Conclusions on XCOM2

[Fallow]

Hi again fellow Escapists, I'm back and I'm sexier than

Spoiler: ever

What are your thoughts on XCOM2 now that it's been out for a while, and most of you have finished it?

Class-wise?
Gear-wise?
Did you enjoy the enemies? Were they too easy, too hard, too annoying?
What did you think of the hacking mini?
Did you like the difficulty? What difficulty did you play on?

Spoiler: Posts away!

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

I haven't played it, but I want to. Has it be patched to fix the performance issues yet? I've been waiting until it was fixed before buying.

 

[DefunctTheory]

I haven't played it, and I feel like I'm the only person in the universe who doesn't want to. The premise is pretty dumb, the gameplay a bit spastic, I'm told the class balance is a bit bonkers, and timed missions can go suck lemons for all I care.

All that being said, I hope you guys all had fun.

 

[Fallow]

I haven't played it, but I want to. Has it be patched to fix the performance issues yet? I've been waiting until it was fixed before buying.

Yes and no. It has been patched, and that resolved some issues, but others cropped up

 

[DoPo]

What are your thoughts on XCOM2 now that it's been out for a while, and most of you have finished it?

I think it's an amazing game and definitely an improvement over its predecessor.

Class-wise?

Classes are re-done from the ground up to have a more active role. They are fun. Some are stronger in the beginning, others later on. Overall they aren't balanced in the sense that each one is exactly as useful as every other one, but they work in different situations. Grenadiers tend to be quite strong for the entire game, though. The Psi operative is AMAZING but it takes time to train them up to be useful, so they enter play after mid game, usually.

Gear-wise?

Not entirely sure what you're after here but gear is...ok? Things have been changed slightly - first of all, don't build weapons one at a time. Which, let me tell you, is a huge blessing. Once you upgrade, say, assault rifles, then all your current assault rifles get upgraded. Same thing happens with medium armours. Light and heavy armours you build one by one but on the other hand, they cost (almost) no money, so it's not that bad.

There is a bunch of drops you can get which enhance your weapons in various ways - expanded magazines, scopes (you don't build them any more), stocks and so on. They are minor-ish enhancements but can make a difference.

Did you enjoy the enemies? Were they too easy, too hard, too annoying?

I'd say too...few. They are interesting otherwise, but when I got to the last one I thought there would be more. But no - there weren't any more. I think there need to be some more enemies near the end.

What did you think of the hacking mini?

*shrug* It was OK. Not necessary but beautiful when you get something out of it. It's definitely worth keeping a specialist for the hacking objectives. I personally wouldn't get more than one specialist - if you're lucky, you'll get bonus hacking as a reward and you probably want that on just one guy.

Did you like the difficulty? What difficulty did you play on?

Commander. Difficulty was fine for me. Once you get into the new mechanics, it feels so satisfying to take on enemies and situations that look hopeless at first but you ace them.

Do note that the normal inverted difficulty curve is still in effect - the beginning is the most difficult until you can stabilize. After that, the game is challenging but starts dropping off. By the time the last enemies come in, they aren't as much of a problem that you'd think they are.

Last, but not least - there is mods, of course. Whatever complaints you have, can usually be addressed with mods.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

What are your thoughts on XCOM2 now that it's been out for a while, and most of you have finished it?

Class-wise?
Gear-wise?
Did you enjoy the enemies? Were they too easy, too hard, too annoying?
What did you think of the hacking mini?
Did you like the difficulty? What difficulty did you play on?

All classes were fantastic and well-tuned. Favourite is Grenadier (I took 3 on most missions), because it makes removing enemy cover a snap, as well as guaranteed damage, special effect nades AND some really useful other abilities, like Shredder and that massive AOE cone of death that I had on my ridiculously accurate grenadier last game.

Gear-wise, heavy and Plasma weapons on the Exo Suit line of armor were AWESOME. Extra kabooms? Homing kabooms? Flamethrowers? A giant cone of shredder death that my Asault can get easy crits with? HELL YES.

Enemies were good. Codexes can go to hell, though. If you don't hit them with a flashbang, they clone themselves at a frankly rediculous rate, especially when you hit them with a shot that should kill them, and then they just "dodge" it? Augh.

The hacking is DULL. Look, I don't mind it being a simple dice roll, but I hate how you have to get really lucky and get those random +20 hacking bonuses WHILE HACKING to get actually good at it. I'd rather have more equipment to use to boost my hacking, a nerual sim for it, and maybe a foundry project or two. Or just replace it with something that required some kind of skill or puzzle or something. Otherwise, I just stick with the lesser hack bonus like 90% of the time.

Difficulty was fine. I played on the "normal" mode. That said, I DO think that the Timers were a tiny bit too strict, so I used the "True Concealment" mod and it suddenly perfect.

So far, this seems to be my Game of the Year, although Stardew is up there too.

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

The surprising thing about XCOM2 is that the enemies are good. I mean they looked and sounded dull in the previews. There was a over abundance of robots and many had abilities that sounded boring, but in play the enemies put up a good fight, offer a lot of surprises and opportunities.

Gear is better? but also kind of different. I love how many items you the game has, but you get them randomly so it's hard to really for plans around items because you have little control over getting them. I am also not sure how I feel about weapons and armor all being upgraded at once.

The missions get repetitive after awhile. Maps maybe random, but many don't feel different and there are too many repeated objectives and mission types. You get a few cool missions like base defense or the second final missions, but they only show up rarely. The game needs them to be snuffled into the guerilla actions and retaliation missions.

Classes I like, but they don't feel improved enough. I would have liked to see more verity in builds and maybe more control. Like why can't I get an assault with a grenade launcher, or a sharpshooter with PSI powers.

The issue with hacking is that the animation is too slow and the task is risky, so you spend 15 seconds starting a hack, then 15 seconds aborting the hack because it's not worth it. trying to hack eats half a min and dose little.

 

[omega 616]

The issues I had with it were the Andromedon, how it does that thing ... people who have played will know what I mean. The hacking was BULLSHIT! I save scummed it so hard! I had like 80% chance to get the best thing and I would have to save scum like 10+ times to get it but even things like 57% chance to get it mean having to reload 10+ times, I can understand a couple of times as it is almost 50/50 but you don't flip a coin 10+ times and have it come up one side that many times.

What I did enjoy was making my Jason Voorhees SUPER mobile, give him the best shotgun and then let him run around slicing and blasting bitches for scary damage that was nearly always critted.

 

[Pseudonym]

I've finished the game on ironman, commander mode. That was as challenging as I wanted it to be. I might if I find the time at some point attempt to win on the highest difficulty mode. In general, I liked it. It is like XCOM:EU but different enough to be interesting another time.

The new metagame somehow feels more directed even if it isn't really. I also did not use psionics. They are an entire class of their own, a very expensive and researchintensive one, that levels without having to leave the base and is entirely unnecessary but apparently quite powerful when rushed. I don't know. I prefer better armour and weapons asap.

I liked the new special weapons and armour and other interesting things and because you now have a dedicated non-grenade slot you have to use them too.

As for the hacking minigame. On itself it is not interesting but in the context of the whole game it is a neat little extra mechanic. I do like having good medics though so I don't use it that much. I do second Nomotog that the hacking menu's take way too long to appear. It should be done within a second and it easily can be done within a second.

I haven't played it, but I want to. Has it be patched to fix the performance issues yet? I've been waiting until it was fixed before buying.

When I recently played it matters where improved significantly. There were no longer garuanteed mismatches between audio and visual in cutscenes and most framerateissues and loading screens have been fixed or reduced in lenght. I still would be careful with ironman mode since there were gamebreaking bugs in the second-last level (2 of my 3 soldiers got stuck. I managed to free one of them, but had to do the rest of the level with only 2 soldiers. He also nearly died because he couldn't take cover) and I can't confirm that those are gone. I doubt the game is bugfree now but it isn't anywhere near as bad as it used to be. It has been taken down from a constant mediumsized nuisance to an occasionall tiny issue.

 

[DoPo]

I can understand a couple of times as it is almost 50/50 but you don't flip a coin 10+ times and have it come up one side that many times.

Oh COME ON! Well done, you've found out that the RNG sequence is preset. Good job. You're so awesome, you know?

Thing is, this has neither been a secret, nor do I understand how people STILL DON'T KNOW IT. By all accounts, this should be common knowledge by now - it was a feature of the previous game, it's a feature of this game, on top of this, it's one of the most distinct features of these games.

The amount of people who (don't) figure it out through experimentation is astonishing. They would reload and reload and reload and conclude that the game is broken or some shit instead of believing what they see and reach the logical conclusion that the RNG sequence is immutable.

 

[omega 616]

I can understand a couple of times as it is almost 50/50 but you don't flip a coin 10+ times and have it come up one side that many times.

Oh COME ON! Well done, you've found out that the RNG sequence is preset. Good job. You're so awesome, you know?

Thing is, this has neither been a secret, nor do I understand how people STILL DON'T KNOW IT. By all accounts, this should be common knowledge by now - it was a feature of the previous game, it's a feature of this game, on top of this, it's one of the most distinct features of these games.

The amount of people who (don't) figure it out through experimentation is astonishing. They would reload and reload and reload and conclude that the game is broken or some shit instead of believing what they see and reach the logical conclusion that the RNG sequence is immutable.

Woah, what's with the hostility? I would comment more on what you said but why bother?

 

[Frankster]

I'm one of those who thought Xcom 1 was lackluster to begin with, and only got good with Enemy Within.

Xcom 2 on the other hand? I've drunk the koolaid long and hard and utterly love it.

-Timed missions? I seriously like them, I always found part a lot of the fatigue in long play throughs for me is in most cases you have kill EVERY alien on the map, and they don't always make it easy for you, resulting in drawn out missions where you can't rush or you might get surprised by some grey hiding in a corner you couldn't see and lose a dude, or crawl the entire map at a snails pace leaving no stone unturned. By the end of my xcom 1 campaign I'd always just make my soldiers run in every direction then reload once xenos were spotted to save me some time.
Timed missions means this isn't the case anymore, you gotta go for it, do your business and GTFO out. No lolligaging and no hunting down hiding Aliens except for certain missions and all those ever did was remind me how I really don't miss that.
Maybe it's because I find this thematic and thus don't mind it even in its vanilla form (theres a mod out there that makes it so timer only kicks in when concealement is broken if you want it), but this has meant I can play Xcom 2 for longer periods of time and chain missions together with noticeably less fatigue or desire to play something else.

-The biggest thing Firaxis Xcom had over the old ones initially was the presentation and being able to play Barbie with your soldiers. Xcom 2 takes both of this to the nines and I always liked to see my soldiers moping around in the skyranger or their faces and soak in the general mood after a mission.

-The ONLY area I personally feel Xcom2 falls short is in the enemy variety. Not just the fact that there ain't that many Alien types but the way the game works, you won't see Vipers after a certain point for example. Some mods help rememedy this and in time mods will fix this problem so it ends up becoming a strength though, which brings me to probably Xcom 2's best addition:

-MODS. There was a time when I'd make it part of my daily ritual to see how many mods were added since the previous day, and drool that they just kept coming, mod support for this game is incredible. I am fully confident that by time later expansions hit, we are going to see some crazy mods adding entirely new xenos or maybe even total conversions.

I mean for gods sake..There's a Fire Emblem style relationship mechanic mod!!!!! People are doing amazing things already and because the game is popular, I am fully confident this isn't going to stop. In the meantime I'm happy with all the various voice packs I have, no soldier I get ever sounds the same, looks the same or even plays the same since I got so many class mods.

-I can't really comment on the vanilla game balance anymore since I've gone hardcore with mods, the idea that people play with ONLY 4 classes rather then the like 30+ I have in mine just makes me shake my head in amusement, how can be people be so happy with so little? It's like playing Skyrim without mods, it's just something I will never understand.

So yeah as you can see Xcom 2 gets all of my love.

The amount of people who (don't) figure it out through experimentation is astonishing. They would reload and reload and reload and conclude that the game is broken or some shit instead of believing what they see and reach the logical conclusion that the RNG sequence is immutable.

For those who don't know, there is a fix for this, all you have to do is do the actions in a different order, and you will get different results, this works for both Xcom 1 and 2. I've scummed my way out of many an impossible situation thanks to this.

 

[Pirate Of PC Master race]

I can understand a couple of times as it is almost 50/50 but you don't flip a coin 10+ times and have it come up one side that many times.

Oh COME ON! Well done, you've found out that the RNG sequence is preset. Good job. You're so awesome, you know?

Thing is, this has neither been a secret, nor do I understand how people STILL DON'T KNOW IT. By all accounts, this should be common knowledge by now - it was a feature of the previous game, it's a feature of this game, on top of this, it's one of the most distinct features of these games.

The amount of people who (don't) figure it out through experimentation is astonishing. They would reload and reload and reload and conclude that the game is broken or some shit instead of believing what they see and reach the logical conclusion that the RNG sequence is immutable.

I have save-scummed SO MANY times in multiple games I have come to understand some of the mechanics...

When you make RNG based action in XCOM 2, it uses pre-generated RNG pool... That's right, YOUR FUTURE IS SET IN STONE. You cannot change it. If character hit 60% chance to hit sectoid with a critical hit, that character will do so again even if you load it.

Only way to change the future is to exhaust the pre-generated RNG pool. As Frankster above me mentioned, only way to do so is make RNG based action with different characters. So changing the order of RNG based action(like taking a shot for example) will change the future.

However, be warned. This also mean that in a single turn, there are limited number of possibilities - how things will turn out. Only thing you can do is to pick the best possible outcome out of multiple futures.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Overall, I was a little disappointed by it, but it's still a phenomenal game.

-I loved the concealment system, great addition. I thought the enemies were excellent and varied, the classes were very well done, the improvements to overwatch were welcome, and I liked the setting. The new customization options are outstanding too.

-However, I agree with a lot of what Yahtzee complained about with the game. I hated the fact that the time limit on missions started before the enemy was even aware of your presence, which never made any sense to me (luckily there's a mod that fixes it).
But my biggest complaint was the fact that they changed so little about the game from the last one. I was really hoping that, thanks to the fact that this time around it's you playing the offensive role and the Aliens on defense (as opposed to the first game) it would be much more oriented to you picking missions and seizing the initiative. Instead, the game was largely like the first one: wait around until something happens and then react to it.

Still love the game, and the mods are obviously awesome.

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

I haven't played it, but I want to. Has it be patched to fix the performance issues yet? I've been waiting until it was fixed before buying.

When I recently played it matters where improved significantly. There were no longer garuanteed mismatches between audio and visual in cutscenes and most framerateissues and loading screens have been fixed or reduced in lenght. I still would be careful with ironman mode since there were gamebreaking bugs in the second-last level (2 of my 3 soldiers got stuck. I managed to free one of them, but had to do the rest of the level with only 2 soldiers. He also nearly died because he couldn't take cover) and I can't confirm that those are gone. I doubt the game is bugfree now but it isn't anywhere near as bad as it used to be. It has been taken down from a constant mediumsized nuisance to an occasionall tiny issue.

Cool. Thanks for the heads up. I'll probably give it a shot now in that case.

 

[veloper]

What are your thoughts on XCOM2 now that it's been out for a while, and most of you have finished it?

Class-wise?

The classes are more balanced now than they were in the previous XCOM game.

Gear-wise?

The new tools are more varied and interesting to put in play than the stuff we had in the previous game.

Did you enjoy the enemies? Were they too easy, too hard, too annoying?

The enemies are more varied, more dangerous and more interesting now than before.

What did you think of the hacking mini?

A waste of time. Didn't need to be included.

Did you like the difficulty? What difficulty did you play on?

Commander on my first win. Now doing commander + iron man (almost finished that game; everything's been researched and upgraded to max).

 

[DoPo]

I can understand a couple of times as it is almost 50/50 but you don't flip a coin 10+ times and have it come up one side that many times.

Oh COME ON! Well done, you've found out that the RNG sequence is preset. Good job. You're so awesome, you know?

Thing is, this has neither been a secret, nor do I understand how people STILL DON'T KNOW IT. By all accounts, this should be common knowledge by now - it was a feature of the previous game, it's a feature of this game, on top of this, it's one of the most distinct features of these games.

The amount of people who (don't) figure it out through experimentation is astonishing. They would reload and reload and reload and conclude that the game is broken or some shit instead of believing what they see and reach the logical conclusion that the RNG sequence is immutable.

I have save-scummed SO MANY times in multiple games I have come to understand some of the mechanics...

When you make RNG based action in XCOM 2, it uses pre-generated RNG pool... That's right, YOUR FUTURE IS SET IN STONE. You cannot change it. If character hit 60% chance to hit sectoid with a critical hit, that character will do so again even if you load it.

Only way to change the future is to exhaust the pre-generated RNG pool. As Frankster above me mentioned, only way to do so is make RNG based action with different characters. So changing the order of RNG based action(like taking a shot for example) will change the future.

However, be warned. This also mean that in a single turn, there are limited number of possibilities - how things will turn out. Only thing you can do is to pick the best possible outcome out of multiple futures.

I'm well aware how the RNG works. It isn't an "RNG pool" but a sequence. And it's not "pre-generated", the state of the RNG persisted, hence why the results are the same as long as you draw from it the same way.

Still, the specifics are not that relevant - the fact remains that if you reload and keep doing the same action over and over again, it won't change. And this is also rather distinct about XCOM, hence why the previous game had the explicit option to turn it off.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Very good game. Desperately low on content depth and breadth compared to its defacto predecessor, which was Long War. The modding community really needs to stop making new tattoos and hilarious voice packs and actually start working on systemic overhauls and game play extension.

Will likely be indispensable once it has a full expansion in place along with DLC and rigorous modding, but right now it's still a work in process.

And this is also rather distinct about XCOM, hence why the previous game had the explicit option to turn it off.

Not regenerating the seed on reload isn't unique to XCOM...it's actually rather common in games that use a RNG. The other flagship property for Firaxis, Civilization, functions the same way. You actually have to go in and turn "regenerate seed" on.

I don't want to be that guy who tells other people how to play their game, but I have a hard time understanding the desire to save scum a game like XCOM. The value of it lies in the difficulty and the tactical decision making. Scumming utterly trivializes the game at every difficulty tier. With sufficient scumming, your unblemished success is inevitable. Why not simply cheat, at that juncture, and save yourself some time and effort?

 

[Frankster]

I don't want to be that guy who tells other people how to play their game, but I have a hard time understanding the desire to save scum a game like XCOM. The value of it lies in the difficulty and the tactical decision making. Scumming utterly trivializes the game at every difficulty tier. With sufficient scumming, your unblemished success is inevitable. Why not simply cheat, at that juncture, and save yourself some time and effort?

Well speaking only for myself... In xcom 1 I started doing this to compensate for sloppy play that kicked when things were becoming routine and a bit dull imo. I mentioned that I would get mission fatigue and try to find ways to just skip missions or at least reduce some of the tedium that set in. Or counter the times when I figured I lost a dude due to BS reasons (how did that xenos see through the walls?!?!?!?!)

Once I gave long war a try it just made things worst, and in an effort to make things go faster stumbled upon cheat engine because at a certain point it was just so friggin long without being necessarily challenging and dealing with each new ufo crash just became this immense chore and did not see myself having the patience to get to the end of long war otherwise.Eventually I did come to the conclusion you present, I'm scumming and it's guaranteeing nothing but wins, why not just outright cheat hardcore and save myself even more time and effort? So I guess the answer is "because I didn't know how to cheat without scumming at first, but once I knew there was inbuilt commands to give you unlimited turns or make you invincible, never went back to scumming.

In Xcom 2 I saved scummed a bit in my first game in order to save my "favorites" from some stupid situations I put them in (this is how I learnt scumming xcom 1 style still works here) and because I consider my 1st game to be a test run where I dip my toe in waters and just focus on learning things and figuring out what I wanted in future playthroughs. But past the first playthrough I stopped scumming because I simply had no reason to and was quite ready and happy for a "hardcore" game with all the challenges it involved.
In fact Xcom 2 is the first time I used the ironman on hardest option (albeit heavily modded so game overall would have been a bit easier in my version due to having extra toys..though i did use mod that adds in more enemy spawns too )to help me stay true to this path when I had 0 interest in doing an ironman classic run in the first.

 

[DoPo]

Not regenerating the seed on reload isn't unique to XCOM...

Not unique, no, but it's something XCOM is known about.