Vaeliorin

Forgive me if this is a repeat, but I've read about as much of this topic as I can stomach at the moment.. So it's okay if everyone else has to use the same abilities every encounter, but casters should be special? Why? Playing a fighter or rogue, in a decent system (D&D is not a decent system) should be just as interesting as playing a mage. Honestly, all Vancian casting means to me is that I never cast anything until I come across a fight that I can't beat without casting something. Which means outside of boss fights I almost never cast spells. In PoE, I made lists of lootable camping supplies that I couldn't pick up because I was already at the limit, and yet I think I only went back for one once (and I didn't just backtrack to inns, and I never bought camping supplies.) Personally, I'd prefer a system where all my characters are useful all the time, and aren't super useful (and generally OP) in one or two fights, and almost completely useless the rest of the time.

At least 1 more than the minimum number to fill all the Fighter/Wizard/Cleric/Thief archetypes. So, usually 5+, sometimes 4+ (mostly in systems where mages can heal.) Basically, give me room to bring a wild card, jack of all trades, or double up on a role and I'm happy. Given that the characteristics of a thief I'm interested in (dealing with locks and traps) aren't class exclusive in PoE, anything greater than or equal to 4 works for me, obviously balanced against the number of enemies.

Unless Obsidian intends to reduce trash encounters by 80%-90%, I'd much rather have a system wherein I'm willing to let the AI actually do things (cooldowns) than one in which I don't want them wasting limited resources (per rest.) Otherwise we end up with, what was to me the biggest problem with PoE combat, trash fights requiring a bunch of micro-management and becoming a massive slog. In the IE games, 85% of fights just required select all->attack, 10% required casting haste, and 5% actually required micro-management, whereas I found PoE to be almost exactly the opposite.

I had a Disgaea game back on the PS2 (I think it was called Symphony of Darkness or something similarly silly) and I recall it being, in my mind, overly complex. It was fine up until they started introducing different colored ground that (if I'm remembering correctly) effected different characters differently. It was just way too much to remember without having any sort of tooltips to remind me what did what exactly.

I wasn't going to fund PoE2 (largely because of Fig, which I don't think is shady or anything, but just seems so freaking unnecessary) but then they had to go and make it all piratey and nautical, and that's something I've been wanting for a long time. Still haven't backed it, but I'm considering it. Not to the extent of the original (because PoE's combat just isn't fun for me...it would be fun if it was turn-based, but as RTwP it just seems to require too much micromanagement in every fight) , but slightly above the basic tier.

Yup. While the idea is still good (and the art is still beautiful) the gameplay of the first game turned me off playing or backing any more of them.

OMG...the Steelers actually scored a touchdown. I thought they only knew how to kick field goals. ...And they missed the extra point. Apparently they only like to have points in multiples of 3.

Is that the new Star Trek uniform? (Seriously, is that kind of thing something people actually wear?)

I don't speak German, but I'm fairly certain that "kinder" is the German word for children. Edit: Ninja'ed

I'm running Gotcha (Flank Preview), Additional Icons (with the loot icons turned off), Perfect Information, CapnBub's, and UIKillCounter along with Long War 2. There are things I like about Long War 2 and things I really, really hate. The changes to the attack formula are so annoying (a 113% shot shouldn't give me -3% to crit because the hit chance is "too low" and it shouldn't freaking graze.) I hate some of the new sidearms (my gunner definitely is gonna use that knife a lot...), but love some of the other ones (Arc Thrower ftw.) I don't get the Holotargeter at all (am I really gonna want to give up my sniper's attack for a 10% bonus to hit that often?) unless you take the free action every 4 turns perk, which means you have to skip Snapshot (and given the Squadsight penalties in XCOM2, I much prefer a Snapshot sniper.) Also, I'd kind of like to punch whoever decided rocket scatter should be a thing in the face. My one use per mission item/ability shouldn't cause more harm than good when I use it (I may be bitter that the first time I used it, instead of hitting the 3 Advent I was aiming at, it blew up the building containing the people I was trying to rescue and killed one of them.) Kind of hoping there's an ini setting to turn off the rainbow colored ability bar, as well. There seem to be a lot of good things, too. The Geoscape seems interesting, though I'll have to see more of it to know for sure. I like the Infiltration mechanic, and some of the new missions I've encountered (it was kind of cool to do a mission without a shot fired. Never broke cover until I hacked the cell doors of some resistance folks, and a turn later we were on the Skyranger...although I may have accidentally thrown a grenade while trying to evac...) It definitely feels more like a Resistance/Guerilla War now, and funding seems hard to come by (no more having almost a hundred trooper corpses by the time the Black Market opens ) Definitely looking forward to playing more of it (and hoping some more mods get updated with compatibility...I really miss True Concealment.)

So, unbeknownst to me, A Better Advent 2 adds some mission variants into XCOM 2. So, color me surprised when I drop into a Retaliation mission, and there's like 8 civilians in visual range. So I blue move my scout to grab a civilian, and lo and behold, it's a Faceless. Just bad luck I assume, and move my scout away to grab 2 more nearby civilians. Just my luck, I trigger a squad of Advent, and, surprise, one of them's a Faceless. At this point, I figure something's got to be up. So I kill the two Faceless and two of the four Advent. Enemy turn comes, and what do I behold but another civilian turning into a Faceless, who runs up and dings one of my soldiers, while another takes 5 damage from an Advent Kommisar (a captain variant that returns fire.) So, I kill the Faceless and the Advent, and begin cautiously across the map, killing an additional 5 Faceless (for a total of 8 so far) before I encounter another Advent patrol. I kill two and freeze the other two, because I have to figure there are more Faceless around and I need guys on overwatch. Amazingly, no Faceless get revealed, and the next turn I kill the remaining two Advent, at which point 7 more Faceless reveal themselves. I'm kind of worried at this point, because no way do I have enough guys left with actions to kill 7 Faceless, and one of them is definitely within range to attack me. So I move everyone I can as far away from the bulk of the Faceless as I can, kill the nearby one, overwatch, and pray. 6 Faceless charge me, 2 of them getting killed by overwatch (I've got mag weapons, and one of my soldiers that uses a cannon got Lethal from the AWC, so he does 8-10 damage, and he one hit a Faceless with his overwatch), and fortunately none of them manage to reach me. Now it's just a matter of cleanup, so I drop an Incendiary grenade on 2 of them, and manage to take out all 4 of them thanks to every shot hitting. So, mission accomplished. 23 aliens dead (which is a pretty typical number for a mission at this point), 15 of which were Faceless, 14 civvies saved (Advent didn't attack them...I'm guessing so as not to make the Faceless obvious) and if I used mimic beacons (I don't) I'd be set for the rest of the campaign. I was pretty freaked out when I started finding all the Faceless, but honestly, it was probably easier than a typical Retaliation (which are honestly my least favorite missions in the game, but this one was really fun.) Now I just have to deal with the fact there's only 5 days until the Avatar project completes and 2 of my top soldiers are in the infirmary. At least I have access to the Blacksite. I'm loving this campaign.

It makes more sense when you realize that Firaxis paid them to make it (or at least that's what I hear.)

Still playing XCOM2, though I had to start a new campaign because I can not get Additional Mission Types to play well with A Better Advent 2 (either empty missions or messed up maps...I had a Rioting City mission that dumped me in the map for the final mission.) Added some other new mods, so now I have 14 classes to choose from (makes it hard to decide what classes should make up your A Squad.) Spec Op Throwing Knives are awesome. They let your stealth units actually participate without breaking stealth (when you throw one, as long as it kills the enemy, you don't break stealth) so they don't take forever to level up (because normally I don't want my stealth units to attack, because then I won't have stealth later, obviously.) Only 2 uses per mission and they count as a grenade, so they're relatively balanced (and late game they likely won't do enough damage to one shot things...they only have a 67% chance to one shot trooper types right now.) Given I've got ABA 2 with default settings (so pods of up to 6 by mid-game) I don't mind a little bit of OPness. Also, mission names are still awesome. Had Operation Chicken Wagon the other day.

Interesting news for those interested in Long War 2,

Freespace ruined the Descent franchise.

I thought he missed that second kick at the beginning...

Overwatch? This is how you take out reinforcements with style: Would be lovely, but they nerfed proximity mines to the point of near uselessness.

Admittedly, in the base game, once you know how they work, the reinforcements aren't an issue (though they sometimes drop far enough away that you can't just overwatch them.) I always play with Additional Mission Types, though, and the reinforcements on Defend the Haven Retaliation missions (you get 2 drops at a time in the later turns) and Rescue VIP From Rioting City mission types (where the reinforcements often spawn far enough away from your main forces that you're likely only going to have the rookie reinforcements you get to try to overwatch them, and they have at best mag weapons, which you have to build in the Proving Ground and are pretty expensive) can get pretty crazy. Basically, while I like the base game, mods make it much better, and solve pretty much every problem I've had with it (there's even a mod that makes it so combat is initiative-based instead of I Go, You Go, though it's a little buggy.)

Love the True Concealment mod. One of the most fun missions I ever had was one where I only had 3 turns to hack the objective (True Concealment adds a dark event that halves the turn timer), so I had to thread the needle between three enemy pods to get to the objective without breaking concealment. There's no tension like watching an Advent Beastmaster and his chrysallid pets pathing towards your concealed soldiers while you're preying they won't manage to flank anyone.

Long War 2 for XCOM 2

I think comparing the combat between the two isn't really fair, given that they're (as far as I'm concerned) in different genres. Dragon's Dogma combat gets compared against the likes of Dark Souls, and though Dragon's Dogma's combat is prettier, it's nowhere near as compelling as Dark Souls. I also don't really like open worlds, so that type of exploring isn't really for me. Dragon's Dogma also suffers because in order to optimize your character you can end up spending 200 levels playing as every class but the class you want to play, which is pretty terrible design. Also, only 1 save...I don't know who thought that was a good idea, but it wasn't. Honestly, it mostly just comes down to DA:I being closer to the type of game I enjoy (traditional western RPG, though preferably turn-based) than Dragon's Dogma, while having (as far as I was concerned) more interesting side stuff (or really, less super boring pointless side stuff) than Witcher 3. If I was the type who could ignore all those unexplored points of interest, I'm sure I'd consider Witcher 3 the far superior game (despite having terrible combat), but I just really can't.

Honestly, I preferred DA:I to Dragon's Dogma. But that's mostly because I found the camera in Dragon's Dogma to be completely terrible. I found it nearly impossible to keep track of enemies, and often had trouble even noticing them before they were attacking because they blended into the background so much. All of that could have been alleviated if the camera just zoomed out further. Also, I prefer real companions to pawns, and found the story in Dragon's Dogma to be severely lacking (this isn't to say DA:I is a masterpiece of storytelling, but I found Dragon's Dogma's story incredibly threadbare.) When the camera wasn't being awful, the combat in Dragon's Dogma was certainly better, though.

Wizardry 8. Yes, you can break it if you want (well, not every skill, but some of them), but you don't need to to be powerful. It's certainly less broken that Wizardry 6 and 7 were, even if I still love those games. Granted, your mileage may vary, but it's one of my favorite games, and would be a starting point for any system I would design (I'd go classless, but other than that there's a lot of things I'd take from it.)

I ended up quitting after I spent like 6-8 hours trying to clear out all the points of interest I had left around Vhelen (sp?) and there were still about 40 to do (though apparently a bunch of those were from Hearts of Stone and too high level for me.) It wouldn't have bothered me if they were interesting, but pointless loot and random level 3 enemies when I was in the high teens or twenties (don't recall exactly) don't compelling gameplay make. Someday I'll go back to it (and start over) but I don't know how I'm going to get through all of those things (and I can't ignore them...I can't leave things in games undone, it drives me nuts.)

I always feel compelled to watch the credits of any game I enjoyed, but I swear Wings of Liberty tested my patience. I think that was the longest credits I've ever seen, including Kickstarter games that listed all their backers. Who thought they needed to list all their customer service reps, from every region of the world? Also, it didn't have particularly good music, and the backgrounds repeated too much, Honestly, I think the best credits I've seen lately were DA:I's. Cassandra reading Varric's book was pretty freaking hilarious.