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The thing about LW2's difficulty is the strategy layer makes mission difficulty highly variable because of changing advent strength and variable and random infiltration times. If you've immersed yourself in LW2 you know how to get and pick missions that are consistently doable and it won't be a problem, or if you've picked a difficulty below what you could do so you can just steamroll it won't be a problem (at the expense of making more of the missions boring) but otherwise you can easily get hosed over by difficulty spikes cause by the obtuse and deliberately misleading strategy layer, which sucks. The strategy layer is poo poo and could be 100% less poo poo if it just showed more information. Sometimes I think about how obtuse they made things, and I'm like these people are insane and this is awful. For example they designed it so you could easily start a campaign new to long war 2, get confused by the deliberately misleading 'find a lead' missions and never start a liberation chain because you didn't pick the right 'find a lead' mission, never reveal the avatar project timer (perhaps reasonably assuming that they took the timer out to allow for a more long war experience) and then suddenly lose out of nowhere with no warning, dozens of hours in. 
lazorexplosion fucked around with this message at 06:02 on Feb 22, 2017 |
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Feb 22, 2017 03:43
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A big thing I wish I'd known was to rush the last two Liberation missions back to back. I waited after the tower and my difficulty kept skyrocketing because I couldn't catch/kill all of the troop columns moving in, so I'm pretty far in with 6ish regions contacted and none liberated, but a lot semi-close.
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Feb 22, 2017 03:47
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Advent strength advertises how lovely things are and infiltration time is determined by how much intel you have gathered in the area. If you are trying to do missions in advent strength 3+ and you aren't prepared to face really nasty things compared to how things go in other areas I don't know what to say. It is obscured because there is actually enemy actions that they do in response to you instead of churning out random missions I guess. I'd view it as playing Pandemic, except you're the disease and Advent is playing with the cards. I like it, it could use a better explanation though.
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Feb 22, 2017 03:53
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Grognan posted:Like LW1 I think red fog will gently caress you on large missions because you will not have enough rockets and grenades to not get hit. Especially when pods are twice your size or by happenstance stick together. The thing about LW2 is that the big missions don't actually get much longer ... instead they get denser. This is why red fog is really good - because they're so dense you can't alpha groups easily, and you will leave enemies alive to take shots. The extra control you get from red fog means those shots don't turn into hits (or even if you do get unlucky, it's probably not a bad hit and it's also on someone who doesn't really need the aim, like a technical or grenadier.) To use a pretty typical example: two enemies left, you have a ranger and a gunner still left to act. Without red fog, your ranger shoots twice to kill one of them, your gunner suppresses the other one, and then on the alien's turn he takes a pretty-scary 35% shot. Or maybe he runs the suppression, doesn't die to it, and gets an even scarier flank shot. With red fog, you shoot each of them once, area suppress them both, and then the fact that you've stacked control elements means they're likely to just hunker instead of taking a 5% shot or running a potentially-lethal suppression. And red fog means that even if the suppression misses, they're probably not getting a flank anyway. Given how much more effective control elements get when you stack them, having the extra not-consumable-dependent control element is a massive buff (especially on large missions), and definitely outweighs the potential downsides of one of your guys taking a wound, and it's a big enough wound to wreck your accuracy, and it's on someone who you're going to be shooting a lot with, and you don't have enough medkits to counteract it.
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Feb 22, 2017 04:17
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LW2 isnt that difficult, its just obfuscated as gently caress. Once you've had a look under the hood and/or a bunch of experience and know the style of play the system wants you to engage in its really not that hard, barring getting yellow alert murdered because gently caress you or viper grabbed and murdered because also gently caress you. You can manipulate the kinds of missions that spawn by intentionally failing the 'bad' ones to clear them off the map so you can get good ones. Its pretty easy to have 3 scientists and 3 engineers in April. You can control the market to get troopers in demand after the first supply drop to get a cash injection. You farm troop columns and supply raids (0%ing isnt even necessary, even if it is 'optimal') for supplies and loot, and liberate a region eventually when you get around to it. So long as you make noise in one part of the world to keep ADVENT from going to the moon you can always power through liberation in some forgotten corner in late summer to address Avatar. Keep 4 rebels or less on any one job to reduce ADVENT retals, unless you're trying to bait retaliations for experience. You only need one A-team and set of gear to do story missions and farm troop columns, plus a few backups to replace the injured/dead. Every other mission you do from stealth, where if you get engaged you die anyways so its better to bring no gear at all to increase movement. LCPL shinobi officers with ghostwalker, command and oscar mike can lead 75% of stealth missions, so pump them out of the GTS and give a commission to anyone who survives a mission.
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Feb 22, 2017 04:40
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Some retaliations give salvage, go full hog on them.
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Feb 22, 2017 04:50
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Not a Step posted:LW2 isnt that difficult, its just obfuscated as gently caress. Once you've had a look under the hood and/or a bunch of experience and know the style of play the system wants you to engage in its really not that hard, barring getting yellow alert murdered because gently caress you or viper grabbed and murdered because also gently caress you. I've nearly won my Commander difficulty campaign and I've never stealthed or intentionally failed a mission. I don't question that it's a good tactic, but you make it sound like it's necessary to win.
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Feb 22, 2017 04:58
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I thought I must be okay at this game after I beat vanilla commander/ironman but I must actually be really loving bad because I have no idea how I'm supposed to beat the number of advent LW2 throws at me on just veteran, even in a very light/unprepared mission with over 100% infil, without taking heavy casualties. 3 pods on the map plus 2 loads of reinforcements on my third mission while I have zero upgrades except for my team being squaddies? gently caress you. I want to like this mod but after several tries I'm just getting frustrated at the tedious infiltration mechanic plus game throwing ridiculous numbers at me no matter how high my infiltration score.
Wafflecopper fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Feb 22, 2017 |
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Feb 22, 2017 05:29
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Wafflecopper posted:I thought I must be okay at this game after I beat vanilla commander/ironman but I must actually be really loving bad because I have no idea how I'm supposed to beat the number of advent LW2 throws at me on just veteran, even in a very light/unprepared mission with over 100% infil, without taking heavy casualties. 3 pods on the map plus 2 loads of reinforcements on my third mission while I have zero upgrades except for my team being squaddies? gently caress you. I want to like this mod but after several tries I'm just getting frustrated at the tedious infiltration mechanic plus game throwing ridiculous numbers at me no matter how high my infiltration score. What was the Advent strength?
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Feb 22, 2017 06:14
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Grognan posted:What was the Advent strength? 1 And after booting up the geoscape save to check, enemy activity was actually "extremely" light
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Feb 22, 2017 07:35
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3 small pods is extremely light, yes. Don't go on a mission unless you can either infiltrate a big enough squad to handle that many enemies, it you're planning on stealthing it.
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Feb 22, 2017 07:48
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Reinforcements are on a timer once you blow concealment. You cannot dawdle on missions any more. That's why you had two reinforcement pods. The 3 pods on extremely light is about right, though: 3 pods by 3 units.
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Feb 22, 2017 07:49
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Yeah on reloading to try again I figured out that reinforcements are infinite. I wasn't dawdling on the first attempt though, they were dropping on me while I was still fighting the original pods, who each chain aggroed on me as I was still fighting the previous one. The fights took a while because of the cover thing the thread has been discussing - getting a decent shot at anything seems to require flanking, which isn't always easy when there's usually one or two units on overwatch. And I was only "dawdling" on the second only because I was trying to mop up to safely evac an unconscious soldier. e: Also how on earth do you ever stealth a mission? Any time I manage to stealth to the objective there's 1-2 squads right on it and with the time limits I can't exactly wait for them to wander off Wafflecopper fucked around with this message at 08:09 on Feb 22, 2017 |
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Feb 22, 2017 08:06
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Yeah, that'll happen. Happens to me far too frequently, I have learned to ditch the reinforcement mobs and focus on objectives and baseline enemies. What difficulty? The reinforcement system is really harsh on Commander-Legendary. I hate ADVENT in the early game. You never have enough flashbangs to cancel out every Sentry's overwatches and prevent any Engineer from flashbanging your whole squad in one go. edit: Most of the time, the only mission types you'll want to stealth are jailbreaks. Pods camp objectives a lot of the time in other missions. Apoplexy fucked around with this message at 08:11 on Feb 22, 2017 |
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Feb 22, 2017 08:08
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Wafflecopper posted:Yeah on reloading to try again I figured out that reinforcements are infinite. I wasn't dawdling on the first attempt though, they were dropping on me while I was still fighting the original pods, who each chain aggroed on me as I was still fighting the previous one. The fights took a while because of the cover thing the thread has been discussing - getting a decent shot at anything seems to require flanking, which isn't always easy when there's usually one or two units on overwatch. And I was only "dawdling" on the second only because I was trying to mop up to safely evac an unconscious soldier. You might try flashbangs; they remove overwatch and leave any afflicted units with major penalties on their turn. Handy if overwatch is keeping you from flanking. Stealth can be tricky, though if you want to avoid a fight sometimes you can find a spot where you can hack/shoot/whatever the objective, then back up, throw the evac flare down on that spot, and when evac is ready run up, grab the objective, and evac. Honestly though, I usually just take a hybrid stealth/violence approach, killing only the enemies I need to to get at the objective and then getting out ASAP.
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Feb 22, 2017 08:19
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If you get more than one reinforcement and it's not a trap mission you are doing something wrong
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Feb 22, 2017 10:15
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I've been glancing over all the LW2 posts since it came out and it really seems like the overwhelming response to it is that its too frustrating and not enough fun. Are the people having a blast with this mod just keeping quiet or something?
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Feb 22, 2017 10:35
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Node posted:I've been glancing over all the LW2 posts since it came out and it really seems like the overwhelming response to it is that its too frustrating and not enough fun. Are the people having a blast with this mod just keeping quiet or something? It's like LW1, so yes
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Feb 22, 2017 10:37
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Maluco Marinero posted:I think at all stems from grenades being 100% accuracy no skill damage application. There is no meaningful strategy in their usage other than forgoing its usage later ... what. "should i use a limited resource for a reliable advantage or go with a more risky option" is a meaningful strategic decision in itself. adding unreliability or making it total poo poo just undermines the choice.
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Feb 22, 2017 10:46
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Node posted:I've been glancing over all the LW2 posts since it came out and it really seems like the overwhelming response to it is that its too frustrating and not enough fun. Are the people having a blast with this mod just keeping quiet or something? I am. I've mentioned before, it's basically the best thing ever to me.
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Feb 22, 2017 11:33
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Bholder posted:If you get more than one reinforcement and it's not a trap mission you are doing something wrong what exactly is a trap mission?
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Feb 22, 2017 11:57
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Bad news. Usually something under-leveled for the region (like a Light baseline activity in ADVENT Strength 6+ region) that contains tons and tons of Faceless.
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Feb 22, 2017 12:01
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Or reinforcements on every turn
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Feb 22, 2017 12:09
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who is the guy in the  smiley?
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Feb 22, 2017 12:17
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Strong Sauce posted:who is the guy in the I believe it's Jake 'Fix your game' Solomon, who headed the XCOM:EU games EDIT- gently caress me, is there a way to disable the LW2 voices they added in? My rebels keep being assigned them randomly and they're grating as all hell. Paingod556 fucked around with this message at 12:52 on Feb 22, 2017 |
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Feb 22, 2017 12:22
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Tiler Kiwi posted:... what. The problem is fundamentally the game is about incoming fire denial by alpha striking. That makes the choice to use grenades far less meaningful, and more like mandatory. This is also done in a context where you are actually given enough grenades to lean on that choice for most missions, which is why grenadiers are so strong. There is not a whole lot of positioning or foresight concerns here, simply resource management, which makes the choice to use/not use explosives fairly shallow, especially once you get extended range, at which point you can pretty much deliver guaranteed damage to almost anywhere you need to with 100% reliability and cover stripping, which further raises the probability of all other actions. Gunfire can't compete with that choice, and the only missions which force that issue are golden path missions with longer duration (so the resource preservation side is more important)
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Feb 22, 2017 12:25
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Maluco Marinero posted:The problem is fundamentally the game is about incoming fire denial by alpha striking. That makes the choice to use grenades far less meaningful, and more like mandatory. Nah, Tiler is right. Gunfire can't compete with grenades because gunfire can't compete with ANYTHING. It's the default, basic attack of XCOM. Any ability limited in use by time or ammo has to be better than gunfire because otherwise they are completely pointless (with the notable exception of the free actions). Grenades are too powerful in the quantity they are given is an argument I can sympathize with, but any argument for why abilities should have random unreliability baked in (especially in such an opaque manner) would need some pretty compelling reasons for why other approaches couldn't work.
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Feb 22, 2017 12:51
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Bholder posted:It's like LW1, so yes That, or most people just aren't playing Long War and have no opinion on it.
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Feb 22, 2017 13:02
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I didn't say anything when the idea was previously suggested, but yeah I too didn't think the grenade change makes a ton of sense. It could be tried, sure, but my sense is that it'll produce basically the opposite effect. I think throwing a delayed effect grenade is very very useless as things are currently set up, because there is no real value to a single turn of fairly small area denial. And having to prime grenades would do little to prevent grenades' alpha striking potential while eliminating their secondary purpose as a 'get out of jail free card'. So the change really pushes the player even further into prepared grenade-led assaults.
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Feb 22, 2017 13:03
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Ive got the game on ps4 so I don't care about lw2. Question I have about the vanilla game though: how long does a usual campaign last? I'm in my first playthrough and trying to go through things slowly but I've already got all the plasma weapons and the second armour upgrade and feel I might be getting close to the end already?
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Feb 22, 2017 13:29
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Cythereal posted:That, or most people just aren't playing Long War and have no opinion on it. It's the most popular mod on Steam Workshop so it must be at least somewhat popular among the small subset of players who install mods. FWIW, I think LW2 is fun and the difficulty level on Rookie is accessible once you've wrapped your head around the new core mechanics like infiltration etc.
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Feb 22, 2017 13:37
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Mandatory Assembly posted:It's the most popular mod on Steam Workshop so it must be at least somewhat popular among the small subset of players who install mods. And people who play mods are a pretty small subset. I, for one, didn't particularly enjoy X-COM 2 and Long War does nothing to fix the issues I have with the game so I'm giving it a pass.
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Feb 22, 2017 13:39
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fridge corn posted:Ive got the game on ps4 so I don't care about lw2. If you have plasma weapons and the shiny sexy armour you can basically finish the game whenever you like, just take a look at your objectives and plow through them. Or you can just screw around as long as you like levelling people up and stuff.
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Feb 22, 2017 13:45
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If you wanna kick around a mechanic that's overpowered to the point it undermines the game loop, I'd go with the psychic stuff, mainly the lockdown abilities. The rest of the psychic kit is probably overly strong without enough of a tradeoff or balancing factor, but the ability to CC anything I wanted ended up making the lategame generally unexciting. I haven't really given LW stuff a shot (although I found a lot of design philosophy kind of repugnant, what with the whole "the aliens get weaker if the player does good because ~realism/fairness~" in LW1), but I straight up despise vanilla Archaeons enough for being sacks of HP you gotta grind down, I don't think I'm the target audience for these sorts of mods.
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Feb 22, 2017 13:58
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Node posted:I've been glancing over all the LW2 posts since it came out and it really seems like the overwhelming response to it is that its too frustrating and not enough fun. Are the people having a blast with this mod just keeping quiet or something? LW2 does some amazing things and totally revamps the game in a really fun and interesting way. It also NEVER TELLS YOU ANYTHING, adds a whole bunch of pointless bullshit that seems cool in theory but in practice just makes more busywork for the player, and is unforgivingly brutal unless you're already pretty drat good at the base game. It's a serious love/hate relationship we all have going with it. .... Seriously, if they just re-enabled the goddamn Avatar Progress bar, I'd probably be able to look past everything else. Tiler Kiwi posted:
I can't resist chiming in that archons used to give me all sorts of crap in Vanilla too, until I realized the beauty that is the gunner-specced grenadier. Opening every archon encounter with Hail of Bullets and applying Holotargetting in the process makes archons much, much, MUCH less annoying to deal with. Backhand fucked around with this message at 15:18 on Feb 22, 2017 |
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Feb 22, 2017 15:15
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They do re-enable it but not until you do liberation 3 in a region and unlock the first network tower.
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Feb 22, 2017 15:19
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Node posted:I've been glancing over all the LW2 posts since it came out and it really seems like the overwhelming response to it is that its too frustrating and not enough fun. Are the people having a blast with this mod just keeping quiet or something? It's a really fun mod that completely revitalized my interest in Xcom 2. I've tripled my Steam Xcom 2 hours played since the mod came out. There is a lot of bullshit in the mod and a lot of hidden information, but most of it can be handled by: 1.) playing on an appropriate level (I played Vanilla on Legendary, but I'm most comfortable with LW2 on Vet) 2.) modding the game to your taste -- there are dozens on dozens of LW2 compatible mods. search for the "An Easier War" mods on the workshop, but be warned that some of them go too far, at least if you're not playing on Legend 3.) if you have time, watching at least the first few eps of xwynns' series on youtube, where he explains many of the hidden mechanics (Pavonis is pathologically incapable/unwilling to convey information in a clear and useful manner) All told it was a lot of trial and error of swapping mods in and out to mold LW2 to my personal liking, but there's no way in hell I could ever go back to Vanilla. Xcom 2 was completely dead to me before it came out and I basically havent played anything else since.
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Feb 22, 2017 15:48
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Fangz posted:I didn't say anything when the idea was previously suggested, but yeah I too didn't think the grenade change makes a ton of sense. It could be tried, sure, but my sense is that it'll produce basically the opposite effect. I agree, on its own it does sweet gently caress all to the balance, but that's because the game is geared towards that kind of play. There's no value to any sort of manoeuvre really because the game is more about damage application puzzles in its current state. You have to rethink a lot to address that, merely changing one thing doesn't address that.
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Feb 22, 2017 15:55
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Node posted:I've been glancing over all the LW2 posts since it came out and it really seems like the overwhelming response to it is that its too frustrating and not enough fun. Are the people having a blast with this mod just keeping quiet or something? i'm not a huge fan of LW2 but having watched the whole LW1 thing mostly from afar the entire time, my impression is that there are indeed a number of people who like it and they're just too busy playing the game to come here and bitch. the mod is not, in fact, objectively bad. it is a very different and more niche experience than vanilla. in tv terms it's a spin-off. it can only appeal to people who are already fans of its parent game, but since it's doing something very different it's also never going to come close to capturing 100% of those people. the need individual fans have to use ini tweaks is a big thing to note on that front. by the time you start doing that you've instantly lost like 75% of everyone ever because people are busy and have stuff going on. relatively few people have the time and mental bandwidth to spare to figure out what pisses them off so much and gently caress around in arcane files changing cryptic numbers. so that is inherently going to damage its appeal as well. in terms of sentiment, the worm will likely turn in 2-3 months when these folks finish up their playthroughs and come back in to check the most recent news, and bring their (perfectly valid) opinions with them. i pray that at that point we're all grown up enough to just be goddamn civil about a loving mod and nobody will be told to play chess, but if i had a large amount of faith in that i wouldn't have thought up the chess rules.
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Feb 22, 2017 16:02
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Personally, I've been playing basically nothing except LW2 since it came out, and am now nearly a hundred missions in to a commander difficulty game (didn't find it particularly difficult, either, which is why I'm kind of surprised so many are complaining about the difficulty; I guess my playstyle just works for it). If people don't like it, that's fine. It's definitely about turning the much more streamlined XCOM2 into a more complex, old school style strategy game, and I'm sure there's plenty of people who love XCOM2 who wont like the changes.
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Feb 22, 2017 19:41
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