1861

I don’t share several of those concerns, but some of them I am curious about. None of them diminish the excitement I have for the game, which seems like a huge accomplishment.

The only concerns I share are the day/night on maps (I’ve been told it’s a non issue, but we’ll see), and the “multiple missions on the geoscape”. However for that last one, I don’t know that’s the case. We are 100% sure that abduction missions always hit with several targets at the same time, and I’ve seen video with there being at least two things happening on in the game world at once that needs attention. The concern I have is only one UFO at a time, and only being able to send one team out at a time - that seems a little limiting, though by the time I get to play it I may be vastly relieved that’s how it plays out.

The rest of those concerns aren’t issues to me, and some of them are actually net positives in my opinion. Man, is it Tuesday yet!?

1862

I can only repeat myself, XCOM of course can be a fun and good game, but it saddens me that there’s such a long list of stuff that was better or more detailed in the original.

rezaf

How do you know this?

Clarification - how do you know the “streamlining” isn’t an improvement. Do you think the original cant be improved?

1863

For those that don’t (I’m not yet decided myself) there is always Xenonauts :-)

1864

I think Xenonauts is too faithful and conservative :P

1865

I’m looking forward to the 6 man team. Should be enough for tactics without slowing the game down to a crawl. And some of those skills that cause the first enemy overwatch shot to miss seem to allow scouting in a way that eliminates the need for rookie cannon fodder.

My main concern when I heard about the game design is that the skills would overwhelm the positional strategy aspect. I was worried it would end up like Dawn of War 2 where all the strategy was in choosing when to deploy your mega abilities, rather than in tactical movement. By that fear was banished by the gameplay vid.

Of TurinTurs list, the only one that disappoints me is that lack of base defense missions. Base Defense made the base layout lots of fun and they were a dramatic moment in the “story”. But it doesn’t spoil the game for me by any measure.

Tony

1866

haha, you are not easy to please ;-)

1867

I’m starting to think TurinTur is an elaborate troll. :)

1868

Heh heh I know.

I’m starting to think TurinTur is an elaborate troll. :)

Hey!
I will show now you are wrong ;)

I think there are vast expanses between a remake that doesn’t have almost any particular improvement,
upgrade or change and the new game hich have strongly simplified changes in every feature I can think of (maps, movement, soldiers, base management, etc).

I’m going to put the definitive guide to my opinions (subject to changes when I play the damn game :P). Incoming table made on Word!

xcom-1.jpg711×782

1869

No full auto? FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

1870

I don’t get the concern about simultaneous missions. You can only play one at a time anyway, and there seems to be several cases where you have to make a tough decision as to which mission to take.

I am concerned about squad composition. Unless I’m missing something, but it appears that specialization (heavy, support, etc.) is determined by the game and not the player. Someone please tell me I’m wrong about this.

1871

If you refer to the new game, I think the “heavy support” guy have one of those “special skills” to go full auto and supress everyone and their mother.

1872

You aren’t, it’s random. However, the game will level off so you don’t get too many Snipers and not enough Assaults, for example, so by the end of the game it will all level out. Unless you consistently get your Snipers killed, I suppose.

1873

Mmm these is one of the hard things to explain to other people. Yes, you could say “you can only do 1 mission at a time, in th end it’s a turn based game, so what’s the point of having a system that allow for more?”.

It’s an issue of immersion, realism, believability and illusion. The old system gave the illusion that the aliens were like not a series of scripts fired every X seconds on the map, but a real enemy that like the player was playing the game, scouting the Earth, creating hidden bases to operate from, using supply ships between them (you could track and attack them!, and discover the bases that way!), launching raids to human cities from the bases, etc.

I am concerned about squad composition. Unless I’m missing something, but it appears that specialization (heavy, support, etc.) is determined by the game and not the player. Someone please tell me I’m wrong about this.

You are somewhat right, at least the base class/abilities and loadout are fixed (but yo can hire from a pool, as the old one, I suppose). No more inventory management. Which btw, it’s one of the things I forgot to mention on the table. The original was a bit too much having to equip every soldier, put every magazine, etc, but the new one goes too far dropping all the options to customize the inventory. Here the heavy support have a machine gun and a rocket launcher and that’s it.

What you can change is the abilities/items you unlock each time the soldier level up, that’s the customization it has.

You can read about them here
http://www.oxm.co.uk/46316/features/xcom-enemy-unknown-class-guide-how-to-use-the-assault-support-heavy-and-sniper/?page=1

1874

You’re not. Jake says in the TMA podcast the game attempts to balance the classes of soldier you’re provided. Definitely a bit bummed about this, but he seems to feel that a strategy game isn’t strategy if you’re allowed to min/max and/or play the way you want to play.

Edit: ninja’d

1875

And I think he’s right. Also, I enjoy some randomness to my strategy games, though I’m aware the more random something is the less strategic it ends up being - I also think it’s going to be fun to promote a rookie and (like opening a present) find out what he ended up being! Sort of neat.

It’s really going to be one of many things that we’ll have a better, more educated opinion about after we’ve had a chance to play it. And of course, if it actually ends up a big problem, I wouldn’t be surprised if a future patch adds a “second wave” option (or even a first wave option) to allow for it. Or a mod.

1876

Well, also keep in mind that what class a soldier is is only the tiny first step in becoming a veteran. Each time they level up they have two different skills to choose from, and many of the skills we’ve seen so far are pretty powerful. Things like snipers who can move and shoot, assault troops who can drive enemies from cover, heavies that can give all your troops bonuses against an enemy, etc. There’s going to be plenty of ways to customize your troops and make them your own.

1877

Also, Psionics! Which we know almost nothing about, except later in the game soldiers can randomly be capable of such feets. Should be interesting.

1878

A lengthy article about the making of the game

1879

Interesting article.

Is it just me or does this last quote heavily imply they are looking at using the engine to make similar games with different settings?

What happens next? I don’t know. This is a game and a game type and a genre, you could tell a lot of stories with this type of game. That’s what I’m excited for. It can still be XCOM, but it could have a lot of settings. It could tell a lot of stories. I’m not tired of it. Not yet! I’ll recharge. But I do think it’s the type of game set-up where you’ve got a strategic layer, you’ve got a combat layer, and the story is so broad of what’s XCOM, that you could tell a lot of stories. You could make a lot of games that could be considered XCOM.

And that’s true of the depth of my thought at this point. I’m like, I could do a lot of things.

1880

My problem with Xenonauts is actually that even it, touted as being very faithful, falls short on features a bit on the original. But we’ll see how the finished game plays, I guess.

Some of the complaints about the original I fail to even comprehend - for example number of soldiers. Nobody forced you to pack your skyranger full of troopers for every UFO. You had the OPTION of doing that, which is nice - there was a maximum loadout (iirc. the skyranger’s was 14?), but you could pick any number that suit you, accompanied by one or two tanks, if so you desired.

It’s the same with types of soldiers - first, the game now forces you into certain roles. Fair enough, I guess I can live with that, but still, I fail to see how this is actually BETTER than the free choice the original game offered.
Now, even with those roles, the game now FORCES the composition of my force on me - don’t like snipers? YOU WILL PLAY WITH A SNIPER, UNDERSTOOD!?! Why is this better than letting me decide how the heck I want to play?

And equipment. Sure, it was annoying to re-equip your soldiers before each fight in X-Com, but this is an easy to adress UI issue.
Now the game picks for me what items a soldier brings to battle? That’s an improvement in which way, exactly?

The list goes on and on.

rezaf