XCOM 2

Vaclav · Feb 13, 2016

So close to beating it on my first Ironman playthrough (Veteran) - after the initial learning curve it's shockingly easy on Ironman/Veteran.

Gavinmad · Feb 13, 2016

It's much better than EU/EW in that regard, but the difficulty still plateaus early.

khalid · Feb 13, 2016

Just started this. Having serious difficulties early on with the timers. Does it relax a bit once you get your guys trained a bit?

Seems much harder at the start than the original.

Gavinmad · Feb 13, 2016

Once you get comfortable with concealment you won't be bothered by the timers so much. Once you've sent one person forward to verify the path is safe, you can sprint the rest of your party up behind them as long as you dont get patrolled into

hodj · Feb 13, 2016

In a lot of cases you can sort of smartly bum rush the target and disable it, and then gradually clear the rest of the map at your own pace.

Mist · Feb 13, 2016

Lithose_sl said:
You know, they get overlooked, but honestly, specialists are enormously powerful. Gremlins only taking one action, and things like healing not ending the turn make them able to deal damage and play defense in one round. Combined with Haywire protocol reliably being able to stun robotic enemies from mid game on and my specialist is pretty ridiculous.

Btw, for every hack success on your specialist, they get +5 hacking (Once more per mission). Combined with the increased hacking from skulljack, and later tier gremlins, it makes hacking very powerful late game. As said, almost always a 100% to disable any robotic enemy, including sectopods. Which makes all mech pods a lot easier.

And for organics they have Capacitor Discharge, which effectively lets you bring one less flash bang (It always applies disorient on organic enemies)...Plus with the last tier gremlin it does 10 damage, in a radius about equal to a grenadier with all the explosive perks. Against robotic enemies it does a shit ton, too. (That is unless you're just breezing with Mimetic beacons heh--I'm only letting myself use one, so disorient is still a massively good debuff.)

Plus if you do medical protocol and medic (And the rest in the hacking tree) you get 4 remote heals per match, that cost one action (So you can do two per turn). I know most people say "just don't get hit", but having the capability to heal people up is still pretty big. (Not to mention their +aid protocol at Gremlin three gives +40 defense, or full cover. It is enormous for when your ranger misses). The final medic skill though, I can't imagine why anyone would pick it when the two lower tier skills give you more than enough healing. I mean yeah there is a lot of AE damage later and being able to get it all in one swoop is nice, but if you're entire squad is getting shit on healing probably won't help.

Specialists are also good for farming bonus intel from missions.

Woolygimp · Feb 14, 2016

There's something to be said about the RNG in this game, and others. Our brains are hardwired in a certain way that makes us susceptible to gambling. Almost everything in life is based upon chance, such as stocks, promotions, and success/failure in general whether it be your occupation or private life. There's just too many variables going on behind the scenes with pretty much anything you do that you can't take everything into account.

People say RNG crits/resists should be removed from combat in competitive games, but the RNG does add to the fun. It all balances out in the long term, and making everything predictable is very boring. If this game gave you absolute success/failure under certain circumstances, it'd probably suck. You wouldn't have to take into account exceptional circumstances, and the same can be said for gaming in general. There's a reason casinos are so successful and I'd rather my game be fun and unpredictable than bland.

I will say that Blade & Soul took this concept WAY too far, damn Koreans...

Raes · Feb 14, 2016

The problem isn't so much the RNG. It's the fact that most of the difficulty is tied to it, in the Aim stat. Once you get your Aim high enough, most of the difficulty is gone. Grenades/rockets already negate the Aim RNG. (Although, I am glad my rockets no longer have a 10% chance to fly in a random direction.) It's why the late game is so easy. It's just a placeholder for better AI really.

Mist · Feb 14, 2016

The game, at least when played honestly, is all about how you handle bad luck. That sometimes things go wrong even when the odds are in your favor and you have to react to that. The problem is that with all the time limits, both in the missions themselves and the Avatar clock, there are some failures that can never be recovered from. I hope whomever makes a rebalance of the game makes it so that you can always come back, it might just make for a very very long campaign.

Vaclav · Feb 14, 2016

Gavinmad_sl said:
It's much better than EU/EW in that regard, but the difficulty still plateaus early.

Yep. Breezed through the whole rest.

Lost 2 people in the first month or so. After that lost 1 dude while doing one of the missions leading up to the finale.

Definitely curious to see how Commander difficulty ramps up now.

Raes · Feb 14, 2016

Yeah, I don't like how the timers severely limit your tactics in a tactical game.

Woolygimp · Feb 14, 2016

Raes_sl said:
Yeah, I don't like how the timers severely limit your tactics in a tactical game.

It's necessary or you can cheese the game. I don't recall exactly but I think it involves maneuvering a rookie into a patrol path while you have your squad on overwatch, so that you in effect get two turns to kill off a pack.

The time limits make the game fun too... there are some missions, especially on higher difficulties when an assault rifle hit can't kill even a basic trooper, that you have to make sacrifices and just maneuver to the EVAC.

Raes_sl said:
The problem isn't so much the RNG. It's the fact that most of the difficulty is tied to it, in the Aim stat. Once you get your Aim high enough, most of the difficulty is gone. Grenades/rockets already negate the Aim RNG. (Although, I am glad my rockets no longer have a 10% chance to fly in a random direction.).

Grenades destroy loot and are a lot less effective when troopers have 4-5 hp and a grenade hit can't kill them outright.

AI on Veteran and below seem to attack randomly making attacks a LOT easier to survive.

It seems that on Commander/Legendary packs tend focus fire much more! Sectoids also seem much more likely to use attacks outright, especially on someone near death... Maybe I have just bad luck, but that's been my experience so far.
Also keep in mind, a big reason that late game gets easy is because armor (Especially Predator/Experimental suits) is so damn good. They're a LOT less effective when your guys are running around with much less health due to the way armor works.

Most of the things you guys are talking about aren't really there on anything higher than default difficulty, because as your guys get culled you have a lot harder time leveling people up to significant ranks achieving high aim/hp.
And if you're not playing Ironman, then you might as well just play Legendary. Commander Ironman is a pretty big step up from Veteran.

Raes · Feb 14, 2016

I love it when people feel the need to educate us about shit we already know. I've already completed the game on Vet and Commander and I'm a third or so into my Legend/Ironman campaign.

Removing timers wouldn't cheese the game.

All time limits do is force you to charge toward the objective. Your use of tactics is limited. The only mission where it's really a serious issue is when you have to rescue a VIP.

Grenades destroy loot? I had no idea (/sarcasm) They only destroy loot if you kill the mob with the nade. You only do that if you have to, you should be using nades to shred armor and destroy cover, for the most part. And the weapon mods are a bonus, but hardly necessary.

Sectoids will almost always use panic/mind control/reanimate. They rarely ever shoot, on Legend as well. I think they are more likely to shoot at a mimic, ormaybeif flashbanged. (Not sure about that)

Armor mostly just lets you either play a little riskier, or make a few more mistakes. Again, not a huge deal.

You're wrong.

Woolygimp · Feb 14, 2016

There was a big thread on the forums about the beta for the game, and in it people were complaining that it was too easy to cheese the game. Basically you just bait packs with a rookie, like I said. Getting two turns to attack every pack is pretty broken, and I don't think anybody would enjoy resorting to that bullshit to progress.

You were also complaining about aim being too high, and if you're on legendary then I'm having a hard time believing you aren't losing a good bit of men which prevents you from getting a bunch of Colonels/gear on one guy.

Raes · Feb 14, 2016

Mimics are way cheesier than throwing rookies away.

I wasn't complaining about aim being too high. I said once your aim gets high enough it negates a lot of the RNG, which makes the game easier. Aim isn't the issue.

It took me like 6 tries to get past Gatecrasher. On my successful attempt I lost 1 rookie. And I think I lost a low level sharpshooter a little later, I can't remember. My current save is at the beginning of a retaliation mission, so I'll have to check tomorrow.

I rarely lose soldiers, my main concern is the avatar timer. But, this is my first Legend playthrough and I haven't gotten to andromedons or gatekeepers and shit yet, so no idea how things are gonna go at that point.

Woolygimp · Feb 14, 2016

The game is poorly tuned at the beginning, I'll give you that. The biggest hangup for me on Commander was getting someone to SGT by mission 3 so that I could get the squad increase. I don't think there's any reason for that to be tied to soldier rank considering it's absolutely imperative you unlock it by the time you do your first retaliation mission.

Raes · Feb 14, 2016

It's not poorly tuned, it's just all RNG. In the first mission, no matter how perfectly you play, if the RNG fucks you and you miss too many shots, game over. You're not at war with the aliens, you're actually at war with the random number generator. If you survive long enough for your soldiers Aim to get high enough, you defeat the evil RNG and win the game.

I'm not looking forward to attempting the last mission on Legend though, ugh.

Woolygimp · Feb 14, 2016

On the second mission, you face spread out packs of a Sectoid & Trooper. On the first, you have nothing but rookies without gear. On top of that, both packs tend to spawn on top of each other...so you have to pull 5 Troopers & an Officer.

If you could somehow throw grenades at the same time during an ambush, then yeah the first mission would be cake.

Raes · Feb 14, 2016

The first mission isn't that bad, you just have to keep doing it til the rng favors you. I head toward the building facing the bomb placement. The three pack of troopers is usually right in front of it. I move in close, grenade them, then finish them off with flank shots. Then I put a guy on each floor behind high cover, and a guy on the roof. Fourth guy baits the officer and his buds, then runs back to high cover, or out of LoS. Pack runs into overwatch. Exchange fire next turn, grenade if I can. Repeat with sectoid and trooper pack. The hard thing is the hp on the officer and sectoid is so friggin high.

khorum · Feb 14, 2016

Arrrrrrrrrrgh fucking bullshit game. The RNG with awc skills and pcs implants actually makes losing your badass chars feel way waaaaay worse.

I started playing as commander/ironman and it took several restarts before I even got to May. Then a archon / viper squad raped my three colonels with those bullshit viper grabs just as they had one turn to evac.

XCOM 2

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