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[starsrift]

how does it "make up" for anything when cover is literally the central game mechanic? it's not like they just arbitrarily decided to give you "extreme" cover bonuses, the entire game is based around using cover and it's a decent system too.

Is it the central mechanic? I certainly agree it's become the dominant one, but doesn't it ring some warning bells when you're more anxious about getting your troops caught out of cover than a scary alien invasion and what might be coming next? I thought the central mechanics were permadeath, strategic depth translating to tactical combat, and of course the tactical combat itself, with character growth/investment mechanics. Other tactical games use cover systems as a matter of course, but it's rarely so dramatically extreme as it is in the X-Com reboots.
 
Once you accept that as a foundation, then yes, everything else will flow 'logically' from it, but I question the premise. Like I said before, it's similar to a chain of events or fixes you see as a programmer and then stare at the guy who did it and ask him why he didn't use a better original implementation. Problem is, probably as it was at Firaxis, is that now they feel they have invested this time into getting their implementation to work, they don't want to go back to the beginning and rework it to be smarter.

how else would you handle it?

Well, like I said, go back and rework the tactical system. That'd be playtesting and stuff. I can imagine they tried something as simple as returning to concealment mode and found it OP, but there are other solutions, although some of those dreamier solutions may be restricted by using the Unreal engine in a 3rd person mode. I don't think you have to return to an expectation of 8-24 man squads and huge maps and AP meters.
Could involve some strategy reworking too. Maybe your units could be more singular and heroic, rather than easily replaceable.

[TheLastBanana]

I thought the central mechanics were permadeath, strategic depth translating to tactical combat, and of course the tactical combat itself, with character growth/investment mechanics. Other tactical games use cover systems as a matter of course, but it's rarely so dramatically extreme as it is in the X-Com reboots.

The game has many central mechanics, and you just listed a bunch of them. There are a several different systems layered over top of each other, including the resources metagame, the character growth mechanics, and the combat itself. The combat system is designed from the ground up around their cover system, so in that context, it definitely is the central mechanic. So it's a bit ridiculous to claim that Firaxis just kind of threw in a half-baked cover mechanic and never went back to "fix" it — the whole combat system is pretty clearly designed with the idea of cover in mind.

You have a constant tension between your cover level, how good your shot is on an enemy, and now how much time is remaining. There are weapons and abilities designed around destroying cover and there are objects you can target to destroy cover. There are reliable types of cover, and there are types of cover that are risky (like cars that can set on fire, or second-floor rooms that can collapse). The entire Ranger class is built with the idea of a risk/reward tradeoff for leaving cover to use your sword. Clearly there's a lot based on cover as a mechanic.

It just seems to me like you're saying that Firaxis should have thrown out their entire system from EU because it's based on cover. Which is fair, I guess, if you accept that cover is innately bad, but I don't see why that's the case.

[starsrift]

Thrown out? Nope. Tactical RPG's are pretty much my favourite game genre, and you definitely need a cover system, I think, to make for a good gameplay.
Scaled back a bit? Probably, though perhaps there are other solutions. The cover system in the reboots is very dramatic and severe, and maybe there doesn't need to be miscellanous crates/trees/other half-cover objects littering the maps in an almost nonsensical, Gears of War way. Again, you can see all these gameplay fixes and patches that are introduced, just to make the cover system work to the degree it does. Going back to the original X-com again, for instance, they had the kneel pose which reduced your profile while in the open. That's a simple solution for a simpler system - the reboots use flanking bonuses as well, which the originals didn't. Should flanking bonuses be in? Definitely! (The originals dealt with flanking generally by panicking your troops if they got shot at a lot during a round, which was a different method of introducing the idea).
Maybe having a longer vision range range than effective shooting range would be an elegant solution, but that brushes up against engine limitations, perhaps.

[s0]

Maybe having a longer vision range range than effective shooting range would be an elegant solution, but that brushes up against engine limitations, perhaps.

but... that's already the case?

and if it wasn't, why would engine limitations affect it in any way?

[TheLastBanana]

I still don't understand why you think that using cover as the central battle mechanic is a bad thing though. It's just a different approach to the tactics genre, where sightlines and cover are given more focus than defense and damage per turn. Plenty of people (myself and presumably Silbereisen included) really enjoy the cover-based combat system because it's different from other games. Had they scaled it back because tactics games aren't "supposed" to be as cover-based, I would have been just as disappointed as you are.

You keep throwing out all these mechanics and design decisions which are "fixes and patches" for the cover system, but most of them seem either unrelated or a matter of preference. Like, going through a few of your points:

• The timer system doesn't really have anything to do with cover. It encourages you not to turtle, but even if there weren't cover, you could still just advance really slowly through the level.
• Concealment isn't just there give cover bonuses. It lets you scope out the level and find where pods of enemies are so that you can plan ahead and place your units in preparation rather than going in blind. It's also thematically fitting given that you're now the attacking force rather than a defending one.
• Scurry moves give you a bunch of free shots as long as you're on overwatch or have any abilities that let you attack moving enemies. As Silbereisen said earlier, if the enemies just started in cover, nobody would complain (but ironically that would actually give you less of an advantage against them).
• Having stuff scattered around the level to hide behind is really not that ugly a "fix." We're willing to accept that human and alien forces move all at once on opposite turns for the sake of game mechanics, and that everyone stands totally still in between. Is having a few extra traffic cones and bags of trash sitting around in an urban landscape seriously a problem?

If you're interested, Polygon has a great article on the making of XCOM: EU. There's also some early gameplay footage where it still used time units and didn't have the current cover system.





It's pretty clear that a lot of testing and iteration went into the current combat system. They didn't just throw it together and work around it for the rest of the development cycle, and I'm not sure why you feel the need to prove that to justify your opinion. It's okay if you don't like the cover system, but that doesn't make Firaxis bad designers. It just means they took a different route than you would have preferred.

[s0]

So anyway, in my opinion this game is Really Good and I think most of the mechanics changes are for the better. There are a number of things that discourage turtling (mission timers, concealment mode, soldiers get more HP (i think), certain unit special abilities) which was the #1 problem in EU. Some people hate the mission timers, I like em and actually found them to be generous enough contrary to what the haters claim. I also like how the geoscape is more interactive and much more strategic. I'm also glad they removed the flying invisible squid aliens whose only purpose seemed to be to make you waste time.

The new base building is good too. I thought it was one of the most unrewarding mechanics of EU. The "puzzle" aspect was too simple and shitty positioning of steam could screw you over early game. I like that it's now more about what you build rather than where you build it.

Things that are worse: Music is less memorable, enemies don't feel as distinct. Performance issues that will hopefully get fixed soon. I'm also a bit split on the "avatar project" thing. I like that it's more flexible than the EU doom tracker and doesn't railroad you as much. But I also sometimes feel like it's unnecessarily convoluted, with the establishing contact with the resistance and etc stuff. The fact that the game doesn't make clear what your actual goal is until after a few missions doesn't help either.

Oh also another problem: The ranger's melee attack is kind of OP. Getting caught outside of cover for 1 turn isn't even that bad (besides it doesn't even necessarily happen everytime you use it), considering it's an attack with 80-100% accuracy that does a shit ton of dmg and can potentially 1shot every enemy early game.

[Nillo]

I never used gunslinger snipers in EU/EW but now they are incredible. You get extra shots that cost no actions and there's an active skill that lets you shoot once on every visible enemy with your pistol. It's amazing for cleaning up what remains after throwing a grenade at an alien pod.

Also: Be very careful with Rangers because there are some enemies (Mutons) who will just shank you if you try a melee attack against them. This class does great damage but it's probably the one that is most likely to fuck you up if you don't know what you're doing.

[starsrift]

Maybe having a longer vision range range than effective shooting range would be an elegant solution, but that brushes up against engine limitations, perhaps.

but... that's already the case?

and if it wasn't, why would engine limitations affect it in any way?

Nah, it's not the case. I mean, you may have to do a partial move, but sight range is effective engagement range. I mean, I dunno, I've not used the Unreal engine and I have by no means insight into Firaxis's code, but if the viewing frustrum is specificed to just what you see on-screen, why is it such a resource hog? More vision probably means more light calculations and stuff. Like I said, may.

I still don't understand why you think that using cover as the central battle mechanic is a bad thing though. It's just a different approach to the tactics genre, where sightlines and cover are given more focus than defense and damage per turn. Plenty of people (myself and presumably Silbereisen included) really enjoy the cover-based combat system because it's different from other games. Had they scaled it back because tactics games aren't "supposed" to be as cover-based, I would have been just as disappointed as you are.

Look, the over-exaggerated cover isn't the problem, necessarily. But it has caused, indirectly, a lot of other problems which have been given kludgey "fixes" and sometimes player-originated work-arounds. I think that's been gone over several times in this thread alone, not to mention other places where you may see critique of X-Com, so if you don't understand it - with all due respect - I don't have much time for your opinion. I really don't mean to be elitist or a dick because I honestly hate that shit, but if at the same time, you're not bothering to pay attention, why should I give much attention to you, right?
Would it be easier to "solve" the problem (again, that even if you can't see, Firaxis saw) by scaling back the cover bonuses? Sure! Probably. But as I said before, repeatedly, there are other possible solutions.
But you do raise an important point and suggest it's enjoyable and wanted. Well, that may be! There IS nothing wrong with liking it. But again, as I said before, Firaxis appears to disagree, since they introduced all these kludgey fixes to 'solve' the side-effects...

I have no disagreement that a lot of work went into the original X-Com:EU implementation. It was actually lauded at the time of an example of playtested work - especially since they had to justify themselves to grognards and old aficionados of the series, like me, who lapped that up first on a 486.
But that doesn't mean it was flawless or there weren't problems with the reboot. I noted them, other people noted them, and Firaxis noted those problems. Instead of going back and reworking the system to smooth the problems, they threw patches at it. All I'm saying is that the patches don't feel good enough. Just like with TFTD - this feels like a big expansion to X-Com: EU, not an actual iterative title. Quite effectively, nothing's changed, though there are improvements to the things that were already there. That doesn't mean I dislike or hate it - just that I wanted to see more, and very I"m disappointed I didn't get more, especially when I see all the work that went into everything else besides gameplay.
I'm happy as shit to play a new X-Com. Hell, the actually RNG-generated maps alone is enough to keep me going. I've been playing it every day.

Oh also another problem: The ranger's melee attack is kind of OP. Getting caught outside of cover for 1 turn isn't even that bad (besides it doesn't even necessarily happen everytime you use it), considering it's an attack with 80-100% accuracy that does a shit ton of dmg and can potentially 1shot every enemy early game.

Trufax. I wound up restarting my game after being crippled from RNG with regards to Engineers, and man, Rangers pwn the first few months.

[s0]

Idk what "effective engagement range" is. Because you know, it's possible to see enemies pretty far away but have low chances of hitting them (because theyre too far away). Shots with <50% accuracy are usually not worth taking. Or do you mean something else?

[Alevice]

lets not forget squadsight

[starsrift]

Generally speaking, if a squaddie is in vision range of an enemy, they're in shooting range or move and shoot range - more relevantly perhaps, a Ranger is just about always in Slash range of any alien in their (personal) vision range. There are edge cases, it's not 1:1, maybe like 100:85.
Doesn't mean they're in engagement range of your entire squad for sure! But personal engagement, definitely.

[TheLastBanana]

I don't have much time for your opinion. I really don't mean to be elitist or a dick because I honestly hate that shit, but if at the same time, you're not bothering to pay attention, why should I give much attention to you, right?

I directly responded to several of your statements about the system being a kludge. I don't see how much more attention I could be paying. I've seen plenty of criticisms (many of them valid, and perhaps yours is too) leveled against the reboot, but you're the first person I've seen claiming that the very existence of the cover system is the biggest issue. I'm just trying to get inside your head.

Your argument seems to be that the cover system causes problems, and that making cover less important would solve those problems. While that may be true, it would introduce problems of its own, like how to encourage people to consider unit placement, how to make the level layouts more meaningful than just being a backdrop for combat, etc. And for that matter, it would require totally rethinking much of the game's combat since it was designed around the central idea of cover.

Every change in game mechanics is going to come with certain tradeoffs and issues that have to be addressed. So what I still don't understand is why you're interpreting every mechanic that Firaxis has added to XCOM's combat as a "kludge" worthy of sending the whole thing back to the drawing board. You're making it sound like Firaxis' additions in XCOM 2 are an admission of defeat on behalf of the cover system, but it looks to me like them doing what any game developer would do: iterating on a system that they (and most players, judging by the game's ratings) are happy with, but want to tweak here and there.

Things that are worse: Music is less memorable, enemies don't feel as distinct. Performance issues that will hopefully get fixed soon. I'm also a bit split on the "avatar project" thing. I like that it's more flexible than the EU doom tracker and doesn't railroad you as much. But I also sometimes feel like it's unnecessarily convoluted, with the establishing contact with the resistance and etc stuff. The fact that the game doesn't make clear what your actual goal is until after a few missions doesn't help either.

I'm with you on all of these, especially the world map stuff. It's definitely more interesting than the one in EU/EW, but the game throws a lot of concepts at you without really explaining them. It felt like I was making a lot of uninformed decisions, because I have a bunch of different resources and markers all over the map (and ways to affect them through hacking in battle), but I don't even know what any of them do.

[s0]

More than anything, they could have just straightforward about the fact that "contacting the local resistance" in a region is the same mechanic as satellites. Once you figure that out, things suddenly make sense lol. Also a bit odd that you have to collect your monthly income yourself, but I guess thematically it ties nicely into the guerilla warfare theme.

Also I like that there are more ways to make money outside of the regular income now (giving you cash for clearing out debris in particular was a great idea). In EU I often had this problem where I saved up for a big expensive building combo, then built that as quickly as I could so as to not waste time. Then, when I needed money at any time during the month for whatever reason (such as eg hiring new troops), I was too broke. 

[TheLastBanana]

Yeah, I'm feeling a little less like I need to keep a constant buffer of 200 moneybux sitting around just in case I suddenly need to buy something really expensive.

I feel like the overwatch animations are way less janky this time around. There were a lot of times in EU/EW where you'd go into slow motion, but then one or two people were still kind of moving their limbs at full speed or sliding around awkwardly. It feels more like actual slow motion now, and the animations are really nice. Still lots of awkward pauses before/after kills and clipping issues though.

[starsrift]

Anyone else finding the story a little... derivative? Trains bringing people to imprisonment camps, an evil organization in search of genetic superiority, etc. I wonder if that's just a result on the Firaxis staff researching the obvious in order to present a reasonable view of an occupation and a resistance. Shame they didn't take more examples from Central and South America,. The notion of a second alien faction that's working against the Ethereals and their pawns (paralleling CIA-backed revolutions) could've been interesting, and paved a way for the next sequel to go interstellar instead of earthbound, or something. Ah well.
Meanwhile, I think I might have all my squaddies speak French...

Your argument seems to be that the cover system causes problems, and that making cover less important would solve those problems. While that may be true, it would introduce problems of its own, like how to encourage people to consider unit placement, how to make the level layouts more meaningful than just being a backdrop for combat, etc. And for that matter, it would require totally rethinking much of the game's combat since it was designed around the central idea of cover.

There are very few tactics game that don't use cover. Final Fantasy Tactics comes to mind, it was about elevation and line of sight, not cover (inasmuch as cover could block sightlines). But the cover system in the X-Com reboots is grossly exaggerated (I had for instance a 40-something % shot the other day against a Muton that was one square diagonally away from the rifle-armed squaddie). Reducing the cover penalties/bonuses wouldn't change player's desires to want cover. And I'd argue that the level layouts could use some cleaning up, having a crate or bench or something every few squares just so you have plenty of cover options is a little absurd in all tilesets.
But the cover exaggeration is not necessarily the problem, but the side-effects it causes, are. "Concealment" is definitely a kludge, otherwise it would be more consistent. And the mission timers (first brought to great effect in the X-Com:EU expansion) are definitely kludges, they're Firaxis saying, "We recognize that you've learned to do this very safely and sanely, so we're gonna make you rush and overextend because we don't like the results of how our system taught you to play".

When Firaxis introduces gameplay "patches" like these to deliberately change the learned response to their implementation, it becomes appallingly obvious that it is inelegant and insufficient to the task set before it. That's not iteration so much as reversal.
And that's fine to disagree with me, I'm no authority or bouncer. I just don't like it. It's ugly and it's begging for a rework.

I find the notion that the singular extremity of the cover system is the main attraction in X-Com - plausible, but unlikely. Maybe! I would've thought a lot more folks play for the IP and the mixed modes and so on, but I could be terribly wrong.

I'm just repeating myself on this at this point, so I'll talk about other parts of X-Com instead.

[s0]

couldn't this dumb game have at least told me that using the skulljack spawns an extremely powerful enemy that can teleport and clone itself?? i just lost my 2 highest ranked characters thanks to this.

[Nillo]

couldn't this dumb game have at least told me that using the skulljack spawns an extremely powerful enemy that can teleport and clone itself?? i just lost my 2 highest ranked characters thanks to this.

I only lost one myself.

But I'm OK with this because I haven't had much trouble with the game at all so far, and I'm doing the final mission now.

[s0]

yeah i pretty much lost my veteran ironman campaign after 2 squad wipes in a row. im gonna start a new one.

also i wish bradford would just shut the hell up sometimes. "commander you don't have much time left etc etc". yeah, no shit i can see the freaking bigass mission timer in the top right corner of the screen THANK YOU VERY MUCH. i hope the "reduce beginner VO" option mitigates this.

honestly, i wish you could turn off more of the excessive feedback, like the game taking a few seconds at the start of the turn to tell you your soldiers are poisoned, panicked, etc. also the little cutscene zooming in on your mission objective when it first enters your LOS. as if there wasn't a huge icon pointing to it on your screen the entire time. this was something that already bothered me about EU. they're small things, but they add up over the course of a campaign and end up wasting time.

still really really enjoying this game tho.

[s0]

oh also i still really disagree with starsrift about concealment. it speeds up the first few turns of missions so much that i can't imagine going back to EU's slow ass opening crawl. tho you probably lose the the time gained through concealment staring at a loading screen lol.

[starsrift]

oh also i still really disagree with starsrift about concealment. it speeds up the first few turns of missions so much that i can't imagine going back to EU's slow ass opening crawl. tho you probably lose the the time gained through concealment staring at a loading screen lol.

Hey, I don't disagree with that! I disagree with the current state of game balance that makes concealment so necessary.

Also, Avenger defense missions are dicks. They literally spawned aliens faster than I could kill them, I was on T2 weapons and I hadn't built any defense matrix - but a dude on another forum told me it doesn't actually matter, he had two defense matrix, an engineer to get them to fire 2x a turn, and t3 weapons, and it just gets worse.