X-COM XCOM 2 + War of the Chosen Expansion Thread

[MadMaxHellfire]

I actually like the timers. At least in a lot of missions. It forces you to play differently than you would in the old XCOM games where you can usually move at your own speed.
Problem is that they really overuse it in the game - there should have been a better balance.

Really, the biggest problem is the game's pod/enemy activation system - especially in combination with the extremely screwed up line of sight and the fact that enemies get a free move (at least not shot) when they see you.
The original games' system where each enemy would just go about its business until it sees you was much preferable.
In XCOM 2, you can be as careful as you want to, you will at some point peek around a corner and end up in the line of sight of an enemy you could not have seen - and suddenly the whole game goes from "you're sneaky" to "'Sir! We are surrounded' 'Excellent, we can attack in all directions!'". It's just a total interruption of the flow, which is never a good thing in games.


Now that is just wrong.
It's in the nature of RNG based games to occasionally just screw you, no matter what.
It usually "only" costs you a soldier or two in games like this, but it might be more. And losing one or two soldiers is usually enough for most people to reload anyway.
Which is the main reason I'd never get the idea to play such games on iron man. I'm just too much of a perfectionist to play a game like this on iron man. If I fail, I want to do better, and not getting a chance at that annoys me too much. I'm certainly very good at games, but not flawless. So.. nah.

Besides, the random seeds in XCOM 2 already make sure you can't just reload a shot until it hits. You actually have to re-do the entire turn to see much of a difference.

Anyway, taking a wild guess, I think that most people talk about a squad wipe after 2-3 soldiers died "already" - since at that point, it is a safe assumption that the rest doesn't stand much of a chance anymore.

Agree with a lot of that. The game felt way more about avoiding upsetting too many pods than it's predecessor. That felt like the key to success, as opposed to being tactically astute.
One game I had all my troops in full cover and on full health, one badly wounded enemy in sight, moving forward on my last turn to kill him I upset an enemy pod which then had a free reign and wiped out all my squad.
Its not as good as it's predecessor Imo, nowhere near.

the problem is the lethality of the combat. it usually takes one missed shot, one bad move, to lead to a total wipe. if combat had been slower, more manageable, i'd be perfectly fine with waking up another pod if that didn't mean i automatically lost the mission but instead i could have one or two turns of manouvering to fix the situation. if you want to keep the same ruleset or something similar.
or, maybe, give me bigger teams and expendable rookies, like in real x-com.
as you can see, xcom took the worst aspects from both sides of the issue, how can it not suck?

 

[Falksi]

What you describe can and has happened in Enemy Within as well. It got me a few times in Xcom 1 before I learned to not move forward with the last soldier. Or sometimes I did, but I knew well what could happen and I was prepared to face the consequences even if that meant losing the mission.
Each shot is a random chance and so is moving forward. As I said to thesheep, it is how the game works. You learn to play it as it is, not as you wish it to be and once you do, it does not really happen often or almost ever.

It just felt cheaper with 2 though. I had the same with EW, but as you say you learn & adapt. However the more random elements of 2 seemed to affect that somewhat, and for some reason it just didn't sit as well with me.
Maybe it's the whole package. Certainly the fact I was fighting human-esq type enemies half the time did little to warm me to it.

 

[Falksi]

the problem is the lethality of the combat. it usually takes one missed shot, one bad move, to lead to a total wipe. if combat had been slower, more manageable, i'd be perfectly fine with waking up another pod if that didn't mean i automatically lost the mission but instead i could have one or two turns of manouvering to fix the situation. if you want to keep the same ruleset or something similar.
or, maybe, give me bigger teams and expendable rookies, like in real x-com.
as you can see, xcom took the worst aspects from both sides of the issue, how can it not suck?

Boom. Top post. I still enjoyed the reboot, Enemy Within is one of my favourite 360 games, but you are dead right regards the issues.
THAT is what the devs should be focussing on, not the time limits which are neither here nor there.

 

[ArchAngel]

What you describe can and has happened in Enemy Within as well. It got me a few times in Xcom 1 before I learned to not move forward with the last soldier. Or sometimes I did, but I knew well what could happen and I was prepared to face the consequences even if that meant losing the mission.
Each shot is a random chance and so is moving forward. As I said to thesheep, it is how the game works. You learn to play it as it is, not as you wish it to be and once you do, it does not really happen often or almost ever.

It just felt cheaper with 2 though. I had the same with EW, but as you say you learn & adapt. However the more random elements of 2 seemed to affect that somewhat, and for some reason it just didn't sit as well with me.
Maybe it's the whole package. Certainly the fact I was fighting human-esq type enemies half the time did little to warm me to it.

vanilla Xcom 2 is not a great game but LW2 is awesome

 

[Nutria]

the problem is the lethality of the combat. it usually takes one missed shot, one bad move, to lead to a total wipe. if combat had been slower, more manageable, i'd be perfectly fine with waking up another pod if that didn't mean i automatically lost the mission but instead i could have one or two turns of manouvering to fix the situation. if you want to keep the same ruleset or something similar.
or, maybe, give me bigger teams and expendable rookies, like in real x-com.

The strategic layer makes this problem even worse. In real X-Com you can afford to lose missions. In the new ones, especially X-Com 2, you have to win almost every mission or you fall hopelessly behind. It sets up a really bad chain:

one bad RNG roll >> one dead soldier >> one failed mission >> game over

It's just begging you to savescum. What ruined the game for me is when I started reloading every time I accidentally activated two pods at the same time. After that I never had a single soldier killed. The only challenge in the game is activating one pod at a time and there is nothing fun or interesting about that.

 

[ArchAngel]

the problem is the lethality of the combat. it usually takes one missed shot, one bad move, to lead to a total wipe. if combat had been slower, more manageable, i'd be perfectly fine with waking up another pod if that didn't mean i automatically lost the mission but instead i could have one or two turns of manouvering to fix the situation. if you want to keep the same ruleset or something similar.
or, maybe, give me bigger teams and expendable rookies, like in real x-com.

The strategic layer makes this problem even worse. In real X-Com you can afford to lose missions. In the new ones, especially X-Com 2, you have to win almost every mission or you fall hopelessly behind. It sets up a really bad chain:

one bad RNG roll >> one dead soldier >> one failed mission >> game over

It's just begging you to savescum. What ruined the game for me is when I started reloading every time I accidentally activated two pods at the same time. After that I never had a single soldier killed. The only challenge in the game is activating one pod at a time and there is nothing fun or interesting about that.

My xcom 2 commander/ironman run had me fail 3 missions. My xcom 2 legendary/ironman run I failed 2 .

 

[Falksi]

vanilla Xcom 2 is not a great game but LW2 is awesome

This is where I hate modern gaming. I'm playing on ps4 and can never get signed in to the network. So it's vanilla all the way
If they release an official expansion I'll defo give it a go.

 

[ArchAngel]

vanilla Xcom 2 is not a great game but LW2 is awesome

This is where I hate modern gaming. I'm playing on ps4 and can never get signed in to the network. So it's vanilla all the way
If they release an official expansion I'll defo give it a go.

Well it is your own fault for playing crappy console versions.

 

[Falksi]

Well it is your own fault for playing crappy console versions.

Pc gaming does my nut in tbh. I long for the old plug in and play days. The more consoles drift towards being like them, the more hassle they become.

 

[Jimmious]

Not sure why it's so hard to believe Jim? I had 4 troops, full squad at that time, all in full cover with one wounded enemy to kill. Sparked a pod off on my last move and they flanked & killed several squad members, the others panicked, and the following turn the enemy finished them off. I reloaded the game and replayed several different ways and avoiding that or a similar scenario from said point basically boiled down to me acting with the enemy pod in mind. It killed the game for me, as that said to me savescumming and luck/pc decisions were too big a factor in the game.
2 feels far cheaper than Enemy Within to me. Still not a bad game, but a backwards step, and a game which has far bigger issues than the timer.

There you go, that's definetely not an optimal move. I know its very gamey but making sure you dont trigger pods after you have done some actions is a big part of the game honestly. Not saying its a GOOD part, but it is important

 

[Serus]

Not sure why it's so hard to believe Jim? I had 4 troops, full squad at that time, all in full cover with one wounded enemy to kill. Sparked a pod off on my last move and they flanked & killed several squad members, the others panicked, and the following turn the enemy finished them off. I reloaded the game and replayed several different ways and avoiding that or a similar scenario from said point basically boiled down to me acting with the enemy pod in mind. It killed the game for me, as that said to me savescumming and luck/pc decisions were too big a factor in the game.
2 feels far cheaper than Enemy Within to me. Still not a bad game, but a backwards step, and a game which has far bigger issues than the timer.

There you go, that's definetely not an optimal move. I know its very gamey but making sure you dont trigger pods after you have done some actions is a big part of the game honestly. Not saying its a GOOD part, but it is important

Agree on this.
"Only make actions that can potentially activate a pod as your first move of the turn" is one of the first things you learn in both nuXComs. It is like ten commandments in one for these games. Sure they might be (rare) occasions where something goes wrong despite your efforts or you are certain than no activation is possible and then BAM! but it is rare.
It doesn't mean that the whole pod activation is a good gameplay - it is not, its stupid and not fun.
If you insist on playing a nuxcom i sugget part 1 with long war... they made there so that pods are mobile most of the time so wheter you want it or not additional pods will often activate no matter what you do. But you are given means to deal with those situations.

Edit: Mind you i only played part 2 once - directly after it was released so it is possible i am wrong on this.

 

[ArchAngel]

Not sure why it's so hard to believe Jim? I had 4 troops, full squad at that time, all in full cover with one wounded enemy to kill. Sparked a pod off on my last move and they flanked & killed several squad members, the others panicked, and the following turn the enemy finished them off. I reloaded the game and replayed several different ways and avoiding that or a similar scenario from said point basically boiled down to me acting with the enemy pod in mind. It killed the game for me, as that said to me savescumming and luck/pc decisions were too big a factor in the game.
2 feels far cheaper than Enemy Within to me. Still not a bad game, but a backwards step, and a game which has far bigger issues than the timer.

There you go, that's definetely not an optimal move. I know its very gamey but making sure you dont trigger pods after you have done some actions is a big part of the game honestly. Not saying its a GOOD part, but it is important

Agree on this.
"Only make actions that can potentially activate a pod as your first move of the turn" is one of the first things you learn in both nuXComs. It is like ten commandments in one for these games. Sure they might be (rare) occasions where something goes wrong despite your efforts or you are certain than no activation is possible and then BAM! but it is rare.
It doesn't mean that the whole pod activation is a good gameplay - it is not, its stupid and not fun.
If you insist on playing a nuxcom i sugget part 1 with long war... they made there so that pods are mobile most of the time so wheter you want it or not additional pods will often activate no matter what you do. But you are given means to deal with those situations.

Edit: Mind you i only played part 2 once - directly after it was released so it is possible i am wrong on this.

In LW2 they are also patrolling. They also added a sound system when each weapon type makes a sound in certain radius and enemy patrols can hear it and will move towards it.

 

[Achilles]

Really, the biggest problem is the game's pod/enemy activation system - especially in combination with the extremely screwed up line of sight and the fact that enemies get a free move (at least not shot) when they see you.
The original games' system where each enemy would just go about its business until it sees you was much preferable.
In XCOM 2, you can be as careful as you want to, you will at some point peek around a corner and end up in the line of sight of an enemy you could not have seen - and suddenly the whole game goes from "you're sneaky" to "'Sir! We are surrounded' 'Excellent, we can attack in all directions!'". It's just a total interruption of the flow, which is never a good thing in games.

Fully agreed. Classic X-Com's combat system is miles ahead of nuXcom. I enjoyed the new games for what they are but the pod activation system needs to be scrapped for Xcom 3.

 

[Falksi]

Yeah, that's the thing ain't it? Having to play the game "gamey" to avoid said pod activation just harms the experience Imo.
What made old Xcom so good was the fact you could hunt aliens down, and get into a superior situation as much as you could unearth a surprise or be bitten on the arse.
They're fucking about with these meld & timer systems to try and encourage players to push forward. Well if they scrapped the pod system and allowed players to go on the hunt too that'd provide it's own reward.

 

[Mazisky]

There are press review packages about a new dlc uploaded on steam, the expansion announce is really close.

I wonder what they will add, if new mechanics, new factions or anything, i hope it will be integrated content EW style and not end game standalone content

Despite the crappy engine, xcom 2 is one of the modern games i liked the most, so i'm quite hyped

 

[Falksi]

Five years to late? How can I be five years too late to comment on an article posted on here 5 days ago? Lol.
Regardless of what's been said in the past, the devs seem to be focussing on the wrong areas to better the game.
Another example of a company listening to the drongo masses who would sooner they spend millions of pounds & hours doing things like making dragons rideable, rather than actually adding a story to a TES game.
Timers are a side-issue, and should be way behind a list of other things to be addressed.

 

[Serus]

like making dragons rideable, rather than actually adding a story to a TES game.

Because story is what those games need the most... of the two things i choose rideable dragons...

 

[ArchAngel]

Are you sure those are not additional mods?

 

[Althorion]

It is another mod. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=866874504 to be precise. His full mod list: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=910737331

 

[ArchAngel]

Long war 2 1.3 is OUT! Too many changes to post here. It is a huge balance overhaul of LW2. They changed almost everything at least a bit.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Sigh, still waiting for a stable LW2 build to replay this fucker...

 

[ArchAngel]

Sigh, still waiting for a stable LW2 build to replay this fucker...

1.3 took them almost 3 months. I don't think they will release something as big any time soon.

 

[Alienman]

Oh no, I just started to play this. I guess this require restart.

 

[Alienman]

"Reinforcements can drop even if your squad is concealed!"

That is a bit of a cock.

 

[ArchAngel]

"Reinforcements can drop even if your squad is concealed!"

That is a bit of a cock.

Yes but now you get a warning before they just show up. Also enemy roams maps in smaller packs.

The main point of 1.3 is to make concealment non combat tactics a bit harder while making combat missions with smaller teams a bit easier.

EDIT: also I think now reinforcements only starts coming after X turns (where X is more than before), in 1.2 they started coming a couple of turns after you broke concealment. This made is so trying to fight during missions early was basically suicide because you would need to fight reinforcements for at least few turns before you managed to finish the mission. Now you can fight from turn 1 if you are good enough to clear enemy pods fast.