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GeneX posted:Sure? Voting on intentionally poor choices is still dumb It's not intentionally poor choices. They should be doing the plot now. In fact given that the Gatekeeper showed up, they should have been doing the plot awhile ago.
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May 2, 2019 08:33
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Intentionally picking a difficulty harder than easy is crippling yourself, why would you ever do it????
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May 2, 2019 10:02
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MonsterEnvy posted:It's not intentionally poor choices. They should be doing the plot now. In fact given that the Gatekeeper showed up, they should have been doing the plot awhile ago.
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May 2, 2019 11:12
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i think it's pretty impressive ya'll took out three archons and a gatekeeper without letting them do anything
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May 2, 2019 11:22
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Yeah you guys are doing way better than I ever did my first time through. Smashing it. Looking forward to how you handle the big dude though.
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May 2, 2019 17:45
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eating only apples posted:Yeah you guys are doing way better than I ever did my first time through. Smashing it. It's important to note, we've had a lot of help with the thread correcting incorrect assumptions we have. Also that commentating just gives us more time on individual decisions.
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May 2, 2019 18:11
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GeneX posted:Sure? Voting on intentionally poor choices is still dumb Frost Grenades and Reapers with Banish + Expanded Mag + Repeater are both optimal strategies, but I don't play with either, because having a "click here to win" button makes the game less enjoyable.
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May 2, 2019 19:30
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Dead Reckoning posted:The optimal strategies in XCOM are frost grenade spam, overwatch creep, turtling, and delaying the plot until the last minute. They're also incredibly unfun and boring, because there's no danger, you don't have to adapt, and it knocks you off the difficulty curve to the point that missions start to feel repetitive and routine rather than challenging. Which it's clear Nat and Tea have been feeling since the Berzerker Queen. There's a reason many of the changes from Enemy Unknown, to Enemy Within, to XCOM2 were various attempts by the devs to encourage people to abandon ultra safe strats. The problem with that, and I understand it, is that difficulty seems very all-or-nothing in this game. Enemies have powers that seriously, seriously punish misplays, which is good, but they also have powers, AI, and mechanics that mean they can punish you out of nowhere; that may be fun for a lot of people, and adaptation to it is encouraged, but the game is not really great about incentivizing risk in any way, and Nat and Tea both seem to heavily dislike that bit overall. What the game needed was better mission design, enemy variation, and unit variation: the defense of the avenger mission was probably the best one thus far because of how much it varied the formula. The final mission is good because it also does that. As is, what will happen with them not using the broken mechanics is that they will be even more cautious, and even more methodical, and if ever a unit gets killed because they didn't bring frost grenades or mimic beacons, they'll be bitter about the game. I'd still say it's weird to vote for knowingly and utterly suboptimal choices after prior thread decisions and the dynamic of the LP leaned very much towards optimization, but if Nat and Tea weren't focused on perfecting things, it might be less of an issue to try that. All that said, instead of restricting armaments, maybe a more fun way of adding some more challenge is to start recruiting and using newbies again, if and when the mission isn't super, super critical.
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May 2, 2019 20:43
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GeneX posted:Sure? Voting on intentionally poor choices is still dumb Watching the dude running the lp figure out how to handle half the garbage random thread voting produces is half the fun in a good deal of lp. The idea of pushing them to send in armies of rookies and watching the blood fly seems like an amusing way to handle the end game though.
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May 3, 2019 00:50
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GeneX posted:
To which I say nah. I think Frost Bombs are ruining the playthrough. As well they were never intended to be in the game.
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May 3, 2019 01:02
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It’s interesting to see the dichotomy between where Nat and Tea’s enjoyment and the thread as a whole’s enjoyment comes. I remember the mission where the first Codex appeared and they sounded so defeated and just done with the game, compared to now where they gleefully outmaneuver anything the game can conceive of throwing at them. From an audience perspective. I do think they could probably stand to increase the difficulty in some fashion, but I don’t know if the game that’s most entertaining to us, the one where death lurks around every corner, is necessarily one that they’d actually enjoy playing.
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May 3, 2019 01:26
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Notty posted:It’s interesting to see the dichotomy between where Nat and Tea’s enjoyment and the thread as a whole’s enjoyment comes. That's why the one dude's rookie suggestion is so clutch. We get casualties to laugh at and vote in replacements and Nat and Tea rest safe knowing they have the big guns safe in the reserves so accidentally wasting rookies here and there is less worrisome.
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May 3, 2019 01:36
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GeneX posted:The problem with that, and I understand it, is that difficulty seems very all-or-nothing in this game. Enemies have powers that seriously, seriously punish misplays, which is good, but they also have powers, AI, and mechanics that mean they can punish you out of nowhere; that may be fun for a lot of people, and adaptation to it is encouraged, but the game is not really great about incentivizing risk in any way, and Nat and Tea both seem to heavily dislike that bit overall. Notty posted:It’s interesting to see the dichotomy between where Nat and Tea’s enjoyment and the thread as a whole’s enjoyment comes. Whoever said it upthread had it right: it's not the lack of blood, it's the lack of sweat.
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May 3, 2019 08:52
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For me, I don't think adding in red shirts would make things better. They brought George Clinton along when he was basically that and it just means you have guys in tier 3 equipment who's main tactical contribution is the least interesting option, firing the main weapon. But then I also wouldn't find Soldiers More Likely To Die dying, that interesting. They could certainly stand to bring George along for variety and training up a robot would at least add new content while reducing squad power a bit. When King 'Chon is dead, seeing what life is like without the DLC weapons is also an option. However I don't really see this as a gimmick run LP, so I'd fully expect the squads to be 5/6 trusted soldiers plus an unknown. If nothing changed at all, I'd still really enjoy this LP to the end. Fwoderwick fucked around with this message at 09:27 on May 3, 2019 |
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May 3, 2019 09:03
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 A massive, massive shoutout to the amazing Bifauxnen who I think has managed to outdo herself with this one.
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May 3, 2019 23:00
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Nicely handled. It's virtually impossible to fight off the Archon King without any damage at all but you came as close as can be reasonably expected without perfect luck. The second coming of Orb Buddy didn't go quite as well, but you got to see what they do, at least. Portal is a huge AoE, damages everything living, and reanimates every dead humanoid. The latter part doesn't usually matter because you shouldn't be letting Gatekeepers survive two turns, but it's there. (It's silly fun to dominate one and have it make your own zombie army, though.) e: I just remembered Emy's back story is something about being a bookworm and retroactively laughed at her punching an alien king in his stupid face. Akratic Method fucked around with this message at 23:53 on May 3, 2019 |
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May 3, 2019 23:49
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Whew, that was more tense than usual! 
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May 4, 2019 00:12
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See? Guardians give the BEST hugs.
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May 4, 2019 00:21
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IMO, Ever Vigilant is one of the better hidden abilities you can get on a Sniper sharpshooter. Snipers tend to either end up falling behind, or spending their turn getting into an elevated position to shoot next turn, and Ever Vigilant means that they can still contribute to the squad's firepower. It's only a pistol overwatch, FYI, so don't run Ma into a squadsight roost thinking she'll start popping off sniper shots during the enemy turn. Your second Gatekeeper encounter was what most people see on their first. They're nasty SOBs, as you saw, but you're usually far enough into tier 3 tech when you run into them that it's completely survivable: Warden armor (and untouchable, best Ranger ability in the game) is the reason Severa lived through a gateway, stun lance and gatekeeper explosion in one turn. Your A-team often needs to go back to the Avenger for naps after getting gateway'd, which is another reason to keep up reservists. Same with the Archon King, really: unpleasant, but doesn't full health one-shot people like you worried about. And you've figured out that free actions don't trigger reactions, and that stackable DOTs fire every move. Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 00:29 on May 4, 2019 |
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May 4, 2019 00:26
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I like that when things get tough, the ice mist descends and Nat turns in to a Mentat from Dune. A Mentnat if you will.
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May 4, 2019 00:51
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Man the xeno are dropping all their ults this mission 
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May 4, 2019 01:26
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FYI, the Stun Lancer on the roof winking out was due to the funky way the game's LoS works. Basically, while it was in cover, it was peeking out far enough that Ma could see it, but when she took a shot and destroyed its cover, it wasn't peeking out anymore and was thus obscured by the protruding half of the pillar Ma was standing behind. Also yeah, this was a very well handled tough mission. Gatekeepers can be drat brutal. Fun story: There's a mod called A Better Advent for this game. It tweaks the enemy AI and adds some new enemy variants. The pinnacle of those variants are Prime enemies, which get a reaction not when you act, but any time they take damage. And I once made the mistake of poisoning a Gatekeeper Prime. It did not end well. 
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May 4, 2019 03:48
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Bifauxnen posted:Whew, that was more tense than usual! That's cause they used the Frost Grenades early on against the ruler.
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May 4, 2019 04:26
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Re: Healing. Your armor adds hit points. Armor HP doesn't count for how long you're injured. So you can take a few points of damage and not be in the hospital at all, and what seem like major wounds aren't as big a deal when you've got good armor going. Healing, oddly enough, also fixes armor HP loss.  But in mission healing does not actually affect how long you're out of action. However bad your real injury (that is excluding armor HP) at its worse affects how long it takes to heal, regardless of in mission healing. re: Missing Turret. Turrets auto-die if you blow out the floor beneath them. Ma did it by accident on the miss, but it still counts. jng2058 fucked around with this message at 06:55 on May 4, 2019 |
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May 4, 2019 05:03
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Keep on the sectopod breakdown, it's probably your best bet
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May 4, 2019 06:51
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jng2058 posted:Re: Healing. Your armor adds hit points. Armor HP doesn't count for how long you're injured. So you can take a few points of damage and not be in the hospital at all, and what seem like major wounds aren't as big a deal when you've got good armor going. Healing, oddly enough, also fixes armor HP loss. isn't that a mod? or was armor hp damage doesn't count toward injury time added in wotc?
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May 4, 2019 09:32
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Roobanguy posted:isn't that a mod? or was armor hp damage doesn't count toward injury time added in wotc? It's how it worked in XCOM1 but to my knowledge not in XCOM2.
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May 4, 2019 17:45
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Bremen posted:It's how it worked in XCOM1 but to my knowledge not in XCOM2. Yeah in XCOM1 you had your "base" HP and then "armour" HP on top of that. So long as you didn't dip into the HP of the actual unit, they didn't spend time in hospital. It's part of the reason MECs were so good, they had a massive amount of armour HP so they could tank a lot of damage without actually getting injury time at the end of the mission. XCOM2 changed this so any amount of injury sends you to the hospital regardless of how much armour you have, although there are mods to put the XCOM1 system back in.
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May 5, 2019 17:36
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I think the XCOM2 system is more realistic and better for game play. Realism wise, even if you're inside an impenetrable armored shell, taking a cannon shot to the body is going to rattle you a bit. Game play wise, it smooths out the injury curve and, again, encourages a deep bench to make losses less catastrophic.
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May 5, 2019 18:46
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Dead Reckoning posted:I think the XCOM2 system is more realistic and better for game play. Realism wise, even if you're inside an impenetrable armored shell, taking a cannon shot to the body is going to rattle you a bit. Game play wise, it smooths out the injury curve and, again, encourages a deep bench to make losses less catastrophic. I mean, not for these guys, and they're still pretending to believe that gremlin heals reduce soldier healing time. Beyond a couple of losses early, Nat and Tea have been insanely lucky. I almost wish they'd started on Commander difficulty. Their A-team is so ridiculous and although they have good backup here and there, they should also really be training up a few extras here and there. A second ranger with concealment or another hacker would really be handy to have just in case. Maybe a death when Big Dude comes back, yeah?
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May 6, 2019 01:21
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eating only apples posted:Maybe a death when Big Dude comes back, yeah? And their A-Team is merely overleveled. I picked up the Alien Hunters DLC to try because I've talked so much poo poo about it, and an endgame squad in WotC with ruler armor, multiple Magi, max level soldier bonds, and extra abilities purchased with XP is insanity. At one point in the final mission, the game threw a pod of two Advanced MECs and two Sectopods at me. It was barely a speedbump. The final encounter was still challenging, but that was because one of the Avatars teleported in with a whole bunch of Elite Spectres. Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 01:59 on May 6, 2019 |
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May 6, 2019 01:37
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Dead Reckoning posted:Only in the highly unlikely events that they activate him after their Grenadier & Ranger have used up all their actions, or when they've burnt through all their once-per-mission powers/grenades. I really hope he waits to show up on Advent Network Tower, because it would be loving hilarious. Yeah, I don't think they'll ever be in a situation where they're unprepared for him ever again. If they use all their resources on a Gatekeeper and find him in a static pod later in the mission they might have trouble. Or vice versa, which I think is more likely. Oh, imagine them having used everything against him as the first pod on a map. Dealing with a sectopod and a gatekeeper might be fun, and plausible on the missions they're seeing now. And I always remembered Devastate as being a real problem, but this squad shrugged it off. A gatekeeper's Portal is way more of a problem and it's far keener to pull it off if they let it. It does still bother me that you're still calling them packs, guys. They're pods, don't you know. 
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May 6, 2019 01:52
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Devastate is a really random ability. The missiles can miss entirely, or they can knock your soldiers out, with several possibilities in between. The King also seems to use it less than the grab.
Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 06:01 on May 6, 2019 |
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May 6, 2019 02:04
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eating only apples posted:It does still bother me that you're still calling them packs, guys. They're pods, don't you know. Where did that come from, anyway? I picked it up from the Long War LP that ran partways a while back on here, and then noticed that everyone who plays the game seems to use that vocabulary, but I don't recall ever seeing it in the game despite it being so universal.
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May 6, 2019 02:55
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Akratic Method posted:Where did that come from, anyway? I picked it up from the Long War LP that ran partways a while back on here, and then noticed that everyone who plays the game seems to use that vocabulary, but I don't recall ever seeing it in the game despite it being so universal. I dunno but I'm glad someone else remembers the Professor something and Kidneyman LP. I was so sad when that fizzled out after 100 updates or more. I tried to get in touch with the LPer at some point years ago but afaik he never came back to the forums after the last update he posted. He's never posted on youtube again either. The thread just kind of flopped out of existence. I remember Kidneyman's deal was his kidney issues, I hope nothing horrible happened.
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May 6, 2019 04:05
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I'm not upset no one is getting killed. I just want them to see the aliens use their special attacks.
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May 6, 2019 06:06
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Most of the remaining ones aren't worth tuning in for. I mean, has anyone ITT ever actually been hit by blazing pinions, Wrath Cannon, or Gatekeeper melee? I almost hope they never figure out what Chryssalids do, so it will be a surprise if they LP Enemy Unknown, but unfortunately they're due for a terror mission. I do want to see how they handle the endgame. Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 06:14 on May 6, 2019 |
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May 6, 2019 06:10
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Dead Reckoning posted:Most of the remaining ones aren't worth tuning in for. I mean, has anyone ITT ever actually been hit by blazing pinions, Wrath Cannon, or Gatekeeper melee? I almost hope they never figure out what Chryssalids do, so it will be a surprise if they LP Enemy Unknown, but unfortunately they're due for a terror mission. If Nat ever does go back to play EU/EW after this, he probably wouldn't be LPing it at all. But I'll make sure to share any fun reactions I overhear 
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May 6, 2019 07:42
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This blind LP is going well in terms of a blind LP; the LPers seem unlikely to get stuck for extended periods on what to do or self-destruct and prematurely end the LP. But it's become less about showing off the game and more about employing the game-breaking items that the game's provided them with. I'm fine with that, because I enjoy watching a game get taken apart systematically and it's rare for a blind LP to be able to do that, in addition to Nat and Tea being able to keep up entertaining commentary. But I can see why some people are starting to become somewhat dissatisfied. Personally my biggest complaints are that Nat doesn't use George Clinton enough after building the psychic academy specifically to get a psyker ("he doesn't gain exp from missions" rings kinda hollow when half the squad is at the level cap), and refuses to train a Spark unit.
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May 6, 2019 17:18
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I mean, it really is just the frost bomb.* I've only played base XCOM2, zero DLC and that thing really is just insane. Even the boltcaster's stun is just a percent chance, and even the snek-suit's Frostbite is single target, single use. I'm planning to replay the game with WOTC+DLC+a bunch of mods one of these days and I'm honestly arguing with myself whether to ignore it or not. Do the Chosen have any abilities that no-sell that thing? *Not telling you two not to keep using it, you dudes do you, dudes.
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May 6, 2019 18:52
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