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[GlyphGryph]

I still can't enjoy Apocalypse. I enjoyed watching the LP, but even that felt like it dragged and dragged, and trying to play it JUST feels like that. Yet people still enjoy the game! I just don't understand. I hope this reboot does not use Apoc as the base. :/

[Domenique]

It clearly won't. The game's fine, the factions intrigued me, but I never really finished it. It's saving grace was real-time, I never liked the battles in it anyways, it lacked the athmosphere that would scare the living fuck out of me when I was a child.

[Neonivek]

I think its a bit funny that people are already finding a way to show how it couldn't possibly ever live up to the original. So maybe the armor isn't the most inspired design. This is (very probably) concept art anyways. Its good news. Even if this game sucked it would be good news. It means that there is enough interest in the market for this type of game, which means more would come. So everybody just strap in and see how it turns out.

You act as if there hasn't been Xcom games after they stopped making Xcom games.

I know of at least Three.

So what? If that horse was dead then people wouldn't still be beating it. Not for long anyways. People obviously want more. This is more.

The what is simple. It is less

[Mephansteras]

Well, we could talk about what aspects we'd like to see in the game.

Obviously, it needs to have both turn-based combat and base/global management aspects. They've already said we'll have destructible terrain, which is good. (And pretty much required to really be x-com)

I would like to have expendable individuals, like the original X-Com.  Having actual specific characters with voices and whatnot can be fun, but I think that takes away from part of the core of X-Com. You're an elite team, yes, but you're also fighting a war against a superior force. You're going to lose people, and having a small roster of actual individuals doesn't really lend itself to that feeling.

Take Silent Storm, for example. It's a great game and a lot of fun, but if you lose a favorite character you're more likely to just restart. You also have a Main Character who the game resolves around. If he/she dies, that's it. You're also a small commando force doing specific missions with a specific storyline. You can't really lose a lot of battles and still progress. And, while it does a good job of mixing up the missions, you're still stuck on a fairly narrow storyline.

X-Com needs to be the opposite. You've got to be able to fight and lose some battles without feeling like you need to reload. It should be ok to have half your face wiped out during a terror mission. Sure, it sucks, but you can always get more guys. The game needs to be dynamic and different every time you play. Ideally, you'd have maps be randomly generated (or, even better, have the major cities actually look something like the real city with randomly generated regular maps). You need to be taking out Alien Bases and responding to a shifting geopolitical environment as the Aliens gain or lose presence in the world due to your actions.

[Neonivek]

Losing people in the original Xcom was only "Ignorable" if you already had high level people or the game breakers.

As well you do not want to lose even once as the game runs by dominos.

[Mephansteras]

Losing people in the original Xcom was only "Ignorable" if you already had high level people or the game breakers.

As well you do not want to lose even once as the game runs by dominos.

We must play the original game very differently.

[a1s]

As well you do not want to lose even once as the game runs by dominos.

Actually it doesn't. The game was specifically designed to step up the alien threat if you were doing well, and cut you a bit of slack if you messed up. Not a whole lot of slack, so completely losing a few missions in a row would be very bad indeed, but enough to where losing a whole team was never the end of the world. (It's also essential to the X-Com experience that you do this at least once)

[Neonivek]

Losing people in the original Xcom was only "Ignorable" if you already had high level people or the game breakers.

As well you do not want to lose even once as the game runs by dominos.

We must play the original game very differently.

We do. Then again I found the game tougher then most people and didn't use any strategy guides.

The game was specifically designed to step up the alien threat if you were doing well, and cut you a bit of slack if you messed up.

Ohh by all means you got slack if you lose to UFOs you shot down. It is the Terror Missions that will bleed you if you lose too many of them.

THEN again I always had the worst luck. I watched letsplays where vehicles weren't destroyed within 5 turns and I went "What the heck? When I played they always blew them up in the first volly".

[Cthulhu]

I'll say it again:  The original X-Com wasn't half as hard as people like to joke.  Yeah, you usually had a small core of elite soldiers, but I never loaded a game when one died, and I didn't give a single fuck about the redshirts.  I used them to burn reaction points on the aliens and shit.

The only hard part in the original was the final battle.  I sent an entire ship full of guys and only one of them survived to the end.

Even the Chryssalids weren't that scary.  I had one mission where they got out of control and it was pretty crazy, but it's pretty easy to keep them from getting out of control.

[Neonivek]

I'll say it again:  The original X-Com wasn't half as hard as people like to joke.  Yeah, you usually had a small core of elite soldiers, but I never loaded a game when one died, and I didn't give a single fuck about the redshirts.  I used them to burn reaction points on the aliens and shit.

The only hard part in the original was the final battle.  I sent an entire ship full of guys and only one of them survived to the end.

Even the Chryssalids weren't that scary.  I had one mission where they got out of control and it was pretty crazy, but it's pretty easy to keep them from getting out of control.

Once again... IF you knew exactly what you were doing.

The game could be very unforgiving and some missions could outright murder you if you didn't know what you were up against before it happened. (such as the first time your up against psychics, THOUGH to admit they were more dangerous if you used my strategy of baiting aliens).

Though personally the part that started the "End of the game" was never the difficulty of the missions or the lack of proper weaponry (The Chryssalids were horrifying if you were using base weaponry... Things that can take full volly of weapons FROM YOUR ENTIRE TEAM! arn't anything to scoff at.)... It was actually if the better UFOs start showing up and you don't have the better intercept fighters.

That and once again... my horrible "Ohh look my entire team blew up within the first turn... again" luck

Oddly enough the easiest enemy type for me were floaters.

[GlyphGryph]

Well, yeah - if you played badly, you were going to lose. Obviously.

But it wasn't really that difficult to play well, at least on normal difficulty. Moving your men in teams, keeping each other covered, sending out expendable units first, a willingness to evac if things got hairy and the intelligence to not take on more than you could chew.

None of those things were particularly difficult or particularly hard to figure out. I never used strategy guides either. As long you were were willing to learn from your mistakes instead of blindly trying the same failed strategies over and over again, it was kind of a cake walk. There were plenty of unpleasant surprises that could screw things up for you (hello, mind control! Hello blaster bombs! Hello Chrysalids!) But nothing a person couldn't recover from, as long as you learned from the experience.

[Aklyon]

And the first two unpleasants became good things later if you had them and didn't do terrible with them.

[GlyphGryph]

I think the biggest problem for people came from not knowing when they were outmatched. If you have to fight every battle, and you fight every battle to the bitter end, even when you don't know what you're up against and aren't prepared for what you find, well..

You're going to lose. Because that's an incredibly stupid thing to do.

[Mephansteras]

And I think that's what I liked about the original. You got the sense of having an army (if a small one) at your command. You used resources and learned from your mistakes. Yes, if things went horribly you could lose. But you could also lose some men or fighters and still keep going. Heck, I've lost entire bases and still managed to come back from the loss.

I don't need the game to be brutally difficult, but I don't need it to be a cakewalk either. I enjoy the surprises, the frailness of my troops, the situations that force you to try different tactics and try to recover from a bit of bad luck or a poor choice of tactics.

I want more of an RTS approach to my troops than and RPG. I like having them level and get better, but I don't want to feel like losing troops means I should just restart the mission. It's war, casualties happen. Losing a squad or a battle should be a set-back but generally not a catastrophe. And retreating from a fight should, sometimes, be your best option when things go bad.

[Domenique]

THEN again I always had the worst luck. I watched letsplays where vehicles weren't destroyed within 5 turns and I went "What the heck? When I played they always blew them up in the first volly".

At most it depends on unit placement. Your guys' (tanks') survival depends on where they are. The armor and weapons are secondary, I used to take out sectopods with heavy plasma, not easy, but not hard enough to carry lasers.

I want more of an RTS approach to my troops than and RPG. I like having them level and get better, but I don't want to feel like losing troops means I should just restart the mission. It's war, casualties happen. Losing a squad or a battle should be a set-back but generally not a catastrophe. And retreating from a fight should, sometimes, be your best option when things go bad.

I remember playing TFTD a few years back and named one guy "Professor Badass". Since I never load saves to prevent losses, I really felt like he was a badass since he survived up to the last mission without dying, being expert in MC and all that jazz. What made him so special to me was the fact that though he could very well die in any mission, he didn't, that's the emotional connection you get with some guy who has a few stats and a badass name.