11/10, completely on point, on all acounts. I really appreciate you taking the effort to do this! A few notes of my own opinion-
I wouldn't run Reliable Damage; particularly because of the effect on the aliens, it can make the game far too... incremental.

I really like the Gotcha Again, Mission Award Variety, and Perfect Information mods. The former makes the game's preview of whether you can see a target from a given position even better- it also tells you if you can see somebody in Squadsight, if you can see an objective, and if you can flank them.

Perfect Information is most important for newer players; it will show you exact things such as the alien's stats, and what their chance to hit on each shot is. It shows you that the game isn't cheating on you or anything.

Mission Award Variety is just hilarious- it replaces the generic "Moved furthest, under most fire, dealt most damage, most attacks" with an often-hilarious randomized assortment, such as "Hates Stun Lancers Most" and "Biggest Killstealer."

Nice comment, but I dont think you are correct. It seemes to me you are beside the point at what people are talking about.

As you seem to understand, People are frustrated because there was no tactical choice that could have prevented a desaster and it happend anyway, and that is ecactly how they should react, this is why these things happen.

People are frustrated when an Advent pod rushes in shooting out of the black and instantly flank-kills two of your soldiers, or when a disoriented Andromedon, that just would not go down (because it dodges nimbly as an acrobat), one shot kills a soldier in full cover with full health and armor. and its probably your Psi Operative, that vou just invested 38 days of training in for a single skill.

Thats why people feel "cheated", because the game mechanics are designed to frustrate you with those moments.

But have You ever wondered why the mods installed most are the ones that give you more costomization options? One of XComs main design choices (probably the most important) is to make You feel involved and attached to your troops, so of course there is justified frustration if bad luck just hits you hard and your favorite team is wiped out. Of course you feel treated unfairly by the game. But how much frustration is too much?
So this is what it is about: the level of built in frustration in balance with the emotional involvement.

So someone like You might be able to be cooly detached from this, but for many the emotional investment is just why they play XCom, and of course they would like to play LW2, because it raises the stakes even more, though sometime higher than they can (and should) take.

Because this is so central to the game, the question of how much frustration a player can and should suffer is a valid one for a game that is supposed to be fun. So You have a point, but there could be a middle ground in terms of frustraion level, accessabiity and balance.

I kinda resent the "so just dont play it!" argument, its very conndescending and simply rude. Only because You feel the game is right for You, does not discredit everybody elses arguments. I could also ask; if you are not emotionaly attached, why are you playing XCom?

I am totally cool with the "stealth" mission feel of LW2 and I know many are not. I think that if I was on the ground fighting aliens, I would do anything to not get involved in a fight too. For me this totally hits the spot for making you feel the rebel underdog fighting the gueriila war, and loosing some in the fight even adds to that. In that sense I think LW2 is better than Vanilla.

On the other hand, I am annoyed and frustrated with the randomness of mission detection, mission difficulty and thus advent strength and dark events mechanics. So i.e. it matters quite a bit for your campaign if early supply runs or advent assault missions are detected only with 1d infiltration time or if you detect them early, and randomness is a huge factor there.

Truth is, you really cant "pick" the right missions. The games just does that for you, just as in vanilla. You kinda feel you have choices, but most of the time you really dont.

And as I said, sometimes because of this, it just kils your troops.

Until now I think I can handle the frustraion level but I think if there are balance issues between frustration level and fun, the game errs on frustration level.

For lazy readers I can summarize the above comment in one sentence:
Long War 2 feels unfair and too frustrating, because it urges You to invest emotionally in your troops and makes You become attached but then kills them off too casually.

currently finished my first hq assault with no casualties. if you're careful and smart you don't have to lose troops. the trick is to cc the ♥♥♥♥ out of everything. gunners and grenadiers are excellent. specing suppression on other troops is great too

Nice thread.
And I tend to Alien Observers sight.
Its hard ... thats ok, but its also frustrating, cause you often feel just helpless ... you did miss 10 times, enemy did hit every time ... your tactic was good, just your luck did suck.
In interaction with bugs, stupid LOS lanes, not all information displayed and human factor ... this gets easily frustrating cause it has much impact on your progress and even can lead to make it impossible to win. Even not with the best tactic you can imagine (which does not mean its the best possible tactic)
But I think this was not intended by Pavonis and they work on it ... so just lets be a bit patient.
Meanwhile use some of the additional mods out there, there are many that can help, nearly everybody should find a way to make it fun for him/her, cause this is the only thing that counts.

Not that I don't like long war, but it is unfair slightly. dark events are very very overtuned and will destroy you quickly, and quite often you cant counter them because they occur in regions you don't have.

@Anderson
I really put some effort into my reply, did you even read it?
Its kinda bad manners to start a thread and not checking in on it.

While I can appreciate the "emotional attachment" to your soldiers, I experience this quite well in Long War 2. It takes some time since you have more soldiers, but after some missions, the names start to stand out and become memorable.

During Long War 1, I had a roster of some 50 soliders, and most of them I could write up a decent summary of their achievements.

I am not detached, I play on Ironman, and you can bet that when I make a mistake and lose a soldier I like, it stings really hard.

I would like to repeat the main point of my threat - Long War 2 is NOT a stricktly better version of Xcom 2. It is a different experience. I am not trying to convert people to playing it, just pointing out that a game like this needs to be learned.

You are not the hero anymore, the story isn't about you. The story is happening, whether you like it or not. ADVENT shall not shed a tear about your misfortune, they will stomp you into the ground. Learn their ways, and adapt, Commander.

I get Your point, and I do agree. All I am saying that the felt "unfairness" is a real thing and the mod probably needs some adjustment to remedy it. This unfairness that people "complain" about is really not about the difficulty of the game or the process of learning how to play it, it is about how much frustration should I suffer while doing so.

Personally I guess I probably am not the best of (tactical) players, as currently I am making way to many mistakes to play on Ironman, because I also play when tired or not 100% concentrated. My "human factor" would kill me very fast because I keep misclicking and am stil learning about how some of the abilities are to be used. But I guess I am pretty good at beating strategy games, since I am doing so for over 25? years now.

My campaign does well, I am hitting advent where it hurts, I keep liberating regions, the avatar project is finally going down, I have master seargents and colonels, advent still uses magnetic rifles while most of my troops have coil.

But right now, I am at a point of my game where I start to get tired of just another mission that I found, that I know I have to play, and I know it will probably be a real grind. (ambush on advent str. 8, a retaliation or another supply run). I prioritise the "Ambush troop column:" missions before all else, not because I like them, but I know I have to play them.

So the missions comes up and I cant help wishing that I could just skip this grind for once and do something more fun instead. So the Long War right now really tests my endurance, not my abilites. I know I can beat advent, but give me a break for once ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Could not have said it better for sure.
For me one additional thing comes up.
Maybe only cause I am too lazy, so I dont mind if you laugh.

Normally I accept losses in a game of this kind.
I did make a mistake ... ok ... I was unlucky ... ok ... something else happened, does not matter what ... I had losses, not nice, but ok.
I take them and play on.
I think about how to avoid them next time and ... take them.
Cause I know I somehow with learning and playing well afterwards can still win the game.
Even if it happens twice, I still can win ... eventually.
But if a bigger loss does nearly automatically leads to the next loss, ending in a snowball always ... you start to end every campaign the first real loss you encounter.
But I did get fast to the point were I did think:
Wow , feels nearly like work now ... and is it really worth all this again just to learn for the next time that the game can be an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥?
And somtimes in between that I am human?
Second is ok, cause I can learn ...
But the game does not "learn" ... smile
Without more balancing.
And then patching.

There is one way I know to get out of this snowball.
Start savescumming.
Not what I normally do.
But I do now, not very often, but I do it.
And I still dont like it.

Yeah, as I wrote elsewhere, my game got killed recently because I got the UFO hunt early. I really did not know what to expect from avenger attacks at LW2, and it was brutal. So after several tries of utterly failing the defense, I gave up and found a save game where I could get back my best teams because I knew the avenger attack was coming. It felt like cheating and it was cheating. But my campaign did well, and there are many surprises like that in LW2, and quite frankly it is too long a long war to give up your game becaause you got killed by another surprise from LW2.

Learning them all is what my playthrough will be about right now. Now I know that in the future, when the UFO hunt dark event is up, I will get back all my teams immediatly and prepare for the very worst.

LW2 is out one month now. I guess Anderson is one in 10000 to tackle LW2 in ironman right know. I now I need to play this through with lots of saves to learn all the nastiness that this game throws at me before ever considering it. But will I ever go through that again? Not sure yet.

Originally posted by AlienObserver:

For lazy readers I can summarize the above comment in one sentence:
Long War 2 feels unfair and too frustrating, because it urges You to invest emotionally in your troops and makes You become attached but then kills them off too casually.

Ahem. That's kinda the entire point of LW2. To be difficult, to be unfair, and to challenge the player.

When compared with the first LW, LW2 alters many mechanics of Vanilla XCOM 2, ups the difficulty curve, and shoulders more decision-making onto the player. And, it punishes you heavily when you make a mistake. And due to resources being even more limited in LW2, you feel this. Thematically, I think it fits.


Now, there are certain things that I do agree can be tuned a bit. Dark Events are sliiiightly overbearing at the moment. Being able to counter already active dark events would be a nice touch personally, although the likely response is to lower frequency of dark events and make them more easily counterable.

Guys, you should keep in mind that the first Long War took quite some time before it reached the "Final Version", which is the one currently available. Long War 2 is pretty young, there are bound to be more patches and such, as people really figure out the workings of ADVENT that are happening behind the scenes.

I imagine that like the first version, they will eventually add Easy Mode, for those who want to enjoy the new features but without the extra difficulty.

But yes, you also nailed the main point - Long War (a lot like Dark Souls) is hard not because of sheer difficulty, but because some of its aspects are not clear. Over time, strategies will improve and the Wiki will be more and more complete.


On a side note, I do hope one day we can play as ADVENT. I think with what Long War 2 has done so far with the game, there is room for an entirely new kind of experience - an almost 4X-style game where you build up your regions and do battle on the tactical map. Kind of like now, but, without an overarching campaign.

I finally made my way to the region where two story missions are, only to find out that in that this newly contacted region the advent str. is 9. I have to do the story missions, but I just did a HQ on Advent str. 8 and it was horror.
I really think the advent str. mechanic stinks.
I did everything to keep advent str. down, but its going crazy everywhere. From the beginning I starved myself and did not send any rebels to gathering ressources unless the region was liberated, still the advent str. goes crazy. I thought I understood it, but I dont get the game mechanics. There is no positive feedback to work with. Its a design failure to never reward the right behavior but only ever punish.

There is another main flaw.
Too much RNG for a tactical game. Too much cheating of the engine.
Just made the experience again.
And the game cheats, dont tell me it does not, I am sure meanwhile, as Alien Observer did say ... if you play well, it just ups difficulty, my advent strenght got up 4-5 point within one month in most regions and now I get again one retalliation/dark event mission after the other ... no way to counter that ... advent strenght gets to 10 within playing 3 missions ... and then game ♥♥♥♥♥ you.by flooding your screen with red missions ... 4 within an ingame day, why not!
Its fun ... isnt it?
I am at the point again were its a pain in the ass and guess I wont restart again.... dont need that, I am not a masochist. So spare your comment Ninja.
All in all.this game is not really difficult, diffcullt games you can master by learning, this is not, but unbalanced as hell, which you also can master, by savescumming
I did say it in my first post already I did write in this forum, ok thats a kind of difficulty too, but its the one I expect of my boss.
Give me boring tasks that I cant do well in no way, and if i do i just get MORE boring tasks in less time and it does not matter how hard I try, no way out.
Thats what I call work!

RNG is nice to have in small doses regarding this kind of games, and the more difficult and more complex they get, the less the RNG Factor should go.
But XCOM2 goes oposite way.
And so does LW2.
RNG in everything, the fights are very RNG based, the events are, the complete mechanics are ... all. Its a roguelike, not a tactical simulation!
RNG is RNG, there is no tactic to win a lottery, then to buy all tickets, and this normally is not a win, there is only a bit of tactic to make it happen more likely ... or to choose the lotteries with the best prices.
So you can loose easily cause luck hates you for a while and easily cause the game cheats you, and thats what lotteries always do, they cheat you!
But this kind of game ppl normally win cause of brain, not cause of luck! Or cause of savescumming! There is a reason why you cant savescum in roguelikes ... it makes them obsolete!
I dont have any problem with roguelikes, I love them ... you play them an hour or 2 besides and then you have won them or you restart.
And they vary very much, so no playthrough is same.
But here ... its very diffrent.
I play a campaign for 30 hours until it gets to the point were it gets funny again.
Then I wait for my week of unluckyness or the game deciding that now I should loose again, cause I came far enough ... and after I have to restart.
So it takes me another 2 month to get again were I was ... if I dont get before some days of unluckyness.
Well, for sure there are ppl out there that love this kind of repeating doing the same all the time, hoping one day luck will have mercy with them and they can say:
I did beat LW2 ...I am a god of luck.
Not what I want.