Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[RAM]

I imaginethat therewould be ways to balance it... The initial thought is that not knowing how far the player got prior to triggering would be unworkable, but they could make it a trade-off from "rush to cover ground" to "trigger more enemies at once/fight on multiple flanks simultaneusly". As the objective could tend to be more densely populated and groups could go to investigate in a gradual pattern. Also they could add exposure traps. Things like tripwires, sensor drones, alarmed doors/windows, concealed enemies... Stealth would then be a challenge and performing well could be the difference between a mad rush to the finish line with your heavy-weapons team and a mad dash around the enemy strong points with your stealth team...

[Mephansteras]

Yeah, Total Concealment is a must for me.

I really feel like Firaxis went way too far with the turn limits. Sometimes it makes sense and makes for exciting missions, but mostly it is annoying and completely illogical. Like the fact that Advent has explosives set to go off after a minute or whatever on something they are transporting, when they don't even know that XCOM is there yet. It just...feels like too much of a disconnect between mechanics and story.

I hope they lay off of it in the next installment. Time limits should be a spice, carefully used.

[Chiefwaffles]

I mean, say what you want on the mechanics side of turn timers, but it's pretty easy to make a story justification.

The timer starts because ADVENT just so happens to notice your not-so-subtle dropship in the area. They don't know where it dropped off your troops, but they do know that there's an XCOM presence in the area.

[Twinwolf]

Playing on console, I didn't have access to the mods, but managed to finish missions just fine. On normal difficulty at least - haven't tried too much above that. I like how it adds a sense of urgency to missions - you can't just move up, overwatch everyone, repeat like you could in Enemy Within. That said, I do wish they could have ported mods like True Concealment to console

[nenjin]

For me the fun of XCOM2 is finding the right tactical solution to a given engagement. Min maxing tactical superiority. LW2 gets this by making the enemy bandwidth for kicking your ass way, way higher than in vanilla. At times it goes overboard though, especially missions with no turn timer.

So for me turn timers are a big cock block for what I enjoy in the game. I like setting up overwatch ambushes and actually getting a sniper into a good position where they can be useful in a mission. That and trying to beat the turn timer is just there to encourage you to get your guys shot, which is plenty possible even with TC and save scumming and all that. I get why people like it, I'm just happy there's mods to accommodate me. Turn timers were ok in XCOM:EU because they were infrequent and shook up missions. They make sense for almost every mission in XCOM2 due to the narrative, I just would have appreciated additional turns and the logic of True Concealment from the start.

[EnigmaticHat]

I prefer if the fun way to play games and the optimal way are similar.  What turn timers mean for me is that there's no way that any strategy involving, say, hiding in a corner of the map could ever make sense.  So by definition the only good way to play is the interesting way.  Total concealment inverts that; now you have two powerful advantages (concealment and infinite time) and the moment you stick your neck out you lose both advantages.  Without total concealment, you have this great dilemma where you feel really powerful because of concealment but you know you have to give up that advantage eventually.  So the tension becomes picking the right moment to strike.  Striking too early or too late both have their perils.

Of course newcom being newcom its balanced wrong.  Some missions you could walk + shoot every action and still not reach the objective; considering how much delay can happen over the course of a mission that's just not fair.  And it overtunes the system so that you always want to err on the side of striking early which is boring.

[Mephansteras]

For me True Concealment isn't really that powerful. I'm a fairly impatient player, so I'm not one to sit in overwatch for a dozen turns waiting for the perfect moment. I just use it to heighten the feel of the sneaky portion of missions and to let myself get into the fight and try to start smart. It also helps avoid some of the really punishingly unfair starts I've seen, where pretty much every pod on the map is on you by turn 2 due to where they are when you first make contact.

[Egan_BW]

Kinda just wish stealth was a bit more involved, like Invisible, Inc. maybe. You can never lean too hard on XCOM 2's concealment mechanics because they're honestly not very good or thought out.

[Chiefwaffles]

Well, XCOM 2 never was designed for stealth in mind and everything in it serves as further evidence of this. Concealment isn't here to add stealth gameplay.

Concealment is just a way used by the developers to allow players to make the first shot, showing them as the aggressors deciding how their battle begins, unlike the aliens from EU.
The fact that the timer still goes when concealed is an obvious design choice. So is the fact that pods are coded specifically to home on the player from concealment, preventing them from stealthing it to the objective.

Supposedly it's fixed with the later versions, but that was my problem with Long War 2 when I played it. It tried to turn this minor mechanic into full-fledged stealth, and I hated it.

[scrdest]

Late to the party on the faction vid, but... Russian or not, the Reapers look like something straight out of Gone With The Blastwave. Hell, even the 'living in abandoned cities' thing fits.

[Rince Wind]

I liked the timers in vanilla. It forced hard choices on you and for me made the battle feel more fluid, which fits with small unit tactics IMO. It felt more like proper fighting than chess.
Having to leave someone behind because they didn't make it and then later be able to rescue them is a great mechanic.

And long war 2s timers are usually more generous, so you can be a bit more careful but still have that urgency, especially as you now watch that reinforcements indicator as well.

[TheDarkStar]

I tried a game at the normal difficulty setting but I decided to start a new one because I was losing soldiers at an unsustainable rate, mostly because every mission had at least 2 Faceless and Codices and 4+ sectoids and I only had a few non-starting level upgrades for my soldiers. I also started over because the Avatar thing was almost complete.

Edit: Also, is there a way to disable the Alien Rulers DLC? Even when disabled, I still get the alien rulers showing up. It's simply not fun to randomly have to deal with an enemy that has 5-6x the health and 9x as many actions as any other enemy, especially on timed missions.

[nenjin]

Thought it was an option at game start to uncheck it. Never tried.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

That sounds like some sort of bug, since rulers don't show up even when activated until you do the investigation mission.

[Burnt Pies]

Turning the dlc off just removes the missions. The rulers themselves still show up, I think.

I've heard the actual way to turn it off is to uninstall it.