What are you playing now?

[Drowsy Emperor]

 

 

 

I have noticed it is mostly the latecomers that are critical of Xcom (I think when the game launched there was a thread where most of us enjoyed it, and only one or two people were disappointed.)  Obviously there must have been some initial skepticism about the game to keep Boo and Melk from picking it up earlier, and that must have been justified.   

 

Its not skepticism keeping me away its just that I don't currently have access to my desktop so I can't play any newer titles.

 

That said, my neighbor, who is much more tolerant about game flaws in general very quickly grew bored of XCOM.

 

I still want to try it though.

 

 

I finished and much to my surprise I'm completely unable to play through again. This is very much unlike me.

 

1. The difficulty is all wrong. The aliens just get crazier, and 'cheat' more.

2. It needlessly annoys me that all my 'men' speak with an American accent, despite being from, say, Brunei.

3. I could complain about the boring weapon loadouts, but ultimately it comes back to lazy alien AI combined with weak mission archetypes.

 

 

Is it true that enemies always spawn in the same place (on the same maps obviously) and wait for you to come at which point they get a free move to hit you or hide - that there are effectively a limited collection of set piece battles with no randomization?

 

Also, is it true that the game rolls all the shots in advance. One player was complaining on metacritic that if you load the game the soldiers miss or hit always in the same pattern, never re rolling the attack?

Edited May 18, 2013 by Drowsy Emperor

[Humanoid]

Neither are accurate, but it's easy to see why it can be perceived that way.

 

Unsighted enemies are never aware of you, this is true, but they do patrol. What happens is that alien packs patrol various waypoints. On their turn, unsighted enemies movement path is calculated from A to B, and line-of-sight is tested for each tile between those two points. If they can't see your squad from any of those tiles, the group is moved to the new waypoint. (They don't bother animating the move since they're supposedly out of your LoS, but there was a notorious bug where this was calculated incorrectly, and therefore caused enemies to teleport into LoS)

 

If there is LoS established at any point in their move, then on the first tile that contact can happen, the aliens move there, then get a single *move-only* turn which they must use to find cover for themselves, they cannot in any circumstance dash (i.e. double move) or attack. This is then immediately followed by your turn, so it's never possible for aliens to establish contact then attack you without your having a turn in between to react. Now this behaviour does annoy some people, but is an absolutely necessary one for game balance purposes - if this did not happen, it would be trivial to wipe them out in a single turn. The excellent Toolboks mod can disable this behaviour if you wish to see it played like that.

 

Accusations that this is the AI 'cheating' is absurd because the player gets to not only do the same, but actually shoot when this happens - so if anything it's a handicap on the AI. The altenative coding, functionally the same, would be for the patrol calculation to always end the alien turn in cover, but it'd just draw a different complaint that "cheating AI always spawns in cover".

 

The game rolling all the shots in advance is only vaguely true. Like the Civ games, the game saves the random number seed in your savegame file. Therefore effectively what you have is a fixed series of numbers for a given game, but used as required, so not only for shooting, but morale checks, environmental destruction, etc. If you take the exact same action after loading a savegame, then the same random number is used, creating the same result. If you change up the order in which you take shots, then the outcomes will be different.

 

The actual random number generator itself has been tested independently by multiple different people and has been shown to be a fair and robust one. There is actually something to the common accusation that the RNG is skewed towards the AI, but not in the way most expect: on Easy and Normal difficulties, the *player* gets a hidden +hit modifier after each consecutive time they miss. So if they miss, say, a 25% shot, the next 25% shot they make will actually have a 35% chance to hit, even if the display continues to show 25%. The player, having gotten used to this behaviour, then feels less 'lucky' when they play on Classic or Impossible difficulties, where the rules are completely 'fair'.

 

On easy there are even more hidden cheats in favour of the player: every time they lose a soldier for example, the rest of the squad gets a big flat bonus to their dodge chance. Now if you lose all but one of your guys, you can literally stand in the open and Rambo the whole map without a care, because all alien hit chances are 0% by that point.

 

Another sort-of-cheat in Easy and Normal is that no matter how many aliens can see you, only five at a time will actively take action against you, the rest will just stay back and wait for some of their buddies to die before actually attacking.

Edited May 18, 2013 by Humanoid

[Drowsy Emperor]

But if the AI always gets a move action that means you can never actually surprise them by sneaking in close in a direction they aren't looking to get a free shot?

 

Like its possible to do in Jagged Alliance?

Edited May 18, 2013 by Drowsy Emperor

[melkathi]

But if the AI always gets a move action that means you can never actually surprise them by moving in close in a direction they aren't looking to get a free shot?

 

Exactly. Part of the criticism I made earlier in this thread

You can never truly sneak up on them, as their exact position will be determined the moment you enter LOS and, through their free move, will be in relation to your position. You could spend a lot of time circline part of your squad around, so that running to cover from your spotter, will cause them to run into the line of fire of your waiting squadies. But you will pretty much always need one person to draw the aliens' attention.

There deffinitly is no putting down landmines in the patrol path of a supermutant guard, as you could do in Fallout Tactics

[Humanoid]

Everyone in the game has 360 degree line-of-sight, so there's no real concept of "sneaking up" behind anyone. You can a free attack on unactivated aliens by, as stated in a previous post, the special ability Battle Scanner, or using the stealth-suit Ghost Armor, but that's not really relevant until the late-game by which stage it may not really matter anymore.

 

During the free move they are vulnerable to your "overwatch" reaction shots however, so it's fully possible to wipe out a pack of aliens the moment they show up, although this is rare.

[sorophx]

 

GTA4 was the most boring of all the GTA's so far. I really hope they bring back the fun factor in GTA5 because GTA4 could have been sooo good.. if it wasn't so dull.

 

what are you talking about? GTA IV is the best game in the series (yes, even better than Vice City)

[Darkpriest]

Bought System Shock 2 on Steam... god how I wish they would remake this game with modern graphics... just a simple graphics update....

 

Even audio, even though it has so many years, is still very good!

Edited May 18, 2013 by Darkpriest

[Drowsy Emperor]

Everyone in the game has 360 degree line-of-sight, so there's no real concept of "sneaking up" behind anyone. You can a free attack on unactivated aliens by, as stated in a previous post, the special ability Battle Scanner, or using the stealth-suit Ghost Armor, but that's not really relevant until the late-game by which stage it may not really matter anymore.

 

During the free move they are vulnerable to your "overwatch" reaction shots however, so it's fully possible to wipe out a pack of aliens the moment they show up, although this is rare.

 

 I guess that's why people are complaining that battles are "scripted", if every one of them starts with the aliens ducking for cover and continues with pew pewing over cover, majority of the time.

Edited May 18, 2013 by Drowsy Emperor

[Humanoid]

It's true, but I feel it misses the point - it's a gaming abstraction and I do feel they could have dressed it up better, but ultimately I don't see the behaviour as cheating. "Realistically", the player has just flown over the aliens in a giant noisy aircraft and is assaulting them. It's reasonable to expect the aliens to be prepared for the player, taking the necessary cover and being ready to fire. Yet the animation implies they've been caught totally unaware and they scramble into cover when you see them. Sure, it looks a bit awkward, but in the end it's a purely cosmetic quibble.

 

Indeed, realistically, all the aliens ought to be on overwatch to begin with and be able to kill you before you're even aware of them. This is how the original XCOM handled it, but this is not a viable proposition with the reduced squad of 4-6 troopers, as opposed to the two-dozen, mostly expendable guys you could get in the original.

 

In the end, I can see the point of view of most criticisms of the game, and agree that many mechanics feel very "gamey" - but yet as a whole, I can see the gameplay justification for all those design decisions, and mostly agree with them being made for the sake of being a more enjoyable, balanced game to play. I stand by my call of it being the 2012 game of the year by some distance.

 

 

A notable thing that may help with understanding why we have the product working as it does currently: during development, the various traditional squad-game mechanics from the earlier games, as well as other titles like JA2 were not only on the table, but indeed were all implemented and playtested as game mechanics. Time-units/action points were in and fully working, so was free-aiming, in-battle inventory management, and various ways encounters could begin. They then culled the mechanics that didn't work, or unbalanced the game.

Edited May 18, 2013 by Humanoid

[Labadal]

I'm building up my caravans in Neverwinter Nights 2. I thought it'd be boring and tedious but I don't mind it at all. I'm getting a lot of trade bars and it feels like I will never run out of money again.

[Drowsy Emperor]

Most people are complaining that the culling was done to cut the game down to a scope that would work on the consoles both from a hardware and gameplay standpoint - not because it was necessary (or even desirable) for an XCOM game per se.

 

I've never even played the original so I don't have a nostalgic relationship to it. I just like to know to get a realistic idea of what the game is like before I decide to jump in, or not.

Edited May 18, 2013 by Drowsy Emperor

[Walsingham]

I did enjoy playing it. But I'd have enjoyed a graphic/UI rehash of XCOM apocalypse more.

 

I just keep getting the feeling in game after game afte game that what we've gained graphically has been scoured out cognitively. By which I mean we have multi-layered shaders but single layered problems.

 

I don't know why the arse the industry isn't interested in improving. I'd cheerfully buy an AI processor to sit alongside my GPU.

[melkathi]

*grumble* strategy games used to be the one thing that hadn't been corrupted by consoles *grumble grumble* Next thing you know, they'll turn adventure games into interactive stories with quick time events... oh! wait, they already did...

[Drowsy Emperor]

I did find a post from Civ V's designer on kickstarter talking about how difficult AI is to program, how proud of his code he was but at the same time admits that the AI doesn't know how to play the game or work as he intended it to work.

 

Here:

 

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/02/14/jon-shafer-criticizes-every-decision-he-made-in-designing-civ-v-explains-how-at-the-gates-will-differ/

Edited May 18, 2013 by Drowsy Emperor

[melkathi]

Interesting read.Thanks.

[Majek]

XCOM was an experiment. And as far as i'm concerned they delivered a solid base that can be build upon. That's all i'll say about it.

 

Playing more Borderlands 2 again. Getting bored fast the closer i am to the end. :/

[Keyrock]

Still playing Grim Dawn and loving it.  I've played for about 9 hours and I think I'm pretty close to the end.  If this alpha is truly 1/3 of the entire game, then it should be about 30 hours for a single playthrough for an exploration junkie like me for the whole game, not too shabby.  Then, of course there's playing through again with different builds, and on the higher difficulty settings.  Like Titan Quest, I'll likely put hundreds of hours into the game before it's all said and done.

 

One of the things I really like is how much more open this game is than Titan Quest.  TQ did have some semi-large-ish areas, but they would quickly funnel into a choke point.  Grim Dawn still follows this formula to an extent, but the choke points are fewer and further between, the open areas are larger and more open, and there are often multiple paths to get through the choke points.  Another cool thing is all the destructables.  There are the standard destructables that highlight when you mouse over them, like barrels and crates, but there are also other destructables that don't highlight when you mouse over them, like furniture and walls.  Some destructable walls simply produce alternate paths to areas you could get to anyway, other destructable walls lead to super duper secret areas.  There are other secrets too.  I found a secret dungeon behind a super secret door that required finding something and talking to someone to get access to.  Inside was a bunch of cool stuff and baddies much stronger than the scaling curve.  I died twice in there because there was a really mean hero beastie in there, but it was worth it to romp through a cool secret area of extra buff baddies.

[Malcador]

GTA4, man is it fun being a phone jockey.

[Enoch]

Still playing Grim Dawn and loving it.  I've played for about 9 hours and I think I'm pretty close to the end.  If this alpha is truly 1/3 of the entire game, then it should be about 30 hours for a single playthrough for an exploration junkie like me for the whole game, not too shabby.  Then, of course there's playing through again with different builds, and on the higher difficulty settings.  Like Titan Quest, I'll likely put hundreds of hours into the game before it's all said and done.

 

One of the things I really like is how much more open this game is than Titan Quest.  TQ did have some semi-large-ish areas, but they would quickly funnel into a choke point.  Grim Dawn still follows this formula to an extent, but the choke points are fewer and further between, the open areas are larger and more open, and there are often multiple paths to get through the choke points.  Another cool thing is all the destructables.  There are the standard destructables that highlight when you mouse over them, like barrels and crates, but there are also other destructables that don't highlight when you mouse over them, like furniture and walls.  Some destructable walls simply produce alternate paths to areas you could get to anyway, other destructable walls lead to super duper secret areas.  There are other secrets too.  I found a secret dungeon behind a super secret door that required finding something and talking to someone to get access to.  Inside was a bunch of cool stuff and baddies much stronger than the scaling curve.  I died twice in there because there was a really mean hero beastie in there, but it was worth it to romp through a cool secret area of extra buff baddies.

 

Good to hear.  I'm no great ARPG fan (and I've never played Titan Quest), but the only 3 people with whom I do multiplayer games all seem rather excited about this one.  So if they get the multiplayer working right, I'll probably be playing it.  (I never last more than a few hours with a Diablo-like in single-player.) 

[GhostofAnakin]

Man, am I regretting bothering with NHL13.  I just don't like the changes they made to the physics in the game.  It almost feels like a huge step back from where the previous versions were.

[LadyCrimson]

Still haven't played much of the Grim Dawn alpha, but early on I was a bit annoyed with the rate of healing enemies have. It's not that it's troublesome or anything, but just enough where if you're focused on one guy then have to switch to some closer, the first one might be mostly healed up by the time you get back to it. Mostly, I could see that becoming tiresome in the harder difficulties if it scales up.

[Walsingham]

I did find a post from Civ V's designer on kickstarter talking about how difficult AI is to program, how proud of his code he was but at the same time admits that the AI doesn't know how to play the game or work as he intended it to work.

 

Here:

 

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/02/14/jon-shafer-criticizes-every-decision-he-made-in-designing-civ-v-explains-how-at-the-gates-will-differ/

 

It's a good point to clarify. I didn't say AI was easy. But we're a couple of baby steps away if we put the industry onto it full on.

 

EDIT: Actually, that gives me an idea...

Edited May 19, 2013 by Walsingham

[Morgoth]

The Walking Dead.

 

Nice little adventure from Telltale in the vein of Heavy Rain, minus the exorbitantly high production values. But it proves you don't need the latter in order to tell a nice little story.

[Gfted1]

Still haven't played much of the Grim Dawn alpha, but early on I was a bit annoyed with the rate of healing enemies have. It's not that it's troublesome or anything, but just enough where if you're focused on one guy then have to switch to some closer, the first one might be mostly healed up by the time you get back to it. Mostly, I could see that becoming tiresome in the harder difficulties if it scales up.

 

 

Im having a similar issue with Neverwinter Online. The respawn rate where I currently am is ramped up so fast that while youre battling one group, the group you just killed respawns and jumps you too.

[Lexx]

Played some Little Big Planet 2. Not bad so far.