Poll: XCOM 2 is Nigh - Prepare Your RNG Holes

[mavkiel]

One thing that really is odd. The descriptions of the various long war team mods. Or to be more precise the lack of a description. I actually want to know what the heck I am downloading before I install it. Vague, descriptions about adding a subclass or an enemy that 'grants bonuses' to other aliens is really not enough.

 

[DoPo]

15 minutes left for me. I'll play it for a bit before going to bed, tonight.

Wish me luck, Commanders.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

One thing that really is odd. The descriptions of the various long war team mods. Or to be more precise the lack of a description. I actually want to know what the heck I am downloading before I install it. Vague, descriptions about adding a subclass or an enemy that 'grants bonuses' to other aliens is really not enough.

I know a bit.

The gun is an entire new type of guns (submachine guns) which I believe serve as a sidearm substitute (IE you can use them to replace pistols). Not sure what kind of bonuses/negatives they impart.

The enemy is a Muton Commander, who will grant buffs/bonuses to nearby allies.

The other one is Officer ranks for your own troops, giving them additional set of perks on top of their class, and they also have buffs/bonuses for allies. You can only take one Officer per mission.

15 minutes left for me. I'll play it for a bit before going to bed, tonight.

Wish me luck, Commanders.

Good luck, Commander. We will be watching.

 

[LetalisK]

Oh, and the tutorial is total arse. Same irritating hand-holding bullshit that forces you to lose troops like in the first game, but takes even longer to introduce stuff. But I was expecting that. Only ticked the box on my first run out of morbid curiosity and a touch of psychotic completionism.

In EU, doing the tutorial netted the player an extra satellite. Anything like that here? Or should it be skipped?

Oh, I couldn't tell you. I haven't played without the tutorial.

...

In other news, you know how a bunch of people got their panties in a severe twist over how the sequal starts off by assuming XCOM lost in the first game? Well, a lot of people will probably miss this, but it's implied that any of the Commander's memories to the contrary (ie the player's memories) were just a bunch of simulations that Advent were running in his/her brain while in stasis prison.

Yeah. We're gonna need a bigger salt shaker.

My god that's stupid. Is it so hard for them to say "Awesome, you killed one of the scouting fleets. It was also a decoy. While we spent all our attention and resources on them, the main fleet was preparing to bushwhack us when we opened ourselves up." It's not great, but it's miles better than what they're giving already. You could even make the tutorial about the bushwhacking.

 

[DoPo]

15 minutes left for me. I'll play it for a bit before going to bed, tonight.

Wish me luck, Commanders.

Good luck, Commander. We will be watching.

So, I started playing. I had the tutorial option on. It was stupid. I don't think I've finished the tutorial yet, however, I did play the first mission where you're not literally given where to move each turn. Erm, played it twice, because the first time it went...not well:

So, I took advantage of the stealth mechanic to move my soldiers into position - I rushed them forwards, as I didn't need to stop and overwatch each turn. So far, so good. I got to the enemies who were still patrolling and Bradford went (essentially) "Hey, use the new concealed overwatch mechanic", to which I answered "Duh" and got to work positioning everybody. Only problem is that one of my soldiers decided it's shorter if he went through open fire. As a result, he was on fire afterwards. Burning works like poison, in that you burn for some damage per turn - eh fine, I thought, I'd just have to take the damage. Only there is another difference - burning soldiers can't go into overwatch. For reasons. I thought I'd just spend an extra turn prepping and if he was still burning, I'd just use him to initiate the combat.

Only, as I suppose have guess, it's not exactly how everything went down. What happened was that on the turn I was supposed to actually attack, my burning soldier decided to panic, run elsewhere and open fire (of course missing)...thus revealing the squad and ruining the ambush. Oh, and also triggering the second patrol which was nearby. So I spend that turn with only 3 active soldiers scampering to get out of the compromised position and try to turn the tables. Only, the aliens managed to panic another soldier, and then proceeded attacking at all the soldiers still in control of themselves. Turned into a slaughterhouse. At one point, I had 3 soldiers left with combined health of grand total of 3. Against 4 enemies. I decided to just grenade my people and restart.

Second time, it went better. Still lost a soldier and got two others wounded, but in my defence, I lost the soldier to fire again. I'm not entirely sure how fire works - apparently if you interact with something that's on fire, your soldier is also burning afterwards. Not sure why, though - I had to disable a MacGuffin before it blew up and it was burning, the actual "disabling" consisted of the soldier standing next to the MacGuffin and holding up a tablet with a hacking interface on it. There wasn't any touching or whatever, nor did the soldier stand in a tile that was on fire. Bizarre. The soldier was then doomed, as she had 1 HP left. Well, whatever, though, at least I got the job done.

Two improvements I wanted to mention because I hadn't actually seen them advertised before:
- If something can be done in a radius around a tile, the marking is the way more appropriate outlining of the entire aria where you can be, as opposed to the stupid circle from EU where even if the line passes through a tile, you can't actually use it from there, but you have to be completely inside the circle.
- In combat, you can target explodable objects - one alien was hiding next to a boiler, so I was able to just shoot at that and the explosion took the alien out. The shot didn't show a percentage to hit, so I assume it's an automatic hit.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

...on the turn I was supposed to actually attack, my burning soldier decided to panic, run elsewhere and open fire (of course missing)...thus revealing the squad and ruining the ambush. Oh, and also triggering the second patrol which was nearby. So I spend that turn with only 3 active soldiers scampering to get out of the compromised position and try to turn the tables. Only, the aliens managed to panic another soldier, and then proceeded attacking at all the soldiers still in control of themselves. Turned into a slaughterhouse.

Sounds like one of Jake Solomon's classic "That's XCOM, baby" moments.

How's your performance been, if I might ask? Still 4 hours away from unlocking here.

 

[SweetShark]

Need to Download the DLC and I am ready to go myself.
Shall I also get the first Mods?
Who else trying them now?

 

[DoPo]

How's your performance been, if I might ask? Still 4 hours away from unlocking here.

Defintely saw what Zhukov mentioned - occasionally the game just stops and waits before doing actions. Usually something to do with the enemies - it did it, for example, when enemy group gets triggered and their animation plays (before they take cover), exactly as described before, but I've also seen the pause at the start of the enemy turn. It appears like it's when the AI starts calculating how to proceed.

Other than that, I've seen some...less than ideal framerates. I'm talking 30 and few times it dipped below. On the bright side, it was only in in-game cutscenes, like when the soldiers came back from the mission and were walking away from the Sky ranger, or when promoting them and they have an idle animation in the background. So, overall, not any time it's really important. I had all the settings on the absolute maximum. It's worth noting that it didn't really do that in the beginning. It definitely showed up only after I had played for a while, as I also noticed it the second time I was in the science lab, but not the first. I suspect a memory leak, which could be due to me going all the way on graphics. And/or because the nVidia drivers for XCOM 2 aren't out yet.

Anyway, overall, the performance was good. Needs some tuning for sure, but it's not a major problem, as it doesn't hit during important gameplay. Well, there is the waits before enemies act, but it's just as Zhukov said - noticeable. It's like the game is waiting for two moments more than what you'd expect.

I'll try lowering/removing AA tomorrow to see if that would alleviate the problem with the choppy-ness.

 

[Zenja]

3. Highly disappointed in $20 pre-order DLC that is just skins. This same type of DLC was given for free if your pre-ordered the first game and even then, it should have just been included. It's mostly just skins, not content, and it isn't even that many skins. I refuse to buy it because they are just art assets being held ransom from the fanbase. There is no reason to do DLC like that other than to try to sell your game for higher than $60 and apply a tax to being a fan. This isn't a map pack, or even a small mission based DLC like Slingshot - its skins.

I hear the game got delayed to really play up customization since it was so popular in the first one. Then we see the Day 1 DLC is focused on customization and costs $20 when it comes out. Which makes it look like they delayed the release of the game for DLC, which does make it look like they are disecting parts of the game out to bulk up the DLC. I can't prove it but the parallels do make me suspicious.

What are you talking about?
There are two buyable dlc's for Xcom 2 at this moment.
1. The Resistance Warrior Pack, which is all skins and comes free with every preorder. We don't know how much this will cost outside of the game yet.
2. The Reinforcement Pack, which costs 20$, yes, but isn't one dlc but rather just a sort-of Season Pass. It comes with 3 dlcs.
The Anarchy Pack, which is, again, just skins and will release in spring of this year.
Alien Hunters, which is supposed to feature new "Elite" aliens and new missions. I think the missions will be dedicated to hunting these aliens, though the descriptions isn't 100% clear on that. Release Summer 2016.
Shen's Last Gift, which is supposed to introduce a new soldier class with unique weapons, armor and also new missions. Also release Summer 2016.

The Resistance Warrior Pack doesn't cost 20$ and the Reinforcement Pack will feature content and skins. Not only skins. Additionally all the dlc of the Reinforcement pack will release after the main game, so I don't know how you come to the conclusion that they pushed the game back to sell skins.

I actually just read the details of it today which makes it seem not so bad, but I also don't care for season passes. I suppose it is like preordering an expansion pack, which... 'meh'. I just see a lot of games trying to push the price UP to $80 on release and many games are using season passes and Day 1 DLC to do it. Unfortunately, I am not a believer that games need to be more expensive. I think that is actually one of the problems with gaming today and am actually more in favor of graphics and such plateauing for a decade or two and games should try to become cheaper. I think publishers should be figuring out how to release games at a $40 price tag, not an $80 one for many reasons that benefit both gamers and publishers/developers. Especially, since the audience for gaming clearly doubled last gen meaning twice as many people are now buying games ...or consoles anyways.

Slingshot was also a very underwhelming DLC, on the first game for me though. I would rather hear that they are working on a full scale expansionthat I have to pay $40 for in a year or two rather than pay $20 bucks for some small DLC's that act independantly that something designed together to work collaboratively. But it isn't fair for me to say how it will be yet so I digress. Just stating that it both worries and disappoints me.

 

[xaszatm]

1. Bought it, waiting to play it. Love the X-Com games and own all of them and Xenonauts and am happy Xenonauts 2 is happening as well. Both games take the original X-Com into different paths and more enjoyment for me.
2. Normal, I've beaten the Long War Impossible ONCE and would like to ease my way into this version.
3. hate Hate HATE (...ok, maybe just dislike) the fact that we're doing a timeline reset here. I'd much rather we start out near the top rather than reset the tech trees.

Also to the Fire Emblem Fates things...they're not really that similar. I don't get why he was arguing that. I mean, I'm getting the special edition as well, but that game and this game scratch different itches.

 

[cathou]

so finally i've received my physical copy from best buy wednesday, tried to install it, but since it must be activated from steam, steam tell me : the game is not out yet. so i cannot even preinstall it. at midnight i will have to install the 4 dvds of the game before playing... damn it

 

[Elfgore]

Well that first mission you have full control on can go fuck itself. Seriously, it's god-awful. Fire is placed in the absolutely worse positions and the map in general lacks decent cover. Lost three guys in the mission because a truck that wasn't even noticeably going to explode, exploded.

Other than that, cut scenes are fantastic, make sure you turn of anti-aliasing(seriously it will kill you frame rate to levels even I consider unacceptable), that weird pause people above are talking about is true and kinda hurts the game a bit, and the tips kinda lie to you(right click on an enemy to charge stab my ass, how about make my guy waste his attack phase to move on spot in front of two enemies.

Edit: Alright, time to mess with the .ini files. *looks through* Dear lord, they have an entire .ini file filled with all the possible cheats you can use in the game. These guys fucking rock, man.

 

[DoPo]

So, after waking up this morning, I realised I didn't mention one thing in my previous post - the ranger melee attack. Namely, has anybody found a way to alter the angle at which it's delivered?

It seemed you're only able to hit the enemy from the nearest side, so if you don't want that (for example, because it would leave your guy exposed) the only other option is to spend one movement on getting elsewhere and then using Slash. But even then, depending on positioning and the cover, that might not be enough.

It looks like a sort of an unnecessary limitation to put, but perhaps I was just not using Slash correctly and you can choose the angle at which to deliver the strike.

 

[Zenja]

I had a weird situation. Mission was to go rescue civilians. Naturally the first 2-3 turns a handful of civilians were shot and killed by aliens. Then a sectoid used reanimate on a civilian and made a little zombie minion out of them. No worries, I had it covered. I throw a grenade and plan to kill both of the units next turn. On the aliens turn the civilian walks up to one of my soldiers and hits them for 3 damage. Again, no problem, I kind of expected that to happen. But then the civilian suddenly catches fire ...when there was no fire around. Then it looks like it burns to death, cool I thought. Then my soldier catches fire, then the car I am standing by explodes killing me and the sectoid in the blast, and now it is my turn. What is that about?

The one that really annoyed me though was a rescue mission. I had 6 or 8 turns to fight my way across a map, rescue a guy locked up, and escort him to the evac point on the other side of the map. It's doable, I was pushing it but I rescued him with 4 turns left. Then the aliens brought in reinforcements between me and the evac zone. I only had 1 turn left so I had the VIP get in the evac section and figured I would finish off the 2 wounded aliens next turn. Nope, time is up, we can't wait for you to kill 2 wounded aliens all your soldiers are MIA. because you took 7 or 9 turns. I understand when the first game did it with the bombs, it's a bomb. But this pilot wouldn't wait for me to finish off these aliens even though the pilot could see me fighting from the extraction zone and I was winning! He was like "They are either dead ore MIA" and flew off. I havent rage quit in a while, but that made me do it. Now I am here complaining.

I have only got to slash 1 enemy and it worked out like I needed it to so I will have to keep my eyes open on that.

 

[Zhukov]

Is it so hard for them to say "Awesome, you killed one of the scouting fleets. It was also a decoy. While we spent all our attention and resources on them, the main fleet was preparing to bushwhack us when we opened ourselves up." It's not great, but it's miles better than what they're giving already. You could even make the tutorial about the bushwhacking.

See, to me that seems awfully dull.

XCOM: "Oh no, aliens!"
XCOM2: "Oh no, more aliens!"

A game that has the balls to straight up say, "Nuh uh, you fucking lost the war scrab", at least feels a wee bit different to me.

Besides, at this point I would be cheering it on purely for the bountiful harvest of salty tears that it has reaped.

 

[Zenja]

Anyone else here getting their butt totally whooped? On one hand, some of my losses are due to ridiculous things I think may be bugs. On the other, most of my losses are due to this game just kicking my butt. I have lost twice now and am going to have to restart a 3rd game on Veteran Ironman. I will say I am still learning exactly what intel and supplies values are and a few other things. I am actually enjoying the level of customization on soldiers though. I am actually giving them bios and such. Then they die after 3 missions and I am sad. But then I recruit more and I like them and am happy again. Then I lose the game and am sad. But in a few hours I will start a new game and be happy again. Maybe this is the time where everything comes together.

 

[veloper]

Anyone else here getting their butt totally whooped? On one hand, some of my losses are due to ridiculous things I think may be bugs. On the other, most of my losses are due to this game just kicking my butt. I have lost twice now and am going to have to restart a 3rd game on Veteran Ironman. I will say I am still learning exactly what intel and supplies values are and a few other things. I am actually enjoying the level of customization on soldiers though. I am actually giving them bios and such. Then they die after 3 missions and I am sad. But then I recruit more and I like them and am happy again. Then I lose the game and am sad. But in a few hours I will start a new game and be happy again. Maybe this is the time where everything comes together.

I'm afraid so. XCOM in classic mode was too easy, but XCOM2 in commander mode is a mean bastard. I even considered veteran (normal) mode for sec after I got that horrible feeling I was becoming that guy getting strings of bad luck from the RNG.

 

[cathou]

Anyone else here getting their butt totally whooped? On one hand, some of my losses are due to ridiculous things I think may be bugs. On the other, most of my losses are due to this game just kicking my butt. I have lost twice now and am going to have to restart a 3rd game on Veteran Ironman. I will say I am still learning exactly what intel and supplies values are and a few other things. I am actually enjoying the level of customization on soldiers though. I am actually giving them bios and such. Then they die after 3 missions and I am sad. But then I recruit more and I like them and am happy again. Then I lose the game and am sad. But in a few hours I will start a new game and be happy again. Maybe this is the time where everything comes together.

I'm afraid so. XCOM in classic mode was too easy, but XCOM2 in commander mode is a mean bastard. I even considered veteran (normal) mode for sec after I got that horrible feeling I was becoming that guy getting strings of bad luck from the RNG.

honestly, i choosed veteran for my first run, just to learn the new mechanics of the game before i get beat up by commander difficulty

 

[LetalisK]

Is it so hard for them to say "Awesome, you killed one of the scouting fleets. It was also a decoy. While we spent all our attention and resources on them, the main fleet was preparing to bushwhack us when we opened ourselves up." It's not great, but it's miles better than what they're giving already. You could even make the tutorial about the bushwhacking.

See, to me that seems awfully dull.

XCOM: "Oh no, aliens!"
XCOM2: "Oh no, more aliens!"

A game that has the balls to straight up say, "Nuh uh, you fucking lost the war scrab", at least feels a wee bit different to me.

Besides, at this point I would be cheering it on purely for the bountiful harvest of salty tears that it has reaped.

Isn't that more or less the same thing? I mean, you can change the details, but I don't see how you get from "I just blew up the mothership" to "you lost the war" without more aliens while not making the connection even more contrived then it already is.

Edit: oh nm, you mean a straight up "the last game's ending never actually happened". Personal preference then, because that would irritate me more.

 

[DoPo]

Isn't that more or less the same thing?

If it is, does it really matter which option was taken?

Edit: oh nm, you mean a straight up "the last game's ending never actually happened". Personal preference then, because that would irritate me more.

Thing is, the last game's ending did happen. Only, it the ending that was chosen was the most common ending that mostly everybody, has gotten and they've gotten it multiple times. It's the ending that has overall happened the most, over all playthroughs by all people - we lost.