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This is incredibly pedantic, but the actual title for this game is XCOM, not X-COM. I clicked this thread expecting a new thread for the classic version, which IS called X-COM. Why they changed it, nobody knows.
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Jan 20, 2013 10:55
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 11:40 |
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chiasaur11 posted:General tip for classic: In The Zone is amazing in a lot of circumstances. Double Tap is good, but I probably like In The Zone more, ever since my sniper killed five Chrysalids in a single turn.
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Jan 22, 2013 10:50
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Jetamo posted:To be fair, 2K seems to handle DLC/expansions/sequels really well. They don't really like, squeeze things, I guess. This extends to Take Two in general, with the GTAIV and RDR DLCs being amazing and meaty. 2K doesn't mess around with their DLC, they're one of the few publishers out there who actually try to treat them like expansions. $10-$15 usually goes a long way with them. Slingshot felt like the heart was in the right place but Firaxis just kind of whiffed on it because of unfamiliarity with the game genre and therefore not really knowing how to properly expand on it. They've hinted at a TFTD thing so I wonder if they're just done with XCOM now and will release that as a whole new game, or if it will be a $30 Expansion Pack. Since Firaxis is also one of the few companies actually still doing that.
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Apr 20, 2013 05:37
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Captain Beans posted:What hints have they dropped about TFTD? The only TFTD related info I recall is Solomon bashing the poo poo out of it saying that because it takes place at the bottom of the ocean you don't get the same feeling of 'saving Earth' because the environments are not familiar to you. Okay, I don't think there has been any and I let this RPS article influence my mind into thinking that they were definitely going for an underwater game next: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/25/deep-rising-firaxis-tease-possible-xcom-sequel/
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Apr 20, 2013 06:04
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Jetamo posted:I had a somewhat crazy idea: What if the DLC/expanso or whatever... will help tie in that FPS X-Com/The Bureau game? dumbideaho The shooter may not even be X-COM related anymore, so who knows.
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Apr 21, 2013 00:33
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Alloy SHIV gives half cover, but on Classic or Impossible, that's not really useful at all. If you're down some men, SHIVs can be useful as an expendable unit who can draw fire, take a few hits, and brute force up the center. The presence of a SHIV not giving a gently caress and strolling right into the thick of things behind the cover of a couple aliens and open firing causes them to freak out and withdraw or choose worse cover. I also tend to lose them every now and again like that, but I figure with them being somewhat cheap to buy that's kind of the point. I would still rather take a good Heavy on pretty much any mission.
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Apr 21, 2013 01:33
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Note to everyone: Verify the spot you're landing an Archangel Armor wearer from all angles before committing the move. Otherwise you may get the soldier stuck in a piece of cover, unable to move for the rest of the mission. Learned that the hard way. Also, I really have to learn to use Tab and Shift exclusively to select soldiers. No, XCOM, I didn't want to open that door. I couldn't have clicked on it, it wasn't even on my screen at the time! I've been trying to give the game a second chance after seeing Beagle's excellent videos, but Firaxis doesn't make it easy to enjoy it.
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Apr 21, 2013 08:42
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Casull posted:Two: One over Canada and one over Nigeria. If it makes more sense, I'm sitting on zero now because I blew my council money on the stuff I listed in my previous post. You're going to regularly run out of money throughout the game, that's just kind of how it goes. Just remember to sell stuff you don't need on the gray market, and you should be fine. Worst case scenario is that you'll have to wait until the next council report to get the money you currently need. You'll get more and more money from satellite coverage as time goes on, too.
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Apr 22, 2013 00:38
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Can someone explain some of the Second Wave options and what they do in more practical terms than the ones the game gives you? With random rookie stats, will that make it so you'll basically have to fire and rehire rookies until you get a sniper that doesn't have abysmal aim, for example? What about random stat increases on level-up? What does New Economy actually do? Will the credit amounts eventually even out or what? What about the random damage? How big of a range are we talking about with that?
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Apr 23, 2013 00:11
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PostNouveau posted:Oof. Still interesting, but he can't get back to Ironman Impossible fast enough. He's funnier in Ironman Impossible but I honestly might like Live and Impossible more. It's nice seeing him vocalize his thought processes and hearing in greater detail why he does certain things, even when they aren't the smartest things to do. And I like the outbursts of emotion live play brings out.
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Apr 23, 2013 07:15
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It's not worth the risk. He'd rather play it safe, hunker down, and have the alien move around, even if he'd prefer it to stay there, than to overwatch and risk getting shot. Unless the alien can flank that very turn, overwatching in full cover is extremely safe and you can always think of a new plan next turn. And if the alien can flank that turn, he has hosed up and usually admits so.
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Apr 23, 2013 08:25
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I'm surprised that they don't have a proper farm map, considering how iconic that setting was to the first X-COM and to alien fiction in general.
Dr. Video Games 0031 fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Apr 23, 2013 |
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Apr 23, 2013 16:57
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Edgecase posted:I think it was the door-to-door tedium of having to clear every room in the house that did it. That, plus the crappy cover situation you got trying to advance across a room from ottoman to ottoman. Room clearing is a thing that probably works best in a real time with pause system like 7.62. That way you can do efficient breaching and clearing. Even an AP/TU system works better than XCOM's two action system for room clearing, which is I guess why they shied away from that aspect of the genre and only have much bigger arenas to fight in. It's still really satisfying for me to breach a store or UFO command room from multiple directions at once, though.
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Apr 23, 2013 19:35
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Captain Beans posted:What we could use is a map editor and easy integration of downloading and rating user maps. And if they did do that (which they totally should and is kind of a bummer that they haven't), they should include a way to just auto download all maps above certain vote thresholds or something, so you can just get a crapload of maps without thinking about them or spoiling them. edit: Crap, double post, sorry, I meant to edit.
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Apr 23, 2013 19:37
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nnnotime posted:I believe that bug happens to everyone, at least on the PC version (on mine it does, too). I have not heard of a fix for it, so I would not waste time troubleshooting it. I don't get that bug, so it's certainly not happening to everyone. I do get a delay where absolutely nothing happens for a few seconds before the game decides to play those animations and move them, though.
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Apr 26, 2013 03:45
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Keeshhound posted:It's a lot closer to how I'd tackle that idea. Since I know everything, and therefor am entirely qualified to give give unsolicited advice to game designers and publishers. Well, now that we know that the turn based XCOM was a huge success that is the primary influence on the direction of the franchise, I feel better about the shooter as a fun little spinoff, rather than having it be the next main entry in the series.
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Apr 27, 2013 01:06
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Thank you RNG, now I'm ready to rock.  
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May 1, 2013 05:38
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:Thank you RNG, now I'm ready to rock. So I decided to take a couple rookies for kicks. One of them got a kill (the other one got killed)  Thanks XCOM! 
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May 1, 2013 06:14
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Jose Mengelez posted:Isn't the reason so many bugs aren't fixed yet more to do with the way xbox live's update policy than impenetrable code? What would Firaxis's excuse for Civ V be? I think it's more that these days Firaxis is just incredibly slow to patch, and when they do, it's underwhelming.
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May 1, 2013 17:59
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Brainamp posted:You have played Gods and Kings right? Cause there ain't nothing underwhelming about that. Yes, I have. The game is still plagued by a pretty massive amount of bugs, AI shortcomings, and balance issues. Gods and Kings added more content and features, making the game more interesting to play, but not any less broken. The patches are always promised but extremely slow to develop. Much like this latest XCOM patch that went into beta months ago and we haven't heard a word since, and didn't fix most of the major bugs anyways.
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May 1, 2013 21:09
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WarpedNaba posted:Been meaning to ask - Do explosives destroy the weapon fragments, or what's the deal with it? Yes. The scientist lady pops in the first time you use explosives to kill an enemy, saying that doing so causes all the weapon fragments to be destroyed.
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May 3, 2013 12:53
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vuohi posted:The cityscape in X-Com Apocalypse had some absolutely hilarious threeways, fourways and sixteenways happening every now and then. It was awesome. I don't know what it is that makes watching your virtual Lego men fighting each other so fun, but it just is. All the way to the original Jagged Alliance, I've had a habit of creating situations in which threeway battles become more common. You know, gently caress Terror From the Deep. I truly hope that Firaxis's next X-COM game will be a take on the Apocalypse concept. That game was so ambitious and had so many great ideas. It's a shame it failed the execution on a few aspects, but if Firaxis could do that, and do that right, it could really become the best X-COM game ever. edit: gently caress it, I'm installing Apocalypse now. What are the recommended fan mods/patches that work on the Steam version?
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May 3, 2013 22:01
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On the topic of Apocalypse, our lord and savior Julian Gollop recently had an interview with PC Gamer that's pretty interesting. http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/04/29/j...-fork-my-fruit/ It actually goes a little bit into the development of Apocalypse and why it didn't turn out so well. But some of the other tidbits he drops are more interesting, like how he was working on a very Valkyria Chronicles-esque X-COM inspired game but the project was scrapped, his studio shut down, and the assets transferred over to the guys who made UFO: Aftermath. That's kind of tragic.
Dr. Video Games 0031 fucked around with this message at 23:19 on May 3, 2013 |
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May 3, 2013 23:14
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I was mostly just looking for a mod that provided the vanilla experience, just better balanced and less buggy. So Karadoc's is the way to go?
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May 4, 2013 01:06
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WarpedNaba posted:Is that a thing to the old TFTD bug that hitched the dif to Superhuman or just XCOM in general? The bug was actually in original X-COM UFO Defense, where the game would reset itself to the easiest difficulty. It never got fixed, nobody was aware it was even a bug until much later (apparently it wasn't in internal builds), and when people complained that the game was way too easy even on the hardest difficult available, Microprose responded by making the easiest difficulty in TFTD more difficult than actual UFO Defense Superhuman mode. TFTD itself was not bugged. It was just designed to be retardedly hard because that's what Microprose thought people wanted.
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May 4, 2013 04:55
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Okay, I really should have been more specific. TFTD's difficulty is not bugged, is what I meant to say. The game is extremely buggy in many other ways, such as an infamous terror mission cruise ship map that has aliens who spawn in walls, requiring you to blow up every single wall to find and kill them all.
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May 4, 2013 06:22
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Orgophlax posted:What the guy above said. Erm, I still don't see it, I don't see the cover bug in effect in that screenshot. The selected soldier is not flanking that sectoid. Are you saying that if you select the other soldier in that screenshot, it shows the sectoid as not flanked? If so, why didn't you screenshot that?
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May 7, 2013 15:04
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Muscle Tracer posted:See the red shield by the sectoid's health bar? That shield should be gold if it's flanked by anybody, whether the flanking soldier is selected or not. Ahh, my bad. I thought that was dependent on who is selected.
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May 7, 2013 15:14
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Jack Trades posted:Last DLC Jake Solomon got surprised that people didn't like Slingshot because when he was designing it he was considering that people are only going to play through XCOM a couple of times which would actually make Slingshot work. I've already said it once, but I'll say it again and think that Apocalypse is a vastly superior setting and concept to try to do "properly." But I suppose I'd rather they save that for a sequel (and it would probably be impossible to pull off as a DLC). I'm not sure if an entire new campaign as DLC would be worthwhile. I would think that there would be a lot less mission variety and would generally be shorter than the regular campaign.
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May 7, 2013 16:32
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Phobophilia posted:Map editor/semi randomisation please. I don't think it's random but pre-generated that way.
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May 9, 2013 23:17
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Fun times in XCOM: I'm doing the Slingshot DLC battleship mission, and I'm stacking up against a door that leads to an unexplored area. When suddenly a Cyberdisc I never seen before just flies through the door (without opening it), and blasts one of my heavies in the face putting him in critical, parking right next to him. So apparently the pre-activated enemies bug can happen to cyberdiscs, and happens in the DLC missions too, that's a fun thing to know. I was left with no choice but to kill the Cyberdisc the very next turn, which meant killing the Major heavy, my top ranked soldier. Yeah... I don't have the will to keep playing that campaign after that bullshit. This is reminding me of why I stopped playing six months ago.
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May 9, 2013 23:31
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Zoran posted:That particular cyberdisc is scripted to activate on a timer after you reach a certain point in the map, basically right at the second power node. If you wait long enough it'll come to you. So is it working as designed that it doesn't have to do its typical activation -> free move thing, or did it just do that but behind a closed door unseen by my squad? Either way, it seems pretty lame that they just throw a single cyberdisc at you that doesn't follow any of the rules the game established for enemies, with no prior warning or precedent. How are you supposed to defend against that? It probably didn't help that a stray shot destroyed the second power node really early on.
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May 10, 2013 02:32
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I'm pretty sure I've seen notifications pop up while the skyranger is moving, so I don't think so. I've also had abduction missions pop up while en route to a DLC mission.
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May 10, 2013 07:19
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Is there a viable gameplay related reason for why the UI is so inadequate? Should the player be able to see line of sights, possible concealment, etc, for any particular spot before they move a person there? Being able to tell whether or not a soldier will be able to see an enemy from a spot before committing the move order would be incredibly helpful, but would it be too powerful? I personally think Firaxis kind of messed up by not including this and it would massively reduce the frustration present in the buggy LOS implementation. Fixing the LOS bugs would be even better, but doing both would be ideal. It just kind of baffles me that for all the interface conveniences they included in the game, this wasn't one of them, and I wonder if they just didn't consider it, they thought it would be too overpowered, or they just didn't want to clutter up the interface. The latter sounds unlikely, because there has to be a way to convey that information clean and concisely.
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May 11, 2013 02:30
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The Crotch posted:They actually had a build that showed lines of sight at one point, but as I recall, it was scrapped for being too ugly and throwing too much poo poo on the screen. I'm disappointed that they didn't try harder to make that work. Because I honestly think that's one of the biggest flaws present in the game right now, and it's a constant source of major frustration from me in almost every single battle. Not knowing whether or not you'll waste a move because you just can't tell whether you'll have LOS or not is really drat annoying. They could have an optional LOS overlay, or draw LOS lines to visible aliens, or have icons above the aliens head when in the move interface, or many other possible things. It really wouldn't be that cluttered, and even if it was a little much, it's probably better than no information at all. That's a really poor decision by Firaxis and I hope they reconsider it in a future patch/expansion/game. ChronoReverse posted:Because in real life, soldiers don't know the consequences of running to a point until they get there. You might THINK you have line of sight only to find there isn't. Likewise with XCOM. In real life, if a person is visible to you, you're able to shoot at them. This is too often not the case in XCOM, thanks to line of sight bugs. But moreover, I find this poor reasoning for this particular decision. In real life, you can't know exactly where a grenade you're throwing is going to land, but Firaxis gives you that information because it makes for better gameplay. This is a video game, and while I don't think gameplay always trumps realism, in most cases it does, and I can't really see the realism angle excusing the lack of line of sight information, as that information would greatly enhance the general gameplay experience. Dr. Video Games 0031 fucked around with this message at 02:41 on May 11, 2013 |
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May 11, 2013 02:37
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That's an aspect I didn't consider. I'm not sure it's necessarily a bad thing that your design is causing players to more carefully consider each move, but it's interesting that they thought it was slowing the game flow down too much. I'm not really sure what I think of that, really. The way I'm visualizing it in my head, it might slow down my play a little bit, but not drastically so or anything. I still think they should at least present it as an option.
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May 11, 2013 02:49
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Revener posted:So there's no real variation among missions? There's variation, but not in a really major way, it's all built on the same basic gameplay concepts, and 9 times out of 10, is "kill all enemies." It's just sometimes "kill all enemies on this crashed spaceship" or "kill all enemies terrorizing this city" or maybe "escort this VIP but also kill all enemies." There is some nice variation in the enemy types, they all behave in different ways. But the way the game surprises you doesn't appear to be the way you want it to. Which ties into the other thing, it's not mindless, it's not something you can zone out to. It's something you have to actively think about and stress over for the entire duration of play. The game surprises you not by a weird new mission type, but more dynamically when your squad gets 'ambushed' (as much as can happen in this game) in mission, or when your rocket blast opens up a wall to an even meaner set of enemies (oh, there's an Ethereal, muton elites, and floater elites all within that room, and the cyberdisc still isn't dead, whoops), and so on. It's constantly challenging you and forcing you to change your existing strategy or come up with new tactics to overcome the latest surprise, in a completely unscripted way. Dr. Video Games 0031 fucked around with this message at 06:05 on May 13, 2013 |
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May 13, 2013 06:03
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The Door Frame posted:Also, most missions are very similar. Sure there's enough alien variation to keep it exciting for a while, but by the time you get ghost armor, it's pretty routine Archangel armor on drat good ground snipers is pretty good, but almost excessive at that point in the game. And I never use ghost armor. Just seems too cheap.
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May 13, 2013 06:07
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Revener posted:I was under the impression this was turn-based combat? I can't imagine a turn-based game you can't zone out to since you have infinity to make any decision. It's turn based, so you can take your time, but you still have to pay attention and carefully consider each move. To me, "zone out" means not paying attention or thinking about what you do, but you really do have to do these things unless you play on easy mode. The game is pretty pure as far as strategy games go. There's little variation in the scenarios, there are terror missions where you have to save as many civilians as you can, there are abduction missions which are the most bog standard extermination missions out there, then there are missions after you shoot down a UFO, or sometimes landed UFO missions, which are all also extermination missions, then there are a few other more unique types like bomb defusal, vip escorts, etc, but those ultimately aren't all that different and are pretty rare. there are also a small handful of plot missions that are mostly like the dynamic stuff. I say the game is pure because it doesn't rely on gimmicks or setpiece moments, but instead relies on dynamic encounters that try to surprise the player through the strategy gameplay instead. So no, there aren't really any of those things you mentioned. But also in that respect, no encounter is ever the same, even after you've played the game a dozen times. edit: Beaglerush's Ironman Impossible series is well edited and concise. Watch it, right now: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXctaw5JGF4LcidFVdkQMV1tc2DfC8x3D Dr. Video Games 0031 fucked around with this message at 06:20 on May 13, 2013 |
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May 13, 2013 06:18
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 11:40 |
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Coolguye is describing Impossible mode, but on Classic, setbacks are manageable, and on Normal and Easy, they're really not bad at all. Unless you run into a series of really bad setbacks all in a row. I find on Classic mode, even if I get a full squad wipe with most of my best soldiers, I can recover. Unless I did a poor job at leveling up backups or something. But the sentiment is still the same, it's a very brutal game where every bad move can start a domino effect if you're not careful. A shot soldier panics, shoots a nearby friendly soldier killing them, while not getting in any better cover, etc. There are ways to mitigate failure and reduce the chances of catastrophic cascades, but you'll end up playing at a disadvantage for the next few battles. XCOM is not an easy game.
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May 13, 2013 06:40
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