X-COM Enemy Unknown Difficulty Curve

[Quazimofo]

Damn, ask me at the weekend... The game doesn't release here until friday and since I'm importing it (I can save 10 friggin ? that way) I don't get it to play until the day after.

But the interview about difficulty implied that above normal you really need a plan in what you are when building as well as the focus on keeping your damn troops alive so you have powerunits when needed.

what i have done is made damn sure to get at least 2 people with med-kits on every mission. I also got kinda lucky with getting wounded but not killed for multiple people across multiple missions because of strategic miffs (but because of this luck, my casualty count is at a whopping 2, and Im fairly certain im fairly far into the game)

from what i can gather, keeping your guys alive is incredibly important, though it is also good to have at least one backup of every class, just in case the worst happens.

Lazer weapons are totally worth it, though if you concentrate your fire with ballistic weapons, and use explosives when times get desperate, you can pull through (i still have heavies and assaults with just plain old bullets, and they can still cause serious harm. 5 damage a shot can REALLY hurt mutons and chrysalids, and even them floating discs, and 1 shot the more basic enemies)

dont let your satellite coverage waver though. when you put one up over a country, -2 panic, and you get bonus money per month. so having good satellite coverage is a big boon.

 

[Quazimofo]

Well it seems my bragging about never losing people jinxed me... recovering a crashed UFO cost me 4 of my best soldiers.

That's XCom for you, just when you feel safe... BOOM!

I know exactly what you mean. Heck, what's worse is when the game lulls you into a false sense of security at the start of a mission.

I remember one mission in Glasgow where it started off with just a few Floaters. I though "Easy! I've got Lasers, and some experienced guys, this'll be cake!" Sure enough, the Floaters are killed with little trouble, and one of them is even captured. I'm sitting there thinking "Oh, this should't be too hard. Why'd the difficulty for this mission say 'Very Difficult' anyways?". Next thing I know, Mutons. Mutons everywhere. All of a sudden, cars are exploding, my guys are missing shots left and right, and an alien grenade somehow manages to kill my stunned Floater. Mission ends with nearly the entire team gravely injured and one of my best Snipers dead (you are missed, Lt. Santiago).

It's moments like that that really get you. The game gets you to start getting sloppy, then BAM! in come the Mutons and Chryssalids.

yeah i had something similar, but a smackering worse. starts off with me feeling confident. difficult abduction you say? well, i just spent a bunch giving everyone carapace armor and some laser weapons, i can handle this. have my sniper grapple up to a building to get a viewpoint, walks up to a window for one of those small rooftop rooms. nobody is inside, so he dashes in to get to his optimal position a bit quicker. oops, there were 2 mutons hiding behind the telescope, and some floaters right outside the other window, and some more mutons on the ground.

the following would take a bit of time to describe, could totally be in an action movie, and somehow wound up with no casualties on my part, yet every alien was killed.

seriously, it was such a clusterfuck 2 people panicked, and i still won. dear god did i get lucky (and the health on my heavies really helped)


oh, and one tip. in order to fuck over the random number gods, if you have a shot or something thats a bit of a longshot, but you REALLY need to make that shot to keep people from dying, or to capture something, save, then re-load, and re-load, and re-load. it feels like cheating a bit, but when everyone survives because of it, its worth it.

 

[Saviordd1]

This is how Xcom is supposed to be.

You don't research, you die.

Luck hates you, you die.

Chryssalids show up, you die.

Ethereals show up, you die.

You exist, you die.

You have to understand that if you bought the game this is what you're gonna get, Xcom is meant to kick your ass 5 ways north and south; if you don't like that your playing the wrong game.

 

[RicoADF]

I won't find out until Friday.

Curse you UK release date.

We feel your pain, down here in the prisoner colonies.

...

OT:
Personally, I'm happy to hear that the difficulty ramps up. I'm gonna try some classic difficulty on "iron man mode". Then I'm probably going to get my arse kicked and quietly slink back to normal difficulty.

I was just thinking that too.... then a sms from eb games saying my copy of se ce is ready for pickup arrived. I almost jumped through the roof in excitement as I was planning to go in and ask for my copy tonight after work as Friday is useless when shops are closed by the time I get home. thank god for late night shopping on Thursday!!!!

 

[DeimosMasque]

This is how Xcom is supposed to be.

You don't research, you die.

Luck hates you, you die.

Chryssalids show up, you die.

Ethereals show up, you die.

You exist, you die.

You have to understand that if you bought the game this is what you're gonna get, Xcom is meant to kick your ass 5 ways north and south; if you don't like that your playing the wrong game.

And I wouldn't have it any other way.

 

[The Critic]

This is how Xcom is supposed to be.

You don't research, you die.

Luck hates you, you die.

Chryssalids show up, you die.

Ethereals show up, you die.

You exist, you die.

You have to understand that if you bought the game this is what you're gonna get, Xcom is meant to kick your ass 5 ways north and south; if you don't like that your playing the wrong game.

And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Indeed. XCOM is all about these water-cooler moments. The horrible strings of luck, the amazing breaks, the sheer unpredictability of it all. We're not complaining about bad luck or difficulty, quite the contrary, we're celebrating it.

Heck, for as bad as luck can treat you in XCOM, sometimes, it can give you a break, too.

Heh. Just before I wrote this, I just did the beginning of a UFO landing. Sectoid commanding shows up and mind-controls my best sniper, who's standing right next to my best assult trooper. No one can draw a bead on the Sectoid, and we're facing a Cyberdisc, too. My SHIV already had hit the Cyberdisc, and both my Support trooper and my two heavies had failed to kill the Sectoid mind-controller, so the only man who can move is my Assault trooper. Que an awesome Run & Gun move where my Trooper gets into range with the Sectoid, exposing himself on the flank, and, with a hit chance of less than 35%, takes the shot. He nailed him, with a single critical, which broke mind control on my sniper, which freed him up to take on the Cyberdisc, which he took down with a single plasma shot.

 

[Studsmack]

I actually won a few missions because my soldier panicked. I swear to god, I shot down at least a dozen or so aliens across the first 4-5 missions just from my soldiers panicking and taking a wild potshot at an alien. I also frequently defied the odds and got kills with 30%-50% odds repeatedly.

Then I needed to capture stuff and Floaters made an appearance and I lost 4 squaddies in a single turn in 1 mission.

Ah, XCOM, I missed you so.

I'm getting lucky with those panic shots, too.

The interesting thing is that I seem to have a better chance when the shot has a 40% to 60% chance of hitting the target. Anything higher and the aliens get a pass more often than not. Strange. Just took down my second UFO, so I'll have to keep playing and see what happens. Loving the game, so far!

 

[Product Placement]

All right, Europe. It's time for us to start playing.

 

[tendaji]

So I guess this thread should be more about your time with the AI and those cocky moments that turned for the worse.

So I assaulted the first alien base with Titan Armor, and almost all Plasma weapons. Well I started off, got a sniper up high who wiped out most of the enemies. Then I had to move forward. But ended up sending a unit too far forward, when I saw 3 Chrysallids suddenly swarm that soldier and kill him (He was a Major Support Unit). So I ended up sniping them off, killing the zombie, and then moved forward. I was facing a downwards staircase and set up some of my units, and sent my shotgunner down the stairs. Turns out Stairs are a terrible Line of Sight problem, and I saw 2 Mutons and a Berserker camping out on the stairs, who immediately lobbed nades and took out all the cover in the room, leaving all the soldiers open up to death, which they did die....That was probably one of the worst feelings in the world, to lose all your best soldiers to a stair line of sight >.>

 

[scotth266]

So I guess this thread should be more about your time with the AI and those cocky moments that turned for the worse.

So I assaulted the first alien base with Titan Armor, and almost all Plasma weapons.

There's your problem - researching certain kinds of tech makes the game both easier and harder since it causes missions to have tougher enemies.

In my playthrough, the enemies in that section were Thin Men, Chrysalids, and Floaters, because I hadn't researched any armor or weapons yet Mind you, without that stuff, Chrysalids were a major pain in the butt.

 

[thiosk]

You aren't supposed to win. They are aliens from another *somewhere*, not Luxemborg's imperial armada.

Chryssalids are friggin awesome. However, killing the zombie no longer causes the chryssalid erupt suddenly, so they received the nerf of all nerfs in this game. It makes sense now, as it did not before, but my god they were awful. The chryssalids now SEEM to want to consume the humies a little less viciously than before. Sad.

In my opinion, research goal 1: laser weapons, research goal 2: carapace armor.

Roughly.

 

[adamc]

I eventually gave up and put this game on the shelf. Too hard to be fun, unlike the original xcom.

 

[C F]

I'm playing on normal, and I got flattened against the wall my first game.

My second game's running smoothly with a satellite-secured green across the board (minus the UK and France), but only because my dad (who actually played UFO: Enemy Unknown with one hand on the mouse and the other hand cradling infant me) coached me about everything I need to know. I've got arch-angel plasma-wielding colonels ready to rock, and I'm thinking about manufacturing an army of Hover-S.H.I.V.s to complement them.

Of course, I still have ways to go, and one slip-up anywhere will cost you dearly.

I love this game. It's like a Sci-fi Fire Emblem, with the emphasis on gameplay and survival over story. The difficulty curve is perfectly challenging even on normal. As soon as I master the ins-and-outs, I might try classic. And I might cry. A lot. But that's part of the fun: a game that plays you as much as you play it.

 

[epidemia]

ive been playing the new xcom for about 3 weeks now, and I cant believe people actually find it so difficult. Maybe its because gamers arent accustomed to having to cope with losing. even with really difficult games like Dark souls, you can still continue on and finish the game even if you made a horrible mistake once or twice. Not so in xcom where the entire goal of the game is to ward off the inevitable defeat for just a few more months. Thats not to say theres no leeway in the game, you can always hire new recruits if a mission goes sour and you lose all your best guys and a funding nation. the game only ends when eight countries withdraw from the project so you have to screw up a lot to actually lose.

 

[epidemia]

Uh no, I play on classic difficulty because normal is a cakewalk. You CAN screw up in classic without losing entirely. By screw up I mean lose a few missions and mismanage your base but if you dont shape up you wont last til month 3. If you can make it to month 5 you have defeated the game and can freely screw around til you decide to end it.

 

[SPARTANXIII]

I've played Dark Souls with glee, endured the frustrations of Ninja Gaiden and have eliminated Crawemerx the Invicable on my own in Borderlands...

But Xcom if offically the first game where I just boil over in anger from the beginning............ON EASY OF ALL ********* DIFFICULTIES! EASY MODE ISN'T EASY, ITS LIKE **************************************************************** WITH A LAWNMOWER BLADE!!!

So, yeah, Xcom: If you're planning to learn from Easy, get ready to rage...........a LOT!

 

[quysspe]

I've noticed a significant curve on the new game. (Of course I never played an X-COM game before) But it seems to have a very significant curve, where if you don't seem to advance enough, you'll just get decimated an hour into the game (especailly with the arrival of Chyraslids, those terrible terrible things that I hate the most). I'll admit, the game has already made me rage from 3 different campaigns due to arrival of very difficult units as well as just how the dice end up rolling.

How do you guys feel about it? I know there are probably a few of you who end up getting off to the difficulty curves like this game.

Playing XCOM and complaining about difficulty is like playing Dark Souls and complaining about difficulty.

Its a series that is famous for being hard. It always was.

Though I did notice sectiods who would roll all crits. All the time.

Mind merge gives them a crit bonus. I think plasma pistols have like 10% base crit chance as well.

 

[Tayh]

I don't see how XCOM:EU has a high difficulty curve.
There's a brief curve where you have to learn the Do's, Don't and Never-Ever-Ever-Do-This-Under-Any-Circumstance's, but that will only get you so far.
In the end, it's all about hoping for the best and that the RNG won't screw you over.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I'm on my first run on Classic difficulty, and I've actually noticed a reverse on the difficulty curve. Those first few missions are brutal and I barely managed to get everyone out alive. However, as the game has progressed, it's actually gotten easier. Of course, this is probably because I've already beaten the game on normal so I know what I'm doing. Those stupid Chrysalids still threw me for a loop the first time they showed up. I had six of the spawn on me at once and all of them rushed me. Thankfully, my squad stepped it up a few and each member took one down, but not without missing a few shots. Thank God for double tap.

Here's my advice. Get satellites up over every country as soon as you can. This stops panic attacks where you have to chose which country to go to. Once that happens, the game is much easier. You are no longer on a timer because you will only have to chose from one mission at a time. So, before you even assault the enemy base, beef up EVERYTHING. There's no time limit, and as long as your satellites are safe, you can rake in money and supplies, thus allowing you to build stuff. Once you can get the Firestorm (research Power Source and maybe Flight Computer), the game is a cake walk. I intend to have plasma weapons for all my troops before I even assault the first base. This will make it much easier.

EDIT: Ha ha, I was wrong. It has just come to my attention that those abductions do still happen. I just had one happen with full satellite coverage. So I guess having full coverage only just REDUCES those attacks, not remove them. Because this is the first one I've had in about three months. Still, this has me a little worried, as I have no way to make the panic go back down now.