Attn: XCOM shit in this thread.

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Re: Attn: XCOM shit in this thread.

Post by Stark »

What do you see? It ain't no satellite!

What more do you want? :lol:

And Gups it ain't just the sniper; guys react fire through obstacles any time. However at least the UI is different because you don't have the alien head symbol with crosshairs that represents 'visible through someone else'. It's a shame the iPad camera thing is so poor, because I'd have loved to make an hilarious video of all the times my sniper aimed and fired through a featureless wall. The last mission I did was UFO site, and by that point I'd given up on actually caring about the sniper's arc of fire, because he could shoot through it anyway.

Towards the end of the first terror mission I had a floater jetting about in a warehouse, who became visible every time he jumped for some reason. The building was intact and had no windows, a roof, etc. While I was moving my squad down the road toward him, my assault free react shot fired his shotgun through the concrete wall and killed the floater. This isn't 'can only see him a bit', this is shooting at a target nobody should be able to see through a giant obstacle. If he'd fired and damaged the wall or put decals on it or whatever, that'd be fine. He didn't, because beyond spotting calculations I don't think the game cares about terrain at all. He fired, the bullets went through a wall, the floater died.

On terms of what Vendetta is talking about, I once had a thin man shoot right through his own high cover and my guys high cover to hit me; he was a square off cover, so he looked and fired directly through it with no fudgey 'don't mind our shit LOS' idle animation. When I returned fire, the first shot spangled off the wall like a real video game. The second shot was fired in the drama camera at a 90 degree angle to the target, hit the target, and the targets corpse appeared on the near side of the wall he was previously behind.

Working as intended.
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Re: Attn: XCOM shit in this thread.

Post by bilateralrope »

I just played the demo on PC. At the end of the second mission I had my sniper sitting as far left on the building as he could be while still using the building as cover. The aliens moved, leaving one of them in the same position at the other end of the building. Then came the snipers turn. Despite there being at least two pieces of solid cover between him and the alien, he could still shoot it with a hit chance as high as any other shot he had made that mission.

I look forward to someone explaining exactly how that shot makes sense. I can even draw a diagram if you want.

I'll probably pick up XCOM when Steam has it on sale.
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Re: Attn: XCOM shit in this thread.

Post by Stark »

This visual stuff is t even the worst stuff. The stuff vendetta and cov talk about with game flow and how mechanics impact successful play is what really kills e game stone dead. This stuff is just laugh-out-loud funny.
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Re: Attn: XCOM shit in this thread.

Post by bilateralrope »

Which is why I'm not going to pay full price. But I've heard enough interesting things about XCOM that I still want to play it.
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Re: Attn: XCOM shit in this thread.

Post by GuppyShark »

Stark wrote:This visual stuff is t even the worst stuff. The stuff vendetta and cov talk about with game flow and how mechanics impact successful play is what really kills e game stone dead. This stuff is just laugh-out-loud funny.
For what it's worth I agree that the combination of flanking*/cover systems and activating enemy groups etc are bigger issues with the game than the LOS issue.

As a tabletop wargamer I don't have a problem with slightly abstracted LOS at all. As far as I can tell, the LOS is drawn from any part of the tile you're in, so in effect you occupy adjacent tiles for the purpose of LOS. It's just that the animations are often not in sync. I just don't really care all that much about the animations.

* Is it just me or do soldiers not even have a facing? They will happily Overwatch guys that pop out 'behind' them, the only thing that appears to have a facing is cover.
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Re: Attn: XCOM shit in this thread.

Post by Stark »

Yeah I'm pretty sure there's no facing. You get just as many bizarre shoot through whole map events backwards as forwards, and I'm not sure how it would even decide which way you're 'facing' in cover, since the idle animation has your just looking and leaning out to expose himself as much as possible.

I'm curious about the apparent pc/console difference though. Does it not show a bunch of read heads in the top left on pc, indicating how many aliens you can see? This decision (if you can 'see' someone or not) is closely linked to being able to shoot them, so that difference could explain a lot.
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Re: Attn: XCOM shit in this thread.

Post by White Haven »

Individual facings would be problematic for the 4-6-man squad setup. With that few people, you really can't afford to have people pointed in every direction.
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Re: Attn: XCOM shit in this thread.

Post by bilateralrope »

Stark wrote:I'm curious about the apparent pc/console difference though. Does it not show a bunch of read heads in the top left on pc, indicating how many aliens you can see? This decision (if you can 'see' someone or not) is closely linked to being able to shoot them, so that difference could explain a lot.
It shows them in the demo. Clicking on them seemed to be the only way to pick which one you attack.
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Re: Attn: XCOM shit in this thread.

Post by Stark »

On PC you can use <poorly chosen buttons> to cycle who you're attacking once in 'tactical mode'; on console its the shoulders. But Guppy's screenshot doesn't have them. If the game doesn't even think the sniper can see anyone, obviously you can't shoot anyone; the issue is that the game often believes you can see something you clearly can't. I've returned the game so I can't make a fuzzy, low-res ipad video of this in action, sadly. :(
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Re: Attn: XCOM shit in this thread.

Post by Zinegata »

I'm on the PS3. Sniper does get to shoot through walls, although it may be more map-dependent. I do recall having problems shooting through walls in the map GS shows, but for some reason my sniper keeps being able to shoot into guys hiding in a UFO :). Alternatively, the secret may be the height advantage - when getting the magical X-ray vision into a UFO my sniper usually has some height advantage.

I really think there's no difference between the console and PC version mechanically save the UI.

Also, finished the game. Rating is definitely "Typical Firaxis" - solid and fun but has many rough edges.

Ending wasn't the most awful ever, but it did have "Shit, we have to ship the game already? Slap together something for the ending!" written all over it.

Finally, anyone wanna see a medieval-themed X-com where you're Inquisition agents hunting down evil Witches and Necromancers? With most combat being melee you wouldn't even have to worry much over the squad sight thing! :D
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Re: Attn: XCOM shit in this thread.

Post by Stark »

Or you could use an actual good game as a basis for this idea. :V

Anyway, I'd be surprised if there were fundamental pc/console differences, but PC people are saying they don't see this stuff, which blows me away.
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Re: Attn: XCOM shit in this thread.

Post by GuppyShark »

Zinegata wrote:Finally, anyone wanna see a medieval-themed X-com where you're Inquisition agents hunting down evil Witches and Necromancers? With most combat being melee you wouldn't even have to worry much over the squad sight thing! :D
I was thinking the engine would work well for a modern fantasy/horror style game where you're cleaning out vampire nests and such.
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Re: Attn: XCOM shit in this thread.

Post by Stark »

Are you guys planning to solve any of the mechanical issues, or just palette-swap to things you like? :lol:

Gamer stockholm syndrome needs a name.
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Re: Attn: XCOM shit in this thread.

Post by Covenant »

I could write a book about the minor things the game is doing wrong, but still having fun. Honestly, as X-COM games go, this is pretty good. Looks and feels better than APOC to me, nowhere as dumb as the spinoffs like Enforcer and Interceptor, and while TFTD is still my favorite of all the X-COMs this one does remind me of the fun of playing UFOD. A lot of the game is pretty blerch, but it could have been so much worse. If you're not sure you wanna spend the money on it, wait for a sale, it will be worth the money if you've been jonesing for an XCOM style game that isn't terribly horribly bad.

Unlike UFOD, the beginning of this game is not the best, it is arguably the worst part of the game. The difficulty balance is all off, you have no toys to play with and your rookies are absofuckinglootely bad, and it makes them so tiresome to play as. This is really bad design, you never want the beginning of the game to suck, because sucking will make people say "Fuck this" and walk away. Losing tons of rookies at the beginning of the game is not fun. UFOD didn't actually clear-cut your teams at the beginning, you had a breathing period to start on laser weapons and medkits, buy some proxy grenades, and order some HWP's. You spend the early part of the game beating up on 2-3 Sectoids at a time, intercepting a few UFOs, and generally being a bit more X-Filesy with the whole "What are these? What's going on?" thing.

People never remember that, and I swear the game-makers forgot it entirely too. Here they start chucking monster closets at you from the beginning. Most annoying, and from someone who has restarted like 9 times now, they don't even let you diddle around in the base before throwing you balls first into a mission. You could AT LEAST let me choose what squad to respond to that first mission with, fucknugget! So in this game you're getting hosed down from the beginning, not that you can't avoid it, but it takes a lot of the fun away and it isn't until mid-game that you actually start having fun with your job as commander.

The terrible fuckups they've done to research and engineering in this game make it so hard to do anything on the strategic layer other than follow a few deviations of a pretty clear-cut build order. Also antithetical to X-COM's flow, the early game seems like the right time to let rookies die for a few good wins, but you're wrong. Rookies early on must be preserved at all costs because level-up bonuses absolutely decide the game. The difference between a rookie and a top-level vet is something like 4 hitpoints, 35-40 willpower, and 25-40 accuracy. That's just raw stats, not even taking into account the fact that a few levels will let you do so much more with your dudes that it is basically like having ten times the amount of soldiers you actually do.

You need to think about this in terms of missions. I'm in August and my soldier who NEVER MISSED A MISSION has only gotten 24 sorties under his belt. That's with going on every mission I was asked or tasked to do. My soldiers 40ish kills each, all except the 6th slot which is a rotating one (I kept this one girl around a lot though, she's been on 14 missions with me, just because I have a soft spot for Assaults).

So consider that if you have a soldier go on, what, 3 missions or so before he gets gunned down... well sure, he's just a "newbie" right, and it's only first month? Wrong! The new guy you get to replace him has missed out on about 1/8th of the missions my best guys have, making it all that much harder to get your squad to a decent level. You really can't afford to lose more than one rotating slot on your roster. Also, for the people who haven't played Classic or Impossible, you don't get the Officer Training School automatically, and I personally found it more useful to spec into weapons first than waste precious research days unlocking that or the foundry. Because of this your harder difficulty runs will make it even harder to accept losses because you're far less likely to have access to a 5th or 6th soldier until the late second or early third month, assuming you're getting lasers and carapace for your soldiers.

Follow that and you should be on the way to success.
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Re: Attn: XCOM shit in this thread.

Post by Stark »

Given the game's story-based structure, I'm not sure how anyone could play it again. What would the point be? Farm more monster closets?

I guess people 'having fun' with a game that has a single correct approach says a lot about how captive the fans of this kind of game are.
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Re: Attn: XCOM shit in this thread.

Post by Covenant »

Stark wrote:Given the game's story-based structure, I'm not sure how anyone could play it again. What would the point be? Farm more monster closets?

I guess people 'having fun' with a game that has a single correct approach says a lot about how captive the fans of this kind of game are.
Originally beating it was meant to unlock a NewGame+ mode with the "Second Wave" options added on, which would have changed things up in some interesting ways to add a challenge. Those got disabled pre-launch and 2K says it was just for internal fun and no plans are made to revisit it, which is either bullshit trying to hide On-Disc DLC or a very sad statement that they've got no concept of how easy it would be to patch it back in (as modders do) to upscale the replay value tenfold.

Honestly, the story-based structure isn't so bad. It basically acts as 'notable moments' in the playthrough but it doesn't restrict the player to doing them at a certain time or a certain way. I just experimented with the Overseer UFO and I can not only ignore it, and it comes back, but shoot it down and then ignore it. I guess they build another one and just tell the crew to stop driving it into the Ukraine.

In an ideal world there would have been some diverging elements to shake things up, and less of a bottleneck placed on things like Alien Bases. Just because the Hyperwave Device is Super Cool doesn't mean there only has to be one. It could just be like the Synonium Device, something you pick up on sensors and have to capture or destroy erry once n a whilly.

But I'd say, all things considered, once you get out of the woods and into the game proper the storyline bits don't FORCE you to do anything. In UFOD it was pretty sandboxy, but the developers could be pretty sure that on an average game players would:

1) Shoot down a UFO
2) Capture a downed UFO
3) Defend a city from a terror mission
4) Capture a psionic alien
5) Invade and destroy an enemy base

Not all of these are REQUIRED. I think you can get all the stuff you need without going into an enemy base or capturing a Psionic Alien, right? Maybe not, I forget who unlocks the final invasion mission in UFOD, in TFTD it involved Lolbstermen who didn't have Psionics (Molecular Control). But you could theoretically do it without responding to terror missions. Using these kinds of pretty assured moments in a game's progression to link bits of story is a smart idea and doesn't preclude you from telling your own story in your head. The only characters who seem to have a personality are Shen and Valen.

I think the real issue is that there's so very little that actually happens per-game. The overseer UFO was, for me, the 7th UFO I've seen. How sad is that? I bet I'm near the end (running out of research topics usually makes you feel that way) so having nearly "beaten" the game with only one base, 2 terror missions that I can remember, and only 7 UFOs spotted (probably like 3-4 council missions and a boatload of abductions to fill out the rest of the 25 missions I've been on)... it has been fun but it is also a very thin experience. I can see playing through again for the fun of it, especially to just derp around on Normal and laugh at how crappy the enemies are, but it is fair to say that you can expect things to go relatively the same.

UFOD wasn't so different. Play it on Superhuman, research things in the sensible order, and unless the enemies throw you a curveball by dropping Mutons on you Month 2 you can basically write the script of how it'll go. The strategic mode in both games is somewhat pre-scripted. The flaw in EU is pre-scripting the tactical mode too much. People would complain a lot less if they didn't see the same map 5 times in one playthrough.
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Re: Attn: XCOM shit in this thread.

Post by Edward Yee »

I understand that the Second Wave options can be manually enabled by INI editing? Doesn't sound like on-disc DLC if only because (okay I'm probably making some logical fallacy here) one would imagine that Firaxis wouldn't make one whose "security" (against being available without buying the DLC) wouldn't be so easily defeated.

Then again, Firaxis apparently left all the CG cutscenes in the demo as .bik files.
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Re: Attn: XCOM shit in this thread.

Post by Losonti Tokash »

It's not that crazy, all of ME3's on disc dlc could be activated by just changing a setting in your save games.
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Re: Attn: XCOM shit in this thread.

Post by Zinegata »

Stark->
Anyway, I'd be surprised if there were fundamental pc/console differences, but PC people are saying they don't see this stuff, which blows me away
It's probably because of different playstyles. Note that for all the people who did the sniper style here, the folks who've "solved" Impossible Difficulty actually advocate mainly using Assault with no snipers and no overwatch at all (Why Assault-only? Fewest research requirements. Just get a rifle, an armor, and then rush to final mission). You play it that way, and the "shoot through walls" thing will almost never happen.

====

Also, the story-bsed thing was something I could honestly say that I liked over the old game. Presentation was one of the game's strongest elements.

As for replayability... I'd honestly say I'd wanna try it again on Impossible or maybe Classic Ironman. The game also does do a good job of making you feel that your team is valuable resource that must be protected, but they can and will die often.

====

Guppy->

Nah, I'd prefer medieval. The problem with the modern setting is that it's generally gunfire-based, which doesn't quite lend well to the X-com engine or "fun" game design in general. Besides which, it would allow for a wider bestiary.

Better to stick with a low fantasy setting so most folks are stuck with melee, which is easier to make more "cinematic".
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Re: Attn: XCOM shit in this thread.

Post by Zinegata »

Covenant wrote:I think the real issue is that there's so very little that actually happens per-game. The overseer UFO was, for me, the 7th UFO I've seen. How sad is that?
Yeah, agreed on this one, the game feels rather abrupt. Hence "Typical Firaxis".
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Re: Attn: XCOM shit in this thread.

Post by Covenant »

Zinegata wrote:Why Assault-only? Fewest research requirements. Just get a rifle, an armor, and then rush to final mission.
That really sucks. Impossible shouldn't be so hard that you have to blitz to end it, but I suppose that's usually what I did on Superhuman UFOD. I wish I could contrive myself getting more assaults, I only have two in my entire roster. You can influence it slightly, I hear, by killing guys up close. I cannot confirm this though.

I personally like the more 'intelligent' playstyle of flank-and-shoot, but it is just so hard to do with the way things are set up now. I'm not sure how you can do it on impossible without huge savescumming, flanking is potent but a unit who is moving in to flank is often exposing themselves to fire as well. Given how long it takes to put an enemy down, even a flanked one... I shudder to think of the things Mutons would do to you!

Do they lose tons of soldiers, or have they figured out how to isolate spawns so that monsters don't swarm? I'm still unsure how to make a unit 'flanked' reliably at all, I once had a guy on either side of a unit and it wasn't considered flanked. But trying to flank multiple guys just seems impossible, especially as you breach UFOs and bases. Oh well, I suppose its called Impossible for a reason. Maybe 6 run-and-gun double-shooting Assaults do enough damage to put down 3 Mutons and that's all you need.
Zinegata wrote:Yeah, agreed on this one, the game feels rather abrupt. Hence "Typical Firaxis".
It's not too bad, there's always too many UFOs by the end of UFOD, but I would have liked them just for set dressing if nothing else. They could have tasked me with 'picking my battles' like they do anyway (via the 3-at-once abduction missions) through having a large interceptor fleet that gets blown up more easily (IE, treat interceptors like rookies until advance weapons).
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Re: Attn: XCOM shit in this thread.

Post by Zinegata »

Covenant wrote:
Zinegata wrote:Why Assault-only? Fewest research requirements. Just get a rifle, an armor, and then rush to final mission.
That really sucks. Impossible shouldn't be so hard that you have to blitz to end it, but I suppose that's usually what I did on Superhuman UFOD. I wish I could contrive myself getting more assaults, I only have two in my entire roster. You can influence it slightly, I hear, by killing guys up close. I cannot confirm this though.
Well, to be fair it's not required that you go all-assault. They simply determine you have a better chance because the biggest killer in Impossible mode is time - the funding nations give up much too quickly to allow for much research. They have had guys win despite not going all-assault (although it's probably more accurate to say they play with Assault + Support, because they share the same weapon to cut down on research. They then try to sneak in Heavies).
Do they lose tons of soldiers, or have they figured out how to isolate spawns so that monsters don't swarm?
They do lose soldiers, and some missions are so bad they are considered "unwinnable" to the point it's better to dust off.

This mode is apparently so bloody that elite soldiers are eventually taken off the rotation permanently and will only be used again for psi testing or the final mission.

Anyway, prolly better for me to just link it :

http://www.reddit.com/r/Xcom/comments/1 ... iscussion/
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Re: Attn: XCOM shit in this thread.

Post by Covenant »

That's damn brutal. Probably too brutal, but an interesting examination of the game in stress test mode.

I'm disappointed that the funding nations pull the plug too fast. It'd be interesting to see them stick it out but force XCOM to rely on waves of Squaddies to eek out victories. Still, exciting to see there is a method for winning the game that doesn't require snipers cheese. My assaults are the game-winners, no doubt, but the snipers do so much culling from the sidelines that I find it hard to imagine trying to do it without them.
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Re: Attn: XCOM shit in this thread.

Post by Zinegata »

Covenant wrote:That's damn brutal. Probably too brutal, but an interesting examination of the game in stress test mode.

I'm disappointed that the funding nations pull the plug too fast. It'd be interesting to see them stick it out but force XCOM to rely on waves of Squaddies to eek out victories. Still, exciting to see there is a method for winning the game that doesn't require snipers cheese. My assaults are the game-winners, no doubt, but the snipers do so much culling from the sidelines that I find it hard to imagine trying to do it without them.
Yeah, the funding nations pulling the plug is the main issue because they often go to FULL PANIC after just one ignored abduction / failed mission in their area. Using sats to ease the pain is only a temporary band-aid because you can't sat a nation twice. Impossible was really meant to kill you by month 4 or so.

By contrast, I more or less did the sat thing in my Classic game, and I only lost Russia at the end of the game (and only because the game decided to throw a terror mission at me in St Petersberg just before I was about to launch the final mission and didn't feel like doing it anymore) while the rest of the world was still in the blue.

I haven't seen full details on the Impossible Marathon option though, which may not require such a bloody blitz. But then again Marathon is still apparently buggy.
Last edited by Zinegata on 2012-10-19 05:22am, edited 1 time in total.
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