XCOM Patch Making Easy Mode Easier

[DrunkenMonkey]

So they are basically turning a strategy game into a turn based gears of war... cool story bro

 

[ResonanceSD]

Why is there so much hate on the easy mode?

Don't like easy mode?

Don't fucking play it, problem solved.

None of this is hurting YOU in particular.

 

[Arina Love]

good news. game is too hard on easy.

 

[BreakfastMan]

Now that people are complaining about thegame being hard, it just reinforces 2k's mentality that even remotely challenging games "scare" gamers away.

WHAT PEOPLE!?!?! Every single damn review has praised the difficulty. Every single damn post I have seen on these (and other) forums about the game has praised the difficulty. The only changes being made to the game are being made to the easy mode, not normal (which would be just as easy to change as easy, so there must be a reason they are not changing that as well). You would think that just might be something that 2K freaking notices! God damn, I feel like I am repeating myself over and over here.

They received feedback to make easy mode easier.

Notice how the feedback was not to make normal or class or impossible mode easier, just easy mode. That should tell you a lot.

It must be a sizable chunk since 2K took the time out of their day to address this.

A sizable chunk out of a single day for one guy, maybe.

Easy mode is the barrier of entry for a game.

They wont touch much of the original game since that takes money out of 2K's pocket.

They WILL most likely apply this incident to future games, since they will keep this barrier of entry thing in mind.

I have said this 3 times now.

So what, they will make easy difficulty easier in future games? Oh, the horror, whatever shall we do.

The easy difficulty is a barrier of entry. They cannot make normal much harder, since difficulty is a scale.

A lower barrier of entry means everything will be designed for a low entry point. They will be pulling their heavier punches.

Why? Why would they possibly want to make the game easier when nearly all of the feedback has complimented them on how hard the game is? It makes no sense, from a business standpoint or a design standpoint. That is why this is a slippery slope fallacy: you are assuming that one necessarily follows the other, when that is not the case. Yes, they will keep the lower barrier of entry in mind for future titles, but do you know what else they will keep in mind? How much so many liked how difficult the game was. Games are not designed for the lowest possible entry point. They are designed for the largest base. And the largest base is the one that likes the difficulty.

2K is currently lowing the barrier of entry. When reviews themselves talk about how good it is that its difficult.

Don't ask me how it makes sense, ask 2K. They went through with it.

Now that 2K thinks gamers cant even handle easy mode, they will make it so everyone can fit into the barrier of entry. Because difficulty may sell, but easy sells even more.

At the end of the day, that's all what 2K wants. Money. Reviews don't pay the bills. Praise doesn't make greedy execs and their accountants happy.

They are willing to take any IP and try to milk it for all its worth. They have been for years.

So basically, you don't trust that anyone at 2K actually knows what they are doing and that they are all idiots. Gotcha.

 

[BreakfastMan]

So basically, you don't trust that anyone at 2K actually knows what they are doing and that they are all idiots. Gotcha.

Their past comments, one of which is regarding XCOM's sale risk factor, is somewhat telling. You know, the one where they said that XCOM won't sell?

And guess what? It has sold like hotcakes in it's current form. Publishers can change their minds about things, you know.

 

[barbzilla]

Classic 'cheats' with aliens getting better crit chances and aiming, but normal has a seriously dumbed down AI.

I actually don't mind it that much, it's barely noticable amount anyway on Classic. The thing that DOES annoy me is the way the AI spawns - sometimes, all enemies just pile up in one small area.
Just had to reload a game, because it thought "hey, let's just have ALL ENEMIES IN THE SAME FIFTEEN SQUARE METERS!" Which would've been fine, if 'all enemies' would've been like four to six Sectoids. But nope, three Sectoids, three Thin Men, and SIX Floaters... at once. Within the same round. Result was that after only a total of three rounds in that map, most of my squad was dead.

If anything needs change, then it's that the AI can throw in multiple squads of enemies when it feels like. If it would be single aliens, it wouldn't be much of a problem, but groups is just not fair and the sole reason I refuse to play Ironman currently.

Open up with a shredder rocket, then follow with grenades/rockets (depending on your load out), finish the area by wiping up remains. I've had the same thing happen to me, though it was a different grouping of aliens than you had. Still though I tend to keep a healthy supply of AOE on hand for occasions like this (and of course lots and lots of medpacks for when it goes bad). Of course this only works on round one, before they've gone for cover and spread the ranks.

 

[Warachia]

snip

So you seem to be really scared about this "bar of entry" thing for some reason, you do realize it doesn't make general games easier at all right?
First because there aren't many games in this genre in the first place (and barely any new ones), you can't alter a FPS based on this game, or even a RTS.
Second because this bar of entry you are talking about doesn't exist. It can't be measured how much easier people want their games, which means they won't change how easy the easier difficulties are in other games, and even if it did, if they followed after this model, they'd only alter their easiest setting.

 

[barbzilla]

For crying out loud people. I see the same people saying the same things as in my thread. Leave it alone. It already had an "easy" mode, they just decided that the "easy" mode wasn't easy enough. Moan and Groan all you want that they are going to dumb down the rest of the game, or change the mechanics, the fact is they are doing it.

OT: I am glad they are fixing some of the major bugs as well. I was getting a bit miffed at the game lock ups.

 

[Winthrop]

I could agree with that, but the thing is, I'm not seeing anyone saying that they're comfortable with easy and don't want it changed. I didn't read every comment, but the ones I did read are just complaining that there's an easy mode in the first place, which is the wrong attitude to take, I think.

There was one person (in addition to you) who suggested adding "Very Easy." I think this is good as it is less condescending than "n00b mode" but doesn't get in the way of people who enjoy easy's current difficulty. Very Easy used to be pretty common, but they have been going away more and more as time goes on. Its a shame, they are good for people new to the genre or gaming in general (I see nothing wrong with being bad at a game. The term "Newb" always annoyed me. There is nothing wrong with being new or bad.)

The reason I am dismissive of this possibility is that the publisher would have to be freaking blind in order to not get that most of the people who have played the game like the difficulty. Lowering the barrier of entry does not mean lowering the challenge ceiling. It might be different if the majority of people were complaining that the game is too hard, but that is obviously not the case. And since devs and pubs are not in the business of removing things from games that most customers have expressively stated they like, the notion that they would remove something that most people like is absurd.

I disagree with you on this. How much do you know about game design? My friends and I do some amateur game design in our spare time. Difficulty is the hardest part of making a game as it runs contrary to a lot of game design theory. You want to make a game as smooth, intuitive, and user friendly as possible but this directly clashes with difficulty. Its a delicate balancing act to keep a challenge but not resort to cheap difficulty.

There are two kinds of difficulty. I'll call them "Cheap" and "Fair". Cheap difficulty is when an enemy can one shot you but takes a huge amount of damage to kill (Hard Difficulty on EDF: Insect Armageddon takes at least 10 clips, probably much more, with the starting weapon to kill the easiest enemy). Fair difficulty is the Dark Souls style. You need to analyze the enemy, find its weakness, be on your gaurd, and take it down using tactis. Cheap enemies scale easily with health and damage changes, fair enemies do not. Thats why AI rarely improves on higher difficulties.

As someone has already stated, when designing difficulty you must start from the easiest difficulty. Giving something less health or less damage does not always make it significantly easier. If something requires a specific tactic to fight, changes to its health will likely not have a major influence. Take something like the Hunter from Halo. Its not a cheap enemy, its a fair enemy. Its tactics focused rather than simply being an elite with a lot more health. You need to get behind it and dodge its explosives. In my opinion, they seem to scale the least with difficulty. Sure it chews through your ammo like crazy on hard, but its just as lethal on easy.

Now take a game thats major focus is tactics (Like XCOM). Changes to health or damage will make the game easier, but some fair enemies would still be difficult to fight if you don't learn the tactics (I'm assuming, haven't played the new one). These would be hard on easy as they require a certain method to defeat them. Perhaps the difficulty of other enemies build you to this strategy on harder modes or perhaps you are just thinking tactics more at a higher difficulty or maybe its just as hard on hard, but people expect it more on hard. Say playtesters call this enemy too hard because of the sudden difficulty spike it causes on easy due to lack of using the tactics. The way I see it this can lead to 3 possible outcomes.

1. The enemy is removed. The designers feel the enemy's tactics are too hard to figure out and keep the game too difficult.
2. The enemy is changed. They like the look of the enemy and want to show it off to everyone, even the easy players, but they fear the tactical nature of it will cause too much trouble. As such, they just make it a higher damage/health version of a previous enemy.
3. The enemy is removed, but only from easy. The designers saw it was too difficult for easy, but they felt it still had a place in the higher difficulties.

Options 1 and 2 hurt everyone, not just the easy players. This means that if a future XCOM game attempts to attract a crowd who wants an easier game, the easyness trickles into other difficulties. Will this do anything to the current XCOM? No. Will it effect future games? Possibly.

 

[BreakfastMan]

snip...

That just basically strikes me as... I dunno, slightly elitist? You seem to basically be saying we can never have interesting enemies or encounters if we have an easy difficulty (because we have to remove those encounters for that difficulty), and I don't believe that, especially since it puts a lot of blame for making games "worse" on those who are less skilled than us and just want a mode for themselves. I mean, that was what I thought the easy mode in XCOM was for: beginners to the franchise who just wanted to learn the ropes. :\

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

It took me 23 restarts to beat classic ironman. I'm currently at 40+ for impossible ironman and so far haven't gotten any games past mission 4 (the first council mission). Thin men when you don't have laser rifles is really hard. Its luck based in that if you have an assault things get much easier.

Fixing the UFO ceiling is a big deal. I suspect they will do something cheezy like change the mesh to have an open roof rather than fixing the raycasting that determines where the move cursor goes.

 

[blackrave]

Last mind controlled enemy will still be unresolved problem?
Either add "Suicide" ability to mind controlled units or make it to be treated as captured alien.

 

[Dark Prophet]

I think it's nice, because people who are completely new to games like this will have some problems. I started with normal and I was doing fine, well I had to reload some missions because half of my teame got killed but otherwise I was doing fine, but the panic level just went fucking nuts and if you have lost 4 countries , you might as well start all over. Now I am on my 3rd game on easy and only now am I doing good allover.

 

[T_ConX]

If it was up to me, I'd just add a new difficulty lelvel. One that's easier than easy mode! I'd call it 'Sarkeesian Mode'!

Oh, and another below that. One where you can skip the battles altogether. I'd call it 'Hepler Mode'

 

[Warachia]

snip

So you seem to be really scared about this "bar of entry" thing for some reason, you do realize it doesn't make general games easier at all right?
First because there aren't many games in this genre in the first place (and barely any new ones), you can't alter a FPS based on this game, or even a RTS.
Second because this bar of entry you are talking about doesn't exist. It can't be measured how much easier people want their games, which means they won't change how easy the easier difficulties are in other games, and even if it did, if they followed after this model, they'd only alter their easiest setting.

Strange, since winthrop just kicked your argument's ass.

Winthrop made a completely different argument, I'm arguing that whatever they choose to do to the difficulty of X-COM it will not affect other games, as you seem to be paranoid that it will.
Winthrop was explaining game design and talking about how/why the different difficulties were created.

By the way, great comment, when you don't have a reply just point to somebody else who also argued against your ridiculous idea.