Beagle said he's never seen aliens get stuck in geometry until streaming today, and he also said he's played about a hundred missions so far.
Also, what just happened on the stream had me laughing out loud super-loud. I hope he puts up a best-of reel from this stream or something because WOW.
Didn't he also started out by saying modded the game for more enemies? It might be a pathing issue that comes up mostly when there are more units moving around that what the mission maps were built for.
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
I'm pretty sure they're just explaining why you don't start out with advanced tech right off the bat. XCOM 2 starts with the narrative that the original XCOM project failed miserably and never got past the first few missions, if that. This allows them to start the game with a normal progression where you have "normal" weapons and then move on to the crazy laser beam plasma rifle stuff.
I'm pretty sure they're just explaining why you don't start out with advanced tech right off the bat. XCOM 2 starts with the narrative that the original XCOM project failed miserably and never got past the first few missions, if that. This allows them to start the game with a normal progression where you have "normal" weapons and then move on to the crazy laser beam plasma rifle stuff.
That wouldn't explain cutting them out as an eventual class choice altogether. I'd figure they would be a pretty popular choice to make a return but I guess they might want to hold them back for DLC.
I do like that the story is basically a continuation of a horrible brutal playthrough and bad ending though. That might be the most X-COM thing ever.
I'm watching the Let's Play with Sir Solomon, G.A. and Mark Nauta.
So, I get that when I'm watching a reviewer play and they're bad, okay, fair enough, they're there to review it not master it. But this Nauta guy is the balance lead. And he's awful.
I wish it wasn't but this is shaking my confidence in the game a bit - I feel like the guy in charge of deciding if things are difficult enough needs to have a basic level of competence at the game to be able to come to valid conclusions about that.
I feel the same way, typically when reviewers start discussing balance or builds or whatever while clearly not having any idea what they're doing.
Though being main doesn't necessitate you needing to be good at all, it's more important that there's some people in house that are good enough that he can analyze/bounce balls against. I don't think he's expected to just play a difficulty level and gut feeling it "This is too easy!", he's more akin to team leader on a big game.
I say this but at the same time developers constantly don't know their own games so...
Edit: It's also worth noting re: Beagle getting some enemy placement bugs, he's playing a beta version that he modded himself. The game freaking out a bit (Again, very few games total) isn't weird at all.
There's a developer/playtester story in the Tales from the Trenches that talks about testers having to demo a game at a show, and having to pretend to have middling skill at a game they've been playing 10 hours a day for months, so the attendees playing against them don't feel discouraged at being so soundly beaten.
I think some of that might be what's happening here, showing off by playing a game perfectly won't be the best advertisement for a game. A better show is to make the kind of mistakes first-time players might make.
Huh, looking at beagles videos it turns out legendary in xcom 2 doubles all building times. I wonder how that's gonna pan out, that ought to be a massive change in difficulty. I mean you're gonna have buildings that take a month to complete? You're gonna play catch up at the start for sure no matter what you do.
I think Solomon or Garth at some point said that Legendary was supposed to be like impossible + a longer campaign. Like a Long War lite. I kind of hope that there's still some old stuff bouncing around in the code for modders to pick out, cause I think it would be cool to have the old classes added back in, or the old aliens.
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DuriniaEvolved from Space PotatoesRegistered Userregular
I'm watching the Let's Play with Sir Solomon, G.A. and Mark Nauta.
So, I get that when I'm watching a reviewer play and they're bad, okay, fair enough, they're there to review it not master it. But this Nauta guy is the balance lead. And he's awful.
I wish it wasn't but this is shaking my confidence in the game a bit - I feel like the guy in charge of deciding if things are difficult enough needs to have a basic level of competence at the game to be able to come to valid conclusions about that.
If it makes you feel better, I watched the Pillars of Eternity team play their game at a PAX South panel last year, and the guy playing (designer? dev lead? forget) was absolutely awful and not faking - so much so that the other panelists joked about how bad he is and how he has to overlevel himself to get anywhere.
That game turned out fine.
For business reasons, I must preserve the outward sign of sanity.
--Mark Twain
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DuriniaEvolved from Space PotatoesRegistered Userregular
There are some exosuit armors in XCOM 2 that you can put on your soldiers that give you some of the MEC-like skills, but aren't permanent. TB talked about them a bit in his video. The concept of meld doesn't appear to exist (at least that I've seen), so your troops get to retain their humanity - which is thematically important for this one.
For business reasons, I must preserve the outward sign of sanity.
--Mark Twain
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Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
There are some exosuit armors in XCOM 2 that you can put on your soldiers that give you some of the MEC-like skills, but aren't permanent. TB talked about them a bit in his video. The concept of meld doesn't appear to exist (at least that I've seen), so your troops get to retain their humanity - which is thematically important for this one.
Damn. But thats something I guess.
I had really grown to love my crimes against nature.
All good things must come to end unfortunately including playing hop scotch with human DNA.
So, ChristopherOdd has a video about the Base Avenger Defense mission:
First off, unlike EW Base Defense, you get to choose who's in the squad at the beginning. You get 6 guys for your initial squad, even if you don't have the squad size upgrade for it, and all soldiers, even the wounded, are available for the mission.
You objective for the mission is twofold: You have to venture out and destroy the disruptor the aliens are using to keep the Avenger grounded, while keeping everyone away from the Avenger's loading ramp. The disruptor is destroyed by shooting at it, and you have 100% to hit, though it looked like you can't squadsight it with sharpshooters (or at least it was never tried) Once it's gone, all troops have to come back to the loading ramp, or they get left behind. This means any soldiers that died or were knocked out have to be carried off the battlefield if you want to have them and/or their gear survive for the next mission. Like the EW base defense, you get 3 extra soldiers during the mission, however there is no security personnel or armed engis/scientists that spawn with them.
What's stopping you? Well, for starts, you don't start the mission in concealment (barring any rangers who's concealment is separate from the rest of the squad) and also the aliens, lots of aliens. There were 5 pods at the beginning of the mission (including a MEC, 4 sectoids, a Muton and a Berserker) Eventually reinforcements start showing up every single turn, with increasingly more enemies as the mission goes on. After 14 turns, Odd had faced 45 baddies, and the dropships were bringing 4 each turn. So yeah, pretty rough mission.
I saw a kid get handed a JB poster by who I presume was his parents outside my store today....he tore it in half infront of his horrified parents.....There's hope for our youth yet!
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DuriniaEvolved from Space PotatoesRegistered Userregular
So, ChristopherOdd has a video about the Base Avenger Defense mission:
What's stopping you? Well, for starts, you don't start the mission in concealment (barring any rangers who's concealment is separate from the rest of the squad) and also the aliens, lots of aliens. There were 5 pods at the beginning of the mission (including a MEC, 4 sectoids, a Muton and a Berserker) Eventually reinforcements start showing up every single turn, with increasingly more enemies as the mission goes on. After 14 turns, Odd had faced 45 baddies, and the dropships were bringing 4 each turn. So yeah, pretty rough mission.
I started dry-heaving when I read that part.
It sounds like XCOM 2 is going to be harder than XCOM in certain ways. I don't know if this is good or bad news for me - me, who totally save-scummed the first game, like a coward. Maybe this game will force me to git gud.
So from seeing enough of the customization options at this point, the picture of the crew showing the pre-order bonus stuff seems to be literally what you get. Barring the guns, everything in that picture is unavailable in the preview copies. Which is cool cause I still like the vanilla armor. I do wonder whether or not the customizations go beyond the base armors or not. Like if there's also old armors of the higher tiers. I assume not.
Matt Lees of Cool Ghosts, Shut Up and Sit Down, and various other things has put up his video detailing his experiences with thoughts on playing the game for about 20 hours.
Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
Might have to restart after my millionth lost run and turn off Iron Man. Things aren't looking good.
But I will not turn it down to easy. Fuck you, X-COM. You won't break me. You've been trying to for years but it's not going to happen. I've never gone below normal difficulty in video games and I'm not going to start now.
Don't think of it as losing, think of it as creating a canon save state for X-COM 2.
PSN|AspectVoid
+3
Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
edited January 2016
Its not feasible to stall progress and just work on building stuff, right?
Thats the only thing I never tried. I've heard you should only start doing that after completing the alien base but never managed to get past that level yet and probably going to crash and burn before I get there on this save.
Zxerolfor the smaller pieces, my shovel wouldn't doso i took off my boot and used my shoeRegistered Userregular
edited January 2016
If you can shoot down every UFO in the world (you don't even have to assault them), you can stall indefinitely. But if you get to that point, you've pretty much already won anyway.
Its not feasible to stall progress and just work on building stuff, right?
Thats the only thing I never tried. I've heard you should only start doing that after completing the alien base but never managed to get past that level yet and probably going to crash and burn before I get there on this save.
On easy/normal you can, on those difficulties the aliens' progress is capped based on how far along the research tree you are.
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Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
edited January 2016
So I could get all the satellites and facilities set up conveniently as long as I don't don't immediately go for the plot projects like the containment cell? Assuming you're not talking about researching weapons and armor.
Didn't think it could be that simple but wouldn't surprise me if my problem turns out to be I've been too paranoid and rushing through things.
I'll delay a bit on hitting the alien base, but the containment cell is way too valuable for me to drag feet on it. Stunning things gives free plasma weapons.
So, ChristopherOdd has a video about the Base Avenger Defense mission:
Oh man, I've been pretty lax with spoilage for this one, but there is no way I'm opening that spoiler. :biggrin:
Yeah, that gets a big NNNNNNNOPE from me as well.
4 weeks and counting, I bit the bullet and snagged the GMG offer to safe $15 or so Canadian (that exchange rate still stings). My only regret is not having vacation time to spend.
Just gonna need a couple pots of coffee and the local pizza joint on speed dial, I suppose.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
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WACriminalDying Is Easy, Young ManLiving Is HarderRegistered Userregular
Oh that reminds me, I need to put in a request to have the 5th off...
They have a perk called Reaper, which is basically LW In the Zone, every time you kill an enemy with the sword, you get 1 move point back and lose a little damage on the next kill. Meaning you can just chain kill enemies like crazy. THEN if someone shoots at you, the class has a perk called untouchable, which is 1 guarantee miss on your unit after they get a kill. AND they have Close Encounter with the Sword, if someone enters into sword range, the Ranger will take a swing at them. ChristopherOdd puts it all to great use in that video
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WACriminalDying Is Easy, Young ManLiving Is HarderRegistered Userregular
They have a perk called Reaper, which is basically LW In the Zone, every time you kill an enemy with the sword, you get 1 move point back and lose a little damage on the next kill. Meaning you can just chain kill enemies like crazy. THEN if someone shoots at you, the class has a perk called untouchable, which is 1 guarantee miss on your unit after they get a kill. AND they have Close Encounter with the Sword, if someone enters into sword range, the Ranger will take a swing at them. ChristopherOdd puts it all to great use in that video
Yeah, I was already on-board with the concept of the Ranger, but watching
him survive a close encounter with a Berserker and multiple Pectoids sold me on the reality behind that concept.
Of course, ultimately my hope for this game is that modders will crank up the number of classes to Pathfinder RPG levels of sheer variety, so that each playthrough has an added element of trying to make suitable squads out of random assortments of roles.
They have a perk called Reaper, which is basically LW In the Zone, every time you kill an enemy with the sword, you get 1 move point back and lose a little damage on the next kill. Meaning you can just chain kill enemies like crazy. THEN if someone shoots at you, the class has a perk called untouchable, which is 1 guarantee miss on your unit after they get a kill. AND they have Close Encounter with the Sword, if someone enters into sword range, the Ranger will take a swing at them. ChristopherOdd puts it all to great use in that video
So it's like that episode of the Simpsons where aliens are chased away by a guy with a board with a nail in it? Except with swords?
They aren't advertising any MECs. That doesn't mean they don't exist as things that you can build in the final version. And even if they aren't available, what do you think will be the most-requested thing for DLC?
They aren't advertising any MECs. That doesn't mean they don't exist as things that you can build in the final version. And even if they aren't available, what do you think will be the most-requested thing for DLC?
Posts
Didn't he also started out by saying modded the game for more enemies? It might be a pathing issue that comes up mostly when there are more units moving around that what the mission maps were built for.
What the fuck. They were the coolest thing ever..
Hearing that this is supposed to be another really solid game, which has me pumped.
I do like that the story is basically a continuation of a horrible brutal playthrough and bad ending though. That might be the most X-COM thing ever.
No, you were underground in the first game. This one you're ABOVE ground.
I feel the same way, typically when reviewers start discussing balance or builds or whatever while clearly not having any idea what they're doing.
Though being main doesn't necessitate you needing to be good at all, it's more important that there's some people in house that are good enough that he can analyze/bounce balls against. I don't think he's expected to just play a difficulty level and gut feeling it "This is too easy!", he's more akin to team leader on a big game.
I say this but at the same time developers constantly don't know their own games so...
Edit: It's also worth noting re: Beagle getting some enemy placement bugs, he's playing a beta version that he modded himself. The game freaking out a bit (Again, very few games total) isn't weird at all.
I think some of that might be what's happening here, showing off by playing a game perfectly won't be the best advertisement for a game. A better show is to make the kind of mistakes first-time players might make.
Me too.
It's basically a continuation of 95% of people's first run. (For me this was because I didn't take into account how long satellites take to build.
If it makes you feel better, I watched the Pillars of Eternity team play their game at a PAX South panel last year, and the guy playing (designer? dev lead? forget) was absolutely awful and not faking - so much so that the other panelists joked about how bad he is and how he has to overlevel himself to get anywhere.
That game turned out fine.
--Mark Twain
There are some exosuit armors in XCOM 2 that you can put on your soldiers that give you some of the MEC-like skills, but aren't permanent. TB talked about them a bit in his video. The concept of meld doesn't appear to exist (at least that I've seen), so your troops get to retain their humanity - which is thematically important for this one.
--Mark Twain
I had really grown to love my crimes against nature.
All good things must come to end unfortunately including playing hop scotch with human DNA.
You objective for the mission is twofold: You have to venture out and destroy the disruptor the aliens are using to keep the Avenger grounded, while keeping everyone away from the Avenger's loading ramp. The disruptor is destroyed by shooting at it, and you have 100% to hit, though it looked like you can't squadsight it with sharpshooters (or at least it was never tried) Once it's gone, all troops have to come back to the loading ramp, or they get left behind. This means any soldiers that died or were knocked out have to be carried off the battlefield if you want to have them and/or their gear survive for the next mission. Like the EW base defense, you get 3 extra soldiers during the mission, however there is no security personnel or armed engis/scientists that spawn with them.
What's stopping you? Well, for starts, you don't start the mission in concealment (barring any rangers who's concealment is separate from the rest of the squad) and also the aliens, lots of aliens. There were 5 pods at the beginning of the mission (including a MEC, 4 sectoids, a Muton and a Berserker) Eventually reinforcements start showing up every single turn, with increasingly more enemies as the mission goes on. After 14 turns, Odd had faced 45 baddies, and the dropships were bringing 4 each turn. So yeah, pretty rough mission.
Oh man, I've been pretty lax with spoilage for this one, but there is no way I'm opening that spoiler. :biggrin:
--Mark Twain
I started dry-heaving when I read that part.
It sounds like XCOM 2 is going to be harder than XCOM in certain ways. I don't know if this is good or bad news for me - me, who totally save-scummed the first game, like a coward. Maybe this game will force me to git gud.
DLC/expansion, duh. (As they were in nuX-Com.)
But I will not turn it down to easy. Fuck you, X-COM. You won't break me. You've been trying to for years but it's not going to happen. I've never gone below normal difficulty in video games and I'm not going to start now.
Thats the only thing I never tried. I've heard you should only start doing that after completing the alien base but never managed to get past that level yet and probably going to crash and burn before I get there on this save.
On easy/normal you can, on those difficulties the aliens' progress is capped based on how far along the research tree you are.
Didn't think it could be that simple but wouldn't surprise me if my problem turns out to be I've been too paranoid and rushing through things.
Don't despair! Technically there are indeed MEC's in X-Com 2.
......unfortunately, it's your enemies that have them.
You know what? Don't mind me. Just resume despairing.
Yeah, that gets a big NNNNNNNOPE from me as well.
4 weeks and counting, I bit the bullet and snagged the GMG offer to safe $15 or so Canadian (that exchange rate still stings). My only regret is not having vacation time to spend.
Just gonna need a couple pots of coffee and the local pizza joint on speed dial, I suppose.
Yeah, I was already on-board with the concept of the Ranger, but watching
Of course, ultimately my hope for this game is that modders will crank up the number of classes to Pathfinder RPG levels of sheer variety, so that each playthrough has an added element of trying to make suitable squads out of random assortments of roles.
C'mon, guys.
They aren't advertising any MECs. That doesn't mean they don't exist as things that you can build in the final version. And even if they aren't available, what do you think will be the most-requested thing for DLC?
Romanceable Vipers.
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I wanna play another run of XCOM EW but I don't wanna burn out before 2 comes out the same way I did right before EW's release.