Heh, that reminds me—when I first got the original XCOM (without a hyphen), I once wasted a very frustrating 10 or 15 minutes trying to save scum the last move of a battle, before eventually giving up because the outcome never changed. It was only later on (I think as part of the Enemy Within expansion) that they added an explicit "Save Scum" option, thereby revealing that by default, the RNG seed doesn't change on a reload and so nothing is ever going to be different assuming you make the same moves. IIRC, this was not documented in the initial release.

I'm not terribly fond of the phrase itself, because it has that usual whiff of "only hardcore elite gamers deserve to play games" snobbery about it that is one of the baneful parts of gaming culture.* There is a lot of that in Firaxis games generally, and the XCOM series in particular, and as an agèd scrublord who doesn't feel a need to apologize to adolescents, I'm annoyed by it. Still, at least they offer the possibility at all.

>They're challenging but didn't feel unfair to
>me--each has a couple -strong- weaknesses that make dealing with them
>entertaining rather than frustrating.

They start off on a bad foot with me by immediately engaging in Cutscene Winning when the first one appears, which is never going to get me into a video game villain's fan club. That, and a lot of their powers seem really cheaty from a spectator's point of view.

Their storyline is also more than a bit goofy. I love that first cutscene they're all in, where the Ethereals demonstrate their extreme talent for personnel management by taking their three most powerful operatives and explicitly pitting them against each other. No wonder they've had such trouble overlording the Earth. How the hell did they win the war in the first place? Oh, right, in a cutscene. Well, that circle closed itself. :)

Also, the two male ones—they're Starscream and Megatron, right? I'm not just imagining that.

>Mind you, there is one critical
>fact about them that they don't say in the manual that makes
>everything doable--they DO NOT HEAL between missions. You damage one
>and they will carry that wound until they eventually die.

... What? How do you even beat them the first time, then? Do they eventually just get bored godmoding your squad and fuck off?

>Almost as moronic as the armor you can make from
>their skins--GOD those things look stupid, even if they're powerful.

...

What the fuck, Firaxis.

--G.
* although not the most baneful part; that would be how many of them are evidently Nazis IRL.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Well... yes, that part was not ambiguous. What I was nonplussed by was the notion of the thing bailing before the fight is over. On the rare occasions when there are recurring enemies in this kind of game, they usually pull the "corpse disappears when killed, shows up alive again next time" dodge (as indeed it appears the Chosen do). It's unusual for them to be able to just wander off mid-battle.

Obviously I didn't beat my head against the VK's bullshit free action machine and equally bullshit popup chumps long enough to reach the point in the battle where he would get bored and bail. When I cashed out he was at about half health (as was pretty much my entire squad, except of course the one who was dead).

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Yeah, for me they only usually stuck around for a couple rounds, and in the last two actions they take they summon an exit portal, then leave. Of course, this is all happening in Speed Force time since they act every time your characters so much as scratch their noses.

The Chosen do stick around until their HP is gone, and they do have a lot of health, though not so much as the Viper King et al. But like I said, their weaknesses can hammer them pretty good. My comment on the Warlock earlier may be apocryphal--looking this up, it seems their disadvantages are random, just like their advantages. In my case, the Warlock had a weakness that made him take extra damage when 3 or more players attacked him in one turn. And it was a LOT of extra damage, maybe double. I critted him for 19 once, I remember.

Anyway, the game might be worth a look in the future, but I don't blame you for wanting to not get frustrated.

------
Fearless creatures, we all learn to fight the Reaper
Can't defeat Her, so instead I'll have to be Her

My biggest irritation on the Alien Hunters/Shen's Last Gift integration was that there was effectively no in-game explanation. I had done Shen's prior to WotC so I was mostly expecting that, instead, zilch. Just make sparks from the start. So when I did encounter the rulers, Central telling me they were made by Vahlen came from left field entirely. No lead up, no advanced briefing just 'There! It's one of Vahlen's escaped experiments!" I spent a moment just blinking in confusion. Then attacking and getting annoyed with their mechanics.

Wait, so the expansion removes the missions that explain where the DLC stuff came from, but leaves the actual stuff? WTF?

--G.
I mean, they're not great missions, but all the same...
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

In a word, yep. I didn't facepalm, because...

>I mean, they're not great missions, but all the
>same...
>-><-

Because that. What drives me bonkers is I paid for the DLC. Does anyone know if the extra stuff, like the weapons and the Sparks show up if you don't have the DLC?

At least the Chosen drop some sweet, sweet weapons. They look incredible and work even better.

------
Fearless creatures, we all learn to fight the Reaper
Can't defeat Her, so instead I'll have to be Her

They don't.

--
-Pasha
"Don't change the subject"
"Too slow, already did."

I was fortunate on my 2nd game with them and had a frost grenade ready right when the Viper king decided to do this, pinning him in place so I could keep stacking damage and killed him before he defrosted.

Wait... what?

Firaxis is literally the precise opposite of this, man. So is XCOM!

Firaxis is basically a vehicle for Sid Meier games, primarily Civ, and, since they picked up the license five years ago, XCOM. And all of those games are designed explicitly around the assumption that even if you're not a hardcore elite gamer, you should be able to play the game and enjoy the experience and achieve success.

Let's look at XCOM specifically. Right out of the gate, they offer a variety a ways to make the game as accessible as you want it to be. Ever played on Rookie? Both XCOMS and their various expansions and DLCs are walkovers on Rookie. X-rays die if you look at them hard, to say nothing of if you actually try and kill them. Chrysallids deliver cute little love taps. And of course even if you do manage to get into trouble, you have convenient quicksave/quickload options. That's right in the basic options menu when you first load in.

And as time went by, they offered you all kinds of other ways in which to customize the experience to your liking. People didn't like the constant timered missions in XCOM2, so they were like "we hear what you're saying, so now you can just turn that off. And while we're at it we'll let you set and tweak and customize or just plain eliminate a lot of other parts of the game that some people seem to not like." That's the epitome of accessibility.

They don't even hide the "real ending" or the "secret ending" behind the higher difficulties. You get the same endings regardless of how you beat it, all the way from Rookie while re-loading every time you get injured to a flawless Ironman Legendary run.

And of course their other big series, Civ, has had since its inception a whole bunch of difficulty settings to ensure accessibility. Civ is famous for it's accessibility. And they made simpler versions of it for people who bounced off that, even!

I don't know where you're getting snobbery from them, I truly don't. Firaxis makes bad design decisions fairly regularly, as do most game studios, but the notion that they're focused on hardcore elite gamers and everyone else can get wrekt seems without evidence.

>>Almost as moronic as the armor you can make from
>>their skins--GOD those things look stupid, even if they're powerful.
>
>...
>
>What the fuck, Firaxis.

Eh?

We've been killing X-rays and wearing them as clothing for ages. Most of the best armor upgrades and add-ons you could get in the first game came from wearing Chryssalid carapaces.

-Merc
Keep Rat

I think the problem isn't so much "turning X-rays into useful gear" as it is, "Can we at least paint this stuff so I don't look like I pulled my clothing from Bozo the Clown's closet while blindfolded?"

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

Not in a form that still looks recognizably like a Chryssalid, though.

>I think the problem isn't so much "turning X-rays into useful gear" as
>it is, "Can we at least paint this stuff so I don't look like I pulled
>my clothing from Bozo the Clown's closet while blindfolded?"

"Costume's probably a good idea. Sewed it myself. God only knows what it looks like."
- Matt Murdock, narrating panels on the last page of Daredevil: Year One, paraphrased from memory

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>Let's look at XCOM specifically. Right out of the gate, they offer a
>variety a ways to make the game as accessible as you want it to be.
>Ever played on Rookie? Both XCOMS and their various expansions and
>DLCs are walkovers on Rookie. X-rays die if you look at them hard, to
>say nothing of if you actually try and kill them. Chrysallids deliver
>cute little love taps. And of course even if you do manage to get into
>trouble, you have convenient quicksave/quickload options. That's right
>in the basic options menu when you first load in.

I understand the point you're making Merc, but I'm not entirely sold. If I remember correctly, the basis for the core concept of XCOM 2 (that you lost XCOM) was that when Firaxis reviewed the Steam stats they found that an absurdly small percentage of players actually WON XCOM (on any setting).

I think I said in an earlier XCOM 2 thread when the game came out, there are things about the 2nd that were definite improvements on the first. And I wasn't as bitter about the lost the first game conceit that apparently a lot of gamers had. But the decision to take a recognizably difficult game and ramp it up in even vanilla XCOM 2 over the first drove me nuts.

Brian

------
Fearless creatures, we all learn to fight the Reaper
Can't defeat Her, so instead I'll have to be Her

Looking at this, it struck me that, if there is no Nr. 5 voice pack for the SPARKs, there is a serious lack of intelligence in the modding community.

I can't mod for the life of me, if I could, that would be the first thing I did.
"Imput. MORE imput"
"Beautiful. Lightbulb."

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"