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XCOM 2 |OT| Be Aggressive! Be Be Aggressive!

Sblargh

Banned
So I've lost multiple soldiers in my new current Legend ironman playthrough, about four missions into the game. Every mission has been a success otherwise, just at the cost of Xcom operatives.

Restart?

As a restarterholic, my instict is to do so, but I have been thinking that, maybe, I have been playing the game wrong.
 

Podge293

Member
Finally completed it. Tough going at times, lost some good people.

Final mission got uber lucky. So many missed shots from the enemy at close range.

Great game tho. Giving it a break for a while then I'll come back on the highest difficulty with a few mods thrown in.
 

ISee

Member
I care, commander. *hugs*

I have been thinking of balance changes of my own, lately.
I like the lenght of legend, and feel it could even be longer. What I don't like about legend is how you need to survive the first few months, but I do like the difficulty of the missions themselves, I just think the consequences are too harsh.
Otoh, I think harsh consequences are necessary. This balancing games thing is tough.

But here are my thoughts.
I like playing with the IESS+ mod (increased enemy size squad) and 6-8 soldiers, because it makes the game slightly more difficulty (having two extra soldiers against 3 extra stun lancers in a pod favors the AI, imo).
I like the long wounded times and the high XP requirements because it makes someone getting shot at or a high ranking soldier getting killed something that matters. Something that I really really do not want to happen.
I don't like losing the overall game too soon because getting back up from a failed mission or even from a string of successful missions that, nonetheless, pile up the dead and the injuried. Reading the other thread about how Darkest Dungeon works, I may have developed problems to losing the game at all. lol
So, my proposed changes (to myself, but I'm curious to see other people's opinion) is to reduce the rookie costs to zero, so you never lose until you actually see a game over screen. Still, you don't want to have people shot or killed (unless they are rookies, lol) because you don't want to keep throwing rookies out there, you want real soldiers who are actually capable of getting the job done.
I am fine with how the avatar timer works right now, but might extend its duration a little bit.
If the game ends up being too easy, to work on making one of my issues with the game even worse by somehow making the beggining even harder.
The thought is to make the overall game balance itself by preventing you to snowball into victory, yet not letting you lose because of free rookies.
I think, eventually, you get strong anyway because of how endgame tech and high ranking skills are amazing.
But by sheer force of failing missions and losing soldiers, getting to that point is a slow climb, instead of a sudden turning point.

I'm also thinking of some sort of adaptive changes too, like flawless missions triggering dark events or something, but you would have to pretend not knowing about that, lol.

Thank you commander :).

I've been thinking about balance/game changes a lot while playing the game to be honest. For me the game was the most fun in its most difficult phases. Okay I confess, the early game nearly made me give up but finishing a mission during the early phase felt much more satisfying then at the end. The IESS+ mod sounds very promising to balance that. For one month during my legend playthrough I had to 'struggle' through the increased enemy numbers dark event combined with the hidden faceless dark event and some missions were hard because of this. The only downfall seems to be the early/mid game as you definitely want more soldiers to counter the increased enemy numbers and that's a bit of a problem.
More soldiers mean longer missions, at least for me. I do not know about you, but I spend a lot of time during difficult situations double/triple checking every option and because of this some missions were already too long (and that's just my own fault). With even more soldiers under my command I'd probably still be on my second mission *g*.

Significantly reducing the rookie cost on harder difficulties is reasonable and needed but making them free and available in nearly unlimited numbers reduce them to canon fodder. I think there needs to be something in between. How about a new mission type: Prison Break. Once per month you can initiate a prison riot in one of 'your' territories. You start the mission with your squad and 2-4 prisoners armed with basic rifles. Your squad and the prisoners could start in different locations and your objective would be to bring the prisoners to your squad's starting location (evac zone). But that would be too much work and there has to be another way. I just do not like the game giving away stuff, especially on higher difficulties. How about a black market ability (15 Intel) that lets you buy rookies for half price for two weeks.

The avatar timer is just fine, if you plan ahead.

And yes you get strong anyway, in the end. That's why my idea right now is to somehow stretch out the mid game and to prevent the late game from happening too early. The 'optimal' way to do so would be to include a new tier of mid game weapons, armors, utility items, enemies and missions types. The other, more practical way would be to just increase research timers, resource costs etc. for late game stuff and to use an IESS+ like mod for the late game to make missions a bit more difficult.

So I've lost multiple soldiers in my new current Legend ironman playthrough, about four missions into the game. Every mission has been a success otherwise, just at the cost of Xcom operatives.

Restart?

Try to hold out a bit longer, I was in a very similar spot but you should get some momentum soon.
 
Any news on XB/ PS4 controller support?

I love this game but played EU on my couch which is how I prefer to play it. The steam controller does not sound appealing to me.

Anyone know if this is in the works?
 

manfestival

Member
geez this final mission is freaking long. gonna have to go to bed before I finish it... guess I gotta finish it when I get home from work... whenever that is
 

pislit

Member
geez this final mission is freaking long. gonna have to go to bed before I finish it... guess I gotta finish it when I get home from work... whenever that is

i just finished the last mission, performance is so bad, i actually finished a whole movie while playing the game. lol.
 

ISee

Member
i just finished the last mission, performance is so bad, i actually finished a whole movie while playing the game. lol.

My fps went down to a 15 fps crawl during my last two turns during the last mission. The strangest thing about this was that my GPU even downclocked to ~980mhz (~40% utilization, temp was under 60°C) and CPU utilization was only around ~30-40%.
I'm playing on the high preset with bokeh and ssao turned off (i5+980).
 
Seems locking up has been added to the fruit salad of this games life. Don't' recall any crashes before the hotfix...so Jake Solomon adding RNG to the stability of the game confirmed.
 
First legendary run was going perfect, but I couldn't kill them fast enough on the retaliation mission to save 6 of them. TBH, I'll probably just tweak commander difficulty to make it harder...can't put into words how much I dislike retaliation missions.
 

Sblargh

Banned
Spraking of workshop, is there any way to see which mods updated? There's always some download being made, but it just generically says it is the workshop.
 
Here's an amusing thought, a mod or gamemode that increases the chance of alien spies among your own people in the Avenger, where you have to manage/fire/interrogate people who might be giving out intelligence to the aliens. Failures lead you to being attacked by UFOs more often or something like that.

Got Implacable on my sniper, holy shit this is amazing.
 
i was save scumming this entire time (25 hours), but after 3 restarts i finally realized you aren't supposed to "win" every game

You're just supposed to deal with it and make it as far as you can
 

mbpm1

Member
I want a mod that makes it possible for Soldiers who got left behind to show up again as mind controlled troops for the ADVENT forces. Complete with the kit you left with them and all their abilities
 

mbpm1

Member
Then you flashbang the Sectoid hanging out behind and get 7 soldiers on a mission!

Well the idea was that they would be permanently enemies. Kind of like a mini-boss (depending on how well you specced them out).

So that last heavy who suppressed the enemy and made a last stand to let your guys evac returns...for them! Muahaha

But freeing them would be fun too
 

captainpat

Member
Holy shit! Apparently, the game decided I was doing a little too good.

I was about to finish one of the blacksite missions when a andromedon landed a crit on one of my high level soldiers carrying to objective, killing the soldier and apparently (maybe a glitch) making my squad unable to re-pick up the objective so they had to leave without it despite being just a turn away from the extraction point. I was able accomplish it on my second try but not before some lancer somehow, one-hit kills another high level solider (full health and armor).
 
I think there is some potential for Viper mods. Make them look like huge, disgusting snakes (no boobs), some snake-human-thin man hybrid (no boobs), or maybe like Dark Souls Serpent Soldiers (no penis). Maybe make the Archon look like Floaters, but with exposed human features, rather than Muton, as opposed to the Mr. Fancy Pants we have now.
 
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