1721

The taking days off joke did just strike me as sorta kinda odd. :)

The only advice I’d give is that tone is really important and that yours carried a combative air that I guess you didn’t intend. As I said, I didn’t think the questions were unfair or out of line. I actually enjoyed hearing you guys talk about the cover system and the impact on game play/level design. I just got the impression from your tone that you were aggressively challenging him on this rather than amicably discussing a design choice.

1722

If more games had been influenced by Freedom Force in various ways LIFE ITSELF would be totally sweet. As it is life is ashen.

I just listened to Three Moves Ahead, not about this but about Jon Peterson’s book about the history of modern simulation gaming (hex wargames, D&D). That was a pretty sweet interview.

1723

It was. Or I thought it was. You said so at the end. That you were looking forward to playing it more.

What I don’t enjoy is pointless sportcaster-style interviews: “How hard was it to get in there and play hard? Do you think you can take today’s performance to the next level? What kind of motivation are you going to take into next week’s game?” So much of game writing/interviewing seems to be exactly this.

Completely agree. In my post I mentioned that I was happy to hear an actual interview, rather than just the usual. I don’t think Jake was aware of you guys asking actual questions. That was my impression, and that was on him, not you guys (or I could have misinterpreted). Which is why I mentioned that I thought he was giving the stock answers before he realized he was with people that actually wanted to have a real discussion. At that point in the discussion, he gave real answers (the point about cover and level design, the point about the darker side of xcom, etc.). It was a good interview, and one of the only recent ones with Solomon that was an actual interview. The rest - since PAX, really - have been the usual fair that you so dislike.

The “I don’t take days off” thing was definitely a joke, sorry that it didn’t fly.

I guess it was just dry. More dry than usual. :) I have listened to a lot of 3MA podcasts and if I had to bet, I would have bet you were joking. But in the context of the rest of the interview, I wasn’t completely sure. I suppose part of it was the questions you asked about zooming out and the ability to change soldier customization via a “PC” interface that made me think the “days off” comment was not a joke (Jake was silent during those questions). Not a big deal, probably paralysis by analysis on my part.

My point isn’t that glitches aren’t bad, my point is that how would you know that these glitches are even glitches, and more importantly, how would Jake answer definitively about whether they’re fixed based on a loose description from an audio interview? He’s not going to put his QA guys in the hole like that, he’s going to give an answer like “yeah, we fixed a lot of stuff since that build” since they probably did. Hearing “the roof has camera glitches, fix it Jake, fix it” is not going to solicit a good or definitive answer. That’s my only point, not that glitches aren’t bad. Glitches are bad.

I don’t want the game so badly that I’m willing to play something where people shoot through walls. I want to know that it really is fixed, and I have not yet heard any confirmation that this type of screw up really is gone in the final release.

The gamespot video preview is where Jake said this was fixed. He said it definitively. Here (at the 54:41 mark): http://au.gamespot.com/shows/now-playing/?event=xcom_eu20120924

1724

here is a youtube link ,if that above link doesn’t work. (the video didn’t work for me).

1725

Yeah, with City of Heroes shutting down next month, it looks like I’m going to be spending a lot of my time back in the FF modding community.

1726

Dan Stapleton chats with Firaxis about XCom’s difficulty modes:

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/xcom-enemy-unknown/1226273p1.html

This video was far better than the demo at convincing me XCom: EU won’t suck.

1727

I liked when Jake mentioned the emotional/gameplay peaks and valleys in the original XCOM. I find most modern games cut off the lows but also some of the highs. Rob talked about how he didn’t want to go back to that time. But when I approach a modern game I usually expect something a little too even-keeled. That’s why I’m not worried about XCOM and also not expecting an all-time classic. (I’m open to surprises.)

I’m tickled how Rob and Bruce noticed the same things about the interface as I did straight away from the demo. Jake seemed surprised. That leans toward one of my theories that modern game developers don’t know what makes a good or bad mouse and keyboard interface. I don’t know, it seems like developers would have to know that.

I didn’t expect the positive words about the glamcam! In the demo I thought it was even more dramatic to keep the camera from cutting away, but I might have to start with the action cameras until I get tired of them.

Also, we can put the drama about the tone to bed now. As a long-time listener, that sounded like a standard Three Moves Ahead podcast with everyone on good behavior.

1728

Haha, no one can resist pointing out the PC interface niggles. No one!!

I’m optimistic because I think the developers are hearing the same things from everyone now. Maybe they’ll address a few of the easy things, like they hinted at during the video.

Skimmed the rest of it and it sounds like you can’t deliberately target cover to blow it up. It was too big of a design challenge so they had to take it out. It blows up on misses instead. Oh well, I can live with that tradeoff.

1729

Except RPS apparently. Shakes fist

Looking forward to this more than I was expecting to. The thing most stuck in my craw any more is the lack of random maps, and the fact that the maps don’t seem to change the lighting to what it looks like it should be on the geoscape. Unless this is another situation where the demo (And the press build apparently, and the version they’re showing in all the videos from the past day or two) is fucked up compared to the retail game and you won’t get night maps when you’re landing in an area in the middle of the day.
Still, for all the changes it sounds good.

Also interested to see these game modifiers available. Some of 'em sound great, like randomized soldier stats.
http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Info_(EU2012)#Second_Wave

1730

Watched 3 hours of video tonight, I want to pre-load NOW.

1731

This seems very good. Not only because some of the modifiers will make the game interesting, but because they seem like mini mods that modify the base game, done by themselves. If they have done a dozen mods, it means the game is moddable.

1732

Just finished listening to the 3MA podcast - that was fantastic! Hats off to the three for a podcast that was about content and not hype. It was great to hear the reasons for certain design choices.

1733

Thanks for the clarification. It’s been a long time since I played JA, and I’ve never liked it as much as X-Com.

The only game where I’ve enjoy RTWP for a squad-level tactics game was Fallout Tactics (and I’m not sure that it even had pause). It worked because it was less an actual tactics game and more a puzzle game since your opponents were running patrols or other predetermined routines, and you had to figure out how to approach them (sneaking or engagement). And Fallout Tactics had engagement thresholds, which I really liked. You could set units to open fire when an enemy entered a certain percent-to-hit range (I think it was 33%, 50% or 67%). That meant that you didn’t have to babysit each soldier, making the real-time aspect of the gameplay much less of a headache.

And you had all the skills/perks from Fallout, so you could do things like invest in sneak and set up ambushes. Nothing more satisfying in that game than sneaking a whole, six-person squad into a room and setting them all to aggressive at the exact same time. Instant bloodbath!

Partly correct. Only certain weapons (in the preview, it was only grenades and rockets … so explosives) are allowed to use free aim, which means that only those can deliberately target cover to remove it.

I’m hoping that Enemy Unknown has something that lets you open up a UFO from the roof. I always loved dropping into a Battleship’s command room in the original and wiping out the leadership in one turn, making many of the other aliens panic.

1734

I liked the RTWP in Drgon Age Origins the best, I believe. Fucking DA2.

It seems to be that grenades being able to open up terrain and destroy cover actually makes them more interesting since regular weapons can’t do it. I like that tactical variety, even though it crushes realism. I’d rather my board game be tactically interesting than real, I suppose, but I can see the argument for both sides.

1735

I forgot about grenades. Jake made the point that if you let regular weapons blow up cover, then your cover-based game becomes all about destroying cover. Maneuvering is much more interesting.

I bet a lot of design fell out of the decision to make it cover-based. They go into that in the TMA podcast.

1736

Anyone know if CDkeysdiscount is legit? They are selling keys for $30, but basing it off the European release date of the 12th. If it is legit, I can wait 3 days to save $20.

1737

It’s gray. It’s legit in the sense that they aren’t pirating. They really are selling you a CD key from a physical package being sold in another territory to take advantage of the pricing difference. It’s so-so on the kosher scale because publishers as a rule frown on that sort of thing.

I’ve heard good and bad things about it. In most cases, it’s a money for goods transaction that goes smoothly. In a few cases, the seller asks for your Steam login so they can manually add the key to get around a regional restriction, then give you back your account which can be kind of unsettling I guess. In very rare cases (CoD:Blops and CoD:MW3) the publisher had Steam cancel the out-of-region keys for violating the restriction and there was no legal recourse for the buyer.

1738

I’ve probably spent more time watching/listening/reading to XCOM preview content than the entire game campaign probably takes. :)

1739

That may give you the Russian version, which maybe happens to be region limited. Inform yourself well before buying.

1740

Yeah, I listened. I’m not entirely convinced that emphasizing cover necessitates that you should remove free aim from most weapons.

I’m not sure what Bruce was going on about in regard to UFO Defense and open parts of the map, honestly. I never left troops in the open, and I always parked them behind cover. If I had to, I’d use up all my TUs just to get a soldier through an open area and behind something.

UFO Defense is very much cover-based; it’s just not explicitly so with sticky-cover indicators and soldier-wall-hugging animations. It was always in your soldiers’ best interest to put them behind some cover.

And destroying that cover was certainly part of the game, like using one soldier’s auto-fire to remove a wall and another’s to target the now-exposed alien. Not to mention that it opens up a lot of tactical possibilities (most obviously, alternate entrances).

Enemy Unknown’s maps, though, are sparse in comparison. So perhaps the tactical options for destructible environments becomes inherently less important as a result.

So there is a trade off here. On the one hand, I see your point that limiting free aim makes the free-aim weapons more tactically important (especially because they’re usually single-use per mission). But I also like the idea of shooting out the back wall of a UFO to surprise the enemy, and I just don’t see that happening very often in the current system.