Xcom 2

Its been years since I played either game, so I can't recall all the missions in either game, I do remember the fishing village and home base invasion invasions being pretty good. However both the home base invasion and EXALT missions came with the expansion and if your including expansion content then its only fair you factor in War of the Chosen for X-Com 2. From what I can recall EXALT missions didn't really play any different in general to the regular missions and where generally easier.

Yes there was some missions where you effectively had a timer like Terror missions and bomb defuse, but they made up only a relatively small percentage of the missions. And if you liked these type of missions then I'm not seeing what the problem with X-Com 2 is.

I'm not describing the same tactic but I should of been a bit more detailed. I'm talking about the initial stealth phase of X-Com 2 missions, where its much easier to remain undetected and move into position to set an ambush. in X-Com 1, as soon as you see an enemy they see you, but that's not the case in X-Com 2, they can be on screen and not see you, as they have to be in a certain range to detect you. The biggest issue for players new to X-Com 2 and dealing with the timer, is they they are too cautious in their opening moves during this phase. They advance moving each of their units into cover as they go, but that slows them down too much and takes too many turns to get into position hence the timer because a issue. If you know how the detection system works you can advance pretty far towards objectives quite quickly with out having to worry about getting the best cover until you want to trigger the first attack. If you do stumble across and enemy, it doesn't mean your instantly detected, so you can then move your men to cover and overwatch but I'm not saying you should sit here permanently and wait until the enemy detects you. If the enemy detects you next turn, that's fine and dandy you can fight them from a good position, if he doesn't you can opt to move to a more optimum position to attack them or move your men so the enemy is no longer on screen and therefore not a threat on the next turn. Or the enemy may simply have moved off screen by themselves, again freeing you do what you want next turn.

Another difference from X-Com 1, is that yes overwatch is still effective and has its uses but its not the dominate tactic in regular missions, you can't sit back with most of your squad set up in full cover with overwatch on for a dozen turns and just let the enemies come on to you. You have to play aggressively and take calculated risks or run out of time, I just found that gameplay to be more pro-active and exciting and believe me I do love to camp and turtle in games every now and then

I enjoyed both games but I found X-Com 2's game play better once I got my head around dealing with the timer.

Nody wrote: »

You lose the game; no not joking. No final battle, no reset to lower it, you simply outright lose the game. Fun game mechanic; makes it "more tactical".

The concept they where going for with X-Com 2 is that earth lost the war and you're no longer defending earth against invaders but you're now fighting an occupying force as an insurgency, fighting a gorilla war where you need to get in fast, strike hard and get out fast before the enemy far superior in overall strength can retaliate with overwhelming force.

In many games, there is an over arching storyline where the enemy has some plot to take over or destroy the world, but in the vast majority of cases, they are running to your time schedule, they can't win and can only progress so far as the story mandates it too as you progress through the game. In X-Com 2, they are running to their own schedule and can actually win depending on their success or your failures, whatever way you want to look at it. Its certainly a novel approach to gaming and while I can understand why it can cause frustration I can see merit to it as well. I've seen the opposite criticism with games, where people say how utterly ridiculous it is that you can go off and spend dozen of hours doing 50 side missions while the main story just stays absolutely static until you back to it. You effectively can't fail. You die, you just reload a save a few minutes back, but in X-Com 2 if you fail enough you can fail permanently. Its part of X-Com's appeal, it adds meaning to your decisions.

The Avatar Project time table has got nothing to do with making it more tactical and you are probably deliberately conflating it with mission timers so you can act dismissive without actually having to rebut the points I was making.

Its actually an interesting debate. The developers are in a way forcing you to play a more fun type of game, but gamers seem to be hate taken out of their comfort zones and are not willing to spend time adapting and rather than adapt they just complain about the game being too difficult. Doom Eternal is anther example of this.

Nody wrote:

Yes, it's so overwhelming that when the enemy shuts down your flying HQ you can sit there and farm endless waves of enemies that will spawn every two turns for ever at the exact same spot over and over again without ever becoming stronger, send in more reinforcements or artillery strikes etc. The same enemy that's incapable of attacking more than three locations at the same time in the whole world that supposedly control and have magical portals to send people around in and can mind control people, except only do that to your soldiers instead of all the rebel camps they know the locations of. If you want realism then make it realistic accordingly; XCom-2 is anything but, every single time they send reinforcement you know what's coming, how many and where. This is a purely arbitrary addition to force people to rush more and was one of the first mods added was to disable it; calling it realism is a joke.

Ah here its a video game, they have to work with the constraints of it being a video game with what they technically capable of doing and balancing the game. I could knock pretty much every game on the similar grounds if I wanted too. For example why in virtually every RTS single player campaign does the enemy give you time to build up your base, why do they attack you piece meal and why do they scatter their forces into smaller pockets across the map that you can overwhelming individually, why do they not simply just pool all their forces together and attack you in force as soon as they detect. I wasn't calling it realism nor were the developers, I was just describing that was the concept/theme they where going for with their game design.

No it does not; it adds an arbitrary time line in what's suppose to be a game, you know something you play to enjoy. The punishment is you simply outright lose it because you did not play at the speed the developer decided you should finish the game. It's one one of the more stupid additions to the game, it adds nothing to the enjoyment for a large pool of people and if people wanted it then they should add it in an Ironman mode or similar.

People enjoy different things. Some people enjoy a challenge and find overcoming a challenge rewarding. True not everyone is like that and some just want to experience the game story/world, but they are catered to on the lower difficulty levels. But that leads to a psychological issue people have selecting lower difficulty levels.

No, it fulfills exactly the same function that you call tactical. It's an arbitrary time limit added to force you to rush through it rather than take your time and play the game as you want. It's the game developer telling you that you can't take your time and build things up, you can't have a few bad games because hey if you do you've lost. It's not adding an interesting new boss, new tactics or interesting challenge, it's run the optimal way or you lose basically.

Tactics are what you employ during the actual missions not outside it in the strategy and management section. From what I can recall of play play through which is probably 4/5 years ago at this point, I was basically required to play a mission every couple of hours of game play to slow the Avatar Projects progress down. But I don't recall having issues with having inadequate resources or tech. I did fail on my first two playthroughs but on my third successful play through neither the mission timers or Avatar Project timer where an issue for me. I also don't recall feeling being particularly rushed. The campaign length was still pretty long and I was able to progress my tech and solider levels along at a decent rate and was well teched up for final missions. Like X-COM Enemy Unknown, X-COM 2 has a reverse difficulty curve, the game gets easier the more you progress.

Funny that; you are telling me what I should find as fun to play and if I don't like it then I'm lazy and staying in my comfort zone. How about I get to decide what I find fun? How about I actually play the games the way I want to play them and enjoy them instead of you telling me what I should like and tell me to stop complaining? How about I, as a paying customer, get to decide that? Novel concept that idea that I want a game to play like the game I liked previously in the same series and when they add things I don't like that reduce the interest in the game play and makes it boring that I voice my opinion about it.

I wouldn't call you lazy but what I find common among gamers is that they have no tolerance for failure, if they find anything frustrating, they call it bad game design and don't look at other perspectives. Believe me I do understand people want to enjoy games and often only have limited time to play and just don't have the time to spend out figuring out how things work. I didn't tell you what you should like and your entitled to complain about a game if you want, but we are on a public discussion forum so people can offer different views. You seem to mostly complain that the game rushes you too much but you also state that you find the game boring, I find that abit of a contradiction.

Then again; your argument is exactly why the likes of Dawn of War 3 or final C&C failed so horribly as well; for some odd reason developers telling people what they should like and not listening to your customers telling you it's a ****ty idea meant people did not like the final game. If they continue this route in X-Com 3 i expect it will sell badly accordingly exactly like Chimera squad did as well.

Developers makes games. You as a gamer get to decide which ones you like and which ones you want to buy, but you don't speak for all gamers nor can developers appease all gamers at once. I liked what they did with X-COM 2, so did many others. Others have expressed opinions similar to your own. The lead developer has acknowledged that and said people who complain about the timer are not necessarily wrong and as a developer he wouldn't try to justify the timer if people found it frustrating but he is still of the opinion that it makes X-COM 2 a better game.
If we where to take the view that developers can't mix things up, we would never have got a classic like say Resident Evil 4 (lol some people would say that's a good thing) or for that matter the DMC series. As for X-COM 2 I don't know how well it did overall but it did very well at launch and successful enough to warrant an expansion and console releases. As for Chimera Squad I haven't played it but its considered more of a spin off and from what I've read about it the most common complaint is that the game is too easy, which shows the developers can often be caught between a rock and hard place.