The two things I hate about XCom so far.

[SilverCanidae]

It's long, a bit ranty, but it's2am and I'm tired so I apologize.

So after playing Xcom 2 for 16 hours now... I've come to realize exactly what I hate about it.

The game itself is very well designed, a few bugs here and there but, so far nothing game breaking. Haven't had to deal with the enemies shooting through walls or using melee attacks through the ceiling.

It's a lot of the same, in the concept of surviving against aliens. The combat works the same way and there's some nice tweaks to the enemies and soldiers since the first game.

What is new, however, is the overwhelming pressure I feel from the game. I lost pretty quick my first playthrough (expected) and since I want the storyline more than the challenge, I kicked it down to the easiest difficulty. The turn timers on the missions are easy enough to deal with, I don't see why the Xcom community is up in arms about that. Actually gives me a bit of a thrill when I'm cutting it close.

No, what bugs me is that as I fly around in my mobile command center trying to gather up supplies, or get in contact with resistance cells to increase income (and try to unlock factory missions to slow down the doomsday counter), special missions will pop up that if you choose to ignore, penalize the everliving ♥♥♥♥ out of you.

Example, before I logged off to type this all up and go to bed; I had just finished a couple missions, including a doomsday mission and a lot of my soldiers were wounded. A mission popped up as I was back at my main base healing up. A mission from a rebel cell (that you don't control) about a train they stopped.

Now, I had two options... Attempt the mission with a crippled, rookie squad or ignore it in an attempt to get to full strength since I didn't plan that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ train mission anyway and suffer either losing contact with that cell and/or major penalties to my supply chain.

Missions where I have a chance to disrupt enemy command choices, I get. Those affect me (supply drops are halved, intel is harder to get, more ufos fly around, enemies gain armor) and stopping those is good. Some random ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mission affecting everything I have going on, not so cool. Not when you have to spend a significant time in game scanning areas for supplies/intel/scientists/engineers/recruits/contacts.

So as I sat there, crippled beyond anything, this stupid mission pops up and I HAVE to take it... And I did it but it was not worth it except to keep the stupid ass rebels happy. Losing a soldier you've put time into for no good reason is just infuriating. And it happens, I get that. But when literally everything goes wrong because RNGsus and stupid missions, I'm infuriated.

So that's one thing. The other, the difficulty ramps up so quickly it's actually insane trying to keep up. My third playthrough I focused research on upgrading my soldiers. Before I knew it, I had teleporting/cloning enemies that disable my weapons, mixed with enemies that can drag my soldiers across the map with a tongue attack (the tongue is horribly disproportionate to the unit) and bind them, meanwhile my soldiers are being panicked and mind controlled. Oh, and they have a tank I can't possibly hope to kill. Wonderful.

So yeah, aside from the difficulty ramping insanely on the easiest mode (thanks, just wanted the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ story) and missions being thrown at you with massive punishments (Xcom 1, come back with your ufos and random ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that didn't matter and didn't punish me for ignoring) it's a really fun game and it's really well put together. I'm just frustrated.

[SilverCanidae]

THREE.

Central talks too much. I made a post about it before but when the people are talking and just repeating ♥♥♥♥, either in the maps or in combat... I find myself wanting to shoot them in the head. I can't take action, pass time, shoot, etc while they talk. The anger is real.

[Wobb the Great and Terrible!!!!!]

I think they thought that because lots of people seem to like this long war mod (I didn't) that people just want insanely unfair difficulty.
Some do. It's why dark souls is so popular I suppose.
I don't.
This game is just rubbish. I have only played a few missions but it's just not fun to play at all when it's not even challenge you face but just ridiculous odds and unfair disadvantages thrown at you in every turn (literally)

Also I don't hate the turn counter, but I do dislike it, because it goes against everything that the rest of the game is trying to encourage; slow, steady and stealthy gameplay.

When you're a resistence army with limited resources and manpower, it doesn't make sense to be throwing those resources and men (and women) into a non-stop meat grinder. Your war would be over in a couple of days if your casualty rate was really around the 50% mark for every mission.

[Damedius]

I would agree in the Gravely wounded addition.

I had a streak going where every time one of my soldiers got injured they were out for 15-20 days Gravely wounded.

My other big gripe is the lack of class balance. The introduction of the op Ranger. Seems like you might as well run 1 heavy, 1 specialist and 4 rangers. I haven't unlocked the Psi-operative class yet, so I can't say how good are.

[Sokeri Peruna]

Well that's XCOM, baby!

[Jolly]

Mebbe time for a break and some sleep?

The game kind of features war, and war is kind of chaotic. It's not like you can plan it all out and just use your pet crew of perfect soldiers. Injuries can take a while to heal so you should be developing some decent subs along the way. I'm lax with this right now and it'll end up hurting if I lose a high ranked soldier and have to replace it with a squaddie. :P

The tongue thing is annoying but I tend to try to get my rangers tongued, that way I can pop them with my sniper and the wallop the bejesus out of the snake once freed. I build my rangers for movement and mass desctruction, not stealth, and they're pretty amazing. My ranger and sniper are crushing everyone else for kills.

The codex aren't all that bad either.

I'm glad they added interesting new beasties to the game since it makes things more interesting and gives you things to learn and conquer.

XCOM is supposed to kind of be a race to keep up. One problem with XCOM 1 is that the satelite thing is a bit too easy and very limited. They've done a great job of making both tactical and strategic feel a lot more frenzied and pressured in XCOM 2. It's brilliant design, IMO.

PS - I'm not a Long War worshipper - I dinked with it and thought a lot of it was excellent, but it was TOO brutal for me. But I think everyone who had XCOM 1 should've given it a try to see what REAL brutality is like in an XCOM setting. You literally had to have 30 soldiers because they had fatigue from missions or were injured and you pretty much never could run the same soldiers in back to back missions. I don't think that's the ideal, but I do think it's good if you need to keep a stable of more than 6 core dudes, which is something you could sometimes get away with in XCOM 1.

[Kaerius]

The strategic layer has a serious case of "another settlement needs your help". Feels like I'm almost never allowed to complete a task without being interupted.

[Jolly]

Originally posted by Anima Solis:

THREE.

Central talks too much. I made a post about it before but when the people are talking and just repeating ♥♥♥♥, either in the maps or in combat... I find myself wanting to shoot them in the head. I can't take action, pass time, shoot, etc while they talk. The anger is real.

Definitely time for a break! :)

Even though I somewhat agree with this one. In my game the avatar got to 12/12 and Central was having a seizure and on retaliation missions he wets himself on the first civvie kill.

[Zergged.XH]

Wait for the Long War types to come out with the tips and tricks of XCOM 2's trade. The XCOM subreddit is also a wealth of information, if the trolls don't flock and smear the community.

[Fever]

I share your pain. I've been playing XCOM since the first one came out in the 90s, not trying to sound all know it all just saying I am kind of familiar with the game. So I started on normal difficulty...oh boy...even with cautious strategy decisions and fighting using cover and overwatch etc the missions play out either way too easy or absolutely ridiculously OP in favour of the aliens. OK I get it there are different alien types and you need to counter them plus its a war so its meant to be challenging but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥...missions are either a cake walk or I get absolutely destroyed, not even a mission that is even anywhere remotely close to a close call either way.

I kind of want to say that I like that you are pulled from pillar to post a little bit with missions, issues you have to address on the campaign screen but at the moment it just feels like "do this, do that, oh you don't have time for this, screw it more avatar points, oh yeah and some more"...pfff.

I want to love this game, but after two games of it already ending in defeat and not really getting going with building up a solid crew with decent armour and weapons due to a lack of supplies I can already feeel the game sucking the life out of itself. When I initially started playing I love the look, feel etc...they've done a wonderful job....but man the imbalance in it just seems like you could toss a coin and when you lose a mission in the early stages its a guaranteed death dive you can't pull up from :(

I will try a third game...the thought of that at the moment does feel like a chore...which saddens me.

[SilverCanidae]

@Wobbler, I can see your argument against the turn limit countdown to a point... But remember that Xcom is a rebel force. They have to move quickly and stealithy or they risk everything. I don't feel that the game is rubbish, it's really well put together, it just wanted to do too many things and instead of being fun for the player it's now very bogged down and chaotic. I'm sure over time I'll get used to the pacing and it'll be fine, but I do understand where you're coming from. A suggestion I saw was instead of immediate failure on the timer, more and more reinforcements start landing as you make a desperate rush to the evac zone. Maybe the timer is when reinforcements start landing and there's multiple objectives per mission, forcing you to weigh out the situation.

@Damedius, I really want to avoid running 4 rangers but I'm starting to come to the feeling you might be right. In EU I ran a medic, 2 shotguns, 2 miniguns, and a sniper (who was also my psy op). In this, a similar loadout just doesn't seem to be doing it for me. I make it work, but damn, rangers are just broken haha. As for the gravely wounded, I absolutely think it's ridiculous how hurt soldiers get so quickly. Example, after getting the Predator armor upgrade, one of my Grenadiers took something like 5 damage total (while also wearing nano-fiber) and was gravely wounded for 18 days. I just about flipped my desk. I mean, awesome, he's not dead, but 5 out of the extra 11 health or whatever it is that armor grants... Technically HE didn't even take damage, game. FFS.

@Nuka-Cola, While I agree with that statement this feels more like Xcom trying to be too many things at once and hurting the player.

@Jolly, I took a nice long break of blissful and uninterrupted sleep haha. Don't get me wrong, I love the chaotic feel of things, but I don't like when Central is screaming at me to make contact and shut down avatar while the game is screaming at me to do dark event missions and the rebels are screaming they've given me a supply drop while they scream that they stopped a train and if I don't clean up their mess they won't support me anymore. It honestly feels like I'm dealing with my nephew when he was three. Wanted everything, messed a bunch of stuff up, then it was all my fault haha. I don't want it to be like my playthrough of EU where I was an unstoppable force with my 6 guys, but I would like to not face a Beserker 8 missions in with wounded core troops against a few rookies, that costs me a mission and loses me support and supply. That was a brutal mission D: My issue with the codex is the clone, double weapon disable while you're fighting Thin Men and Sectoids. Throw in a Muton or two, maybe a Beserker and you've got yourself a recipe of just absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. I don't mind keeping two full squads of soldiers going, I usually try to do exactly that. Just frustrates me when 8/12 main soldiers were down (for unreasonably long times for the damage they took... though the sniper and the tech did get knocked down to 1 hp so I totally get that) and I was fielding crippled forces because I'm FORCED to. I haven't gotten to full Avatar yet, though I suspect that if Central really does just longwind a speech... I might just let the world burn.

@Kaerius, Exactly that man. "Hey, we dropped some supplies but good luck ever getting them because we also need this dark event stopped. Oh good job, but before you grab those supplies here's another Avatar counter and a rebel mission that you have to do or we bounce. Still want those supplies? You should probably make contact with other areas because here's another mission you didn't want!"

@Trem, I'm all for the long-war type of game. My issue is the game wants to be long war without the ability to be long-war. You can rush the first black site and things start going well (that's what I've done anyway) and make contacts and blah blah blah, and then suddenly EVERYONE NEEDS YOU. Like, is no one else picking up a damn gun? Am I literally the only squad willing to shoot things? FFS this is why humanity got boned. Actually, now that I think about it in that aspect, Advent, hook me up baby haha.

@L-r | Fever -_^ I was a huge fan of EU/EW and could reasonablt play on normal. For this game though, clicking down to recruit and still getting mollywomped is frustrating. Like, let me get the damn story! It's why I play the game. After that let me play a difficulty that's super challenging! And I feel your pain when you say it's either cake or death. Most missions that my ambushes fail miserably (thank you RNGsus) force me to run a single troop to the objective to deal with whatever it is and that's horribly frustrating. And exactly, it feels like it wants you to do too much with too little. You want me to do 6 things at once and if I fail to do it all I get screwed? Uh huh... Give me the ability to field 2 squads on different missions. Give me the ability to send in covert operatives to missions I can't reach to try to balance it out. It wanted to do too much, and I'm not sure adding more would be wise, but it might help. Or we'll all rage at that too, who knows haha. Maybe give me my damn co-op and let two squads fly around and deal with ♥♥♥♥, that might be nice. If I lose this third game (and things are looking grim and I'm being forced to save-scum because that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ train mission) I might look into mods... Which is a shame because I really like finishing core games before I mod mission files. Does feel kinda like chores though.

[Wobb the Great and Terrible!!!!!]

I thought the turn count should start after you are detected. This way you can either choose to try and rapidly fight your way through, or take your time and try to sneak around.
Just because they are a resistance force doesn't mean they would have to get in and out quickly. That would always depend on the mission at hand, and whether they could do it without being spotted. If nobody knows they are there, then what's the rush? You just risk being spotted if you rush.
And the real problem with it lies where the game has a timer that forces you to move fast and take risks. This results in a much higher number of casualties, especially deaths. In a small army with limited funds and soldiers, this would be unsustainable and tactics would have to change or the whole campaign be abandoned

[Joshi]

Originally posted by wobbler:

I thought the turn count should start after you are detected.

Good suggestion, makes no sense to have the aliens start shutting down access terminals if they dont even know there are XCOM soldiers there

[Cccactus]

I love all the chaos and rushing, it makes the game unique. I'm a bit bored of sandbox style strategy games where you can take as long as you want to do anything.

[[Ger] Daen]

The thing is... my feelings are mixed.
When I was a student I played the first X-Com games and had ALOT of fun whilst having an immense amount of time!

Then when I grew older I played X-Com EU/EW.
When I came home from work, I loved it to play the game on easy, just burn some aliens, build some base while in the hear preparing for work.

When I had more time and together with friends, we played normal and despite the losses had a great time.

Then I had a vacation of three weeks and I played the game in classic-mode and beat it. It was not "fun" but it was great! For me as an average player it was extremely cool spending so much time in a game as I didn't had so much vacation since years.

Now with X-Com 2...
When I click on easy - I want an easy game. Laugh at me, I'm not that of a good player, but why should such a great game just be for good players only?
I want to see the story, lead some of my "friends2 through the war and then turn off with a smile.

Why are there different difficulties when they're all so hard for guys like me? :p
I'd love to have an easy game on easy mode and then, in March, when my LOOONG vacation will be, trying the game on classic whilst my wife provides moral support, Coke and German sausages! :D

[SilverCanidae]

That was my issue as well, Daen. My buddy decided to play on Normal difficulty (which I had started on and got rocked, so I said screw it and went to Rookie.) The damage from enemies remains within 1-2 points, but I did notice RNG was critting me more often (on a lower difficulty). Enemy health seems about the same, it's not like there's more enemies on the map on higher difficulties.

It honestly feels like they programmed a dead switch on difficulty. Clicking rookie doesn't actually make the game easier, just makes you think it will be easier and then punches you in the face a lot. I'm not a great strategy player, I'm not a great XCom player, and RNGsus hates me more than Donald Trump loves money. I just want the storyline damnit, I shouldn't have to be a god to play on the easiest difficulty.


@Jolly, got my timer to 12. Central spasmed. Had no intel to get to the next three zones over to delay. UFO found me while I wasn't flying (collecting intel in a desperate, futile attempt to win), I was forced to fly off, it flew AROUND THE WORLD and then attacked me. I got pulled through a completely intact, solid wall by a Thin Man (I couldn't shoot him on my turn, no LOS) got my ranger glitched because bladestorm/bind issue, she couldn't take damage anymore but could still move/kill things. Was glorious. Avatar finishes. gg no re.