And having a strong manufacturing division was not a cheat, and never was. Lots of money doesn’t make it easier to take down aliens. It does make research faster, but that’s it. The game was built with manufacturing and selling in mind. Low on money? Clear out your stock of plasma pistols! Hawking the extra unneeded alien technology was part of the financial balance of the game. If you want to balance selling laser rifles, then throw in a simple supply/demand system or just balance prices. No big deal.
Elirium was the Unobtanium and you had to farm that shit. It MADE the mid-end game. You used it to find more aliens faster (better ships), and it factored into your strategic decisions, like you wouldn’t start launching blaster bombs into an alien ship for fear of destroying the sweet Elirium-filled reactors. The more bases you ran, the more elirium you needed, the more elirium you found.
Stardock could pull it off - They are financially independent, and can make the game however they want, like they do with Elemental. Other than that, I actually think that as you mention, ex-modders may actually be the one kind of group that can pull it off, IF they have any succesfull experience. I have no idea who they are.
I think the whole objection to selling things is bordering on NMA territory.
My fondest memories of X-Com don’t involve selling crap.
I understand where people are coming from, but saying the whole game is destined to be shit because you can’t sell stuff is just silly. Thats exactly the mindset of NMA when it came to Fallout 3. “Its not isometric, so it automatically is shit.”
Fallout 3 was shit for completely different reasons than its perspective. :)
Look at Elemental, it’s not exactly MoM. Even Stardock, if needed to make an X-Com game, will make changes.
Maybe 2K Games will one day try to upgrade the graphics like has been done with Monkey Island lately. This could sell pretty well. Especially if you consider an iPad/iPhone version.
The Q&A only makes mention of manufactured items, so it might still be possible to sell salvaged alien tech and corpses to finance the war effort. Regardless of whether this is true or not, this hardly makes or breaks the game for me, assuming there are other ways to make money that are reasonably balanced.
Really, the financial mechanics in X-com were incredibly well balanced.
Also, alot of money early doesn’t help that much. Sure, more bases. But there is a limit to how much you can get out of them without all the alien tech you haven’t research yet. And never mind Pogo’s elerium point (which is true).
Being financially self-sufficient through manufacturing means you can completely ignore the funding situation. This removes your incentive to perform well on missions (avoiding civilian deaths, etc.) and means you dont need to worry about alien infiltration, letting you take out alien bases at your leisure.
It does have an impact, and I think this team has the right idea by scaling it back.
Well, you could also get into a situation in which a lot of the important funding nations would sign secret pacts with the aliens even if you performed well on all missions, leaving you without a solid funding base.
In the oh-so-improved scenario, that’d mean screw it -> reload a much earlier save to try and prevent the secret pact.
In the original game, you could always just build a manufacturing base and allow those nations to STILL help finance you by sidestepping their secret pact - instead of directly funding you they’d buy your laser cannons.
Of course, this is a completely fictional narrative to the fact that you could build a base and sell laser cannons, but wasn’t part of what made XCom such a great game the opportunity to create such personal narratives?
I think it’s hard to argue that country funding was very significant in the original game. Between manufacturing and selling off alien weapons you hardly needed the funding which is not a good thing. Even a few countries cutting funding altogether was not something that really stung that much. Bringing a bit more emphasis on that part of the game sounds about right, and as long as everything is balanced it’s OK by me.
Rewriting XCOM with unchanged design and balance seems like a waste of time and probably won’t be the commercial success the hardcore audience for some reason thinks it would be.
Well…Since the craziness regarding selling stuff seems to have died out, here’s two more things for you purists to explode over ;-)
Psi is still there, but ONLY for aliens, its been removed for the human side. Too powerfull, and is a real terror for the human side when done well - this way its there to keep the player on its toes, and to keep the suspense of the game
Blaster Bombs are gone…totally irrevocably gone! too powerfull and removes strategic layer according to the devs.
The game becomes a cakewalk when you develop Psi properly. As for blasters, I don’t really mind. I only ever used them to blast holes in the outside of UFOs, so as long as there is still a high explosive that can be researched that is able to punch through the outside of a UFO, I can’t honestly say that I’ll miss randomly losing 3-4 squad members from across the map.
Again, I think those are probably fairly wise changes from a balance perspective.
The first time I ever played through X-Com (when I was 13 or 14) I actually never discovered Psi technology. It blew my mind when I replayed it a little later and found there was this whole aspect of the game I’d never touched. It does tend to trivialise the end-game, though.
I can see the point in cutting human psi, but I’d rather nerf it instead of axing it outright.
Not convinced about cutting blaster bombs - they didn’t unbalance things nearly as badly as psi, though admittedly I hoarded them instead of using them to level everything in sight.
They pretty much made the game about firing off a blaster bomb and then finding the 2-3 dudes who survived it.
If even that many made it.
They really did trivialize the game quite a bit. I can overlook them not being there, but I do want some sort of big bang weapon that can knock down buildings and the like. It doesn’t neccessarily have to fly around corners and right into the enemy’s rectum though.
And boy howdy did they suck when the enemy first got them sometimes. Land your plane, BOOOM everyone dead and plane destroyed. Time to reload and hope that doesn’t happen in the first turn or two this time.
I dont know, i quite ‘liked’ the prospect that all my men ‘could’ die on mission start. It wasn’t hugely likely, but it did probably happen to all players once or twice. Kept it real.
I thought those aspects of Xcom really just added to the story/role play aspect. It was a really great game for the imagination(something modern ‘games as movies’ sadly lose out on imho). The game design left you room for that, which i think was one of it’s greatest achievments. It wasn’t about being fair or un-exploitable, you as the player made those calls(or had them made for you by an alien with a blaster bomb in the DZ).
“And then in the darkness as the hatch opened and F58T60H40B50(Franz to his mates) stepped onto terra-firma, a bright light followed by a huge explosion filled the air…the whole team was dead!” - F**Kin Hell! the player exclaimed.
