Difficulty By Design- X-COM 2's Endless Arms Race
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- Опубликовано: 22 май 2024
- Follow me on Twitter- / thefearalcarrot
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This video contains spoilers for X-COM 2 as well as Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice.
Despite having punishing difficulty, infuriating RNG and terrifying levels of complexity, X-COM 2 remains highly compelling. Why is this?
With a cadre of loyal but ultimately expendable Rookies at his back, the Architect drops into the fight against ADVENT to find out why more difficulty doesn't always mean less fun.
And maybe get the numbers of some Vipers too.
You saw:
X-COM 2- 2016
X-COM: Enemy Unknown- 2012
Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword- 2003
Valkyria Chronicles- 2008
DOOM- 1993
Hellblade: Senuas Sacrifice- 2017
Spelunky- 2008
Dark Souls 3- 2016
Interesting Links-
How Firaxis Saved X-COM: • How Firaxis saved XCOM...
GMTK what we can learn from DOOM: • What We Can Learn From...
X-COM 2's Creative Director plays Mario+Rabbids Kingdom Battle: • XCOM 2's Creative Dire... 
Игры
XCOM: The "Great, now my entire team has died because i moved this one soldier a tile farther than i should have, so now he's magically spotted 18 aliens who're all ready to make sure i'll never be able to walk straight again." simulator.
Volvirth phantom rangers my dude
You're not wrong
The "enemy response move" has really stunted the tactical depth of the latest X-Com games.
Try playing Xenonauts. That shit's _really_ unfair.
Ez my dude just get ranger with bladestorm
"Specialist help you recover from mistakes."
I love that statement. It's not, "They heal your units."
It's, "You fucked up, and I'm gonna temporally fix that."
That mistake being that you trusted the hitchance.
When you need to have luck to perform very well then you didn't fuck up.
@@crazeelazee7524 Until even the 5% to fail a hack happens early on(even somewhat late game if it's a timed mission)
@@crazeelazee7524 Taking a high hit chance is not a mistake. Not having a backup plan if it fails is a mistake.
I mean, it's not a mistake if you are unlucky. Why specialists are so good is because they make the average matter more than one unlucky shot. If I have maximum cover, but my soldier gets shot still, I couldn't do a whole lot about that, unless I ahve a spacialist, when I can increase the cover by 30%, and even if he gets hit, I can heal him up. What that does is it rewards good strattegy, instead of just safe strattegy. That makes it a mistake to not bring any specialists on a mission, because then you're opting in to using sub-optimal strattegies or lose soldiers cause of bad luck.
Commander! We must... Commander! There is a... Commander! The avatar project.... Commander! If we do not... Commander! We have a.... COmmAndEr! COMMANDER!
CCOOMMMMAANNDDEERR
sneeeeeeek
shut the fuck up bradford
SNAKE SNAAAAAKE
Hey, Listen!
haha plasma research go brrrrr
That moment when you lose your best soldier because he missed a 99% shot, that feeling is priceless.
69 likes confirmed
XD
Also
F
That feeling made me drop the fucking game. I love it but fuck the 99 percent shit
You learn at the beginning: Cover, flank, kill. Worst thing I ever learned. The way it really goes: Cover, flank, get spotted by 1 Andromedon, 1 Beserker, 1 brute boy, all added on the adromedon, sectiod, and lancer I was just fighting
You also forgot when they run so mu h farther then they can actually move and are now circled around your soldier and the only one left that can move is the sniper who needs to reload his weapon.
That’s why you cover use a battle scanner to see if you can flank ( or scanning protocol) if yes flank kill. If not next step is either acquire highground or destroy the enemies cover then kill.
Ooof, time to load the last save
The only ways to avoid that is to spot every enemy group before breaking concealment or having always scout ahead an entire screen. The scanning protocol ability of the specialist is also one of the most usefull abilyties you will never use. But unlike x-com enemy unknown it you atleast have some ways to find the aliens bofore having to engage them. But if you don't know what is hiding in the fog of war play it as save as possible.
@@markusbarten455 Yep. It's counterintuitive but playing like you WILL find some pod in the fog of war unless proven otherwise actually works great. Every time you pierce it, do it with one guy while everyone else still has all their actions and is at least one movement action away from decent cover. Makes for really slow action at first, at least until you have decently upgraded scouts.
I think you mean "The Sniper, the one who does all the real work, while the concealed ranger finds targets."
Killzone ambush and followup with series. I have to stop myself from using my colonel sniper too much because she would starve my other squad members of xp otherwise. And considering snipers get hurt less often than rangers and other front liners, she reached colonel before any other character reached major.
I'll see your ranger and raise you a reaper who goes on a murderous rampage that makes the rest of the squad obsolete
I might try this tactic
@@noahblair-sparks7845 do it, it's incredibly fun. Just slap a superior magazine on the sniper rifle (better than auto reloads since the max number of kills in a killzone ambush or a series is your mag capacity, give the reloads to rangers and other classes), find a high point (the spider suit was made for snipers since you can grapple hook for free and then shoot with the rifle) and go to town. Ambushes in particular are amazingly strong with killzone since you can set it up, break stealth with another character, shoot every single alien in the kill zone during the ambush and then shoot them again when they move during their turn. If you itemize the sniper correctly they won't miss a shot, and they have a high enough damage output that they'll likely kill all lower level grunts, especially with special bullets like fire, venom or blue screen.
That is so true, especially when u get the chosen sniper weapon. That shit nice
I really feel like I have to mention this: Mutons are NOT immune to melee. They just have a high chance to dodge your melee attack and riposte your soldiers, but they can't riposte bladestorm (making Templars amazing at finishing them off and a certain Chosen weapon very op) and if you're really desperate there is a small chance for you to normally melee them.
If you look in the data its like 66% chance, so much I have read. I hate them too, since I love my Templar, Ranger and SPARK.
a fun thing to do is coax them into battling the lost, they can deal with an entire swarm in a few turns lol
@@ToxicBastard Or you know, if it's me. They ignore the 10 lost dogpiling them and shoot my guy taking cover behind a car.
Cars are not cover children.
@@alexchen2519 lost are super biased, that's why I use a ranger and heavy with a lure to make them fight like so
ruclips.net/video/-YnI24n36To/видео.html
Aah, the Templar. The only good "hero" unit type in war of the chosen. Reapers suck because they can never bring in an item, and both Reapers and Skirmishers suck because they can't use better armor. Neither can Templars, but at least they have a lot of perks to mitigate the no armor defect that "hero" units have.
"The default difficulty, Veteran,"
Me : That explains so much.
I know this is such a bad attitude but anything anyone says about xcom before at least commander difficultly is kind of moot.
@@shauncarr1991 "I know this sucks, but imma do it anyway-"
@@shauncarr1991 Difficulty is there to be played. You can still criticize the game at a lower difficulty lmao.
I guess XCom claims to be fair but *HOW DID YOU CRIT MY BOY THAT'S BEHIND FULL COVER*
It isn't. Don't let them lie to you. I present the 100% miss. With a shotgun. Point blank.
ruclips.net/video/2ar3NwhcCms/видео.html
@@BigBeerus ah, I recall this.
If I'm correct, I think that's because the game rounds up to a 100 when it's actually 99.2% or something?
From what I've read the game is actually in favor of the player behind the scenes. And it's purely luck or not whether you miss a shot
Xcom 2's random number generation is kinda bullshit and uses one number for every roll with a single shot (something EU didn't do). That means if your defense is high enough any shot that manges to hit you probably also manages to crit.
If y’all think Xcom is bad just wait until you play battle brothers
That ending was perfect. The number of times I have shrieked after a dude is killed outright from fucking miles away when in full cover is unreal. I am a diehard fan of the original X-COM games and I'm so glad modern gamers get to experience some of X-COMs brilliance. Even if it is watered down in the reboot series. I do wish they would bring back the simulation base/financial management though. It was awesome to build factory bases with their own veterean personal defence forces, dedicated research outposts etc. Being able to take full control and having a proper fleshed out economic system made the originals feel like they gave you 100x more freedom to play the game the way you wanted to. I would have an epiphany when I was in school of a new way of making money, or a new alien craft breaching tactic and I'd go home and test it out. As refined as the new XCOM is, it doesn't really require you to put that level of thought into it, which is a shame IMO.
I'm not sure I agree that you don't go on the offensive until the final mission stages.
Most the mission types you get are striking out against ADVENT and the Avatar Project in some way instead of defending XCOM or Resistance targets. You're USUALLY blowing up a facility, raiding supplies, kidnapping enemy VIPs, assaulting grounded UFOs, stopping alien transmissions, etc. Hell, pretty much every story mission is a strike against ADVENT and the aliens as opposed to defending from them.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean about that, but you're usually making active moves against ADVENT targets in this game.
I think he is talking gameplay wise not story wise. It doesn't matter the reason you go into a mission, you almost always play defensly
The missions you can really only count as defense are the retaliation missions and saving vips
Edit: Dis be wrong
@@keithkania3810 What he means is that you're always reacting to (AKA defending against) a new threat the game gives you, which means you have to constantly worry whether your decisions will play out well or not without being able to truly know if they well. It isn't until the end that you're able to proactively plan against (AKA attack against) every encounter you meet and act accordingly.
Adrien Taylor
Hey thanks for the clarification
i mean, on the other hand you do it to defend yourself. you strike that thing to stop research from advancing, capture the VIP in order to prevent them from making you scan slower and simmilar things. if you don#t do something you as an example might get less money from that point on
You forgot to mention that Vipers are also often sexy snakegirls from space. Pretty key point of fact, I feel.
Snexy
I still don't understand why were they infiltrating as thin men instead of women in the first game
Too many creeps making unwanted advances.
Levyathyn Best reply ever lol
Levyathyn The only "sexy" thing about them is they have two round chest bumps. How has xcom 2 made all the snake furries show up?
if you play on legendiary ironman starting with 4 rookies, the 1st mission is the most difficult, it only gets easier
It only gets easier after you get the tier 2 weapon and armor. The first 2 months are pure suffering in Legendary ironman.
@@Sir-Pleiades I delayed getting those cause I didn't feel the need, do a "savage" mission early and just buy 1-3 mimic beacon, plus get a free spark from the tower mission, not to mention the free alien hunter weapons you get within 10 days (including op frostbomb)
also you don't have to win missions after the first one and keeping your squad healthy is worth more then the rewards
so after the first mission, you shouldn't even get wounded, ever, if you play safe, get your second reaper and always know what's ahead
@@maxmustermann-zx9yq Time to add Yellow Alert and some other mods.
it really sucks, after some point in the game it becomes too easy, even on legendary: ranger in archon suite with serial and talon rounds just deletes pods. The same ranger with inspire and teamwork kills avatar in 1 turn.
Sectopod? EMP bomb it. Not stunned? EMP bomb it again (salvo). Still moving? Hold my haywire.
Snipers can kill from the other side of the map (the only thing that saves poor aliens are trees) or fire pistol 5! times in a turn (20-45 dmg)...
I enjoy analysis of design in games being explored further, i agree i had that feeling of gaining power during gameplay but instead of an increase of raw stats it felt like an increase in diversity of play.
keep up the content.
That's one thing X-COM does really well across the board. Besides new weapons/armour, everything is just more options rather than a straight upgrade. I ended up getting acid grenades early on and that totally shook up how I fought MECs and other aliens with amour.
I agree that Ironman is how it's meant to be played... but I never put it on in XCOM 2. There's just too much risk of a game-breaking glitch that'll ruin my whole playthrough. The best example was when the UFO intercept event was bugged, the UFO didn't spawn on the globe, so my Avenger got stuck waiting for it to be intercepted. Restarting the game didn't help, only loading an earlier save worked. If it had been Ironman, I'd have been fucked.
XCOM 1 wasn't perfect (An ironman battleship raid almost got fucked when placing my SHIV in the first doorway made the game decide that this only path in was now blocked permanently. I cleared it by having my two guys with Archangel armor go around that doorway and lure everything to the doorway killzone.), but I was dissapointed with XCOM 2 being even buggier.
Not that that stopped me from having done multiple fun playthroughs of course.
I won't put it on because I don't want to lose my precious bois
James Brincefield Well, I got the above mentioned bug, plus one where a new level loaded and the screen was completely black. Restarting the game didn't help. So that's two of the three or so playthroughs I did that would've been trashed.
I always play Ironman of my own free will in XCOM, I don´t need and don´t want to tick any box off just because technical issues may happen, reloading because you can´t extract an injured soldier due to a glitch is not "cheating", happened to me more than once. You do need to replay the entire mission though since I never save in missions, I never play on the hardest difficulties though, Iron Man and normal difficulty is all I need.
It's true, in my last xcom2 playthrough something during the first blacksite mission broke and I was unable to finish it. Learned the hard way not to use ironman.
When i finally worked up the courage to do an iron man playthrou on one of the harder difficulties, it was rough in the first few months. This one time thou when i was doing a mission with the lost modifier, too many lost was loaded in. game crashed. when i checked my save file was corrupted. havent touched the game since. im not strong enough to go throu that torture again
One thousand views!? Where did you people come from???
/r/XCOM
And /r/games
I was shocked you have so little views on your other videos. You deserve way more!
When i clicked on the video and saw the first minute, i thought you were a 300k + channel judging by the quality. Turns out this channel is much to small! You deserve 100x of the views you are currently getting. Im glad i discovered you. Keep up the good work!
try 13k
I love all these games, great video man, keep grinding!
3:33 The Mutons are not immune to melee attacks.
There is an achievement for killing a berserker (a beefier melee based muton) with a melee attack.
My first Slash on a Muting is what make me SAVE SCUMM OUT IF PURE RAGE
*I bifurcated the Assassin and YOU are what kills me!?!*
Never gotten bored with XCOM for some reason (may have rage quit it a few times When missing an enemy who's 1 tile in front of my Ranger using a Shotgun) but I've never gotten bored with the game, its always in the back of my mind and I'm like what game do I want to play? XCOM
My main problem with xcom is that I never feel like I'm loosing fairly, and this arm race feeling makes me not want to accept death. I feel like if I'm loosing already and since the aliens are getting stronger it's all downhill from there and it's not really fun imo to feel like you're already doomed.
I honestly think the random aspect of the shots, coupled with the line of sight mechanic makes death really frustrating.
What I mean with line of sight is the binary state of "move there, you are safe and can kill that last ennemy easily". "move one square further, you triggered two group of ennemy by spotting them and they are killing two of your soldiers now, especially since it was you last character and nobody is able to shoot right now".
Same with shoots, having a 60% chance of "dodge and nothing happen" and 40% of "ho well... you're instantly dead" is a bit too much variance.
I don't mind some RNG when the effect isn't so gamebreaking. Having to retreat a character or play safer because of bad luck is fun. Instantly losing hours of progress because your high level character got a random 1% crit and your other high level character got eviscerated by this group of ennemy that spawned because I move just a square too far (which is RNG since I wasn't seeing them before that, it's not like I chose to trigger those ennemy turns)... well it's simply not enjoyable. It's not even punishing, I could have played well and still get punished (same is true with ennemy movement, especially since even if the AI doesn't see you apparently they are scripted to come near you so that you can't actually try to infiltrate and trying to do so is the best way to die...).
Basically a lot of things are really cool with x-com, but some mechanics are simply bullshit imo.
I particularly fucking hated the MEC units that without fail used the fucking morter for absolutely guaranteed damage, that shit was fucking stupid
Hate to break it to you bud, but rng does not answer everything. You and the enemy see each other at a 17 tile range. Just remember that and play around it. Soon you'll be able to eyeball it fairly easy
Mods help with a lot of this. Something as simple as turning off or reducing mission timers makes this game infinitely more enjoyable. Same with the Avatar project.
Plus cosmetic mods are hella good. Now you can have like 20+ unique looking soliders
Well rng is not bad on itself the problem with xcom is that a lot of mechanics interact badly with rng making the game quite frustrating sometimes.
The first one is how feeble are unit especially in the early game because of that any mistake you make cost you which is great, but because the mechanic also is fairly based on luck it means any struck of badluck cost you dearly too which is fairly outside of your control and frustrating.
The second one is how the campaign work, since it is a continuous campaign where success in mission impact the whole difficulty in the mission it means that any set back make the game harder in the long run, so your bad luck can have a deep impact that can snowball.
And third the game is now designed to test your luck, with timed mission you now need to sometimes rush, and rushing put you at a disadvantage against the enemy, forcing you to take "risk/reward" situation which are abosolutely not risk reward situation since the reward is not making the rest of the game more difficult, (that's why meld was a great idea it was indeed a risk/reward situation no just let's see if the game screw you or not).
There is a simple solution for rng make base soldier health 100 make every shot deal some damage and make them deal damage based on cover/range/weapon type/armor etc so that you don't get punished for trying a %95 chance sniper shot from block away from enemy. Seriously i have no idea why they keep this rng based combat
One of my favorite thing that Xcom 2 did was Stun Lancers. Hate their guts and wish they would all have horrible deaths.
But they show up around the time your Rangers can become sword wielding 1-shooting units. It’s the games way of saying “we can do it also” and also makes it so you can’t just have your Rangers be used in a brain dead way. And to top it off, they were in the game on launch.
For such a simple unit, they hold such a hatred from the playerbase and a target priority as a unit. Even in the late game.
I thought the stealth mechanic and the in-mission timers were a massive self-contradicting design decision.
The stealth mechanic allows you to set up an opening gambit on the fly rather than slowly inching forward for fear of triggering the next pod. It's to give you a bit of breathing room at the start of a mission and lends itself to quick, surgical strikes more than the first one. It was NOT intended as a turtling method and the mission timers plus all the other anti-turtling decisions made in XCOM 2 reinforce, rather than contradict, that notion.
The timers can be stressful but they certainly have value gameplay wise. They make it so you can't just find a nice spot, turtle up, and poke at the baddies from your superior position until they're all dead. Or only ever blue move and overwatch hop your way everywhere.
It's so you have to sometimes stick your neck out and take a risk in order to complete the objective.
HitodamaKyrie exactly what I thought. Brilliant design
@@HitodamaKyrie Personally I hated the timers. It pushed movement for the sake of movement, and the number of times I got caught out in the open by reinforcements or had them just drop in behind my agents and nuke them and then being absolutely fucked to get back to extraction on time made me uninstall and never bother with it again.
@@NonRegnumDei1934 I have a vague memory of hearing about option in game after WotC that moves timer to only move AFTER you break the concealment.
In fact you are only half right. The code of xcoms 1 and 2 rubber-bands the enemy (think of old racing car games where once you get so far ahead, suddenly they seem to speed up so you can never really pull away)
That early tech boost is so quickly useless because they tech faster due to it.... win too many battles? They get tougher... Get too many hits in vs your predicted odds? It will put an invisible debuff on your to hit odds until it falls back in line. The game actually is designed like a fruit machine... it wants to let you win only so much... fall behind or race ahead and it will change the rules in favour of the underdog.
I know I'm ghosting this 9 months later, but that is entirely wrong. Anything research progress you make does NOTHING to affect how the aliens progress, they progress based on a system called 'Force Levels', which increases every 10.5 days (15 in Legendary Difficulty) Starting at 1 and capping out at Force Level 20 around August, so you'll be facing Sectopods and Gatekeepers in September no matter what weapons you have
"Get too many hits against predicted odds?" Then basic probability will push your results to the expected outcome. A 50% chance to hit will hit 50% percent of the time. A 95% chance to hit will miss 5% of the time. No manipulation is happening.
@a Pickle with a Mustache you've clearly never played the original XCom. Predicted odds are only kind of related to actual odds. If you're standing right next to somebody with a low accuracy weapon it might give you a 60% chance to hit, but then you'll fire 5 times and hit every single one. Which isn't impossible obviously, but it happens every time. Similarly I've also missed chances that are above 100% many times, sometimes multiple times in a row.
orangesilver8 given that the video in question is talking about the recent xcom series I don't think it is reasonable to use the original games manipulating odds as evidence for if the modern games manipulate odds.
Hm. I may have misread the comment I was responding to.
The schedule isn't really true. I've had XCOM 2 runs where I got lots of early scientists, rushed a laboratory, and was able to get magnetic weapons within the first month or so. The very next mission, ADVENT will send out advanced troopers. (so at least a month earlier than they typically appear)
Since the aliens _always_ advance at the same pace as you, the truth is that there's no real rush to complete any of the research, aside from what you need to keep the death timers from going off.
Matthew Crazer hehe in nu current campaign. I put of researching new equipment until I get the inspiration bonus. This does end up pretty bad for your soldiers though
The aliens can deffinatly reach newer equipment earlier than you (learned that the very hard way) but i suppose it is possible that the aliens are always either one step in front of you or equal to you.
wow,,, i did not know this. i thought i sucked
I haven't really checked, but I suspect there's a bit of both going on - the standard Advent grunt likely gets upgraded as you upgrade your weapons - keep them up with you, keep the pressure on, but let you have someone you can still deal with if you're behind the curve.
The other aliens are (mostly) on a fixed schedule - every month, a new type or two is introduced.
This lets you do things like I did one playthrough - I was short a vital corpse, so I skipped magnetic weapons entirely. This gave me a bit longer with the standard weapons - which definitely made for a few tense missions as I had to work out how to deal with not having the damage needed to reliably deal with the new aliens as they came out. However, it also saved me some time in research so I got plasma weapons faster - at which point (probably, I didn't really notice - I'd just been taking out mid-tier with ballistics, after all) the upgraded Advent grunts keep it from getting to easy, but I could deal with the alien types fairly easily for a while. So a reward for a risk, but not a cakewalk.
if you do a rushed game, to get the winning before july achievement, the game will obviously throw some loops at you by introducing plot essential enemies or just straight up Sectopods (which are meant to appear in august). When I did the rushed campaign I met every enemy except specters, they never appeared once lol.
I put in about 200 hours into xcom 2 so far. It's one of those game that you can always come back to and play few maps. I really love it.
I save scum It literally took me a whole week to become OP on my second try on war of the chosen. I'm having "fun" now!!! (Still sometimes missing 95-97% shots!!!)
I use to Save Scum like a mofo...but I think that helps you learn a bit, I am getting to the point where I rarely save scum now Only S.S.ing when some BS happens (Like a car that's been on fire the whole match, suddenly decides it was to randomly blow next to my Sharpshooter and the last civilian in a Retribution match) XCom is a bitch but it's a bitch that gets easier each time you go at it too the point you feel satisfied that you got a Flawless on a mission with like 7 Pods and a Timer on the last section
@Jamie If its their first introduction to Xcom then I can see why. But the only save scumming I ever done was 1 time a soldier got crit killed by a 49% hit chsnce 1% crit chance. Though I didn't load to the last action I just restarted the whole mission. Idk Save scumming can be totally abused like every turn or just a minor "let me do this once more because that was bs"
Though people that talk trash like that just remind me of the Fire Emblem community when it comes to casual or classic mode. Why does it matter? In the end its not like it affects your experience unless its someone streaming the game.
95-97% shots have a 5-3% chance to miss. They arent 100% shots.
@@TomCruz54321 United
I kinda save scum. My general rule is that I can restart the mission (from the main map so it resets the map and all). Respect to the people who do Ironman, but I just can’t.
1. Secoids are not priority targets. They ALWAYS resurrect if they can which means that they won't hurt you for the first turn.
2. The doom counter doesn't end the game when it runs out. It gives you another two weeks to lower it; which resets those two weeks. It is no threat what so ever.
Otherwise great video^^
Btw rangers & the psionic faction guys counter sectiods due to them having melee vulnerability
3:33 Correction : Muton's aren't immune to melee attacks. There is a percentage chance that they will counter your melee attack (which feels like 2 out of 3) but they're definitely not immune. I've killed many Mutons with my rangers slash attack in Wotc.
Great points, and something I noticed Darkest Dungeon, despite feeling very similar to XCOM2, lacks in player progression. Like XCOM, it adds different enemy types into the mix as the game progresses, but your heroes never really get the upgrade as XCOM soldiers do. Once you unlock all skills at the base level, every further upgrade is just better numbers on that skill. in XCOM, your options in combat are always increasing, while they kind of stagnate in DD.
Really hoping they improve on that in Darkest Dungeon 2 someday.
one is fair and the other is Xcom. That's the difference. Screw them for lowering my hit chance without me knowing.
Based on the name, Darkest Dungeon, I don't think a second could be made. If their was an even darker dungeon in the world, it wouldn't be the darkest dungeon, and if the second isn't darker than the first, it doesn't deserve the name darkest. That's not to say that the makers couldn't make a "second" one by making a game much the same in concepts, but not actually be named, Darkest Dungeon.
@@propheinx2250 So about that-
@@fattytan1377 Xcom doesn't do this...? In fact, Xcom actually cheats the rng in your favor on all difficulties below Legend.
@@propheinx2250 ...Or just go deeper in the darkest dungeon?
My favorite tactical battle game, that nobody ever seems to talk about, was Final Fantasy Tactics. It had a really interesting turn system that made it different from most other games, even today. Every single unit on the field has a "speed", so instead of a whole team having turns, it went unit to unit. Also the combat itself was extremely satisfying
I mean they tried that sort of combat system with XCOM: Chimera Squad. Up to you whether that was a good implementation of it or not.
Assassin + bow + ultima strike = 999 dmg
Fft be like xD
this video got me to buy the full xcom bundle at 30 dollars on this year's steam sale, and i have absolutely no regrets
thank you
Xcom 2 loves to punish the player, and the player had better learn to enjoy that punishment. It enjoys watching the player suffer, and takes every opportunity to show the player who is really in charge, hurting them in ways that they will not soon forget whenever it is unsatisfied with the player's actions. I love Xcom 2. I think that, secretly, it loves me too, and it's harsh treatment of me is at least partially because it knows that I like it.
josh fritz xcom 2 is my new waifu
josh fritz lol... Well said.
I wouldn't have it any other way :3
-and it's okay because i consent to being abused-
... and now you secretly likes BDSM!
This game is a monster! :-)
a D/s relationship, with XCOM as the dom... hmm should i be wearing latex when i play? :P
While i haven´t played X-Com 2 until now, i already know the feeling you described from the first one.
I think there is not just the timing you described, i assume the game also introduces new enemies depending on what technologies you research.
This makes sense from the system perspective as it is easier for the designers to scale the difficulty this way.
The most xcom thing happened to me while watching this video and I missed a 97% shot
Classic
20 hour campaign!? Am I that bad at this game when I use 40-50 on one run :(
I took 80. Actually looking at sites like howlongtobeat I see that everyone takes less than myself to finish a game. Watching gameplays, though, I don't see a difference in my pace. May it be that everyone else finishes the game in a hurry? Or am I the wrongdoer here?
i use the long war mod, and am currently researching magnetic weapons, going on 60 hours.
I'm a completionist, and I love the Long War mod. I have one game that I have been working on for over a year, the time is at over 300 hours. I could have beaten it quite a while back, but there is a certain enjoyment to playing X-Com 2 with 10 full squads of colonels. It has allowed me to test best possible end game combinations in ways that are impossible to get to in the vanilla game. I just wish the Long War mod would be adapted for War of the Chosen.
Running on 500 total hours in XCOM 2. I'm playing it over again on next-to-hardest difficulty and on Ironman, and I'm only about 10 hours in and I'm already set to steamroll the rest of the game's story. I should really invest in the "Impossible" difficulty...
I just hit 500 hours this past weekend.
13:16
Half health. Half cover. Get Xcom’d baby.
(I’m kidding of course. Great video!)
The reaper and ranger with the conceal perk trivialize the game for me. While the damage output from the reaper is extremely low, their ability to permanently highlight targets, their claymore, and ability to remain concealed after killing a target made them a must have on every mission.
The mimic beacons also made the game surprisingly easy as you could force ADVENT into disadvantageous positions. Civilians still took priority hits, but not getting decimated by a sectopod always felt good.
Overall you're given an absurd arsenal to work with that can make the game significantly easier. Even with the added mechanics from WOTC it became relatively easy to find a balance for your soldiers given the new tools you have to work with.
Also, psi troops are still just as OP as they were in Enemy Within. Blind null lances FTW.
Reaper? Low damage? Maybe most of the time buuuut banish says hi on that 1 enemy you just hate
I swear you just cursed my guy, just as I was done laughing at the "he was in full cover, at full health, what the heck?" joke i immediately lost my grenadier who was in full cover to a crit from a muton :/
Really great analysis. Thank you.
X-COM deserves more love, great video
Kent does too!
First time watching your content. INSTANT SUB YEAA BOIIII!
It's appreciated, thanks!
I read this as INSANE SUB!!
...still applies.
You forgot one thing, a single reaper used to scout, with even a single sniper abusing squadsight completely trivializes every encounter in this game
I got all the way to the assassin's fight using that two man dream team. Unfortunately, they both died, so I memorialized them and sent a bigger team to get revenge
I personally like having skirmishers use their grapple abilities to make lucrative grenades absolutely amazing. Have them pull themselves into an enemy then pull an enemy to them and next to said enemy. Have someone give them a free action via teamwork to escape then blow up the whole area.
11:35 why does the gameplay in the background show Mox giving an action to a bond mate only for the bond mate to it back?
Grave dire quelle parole ad inizio video! Adorare così tanto sto gioco è grave!
My XCOM experience usually goes like this. Place a guy behind elevated full cover for max protection and aim bonus. Flashbang aliens to stun their movement and aim. Only to get said soldiers one shot critit’d through said elevated full cover by a SECTOID with squadsight!
I loved both Firaxis's versions of the Xcom games but the massive flaw I find is that after a bit of xp is gathered no enemy ever gets a chance to fire back. War of the Chosen added a lot of new, often fun, game mechanics that unfortunately made this problem even worse, any error I made on Classic mode could be instantly solved with a special ability or team work boosting a soldiers action points.
use a mod to increase pod sizes
I've hit the point in my current campaign where pods are often 5 spectres and a couple of andromedons, and my standard missions have more enemies on them than the avenger defense or chosen stronghold missions
Beautiful job friend +1 sub!
Love playing Xcom. On Legend the only time I really struggle is the first mission that has a sectopod. That's about the time it starts becoming a challenge.
2:38
Ah, I see you're a man of fine taste as well.
Can I just ask wtf this gameplay in the background is at 11:24?
You move the skirmisher up right next to the warlock presumably for a point blank high damage shot, but then you use combat presence to grant a turn to a different teammate who would have a worse shot. Then for SOME REASON that I am too intellectually inferior to understand obviously, you use that turn granted from the skirmisher, to use teamwork on skirmisher, using your turn to give an extra turn back to the skirmisher aka the person you got that turn from and what is this mess lol. All that did was effectively putting combat presence on cooldown and wasting your teamwork which you only get 1 (2 leveled up) of per mission.
I just got really confused by that sry if I'm nit picky
I assume it was to get that flanking shot via dashing with the Skirmisher to get them into position, despite how expensive that is. It’s an alright move in all honesty, just not the most optimal, yknow?
I didn’t see this really as “nit-picking” honestly. It’s just not what you would do in this situation and I’d do something similar honestly. Hope this helped! Lemme know if it didn’t :).
@@tenacityxl except he needed an action point to use combat presence so he could of just taken the the shot.
@@31codyskater my slow ass has no idea what any of those terms are and am getting scared to find out what those terms are lol. Haven't gotten that far yet in xcom 2 yet
This video and you in general got me to get xcom2 on my switch. First off I hate you so much for this second off I'm probably also getting it on steam this game is so fun
Just about to play this for the first time. It seems like this game has a dedicated fan base so it makes me hopeful I'll love it.
Biggest problem with XCOM2 is the Line of Play mechanic. It makes what should be a tactical and strategic battle map into a one-size fits all situations approach. Enemies cannot be skirted or avoided, and will always intercept your troops unless you take deliberate game-breaking efforts to break the LoP mechanic. Being forcibly revealed by completing objectives is also substandard.
This is due to objectives that require someone to get to a console be game breakingly easy if the enemy didn't detect you when achieving it. Take the supply missions where XCOM fights advent over common supplies. The game lets you time to plan your moves as advent will only start evacuating crates when you get spotted, but if you could tag the crates and remain in stealth, then a single reaper, or a single solider with a lot of patience, could tag all crates and extract with no tension what so ever. XCOM never want to have you in a sense of full security, and want you to make decisions in the grey area. Even missions like rescue missions make sure that even IF you manage to open the cell and get the prisoner undetected you have to plan out your escape well. Since you will most likely only have one or 2 turns to escape before the enemy overwhelms you and you cannot fight them off any more
So, you're complaining that the game isn't brain-dead easy?
@@aolson1111 Because having shitty poorly done artificial difficulty gameplay is so much better
Wait, orthogonal? Orthogonality means right angles, or two elements that are perpendicular to one another. How in the world did this become "enemies with different classes"?
If you imagine a class as a vector representing its attributes, orthogonal design in this context means that many or most classes' vectors cannot be represented as mere sums of those of other classes. No combination of other classes can e.g. pull you out of cover and suffocate you like the viper, so that class is orthogonal to the others.
However, I'm not actually convinced that XCOM 2 is a good example of this principle.
@@SodiumNitrateBot Thanks for the info
Great video, and thank you very much for the hellblade spoiler warning! x
My PTSD episode started at 2:30 when I recognized that font from a RUclips speedrunner I adored before he left the platform. But it was only at 2:39 that I started convulsing on the ground, because that font plus that green is just too close to Nak3d Eli's old thumbnail titles. Go look him that gem.
RIP Nak3d Eli. ;~;
Heard they also have a sneaky background coding for the hit percentages. If everything is going fine they'll lower the hit chance without telling you so you miss and everything goes to shit(why your guy will miss even with 90%). Same if you have maybe 2 soldiers left and 3 dead then they'll bump up the hit percentage without telling you to make the soldiers seem like they pulled the impossible.
If thats the case its the shittiest mechanic ever and you should be able to turn it off. Seriously I get challenge and difficulty but it defeats any sense of fun - and in the end I play to have fun not get annoyed.
Yes your comment is 1year old - but I just got this vid on my recommended and had to jump in here :)
That explains why one motherf***er in my squad always misses 91% hit shots
Immersive Gamer dynamic difficulty is used in a surprising amount of games. I don’t think it should effect hit chances though. I much prefer the resident evil style of getting rid of enemies after you die a bunch of times in a row so you have to deal with less at once.Aka don’t make the player weaker or stronger make the enemies weaker or stronger. If I’m doing too well spawn more sectapods and gatekeepers or whatever is the strongest enemy at the point of the game I’m at. Don’t fudge the hit percentage numbers.
It literally never lowers hit chance. 90% is not 100%.
@@aolson1111 they admitted in doing so
This video reminds me that Firaxis really put a ton of thought and effort into X-com, the several restarts ensured they only released a good product. Playing battletech now, it's a good game, sadly let down by the majority of missions being the same old bland randomly generated scenarios with only major difference being quantity, type, and makeup of enemy forces. There is strategy of course, but not the vicious unrelenting arms race of X-com, mostly you're fighting against the campaign layer, attrition, logistics, funds etc. Which I love, but its very easy to get burnt out after too many samey missions in a row.
you've hit the nail on the head as to why guys like me keep coming back to Xcom over and over and over
I just picked X com 2 up and it's my favourite game since rocket League. Absolutely incredible fun and well designed
I'm getting amped up to play this for the first time, so I'm not sure what your definition of a "punishing and ruthless game" is, but it does remind me of my journey through Far Cry. Yeah, simple shooter...but I loved FC 2 b/c of its absolute brutality, while subsequent titles have had to be modded to achieve anything similar. If we're talking that type of punishing, then I'm all in! :-)
Far cry 2 is a classic masterpiece, I’m glad you referenced it lol hope your first play though was a blast, stay safe God bless!
The problem I have with xcom is that there were a lot of times where I felt cheated rather than it feeling like I had made a mistake. That mostly comes down to the rng I suppose, and it's also why I found it hard to keep going with darkest dungeon after a while. I like hard games and normally play on whatever the hardest difficulty is but idk , missing a 95% feels worse than hitting a 5% feels good if that makes sense
Because of expectation and immediate plans around expected outcome
At least darkest dungeon made it clear from the get go that
*Make the best out of the worst situation*
It tells you outright that the game can be unfair.
I always had a tendancy to focus all my efforts on upgrading weapons, armor and research. It wasnt until recently I realized the benefits of opening up the map 😐 I always watched the avatar program and tried to upgrade my stuff fast enough and usually couldnt take out the first black site. Now I'm doing much better. Though I cut it close. 2 blocks from avatar project complete before I started taking avatar blocks away. I can only hope the game goes and goes and goes. Absolutely awesome game tons of fun, and variety.
Strangely enough, it took the doomsday clock to start ticking to get me to build new comms relays and contact a new region to go after a black site to buy some more time.
In XCOM you have to be flexible just like in real life warfare. That's what's so good about it.
>just like in real life
If we're talking about ufo defense, maybe, but i doubt a real life close combat would just be a weird rng game.
The game can get even more punishing depending on what mods you install
I don’t typically watch smaller channels because they typically don’t have the level of polish to be enjoyable, but holy shit man you’ve got a level of polish on your videos I’d expect from somebody with at least 100,000. I know this is a fairly old video but keep up the good work and I’ll be glad to have you in my sub box.
What a great game. So happy that it was a PlaystationPlus game. I would never have discovered it otherwise.
This comment section proves exactly why this game is so good. There is no perfect way to play, sure there are some things that probably overall are better than others, but combine that with the RNG and you’ve got an excellent game you can play forever.
The one thing i hate about xcom and by extension fire emblem is the bloody rng. Moving a unit to where they get attacked 3 times? yh your fault. Missing 3 80% hit attacks in a row then having one guy die? Utter bs.
If you're regularly putting your soldiers in a position where they will die if they miss their shots, then that's your fault. There are also guaranteed hit weapons and skills that make it practically impossible to get hit.
The RNG can never make you lose the game in one or two rolls. It can make you lose soldiers, yes. Though even that was probably a mistake on your part. Losing soldiers and dealing with it is part of XCOM.
That's how many tabletop wargames work. Shit happens and then you deal with it. The point is you can't trust anything to succeed, so you need a plan B.
Thats the beauty of xcom lol. Its unpredictable😎
@@Xandros999 as well as a plan c, d, e........
I remember using all snipers and a stealthed dude/dudess as spotter, never really changed my strategy all that much .. and stuff .. well ... just died.
I loved these games and but stopped on one of the 360 they tiles it just ... became impossible to advance, even keeping everyone alive and researching etc. Looks that this may have been remedied in the newer titles, your video may have got my interest up enough to purchase this, do they have a "hold" edition, original and expansion(s?) included?
4:45 why is that mage attacking from one range!?!
I still like how the hardest setting makes everything even/balanced. All the lower settings give you hidden advantages to beat the AI xD
I'd make the claim original XCOM: UFO Defense did a better job balancing Superhuman than this game did.
@@thefinalpotato8607 The game has a bug where it sets the difficulty to the lowest option after your first mission.
This game really name is "Miss hit a 100% shoot and get insta killed by a fucking robotic chiken"
Imho xcom 2 has a difficulty sense that makes you cautious of what choices you make, both on the global map and in the mission. Idk how many times i thought it would be a good idea to ambush early, only to have aliens said ambusher were weak against bumb rush the poor guy before i could adjust my action. The timer just reminds you of what is at stake and can be managed with practice(might take a few gameovers to get that sense lol ). Havent gotten the expansion yet but im going for it asap, though i AM dreading a second counter xD
I disagree with your initial opinion: your troops scale up with the difficulty and it always feels hard. In xcom EU (and EW), and in xcom 2, for me the game was always instead: the initial game is pretty hard, and you can get obliterated early, and then the game is obscenely easy as the enemies never scale fast enough for the rest of the game (and yes, i did turn up the difficulty). You die fast, sure, but if you put a minimal amount of thought into your actions the game is never difficult after the first few months (by the time vipers are out/confounding light is over the game only ever gets easier). So to me xcom is not a great example of this type of design but actually an example of not much changing over the game.
he was not in full cover he was flanked and he was at half heatlh not full
I think he meant at the start of the turn before the robot blew his over away.
13:17 “HE WAS ON FULL HEALTH!!” Soldier: was on 3 health
He hasn't been keeping up on his Physical Training, okay? :p
Hey Adam, I haven't played WotC yet, but I've been considering it. The gameplay footage that you're showing, is that vanilla WotC? Like all the cool-looking UI stuff, armors, weapons and new classes and such?
serpenttao yes you get 3 new classes with their own weapons and armor along with new weapons and armor and enemies
and templars and Psi Ops can deal with anything in the game fairly easily...
the REaper special class is much stronger than both of those, even, and can kill absolutely anything in the game in a single "shot".
Keith Filibeck
while they are really good, i have dominated, and i don't mean the ability, the game with both Psi Ops and Templars, even when i only had one of those units, the missions were almost too easy, and when i used them together, there was very little chance i even got hit, in most missions anyway.
not even the last mission gave me much trouble.
i just don't play with as much emphasis on stealth, and most of my snipers are gunslinger specced out, so they don't even really need that much range.
just my preference, i suppose, guess i should try to use the Reapers more though, it could make things more entertaining, not that it was getting boring.
=> Mentions Mark Brown
=> Calls the new genre trend thing "Souls'em up"
Oh you cheeky git
I thought this was released 5 hours ago, not 5 years... Still a great video.
What's the last music of the video? I've really heard it a loot, but can't remember where
This analysis confuses me. How can you miss that the source of difficulty in xcom at least as far as enemy design goes is that enemies are designed as hard counters to possible builds you can field. You even hint at this towards the beginning, but then try to put focus on orthogonal design, which plainly isn't the case at all. Sure, the enemies are different from each other, but that's because they're designed to counter a different kind of operator. Add in the unpredictable nature of what enemies will show up on a map combined with the need to keep a variety of different operators leveled up, and you now ensure that you'll almost never see someone deploy a team that's optimal for the enemies and map that they're on, just the best possible choice at that moment, which layers on difficulty as well.
I know some of you may read this and think this isn't a big difference, but no enemies merely being different from one another versus enemies being designed specifically to counter a given tactic/unit available to the player is a huge thing. Many of the creatures in No Man's Sky exhibit orthogonal design, for instance.
Want to talk unforgiving? Play the original Microprose X-COM. Trust me, if you've never played it, the Firaxis XCOMs are way more forgiving.
There's a fairness to the original XCOM that's just missing from modern renditions. From bullets actually being individual damage dealers with their own individual arcs to the fact that aliens operate at a similar playing field to you with no pods and instead spawned into the maps together or separated depending on issue.
XCOM UFO Defense is punishing, but its not slamming your head into a tiolet seat repeatidly like XCOM2's progression acts like.
I don't know. By the end, your psi corp would be matching aliens everywhere.
USMM Chris exactly! I've had games where my soldiers couldn't even make it off the damn ship.
I remember Terror from the Deep being probably the least forgiving of the games. And also had plenty of unforgiving bugs as if the game wasn't hard enough ;) And then there was X-Com: Apocalypse which for the most part wasn't that unforgiving... you just needed to know some tricks to deal with head crab launchers etc. except for that one late-game alien weapon that had homing acid missiles (100% guaranteed to hit, no matter the cover, even behind corners etc.) that would deal DoT to equipment and quickly leave your soldiers naked.
Also, as far as enemy designs and adjusting to new situations, if You like XCOM 2, especially WOTC, there's actually another series that I find myself comparing to it constantly. Tactics Ogre. It's often forgotten about, but the PSP remake and GBA game in particular (As well as the amazing One Vision mod and the original Ogre Battles) do a fantastic job of constantly mixing up unique enemies and classes (as well as skills and perks) to constantly feel like You are adjusting to new stuff.
Actually One Vision in particular makes for a very interesting campaign, where You find Yourself adjusting the entire course of a battle because of one unit failing to block, and getting misplaced. One of my favorites was a fairly straightforward fight in which I put too much faith into a guy blocking a choke point, he got shield based off of a roof, which let all but 2 of my units get surrounded and eliminated, finally resulting in my leader and his trusty healer using poisoned claws and a spear's range to awkwardly keep away each unit until they finally won, right as the thunderstorm they were in cleared away. Their odds were grim, but they just barely scraped by. (Best part, got it on video.)
Coffee Potato Wasteland 2 is fuckin lit
Hell yeah it is!
Which is Mark Brown video he mentioned? I couldn't find it
i absolutely love xcom and im sure i always will, but man the console load times on xcom2 are AWFUL. running it on a ps4 pro doesn't help at all -_-
Just now playing the DLC, only because I just found out about it. The game is awesome, the load times are killer it's why I'm cloning my PS4's hard drive on an SSD right now :). Also ironman is out of the question this time, The game crashes on occasion, think they rushed it out or something.
XCOM 2 WotC ruined almost every other game for me. It's so cleverly difficult that now I find other titles boring after a few hours of play.
YEAAAAH, i get the same feeling, god damnit my life is soo boring right now
Nice video, but I have to remind you that the aliens continue to make progress on the avatar project. If we're going to slow them down we need to move fast.
My sister played Senua and got terrified because of the threat of a game over. She played it like her life depended on it lol.
Such a nice concept to work around
I really hate the avatar project tbh. I wanna play forever.
ErgonomicChair If you keep tackling facilities, or in war of the chosen’s case, picking certain faction operations or whatever they’re called, it will go on forever.
Unfortunately there's an underlying ticker that has progress that you can't erase by taking out facilities, so you can only prolonge the inevitable :(
ErgonomicChair The war of the chosen operations are infinitely cycling, and yes, it’s not forever, but you can probably get a solid 18 in game months going.
Yeah, I want longer... Much longer lol
ErgonomicChair Do multiple runs with the same character pool and then boom. Close enough. Or do some achievement hunting, that’ll take about 10 years.
That just sounds like a bunch of novelty that adds complexity but very little depth. Chess doesn't need to throw in a new game mechanic to keep you from getting complacent. You never stop learning because the game is deep as hell.
Speed chess is incredibly popular for exactly these reasons.
0:25 and then Marbozir and Xwynns
So the gameplay looks different from the xcom 2 that i played (on xbox one). Does this include add-ons/ mods of any sort?
A good example for why tastes are subjective. In optosite to this video I find that throwing a fucking timer at you nearly every mission ruined the game for me bc it added some superficial "difficultuy" to the game. To me it feels like those games where higher difficulty simply means slap a crazy amount of HP and DMG on the Enemies without any tactical nor new skill based additions - to me uninspired and lazy.
zn4rf very much agreed
If you don't like an aspect of the game, that's what mods are for. You can prevent timers from ticking as long as you stay concealed: steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=618077830. Or just get rid of them altogether: steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=616964599
Except it is a tactical addition. You now have to take risks instead of easily overwatch training yourself to victory.
I like the timers. It does a couple of positive things for gameplay. One, it adds an additional element of tension. One of my favorite things about XCOM is the tension of situations, and having a clock adds to that. Two, it forces you to be aggressive. Unlike in XCOM, XCOM 2 casts you as the aggressor. You are attacking the aliens, not defending the earth from them. By putting a timer on missions, you need to move across the map and kill enemies in a somewhat timely manner; you can't play as passively and safely as was allowed in some missions from the first game.
Just beat Xcom2 WOTC and I have to say the mission variety in my play-through made it far less common to have any form of counter which was nice. Also there is a mod that prevents the timer from starting as long as you are concealed which I think is a fair middle ground.
I used to enjoy XCOM 2, but had to drop it in the end because the lack of information makes the whole "tactical" element go out of the window.
Case in point: Random Muton spawned and threw a nade, murdering my Heavy Weapons Guy who was behind a car. Cause until then, I didn't have to care about grenades, so I didn't think about explosions.
It was a upgraded grenade, too!
I'd rather play something that, you know, doesn't make me feel like I'm blindly running into enemy territory all the time (and yes, I took my time on missions, and moved slowly). It's like an arms race where the enemy has triple the production you have.
Awesome series! Wish they’d make a sword/scorcery version or modern day mercenaries fighting terrorists
Fire emblem
Assassination missions are really easy if you don't need the intel and have a Reaper. Sneak in, place a claymore, explode the claymore, and fuck right off. Done.
I really enjoy reapers, because they are the best scouts (low detection radius, enemies stay marked) and can fuck up your enemies in so many fun ways (exploding cars and explosives, sticking claymore on the ground or on enemies, and BANISH). Banish is especially fun when you got a highly skilled Reaper with AP skills and a fully upgraded rifle (with +4 magazines, for example). "Oh hey, a gatekeeper! "