• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen |OT| Mario + Rabbids + Autopsies

Jintor

Member
It just sucks the armour styles are so good at base level and just garbage at the highest tiers. Mods can only take you so far
 

Hupsel

Member
Is Overwatch completely useless in Xcom2? Looks like it was nerfed soooo much from Xcom1. I literally miss 80% of all my Overwatch shots.
 
Is Overwatch completely useless in Xcom2? Looks like it was nerfed soooo much from Xcom1. I literally miss 80% of all my Overwatch shots.

I still use it, but the bad streaks are all too real. Nothing like opening the door and having 5 teammates all miss their overwatch shots at the same time.
 
I personally love the Templer's switch-a-roo ability (that is switching positions with the target), if your team is off-position, just bring the chosen to you :)
Not tried that but I will.

Is Overwatch completely useless in Xcom2? Looks like it was nerfed soooo much from Xcom1. I literally miss 80% of all my Overwatch shots.
I tend not to Overwatch everyone as if they all miss there's a good chance you're going to get fucked up. So Overwatch maybe half, or those with best accuracy. More than once has holding a few back has saved a soldiers life.
 
I downloaded the first half and it installed but I can't find where to go back and download the second half lol.

Edit: Found it. Should be good to go in 30
 

Grimsen

Member
The performance is on par with vanilla (ps4 pro). Choppy, long load times. Those load times might be a bit faster than in vanilla, but not by much. It's nowhere near the improvements of the PC version.

Also, the character pool doesn't transfer from vanilla to WOTC. I can understand that on PC, since the folder for it is different, but on ps4? For fucks sake.
 

Trey

Member
The secret is Overwatch was always a poor option

back in xcom 1, it was a useful way of getting off free shots when you activated a pod. that changed in xcom 2 drastically, which makes for a more interesting tactical experience in my opinion.
 
The performance is on par with vanilla (ps4 pro). Choppy, long load times. Those load times might be a bit faster than in vanilla, but not by much. It's nowhere near the improvements of the PC version.

Also, the character pool doesn't transfer from vanilla to WOTC. I can understand that on PC, since the folder for it is different, but on ps4? For fucks sake.

Cmon man Firaxis WTF

40$!!

This pisses me off a lot.
 

Jintor

Member
It got a lot more fun since you don't have the _-20 aim penalty in ambushes.

Or does that only activate if the target is dashing?
 

Skade

Member
Maybe you aren't using it right.
I find it has plenty of tactical uses.

Well, from my experience, the only real uses is see are :

  • End of the turn, soldier is revealed with no enemy in sight.
  • End of the turn, soldier is revealed with an enemy in sight but with no reasonable chances of damaging it.
  • End of the turn, soldier is not revealed but a patrol is nearby, you don't want to trigger the pod, and you can't move said soldier.

Basically, it's a failsafe for when you can't do anything else more usefull. Still usefull, not denying it. But i will never count on overwatch to kill a target. Especially not for killing an entire pod. Even more on my turn.
 
So I picked this up about a week ago as my first XCOM game, and now I am hopelessly addicted to it. I've restarted twice and think I have a general idea of how everything works out, but the game always seems to be actively trying to make life miserable - that's for sure.

Some questions: how do you replace high-ranking soldiers when they are dead or wounded? The aliens don't suddenly replace Berserkers with 3 health troopers, and squaddies are trash. I haven't built the Psi-Ops yet, but how do those soldiers catch up as well?

Something really odd happened this run that I want to share, too. I had a very early mission to hack a supply box on a train, with a squad of squaddies and cpls (Reaper included). The box was wedged between two fuel cars, and after I hacked it remotely the Assassin showed up since cover was blown. So my next move was to use Remote Start on the fuel car, which one-shot the Chosen, two Lance Troops, and a Sectoid. I knew I was lucky, but what I didn't expect was the Reaper was promoted to Lt. right on the spot. Is that normal? It seemed waaaay early to have a Lt., especially with no Sgts! I was able to quickly complete stage 2 influence of 2 factions.
 
So I picked this up about a week ago as my first XCOM game, and now I am hopelessly addicted to it. I've restarted twice and think I have a general idea of how everything works out, but the game always seems to be actively trying to make life miserable - that's for sure.

Some questions: how do you replace high-ranking soldiers when they are dead or wounded? The aliens don't suddenly replace Berserkers with 3 health troopers, and squaddies are trash. I haven't built the Psi-Ops yet, but how do those soldiers catch up as well?

You get opportunities on the map to recruit higher ranking soldiers (both as scan-and-pick-up and as mission rewards.) Also in the expansion, you can use the Resistance Ring to send your grunts on covert ops that give them XP and promotions, as well recruit Resistance faction heroes, so it's easier to fill up a roster with badasses.

In general, try to plan ahead and always put one or two 'lesser' characters on your A-team so they can get their XP too.
 

Sentenza

Member
It just sucks the armour styles are so good at base level and just garbage at the highest tiers. Mods can only take you so far
I don't particularly dislike the last tier of armors.
Yeah, a bit too on the sci-fi side compared to the more charming start equipment, but at least the design is sleek enough.
Absolutely hate the intermediate tier (those squared armors look like fucking ovens) and above anything else I can't stand the completely-out-of-place alien hunters sets.


Well, from my experience, the only real uses is see are :

  • End of the turn, soldier is revealed with no enemy in sight.
  • End of the turn, soldier is revealed with an enemy in sight but with no reasonable chances of damaging it.
  • End of the turn, soldier is not revealed but a patrol is nearby, you don't want to trigger the pod, and you can't move said soldier.

Basically, it's a failsafe for when you can't do anything else more usefull. Still usefull, not denying it. But i will never count on overwatch to kill a target. Especially not for killing an entire pod. Even more on my turn.
Yep, and that's pretty much the intended use I guess.
"Overwatch" to me has always been "that option you pick when you have not a good alternate option".
 
2 crashes within 10 minutes in my first 2 hours on PS4. Not a great start, especially with this shit load times.

I don't know why I let myself think the optimization improvements would carry over to the console version.

Blind squirrel did the port again. I should have expected this.
 

Skade

Member
Well, if you can know for sure (with reapers or Ghost Rangers) that a pod not yet activated will run freely on your soldiers during the aliens turn, yes, overwatch all you want. Or maybe on the old avenger defense where you can blow up all trace of cover and just wait to erase any enemy that wander in this no man's land (great way to level up rookies and such by the way).

But that's it. I see a lot of people trying to do overwatch ambushes on their on turns while concealed and that's not the best idea. Because you can't control wich alien will get killed (if any) and then, then, you are left open for the pod survivors to do anything they want immediately after.

So NEVER try to ambush during your own turn. Something like overwatch all but one and activate the pod with a grenade or something. We've all done that, but that's too much like rolling a dice on a game that is already screwing you with dice rolls. Way too risky.
 
2 crashes within 10 minutes in my first 2 hours on PS4. Not a great start, especially with this shit load times.

I don't know why I let myself think the optimization improvements would carry over to the console version.

Blind squirrel did the port again. I should have expected this.

Ffs... 40 goddamn dollars.

Thats what I get for preordering. Firaxis never gave a shit about the console versions.

We all thought the optimization would carry over :(.
 

Skade

Member
Can you multi level soldiers in one mission or does it cap out at one level per mission

Vanilla, there is some kind of culling that stops your soldiers from gaining more than one level per mission. Sadly. And i do think the xp gets wasted.

But there's mod to counter that. Don't think it works on WOTC though.

Covert Actions will pop up from time to time. You need medium influence (one Chosen hunting mission completed) to attempt them, though.

Indeed. But you can only get a second soldier from a class in your starting faction. So you can only have two Reapers if you play with the custom mission that gives Dragunova and Mox. You can only have one member of the other factions.

But once gain, there's a mod for that. (so i have two Reapers and two Templars, soon to be three)
 
If you HATE the late game weapon aesthetics like I do, you're in luck. E2345's weapon mods are out for WOTC. Includes present day and a few futuristic laser/beam tier weapons. Best thing about those futuristic guns featured is that they're still recognizably human looking. All the weapons will upgrade when you do so you can have ballistic weapons with beam stats. Bit buggy when you install the mod on a current game though. I find the machine guns are missing when you do that.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1132835147

Also get this Uniform Manager mod ported to WOTC.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1126857331&searchtext=uniform

Select character appearances from the character pool to import, and you can get Kevlar customization options again. Tier 2 and 3 armor has a terrible design, where does anyone even store their ammo.
 

Skade

Member
Tier 2 and 3 armor has a terrible design, where does anyone even store their ammo.

I kinda like Tier 2 armors. Not so much T3 though.

But what i like very much is what they did with the new classes. Their upgraded armors are almost the same, just some parts gets modified while the rest remain the same. Would love to see something like that done to the old classes. Some kind of kit-bash mixing updated armors with old kevlar parts so the soldier keep their old looks but with still visible changes.
 

Sentenza

Member
I kinda like Tier 2 armors. Not so much T3 though.
The exact opposite here.
Tier 3 may not be exactly my cup of tea (I'm more for the grounded-in reality vibe of tier 1 weapons and armors, personally) but I can grow used to them and they are not bad models at all.

Tier 2 stuff, on the other hand... No matter how many campaigns I play, I always hate that limited time window where I'm forced to use that Qbert-looking cubic shit.
 
Maybe you aren't using it right.
I find it has plenty of tactical uses.

These are the very limited cases in which Overwatch is useful in my experience:

1. When it's free from soldier skills (like Specialist).
2. When shooting at an enemy behind cover has very low probability of success. You might as well overwatch and catch him in the open.
3. If you know that an enemy pod is heading your way through scanning or stealth units. Then you can set your entire squad to overwatch, end the turn, get a few free hits in as the enemies come into view and have a full turn to deal with the rest.

Setting up an overwatch ambush as the tutorial teaches you is a recipe for disaster. If you don't kill everyone then you are powerless during the enemy's turn and you will take damage. If you have an unlucky shot streak and miss a lot you will get your men slaughtered.
 

Skade

Member
Setting up an overwatch ambush as the tutorial teaches you is a recipe for disaster. If you don't kill everyone then you are powerless during the enemy's turn and you will take damage. If you have an unlucky shot streak and miss a lot you will get your men slaughtered.

Well, the tutorial teaches that as well since only Jane Kelly survives. :p

The exact opposite here.
Tier 3 may not be exactly my cup of tea (I'm more for the grounded-in reality vibe of tier 1 weapons and armors, personally) but I can grow used to them and they are not bad models at all.

Well, everyone taste i guess. But i'm sure we can all agree that the ruler armors looks horrendous either way.
 

Aselith

Member
How much less buggy is this expansion than the base game? I can't believe how fucked up Xcom 2 is after being out this long. I had a lot of trouble when it came out and figured I'd check it out again because surely a year's worth of patches made it better? Then on my third mission the game just locks into a weird view where I can't see my troops at all or move since I can't see the grid and it's like one soldiers perspective (not the soldier that's selected in this screenshot. Lena is on a cliff on the other side of the map) The game is just hot trash which, while Xcom 1 had some weird camera bugs sometimes, it never actually bugged out enough to prevent progress...just some janky camera movement.
0D2ED771CF3A913F793E7680FA2A43510C302AD1

Am I going to see significant improvements in the expansion or is it still fucked up?
 
Can you multi level soldiers in one mission or does it cap out at one level per mission

1 level per mission.

I used to think that once a soldier leveled in a mission his/her xp got capped for the rest of that mission so getting kills on them was useless at that point but apparently the extra xp actually gets carried over to the next mission and theoretically they may get an instant promotion once they get their first kill in a new mission, or at least that's what the reddit thread I found said.
 

Jintor

Member
Am I going to see significant improvements in the expansion or is it still fucked up?

performance is a lot better, but i did spend a good heap of a day or two ago trying to troubleshoot some dumb issue where it would crash whenever i issued a specific command.
 

AlanOC91

Member
I completed the
rescue mission for Mox
yesterday.

By round two I was on an alert of like 10 and everything was ballsed up. I thought killing someone on their own would keep things quiet (oops).

How are you actually supposed to silently do the mission?

It looked like if I crossed the red barrier that the alarm would trigger.
 

Grimsen

Member
I completed the
rescue mission for Mox
yesterday.

By round two I was on an alert of like 10 and everything was ballsed up. I thought killing someone on their own would keep things quiet (oops).

How are you actually supposed to silently do the mission?

It looked like if I crossed the red barrier that the alarm would trigger.

For those missions, I don't kill anyone until after I've freed the prisoner. The red barriers don't trigger alarms.
 
Is the entire cast new to the War of the Chosen from Star Trek The Next Generation? Don't get me wrong, i like it but it seems odd after a while. Was there a bulk discount at the talent agency?

I completed the
rescue mission for Mox
yesterday.

By round two I was on an alert of like 10 and everything was ballsed up. I thought killing someone on their own would keep things quiet (oops).

How are you actually supposed to silently do the mission?

It looked like if I crossed the red barrier that the alarm would trigger.

I meleed someone in that mission and didn't trigger any alarms.
 
I completed the
rescue mission for Mox
yesterday.

By round two I was on an alert of like 10 and everything was ballsed up. I thought killing someone on their own would keep things quiet (oops).

How are you actually supposed to silently do the mission?

It looked like if I crossed the red barrier that the alarm would trigger.

I sneaked everyone in, and as soon as I had picked up the"package", and the alarm went off, I blew a hole in the wall on the back side and got out there.
 

Markoman

Member
back in xcom 1, it was a useful way of getting off free shots when you activated a pod. that changed in xcom 2 drastically, which makes for a more interesting tactical experience in my opinion.

Absolutely. In Xcom 1 you were encouraged to just move within the blue borders and activate OW, which gets pretty lame after a while. I think the timers, Choosen and Hunters
counter this playstyle perfectly.

Using OW only makes sense for soldiers with very high aim stat like sharpshooters and specialist who have a chance of second ow shot. Of course a grenardier with 70 aim
will hit shit with OW when an enemy appears at the outer line of sight. OW also makes sense when you have something like 65% to hit an enemy during your active phase, but you calculate that he will charge
towards you when you end your turn, so the % will increase slightly.

You can kinda have to build true mid-range OW soldiers by equipping weapon mods on specialist to increase their aim.
 
Top Bottom