"Obviously X-COM also faced this problem. One of the biggest complaints is when an enemy is right next to a player and they’ve got an 85 per cent chance to hit and they miss. ‘That’s absolutely ridiculous!’ People ragequit and never play again. It’s an issue they partly solved in XCOM 2, and we had another mode in Chaos Reborn. It’s a rather sobering lesson in game design and how people manage random factors."
lofaszvanitt · 1d ago
Original XCOM and XCOM2 was ok, PP was rubbish.
scotty79 · 1d ago
Why was it rubbish?
jsiepkes · 23h ago
I wouldn't say it was rubbish, but I will say I was disappointed with it (as a life long XCOM fan). Primarily because the microgame (tactical squad based combat) was good but the macro game (the strategical game in the world overview) was weak. Base building was basically non-existent compared to the original XCOM games. Instead you stumbled across existing bases and "build" on of 3 facilities in them. The research tree was weak. A DLC introduced the "shooting down UFO's"-mechanic but overall all of the DLC was just focused on more different enemies and story lines and did very little to improve the worldview game.
nis0s · 1d ago
I hope the future direction of this game goes back to its roots. The X-COM2 DLC which introduces alien combatants to your team as players always seemed deeply misguided to me. To me the point of XCOM is about humanity confronting those aspects it finds unacceptable to its condition, I’ve never taken it literally about aliens vs. humans, so the othering of a race of aliens is not a concern for me. What I care about are non-fictional people, their nations and their cultures. So the DLC where aliens were part of your team seemed like such a misguided venture to me. It seemed like something someone might come up with in a thoughtless effort to be inclusive of diversity. But what does that even mean in this case? So, yeah I hope XCOM reexamines it point, or someone else should create a better IP.
TheCleric · 1d ago
I feel completely the opposite. What would it look like in an alien war? Would we have defectors like we do in actual war? Could some of those fighting for the aliens actually be enslaved and riot?
All of this adds depth and texture to a game instead of "humans good, aliens bad". The world isn't simplistic and I really don't want a game with a theme to either.
nis0s · 22h ago
I get that, but as I see it, this way of thinking about it just makes a mediocre IP that’s coloring by numbers. It’s exactly how you say it is, and it’s what’s expected. A typical war story. But let’s look at it from a Tolkien perspective, to me that lens of looking at things gives you a sense of what’s important to keep, and what values to adhere to. It’s not orcs vs. humans, it’s evil vs. mankind. It’s not aliens vs. people, it’s non-human vs. mankind. That’s just my way of looking at it, and I expect others to enjoy the game differently, and that’s fair.
TheCleric · 20h ago
So to make it less mediocre you’d make it more predictable?
nis0s · 20h ago
To me there’s so little in the way of things which unite us on the concept of humanity. Our conceptualization of evil and what it means is somewhat aligned, but more than that what I think unites us is our way of thinking about things which give us hope. The takeaway from a lot of Tolkien’s work, and that of others like him, has always been about the nature of fairy stories and what they entail.
It’s the same with games about uniting as humanity to kill aliens, you exist in some liminal space between reality and fantasy to come to terms with what it means to be who you are, etc. That said, someone is free to make their game how they like, just as I am free to dislike its direction and make a comment on it. And so on, and so forth.
cosmicgadget · 23h ago
Wait isn't the puppet human government a huge part of the story?
cosmicgadget · 23h ago
Did the developers say it was driven by inclusivity?
scotty79 · 1d ago
I really liked X-COM Chimera Squad. Different capabilities were really cool and interspecies banter made the whole thing feel alive. Don't get me wrong, I still like shadowy claustrophobic climate of the original just as much, but for example X-COM reboot was almost spoiled for me because of one character, Bradford. I never hated any alien as much as his nagging, orders and tone.
Also the mechanic in the reboot was a bit misguided. They eliminated sneaking up and ambushing the enemy and replaced it by little animated introduction of the enemy as soon as they land into a very large circle around your soldiers, almost regardless of terrain. X-COM 2 brought it back a little bit with you soldiers starting in stealth mode and some of them potentially re-entering stealth again using a skill.
All of this adds depth and texture to a game instead of "humans good, aliens bad". The world isn't simplistic and I really don't want a game with a theme to either.
It’s the same with games about uniting as humanity to kill aliens, you exist in some liminal space between reality and fantasy to come to terms with what it means to be who you are, etc. That said, someone is free to make their game how they like, just as I am free to dislike its direction and make a comment on it. And so on, and so forth.
Also the mechanic in the reboot was a bit misguided. They eliminated sneaking up and ambushing the enemy and replaced it by little animated introduction of the enemy as soon as they land into a very large circle around your soldiers, almost regardless of terrain. X-COM 2 brought it back a little bit with you soldiers starting in stealth mode and some of them potentially re-entering stealth again using a skill.