XCOM: Enemy Unknown and the dreaded E-word...

[IamLEAM1983]

That word would have to be "Entitlement". Yes, that word again. Wanna know why? Here's why.

The Game Hub for Enemy Unknown on Steam is priceless. Here's a little something attributed to one "Alex Mercer":

"I'd expect Firaxis to explode, and another company to come around and develop an actual X-COM game, that isn't dumbed down, and takes previous features found in the other game and integrates them into a 3-Dimensional Top-Down Strategic Shooter that encompasses individual unit movement, the tried and true tile movement system and a cover system based on individual unit hit boxes and object collision hit system in relation to attacks by separate units, and their rays onto the individual environment objects.

As is done already, as was done before, and as has been done before.

It's not rocket science, but it IS computer science."

Let's parse though that...

1. "Individual unit movement" and "Tile movement system". Both of them are already in the game, but you have to understand what it is Alex seems to want, if you go by what he inundates the Game Hub with. Each square should count as a move.

He actually wants Time Units to return. I understand how some retro-gamers might appreciate UFO Defense's system, but I'm surprised be can't see that the new system also has its benefits. Instead of managing every single action, you're treating your missions like a game of chess, plus guns. Things go by a lot faster and require just as much tactical planning and just as much of a careful approach.

It's just weird to hear someone who actually says he misses the days when flubbing your TU count meant you'd be stuck out of cover, getting shot to pieces.

2. A cover system based on hitboxes. Yeah, sure!

Thing is, Enemy Unknown isn't Gears of War. Luck is supposed to play as a factor in almost everything you do in the open, short of moving your units on the field. Yes, immersion is completely broken when a shot that would make no sense whatsoever actually lands because the measly little ten percent of success actually wins out, but that's a concession that needs to be taken into account. You can't make a purely stat-based combat system and not expect to run into the occasional snag.

So, the guy basically wants a system where luck matters (because otherwise this wouldn't be XCOM and he'd flip his lid) and at the same time, he wants that luck to skip any instances of shots hitting things other than your squad members. As far as I know, coding exceptions like this would completely remove the suspense from the matches. You could just sit back, safe in the knowledge that the pile of crap over there will soak a few hits.

Plenty of guys in the Game Hub came up to him and reminded him of UFO: Extraterrestrials or Xenonauts, which are both carbon copies of UFO Defense with a tiny bit of aesthetic improvement done. Guy's not satisfied, he alternates between wishing the devs flat-out died and angrily asking for a refund.

I mean - jeeze. I get that he has the right to be dissatisfied by his purchase, but aren't there better ways to explain it? That doesn't even cover how he reacts to anyone who starts a thread defending the game, either. He and a few other guys have made it their appointed mission to spew negative shit in any thread that even vaguely goes in the direction of "Well, I like the game!".

It's just sad, really. People should ideally like what they like and hate what they hate. I don't have any business telling anyone else that they're wrong for liking something I don't or for disliking gameplay elements I happen to favour. I told him he'd be better off putting a game design doc together than simply sitting there caterwauling about a game that's insofar been almost universally praised.

The guy IMs me, telling me it's his damn right to rage on about whatever it is he wants to rage on, and he'll report me if I press the issue.

To which I can't really reply with more than a massive "What the fuck, dude?"

I mean - I can recognize some degree of justification to the Mass Effect 3 debacle. I can almost understand when I see someone rage on Blizzard's forums because this or that patch unbalanced their previously constructed build.

This, though? What the Hell, man? It's a freaking game, for God's sake, not a crime against Humanity! Yet there he goes, spewing stuff on and on about how Firaxis is so terribad they should just up and die for what they did to *his* franchise. I knew people could be passionate about stuff, but this?

I don't know if I should cackle in absolutely cruel glee at the sight of this or start weeping. I thought I still had a couple maturity pegs to hammer in place and I might be wrong, but "Alex" here looks like he's even worse than I am.

I know, I know, Jim Sterling covered the issue of entitlement and the fact that we all have the right to defend a product when we're convinced that it's being tampered with by idiots, but come on! The press is pretty eloquent about what it thinks about Enemy Unknown! This isn't a bad game, and it isn't a game that was butchered by an uncaring developer! This isn't one of the textbook cases of what Sterling was talking about! A classic case would be the last two Modern Warfares!

I'd just like to know. He is in the right to think the game was butchered? I think it wasn't. I think Firaxis did a fantastic job. You know what they say, though: opinions. Opinions everywhere.

I'm just amazed by the fact that another human being I've met online has such a capacity to become close-minded about a game's value that he'll spend days on end spewing bile all over a community platform and more or less spitting in the eye of those people who actually find some contentment in the game.

 

[Rose and Thorn]

I never played any of the previous X-COM's, but I love the new X-COM. Although the Mutons are still ending my games everytime I get to them, just after I finally started doing good and learning how to combat Chryssalids, these Mutons show up and bam, pow, klaplowy. I play on Classic Ironman because I like to lose and refuse to switch over to Normal, because when I finally do beat it, I will feel so good. I just got my first Majour last game, so every game I do a little better and get a little further. It's great fun.

Firaxis makes game, I play game, I enjoy game. When it comes to player entitlement, the only thing I ask from a developer is to give me the full game. I hate day one DLC's and bullshit pre-order in-game stuff that I feel like I am missing out on if I don't feel like spending $59.99 on a new game. I would also ask for more substantial DLC's in the form of Expansion packs. None of this small stuff, unless maybe it is extra fighters in a fighting game. This is the only reason I don't play Bioware games anymore, it has nothing to do with how they choose to end their series.

How a company chooses to make a game is their buisness, it is our buisness as a consumer to choose whether or not to buy their game. If it looks like you won't like it, then don't buy it. It really is as simple as that. I never pre-order for the sole reason of wanting to see some of my favorite people, be it reviewers like TotalBiscuit or Let's Players, play the game first and then I can confirm whether or not I want to spend my money of this game. I can say 100% percent that I haven't bought a game I haven't enjoyed for over 4 years now, because I have grown up and learned how to be patient with my money and do the research.

X-COM for example did this Elite Soldier pack. It was a small bullshit DLC that should have been apart of the game, and the only way to get it day one was to pre-order it. The DLC came out like two weeks after release, for an extra $5.00. The DLC gave you options to personalize your soldiers better, and this should have been in the game day one for not extra cost. It is that stuff that I don't like and what turns me off buying games. X-COM I made an exception for because I have been waiting a long time for this game and I love it.

*I agree with you for the most part Topic creator, people are immature. I would hate to develop a videogame for these earthlings.

 

[Zhukov]

Did anyone else read the title and think the "E-word" was Elerium?

OT: Mate, it's some gamer guy whining and throwing a tantrum on the internet. Such folks are a dozen to the dollar. You either get used to it or learn to disregard it.

 

[krazykidd]

So, you find some random guy on some forum ( not here ) ,copy and paste what he said HERE ,and then make a thread HERE and deconstruct and argue it ,HERE . May i ask why?

Here's a thought , let people have their opinion ! Not to say you can't discuss things on the internet ( read: argue ) , but why not take it up with the guy on the forum he was on ?

Or were you looking for a response along the lines of : " He had an opinion different that ours! GET HIM!"?

 

[XMark]

There's a whiner for everything under the sun. And the internet gives them all a giant bullhorn, so any time anything gets released ever, the whiners are the loudest and most noticeable voices.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

I seriously, honestly get the feeling that if these people have even heard of Xenonauts, they'll disown it if it doesn't reset the difficulty to 'beginner' if you pick any other level, just because that's what UFO Defense did.

 

[Tallim]

I never understand people arguing about the 2 move system. In the old Xcom you spend most of your time either moving with enough time units to fire etc or moving a long way anyway. So all they have done is condense the most common actions in the old game into a much simpler system.

I do sometimes miss some of the intricate things you could do with the time unit system though but nothing that is a major loss

 

[John the Gamer]

Did anyone else read the title and think the "E-word" was Elerium?

(...)

I was thinking more in terms of "Ethereals"

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

1) The new system quite simply makes less sense than the old one. If the guy has problems with it, that's the most legitimate reason to have a problem with anything. And you know what, I find the new system fucking stupid as well. We'd maybe be having this conversation if this were some new franchise without the baggage of a better system and different design paradigms (board game vs. more simulation oriented), but this ain't.

If we're discussing the "hit" system, I'd say the current system is a fair compromise. Given how difficult it would be to adequately inform the players in an obvious fashion what lines of sight might be given variations in terrain, the current system of simply applying heavy/light cover to units seems fair.

That said, there is a thing that bothers me: when a unit obviously has some object that would obviously act as a piece of cover during a move, not applying that bonus seems insane. The better system it would seem is simply to take the heaviest piece of cover in a direct line from shooter to target and use that as your arbitrary bonus. This system is easy to understand and doesn't leave players watching and saying "but how the hell did that actually connect" as often.

P.S. By the way, guy, flubbing the bloody time units is your own damn fault. Next time get better.

The argument of "you're bad at the game and thus the opinion is invalid" is not a good way to go, largely because it relies upon rhetorical fallacy. Beyond that, it is simply a matter of considering precisely what benefit TU's bring to the table.

Fundamentally, TU's simply made the number of actions a character could perform mutable. If memory serves, that cap was ~80 - sufficient for 2 attacks and a short move, a few psi amp uses, or a really long dash. The new XCom offers similar features through different avenues. Movement range is can be modified with armor choices. Certain classes can get additional attacks beyond the one offered by default. Actions can still be split between moving, shooting, psi and Item usage. Given that thresholds between getting to such places were so far apart in the old games, the real difference between the systems is relatively non-existent for the most part. It makes complaints about the TU system's absence incredibly silly as the added granularity does little to modify how any particular soldier might act.

Now, the fact that the modern game has dramatically reduced scale along with arbitrary choices arising from that reduction seems the better place to level a complaint. The max deployment size is 1/4 the old games, you no longer get bases around the world and much of the core at base gameplay is simply broken. You can easily research all the major stuff you'll ever need before the game truly escalates without ever building a lab.

Still, even those changes aren't what I'd shake my old man stick at. I can't count how many times I've done something boneheaded simply because commanding an action often seems to be an incredibly arbitrary task. I'm sure I'm not the only one who intended to send a soldier to a railing to spray death upon hapless foes below only to have the game interpret the command as an wanting to send the same soldier to the ground below where they can be unashamedly beat to death by the legions below. Stupid fancy graphics and weird perspectives.

 

[srm79]

For what it's worth, the last time I played the original X-COM was only about 4 weeks ago. I then picked up the new one, and while there are some things I don't like so much (mostly in the strategic side), I've fallen completely for the new tactical game. It flows much more than it ever did before, and removing some of the micromanagement that frankly made late game battles a chore has worked pretty well in my opinion.

My only real gripes are that you can no longer build multiple bases, and you can only have one SkyRanger. Overall though, I love the new version of the game.

 

[dangoball]

Fun fact - This raging person can only boost X-coms sales.

Here is why:
He bought the game, he didn't like it, therefore goes to the internet to whine and insult. There he can meet 3 other types of gamers - a) one that bought the game, b) one that is looking for opinions on the game before buying and c) one that has never heard of it (unlikely but possible). Those who have bought the game already gave Firaxis money, so skip those. Group B will see him and maybe 5 other raging whiners amids generally high praise from all sources (heck, even Yahtzee praised it) and group C will grow curious as to what could cause such a rage, look for more info and see a torrent of praise all over the internet, therefore might be more inclined to buy it.

Here you go, he just helped sell another copy of X-COM Enemy Unknown

I haven't had the chance to play it yet but I would very much like to. I really enjoyed UFO series (Aftermath, Aftershock and Afterlight).

 

[dangoball]

Now, you may like it, and you may even for some reason not appreciate criticism towards it, but quoting some guy from some other forum and expecting people to jump on his ass instead of, for instance, talking to him about it, as somebody else pointed out, makes you seem pretty petty to me.

2) Won't be reading that wall of text.

A question: why bother posting in a thread when you can't be bothered to read what is it about?

If you actually read that "wall of text" you would know that OP tried talking to said person and was met with nothing but hostility with no room for civilized argument. Or at least that's what we are told.

 

[Tyranicus]

I agree with the OP the guy was out of line. You could tell him if you dont like XCOM dont play it and make your own version of it then.

 

[Frankster]

Well the guy has some points imo, but the attitude wasnt cool and certainly shouldnt have jumped at you like that.

A whole lot of you are in love with xcom, i get that, but the new xcom isnt all it could have been and is weaker then the original in a lot of respects, heck for me alone the new xcom has an UNFORGIVABLE sin: lack of replayability.

2nd, 3rd, 4th game of old xcom would tend to be very different (as would be your initial attempts to finish the game the 1st time) experience due to all the variables.

New xcom is insanely samey each playthrough due to design decisions and artificial constraints, the first playthrough is magical but after that its depressingly predictable and a whole lot of the emergent gameplay that would result in unique game experiences have been completely ripped out in the name of "streamlining". I can see why some old xcom fans would be really pissed and i cant blame them tbh.

Still holding out for mods before i can replay the game again :/

I agree with the OP the guy was out of line. You could tell him if you dont like XCOM dont play it and make your own version of it then.

And that response would only piss him off more, or is that the intention?

 

[Lovely Mixture]

Criticizing a game and it's elements is fine. Criticizing a game for not being exactly what you want is kinda silly. Being an uncompromising asshole is silliest of all.

The square tile system neither completely out-dated or anything special worth reinventing, but it's up to devs to decide if they want to use it or not.

Did anyone else read the title and think the "E-word" was Elerium?

(...)

I was thinking more in terms of "Ethereals"

I was 99% sure it was going to be "Easy." Because I imagine some people didn't want the difficulty of Easy mode to changed at all.

 

[AnarchistScum]

Criticizing a game and it's elements is fine. Criticizing a game for not being exactly what you want is kinda silly. Being an uncompromising asshole is silliest of all.

But what do we do if not criticizing games because they're not what we want? What you're saying is nonsense, because this is what everyone do. His criticisms are applicable and are therefore not shit, however, his way of going about criticizing is shit and he should be reprimanded for that; and only if the OP is telling the truth about his behaviour.

The argument of "you're bad at the game and thus the opinion is invalid" is not a good way to go, largely because it relies upon rhetorical fallacy. Beyond that, it is simply a matter of considering precisely what benefit TU's bring to the table.

It's not a rhetorical fallacy, it's actually a very valid thing to say.

Listen, I'm not good at dwarf forts by any stretch of the imagination. The UI is hard for me to understand, the graphics are only enjoyable to me with a tileset and the game is balls hard. If I were to get better at it, I would enjoy it a lot more.

If I wasn't me, then the opinion I would've had about dwarf fortress would probably be invalid. Because I don't understand all the game mechanics, they're too frickin' hard. The same goes for a lot of other games.

The most easy thing to draw a parallel here is to music. If I can't understand what Sunn O))) are about, then how would my opinion of what they do be valid? Because opinions are sacrosanct? Perhaps, but not what they are based on. What most people ask for when they don't understand things is a change to the core mechanics. This can be core mechanics, like Dark Soul's difficulty, Sunn's wall of noise or something else. This opinion is less valid than say; Someone who listens to the band or plays the game.

They understand what the whole things was about from the beginning, and can enjoy it. In the case of XCOM, I'd say this:

New xcom is insanely samey each playthrough due to design decisions and artificial constraints, the first playthrough is magical but after that its depressingly predictable and a whole lot of the emergent gameplay that would result in unique game experiences have been completely ripped out in the name of "streamlining".

Is a very valid opinion. This guy gets what the old games were about and sees how new mechanics or lack of old mechanics, detract from the worth of the game. His opinion on what is good or bad is more valid, since he has more information he can base his opinion on.

He got better at the game, and therefore has a larger perspective than those that didn't. Ergo, his opinion is more valid.

 

[Pink Gregory]

There's at least one comment like that on pretty much every Steam game hub.

I guess people take it personally because they bought it.

Saying BUYER BEWARE!!!1! for something that they didn't like is bullshit, though.

I suppose all that fun I've been having has just been an illusion, huh.