Points
You do realize, of course, that just as there are and will be mods for the new XCOM, the old one had some fairly outstanding modifications and community patches? Including the one that saved loadouts for individual troopers? Really, old XCOM was horribly buggy and terribly optimized. Just as the new one has its quirks and quarks.
Yeah, I never really saw that great a deal of cohesion or purpose in the old UFOs either, other than picking some place to terrorize, or supplying a base, or trying to scout out/assault your base. But on the tactical map you would get aliens hiding in buildings, then popping up to a window or out the door to toss a grenade at your troops before heading back inside and out of sight. They were generally just as clueless as you were to start off with, and the way they were spread out and wandering around for a good position seemed more reasonable (not to mention unpredictable) than a perhaps more prepared design.
Now, I *still* haven't seen any new-XCOM LPs (still watching Kiko and yup, there's the Glitchalid at episode 51), so I don't know what the current placement and movement is like on the tactical map. But I've seen a few people writing about aliens "spawning in", and from what I've gathered it seems like placements and activities aren't much different from what they were like in the demo (effectively "instances" that don't do squat until you bump into them). Not completely sure how I feel about that, but for as little as I liked hunting down that last damned alien hiding in the freighter (gaaaaaaah), I
did like the fact that you could never really be sure where you'd find someone wandering around. Or how many would be there. Or if some previously-unseen alien had, in fact, managed to circle around behind your troops because you weren't paying attention in your sweep.
Again, acting with purpose? Difficult call. Freedom, perhaps, but I never really felt much "purpose" at hand.
As for pricing, while you
could get an interceptor for $500,000 and hire a new grunt for $40,000, you also didn't have to pay more than maybe $198 for high-speed shipping costs of small items or amounts. But since new-COM has apparently done away with shipping, it's not really much of an issue. Although having medkits cost that much is... Strange.
I would however argue that the new cover system would be easier to get an AI to comprehend than the old one. Since the old one was more "free form", it really just came down to having something between you and them. And getting the computer to figure out what's "between" what and what can be something of a hassle. Since the new system is a bit more contrived, yet also comprehensible, it really just needs to check and see "is this square cover? Yes? Okay, go there".
It's times like these I'm really glad Ioric Kittencuddler's banned. He would've burned this thread to the ground with PC master race nostalgia rage.
Ioric got himself banned? Man, just how long *have* I been out of the loop?