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Well, I'm convinced. LW is the greatest mod - no, greatest game - ever, Firaxis should be ashamed for not shipping anything like it, and it's clear to me now that the whole reason XCOM 2 is modable is because Firaxis knows that anything they make will be complete and utter poo poo compared to what the LW team will make. I don't see why Firaxis should even try making strategy or tactical games anymore, they should just make casual babby games. VVVV - that Firaxis didn't recognize the genius that are cruise ship missions says it all monster on a stick fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Jul 3, 2015 |
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Jul 3, 2015 03:37
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Can the grogs please confine themselves to I/I runs and Terror From The Deep?
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Jul 3, 2015 03:38
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MrBims posted:Backpedal more? The fact that you kicked off about it is your problem, not mine, holmes. Chill the gently caress out.
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Jul 3, 2015 03:46
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Cythereal posted:Can the grogs please confine themselves to I/I runs and Terror From The Deep? TFTD wasn't so bad until the first Cruise Ship Terror Mission, which involved two hours of me futilely combing the ship for the last Lobsterman before piling the survivors back into the sub and flying away to better games, never to look back.
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Jul 3, 2015 03:51
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GlyphGryph posted:There's lots of stuff in LW that is straight up hands down improvements over the way things work in Vanilla. It's also obviously trying to be it's own thing with lots of lateral changes which obviously don't appeal to everyone, but do tend to appeal to people who are looking for more depth, variety, and/or challenge compared to Vanilla. Plus, item degradation has never been fun or tactically interesting in any game
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Jul 3, 2015 04:13
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Basic Chunnel posted:Plus, item degradation has never been fun or tactically interesting in any game I remember always carrying a few dozen hunting rifles and assault rifles at a time in Fallout 3 so I could just smash them together whenever they dropped below 90% durability mid firefight.
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Jul 3, 2015 04:17
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I do not buy for a second that every single one of Long War's ridiculous number of items are useful. I'd be surprised if even 3/4 of them are honestly.
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Jul 3, 2015 04:22
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I feel that an EU/EW game is already long enough.
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Jul 3, 2015 04:28
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A.o.D. posted:I feel that an EU/EW game is already long enough. It really is. Around the point that you start trying to grind Annette's buddies up to max Psi, you know something has gone wrong.
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Jul 3, 2015 04:33
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Coolguye posted:Baldur's Gate also got a novelization. It's not a big deal. A subsection of people will like it (how You lie E: also long war isn't to everyone's taste and that's okay.
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Jul 3, 2015 04:38
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Cat Army 
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Internet Kraken posted:I do not buy for a second that every single one of Long War's ridiculous number of items are useful. I'd be surprised if even 3/4 of them are honestly. Well, then be surprised I guess? While you probably won't use every single item yourself, there'll be others who swear by them and be just as successful. One of the things that surprises me about LW is that everyone has a completely different playstyle, even on I/I.
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Jul 3, 2015 04:38
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Internet Kraken posted:I do not buy for a second that every single one of Long War's ridiculous number of items are useful. I'd be surprised if even 3/4 of them are honestly. They are all useful. Not each to everyone, but that isn't the point - the point of having so many is to fit different playstyles and potentially do so on a per-mission basis. EU/EW locks you into having Snapshot or Squadsight on a sniper, full stop, while LW gives you an option between full-Squadsight sniper rifles with high crit chance that require the Snapshot perk to move and shoot, or limited-Squadsight marksman rifles that can move and shoot without penalty. When you're on a terror mission and need to stay mobile you might prefer to take the marksman rifle, while an Exalt defense mission would give you more opportunities to shoot the sniper rifle than normal, but both situations are up to the player and can be radically altered with perks. The sniper rifle may be what you want to take out boss enemies on the terror mission, or the marksman rifle might be what you want to set up an ITZ chain on flanked Exalt soldiers. Squadbuilding in LW can be considered a bigger and more intricate strategy game than the entirety of the Geoscape in EU/EW, and there are rewards for making strong combos between a soldier and their equipment or between different soldiers. MrBims fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Jul 3, 2015 |
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Jul 3, 2015 04:41
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Speaking of other games, the only other game that managed to scratch my tactical shooty mans game itch was fallout tactics. e: you fuckers posted in between. The Iron Rose posted:E: also long war isn't to everyone's taste and that's okay. also this posting about LW isn't gonna stop til XCOM2 is out I guess, and even then it'll probably happen as people are still playing openxcom. VVV exactly VVV Musluk fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Jul 3, 2015 |
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Jul 3, 2015 04:44
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As a super big LW player/parttime modder I can confidently say that Long War would make a terrible shipped game. But it's a fantastic, slightly grognardy expansion pack for those of us who like that sort of thing. I'm usually actually not super big on grognardy-ness, but LW pulls it off well I think. It's complex, certainly more than base EW and definitely too complex, and frankly, overly difficult to appeal to new players. Similarly, the wave after waves of missions and the clumsiness of managing 8 soldiers rather than 6 is also not great in terms of design decisions. It's a bit too much, and it makes the action slow. EU/EW had it right with 4-6 soldiers rather than LW's 6-8 (10 for base defence/assault iirc). Still, I like the complexity and I love the different tools that you're given to play with.
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Jul 3, 2015 04:46
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The only weapon type that has questionable uses are the carbines, the ones that give less damage but have higher aim and mobility. They are good as Rookie weapon and for guys with low aim but they cozld use shotguns anyway... The other might be the arc rifle because you make one guy useless for getting a free disabling shot every three turns
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Jul 3, 2015 04:51
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Dominic White posted:See, that's exactly the kind of stuff I love about the mod. It lets me play in so many different ways. Early-game, I love having blitzers with light armor, SMGs and skills that further boost mobility, backed up by scout-marksmen that can rush to rooftops and provide cover. Rapid flanking is order of the day. Smgs were the shining light of the weapon additions. That much extra mobility stops being a minor start change and becomes a complete shift in the way you use a soldier. Conversely, +/- N to aim or damage by itself is boring as gently caress. I'm not a fan of the class split either, although I do like the ability to choose between two at level 1. There's a load of shared skills, and a bunch of classes don't have a real identity of their own.
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Jul 3, 2015 05:01
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Pomp posted:I'm not a fan of the class split either, although I do like the ability to choose between two at level 1. There's a load of shared skills, and a bunch of classes don't have a real identity of their own. Uh but they do? Infantries shoot with rifles a lot Assaults are the shotgun guys as always engineers throw grenades medics heal people snipers are the same as before scouts can do anything gunners are heavies without rockets rocketeers are heavies without the big guns
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Jul 3, 2015 05:10
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRuz-Yf70Dk e: 
Musluk fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Jul 3, 2015 |
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Jul 3, 2015 05:15
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The only classes I can say have no identity are Shogun and Jaeger, both of which are going to get some love in the next patch. Can you give an example of what you mean if you're talking about soldier classes?
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Jul 3, 2015 05:24
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Psion posted:The only good videogame tie-in property is the Doom comic anyway. I don't know if it counts, but the Crimson Dagger backstory tie-in to Xenonauts was pretty dang good (and came as a free PDF with the game).
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Jul 3, 2015 05:41
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MrBims posted:The only classes I can say have no identity are Shogun and Jaeger, both of which are going to get some love in the next patch. Can you give an example of what you mean if you're talking about soldier classes?
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Jul 3, 2015 05:41
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My biggest issue with Long War, from which a lot of my other issues with Long War stem, is that the game is *intentionally* developed around a 150 hour campaign experience. If you play LW like a full time job you can finish a campaign in about a month. This is intentional, and not a disastrous failure of design the devs are frantically trying to address. The mod simply doesn't have enough content to support being interesting for that long. After Small UFO landing #23 a lot of the shine has worn off. And instead of building the game around an EW length experience, maybe a little longer, and then using the Marathon option for the masochists who *like* that kind of thing, they added the half rear end Dynamic War option as an afterthought, except it doesn't scale well enough to make a not insane playthrough really viable. Basically, if your game takes 100+ hours to complete you have failed as a designer. No single player game has enough cool stuff to support over 100 hours of play in a single campaign without being a drawn out grind. I love that XCOM has so much replayability, and that Long War has given the game even more replayability, but the length of a Long War campaign means I dread starting a new playthrough enough where it can take months to come back to a game I genuinely enjoy.
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Jul 3, 2015 06:08
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This is good
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Jul 3, 2015 06:09
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Not a Step posted:My biggest issue with Long War, from which a lot of my other issues with Long War stem, is that the game is *intentionally* developed around a 150 hour campaign experience. If you play LW like a full time job you can finish a campaign in about a month. This is intentional, and not a disastrous failure of design the devs are frantically trying to address. The mod simply doesn't have enough content to support being interesting for that long. After Small UFO landing #23 a lot of the shine has worn off. And instead of building the game around an EW length experience, maybe a little longer, and then using the Marathon option for the masochists who *like* that kind of thing, they added the half rear end Dynamic War option as an afterthought, except it doesn't scale well enough to make a not insane playthrough really viable. This is another good post and why I love Dynamic War.
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Jul 3, 2015 06:09
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The insane length really becomes a problem when you remember that large abductors, supply barges, and battleships have barely any variation in map layout. Enjoy raiding those same ships over and over and over again!
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Jul 3, 2015 06:16
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Internet Kraken posted:The insane length really becomes a problem when you remember that large abductors, supply barges, and battleships have barely any variation in map layout. Enjoy raiding those same ships over and over and over again! Meh I raided back in my wow days, I can at least pause this grind or do chores in between. It helps that I really enjoy the tactical game.
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Jul 3, 2015 06:26
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Can we at least all agree that Vanilla should really have let you hire on Van Doorn and the awesome security dude survivors from the base defense mission? I really do wish they'd mainline some of the changes, like that stuff and the bugfixes. The Officers mechanic is pretty cool too, better than the medals thing. I also did play long war before EW (but I already beat EU twice by that point), and definitely missed a lot of stuff when I went back to try Vanilla EW.
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Jul 3, 2015 07:04
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More 'special' troops after council missions is pretty neat. Officers were kind of 'meh' to me until they gave them the command ability, which I like a lot. Not sure why they can't be psi/gene modded by default though. e: though with the extra fatigue as it is, you'd be creating asthmatic supermen who have to take two weeks of rest after any mission... dyzzy fucked around with this message at 07:20 on Jul 3, 2015 |
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Jul 3, 2015 07:11
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Internet Kraken posted:Real answer: Those civies are running towards the zone, trying to figure out what is going on. Advent is probably worried about potential Xcom sympathizers and is thus taking a zero tolerance stance on ANYONE interacting with them in any way. They control the mass media so its not like they have to worry about bad publicity resulting from a few broken jaws. And they can use their control of the media to point out that the XCOM terrorists would have *shot* them. Yes, they're on the ground and have a couple broken bones. Bones heal, probably very well thanks to the medical advances our Visitor friends brought.
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Jul 3, 2015 07:11
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I think or believe it's possible to mod Long War to actually run about the same length of time as Vanilla EW. As far as I can tell, every item and research project runs off a variable referred to as ITime. Altering this can alter the time taken to manufacture an item base, and to research. You can also alter the number of engineers required for an item. Given the way item manufacture works in Long war, I'm pretty sure that its a scale based upon the variable iTime, scaled up or down depending on if you have less or more engineers respectively. there's also a variable to multiple the time, so you could halve that to theoretically halve the times required. Research actually runs off the formula (iTime * Tech_Time_Balance * 72) for one scientist, and Tech_Time_Balance is currently set to 10. Altering that will have an effect on all research projects, so it seems that you could shorten both Research and manufacture of weapons and armour, which seems to be the major factor in how long a game takes. Of course, doing so also means you don't have enough resources, so you would have to figure out how to do that, but it's a step in the right direction.
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Jul 3, 2015 07:25
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That's presumably how the dynamic war SW option works, right? Along with scaling of resources and troop xp and all that.
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Jul 3, 2015 07:30
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Halman posted:If you don't think X-COM 2: The Book: A Novel About Snaketits is going to be amazing then you owe it to yourself to find a copy of Diane Duane's X-COM novel, about an intrepid commander's mission to build a new base and also judge some cows at a harvest festival or something idk it was hilariously bad. If it's Diane Duane again I'll read it. That may have been terrible, I've never managed to find a copy, but she's got me wrapped around her finger between Young Wizards and some of her Star Trek work.
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Jul 3, 2015 07:52
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GlyphGryph posted:Can we at least all agree that Vanilla should really have let you hire on Van Doorn and the awesome security dude survivors from the base defense mission? I really do wish they'd mainline some of the changes, like that stuff and the bugfixes. A giant neon sign falls from the sky, it is a single word. Duh.
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Jul 3, 2015 07:59
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But If you could hire the security dudes I might feel bad about using them as cyberdisc bait.
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Jul 3, 2015 08:00
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Internet Kraken posted:But If you could hire the security dudes I might feel bad about using them as cyberdisc bait. Or intentionally getting them killed after they run out of grenades so I can get a reinforcement wave with a real soldier and maybe some fresh blueshirts with more grenades.
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Jul 3, 2015 08:07
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Voyager I posted:Or intentionally getting them killed after they run out of grenades so I can get a reinforcement wave with a real soldier and maybe some fresh blueshirts with more grenades. I only let one survive for both killing a Secotid Commander and surviving a bombardment from a Sectopod and Mechtoid. Without a grenade. The dude DESERVED life after that especially when he ran the overwatch gauntlet to get back behind lines.
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Jul 3, 2015 08:08
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Happy Noodle Boy posted:Know what else is bad?  (stolen from Beagle's fanart tonight)
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Jul 3, 2015 08:13
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Internet Kraken posted:You'll get XCOM: Magical Girl edition as a mod. Base it off of Madoka Magica and it'd be pretty swank.
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Jul 3, 2015 08:39
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dyzzy posted:That's presumably how the dynamic war SW option works, right? Along with scaling of resources and troop xp and all that. That's exactly how dynamic war works. You can't mod the frequency of EXALT or Council missions though, at least without significant difficulty.
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Jul 3, 2015 08:52
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Bholder posted:Uh but they do? That's three different midrange shooty dudes, two AR wielding explosives guys, scouts and assault fill the exact same niche, and every one of these classes share multiple perks with others. Most of what should the level 1 perks, the ones that are supposed to define the class, aren't even unique to them. It's like reading through most 3.5e supplemental stuff, there's a crazy amount of overlap and everything loses identity in it.
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Jul 3, 2015 09:08
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