First time playing: Default or the Community Edition?

[Retroburn]

I plan to buy this game in the months ahead (soon as I take care of a handful of Steam backlogs) and I'm quite curious: should one play the default or the Community Edition on one's first run of the game?

I'm asking this as with the arrival of OpenXcom, it has rendered the original games (including TftD) obsolete---it's just more preferrable to play the OpenXcom version than the original games as the mod squashes tons of bugs. It also introduced a lot of quality-of-life fixes.

Is it the same case with Xenonauts?

[Charon]

XCE all the way. Its basically a less bug haunted, improved vanilla version.

One of the only reasons why XCE is not the main game is that Goldhawk cant really take responsibility for the bugs XCE may introduce, nor can it "officially" say "Just play XCE", for obvious reasons.

Now that i think about it, why not ? XCE could get advertised as a simple improved version.
Like when it gets installed the launcher could ask to if the player wants to install the vanilla game or XCE ( unsupported ) ( recommended ) or something like that.

Anyway, thats my oppinion.

[Retroburn]

Originally posted by Charon:

XCE all the way. Its basically a less bug haunted, improved vanilla version.

One of the only reasons why XCE is not the main game is that Goldhawk cant really take responsibility for the bugs XCE may introduce, nor can it "officially" say "Just play XCE", for obvious reasons.

Now that i think about it, why not ? XCE could get advertised as a simple improved version.
Like when it gets installed the launcher could ask to if the player wants to install the vanilla game or XCE ( unsupported ) ( recommended ) or something like that.

Anyway, thats my oppinion.

Thanks! I'll definitely try it out.

Any more input from the others!

[your.sheepy]

Play Community Edition.

[Retroburn]

Originally posted by your.sheepy:

Play Community Edition.

Thanks!

[post apocalypse otter boi]

Just putting this out there, but community edition does not work for mac.

[Janthis]

The CE does add some fixes and improvements, with one small caveat - it also makes the game harder. One difference I noticed between regular version and CE is that aliens have better accuracy and reflexes. You might often find yourself getting shot in the face when you open a door, or go around a corner. Aliens also have a tendency to hide and camp a lot more than in the regular version.

Another thing is the map packs - CE introduces a LOT of new maps, of varying quality. Some of them are full of dark corners, nooks and crannies for aliens to hide and camp. If you're okay with that, play CE - maybe on a lower difficulty.

[Charon]

Originally posted by ionutz1280:

The CE does add some fixes and improvements, with one small caveat - it also makes the game harder. One difference I noticed between regular version and CE is that aliens have better accuracy and reflexes. You might often find yourself getting shot in the face when you open a door, or go around a corner. Aliens also have a tendency to hide and camp a lot more than in the regular version.

The vanilla game doesnt allow reaction shots when opening a door - for both sides. Thats not increased stats whatsoever.

Yes, XCE is harder because it fixes broken exploits people might enjoy more. Namely door camping by introducing reaction shoots on opening a door, and the teleport blocking with tele fragging.

These points are things where i think XCE goes quite the different path to the vanilla game, because it puts skill level over easier solutions and for some people that might be too much.

[Retroburn]

Thanks for the additional input guys.

[Charon]

Originally posted by Retroburn:

Thanks for the additional input guys. :TheBureauEagle:

:)

[Solver]

Originally posted by ionutz1280:

The CE does add some fixes and improvements, with one small caveat - it also makes the game harder. One difference I noticed between regular version and CE is that aliens have better accuracy and reflexes. You might often find yourself getting shot in the face when you open a door, or go around a corner. Aliens also have a tendency to hide and camp a lot more than in the regular version.

Another thing is the map packs - CE introduces a LOT of new maps, of varying quality. Some of them are full of dark corners, nooks and crannies for aliens to hide and camp. If you're okay with that, play CE - maybe on a lower difficulty.

X:CE does not modify alien accuracy or reflexes. The biggest change contributing to difficulty is that X:CE enables reaction fire when doors are opened, which doesn't happen in vanilla. This has the net effect of making the game a bit harder, although sometimes this reaction fire works out to your advantage.

Disabling the "X:CE Balance" mod in the launcher reverts these few changes.

[Janthis]

Originally posted by Solver:

Originally posted by ionutz1280:

The CE does add some fixes and improvements, with one small caveat - it also makes the game harder. One difference I noticed between regular version and CE is that aliens have better accuracy and reflexes. You might often find yourself getting shot in the face when you open a door, or go around a corner. Aliens also have a tendency to hide and camp a lot more than in the regular version.

Another thing is the map packs - CE introduces a LOT of new maps, of varying quality. Some of them are full of dark corners, nooks and crannies for aliens to hide and camp. If you're okay with that, play CE - maybe on a lower difficulty.

X:CE does not modify alien accuracy or reflexes. The biggest change contributing to difficulty is that X:CE enables reaction fire when doors are opened, which doesn't happen in vanilla. This has the net effect of making the game a bit harder, although sometimes this reaction fire works out to your advantage.

Disabling the "X:CE Balance" mod in the launcher reverts these few changes.

Are you sure CE does not modify alien AI at least? I could swear aliens were a lot more defensive and camped far more extensively than in the vanilla game.

Yes, XCE is harder because it fixes broken exploits people might enjoy more. Namely door camping by introducing reaction shoots on opening a door, and the teleport blocking with tele fragging.

Oh, and reapers camping teleports to one-hit kill your guys isn't "broken"? Or aliens camping doors/corners/teleporters with full TUs just waiting for you to come to them? Sounds like you deem "broken" only things that work in the player's favor, but the aliens can be as cheap/overpowered as they like.

[Charon]

Originally posted by ionutz1280:

Oh, and reapers camping teleports to one-hit kill your guys isn't "broken"? Or aliens camping doors/corners/teleporters with full TUs just waiting for you to come to them? Sounds like you deem "broken" only things that work in the player's favor, but the aliens can be as cheap/overpowered as they like.

This triggered a whole conversation in my head which i will try to explain.


But first things first, I believe we are on the same page what concerns vanilla/XCE.

If the game boils down to only a certain strategy, which on top may be a dice roll thuse keeping the player from having any impact on the game whatsoever, is bad game design. You could read a book instead and would have a similar influence on the outcome of what content you experience. This is contrary to a "game", where you "play".

Is XCE broken ? I dont know, i havent even played it once, tbh.
All i did was play the vanilla game once and thats it. I believe it is a good introduction to what the game actually can become, and it does a pretty good job at it.

This is the main point and the biggest weakness of XCE. It has no community which gives feedback, because, frankly speaking, XCE serves as a big collaboration of bug fixes and as a platform to easily enable modding. Its rather a coding tool than a game.
90% of players play XCE with a lot of mods on top, and not as a standalone addon.


All of this points lead us to result that game content which overcentralises the actions of the player wont get fixed, because there is not enough feedback.

Does enabling reaction fire on opening a door make a better game ? I believe so, because it bans an overcentralised strategy to open up new and diverse gameplay. This is good because there are other tools available.

Does enabling tele fragging make a better game ? Again, it decentralises a certain strategy but in this case i believe it doesnt provide enough different tools to cope with the new situation.
Will this get fixed ? Unlikely.

You cant fly with shields anymore ... and so on.


Just like Solver said, you can deactivate all of those things, but who actually knows how to do this ? There is no instrunction nor any hint how to deal with all of this, except if you look on the main page, which 99% of steam users dont. So there is definitely room for improvement.


In a nutshell i would say the time is over when you cry for a fix and the developers bring it to you. If you dont like something change it yourself.

As a closing argument i would say i totally agree that there is no support for doing this all yourself. There are no threads for the average user to understand, there are no videos and there is no exe which tells you about all of this.
I believe this to be a big opportunity to make a game more accessible.

[Janthis]

Does enabling reaction fire on opening a door make a better game ? I believe so, because it bans an overcentralised strategy to open up new and diverse gameplay.

This is the main idea I disagree with. Nerfing and removing known strategies does not diversify gameplay. On the contrary, it shrinks the number of possible strategies and paths to victory until there is only one, or a small handful, of "right" ways to play, because all other ways lead to losing. This is the trap that many modders fall into - in their quest to make the game challenging for "hardcore" players who know all the exploits, they overcompensate by buffing enemies and nerfing legitimate strategies, ultimately making the game not only harder, but less diverse and, ultimately, less enjoyable to everyone except aforementioned hardcore players.

This is the main point and the biggest weakness of XCE. It has no community which gives feedback, because, frankly speaking, XCE serves as a big collaboration of bug fixes and as a platform to easily enable modding. Its rather a coding tool than a game.
90% of players play XCE with a lot of mods on top, and not as a standalone addon.

Unfortunately this is true, there seems to be no more support/discussion/interest for XCE or Xenonauts for that matter. Hopefully Xenonauts 2 will come out soon.

[Solver]

Originally posted by ionutz1280:

Are you sure CE does not modify alien AI at least? I could swear aliens were a lot more defensive and camped far more extensively than in the vanilla game.

There isn't much modification per se, but X:CE fixes some AI bugs and therefore can make the AI appear more intelligent. One bug in particular that matters is that in vanilla, the AI would sometimes get confused and a particular alien would decide to do nothing, it would just stand there for a turn. X:CE fixes that, so aliens will try to actually do something every turn, so instead of standing out there in the open, they'll probably shoot or try to move to a better position.

Originally posted by ionutz1280:

This is the trap that many modders fall into - in their quest to make the game challenging for "hardcore" players who know all the exploits, they overcompensate by buffing enemies and nerfing legitimate strategies, ultimately making the game not only harder, but less diverse and, ultimately, less enjoyable to everyone except aforementioned hardcore players.

A good point in general, but X:CE has been developed with a lot of consideration to how the vanilla game was intended to work. The gameplay changes are generally not what "modders thought are best", but rather "developers didn't have the time to fix this". Reapers don't attack vehicles in vanilla because developers didn't have the time to fix that. Jetpacks don't work over water because the developers missed that. Panicking soldiers fleeing towards aliens is unintended. And so on.

Unfortunately this is true, there seems to be no more support/discussion/interest for XCE or Xenonauts for that matter. Hopefully Xenonauts 2 will come out soon.

Saying there is no support for X:CE when the latest version is quite recent is disingenuous. Of course there is much less discussion and activity than 2 years ago, but that is the reality.

[Charon]

@ionutz1280

I actually wanted to write more, and your response is the perfect setup. All of this is about game design.

Originally posted by ionutz1280:

This is the main idea I disagree with. Nerfing and removing known strategies does not diversify gameplay. On the contrary, it shrinks the number of possible strategies and paths to victory until there is only one, or a small handful, of "right" ways to play, because all other ways lead to losing.

Decentralising opens up new possibilies in the same way cutting down a big tree frees up nutritient value for other plants to grow in the spot which was made free.

Here is the point, but i urge you to watch the whole video:
https://youtu.be/UQRo2PrkyJ0?t=6m



...

and after talking with Solver all my arguments disappear. The video and the following describe how i think about good game design, but is not limited to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apmr8I4xaOg