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After playing XCOM 1 a lot and watching Jadestar's LP of this game I never really felt the urge to buy it, but the first mission of this wonderful LP is really making my eye twitch. As a coping mechanism I'm going to have to grab it myself and if anyone else is in the same position, the Humble Store has currently got the usual round of heavy discounts on both the base game and +WotC version. Anyway I'm cheering you on and hoping for a full on archetypal journey of the rise, the hubristic fall and the final redemptive crushing of our alien overlords.
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Jan 15, 2019 17:35
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 03:10 |
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Agreed on lightning hands. The more active chances you have to effect the current situation the more fun this game becomes I find. It's the old Sid Meier's adage of seeing games as a set of intersting decisions and the more variety and frequency of options you have, the more each encounter becomes a puzzle of how to get out of it unscathed. This game by design has a lot of RNG bullshit (and as we've seen, 'Surpriiiiise!' bullshit) but it also gives you skills like these that allow you to actively bend the situation in you favour. Fwoderwick fucked around with this message at 10:11 on Feb 17, 2019 |
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Feb 17, 2019 10:08
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I've noticed a couple of points where Tea's shown concern over how interesting overwatch happy play is to watch and I agree with your response to him. In the first game I was sometimes guilty of 10+ overwatch turns hoping to bait out a single activated sectoid scooting around in the darkness. Now THAT is dull gameplay. A few turns of catching your breath, being cautious, is actually just an interesting example of you guys really getting the hang of the game's systems. Fwoderwick fucked around with this message at 10:58 on Mar 2, 2019 |
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Mar 2, 2019 10:55
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GeneX posted:I feel like the strict limit on soldier inventory slots means that you can’t afford to not bring these kill-confirm items, since leaving an enemy alive with 1 hp vs them being dead can cause a soldier to be injured for, like, a month The injury system adds a few things, I think. In many ways the game is a 'this isn't ideal but...' simulator, with injuries being one way this comes about. You may think your ideal squad is two grenadiers, two specialists, a ranger and a sharpshooter. Ok your two grenadiers got injured, now who do you bring? How are you going to change your tactics? Another thing is tension. If you could just yolo yourself into the aliens faces treating your soldier's health as ablative armour rather than something with long term consequence then the atmosphere of the game would be very different. On the subject of kill-confirm items: Firstly you're largely right, at least in the first half of a campaign. As you get better armour and better skills, a grenade for every man no longer feels as important. Flashbangs are situationally great but like many things this is never well communicated. They disable enemy special abilities (like the codex clone ability), can free soldiers from mind control and disable overwatch, all the while reducing enemy aim and mobility. As discussed Mimic beacons are amazing, even more so on harder difficulties. Some ammo types are excellent such as blue screen rounds, which do extra damage to mechanical enemies. But I've yet to see a reason to build any of the item-slot armours and several of the grenade and ammo types are sub-optimal.
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Mar 7, 2019 21:57
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I feel Shanty Pete would descend further down the life cosplay well and call his shotgun the Blunderbuss. And the 360 NoScope for the sniper rifle, purely for the looks of insufferable smugness (Mustang) and utter disdain (Ma) when using it.
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Mar 31, 2019 09:34
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Armory > View Soldiers > SPARK-001 > Customize > Voice > French Julian tia 
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Apr 6, 2019 10:15
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Yeah it'd be a real shame if sparks don't get a look in at all but it is understandable when it's a toss up between existing high level characters and starting from scratch. Two comments in the videos did stick out though, one being not wanting to raise another pokemon when Dash Rendar at Corporal is pretty much just that (no ban plz Blind Sally). In that Very Difficult mission you made some tactical... whoopsies and mostly carried Dash through the mission to a Flawless rating, so it's very possible to bring soldiers up to speed at this stage in the game. The other comment was about wanting more armour shredding abilities. The spark's main weapon does this by default and they have a heavy weapon slot so that's a lot of bonus additional shredding. Spark's aren't amazingly overpowered but they do add some fun options if you spec them right. My main gripe is the fact they have a completely separate weapon/armour upgrade costs and I'm not sure why Firaxis felt the need to hobble them that way.
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Apr 11, 2019 23:14
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Pea posted:I think that the game won't be able to seriously threaten the LP'ers chances of winning. They read spoilers about the rulers and overall, their playstyle is too conservative and deliberate to get surprised by new enemies or accidentally triggering a second pod. Nat has his preferred tactics figured out and Tea is there to reign him in when he's considering anything slightly risky. I don't think anyone who's got to this stage in any modern xcom is in danger of dealing with anything but the mildest speedbump, especially on Veteran. The creeping sense of hubris/boredom as you run out of things to do is about the only way I get anyone killed from here out. Say, sending Severa off in to the distance and activating a Sectopod/Avatar/Gatekeeper/Archon King as the last move of the turn. Fwoderwick fucked around with this message at 13:22 on Apr 13, 2019 |
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Apr 13, 2019 13:02
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On harder difficulties I think the frost grenade feels a lot more balanced because with enemies having increased health, the chance that you can't deal with everything on screen increases by a lot. The thing is though, once the rulers are out the picture then if you don't use the frost grenade then you can just put more tactical onus on the mimic beacon (which is barely used in this LP) and achieve pretty much the same outcome. That said you're at a point where omitting it probably won't slow you down and if it's use is becoming monotonous or rote for you guys playing the game then it might help keep things interesting. I guess calls to leave out the frost grenade is no different to my keenness to see the robots in that regard. I'm not particularly interested in any attempts to inject artificial schadenfreude to the LP though.
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Apr 17, 2019 13:31
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These situations are where I have most fun with XCOM I think. When things get quite hairy and you spend 5-10 minutes consulting your batman utility belt to get back out of it unscathed (hopefully). Also going back to the second vid this week and another round of fighting against the squad equip interface. I want to say that if you only ever use the buttons on the squad screen and not the individual soldier screen you won't unequip soldiers that are supposed to be getting on the plane. Certainly I never saw that issue to the extent you have and that's the way I went about it.
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Apr 20, 2019 09:11
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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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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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Think I'd see using dominate as a plus. Even more so because it seems that with the new soldiers they're already choosing not to use George to his fullest because he won't gain XP from kills.
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May 16, 2019 20:45
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Step 1. Sell everything not nailed down at the black market Step 2. Robot
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May 31, 2019 11:20
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Look at all those Advent flopping over at the end, unable to cope with the p-funk George was blasting out over the Advent Network.
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Jun 4, 2019 15:28
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 03:10 |
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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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