a lot more fun to work at than other places. I imagine Firaxis is one of those rare exceptions though. I wonder how Jon Shafer feels about leaving Firaxis to go work at Stardock, these days?

1677

LOL. I am sure Jon is smart enough not to say anything negative in public forum read by his boss. But the thought had crossed my mind more than once reading the different reactions to the Stardock/Brad legal trouble vs XCom.

Not to mention Michigan in Dec. shoot me now.

1678

I doubt Brad would have any qualms with me admitting publicly that I’m having more fun now that I ever have, but you never know. :) I’m currently working on a couple incredibly cool projects, one of which I’ll be able to talk more about in the near future. In any case, things are not always as they seem.

Anyways - very much looking forward to the release of XCOM! I saw a fair bit of the game’s development from the inside but it’s definitely evolved since the last time I had a good look at it. Jake’s got an incredibly tough job and I’m excited to see what he and the rest of the team have put together. :)

  • Jon
1679

Well, as a massive fan of what you and your team did for Civ, I’m excited to hear more about this mysterious project you hinted at. Otherwise, I’m glad for your success and fulfillment, of course.

1680

Does he ever, you know. Touch your hair?