FreiA French Prometheus UnboundDeadwoodRegistered Userregular
I'm always wary of any fan "balance" mods I see because the attitude of "I know what's right, I have great ideas because they're mine." really seeps into everything, and you get a bunch of people who have played one playthrough making balance mods, or just plainly people with no experience balancing anything going at stats with abandon. If it's just for yourself though, you know, whatever, doesn't matter.
Are you the magic man?
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NEO|PhyteThey follow the stars, bound together.Strands in a braid till the end.Registered Userregular
I could have sworn there was a pistol skill that let you shoot for free every turn. I've never noticed a cooldown on Lightning Hands (or possibly it's another skill I am thinking of).
There's a pistol skill that makes firing the pistol as your first action in the turn not end your turn, you may be thinking of that one.
It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing... And take away its pain.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
Quickdraw makes firing a pistol as your first action only use up your blue move. Death From Above makes killing something at a lower elevation with your sniper rifle do the same.
Concealment isn't meant to be used a whole mission, because it's entire intent is to speed up the player to the first engagement, get into a better position and then get a huge advantage on the first pod they encounter/choose to engage. It's not meant to be used all mission, because of how ridiculously powerful it is - just look at how badly phantom rangers break the base game.
Well duh, that's kind of my complaint. I wouldn't want (or expect) anyone to mod in silencers in a vacuum. As much as they trumped up concealment, it doesn't really add any interesting decision making to the game.
In its current state, it kind of feels like a band-aid over the fact that the pod system has/had some major issues with pacing on mission start.
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
How did you people get a hold of PCS implants? I had like 2 drop all game. Seemed like there should have been a proving ground project to make them, but it never showed up.
Black Market is the only other place they're available, AFAIK.
The Black Market should have an indicator on it as to whether or not the inventory has changed since you last visited.
How did you people get a hold of PCS implants? I had like 2 drop all game. Seemed like there should have been a proving ground project to make them, but it never showed up.
Black Market is the only other place they're available, AFAIK.
The Black Market should have an indicator on it as to whether or not the inventory has changed since you last visited.
I really wish that buying stuff from HQ and the black market didn't require me to fly my lazy ass over there every time.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
You should play through with the beagle changes before touching any skills. One of the big mistakes you can make in balancing is changing too many things too fast.
There are quite a few skills that need addressing. Mostly I limit action economy skills, so things like lightning hands would get a cooldown and similar. Essentially, anything that boosts action economy I limit, so that non-action economy increasing skills become more attractive. I actually already have an extremely good idea as to everything I would change and why, starting with Blademaster getting more damage so it actually competes with the shotgun.
I know you do, and so would I, but I would still play through it with any changes first. You can't always tell when something is affecting your judgement. With grenades and mimic beacons no longer being op, this changes how you evaluate skills.
Theory crafting is <<<<<<<<<<<< to actual experience with new changes. Theory crafting can't handle exceptions to theory crafted rules because you never actually get a chance to expose yourself to those exceptions, so the theory just doesn't include them.
Theory lacks. That's why game balance requires actual testers.
It's just a pragmatic reality of human decision making, that's all. It's not a slight on you.
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(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited February 2016
People called me a theory crafter from watching prerelease preview videos/streams where I stated "Grenades and the mimic beacon is OP" and....
Edit: It's like the shotgun vs. sword discussion. The shotgun is just better, you can sit down for 5 minutes and do maths on a piece of paper to show that not only is it more reliable, it does more damage for less risk. Likewise, if you nerf the almighty grenade and mimic beacon, abilities that give you more shots go through the roof in value - instead of just being added insult to injury in ensuring the aliens never get a turn like it is now. Maybe it's just years and years of fiddling with tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons, but it's inherently obvious to me that if you take away grenades you end up favoring everything that gives more action economy. Given aliens have a very rigid and extremely defined action economy, any abilities or skills that let you break this matter more.
It's worth noting I don't want to increase Pod sizes like beagle has, but increasing pod size is identical in effect to increasing the aliens action economy and makes those skills that give you more actions/shots much more important.
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Well, a rule of thumb for adding challenge to players in turn-based games is "more enemies, not stronger enemies".
It's a lot more fun to have a challenge fighting 15 sectoids in short order than it is to fight one souped-up Gatekeeper and grind it out for ages.
I mean, simply upping pod size is not a great solution, but beefing up squad numbers with low-rank enemies is not a bad idea.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited February 2016
It depends on how smart and individually threatening each one is, which currently is pretty dangerous as many enemies can really wreck you if they do shoot at you. XCOM 2 is a game balanced around the idea the AI will be routinely shooting at the player, which is why they have aim values and no range bonuses so that if you're in full cover, it doesn't feel like you get hit all the time*. Rolling more dice in favor of the aliens actually increases the games randomness in a highly negative way for the player, which is artificial difficulty and not genuine challenge.
Just not being able to instantly wipe out a pod from when you see it with grenades and being unable to cancel the aliens turn with mimic beacon is really huge. I don't think I would add an alien to the pod at this point.
*It's 100% obvious Firaxis listened to the complaints about Thin Men from EU/EW.
How did you people get a hold of PCS implants? I had like 2 drop all game. Seemed like there should have been a proving ground project to make them, but it never showed up.
Black Market is the only other place they're available, AFAIK.
The Black Market should have an indicator on it as to whether or not the inventory has changed since you last visited.
It does. It's the little exclamation mark. It changes after every supply drop.
You know, I think some parts of mimic beacon's effects on the AI can persist even after it's been destroyed.
Even in those time's it's been destroyed, I've seen Mutons and Stun Lancers waste their turn rushing to the square it was at, and recently had a Gatekeeper use it's AoE skill... to raise the mimic beacon as a zombie (still amuses me that's actually possible), rather than to damage the 3 soldiers siting close enough to be hit.
yarp. because I constantly get "friendly fire" warnings landing grenades to where a mimic had been the turn before and there is nothing else there!
firing the grenade also only damages enemies eventually.
So the mimic beacon behavior thing has been bothering me so much that I did some digging into the AI ini file to see what I could find. And while I can't claim to understand even 10% of what's in there just yet (I'm getting there but my head hurts so I'm stopping for now), it looks very much like there's a completely different set of behaviours that kick in when a unit has sight of a mimic beacon. Which explains why their brains all seem to fall out whenever they spot one; their normal AI really does completely stop working and they go into "MUST KILL BEACON AT ALL COSTS, RAAARGH!" mode. Which is nothing we didn't already know, but its good to have definitive proof that this is the case.
The behaviours in question are called, sensibly enough, "MimicBeaconBehavior" and they seem to be assigned to every single alien unit in the game, towards the top of the tree that's used to decide which actions are prioritized over which. And, as we've already figured out, they won't even conceive of trying to shoot at something that isn't a mimic beacon if they have one in sight, and if they can't shoot at it for whatever reason, they just try to move as close as possible to it.
I'm wondering what would happen if I just straight-up removed that particular node from the enemy's decision tree... would they treat the beacon like any other enemy, or would they fail to react to it at all? Because I really don't think the beacons need a HP reduction or negative defence or anything, they just need to not be a "get out of damage free" card.
I wonder how aegeri feels about grenades and mimic beacons
We should all know, he called it before the game was even in playtesting, as was revealed to us by him. He even tells us outright that his ideas are GOOD ideas so we don't need to worry about it.
I do find it hard to believe any weapon upgrades are better than a scope. On my Sharpshooter, it enables Deadeye and chaining together Serial kills. On my Specialist, it enables Guardian to keep chaining. On my Grenadiers, it makes sure they hit with those opening Ruptures and shreds. Missing is just so much fucking worse for any and all of them than any benefit the other upgrades can bring me, other than Autoloader on the Sharpshooter enabling Killzone and Serial.
I think my next playthrough, I'm definitely going to be snapping up any Perception PCSes or Scope upgrades from the Black Market, intel be damned.
---
Also, I finally got an execution on a full-health Sectopod.
... It was next to the truck with the objective and I failed the mission :bigfrown:
The mod that adds damage on a miss (stock?) is pretty good. Since 'misses' do damage they count as hits, so I've procced things like dragon/venom ammo and execution off of them. Laser sights are great for shotgun rangers going for crits. Mag upgrades are wonderful for snipers, good for grenadiers too(even if I seem to be one of he few to actually have them both use their main guns.) Autoloader is nice for shotguns and snipers. Otherwise most of the rest are nice to have but not much to right home about. I think I had hair trigger work twice the whole game, despite having it on a couple of guys.
Hmm, they count as hits for doing damage, right, but not for things like Guardian?
I've tried magazine upgrades, but I've found them not great, at least on Veteran. The Squadsight penalty and Deadeye gives scopes a lot of utility on Snipers, and comparatively, I prefer a Superior Autoloader for 9 free shots to start a mission over a Superior Expanded Magazine for 6 shots between reloads to keep my sniper from falling behind. That being said, maybe I should give it another shot if I see larger pods, so Killzone can shoot at all of them (as opposed to size-3 pods, which usually only get 3 Killzone shots a lot of the time anyways).
BTW, Beagle is currently streaming with some difficulty adjustments, which are here: http://pastebin.com/JkaqAbuA
Glad you mentioned this. Fun stream. Also, man there are a lot of voicepack and cosmetics mods for <2 weeks from launch
3 rookies + 1 sharpshooter for the first terror mission of the game. all sombreros gimmick soldier squad goooo
I wonder how aegeri feels about grenades and mimic beacons
We should all know, he called it before the game was even in playtesting, as was revealed to us by him. He even tells us outright that his ideas are GOOD ideas so we don't need to worry about it.
Eh, he's maybe not communicating his point in the best way... to put it politely... but he does have a point. Mimic beacons are OP as fuck.
I remember hearing that there was going to be a sort of "skirmish mode" where you could set up your own scenarios... whatever happened with that? Basically I'm looking for a way to test INI changes and there doesn't seem to be any console commands to spawn bad guys.
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
How did you people get a hold of PCS implants? I had like 2 drop all game. Seemed like there should have been a proving ground project to make them, but it never showed up.
Black Market is the only other place they're available, AFAIK.
The Black Market should have an indicator on it as to whether or not the inventory has changed since you last visited.
It does. It's the little exclamation mark. It changes after every supply drop.
TODAY I LEARNED
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FreiA French Prometheus UnboundDeadwoodRegistered Userregular
I wonder how aegeri feels about grenades and mimic beacons
We should all know, he called it before the game was even in playtesting, as was revealed to us by him. He even tells us outright that his ideas are GOOD ideas so we don't need to worry about it.
Eh, he's maybe not communicating his point in the best way... to put it politely... but he does have a point. Mimic beacons are OP as fuck.
I remember hearing that there was going to be a sort of "skirmish mode" where you could set up your own scenarios... whatever happened with that? Basically I'm looking for a way to test INI changes and there doesn't seem to be any console commands to spawn bad guys.
Oh, no, I'm not saying he's wrong about mimic beacons. I'm saying his insistence on being in love with his own ideas and needing to tell everyone that he "predicted" things is maybe just a little satire-worthy. It's just a little Trump-ish. No big deal.
I mostly (after they fix performance issues) want to see how they go about balance via official patches before I start thinking about what sort of balance changes will need to take place after.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Theory crafting is <<<<<<<<<<<< to actual experience with new changes. Theory crafting can't handle exceptions to theory crafted rules because you never actually get a chance to expose yourself to those exceptions, so the theory just doesn't include them.
I'll point out this is wrong on multiple levels, because the primary problem XCOM 2 has is a maths one. A really really big gaping problem in maths and you can write down, with maths, every problem this game has and solve it, with maths. Let's compare something simple, like smoke grenade vs. mimic beacon. Assuming the smoke grenade gives you +20 defense in a 9 tile range (I actually don't know, because I've never used one or even seen anyone use one), how does this compare to the mimic beacon?
The beacon, for 12 HP, 50 resources and a 2 faceless corpses, guarantees wasting 6 alien actions. They tend to move to get nearer to the beacon and they will always shoot at it. By wasting 6 alien actions, which might include some nasty abilities like tongue grab. On the other hand, the smoke grenade doesn't change the games core AI, it might waste the aliens shot and you need to work that out (mathematically), how much it reduces. Assuming the smoke grenade comes out in the same circumstances as a beacon, which are 3 aliens left alive and a vulnerable soldier in low cover that might die, we can work this out easily:
Each alien does 6 damage with an 8 damage crit (10%), with a 70% aim bonus.
Mimic Beacon: Always takes all 3 shots. Can be put anywhere including high cover (so it gets the 40% aim debuff).
(0.3 * 6) + (0.1 * 8) = 2.6 damage per shot. So on average, that Mimic Beacon will survive and absorb all three shots, taking 7.8 damage that round from all three aliens.
Smoke Grenade at +20 defense (It might be higher, I don't know) has the exact same maths in this scenario (turning low cover into high cover), but your soldier dies because on average, they probably have 6 health or so and that's lower than the expected (average) damage of the three aliens shooting at him. This is even assuming the aliens bother shooting at your soldier in the smoke grenade - something they don't have to do unlike the mimic beacon.
Do you need hours and hours of playtesting to know this is broken and that the Mimic Beacon, as a defensive option, is utterly better? Unless you're particularly bad at game design, you don't. You really honestly don't and so your argument doesn't hold. You should be able to write out something like "If this always takes the entire aliens turn of actions and this doesn't, the option that does is better". You don't need hours of actual experience to realize this, it should be utterly obvious from 18+ years of actually playing turn based games. Likewise, you can do similar kinds of things to prove why grenade spam is far better than ever trying to engage in a firefight with aliens etc. Altering action economy follows, if you change the game so you need to shoot more, I mean seriously. Do you need me to prove that shooting more is better than shooting less and when aliens need to be shot at more, all the skills that let you shoot more become far more valuable compared to their comparative options. Do you actually need that?
Stating that "Theorycrafting <<<<<<< Actual play experience" isn't true, because "Actual play experience <<<<<<<<<<< Solid Core Maths". For example, XCOM 2 unless you dig into its maths doesn't tell you how much its cheating to massage the players experience on lower difficulties (as an example). So your actual play experience is inherently lying to you quite a lot, such as commander difficulty where I was amazed to learn it's silently turning 40% chances to hit into 70%+ chances to hit after a couple of misses (it gives you a cumulative +15 aim bonus per miss over a certain %). Even so, you shouldn't need hours of playtesting to know in a game like XCOM with its core design there are four main balance constraints:
I'll give another example of 4. The sword should have an inherent advantage over the shotgun, because it's much better at 4. You can gold move and attack, while still choosing where you end up so you're not out of cover. It should be an excellent example of having better action economy, letting you move twice and still attacking that turn. Yet if you do the basic maths, you find that the sword rapidly drops off in damage compared to the shotgun, which even at a blue move in distance tiles wise still has an impressive amount of accuracy/critical damage. This turns into 100% reliable damage with an incredible crit chance if you can move next to (or within only a handful of tiles) of the same enemy, but you can still be in cover and attack with sword like accuracy safely. This greatly devalues the sword, but Beagle smartly changed this by making the shotgun drop off in accuracy/crit much faster. It means that the shotgun doesn't have so much mobility in choosing more ideal spots to attack from (so no more mid range sniping with it). This did seem to drop the "100% accuracy" thing the shotgun had going on as well, which just coincidentally boosts the sword, because one of the reasons the shotgun outpaces the sword is at the same point blank distance, the sword doesn't have 100% accuracy or the crit bonus.
Likewise, the more you punish the sword the less you need playtesting to tell you the obvious from the maths. If you have a game with a bunch of enemy types and some them can do something about the sword uniquely, while none of them can do anything about a shotgun, you've automatically made a problem. For example some enemies counter melee attacks directly, which really ruin whoever was trying to use slash as an abilities day. This isn't something that effects a shotgun at point blank whatsoever. Basically, if you design something and then uniquely punish that aspect over something else, it's pretty obvious how many players will gravitate to the stronger option. Even before release, people were saying that things like the sword needed to get a boost by having more aim (100% hit chance) or damage (to compensate for missing/keep up with the shotguns) and so on. You can easily work out what approach will work well with the core maths, because if they scale reasonably well with damage, they both become viable options and stay that way. Countering melee attacks while aliens can't do anything about a shotgun to the face, is either an accepted part of the game where you say "The player just has to learn this" or a significant disadvantage to the sword.
And so you don't need much actual play experience and can just assume if X aliens turn up Y times, how much does that devalue Z sword skills? You can solve that with maths too, because if they're common you shouldn't need tons of play experience to realize you've just heavily affected the sword. It should be obvious.
And a lot of the problems in XCOM 2? They're really spectacularly obvious problems, but it's also the case that Firaxis were still balancing and changing the game right up until release. Legendary was only finally "balanced" within a week (two weeks?) of the game coming out. So it feels a lot like things were thrown at a wall at the last second to see what stuck in a lot of ways. The mimic beacon AI feels like something that was implemented very recently, because it causes a tremendous amount of issues (like with aliens trying to psi-zombie raise it).
I'm saying his insistence on being in love with his own ideas and needing to tell everyone that he "predicted" things is maybe just a little satire-worthy. It's just a little Trump-ish. No big deal.
You're comparing me talking about some things in a video game to a man who actively says Mexicans are rapists, is a huge racist, says ridiculously offensive things about women constantly and is actively hateful?
FreiA French Prometheus UnboundDeadwoodRegistered Userregular
edited February 2016
No, just the ego part, the insistence on believing you are right, telling everyone how right you are/were, and the lack of follow-through. Very Trump-chic. I'm sure you're a socially conscious person, and I don't see how bringing up racism and etc is really useful unless you wanted to just pull up a quick false equivalency. I don't mean to derail anything here though, so sorry about that.
edit: and I was saying sorry for the thread derail, cause it's annoying when that happens. not anything else really, since the way you talk about yourself and your ideas is Donald Trump personified. don't want to make another reply.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
No, just the ego part, the insistence on believing you are right, telling everyone how right you are/were, and the lack of follow-through. Very Trump-chic. I'm sure you're a socially conscious person, and I don't see how bringing up racism and etc is really useful unless you wanted to just pull up a quick false equivalency. I don't mean to derail anything here though, so sorry about that.
Well, you did. Because you compared me to someone who thinks Mexicans are rapists and that they should be paying to build a god damned wall around them, amongst a great deal of incredibly awful things. And if you don't think I take extreme offense at that even being remotely comparable to talking about a video game, then you've got some problems thinking critically.
Edit: And so you do it again and with that, you can stick your disingenuous apology.
1.) @Frei stop being a jerk
2.) @Aegeri maybe stop being so defensive.
EDIT - I will say I'm glad I'm not the only one that's apparently been getting slightly put off by the tone in this thread. It's all well within spec, but the past few pages have made me feel like maybe I'm a fucking mouth-breathing, knuckle dragging moron for liking the game and finding it somewhat challenging.
Aegeri, I'm not going to defend Frei but what I think he was intending to get at is that some of us, myself included, are getting tired of or discouraged by the majority of your posts boiling down to, "this game is trivial on anything below modded, limiting yourself legendary. Get on my level." I'm sure it's not your intent to imply that; but the sentiments are getting implied.
I had a challenging time on Veteran and felt good about myself for struggling though the final mission without losing anyone. I know other posters have had such troubles that they've kicked the game down to the lowest difficulty. Not everyone is great at this.
*edit* @A steak! beat me too it. I hope my thoughts are coming across as non-personal as I intend them to be.
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mastertheheroProfessional Video Editor & Book AuthorRegistered Userregular
EDIT - I will say I'm glad I'm not the only one that's apparently been getting slightly put off by the tone in this thread. It's all well within spec, but the past few pages have made me feel like maybe I'm a fucking mouth-breathing, knuckle dragging moron for liking the game and finding it somewhat challenging.
Yeah, I definitely did not have an easy run on my first veteran play through. Guess I'm not l33t enough for all these people who want to add Long War levels of difficulty to their game. Anyway, I'm looking forward to doing my last mission tonight and maybe playing some MP matches so I could get that stupid achievement.
I almost won my last MP match but made the critical mistake of not killing the shieldbearer with my Chrysalid and instead going for the Specialist who was at full health. Had I killed the shieldbearer, I could have had 3 more lids which would have decisively changed the match for me.
Oh and bringing a faceless on the team was useless too since he can't blend in with civilians. So you see him lumbering a mile away with only a melee ability to use as attack. Should have brought the Andromedon instead or even an Archon.
So I'm into the home stretch now on Commander. Just some random thoughts:
Blademaster is not as bad as I initially thought. I experimented with a team of 2 Phantom rangers vs a team with 1 Phantom + 1 Blademaster, and there is a dynamic that immediately becomes clear: once your scouting Phantom needs to blow their concealment and has capitalized on Shadow Strike, every turn thereafter they are strictly worse than the Blademaster. It's not by much, of course, but nevertheless - they do slightly more damage in melee and are immune to Overwatch, while the Phantom has blown their resources and is now just a guy or girl with a shottie and sub par sword.
You still want Phantom first, and a second Blademaster ranger may not be want you want on the team at all, but Blademaster is the pick to make if you're going to run 2 rangers.
Agent Smith's final incarnation is a Phantom ranger with Lightning Reflexes and Untouchable. lol.
Acid Grenades > Plasma in most mid to late game situations, IMHO. I will fight you over this.
I don't disagree with the general consensus that special ammunition is slightly too expensive for what it does, but I do feel that Dragon rounds are worth looking for if you have a sharpshooter. It seems to proc on every hit, and lighting certain enemies on fire (Vipers, Shieldbearers) can prevent awkward situations from developing.
Sectopods are weak sauce. I have run into two situations where I made a mistake and as a result left a Sectopod staring down my vulnerable squad - in both situations, the Sectopod wasted it's turn charging-up it's laser and was killed before said laser could shoot. Pretty stupid behavior.
I dislike the falling damage & destructible floors. Yes, it looks pretty cool, but it also breaks a fundamental strategy game rule (that high ground is valuable to have and dangerous to let your opponents have). Every time I see a pod on a roof, I just smile and let gravity do most of the heavy lifting.
Chryssalids feel cheap, and ultimately limit the play space within the game. There is no reasonable way to detect or avoid damage from them (unlike, say, Faceless - which are disguised, but you can still see the civilian ahead of time and play around the idea that they might be Faceless), so you're forced to bring Medkits or anti-poison armor/abilities to deal with the poison. It's just lazy from a design perspective; they couldn't figure out how to make a late game melee alien dangerous but fair, so they threw 'fair' out the window and allow it to break every fundamental aspect of the game (and, sadly, despite them being a cheap little bullshitty thing that corrupts save files, you can still trivialize them. Psi Ops with Fortress are immune to poison. So, just bring a Fortress Psi Op along on any mission that includes Chryssalids and move the Psi Op first. GG bugs).
I like that enemies from the early game are still included in late game missions & given stat boosts to compensate. It's a brilliant way to have large enemy variety throughout the game without designing dozens of enemies, each of which only sees action at certain parts of the game.
Award for most useless soldier skill in the game goes to Deep Cover.
Award for most useful soldier skill in the game goes to Phantom.
Award for most fun enemy to engage goes to the Andromedon.
Award for most useless enemy skill in the game goes to Reanimate.
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Zxerolfor the smaller pieces, my shovel wouldn't doso i took off my boot and used my shoeRegistered Userregular
Here are Zxerol Thoughts™:
1. Yes, there is stuff you can abuse in this game.
2. It's still plenty challenging for regular ass people.
3. Like I've stated before, I'm glad that the game isn't balanced around how super high level players are able to break the game.
4. Fortunately, the game is moddable as fuck, so wring yourself through the grinder as you want.
5. I guess some people really wanted Terror from the Deep-style absurd balls-kicking for a sequel escalation? idk, eff that
What I want in a mod, and I might even make something myself one day if I can be arsed, is one that makes the enemy less effective, but more numerous. It seems like as the game goes on you're always fighting more-or-less the same amount of enemies, they just get better. All of the ADVENT propaganda shows legions of regular old troopers, but by the mid-game you're facing almost nothing but advanced troopers, stun lancers and shield-bearers. I don't want to go from fighting three crappy ADVENT to fighting three upgraded ADVENT, I want to go from fighting three crappy ADVENT to fighting five or six of the same crappy 4HP troopers from the start of the game. Not only would this let you feel like you're actually getting more powerful as the game progresses, but it also solves a lot of the issues with explosives. Even on a particularly grenade-happy mission I typically only use 4 or 5 of them, but if you're facing two dozen crappy minions you're not going to be able to blow up everything; you're going to have to save them for when they really count.
on missions where you're capturing or killing a VIP, do you get more rewards for actually capturing them? Kind of a hassle compared to just blowing up the car they're next to
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
on missions where you're capturing or killing a VIP, do you get more rewards for actually capturing them? Kind of a hassle compared to just blowing up the car they're next to
Yeah, you usually get extra stuff for capturing them instead of killing them. Like additional Intel, etc.
on missions where you're capturing or killing a VIP, do you get more rewards for actually capturing them? Kind of a hassle compared to just blowing up the car they're next to
most if not all of the time, capturing the VIP awards you an intel reward on top of the supply bounty for killing them.
on missions where you're capturing or killing a VIP, do you get more rewards for actually capturing them? Kind of a hassle compared to just blowing up the car they're next to
Yes you definitely do. My first alien VIP ate a gas grenade and died. When I got back Bradford reminded me we cant get Intel from corpses.
Bite it Bradford. I cant control...air and gas. Probably. Mostly.
on missions where you're capturing or killing a VIP, do you get more rewards for actually capturing them? Kind of a hassle compared to just blowing up the car they're next to
I think for those missions there's typically both a supply and intel component of the reward, and you only get the intel if you bring them in alive.
I'm talking to the guy who made the Improved AI mod and it sounds like a few people have tried modding the mimic beacon behaviour with no success; it just bugs out if you try to change it, which is why Beagle went with just nerfing it statistically. At 1HP and -20 defence it should only nullify one attack at best.
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Warframe/Steam: NFyt
Well duh, that's kind of my complaint. I wouldn't want (or expect) anyone to mod in silencers in a vacuum. As much as they trumped up concealment, it doesn't really add any interesting decision making to the game.
In its current state, it kind of feels like a band-aid over the fact that the pod system has/had some major issues with pacing on mission start.
The Black Market should have an indicator on it as to whether or not the inventory has changed since you last visited.
I really wish that buying stuff from HQ and the black market didn't require me to fly my lazy ass over there every time.
I know you do, and so would I, but I would still play through it with any changes first. You can't always tell when something is affecting your judgement. With grenades and mimic beacons no longer being op, this changes how you evaluate skills.
Theory crafting is <<<<<<<<<<<< to actual experience with new changes. Theory crafting can't handle exceptions to theory crafted rules because you never actually get a chance to expose yourself to those exceptions, so the theory just doesn't include them.
Theory lacks. That's why game balance requires actual testers.
It's just a pragmatic reality of human decision making, that's all. It's not a slight on you.
Edit: It's like the shotgun vs. sword discussion. The shotgun is just better, you can sit down for 5 minutes and do maths on a piece of paper to show that not only is it more reliable, it does more damage for less risk. Likewise, if you nerf the almighty grenade and mimic beacon, abilities that give you more shots go through the roof in value - instead of just being added insult to injury in ensuring the aliens never get a turn like it is now. Maybe it's just years and years of fiddling with tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons, but it's inherently obvious to me that if you take away grenades you end up favoring everything that gives more action economy. Given aliens have a very rigid and extremely defined action economy, any abilities or skills that let you break this matter more.
It's worth noting I don't want to increase Pod sizes like beagle has, but increasing pod size is identical in effect to increasing the aliens action economy and makes those skills that give you more actions/shots much more important.
It's a lot more fun to have a challenge fighting 15 sectoids in short order than it is to fight one souped-up Gatekeeper and grind it out for ages.
I mean, simply upping pod size is not a great solution, but beefing up squad numbers with low-rank enemies is not a bad idea.
Just not being able to instantly wipe out a pod from when you see it with grenades and being unable to cancel the aliens turn with mimic beacon is really huge. I don't think I would add an alien to the pod at this point.
*It's 100% obvious Firaxis listened to the complaints about Thin Men from EU/EW.
It does. It's the little exclamation mark. It changes after every supply drop.
This fits with how shooting a grenade gave me the friendly fire prompt even though the beacon that used to be in the radius was already destroyed
yarp. because I constantly get "friendly fire" warnings landing grenades to where a mimic had been the turn before and there is nothing else there!
firing the grenade also only damages enemies eventually.
The behaviours in question are called, sensibly enough, "MimicBeaconBehavior" and they seem to be assigned to every single alien unit in the game, towards the top of the tree that's used to decide which actions are prioritized over which. And, as we've already figured out, they won't even conceive of trying to shoot at something that isn't a mimic beacon if they have one in sight, and if they can't shoot at it for whatever reason, they just try to move as close as possible to it.
I'm wondering what would happen if I just straight-up removed that particular node from the enemy's decision tree... would they treat the beacon like any other enemy, or would they fail to react to it at all? Because I really don't think the beacons need a HP reduction or negative defence or anything, they just need to not be a "get out of damage free" card.
We should all know, he called it before the game was even in playtesting, as was revealed to us by him. He even tells us outright that his ideas are GOOD ideas so we don't need to worry about it.
Glad you mentioned this. Fun stream. Also, man there are a lot of voicepack and cosmetics mods for <2 weeks from launch
3 rookies + 1 sharpshooter for the first terror mission of the game. all sombreros gimmick soldier squad goooo
Eh, he's maybe not communicating his point in the best way... to put it politely... but he does have a point. Mimic beacons are OP as fuck.
I remember hearing that there was going to be a sort of "skirmish mode" where you could set up your own scenarios... whatever happened with that? Basically I'm looking for a way to test INI changes and there doesn't seem to be any console commands to spawn bad guys.
TODAY I LEARNED
Oh, no, I'm not saying he's wrong about mimic beacons. I'm saying his insistence on being in love with his own ideas and needing to tell everyone that he "predicted" things is maybe just a little satire-worthy. It's just a little Trump-ish. No big deal.
I mostly (after they fix performance issues) want to see how they go about balance via official patches before I start thinking about what sort of balance changes will need to take place after.
I'll point out this is wrong on multiple levels, because the primary problem XCOM 2 has is a maths one. A really really big gaping problem in maths and you can write down, with maths, every problem this game has and solve it, with maths. Let's compare something simple, like smoke grenade vs. mimic beacon. Assuming the smoke grenade gives you +20 defense in a 9 tile range (I actually don't know, because I've never used one or even seen anyone use one), how does this compare to the mimic beacon?
The beacon, for 12 HP, 50 resources and a 2 faceless corpses, guarantees wasting 6 alien actions. They tend to move to get nearer to the beacon and they will always shoot at it. By wasting 6 alien actions, which might include some nasty abilities like tongue grab. On the other hand, the smoke grenade doesn't change the games core AI, it might waste the aliens shot and you need to work that out (mathematically), how much it reduces. Assuming the smoke grenade comes out in the same circumstances as a beacon, which are 3 aliens left alive and a vulnerable soldier in low cover that might die, we can work this out easily:
Each alien does 6 damage with an 8 damage crit (10%), with a 70% aim bonus.
Mimic Beacon: Always takes all 3 shots. Can be put anywhere including high cover (so it gets the 40% aim debuff).
(0.3 * 6) + (0.1 * 8) = 2.6 damage per shot. So on average, that Mimic Beacon will survive and absorb all three shots, taking 7.8 damage that round from all three aliens.
Smoke Grenade at +20 defense (It might be higher, I don't know) has the exact same maths in this scenario (turning low cover into high cover), but your soldier dies because on average, they probably have 6 health or so and that's lower than the expected (average) damage of the three aliens shooting at him. This is even assuming the aliens bother shooting at your soldier in the smoke grenade - something they don't have to do unlike the mimic beacon.
Do you need hours and hours of playtesting to know this is broken and that the Mimic Beacon, as a defensive option, is utterly better? Unless you're particularly bad at game design, you don't. You really honestly don't and so your argument doesn't hold. You should be able to write out something like "If this always takes the entire aliens turn of actions and this doesn't, the option that does is better". You don't need hours of actual experience to realize this, it should be utterly obvious from 18+ years of actually playing turn based games. Likewise, you can do similar kinds of things to prove why grenade spam is far better than ever trying to engage in a firefight with aliens etc. Altering action economy follows, if you change the game so you need to shoot more, I mean seriously. Do you need me to prove that shooting more is better than shooting less and when aliens need to be shot at more, all the skills that let you shoot more become far more valuable compared to their comparative options. Do you actually need that?
Stating that "Theorycrafting <<<<<<< Actual play experience" isn't true, because "Actual play experience <<<<<<<<<<< Solid Core Maths". For example, XCOM 2 unless you dig into its maths doesn't tell you how much its cheating to massage the players experience on lower difficulties (as an example). So your actual play experience is inherently lying to you quite a lot, such as commander difficulty where I was amazed to learn it's silently turning 40% chances to hit into 70%+ chances to hit after a couple of misses (it gives you a cumulative +15 aim bonus per miss over a certain %). Even so, you shouldn't need hours of playtesting to know in a game like XCOM with its core design there are four main balance constraints:
1) Enemy aim
2) Enemy action economy
3) XCOM aim
4) XCOM action economy
I'll give another example of 4. The sword should have an inherent advantage over the shotgun, because it's much better at 4. You can gold move and attack, while still choosing where you end up so you're not out of cover. It should be an excellent example of having better action economy, letting you move twice and still attacking that turn. Yet if you do the basic maths, you find that the sword rapidly drops off in damage compared to the shotgun, which even at a blue move in distance tiles wise still has an impressive amount of accuracy/critical damage. This turns into 100% reliable damage with an incredible crit chance if you can move next to (or within only a handful of tiles) of the same enemy, but you can still be in cover and attack with sword like accuracy safely. This greatly devalues the sword, but Beagle smartly changed this by making the shotgun drop off in accuracy/crit much faster. It means that the shotgun doesn't have so much mobility in choosing more ideal spots to attack from (so no more mid range sniping with it). This did seem to drop the "100% accuracy" thing the shotgun had going on as well, which just coincidentally boosts the sword, because one of the reasons the shotgun outpaces the sword is at the same point blank distance, the sword doesn't have 100% accuracy or the crit bonus.
Likewise, the more you punish the sword the less you need playtesting to tell you the obvious from the maths. If you have a game with a bunch of enemy types and some them can do something about the sword uniquely, while none of them can do anything about a shotgun, you've automatically made a problem. For example some enemies counter melee attacks directly, which really ruin whoever was trying to use slash as an abilities day. This isn't something that effects a shotgun at point blank whatsoever. Basically, if you design something and then uniquely punish that aspect over something else, it's pretty obvious how many players will gravitate to the stronger option. Even before release, people were saying that things like the sword needed to get a boost by having more aim (100% hit chance) or damage (to compensate for missing/keep up with the shotguns) and so on. You can easily work out what approach will work well with the core maths, because if they scale reasonably well with damage, they both become viable options and stay that way. Countering melee attacks while aliens can't do anything about a shotgun to the face, is either an accepted part of the game where you say "The player just has to learn this" or a significant disadvantage to the sword.
And so you don't need much actual play experience and can just assume if X aliens turn up Y times, how much does that devalue Z sword skills? You can solve that with maths too, because if they're common you shouldn't need tons of play experience to realize you've just heavily affected the sword. It should be obvious.
And a lot of the problems in XCOM 2? They're really spectacularly obvious problems, but it's also the case that Firaxis were still balancing and changing the game right up until release. Legendary was only finally "balanced" within a week (two weeks?) of the game coming out. So it feels a lot like things were thrown at a wall at the last second to see what stuck in a lot of ways. The mimic beacon AI feels like something that was implemented very recently, because it causes a tremendous amount of issues (like with aliens trying to psi-zombie raise it).
You're comparing me talking about some things in a video game to a man who actively says Mexicans are rapists, is a huge racist, says ridiculously offensive things about women constantly and is actively hateful?
Wow.
Just, wow.
edit: and I was saying sorry for the thread derail, cause it's annoying when that happens. not anything else really, since the way you talk about yourself and your ideas is Donald Trump personified. don't want to make another reply.
Well, you did. Because you compared me to someone who thinks Mexicans are rapists and that they should be paying to build a god damned wall around them, amongst a great deal of incredibly awful things. And if you don't think I take extreme offense at that even being remotely comparable to talking about a video game, then you've got some problems thinking critically.
Edit: And so you do it again and with that, you can stick your disingenuous apology.
OK.
Commander got a lot easier now that I have five grenadiers with T2 weapons and armor.
Maybe I'll bring a specialist along once my sixth slot opens up.
Why cycle them?
Everything just... dies.
It's glorious.
Pretty great huh.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/pablocampy
2.) @Aegeri maybe stop being so defensive.
EDIT - I will say I'm glad I'm not the only one that's apparently been getting slightly put off by the tone in this thread. It's all well within spec, but the past few pages have made me feel like maybe I'm a fucking mouth-breathing, knuckle dragging moron for liking the game and finding it somewhat challenging.
I had a challenging time on Veteran and felt good about myself for struggling though the final mission without losing anyone. I know other posters have had such troubles that they've kicked the game down to the lowest difficulty. Not everyone is great at this.
*edit* @A steak! beat me too it. I hope my thoughts are coming across as non-personal as I intend them to be.
Yeah, I definitely did not have an easy run on my first veteran play through. Guess I'm not l33t enough for all these people who want to add Long War levels of difficulty to their game. Anyway, I'm looking forward to doing my last mission tonight and maybe playing some MP matches so I could get that stupid achievement.
I almost won my last MP match but made the critical mistake of not killing the shieldbearer with my Chrysalid and instead going for the Specialist who was at full health. Had I killed the shieldbearer, I could have had 3 more lids which would have decisively changed the match for me.
Oh and bringing a faceless on the team was useless too since he can't blend in with civilians. So you see him lumbering a mile away with only a melee ability to use as attack. Should have brought the Andromedon instead or even an Archon.
You still want Phantom first, and a second Blademaster ranger may not be want you want on the team at all, but Blademaster is the pick to make if you're going to run 2 rangers.
Agent Smith's final incarnation is a Phantom ranger with Lightning Reflexes and Untouchable. lol.
Acid Grenades > Plasma in most mid to late game situations, IMHO. I will fight you over this.
I don't disagree with the general consensus that special ammunition is slightly too expensive for what it does, but I do feel that Dragon rounds are worth looking for if you have a sharpshooter. It seems to proc on every hit, and lighting certain enemies on fire (Vipers, Shieldbearers) can prevent awkward situations from developing.
Sectopods are weak sauce. I have run into two situations where I made a mistake and as a result left a Sectopod staring down my vulnerable squad - in both situations, the Sectopod wasted it's turn charging-up it's laser and was killed before said laser could shoot. Pretty stupid behavior.
I dislike the falling damage & destructible floors. Yes, it looks pretty cool, but it also breaks a fundamental strategy game rule (that high ground is valuable to have and dangerous to let your opponents have). Every time I see a pod on a roof, I just smile and let gravity do most of the heavy lifting.
Chryssalids feel cheap, and ultimately limit the play space within the game. There is no reasonable way to detect or avoid damage from them (unlike, say, Faceless - which are disguised, but you can still see the civilian ahead of time and play around the idea that they might be Faceless), so you're forced to bring Medkits or anti-poison armor/abilities to deal with the poison. It's just lazy from a design perspective; they couldn't figure out how to make a late game melee alien dangerous but fair, so they threw 'fair' out the window and allow it to break every fundamental aspect of the game (and, sadly, despite them being a cheap little bullshitty thing that corrupts save files, you can still trivialize them. Psi Ops with Fortress are immune to poison. So, just bring a Fortress Psi Op along on any mission that includes Chryssalids and move the Psi Op first. GG bugs).
I like that enemies from the early game are still included in late game missions & given stat boosts to compensate. It's a brilliant way to have large enemy variety throughout the game without designing dozens of enemies, each of which only sees action at certain parts of the game.
Award for most useless soldier skill in the game goes to Deep Cover.
Award for most useful soldier skill in the game goes to Phantom.
Award for most fun enemy to engage goes to the Andromedon.
Award for most useless enemy skill in the game goes to Reanimate.
1. Yes, there is stuff you can abuse in this game.
2. It's still plenty challenging for regular ass people.
3. Like I've stated before, I'm glad that the game isn't balanced around how super high level players are able to break the game.
4. Fortunately, the game is moddable as fuck, so wring yourself through the grinder as you want.
5. I guess some people really wanted Terror from the Deep-style absurd balls-kicking for a sequel escalation? idk, eff that
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Yeah, you usually get extra stuff for capturing them instead of killing them. Like additional Intel, etc.
most if not all of the time, capturing the VIP awards you an intel reward on top of the supply bounty for killing them.
Yes you definitely do. My first alien VIP ate a gas grenade and died. When I got back Bradford reminded me we cant get Intel from corpses.
Bite it Bradford. I cant control...air and gas. Probably. Mostly.
I think for those missions there's typically both a supply and intel component of the reward, and you only get the intel if you bring them in alive.
I'm talking to the guy who made the Improved AI mod and it sounds like a few people have tried modding the mimic beacon behaviour with no success; it just bugs out if you try to change it, which is why Beagle went with just nerfing it statistically. At 1HP and -20 defence it should only nullify one attack at best.