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XCOM 2 Review thread

G

grandwizard

Member
Sounds awesome, can't wait.

All the ppl saying you played the first with a gamepad because the m/kb controls weren't good.. consider the fact that the m/kb controls weren't good because they had to make the entire UI around being able to use it with a gamepad. The m/kb control scheme definitely suffered. Glad they are making this one without those limitations and I think it will be a better game for it. Then later down the line someone can mod in pad support without having to rebalance the game or remove abilities just to simplify it for the limitations of a pad.

And there's always the Steam Controller or logitech k400 if you want to couch play.
 
P

Psychoward

Banned
Rhaknar said:
you cant say that as a fact as if everyone thinks like that tho. I know people that can only play save scumming, they just cant be arsed fucking up and having to redo something. And they love the game. To each its own right?

I dont save scum but I play on normal for example (which apparently is harder this time?), I remember trying enemy unknown on some harder difficulty in a second playthrough because of all the "thats how youre supposed to play it man!" and had zero fun.
Click to expand...

Yeah a big problem with EU was the difficulty scaling was completely borked. After you get used to the game normal is a joke and almost impossible to lose especially after the first few months. I've never gotten past the first few months on classic though.
 
R

Rhaknar

The Steam equivalent of the drunk friend who keeps offering to pay your tab all night.
im trying to remember if I save scummed in EU... I think I did it once when I pressed a wrong button or something and it pissed me off, like it wasnt RNG or a bad decision, it was a bad controller input. But usually I liked the idea of the soldiers dying (playing darkest dungeon right now and its the same vibe... the same soul crushing vibe lol).

I'll never forget my one sniper that lasted the whole game, until he died in the last mission. fuck I was so gutted lol. I forget his name, I know he was french tho.
 
R

RandomSeed

Member
PsychoWARD23 said:
the only way I can imagine playing xcom games without ironman is just by playing them like you have ironman installed but not actually enabling it in case a glitch happens or something so you can reload


honest question: people who play it without it enabled - do you guys reload a mission if something goes wrong?
Click to expand...

PsychoWARD23 said:
Yeah a big problem with EU was the difficulty scaling was completely borked. After you get used to the game normal is a joke and almost impossible to lose especially after the first few months. I've never gotten past the first few months on classic though.
Click to expand...

You can't imagine playing without ironman on, but you play on normal. When you start playing on classic and up, the early maps you get can be anywhere from easy to a slaughterhouse. Playing bronzeman style means you can retry a mission until you can pass it, rather than starting over 5 times and getting ideal maps. Being able to work around the glitches and bugs is nice too.
 
G

Gothos

Member
Right now the only thing that worries me is the balance of difficulty levels. XCOM was too easy on Normal and a little too frustrating on Classic (would love a difficulty setting between those too). Hopefuly this time around the balance is better.
 
H

Hydrophobic

Member
I preordered this last week and I'm super pumped to play it on Friday. I did some save-scumming in my first playthrough of Enemy Unknown, and I'll probably do some of it my first playthrough of this game because I get super attached to my soldiers. That being said, I look forward to 95% chance to hit my desk when I miss a high-percentage chance to hit an enemy.
 
R

Rhaknar

The Steam equivalent of the drunk friend who keeps offering to pay your tab all night.
Gothos said:
Right now the only thing that worries me is the balance of difficulty levels. XCOM was too easy on Normal and a little too frustrating on Classic (would love a difficulty setting between those too). Hopefuly this time around the balance is better.
Click to expand...

the word is normal is much harder this time around /shrug

edit: for example, from the RPS review

"XCOM 2 is a very difficult game. Playing on the easiest difficulty is a perfectly legitimate choice, however, if you want to roleplay as the aliens’ worst nightmare. You’ll still lose soldiers from time to time, if you’re even slightly careless, but you’ll have a squad of high-ranking Xterminators in no time. The balance seems to shift well between settings, with Normal providing enough of a challenge for me on a first playthrough. I’ll gladly move up to Classic for a second playthrough."
 
D

Diancecht

Member
BennyBlanco said:
XCOM 2 |OT| 95% chance to hit consoles.
Click to expand...

Bullseye.

sabribey-o.gif
 
E

epmode

Member
Grover said:
awesome reviews, this might even be better than enemy unknown
Click to expand...

I'd happily buy XCOM2 if it was just Enemy Unknown/Within with procedural maps. The fact that they piled all sorts of nice changes on top of the maps is just lovely.
 
D

Durrzerker

Banned
RandomSeed said:
You can't imagine playing without ironman on, but you play on normal. When you start playing on classic and up, the early maps you get can be anywhere from easy to a slaughterhouse. Playing bronzeman style means you can retry a mission until you can pass it, rather than starting over 5 times and getting ideal maps. Being able to work around the glitches and bugs is nice too.
Click to expand...


why did you assume they play on normal? I've never played on anything less than Classic, including my first time playing, ever. And I only do Ironman.
 
S

Sinatar

Official GAF Bottom Feeder
Ont said:
Also why was someone with less than 10 years of gaming experience (apparently mainly on Playstation consoles) allowed to review a big PC game like XCOM 2?
Click to expand...

Because a wide range of opinions is important? Reviews aren't an echo chamber designed to reinforce your predetermied belief about the quality (or lack thereof) of a game.
 
E

Erheller

Member
Hopeford said:
People have dissected the game code as well as run lots of tests to see if it works. Plus there are mods to show both the percentage and what you rolled against that percentage, the numbers are completely legit.

The 100% glitch is because for some ungodly reason the chances are calculated in floats but displayed as rounded ints, so 100% is actually often something like 99.99 or something. So if it makes you feel better, a 100% shot in XCOM1 is actually still liable to miss.

(It is absolutely bullshit how they rounded percentage chances though haha)
Click to expand...

That's actually false. It's because this is what happens when you fire a shot:

1) The game rolls to see if the shot is a hit or not.
2) The game draws a projectile (if the shot is a hit, it'll draw a projectile towards the targeted actor)
3) If the drawn projectile is a hit, damage is applied.

Ideally, every single shot that rolls to hit will draw a projectile that hits the target and apply damage. That isn't the case, however.

Amineri (one of the Long War people) explains this in more detail:

I'll also chime in with some technical observations. There are two significant factors possible at work here, as best I know.
1) The RNG, which while not the greatest is pretty reasonable.
And independent random numbers are inherently "streaky". If the numbers were all too close to the expected mean, it would actually indicate a problem in the RNG.
2) Coding bugs
Here's where things get more interesting. For a standard shot, the game computes the hit chance, crit chance, rolls them, randomizes damage, and so on.
What it does NOT do is directly apply said damage to the target. Instead, it uses what I call "first person shooter mechanics" to transfer the damage from the shooter to the target. It takes the following steps:
a) Create a projectile, with a boolean hit/no-hit and the damage stored in the projectile. b) Based on boolean hit/no-hit, make the projectile trajectory intersect or miss the target. c) As projectile touches each Actor, make the projectile explode if it was a hit and the Actor is the target. If it's a hit, go through cover. If it's not a hit, impact cover and deal environmental damage. d) When projectile explodes, transfer damage from projectile to target unit.
This is fairly complicated sequence of events, and various bugs can cause the chain to break. Typically this results in no damage/miss pop-up occuring at all. THIS is the source of 100% chance misses, not hidden fractional values.
Note that the above sequence can never result in a rolled missing becoming a hit, but bugs can results in a rolled hit not dealing damage. This biases the results to be below the expected mean based purely on RNG.
Also note that such bugs are much more frequent when playing with Cinematic cameras shots.
When collecting data to validate the RNG (in isolation), you should disregard any shot that doesn't display either a damage/miss pop-up -- that's the typical indication that the damage-transfer-via-projectile has bugged.
Click to expand...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Xcom/comme...is_seriously_off_with_the_to_hit_for/cvl6a70:
 
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