Xcom 2 ?

I haven't been able to log into Steam for two days so no preload for me. Hopefully the problems will be sorted tomorrow. After all this waiting I want my damn Xcom 2!
 
And it's out! I already have two rookies and one grenadier dead. What a warm welcome back into the fold!

Also, a couple of tips. Playing the tutorial is necessary to understand the premise of the story (a very important plot point is shown in the tutorial level). However, having the tutorial enabled means you cannot play the game in Ironman Mode until you start a new game without the tutorial.

That is all. Back to getting my troops killed. *cough* ...getting ADVENT out of Earth.
 
ZigzagPX4 said:
And it's out! I already have two rookies and one grenadier dead. What a warm welcome back into the fold!

Also, a couple of tips. Playing the tutorial is necessary to understand the premise of the story (a very important plot point is shown in the tutorial level). However, having the tutorial enabled means you cannot play the game in Ironman Mode until you start a new game without the tutorial.

That is all. Back to getting my troops killed. *cough* ...getting ADVENT out of Earth.
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what difficulty you're into? i watch lot of beaglerush and christoper legendary plays and it doesnt seem to be that hard.
 
eissa said:
what difficulty you're into? i watch lot of beaglerush and christoper legendary plays and it doesnt seem to be that hard.
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Beaglerush makes everything look easy, so that doesn't count. :roll:

I'm only playing it on Normal, and I'm starting to do fine now. The tactics involved are vastly different from EU's tactics, so make sure not to copy old playstyles over. Especially with Sectoids.

Very fun. I would suggest playing through the tutorial no matter how good you were at EU simply for the story. Like I said, an important thing happens, and it's an integral part to the main plot so make sure to see it at least once, even when the tutorial doesn't teach anything new at all.
 
Been reading a lot of reports of some performance issues, frame drops to the single digits, crashes and freezes and on alleged machines that have or surpass the recommend hardware requirements. Poor optimization basically. Anyone vouch for these reports? I know TotalBiscuit said his machine experienced it in the press release version and he has a jacked ass system sooo, let me know?
 
Yeah, a lot of people seem to be having issues. For me it's worked perfectly so far, so I'm happy about that.

I'm playing on Commander (equivalent of Classic in EU/EW) and it's certainly challenging. I've lost a few guys, but only rookies so far. I wanted to do an ironman playthrough, but I'm not doing that until the game is patched. Don't want to lose lots of progress due to any eventual bugs. So instead of going "honorman" or "bronzeman" or whatever you want to call it. I only reload if I'm failing completely, and I only load a save at the very start of a mission. So no turn do-overs. That way I will have to accept lost soldiers unless I want to waste a ton of time replaying missions. I also do this because I want to take in the story. I'm loving how story-driven the game seems to be.

You gotta remember that the Let's Players like Beagle and Mr Odd are really damn good at XCom. Of course they make it look easy.

There is a lot of complaining about the turn limits on the majority of missions. Personally I don't have a problem with it so far. Rather, I enjoy it because it speeds up the game and it has me rethinking strategies and killing old habits. To me, most of it sounds like "man, this game is haaaard - I want easy mode!". Punishing you for sloppy tactics is one of the core concepts of XCom. I sincerely hope all this whining won't have a lasting effect on XCom and future iterations.
 
for those who have performance issue, disabling AA and unnecessary detail such DoF helps a lot. yeah, i have feeling that since this is the old UE3, firaxis just using lot of polygon with minimal optimization just for 2015's graphic demand. the devloper say, the most expensive aspect in this game are building model and destruction. and implementing procedural gen cost a lot
 
I can't wait to beat Darkest Dungeon so I can justify buying this so close on the heels of another turn based game.

From watching some streams it seems that a lot of things have improved and the difficulty is high. Snakemen have made a return, along with useful melee weapons. It really looks to be a solid sequel to EU/EW and a good installment in the overall series.

My only wish is they'd named it something other than Xcom 2.

That will always mean "Terror from the Deep" to me, no matter how good this one turns out
 
My fears were unfounded. Slight gpu upgrade and it runs like silk, although my team gets it's ass wiped wayyyy more often than Enemy Unknown and I fucking love it :D
 
I've got an older PC (with GTX570) and I do get freezes during fastroping cutscenes, but during actual gameplay it's absolutely fine.

I'm past the first "big" arctic mission now, but my verdict is still out. To a certain extent it feels like they made the game more complicated without any actual real benefits to it. Simple isn't bad imo, especially if the gameplay is up to snuff. But as I said, I'm not far into the game yet & I think they're still explaining concepts before the game really kicks off.
 
aenemic said:
Yeah, a lot of people seem to be having issues. For me it's worked perfectly so far, so I'm happy about that.

I'm playing on Commander (equivalent of Classic in EU/EW) and it's certainly challenging. I've lost a few guys, but only rookies so far. I wanted to do an ironman playthrough, but I'm not doing that until the game is patched. Don't want to lose lots of progress due to any eventual bugs. So instead of going "honorman" or "bronzeman" or whatever you want to call it. I only reload if I'm failing completely, and I only load a save at the very start of a mission. So no turn do-overs. That way I will have to accept lost soldiers unless I want to waste a ton of time replaying missions. I also do this because I want to take in the story. I'm loving how story-driven the game seems to be.

You gotta remember that the Let's Players like Beagle and Mr Odd are really damn good at XCom. Of course they make it look easy.

There is a lot of complaining about the turn limits on the majority of missions. Personally I don't have a problem with it so far. Rather, I enjoy it because it speeds up the game and it has me rethinking strategies and killing old habits. To me, most of it sounds like "man, this game is haaaard - I want easy mode!". Punishing you for sloppy tactics is one of the core concepts of XCom. I sincerely hope all this whining won't have a lasting effect on XCom and future iterations.
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I have to admit I'm not the best with strategy and sometimes I'm guilty of save scumming from time to time. Usually, if I've failed a single mission two times over, whether it was important or not, I just move on.

The bugs and poor performance are the most common complaints so far, though it's not drastic, people are just surprised to see a PC exclusive being badly optimised rather than a poor PC port again. At this point, I'm finally beginning to doubt whether it's poor effort on the developer's part, or if minimum specs for every PC game from this point on just needs to start going up drastically again. It's like standard requirements for a lot of PC games are starting to fall behind the console capabilities, which is strange.

Anyways, the difficulty complaints so far are there the same way people complain about Dark Souls difficulty. Just because it's fun from being hard doesn't mean letting loose some steam is wrong. Most of the complaints on the difficulty aren't really serious, they're just being salty about it but in truth, any easier would've been a disappointment to everyone. It's a direct sequel and builds on the last one. Playing it like a standalone game in terms of difficulty adjustment is not a very smart way to take it on.

Difficulty's fine, performance was fine on mine but needs patching up on lower specs. I'm thinking the entire gaming industry needs to finally refocus on the many aspects of PC gaming so that either the standards for optimisation improve or we need new, more accurate minimum specs.
 
So far the main issues appear to be people having performance issues or people claiming "GAME TOO HARD 0/10"

Apparently there are too many timed missions as well. I don't know why it would be a good idea to put a mission timer in a turn-based strategy game.
 
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Irwin John Finster said:
So far the main issues appear to be people having performance issues or people claiming "GAME TOO HARD 0/10"

Apparently there are too many timed missions as well. I don't know why it would be a good idea to put a mission timer in a turn-based strategy game.
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No, like I just said, the game being too hard was a Dark Souls-like common joke complaint. No one comes to XCOM for easy givings. It's just a running thing going around everywhere. There are a couple of geniune complaints but not nearly enough to change developer priorities. Personally, it fits the whole guerilla band on the run thing, but I wish they balanced the concept of completing objectives and then escaping the area out more. It seems like the game is designed for hit-and-runs yet you can't do that on so many operations, in which case, in becomes too hard for real.

The performance thing is surprising because for the first time in a long time, a PC exclusive and not a poor PC port does this. It's been fine for me, but my laptop is pretty high-end (and painfully expensive) so that was to be expected.

As for the timed missions - they're fine, and perfectly paced. Far as I've seen, not having a time limit would actually be detrimental to the player, since pressuring them to move is beneficial. Going forward seems to save my squad more than staying in cover now, and it promotes taking risks and new manuevers. I like the new timed missions just fine.
 
About an hour in XCOM 2 (aka I-Corridor 2) and I already feel like watching paint dry, grass grow and claw my face off instead.

For crying out fucking loud. Just like with the first fucking X-Com "reboot" it's cutscene after cutscene after cutscene and if it's not that it's the usual bull from the first. Linear hand-holding, two moves only and no TUs (time units) and the list goes on.

Fuck you Firaxis (and who else thought generalizing X-Com for the idiotic masses was good idea) and frankly screw cripple A gaming in general.
That's my opinion on the matter and if anyone has anything to say about it, I don't fucking care. I'm sick of humanity.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm gonna boot up OpenXcom and do a terror mission where I can shoot humans as a Gazer alien because you fuckers deserve it.
 
I love this game so far.

The only black mark is the performance issues. My computer is not a powerhouse (6 core Phenom and R7 260x card) but even so the game doesn't run very well, I absolutely have to disable AA, AO, and dynamic shadows to play above 30 FPS, and on the Avenger it sometimes dips to 20 or less. I'd expect these issues from a multiplatform, but from a PC exclusive? Firaxis can do better. The camera can also be quite buggy, especially when triggering multiple Overwatchs.

Apart from that, it's basically EU/EW cranked up to 11. Tougher and more varied enemies, but you get loads of powerful toys to play with. The strategic layer is much better, there's a greater sense of being able to play your way rather than satellite spam and I never seem to have enough supplies, intel or time, whereas I spent a lot of EU overfunded and much of Xenonauts and Long War waiting around. The random maps add some welsome variety, even if you do see patterns from time to time. Concealment is a very cool mechanic, managing to decimate two entire pods in one carefully planned turn is immensely satisfying.

Playing on Commander, and the challenge is definitely there, I lose 4 soldiers so far not counting the 2 jokers in the prologue. What I like is that the difficulty curve is far more even than EU's (where the early game was brutal and the mid/lategame faceroll). New and challenging enemies are introduced at a steady pace so you never get complacent. In a way it also more forgiving, strategically speaking; I lost a Retaliation mission (equivalent of Terror) and while doing that would mean 3-4 countries instantly leave the Council in EU, here it means I lose contact with the region and income; a setback to be sure, but I can retake it. I think it's a good thing, it encourages less save scumming if you fail to complete an objective.

The complaints about timers are unfounded if you ask me. You always have ample time to get to the objective, I have never failed a timed objective once even if my squad was getting battered. The fact that Specialists can complete objectives halfway across the map helps a lot. And the more difficult missions usually don't have timers anyway, and unlike in Terror missions back in EU Retaliation seems hard coded so that only 1 civilian die per turn.

My favorite mission was a Defense one; basically, a UFO shoots down the Avenger (you can prevent it, t'is a Dark Event) and you need to defend the ship's ramp as you push forward to destroy an enemy relay. You get hordes (20+) of enemies initially, with ADVENT reinforcements every turn after a time, but you also get to use up to 9 soldiers so it turns into a giant, very tense brawl as you slowly get overwhelmed but manage to fly off by the skin of your teeths.

OK, enough gushing about this game, back to playing it.
 
I gotta ask everybody. What do you think of the 2 action system present in XCOM EU and XCOM 2? Do you like it better compared to Fallout or Jagged Alliance 2?
 
Sn1p3r187 said:
I gotta ask everybody. What do you think of the 2 action system present in XCOM EU and XCOM 2? Do you like it better compared to Fallout or Jagged Alliance 2?
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It's got its plusses and minuses. 2 actions makes every decision important; one bad move or one miss can alter the course of the battle (by allowing one of those damn Mutons to grenade half your squad, for instance). Of course, that also robs some flexibility from the player and makes the RNG a very cruel mistress sometimes.

Xcom 2 has a lot of abilities/items granting free actions, however. The Gunslinger build for Sharpshooters is built around it for instance, reloading now doesn't end your turn at once, you can fire rockets after moving, and there's a mod with a chance to grant you an action after firing for instance. It seems that the devs are aware of the limitations of the system, but decided to work around them rather than scrap it entirely. I like it overall and think it works well.

That said, while I like the AP system and Fallout, and found it worked well in Tactics, the TU system in X-Com and Xenonauts seems a bit like needless complexility to me. Working with 8 or 10 AP is more interesting than working with 50 or 67 or 72 or 81 TUs, with every menial actions costing TUs including freaking turning around.
 
ZigzagPX4 said:
I have to admit I'm not the best with strategy and sometimes I'm guilty of save scumming from time to time. Usually, if I've failed a single mission two times over, whether it was important or not, I just move on.

The bugs and poor performance are the most common complaints so far, though it's not drastic, people are just surprised to see a PC exclusive being badly optimised rather than a poor PC port again. At this point, I'm finally beginning to doubt whether it's poor effort on the developer's part, or if minimum specs for every PC game from this point on just needs to start going up drastically again. It's like standard requirements for a lot of PC games are starting to fall behind the console capabilities, which is strange.

Anyways, the difficulty complaints so far are there the same way people complain about Dark Souls difficulty. Just because it's fun from being hard doesn't mean letting loose some steam is wrong. Most of the complaints on the difficulty aren't really serious, they're just being salty about it but in truth, any easier would've been a disappointment to everyone. It's a direct sequel and builds on the last one. Playing it like a standalone game in terms of difficulty adjustment is not a very smart way to take it on.

Difficulty's fine, performance was fine on mine but needs patching up on lower specs. I'm thinking the entire gaming industry needs to finally refocus on the many aspects of PC gaming so that either the standards for optimisation improve or we need new, more accurate minimum specs.
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I have encountered a few bugs and "wtf" moments that I'm unsure if they're bugs or poor design. Some of them have resulted in me save scumming, unfortunately. It's not fun screwing up because the game tells you you'll have line of sight, but when you move you suddenly don't. And losing a soldier because a Faceless spawns on the last turn of a retaliation mission and immediately gets a free turn is immensely frustrating - first time that happened I did reload, because I had no idea it could happen. Now that I know, I can adapt to it and if I make the same mistake again I won't reload. Still, mistakes like that can be "fun" on an ironman playthrough.

I've had no problems with performance, save the same retaliation mission I just mentioned, which had some dips in fps because of all the fire around the map (I presume). Buy yeah, performance seems to be one of the biggest issues with the game. It's really hard to tell these days if it's poor optimization or if it's on the user end - I do think that peoples pc's are generally even more varied now, what with all the drifferent driver versions, different parts manufacturers, different versions of Windows (and updates), "performance enhancing" software etc. Plus, I doubt people actually keep their pc's as clean and virus/malware free as they might think.

As for difficulty, I played quite a bit last night and got further into the game. New enemies have appeared and the missions have gone from all being labeled as "easy" to some being "moderate" or "difficult". The challenge is definitely ramping up. But I still think it feels fair. Save for the mission I am on now, which is the first time I've called bullshit on a few things. It's a timed mission on 8 turns where I have to destroy an ADVENT relay. I start in a corner and within the first double move from there, there are two turrets, a MEC and a trooper. Once I move past them, two Stun Lancers and a MEC drop in. A little bit further (like a half a move) is the house where the relay is, which has a Muton and two Sectoids patrolling around it. And on the other side of that house is a Viper and two more ADVENT. All this is so closely packed together that there's no chance in hell to deal with one pod at a time. I do think that this is a fun mission to figure out, but the problem is that it would pretty much be a guaranteed fail on a first attempt, at least to someone at my skill level. And I would be ok with that in an ironman playthrough, but having the option to retry the mission was too tempting. Besides, it's a guerilla ops mission - failure results in a rather punishing Dark Event.

So I did make a second attempt once I realized there was absolutely no way to get close enough to destroy the relay (after also finding out that rockets don't damage the relay). Second attempt went better and I'm just at the end of the mission - surrounded by enemies, most soldiers flanked. And the last thing that happens is that a Stun Lancer gets a double turn (obvious bug) - he teleports from behind his cover, next to my Ranger and kills her, then he moves out from the cover he initially was behind and fires on another soldier. And that's when the last pod gets activated (the Viper and two troopers), now having my guys surrounded even more. Like I said, these moments make the game an exciting experience and teach you a lot. They're frustrating as hell, but don't make me ragequit the game and yell that the game is too hard and unfair. I know a lot of mistakes I made, and a lot of precautions I should have taken. I also believe missions like this are to teach you it's actually ok to lose a mission. But a bug like that does upset me, and I don't feel ashamed for retrying from the previous turn.
 
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