XCOM 2 Gameplay Video Shows Off More Strategy Depth

[BloatedGuppy]

We lost.

We have a trophy government as it is. All our military seems to be disbanded. The literal few soldiers the resistance would get, they would never send more than absolute barebones to any mission. Because Losing 7 field assets when you have around 40 and your replacement rate is one new soldier per successful mission severely limits your future operations.

I do hope there's a mechanic that if you really bungle a mission and lose everyone (like someone would do that with the invention of save scumming), you'd have to do 3 times as many missions in a locale to renew the trust of the people to have them volunteer again.

There's an interview with someone in Firaxis...they said something along the lines of "Most players lost their first playthrough of XCOM, so we're basing the story of the second game off of that". Narratively, it's more interesting than a scenario in which we won. I find the few people complaining about it utterly confusing. What did they want, exactly?

They need to balance the strategic game so that having a tactical mission go tits up doesn't throw the entire war effort off its axle, as it did on Classic and Impossible. It's all well and good to design this game where losses are part of the process, but losing your "A Squad" late in a campaign was a functional game over, because they didn't stagger their difficulty to the point where you could reasonably expect to level up neophyte soldiers, and they didn't sufficiently incentivize not putting your eggs in one basket (quite the opposite, actually). The result was this weird binary difficulty where either your successes snowballed into more successes and the end of the game was a cakewalk, or you just blew up on a single mission and lost.

So...absolutely. A mechanic that allows for the bungling of missions would be most welcome.

 

[Kathinka]

We lost.

We have a trophy government as it is. All our military seems to be disbanded. The literal few soldiers the resistance would get, they would never send more than absolute barebones to any mission. Because Losing 7 field assets when you have around 40 and your replacement rate is one new soldier per successful mission severely limits your future operations.

I do hope there's a mechanic that if you really bungle a mission and lose everyone (like someone would do that with the invention of save scumming), you'd have to do 3 times as many missions in a locale to renew the trust of the people to have them volunteer again.

There's an interview with someone in Firaxis...they said something along the lines of "Most players lost their first playthrough of XCOM, so we're basing the story of the second game off of that". Narratively, it's more interesting than a scenario in which we won. I find the few people complaining about it utterly confusing. What did they want, exactly?

They need to balance the strategic game so that having a tactical mission go tits up doesn't throw the entire war effort off its axle, as it did on Classic and Impossible. It's all well and good to design this game where losses are part of the process, but losing your "A Squad" late in a campaign was a functional game over, because they didn't stagger their difficulty to the point where you could reasonably expect to level up neophyte soldiers, and they didn't sufficiently incentivize not putting your eggs in one basket (quite the opposite, actually). The result was this weird binary difficulty where either your successes snowballed into more successes and the end of the game was a cakewalk, or you just blew up on a single mission and lost.

So...absolutely. A mechanic that allows for the bungling of missions would be most welcome.

I liked how it was done in the original.

You'd take what, like 16 guys on a mission. You'd start crammed up in your landing craft, storm down the ramp and instantly take fire. It was like Private Ryan with plasma. In every mission, you'd lose a few guys. Just the way the war goes. Total massacres also happened, and they were obviously bad for the war effort, but it wasn't an instant Game Over like in modern XCom.
(that would lead to interesting strategies, like having a core team of 4-6 experienced, well equipped soldiers in the back of the craft, and filling the front up with meat shield recruits. You'd then Zerg rush out like the Yanks in Normandy, overwhelm the alien defense fire with bodies, and clean up with your experienced core team. Every now and then one of the meat shield rookies survived and earned a chance for future greatness.)
So instead of the weird binary difficulty that you mentioned, we had a constant struggle for resources and manpower. And a real sense of loss when your highly experienced favorite guys died. But the war must go on.
I want that back. That along with a real inventory system, real randomly generated maps and multiple bases.
Sadly all this is too complicated for consoles and hence will not happen.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

So instead of the weird binary difficulty that you mentioned, we had a constant struggle for resources and manpower. And a real sense of loss when your highly experienced favorite guys died. But the war must go on.
I want that back. That along with a real inventory system, real randomly generated maps and multiple bases.
Sadly all this is too complicated for consoles and hence will not happen.

Wait, I thought Xcom 2 was a PC exclusive. Why can't we have that again? That sounds awesome.

There's an interview with someone in Firaxis...they said something along the lines of "Most players lost their first playthrough of XCOM, so we're basing the story of the second game off of that". Narratively, it's more interesting than a scenario in which we won. I find the few people complaining about it utterly confusing. What did they want, exactly?

They need to balance the strategic game so that having a tactical mission go tits up doesn't throw the entire war effort off its axle, as it did on Classic and Impossible. It's all well and good to design this game where losses are part of the process, but losing your "A Squad" late in a campaign was a functional game over, because they didn't stagger their difficulty to the point where you could reasonably expect to level up neophyte soldiers, and they didn't sufficiently incentivize not putting your eggs in one basket (quite the opposite, actually). The result was this weird binary difficulty where either your successes snowballed into more successes and the end of the game was a cakewalk, or you just blew up on a single mission and lost.

So...absolutely. A mechanic that allows for the bungling of missions would be most welcome.

Wait, what? Most people lost? I lost a nation or two, but the entire game? Satellites, people. Just... liter the sky with those things. That reduces panic, it gets you the money, and you get into the fight..

But what you're saying now is a little more impossible now. With limited numbers, your A gamers are always going to be the ones you're leading off with because the missions will only ramp up in difficulty. You don't have time to bring a green recruit up when the Aliens are ramping up their efforts against you.

Maybe if there was a mechanic that a really seasoned Vet has... I don't know, a Leadership score that inspires recruits to a level or two higher than when they are brought in. That would make those characters super valuable and you wouldn't bring them on every mission. Keeping some of your A game in reserve and simultaneously making mid and late game manageable due to losses.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I liked how it was done in the original.

You'd take what, like 16 guys on a mission. You'd start crammed up in your landing craft, storm down the ramp and instantly take fire. It was like Private Ryan with plasma. In every mission, you'd lose a few guys. Just the way the war goes. Total massacres also happened, and they were obviously bad for the war effort, but it wasn't an instant Game Over like in modern XCom.

(that would lead to interesting strategies, like having a core team of 4-6 experienced, well equipped soldiers in the back of the craft, and filling the front up with meat shield recruits. You'd then Zerg rush out like the Yanks in Normandy, overwhelm the alien defense fire with bodies, and clean up with your experienced core team. Every now and then one of the meat shield rookies survived and earned a chance for future greatness.)

So instead of the weird binary difficulty that you mentioned, we had a constant struggle for resources and manpower. And a real sense of loss when your highly experienced favorite guys died. But the war must go on.

I want that back. That along with a real inventory system, real randomly generated maps and multiple bases.
Sadly all this is too complicated for consoles and hence will not happen.

The original was not without its issues. Using rookies as fodder was amusing, but not particularly tactically rich. The deformable terrain was fantastic, but aside from that there was no functional "cover" or anything tactically sophisticated beyond parking your soldier and shooting. After the initial skirmish, clearing a map would often turn into an excruciatingly protracted bug hunt (one that became almost intolerable in Terror From the Deep, when cruise ships were introduced as maps). The soldiers themselves had little to no personality outside of their randomly generated names and hilarious Dragonball haircuts.

Don't get me wrong, it's probably the finest marriage of strategic and tactical gameplay ever made, and the modern remake...while excellent in its own right...did not capture all of its myriad glories. But I played Xenonauts, which is as faithful a modern recreation as one could ask for, and it was a tedious slog void of all personality and verve. I don't know if you could keep modern XCOM's combat dynamics and pacing and apply it to huge, labyrinth maps and dozens of participants and not lose something essential in the process.

PS - The game does feature an inventory, just a very streamlined and simplified one. I'm not convinced it's an issue.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Wait, what? Most people lost? I lost a nation or two, but the entire game? Satellites, people. Just... liter the sky with those things. That reduces panic, it gets you the money, and you get into the fight..

Yep, most people lost their first playthrough, as per Firaxis. Hell, even I did...although I lost it ON the Temple Ship mission, playing Ironman Classic, due to mind control.

Maybe if there was a mechanic that a really seasoned Vet has... I don't know, a Leadership score that inspires recruits to a level or two higher than when they are brought in. That would make those characters super valuable and you wouldn't bring them on every mission. Keeping some of your A game in reserve and simultaneously making mid and late game manageable due to losses.

They just need to stagger missions like Long War did. Don't completely remove easy missions and weaker aliens as the campaign marches along. Have softer missions that you can send B or C or even D squads on.

 

[Kathinka]

True that. But at its time, it was amazing. Just think of what we could achieve with modern technology and game design, but the love and....certain something that the old one had.
But I hear you on the issues. It was certainly not the tactics game to end all tactics game. Still, I like to think that bringing back some of it's great elements would make for a mind blowing new Xcom installment.

I actually liked the old inventory system much better. The Xcom 2012 "streamlined" inventory was..nothing to write home about.
I liked running out of ammo and picking some off dead people to keep the shootout going. I liked the guy with the critical equipment getting blasted into smithereens, and me then having to work my way towards his body under fire to retrieve whatever it was that I needed of his sizzling carcass.

As for Xenonauts, I really couldn't get into it either. The strategic layer was so broken you could easily dominate the entire game to hell just by focusing on air combat early on. It was not as much a remake as a carbon copy, and obviously games have moved forward a lot in the past two decades. It was fiddly as hell and tedious. Also, fuck people with rocket launchers shooting at an alien from around a corner, missing and hitting the corner they themselves are hiding behind because of the random shot deviation. Fuck them.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

But I hear you on the issues. It was certainly not the tactics game to end all tactics game. Still, I like to think that bringing back some of it's great elements would make for a mind blowing new Xcom installment.

I'd like to see more destructible terrain, I'd like to see a return of the smart rockets and extra layers of Y axis, I'd like to see a return of multiple skyrangers. Those are all things I'd like to have back from the original game. Most other elements were improved upon, or have dated themselves into irrelevance.

I actually liked the old inventory system much better. The Xcom 2012 "streamlined" inventory was..nothing to write home about.

I liked running out of ammo and picking some off dead people to keep the shootout going. I liked the guy with the critical equipment getting blasted into smithereens, and me then having to work my way towards his body under fire to retrieve whatever it was that I needed of his sizzling carcass.

I know the 2nd game will allow retrieval/removal of friendly injured off the battlefield. No idea if it allows for the recovery of their dropped gear. Although with the hard-baked class system it wouldn't make much sense.

The way the game was tuned, having an expanded inventory would be game breaking. Imagine having virtually unlimited grenades, or having everyone lugging around extra medpacks and rocket launchers. Were the resources provided too finite and occasionally limiting as a result? Perhaps. I'd like to think there could've been more room made for loadout changes, so the player was presented with interesting choices. But I don't think going back to an original XCOM style inventory is a good solution.

As for Xenonauts, I really couldn't get into it either. The strategic layer was so broken you could easily dominate the entire game to hell just by focusing on air combat early on. It was not as much a remake as a carbon copy, and obviously games have moved forward a lot in the past two decades. It was fiddly as hell and tedious. Also, fuck people with rocket launchers shooting at an alien from around a corner, missing and hitting the corner they themselves are hiding behind because of the random shot deviation. Fuck them.

I was one of the original backers...it was the first game I ever Kickstarted (I don't even think it used Kickstarter, I used some other method to fund it). Played various beta versions, and found it utterly lacking in charm. If I wanted to play an old-school squad based tactics game that LOOKED old school, I'd play the vastly superior Jagged Alliance 2.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Wait, what? Most people lost? I lost a nation or two, but the entire game? Satellites, people. Just... liter the sky with those things. That reduces panic, it gets you the money, and you get into the fight..

Yep, most people lost their first playthrough, as per Firaxis. Hell, even I did...although I lost it ON the Temple Ship mission, playing Ironman Classic, due to mind control.

I mean this with everything I love.

Fuck Mind Control.

Fuck it's ability to make every Assault crit his or her shotgun blast from like ten spaces away. Fuck their ability to always pick my most powerful member. Fuck the mind controllers running away like little scared school children.

Fuck Mind Control.

 

[laggyteabag]

This game looks just great. I loved XCOM EU, and I hope that this is at least as good.

[small]I am going to spend far too much time in the squad customisation menus.[/small]

 

[Avisell]

With more strategy depth, i do hope they add a bit more of a tutorial, than they did in the previous titles. I know the old 'no hand holding' is becoming ever more popular. However with a game, that had as steep a learning curve as it did, just a little bit more of a heads up would be great. Stupid satellites!

 

[RedRockRun]

With more strategy depth, i do hope they add a bit more of a tutorial, than they did in the previous titles. I know the old 'no hand holding' is becoming ever more popular. However with a game, that had as steep a learning curve as it did, just a little bit more of a heads up would be great. Stupid satellites!

What about the satellites? And to what game are you referring?

Also how hard is it to get into the old games? I've watched videos of them, and I honestly can't understand what's going on. I hadn't heard about Xenonauts either until I saw it on this thread. What's so bad about it? It looks sort of like the old games?

 

[C117]

As excited as I am for this game, you know what would make it even better? Something to make you care for the soldiers you send out into the field, other than the fact that you want to avoid the situation of "crap, my best sniper died, now I'm really in for it".

Perhaps some kind of relationship system. As the soldiers are out on the field, they form bonds between each other, some good, some bad, and they affect the soldiers performances. A friendly relationship might give the soldiers a moral bonus when they're out on the field together. A hate-filled relationship might make the characters perform worse if they have to cooperate in the field, unless someone of higher rank is there to stop their bickering. A romantic relationship might give the participants huge bonuses when protecting each other, but if one dies the survivor goes berserk in a fit of grief. And a rivalry might spur two soldiers into trying to one-up each other, gaining bonus EXP at the end of every mission they both participate in, but lowering their accuracy as they become more sloppy.

It's not a perfect idea, but I just wish you had a band of characters to command rather than a bunch of pawns, who are all identical aside from their classes and stats, and a system like this might alleviate this a bit.

 

[Avisell]

What about the satellites? And to what game are you referring?

Also how hard is it to get into the old games? I've watched videos of them, and I honestly can't understand what's going on. I hadn't heard about Xenonauts either until I saw it on this thread. What's so bad about it? It looks sort of like the old games?

Oh, XCom Enemy Unknown, sorry. There are satellites that you can put around the globe, which gain you certain bonuses depending on the country they're over. Also, they are also a way of you tracking the enemies movements. The problem was, for me anyway, that it seemed like they just said it in passing. kind of like 'Oh and there's satellites too, if you want them' and not 'You will lose, without them'

In regards to your question about how hard they are to get into - It's a really fun game, however there is a VERY steep learning curve, most of the time, you'll be playing catch up. Which is kind of cool and in context, they are technologically advanced. However, i don't know anyone who has beat this game on their first play through.

Stick with it though because once you get it, oh man, you're going to love it... maybe (TIP - Armour!)

 

[Avisell]

Perhaps some kind of relationship system. As the soldiers are out on the field, they form bonds between each other, some good, some bad, and they affect the soldiers performances. A friendly relationship might give the soldiers a moral bonus when they're out on the field together. A hate-filled relationship might make the characters perform worse if they have to cooperate in the field, unless someone of higher rank is there to stop their bickering. A romantic relationship might give the participants huge bonuses when protecting each other, but if one dies the survivor goes berserk in a fit of grief. And a rivalry might spur two soldiers into trying to one-up each other, gaining bonus EXP at the end of every mission they both participate in, but lowering their accuracy as they become more sloppy.

C117 - this sounds awesome!