Aliens getting free shots

[Inemuri]

Even if you removed the alien's free shots, if you're unlucky you can still lose soldiers through no fault of your own.

The keyword being you had to be unlucky, and even then it usually was in your power to stop it (by giving up the objective or something).

I think this could also be true of the aliens' free shots. I wouldn't be surprised if in a couple of months time people figure out good strategies to minimise the danger associated with their potential to have free shots.

These things shouldn't happen with such frequency as to expect them on every mission. You should lose and suffer by your own hand, when you fail that 99, knowing full well there's a 1% chance it can happen. Not every mission when you hope those fresh pod ~20% shots don't crit.

For me part of what makes XCOM exciting is not knowing what is going to happen, and that is why I prefer more uncertainty in the game. There is a balance to be struck here. It seems what we specifically disagree on is the amount of certainty in the game. I like that LW2 is more rough and tumble.

[JLtheking]

The only way to do that is to rely on guaranteed damage, much of which Pavonis has mostly removed in LW2.

This is untrue. Combat protocol is still in as the first chooseable perk for the specialist, hail of bullets for the gunner as his second rank. Grenades, have mostly been converted away from cover destruction (which I agree is much, much more OP) to a main focus of providing reliable damage, though with very well designed trade offs (making a lot of noise, destroying valuable corpses). This form of guarantees damage is so important that Legend players swear by it. I doubt they'd be able to compete the campaign without them. Hence, it is a critical part of the XCOM formula. Do you sacrifice valuable corpses for guaranteed damage? Do you sacrifice a pretty cool perk for guaranteed damage? And it is a good thing, if the answer isn't always yes.

To allow the player a strategy that minimises the chance of failure to the point that it is effectively eliminated means you lose the feeling of being in a real battle. You lose the tension and uncertainty, a campaign with both lows and highs and the stories that emerge out of those moments.

This I agree with. BUT it doesn't mean that giving the player control over certain aspects of the game so that they retain a sense of urgency is a bad thing. Look at Hearthstone. By all accounts, it is an RNG clusterfuck but that is part of its charm to a certain group of players. It still is able to retain interest in a segment of players that hate RNG, because it still retains many aspects of predictability that reward player skill. If that was removed, do you think there would still be a vibrant competitive scene for it?

It's not a good analogy to compare XCOM to Chess. A better analogy is to compare it to poker, and people are screwed by RNG in poker all the time -- more than in XCOM! -- and yet people still play and love the game.

That is an interesting comparison you just made. Because, from what I believe, XCOM has much, much more similarities with chess than Poker. It is a tactical game with tactical simulations. Chess is precisely that, with absolutely 0 RNG to precisely elevate the importance of player skill. In XCOM, you move your pawns about the board hoping to 'outwit' the enemy AI. You don't draw cards from a deck and play with the hand that you're drawn. The latter is only a consequence to a clusterfuck of RNG thrown to the player, designed precisely by the game designer.

So I guess in the end you and I enjoy playing different games. I want my XCOM to be a tactical simulation that rewards player skill. Sure, it is fun if it is hard. But I don't find it fun if it is hard because of the computer incidentally rolling good dice against me. I am glad that LW2 gives room for player failure. But any "player failure" that happens should precisely only happen BECAUSE of player failure, and NOT because of RNG mechanics out of the player's control, that makes the player feel bad. I want the game to be hard because of overwhelming, avoidable and outsmartable odds, NOT because of mechanics introduced that are unfair to the player. That is the kind of difficulty that is rewarding and fulfilling to conquer.

[Manifest]

The only way to do that is to rely on guaranteed damage, much of which Pavonis has mostly removed in LW2.

This is untrue. Combat protocol is still in as the first chooseable perk for the specialist, hail of bullets for the gunner as his second rank.

It is true though, almost every source of guaranteed damage other than hail of bullets is weaker than it was in vanilla, combat protocol is significantly weaker, not anything to do with itself, but the average health and number of the enemies you face is higher (on the highest difficulties), whereas before I could always count on the second rank of it to kill a trooper, troopers are extremely rare compared to every other advent type, and they definitely won't be around much by the time you get gremlin level 2.

Hail of bullets is indeed good, but the base state of LW2 has the graze band now, which I'd say makes you want to lean heavier on guaranteed damage that is less prevalent. The base grenades have a higher damage range and only deal full damage in the center, meaning you can't count on 3 damage anymore. The most notable removal is stocks and the Shadowkeeper's guaranteed shot.

Rockets and Flamethrowers and Walk Fire are new additions that both come with their downsides: scarcity, partial scatter, and HUGE explosive alert noise. For the Flamethrower you have close range, which with the increase in enemy density is an obvious terror.

Also have you noticed that these guaranteed damage classes (Grenadier, Technical, and Gunner) ALL have higher infiltration times to discourage you from relying on them? For the gunner it especially seems out of place, but I guarantee hail of bullets plays a big part.

[Inemuri]

Look at Hearthstone. By all accounts, it is an RNG clusterfuck but that is part of its charm to a certain group of players. It still is able to retain interest in a segment of players that hate RNG, because it still retains many aspects of predictability that reward player skill. If that was removed, do you think there would still be a vibrant competitive scene for it?

I'm not advocating for adding so much RNG to XCOM that strategy becomes irrelevant. My argument is that what makes XCOM more than a good game is that it has more to it than a pure strategy game. I'd say RNG is central to why XCOM has been so popular.

That is an interesting comparison you just made. Because, from what I believe, XCOM has much, much more similarities with chess than Poker. It is a tactical game with tactical simulations. Chess is precisely that, with absolutely 0 RNG to precisely elevate the importance of player skill. In XCOM, you move your pawns about the board hoping to 'outwit' the enemy AI. You don't draw cards from a deck and play with the hand that you're drawn. The latter is only a consequence to a clusterfuck of RNG thrown to the player, designed precisely by the game designer.

XCOM is similar to Chess in that both have an element of strategy, but it is not similar in that there is no chance in Chess. Playing Chess is an exercise in calculation. XCOM also requires calcuation, but it is more than that. So if you removed RNG from XCOM, yes, you wouldn't unfairly lose soldiers, and people would generally be less frustrated and salty as a result. But that isn't the only thing XCOM would lose if RNG was removed. And it is those other things that are an important aspect of XCOM's success.

The problem here is that when RNG stings you in XCOM, it sticks in your mind more prominently than when RNG enhances your enjoyment of the game. When RNG enhances the game, it is more subtle, if it is noticed at all. So you see many posts online where people complain that XCOM is unfair and they want RNG removed. I don't think that they fully appreciate what the game would lose if that was to happen.

I'd recommend Invisible Inc., if you haven't played it, since apart from the level generation, RNG is mostly removed and you're left with a puzzle to solve.

[Solitas]

I'm not opposed to the free shot aliens can get, especially as it's dictated by their alert status which can be mitigated somewhat by less liberal use of loud noises (ala the sapper and technical "f*** this building in particular" attitude). Indeed I fail to think of a LW1 campaign where I didn't have Itchy trigger tentacle (Itt) enabled.
But I do feel it's simply too much with the likes of MECs whom care not for cover and get those absurd flanking shots for free, or sectoids that will get to mindcontrol one of your soldiers with little say in the matter. The latter especially, as cover is irrelevant to psi abilities meaning you are at the mercy of rng unless you happen to have some form of focus buff on the soldier that sectoid happened to target.

Honestly I feel as though if it were more like ITT (being a toss up between shooting or scampering) I'd feel a little better about it. Or perhaps simply having overwatch being the bonus action. Locking you down and forcing a re-evaluation without the random wheel of death roll.

Also yes, you should obviously attempt to have your soldiers in cover as best you can, but rarely will you have cover in such a fashion to defend multiple angles. Leaving an alien alive and up is a choice you may or may not suffer the consequences for, free patrol shots is a choice taken away from you.

[ff03k64]

I have read about half the posts in this thread, so I might not be quite fully informed.

What if instead of normal movement except running on yellow alert, the advent/aliens always move to cover when they are yellow alert? Then it would be one move. Anyone that is in vision at that point can take their shots, and the ones that are still out of vision can overwatch or scamper to better cover or something of the sort.

[Manifest]

What if instead of normal movement except running on yellow alert, the advent/aliens always move to cover when they are yellow alert? Then it would be one move. Anyone that is in vision at that point can take their shots, and the ones that are still out of vision can overwatch or scamper to better cover or something of the sort.

I don't follow. "Normal movement except running" I don't understand that.

"what if instead of....the advent/aliens always move to cover when they are yellow alert?"

The enemy already always moves to cover on any alert. Do you mean when they're unactivated? Like they hear the sound and immediately cover/activate no matter how far you actually are?

[ff03k64]

What if instead of normal movement except running on yellow alert, the advent/aliens always move to cover when they are yellow alert? Then it would be one move. Anyone that is in vision at that point can take their shots, and the ones that are still out of vision can overwatch or scamper to better cover or something of the sort.

I don't follow. "Normal movement except running" I don't understand that.

"what if instead of....the advent/aliens always move to cover when they are yellow alert?"

The enemy already always moves to cover on any alert. Do you mean when they're unactivated? Like they hear the sound and immediately cover/activate no matter how far you actually are?

When aliens are on yellow alert, they run along their patrol route, but I haven't seen any sign that they necessarily change that route, so that is the "normal movement except running".

So instead of taking that normal movement at a run, they also move to somewhere they are in cover instead of in the open. Then if they move into detection range, they have done so into some form of cover, even if they might get it in the wrong directions (they do that sometimes anyway). Some people's complaint is that they get a free action by doing their move, then scampering, then possibly shooting. This could remove the scamper step, and then they only have used 2 moves, like normal.

Also, I do mean all of this when they are not activated yet, so being on yellow alert would change their patrol route before they are activated in such a way as to possibly have them patrol into activation range, but in cover instead of standing in the open.

It sounds better in my head,

[UzielTD]

@Inemuri: I have to disagree that Poker is a better analogy to Xcom than chess. It's true that chess has no random element and poker does, but in poker there is no feasible way to improve your hand. All you can do, in poker (Texas Hold 'Em, at least), if you have a crappy hand is fold (the Xcom equivalent would be abandoning a mission or a campaign if things are going too badly in order to retain your soldiers or not waste time with a doomed campaign, respectively) or bluff. There is no way to bluff in Xcom. If you pop 4-5 pods in Xcom simultaneously and you are currently facing 20-30 enemies all at once with a squad of 5-6, you fight or you run. You cannot pretend, somehow, that there are actually 12 soldiers in your squad all of a sudden which will prompt the enemy to retreat. In this way, Xcom is actually more like chess, where both you and your opponent have a set of forces (meaning not just soldiers but other elements such as tech level and Dark Events) which you have to work with.

The difference of course is that you can, not just through good play, but also through good luck, stack those forces in your favor; or through not just bad play, but also bad luck, have those forces stacked against you. Beyond that, in Xcom, unlike chess, those forces are not identical or even necessarily balanced. The loss or gain of those forces is not identical, or balanced. Losing, for example, one of two Colonels the player has available to him hurts them a lot more in the long run than it hurts the AI to lose a Sectopod or an Avatar, even if the mission is won (unless its the last mission).

[Inemuri]

@Inemuri: I have to disagree that Poker is a better analogy to Xcom than chess. [...] There is no way to bluff in Xcom.

I didn't intend to say as a complete analogy for XCOM, poker is superior to chess . The reason I brought up poker as an analogy was to emphasise that XCOM isn't purely a stragetic game. The person I was arguing against essentially said you shouldn't lose a soldier unfairly in XCOM anymore than you should randomly lose a piece in Chess. They want no soldier to die unless the player made a mistake. But their analogy was flawed because they were denying the existance the RNG in XCOM, which means there is always a chance for unfair things to happen. To illustrate that point, poker is a better analogy.

[UzielTD]

@Inemuri: I have to disagree that Poker is a better analogy to Xcom than chess. [...] There is no way to bluff in Xcom.

I didn't intend to say as a complete analogy for XCOM, poker is superior to chess . The reason I brought up poker as an analogy was to emphasise that XCOM isn't purely a stragetic game. The person I was arguing against essentially said you shouldn't lose a soldier unfairly in XCOM anymore than you should randomly lose a piece in Chess. They want no soldier to die unless the player made a mistake. But their analogy was flawed because they were denying the existance the RNG in XCOM, which means there is always a chance for unfair things to happen. To illustrate that point, poker is a better analogy.

Ah, I get ya, I get ya. It can be helpful to compare the often random unfairness found in X-com to something like poker, but a better analogy might be something like monopoly. Unlike in Poker, you can't bluff your way out of a shitty roll of the dice.

[Inemuri]

@Inemuri: I have to disagree that Poker is a better analogy to Xcom than chess. [...] There is no way to bluff in Xcom.

I didn't intend to say as a complete analogy for XCOM, poker is superior to chess . The reason I brought up poker as an analogy was to emphasise that XCOM isn't purely a stragetic game. The person I was arguing against essentially said you shouldn't lose a soldier unfairly in XCOM anymore than you should randomly lose a piece in Chess. They want no soldier to die unless the player made a mistake. But their analogy was flawed because they were denying the existance the RNG in XCOM, which means there is always a chance for unfair things to happen. To illustrate that point, poker is a better analogy.

Ah, I get ya, I get ya. It can be helpful to compare the often random unfairness found in X-com to something like poker, but a better analogy might be something like monopoly. Unlike in Poker, you can't bluff your way out of a shitty roll of the dice.

Yeah, I think using monopoly would have been better.

With hindsight, if I had given it more thought, I would have probably suggested that XCOM isn't like vanilla Chess, but something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dice_chess That way my analogy would have included the strategic element of moving pieces around a board while also making my point about RNG.