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ManlyGrunting posted:Shanty Pete manages to have five aliens group around him like playground bullies and not receive a single scratch
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Jun 6, 2019 23:55
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Bremen posted:It's a WotC change. Welp looks like it, spending the kit was the play to make then.
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Jun 7, 2019 05:33
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Hi everyone, I'll be doing a youtube premiere for the final episode. For those that don't know what that is, the video will go live at 11pm BST, 6pm EST. In the half hour before you'll be able to get onto the video's channel and chat / wait for it to air. When it does, it'll air for everyone in the channel and you can chat about it in real time. It has no impact on quality or anything else but I thought it might be nice if you wanted to ask questions / laugh at me live.
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Jun 7, 2019 12:27
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 Premiere is done! Natural 20 fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Jun 8, 2019 |
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Jun 7, 2019 22:50
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A job well done! Thanks for the highlight reel at the end, it's intensely stupid that the game doesn't do it for you. Like, Pokemon figured this out 2 decades ago.
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Jun 8, 2019 00:07
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Before I sign off for the evening and let you guys get to watching and discussing. A huge huge thank you to Bifauxnen for doing all the cover page illustration work. If there's an art asset that was used in this LP she almost certainly made it and put more time into this than anyone save Tea and myself. So she genuinely deserves credit as the effective third member of this LP team. We'll be back on the 1st of July with our next LP. We're planning to hit up Sonic Generations at this point as a more chilled out LP after this relatively intense one. In the meantime, please head over to my Yoshi's Crafted World LP if you just can't get enough of my ramblings. If there are any games you'd particularly like to see us play I'd appreciate a post here as well. We have a schedule but if there is great demand that we look at something we're more than willing to change things around. No War of the Chosen though. 22 weeks and 66 episodes of XCOM is probably enough for now! Thanks so much for watching!
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Jun 8, 2019 00:16
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play aria of sorrow soon, it's symphony of the night but better
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Jun 8, 2019 00:33
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Nice LP, guys! The final mission of the first game was a victory lap with very little challenge. Most people found it boring. This time fights really ramp up in the last room. I think it's fun and tense.
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Jun 8, 2019 01:47
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What song did you use for the highlight reel?
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Jun 8, 2019 02:06
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Nicely loving done
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Jun 8, 2019 04:13
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Still found the Frost Grenade basically cheating. Good show otherwise.
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Jun 8, 2019 06:14
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Campaign post mortem: I think what you guys experienced was somewhat typical for a first XCOM playthrough. After getting bloodied by the randomness of the early game, when Sectoids and Vipers are the big threat, you guys adopted super-safe strategies and refused to take any chances. The game is hoping you'll build up a big roster so that unlucky casualties aren't catastrophic, and understand that every enemy is like Sectoids: menacing at first, but laughable when you get a handle on their tricks. However it does a terrible job of signaling either of these things. And yes, the Codex spike has a huge flaming problem of showing "doing plot objectives will gently caress you" when the exact opposite is true. From a metagame perspective, turtling and delaying is unfortunately pretty optimal, and every change the devs have made to the game since vanilla XCOM 1 have been to try to get people to abandon those strats. As you saw, it leads to being over-leveled, story missions lacking challenge, running into Gatekeepers early (which ruins the spooky psi gate mission) and thumb-twiddling in the end game. This is why it probably seemed like I was pushing you to take risks: you were actually above the difficulty curve for most of the game. You figured out most of the key tactics pretty quickly: fighting one pod at a time, using overwatch and positioning to trigger the pods on their turn, using Phantom Rangers to scout, half cover being a lie, etc. and in many cases played quite well. You never quite got a handle on all the game's quirks though: towards the end, you were still occasionally taking turn-ending actions without using a move first, (though I think some may have been deliberate) and you never quite got a handle on the utility of things like Inspire that break the game's action economy, or the importance of powers that cause guaranteed damage like Hail of Bullets. I think having the Alien Hunters gear eliminated the need to learn some of these. You're right that you can get Frost Bomb levels of cheese with Mimic Beacons, Flashbangs, and Stasis, but they'e all a bit better balanced (maybe not mimic beacons, which IMO are best saved for Ironman runs) and situational, and by the time you figure out how to use them optimally they feel like less of a win button. Anyway, while Shanty Pete, California T. Mustang, and Emi all made great contributions to the success of XCOM, I think we should take a moment to recognize the MVP of this run:  Cpl. Frost "Freez'em" Bomb Best of luck on the next LP. Omnicrom posted:What song did you use for the highlight reel? Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 07:41 on Jun 8, 2019 |
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Jun 8, 2019 07:37
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For a second I thought you were going to let California go out in the coolest possible way by staying put in the rift and doing murder, but running away was pretty cool too. I guess. Good job guys, I really enjoyed this. Do WotC in six months when the Xcom bug hits, because it will.
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Jun 8, 2019 12:00
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Natural 20 posted:No War of the Chosen though. If you play WotC soon, a one-shot recording of the first proper-new mission of the WotC campaign (it's very early on, but not sure if there's an exact point it pops up). Either as a post-script to this, or perhaps something to throw into the casual LP thread if too much time has passed. I'm very interested in seeing your reaction to the various new things it introduces.
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Jun 8, 2019 12:02
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Amazing LP, thanks for doing this! I highly recommend you play WOTC when you get the chance as it adds a lot of variety and some interesting changes to fundamental mechanics. But you should definitely play on commander difficulty given how easy this got for you. It elongates the gaining power stage of the inverse difficulty curve and I feel shortens the end plateau a bit. Also read up on how it integrates the previous DLC as the options arent well explained (obviously). I'd also consider looking in to the mod scene that WOTC opened up. There's some good quality of life stuff like colour coded abilities based on AP cost and one button Evac all/Overwatch all. And there's another that makes robots great! (Use the robots  )Looking forward to the next work you guys put together.
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Jun 8, 2019 13:03
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Frankly it makes sense that this playthrough ended with Shanty Pete double-criting the endboss at point-blank range, I could not have envisioned a better ending.
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Jun 8, 2019 14:45
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This was an awesome LP and I really enjoyed it, thanks so much for doing it. I've not commented before because I didn't know anything about XCOM and didn't think I had anything substantive to contribute, but I wanted to let you know I appreciated it. I'm seriously tempted to give one of these games a go now (or at least next time I get a new PC, there's some doubt as to whether my current one can run this). This game also did a really good job of scratching that "cheesy SF" itch I get every so often. It's really impressive how much characterisation work this game manages to do even when the characters are randomly-generated or goon-submitted, just between the way their abilities develop and the random outcomes and reactions they have on missions. By the end of this run, the A-team have managed to take on a sort of iconic quality that I wouldn't have expected given how this game starts off; anyone who's watched this LP will instantly recognise Shanty Pete, California Mustang and so on. Also, well, congratulations on not dying! That last mission looked legitimately hard even with all the DLC powers you had. I'm not sure what to make of the difficulty curve, so have some vague thoughts: a lot of games have this issue of "inverse difficulty curves" where the hardest part of the game is front-loaded and the accumulation of options and power (and player skill and knowledge) means that things slowly get easier until you reach a tipping point where the rest of the game is a cakewalk. I don't know if this is necessarily a game design issue, because it's very good at creating satisfying moments for the player when it's done well, but it's definitely the sort of thing that becomes more evident on replays (and can remove a lot of that satisfaction in retrospect). The question becomes, is it inevitable to have an inverse difficulty curve in any game with power development, or are there ways to scale difficulty better in order to mitigate or prevent it from happening? (And, if so, would we want to?) In the case of this game, I find myself wondering if they didn't intend the player to develop every aspect of the tech trees as much as happened in this LP; maybe you're supposed to progress the plot earlier and more consistently, and not get so many upgrades? (Although the actual plot missions seemed few and far between, it doesn't seem to me like there'd be much campaign there if you did only those, or even if that would be possible.) We did, for instance, see Gatekeepers showing up before the plot mission that seems intended to introduce them. So it could maybe have been a pacing issue, though that in itself seems like a flaw: it's not the player's fault for taking advantage of options given to them even if that results in later content seeming unimpressive.
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Jun 8, 2019 15:34
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ManlyGrunting posted:Frankly it makes sense that this playthrough ended with Shanty Pete double-criting the endboss at point-blank range, I could not have envisioned a better ending.
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Jun 8, 2019 16:42
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I think the game’s biggest problem, difficulty-wise, is lack of mission and objective variety. In the end, the only real variations on “move forward quickly but cautiously” were the Avenger defense mission, Shen’s Tower thing, and, well, the final mission. Trying to disincentivize overwatch turtling while constantly presenting missions where it’s the most optimal strategy, turn limit or none, is self-defeating. The times when things varied, whether by forcing you to whittle down your squad in the tower, forcing you to venture into enemy territory in the avenger mission, or forcing you to deal with hordes of new enemy spawns in the final mission, were probably the best.
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Jun 8, 2019 17:16
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Heres a bit of info you never found out that may have significantly changed how you went about the game: If the Avatar bar is filled, you don't immediately lose the game! Instead, it activates a big scary countdown of approximately one month, during which you must reduce Avatar progress somehow, and you'll lose if that runs down. Any time lost on the doomsday clock is not reset if you enter that period multiple times per play through. There might be some minimum value, I can't recall. I saw this during a video of some promo copy they gave to some big XCOM LPer; and it significantly affected how I went about my first play through. Also, continent bonuses. You got one or two, but never put thought into them. To get them, you need to contact every region and set up a certain number of radio towers, one for smaller continents and two for ones with 3 or 4 regions. After getting Resistance Radio the names of these bonuses (which are picked from a pool each play through) appear by the continents and you can mouse over them for more info. It also displays a bar divided into sections for each region and dots for each radio tower you need. I saw a bonus for decreasing black market costs, can't recall what the others were. With the increasing supply cost of each radio tower, do you think you would have went for them? Minor things you never got to see: A buff to health kits in the proving grounds got lost in between all the other projects. RNG did not see fit to bless you with the best powered heavy weapon: the Blaster Launcher. An upgraded rocket with greater damage and AoE, but best of all it takes the form of a floaty sphere of energy that can steer around corners, meaning you don't have to worry about positioning at all for it! He defense facility is fun. The turrets it provides get squad sight and can fire twice per turn, four with a staffed engineer. Upgrade the facility, and you get four of them. They don't get a height advantage and their aim isn't great, so the squad sight aim penalty hurts, but they can always hit the EMP device. Only used once or twice per campaign, if at all, but it's a mission you NEED to win.
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Jun 10, 2019 17:20
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Also, prox mines! You guys should take a peek at its stats next to those of the plasma nade. And then think about what it means for overwatch ambushes and certain grenadier skills.
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Jun 11, 2019 00:15
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It's also great comedy for Advent reenforcement drops, if you don't have a Bladestorm Ranger handy. Dr Christmas posted:Heres a bit of info you never found out that may have significantly changed how you went about the game: If the Avatar bar is filled, you don't immediately lose the game! Instead, it activates a big scary countdown of approximately one month, during which you must reduce Avatar progress somehow, and you'll lose if that runs down. Any time lost on the doomsday clock is not reset if you enter that period multiple times per play through. There might be some minimum value, I can't recall. I saw this during a video of some promo copy they gave to some big XCOM LPer; and it significantly affected how I went about my first play through.
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Jun 11, 2019 01:47
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Dead Reckoning posted:IIRC, this is how the Doom Timer actually works: it shows however much time you have before you would get your next Avatar pip, whether that be from normal alien progress, facilities, or dark events. (So, if you're unlucky or incautious, it can be quite short indeed.) So really, you have the number of pups in the avatar bar +1 before game over, but when you are down to your last (hidden) pip, the Doom Timer shows exactly how much time you have left. This isn't actually how it works. It's a timer no matter how long it would be until the next avatar progress.
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Jun 14, 2019 04:21
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Players report the amount of time on the timer seeming to be random and variable. The only explanation I've seen that makes sense is that it is based on the time until you would have got your next pip. Though this may have changed with a patch.
Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 05:20 on Jun 14, 2019 |
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Jun 14, 2019 05:17
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Explopyro posted:The question becomes, is it inevitable to have an inverse difficulty curve in any game with power development, or are there ways to scale difficulty better in order to mitigate or prevent it from happening? (And, if so, would we want to?) It's not inevitable at all! Invisible Inc, for example, has a great way of dealing with this. I would love to see you all play Invisible Inc next - it's a turn-based stealth strategy game on a whole other level compared to XCOM 2 when it comes to game design, and I say that as someone who's spent hundreds of hours of XCOM 2. Given how easily you mastered the tactical and strategic aspects of XCOM 2, I would love to see how you deal with Invisible Inc and hearing your insights.
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Jun 29, 2019 19:19
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xxlicious posted:It's not inevitable at all! Invisible Inc, for example, has a great way of dealing with this. Oh man you and me both, I've been recommending Invisible Inc to Nat for a while! I should play it again sometime, I haven't picked it up ever since my old laptop died and I abandoned my own attempt to LP it. I definitely agree about its difficulty curve being infinitely better than XCOM's. It also removes the whole  factor of random chances to hit loving you over. It's just such a solid tactics experience.Anyone reading this thread who has never tried Invisible Inc yet should do so ASAP.
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Jun 29, 2019 19:31
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Hey guys, I just caught up with the LP and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Thanks for the great content.
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Nov 27, 2021 13:25
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