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No idea where I heard it, but my takeaway was that the war went very badly after the first battleship (the dlc one I imagine) was downed. This also leads into the battleship wreckage you can find as a scan site.... which falls apart narratively when you discover more then one! Ah well. 
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Apr 9, 2017 02:18
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Thyrork posted:No idea where I heard it, but my takeaway was that the war went very badly after the first battleship (the dlc one I imagine) was downed. Yeah, I can see that. Basically, first contact was as the first game showed. A few scouting sectoids, XCOM launches a handful of spec-ops raids, brings back some expendable alien corpses that the Ethereals really didn't care one way or another if they lost. XCOM manages to shoot down a scout or two...and then somehow a pilot manages to roll a perfect 20 and an avalanche missile finds its way up a supply ship's exhaust port around the time our Chinese friend contacts them and the aliens get blind-sided by the humans being able to successfully board and commando-raid a battleship into the ground. Suddenly the Ethereals are all "THEY DID WHAT? OKAY THIS AIN'T FUN NO MORE!" and drop the hammer, suddenly the XCOM base is invaded right about the time that Shen is looking at lasers and robot soldiers. It would explain sense why Zhang is a static character too. He was an actual guy that ratted on the triad trying to sell out to the aliens and then jumped ship to XCOM...and why he's so flat of a character: XCOM got the hammer dropped on them a week or two later.
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Apr 9, 2017 03:12
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Well, Zhang is boring because it was a badly written character overall, but I do like your take from a purely narrative place. Also I think I remember something about the temple ship showing up at the same time the base got invaded? That, plus the council ratting you out... yeah. XCOM got a month of hell before lasers were even finished.
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Apr 9, 2017 03:29
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Well XCOM has to survive long enough for a) there to be enough organisation there for everyone to scatter to the winds when the war is lost and keep the fight going, and b) the commander has to have actually done something worth the aliens keeping him/her on ice and central trying to rescue them.
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Apr 9, 2017 10:15
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Thyrork posted:Well, Zhang is boring because it was a badly written character overall, but I do like your take from a purely narrative place. Well, yeah. Zhang was a giant Mary Sue who's only positives were that he gave me a giant loving pile of resources AND I could chop his limbs off. If everything past the first few 4-6 weeks of EW was a programmed hallucination the commander experienced then I could see the commander meeting Zhang in 2-3 debriefings and meetings so he knows the guy's face and voice and nothing else about him besides a dossier that reads "our intel sources have nothing on this guy, Chinese organized crime wasn't really on our radar", making him a flat character.
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Apr 9, 2017 16:44
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Psion posted:on the other hand, who cares if you decide that's the backstory to your earth, right? Pretty much. The UFO series did the same thing where game 1 was "you win!" and game 2 was "here's what would happen if you hadn't won" and no one's head exploded trying to reconcile it (mostly because no one played either game heyoooooooooo) Though I'll admit I was hoping for a moment either in the base game or a DLC where your volunteer from XCOM 1 gets imported into XCOM2 and just loses his poo poo.
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Apr 9, 2017 17:04
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Alkydere posted:Well, yeah. Zhang was a giant Mary Sue How? He has speaking lines in a single mission where he hands over some tech the triads stole and then shoots a sectoid. His lines are basically "I'm not cool with loving with alien tech, you guys have it instead, oh by the way I'm an alright shot." He never speaks again after that point, is in no way required to be used, and pretty much the only negative thing is he can't be customized and he gets some slight buffs to aim and will or some poo poo. He's a complete non-entity. The psychic people from the EW mini-quest thing are the same way. Like, yeah, gangplank or whatever it was called was a bland dlc overall, but I really never understood the weird crying about Zhang. He's as much a nobody as every other rookie in the game.
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Apr 10, 2017 05:15
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No idea. Maybe it's a complaint about Zhang being statistically better than other soldiers? (he comes as a Lieutenant Heavy with 75 aim, which is as much as a colonel heavy, and I think more HP than normal too)
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Apr 10, 2017 06:05
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Psycho Landlord posted:How? He has speaking lines in a single mission where he hands over some tech the triads stole and then shoots a sectoid. His lines are basically "I'm not cool with loving with alien tech, you guys have it instead, oh by the way I'm an alright shot." He never speaks again after that point, is in no way required to be used, and pretty much the only negative thing is he can't be customized and he gets some slight buffs to aim and will or some poo poo. He's a complete non-entity. The psychic people from the EW mini-quest thing are the same way. For me it's a mixture of sour grapes over the bland DLC just being the EU version of a "spend money for free resources in your game" thing, and the fact that in the video he kills a sectoid off hand with a pistol...then tosses his loving gun away and goes "Okay I've just proven I can kill, but now I'm relegating myself to VIP status to make you do an escort quest." At least his missions had enough variance they weren't literally "Thin Men are always in the exact same spot, including the drop-in reinforcements" that the psychic girl's first mission was. BlazetheInferno posted:No idea. Maybe it's a complaint about Zhang being statistically better than other soldiers? Also this. He literally gets better stats than any other heavy. But yeah, I'll admit most frustration about Zhang is because the entire DLC was so dumb.
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Apr 10, 2017 06:42
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The most annoying thing about Zhang is that, in the cutscene that introduces him, he casually shoots a Sectoid to death and then proceeds to throw away a perfectly good pistol and become an unarmed VIP that you must chaperone to the exit. 
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Apr 10, 2017 07:17
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Mandatory Assembly posted:The most annoying thing about Zhang is that, in the cutscene that introduces him, he casually shoots a Sectoid to death and then proceeds to throw away a perfectly good pistol and become an unarmed VIP that you must chaperone to the exit. It's a pistol good enough to one-shot a sectoid. I'd happily ditch Zhang just to get my hands on one of those that early.
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Apr 10, 2017 07:18
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Jabor posted:It's a pistol good enough to one-shot a sectoid.
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Apr 10, 2017 10:02
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Ravenfood posted:It's a pistol shot so good Zhang apparently swears off ever using a pistol again after he's made it. "Those things can take full bursts from an Assault Rifle and survive, and I just killed it with a single pistol shot. Welp, never gonna top that. gently caress it, I'll end my pistol-shooting career on a high note. Some for some DAKKA."
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Apr 10, 2017 10:25
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Alkydere posted:
and that's fine, there's plenty of reasons to criticize Slingshot, but you're using the term mary sue completely incorrectly. just sayin  It has First DLC Syndrome written all over it, for better or for worse. Cutscene competency turning into Escort The VIP is an unfortunate clash of trying to use narrative shorthand to introduce a character as a cool and good dude and then go straight into already developed, pre-existing mission mechanics. And then he's back into competency but under your control when you see his above-average stats. This kinda thing happens so often in so many games  the giant pile of resources you get for completing Slingshot is a bigger deal - changing that could've been a line or two of dialogue from Central or Shen and then they could've tuned it better. But even then, I'm not really complaining about getting blaster launchers early considering how I never even got them at all my first playthrough of EU because the requirement to unlock them came so late. It's sort of an odd fix, and I'm not sure that problem was universal, but it was okay for me. but like I said. first DLC means rough edges, it seems to be inevitable. Psion fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Apr 10, 2017 |
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Apr 10, 2017 17:27
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Yeah, it's a shame Zhang didn't come out when Enemy Within did. Then he could have been a reskinned infiltrated agent! Protect the VIP, also he has a pistol!
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Apr 11, 2017 02:08
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Psion posted:and that's fine, there's plenty of reasons to criticize Slingshot, but you're using the term mary sue completely incorrectly. just sayin Fair enough. And yeah, the whole cutscene competency issue was what really galled me. Dude can one-shot a Sectoid with a pistol which, while the weakest enemy in the game, can take 3-4 bullets from a rifle. So he's shown he's a badass and then for no explainable reason he just tosses the pistol away. C'mon man, the aliens don't give no poo poo about "non-combatants", and they sure as hell wouldn't count you as one after you nailed a Sectoid in the dome.
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Apr 11, 2017 02:14
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Doctor Reynolds posted:Yeah, it's a shame Zhang didn't come out when Enemy Within did. Then he could have been a reskinned infiltrated agent! Protect the VIP, also he has a pistol! I think it's a reasonable guess they learned from slingshot and made that change for agents in EW, in which case I'm all for it. one VIP escort mission is a small price to pay for how much fun those agent missions are in EW.
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Apr 11, 2017 02:51
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LW2 1.3 is coming sooner rather than later. Tons of perk changes and balancing, but most importantly, it seems like there's going to be a big shift away from stealthing missions being the norm. Your standard timed missions (Guerrilla Ops) are going to have roughly the same amount of enemies, but with less enemies per pod and more pods. So encountering two pods of 4 on Extremely Light will go up to 3x3, making for an easier time for smaller squads to fight through without getting bogged down by EVERY ENEMY ON THE MAP AT ONCE, THEN REINFORCEMENTS in one firefight. I can't wait!
Apoplexy fucked around with this message at 06:31 on Apr 11, 2017 |
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Apr 11, 2017 06:26
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as long as it gets released and everyone can boot the game the first time without a hotfix i'll count it as a win over LW1
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Apr 11, 2017 06:34
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"Yanno what I haven't done yet, I think I'm gonna start a Legendary campaign! And of course Ironman because that's how I play these days!" Said Alkydere one night. His jaw dropped through the floor as the game gave him a flawless Gatecrasher. This had to be too good to be true, it couldn't work out that well could it? Nope. It couldn't First mission was a code black because I stepped on a tile that wasn't properly displayed as "revealed". Two soldiers killed in one turn, remaining two panic and are mopped up the next turn without me even being allowed to input a command.
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Apr 11, 2017 06:55
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I just opened up a mission that I scrambled for because I had very little time to infiltrate, so I only got a few troops in. Figured I'd sneak the whole way through. My sneaky guy got spotted on the first loving move, so so much for that. I ended up fighting my way through the whole map with just 3 soldiers. Thanks to some incredibly lucky play and only popping one pod at a time I pulled it off. One shinobi, one ranger, and one sectoid (thanks to playable aliens mod). Sectoid really was the MVP of the map, providing mindspins and psi zombies to distract fire. Highlight was right near the exit when my mind-controlled muton wore off and instead of targeting any of my three nearly dead units, he charged downstairs to melee-kill a psi zombie. All three + the VIP survived, but only just barely. Probably my best XCOM play ever, combined with some very fortunate rolls. Apoplexy posted:LW2 1.3 is coming sooner rather than later. Tons of perk changes and balancing, but most importantly, it seems like there's going to be a big shift away from stealthing missions being the norm. Your standard timed missions (Guerrilla Ops) are going to have roughly the same amount of enemies, but with less enemies per pod and more pods. So encountering two pods of 4 on Extremely Light will go up to 3x3, making for an easier time for smaller squads to fight through without getting bogged down by EVERY ENEMY ON THE MAP AT ONCE, THEN REINFORCEMENTS in one firefight. I can't wait! Encouraging slow going and fighting your way through instead of "I'll never pull this off, let's try to sneak the entire way through"?
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Apr 11, 2017 08:41
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Vib Rib posted:So basically the same amount of enemies, but spread to more separate pods? Correct, yeah.
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Apr 11, 2017 08:57
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Apoplexy posted:LW2 1.3 is coming sooner rather than later. Tons of perk changes and balancing, but most importantly, it seems like there's going to be a big shift away from stealthing missions being the norm. Your standard timed missions (Guerrilla Ops) are going to have roughly the same amount of enemies, but with less enemies per pod and more pods. So encountering two pods of 4 on Extremely Light will go up to 3x3, making for an easier time for smaller squads to fight through without getting bogged down by EVERY ENEMY ON THE MAP AT ONCE, THEN REINFORCEMENTS in one firefight. I can't wait! I understand why they are doing this but I'm still kind of bummed about it. I just started a new Commander campaign not too long ago and early game stealth missions are real nail biters. It would be cool if they could just be balanced better for mid to late game but not completely eliminated. They're also changing Oscar Mike and Command so that they won't work on non-combatants, which kind of sucks imo. I lose enough civvies on these jailbreaks as it is. I am looking forward to the smash and grab mission types, though. Hopefully they will eliminate some of the resource scarcity that makes the early game such a drag and be a fun replacement for stealth missions.
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Apr 11, 2017 14:27
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Been lurking this thread for a bit while working on my first xcom2 playthrough and y'all talking up LW2 really makes me want to dive into it. game is fun as hell so far.
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Apr 11, 2017 15:38
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Awesome! Let us know how your vanilla playthrough goes, and when you give LW2 a try, don't hesitate to look here for support on that endeavor.
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Apr 11, 2017 16:22
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Beagle seems ... troubled? I dunno, glad he can afford to ditch stuff he doesn't like doing though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-TlNe2E2A0
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Apr 12, 2017 10:19
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He sounds more relieved than troubled to me The Congregation of LW2 have probably abandoned him so it seems risk-free to start up LW1 again.
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Apr 12, 2017 10:35
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Honestly, I see a lot more interest in LW ONE players than LW2 ones. Maybe because Xwynns has the market cornered on the latter, and there's some extremely good players whose interest are also in LW2 as well, like JOinNrbs. He seems decent from what I've seen. But there's just this huge excess of LW2 streamers/LPers because of how new it is, whereas I imagine the LW1 community is just those who went back to it after trying and not liking LW2/not liking LW2 as much as they did LW1.
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Apr 12, 2017 11:23
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gITg6IBeGKo This is one of the most bullshit with a capital hosed things I've ever seen. Three Avatar pips in less than a day?
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Apr 12, 2017 11:25
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Jonah Galtberg posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gITg6IBeGKo Haha, did that dude lose an 83-hour long war 2 campaign in like 2 minutes on the strategic layer?
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Apr 12, 2017 11:37
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PostNouveau posted:Haha, did that dude lose an 83-hour long war 2 campaign in like 2 minutes on the strategic layer? Sadly, because he got some unlucky Facility pips advancing to the Avatar Project counter and all. It really sucks, but the AVATAR Project was part of the base game, too, don't forget. It sucked then as well!  I forget if he liberated a region early or not, but the only thing you can do is plan around that and spreading out fast to get facilities down, like with vanilla.
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Apr 12, 2017 11:41
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Also, goddamn. Dude makes $1500 a month playing video games for voyeurs. I would TOTALLY do that if I weren't uncharismatic and camera+mic-shy.
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Apr 12, 2017 11:44
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Does LW2 not have facility leads?
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Apr 12, 2017 12:23
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I believe it does, in fact.
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Apr 12, 2017 13:12
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Yeah but they're pretty rare. Pavonis have started asking for their forum members to help with localisation. So hopefully they'll make some UI elements explaining obtuse poo poo.
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Apr 12, 2017 13:51
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Apoplexy posted:It really sucks, but Don't make excuses. It is considerably shittier in LW2 than vanilla. No buts.
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Apr 12, 2017 13:57
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I like video games.
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Apr 12, 2017 14:02
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I'm confident LW2 will be good by patch 1.869
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Apr 12, 2017 14:04
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At a time when Xcom 4 will be out for months. Even if this schedule keeps up.
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Apr 12, 2017 14:53
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1.3 is looking to be really good, I like all the balancing shifts they've done to the perk trees and skills themselves. There's some nice UI-related stuff in there, too, like managing haven advisors' gear and PCSes and all while they're deployed. Here's something that I'll love: "- Clicking the Missions button in the Haven Management UI will assign and cycle the first 13 rebels through each of the jobs. 14+ will go to hiding." gently caress yeah, no more 13 instances of aiming for the little arrows and clicking twice! :P
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Apr 12, 2017 14:59
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