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

M

ManeKast

Member
Zach said:
Beat it last night. On Rookie or whatever the easiest setting is. Crazy that that's the easiest setting. It was a really hard game. I only reloaded if one of my top few soldiers died, but I still probably averaged one reload per mission.

It was still a very fun game at times (I played on PS4; put it in my GOTY voting; P.S. it chugged a lot there at the end on PS4), but I feel they need to do better with the difficulty settings. Like, I'd gift the game to my casual brother if easy mode was easy mode, but it's not, so I'm not going to bother. He'd no doubt get frustrated early in and quit, even though he'd probably enjoy the gameplay.

I probably liked the first game more due to this, among some other little things, but it was still a cool game. I hope they make another, but with additional, better-thought-out difficulty settings.
Click to expand...

I've been toying with Rookie as well but it seems to me you don't get enough enemies and subsequently end up not levelling up as much, so squad size upgrades take longer.
Can anyone who is pro at this game tell me if this is the case?

It's hard but if you follow all the useful help on here and use peoples tips it actually is pretty spot on in the challenge. Mind you I ONLY use Ironman. If you reloaded anything in this game you played easy mode anyway.

Live with every choice, thats the perfect balance to me. My start game now has improved drastically and I am near the end finally on veteran ironman. Harsh but I think the entire thrill of these games is living with every choice with no way to back out.

Perfection. Will be my number 1 game this year after much deliberatuon. I just keep coming back to it, learning more, creating more characters.... game to me is GENIOUS. Better than what Fire Emblem became even.

It's endless on PC with mods, anyway just wanted to shower the game with love on here can't stop playing! Even after a year..... THAN YOU FIRAXIS I love you.
 
C

CrocMother

Banned
Anno said:
I dunno, but holy crap at the changes to the Strategic
map.

1-10 men squads
Multiple squads deployed at once
Recruit and manage resistance forces
Hack MECs and deploy them in support of your resistance cells in the world map

This thing sounds wild.
Click to expand...

Probably wait for a few updates before giving that a whirl. It's a complete overhaul.
 
M

MonorailCat

Member
Anno said:
I dunno, but holy crap at the changes to the Strategic
map.

1-10 men squads
Multiple squads deployed at once
Recruit and manage resistance forces
Hack MECs and deploy them in support of your resistance cells in the world map

This thing sounds wild.
Click to expand...

My inner sceptic says: Changes this severe will problably not be properly balanced at release.
But I really wish everything works fine. The strategic layer is my biggest letdown of XCOM2 ..
 
Z

Zach

Member
ManeKast said:
I've been toying with Rookie as well but it seems to me you don't get enough enemies and subsequently end up not levelling up as much, so squad size upgrades take longer.
Can anyone who is pro at this game tell me if this is the case?

It's hard but if you follow all the useful help on here and use peoples tips it actually is pretty spot on in the challenge. Mind you I ONLY use Ironman. If you reloaded anything in this game you played easy mode anyway.

Live with every choice, thats the perfect balance to me. My start game now has improved drastically and I am near the end finally on veteran ironman. Harsh but I think the entire thrill of these games is living with every choice with no way to back out.
Click to expand...

See, I like the idea of that... but I was pretty sure if I lost my top guys, I'd eventually get stuck and not be able to proceed, which would've been terrible. And I'm sure now that that definitely would've happened on the last mission, if not sooner.

And I'm not saying the game shouldn't be hard, or people shouldn't enjoy it or whatever... what I'm saying is that it should have more inviting difficulty levels -- even if they add Super Baby Mode for guys like me.

Or jerks like me could just not buy the games going forward, which I'm guessing isn't their goal. But what do I know?
 
A

Anno

Member
The head of the project even said he would like to see easier difficulties because it should be available for anyone to play. I wouldn't be surprised if the current ones are rebalanced or new ones added in the future.
 
F

Fragamemnon

Member
Sober said:
Got a 1060 the other week so I guess a XCOM 2 reinstall wouldn't hurt.
Click to expand...

my opinion of the game turned around 100% once I got the following mods in place:

Scanning Sites Plus
A Better Advent
Shadow Ops LW (fantastic classes!)
Timer Tweaks (need a few extra turns due to more enemies and defensive-minded classes)
Squad Notoriety

A lot of other stuff (Grimy's Loot Mod, etc) and UI changes.

The real meat though is those four mods listed above working in concert. Scanning sites plus helps add some choice to the otherwise-insipid strategic layer. The other three mods turn the tactical game on its head-killing all aliens on encounter isn't really possible and you get some truly wild firefights with lots of defensive abilities at your disposal. Notoriety prevents A-team spamming garbage and the snowball that getting ahead of the curve on perks gives to your team.

Also I play on Legend-anything lower and you just bum rush mag weapons and snowball your way past the ABA2 alien progression curve. Tech, build, and promotion times (given cycling of troops) is fine.

LW2 has gotten rave remarks from the internal testers and it'll be even better than the above. But even in its current state XCOM2 can go head to head with EW LW.

The head of the project even said he would like to see easier difficulties because it should be available for anyone to play. I wouldn't be surprised if the current ones are rebalanced or new ones added in the future.
Click to expand...

I think this is a good thing. For most people, you should get punished when you make a mistake but the degree of the punishment should vary a lot by difficultly. Legend players for example should play on that knife's edge all campaign, expecting someone not invested in the franchise to do so is kind of unfair. Besides the mod support now means that if you need to get your ass beat you can find someone who has just the thing for you.

The key is to not lose the sense of loss and guilt from the mistake. This is what makes the franchise reboot so compelling. Earlier somoene said that they reload during the mission-I would like for that to not be an option and instead make bleedouts (which people generally won't reload from) more likely at lower difficulties. If the injury time is long enough they more or less accomplish the same goal in terms of campaign balance.
 
A

Anno

Member
Yeah I think more options for balancing difficulty in the base game is a very good thing. The best thing about XCOM (attachment to your squad) should resonate with people even if the numbers attached to the aliens are lower or you hit 10% more often, so opening the game up to more people seems like the way to go. Let them play with options and mods to match the level of difficulty that best suits them.


Regarding the first part of your post Frag, have you tried/do you like True Concealment? I find it another cool tweak on many of the mods you listed. And it allows some alternative mission types like bringing a tiny squad into a VIP rescue and playing it as a stealth game.
 
F

Fragamemnon

Member
Anno said:
Regarding the first part of your post Frag, have you tried/do you like True Concealment? I find it another cool tweak on many of the mods you listed. And it allows some alternative mission types like bringing a tiny squad into a VIP rescue and playing it as a stealth game.
Click to expand...

True concealment is great if you play the ABA2 version where you scale down the squad size and pod sizes. If you leave the ABA2 pod sizes at their defaults it results in some tedious gameplay (creeping around pods too much) and turns VIP missions into a giant crapshoot with tons of RNG involved in placement.

Keep in mind that ABA2 puts down 16-20 aliens right from the get go per mission, all with more HP than the vanilla counterparts. I play with the defensive-minded Shadow Ops LW classes and grenade falloff (this is a BIG early game change), so it takes longer to clear out pods.

edit: I don't see how people play this game without grenade falloff BTW.
 
A

Anno

Member
I think they've said in the forums that at least one of these mission types might be fought with the new kinda generic armed resistance fighters on the ground as well as the one(?) advisor you've placed in the area that can be a traditional soldier. So that would be wild, scrambling a bunch of generic citizens and one good dude to cut off some informant or something.
 
K

Kaffeemann

Banned
So Long War 2 is coming "extremely soon" according to the Jake Solomon.
Which is great because I'm currently busy replaying Witcher 3 and by the time I get back to LW2 it will hopefully be balanced and bug free :p
 
C

CmdBash

Member
Has anyone tried going back to play EW (never really played it much) after finishing X2? Or should I just go for another X2 run?
 
F

Foffy

Banned
Fragamemnon said:
One of the testers is working on a compatible/not compatible list available right at release.
Click to expand...

That sounds cool as fuck. Much like ArmA's ACE mods, Long War is likely going to be the "default" mod people use in the community, so compatibility with that will be longed for.
 
A

AWizardDidIt

Member
Whelp, I'm ready to wave goodbye to another 200 hours of my life into this game. Lets go Long War!

Looks like a future update is going to revise psionics to tie them to a more conventional soldier level progression. Hmm...
 
M

ManeKast

Member
inxy said:
Is XCOM worth buying on the PS4? Or is it best played with on PC?
Click to expand...

Ideally PC as everyone will agree but if your PC isn't up to speed like mine the PS4 version plays very well indeed, alas no mods and no pro patch (who thinks this will still happen?!).
 
24hr

24hr

Member
ManeKast said:
Ideally PC as everyone will agree but if your PC isn't up to speed like mine the PS4 version plays very well indeed, alas no mods and no pro patch (who thinks this will still happen?!).
Click to expand...

Well I don't even have a PC! I am tempted to pick it up on PS4 after enjoying enemy within on the iPhone.
 
P

Palmer_v1

Member
I liked the original Long War Mod, but this one is weird so far. Like they've added a bunch of mechanics without actually explaining any of the new mechanics.

This is my second mission:

mI4oMWU.jpg


... and I already killed as many people to even get to this point, on a timer, with mostly rookies. No amount of tactical prowess can get you through a dozen pot shots a turn.

Edit: It takes the AI like 10 minutes to get through a turn with this many troops. The floating mechanical guys are just flying at me and stunning at point blank. I only have one guy not dead or stunned, and he failed a panic check of course. Still didn't stop the mission from dropping more reinforcements, so add 6 people to the above screenshot, plus a few out of line of sight in the building that I forgot to mention.

Edit 2:

2vpO0kI.jpg
Click to expand...

Yeah. I don't mind increased difficulty, but I learned nothing from this loss.
 
I

iosefe

Member
Palmer_v1 said:
I liked the original Long War Mod, but this one is weird so far. Like they've added a bunch of mechanics without actually explaining any of the new mechanics.

This is my second mission:

mI4oMWU.jpg


... and I already killed as many people to even get to this point, on a timer, with mostly rookies. No amount of tactical prowess can get you through a dozen pot shots a turn.

Edit: It takes the AI like 10 minutes to get through a turn with this many troops. The floating mechanical guys are just flying at me and stunning at point blank. I only have one guy not dead or stunned, and he failed a panic check of course. Still didn't stop the mission from dropping more reinforcements, so add 6 people to the above screenshot, plus a few out of line of sight in the building that I forgot to mention.

Edit 2:



Yeah. I don't mind increased difficulty, but I learned nothing from this loss.
Click to expand...
Hacks might be the worst. Call Evac the moment you are spotted so you can escape
 
M

Makikou

Member
Palmer_v1 said:
I liked the original Long War Mod, but this one is weird so far. Like they've added a bunch of mechanics without actually explaining any of the new mechanics.

This is my second mission:

... and I already killed as many people to even get to this point, on a timer, with mostly rookies. No amount of tactical prowess can get you through a dozen pot shots a turn.

Edit: It takes the AI like 10 minutes to get through a turn with this many troops. The floating mechanical guys are just flying at me and stunning at point blank. I only have one guy not dead or stunned, and he failed a panic check of course. Still didn't stop the mission from dropping more reinforcements, so add 6 people to the above screenshot, plus a few out of line of sight in the building that I forgot to mention.

Edit 2:



Yeah. I don't mind increased difficulty, but I learned nothing from this loss.
Click to expand...

From what I see on this, you just didn't infiltrate to even close to 100%
 
The Stig

The Stig

Banned
late to the party.

just built a new PC a few weeks ago and got this on sale.

loved the original and 2012 game. man this game is great. any tips?
 
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