Dark Events

[knrp]

An issue I have with permanent tactical dark events vs LW1 navigator upgrades is that the latter came in a fixed order and could be balanced around that.

Here I got grazing fire as literally my first tactical upgrade at the start of may. Remember all that stuff about LW decreasing the importance of alpha strikes, emphasizing crowd control like flashbangs and area suppression instead? Well, throw all that out because half the enemies in each trooper pod now have a 50% chance to do damage as a minimum.

Makes suppression in particular worthless since shooting low % shots back at the gunner is one of the most popular responses, but those grazes now end suppression.

[mattprice516]

Dark events do not scale infinitely (to 100 hp troopers and such). There's a set list of them (3 total hp upgrades in that list), and yes if you play forever you'll probably see most of them. LW2 isn't designed for you to play forever, the goal is to stop the avatar project.

For those who aren't immediately dismissing the entire idea of permanent alien upgrades (recall that LW1 also had this, it was just via a different and more hidden/obscured mechanism that the player couldn't counter at all), I'm sure feedback on the pace and variety of them throughout the campaign would be useful (keeping in mind that you are supposed to see a lot of them in a campaign and yes, that the game is intended to be balanced around that so the lategame pre-1.1 was a bit easier than intended). Reasoned and thoughtful feedback on how the game might be improved based on play experience and/or numbers is helpful.

On the other hand, I doubt "permanent dark events are bad and lazy design, and I don't want them in my game because they're stupid" type comments will get much traction. Like... at all.

For those folks, as always, there is the option to mod them out. It's a single player game, play how you want. Just don't assume that everyone has the same preferences as you or that the devs are stupid/lazy/whatever for putting something you don't like into the game. That's neither courteous nor helpful.

[LordYanaek]

Wait just for clarity, sorry if it was said somewhere and I missed it: which dark events are permanent? All of them? Just the tactical ones? Or are things like alien conditioning permanent as well o.O

I'd like to know this too. Some dark events are not labeled as "tactical", yet they appear to remain (at least longer than the usual 1 month), it would be nice to know for sure.

For those who aren't immediately dismissing the entire idea of permanent alien upgrades ...

Well, i don't think i've been entirely dismissive so i'll stay here for further discussions

As others, i'm most concerned about the random nature of those upgrades. Again, comparing to LW1, we wouldn't see some of the most annoying navigators/pod leaders like those lightning reflexes crysalids or CCS oustsiders for quite some time and by the time they would show, we (hopefully and provided we played well) also had more tricks in our bags to deal with them. Here we could get some rather mean Dark Events very early and preventing them is not always an option. You need to see the mission to be able to stop them. I would probably risk sending squad Sledgehammer on those missions with 12h left if i saw them, but more often then not, i don't see them and i put most of my rebels on intel until i have at least 6 of them in every haven.
That's why i proposed to use another detection for dark events compared to regular missions, one that would eventually always show the mission, but with very limited time if you don't detect it before.

However, this could lead to another issue if the game is balanced with improved Aliens in the end. If someone actually fights every dark even, the end game might become too easy like in the base game. So why not use some sort of hybrid system between the old (LW1) research and the new Dark Events.
Basically, Advent would use research to improve their troops. That research would accumulate like the avatar project blocks, and once they reach a given level, the first upgrade (be it +1HP or something else) will be discovered, then Advent will accumulate research towards the next upgrade. If the developers don't want totally linear progression, i'm sure it's possible to implement groups of upgrades so all the group1 upgrades must be researched first before moving to group2.
Now comes Dark Events, they simply add to that research like the Avatar Breakthrough do. If you counter one of those dark events, you will delay the upgrades, but you can never prevent them, like in LW1 you could delay alien research by hitting their operations, but you couldn't stop it.

This way, you never get super dangerous upgrades very early but you can't totally stop advent progression either. This would take away some power from the RNG to totally screw you up or give you a very easy game, both situations being as bad in my view.

[cmdrspyker92]

Dark events do not scale infinitely (to 100 hp troopers and such). There's a set list of them (3 total hp upgrades in that list), and yes if you play forever you'll probably see most of them. LW2 isn't designed for you to play forever, the goal is to stop the avatar project.

For those who aren't immediately dismissing the entire idea of permanent alien upgrades (recall that LW1 also had this, it was just via a different and more hidden/obscured mechanism that the player couldn't counter at all), I'm sure feedback on the pace and variety of them throughout the campaign would be useful (keeping in mind that you are supposed to see a lot of them in a campaign and yes, that the game is intended to be balanced around that so the lategame pre-1.1 was a bit easier than intended). Reasoned and thoughtful feedback on how the game might be improved based on play experience and/or numbers is helpful.

On the other hand, I doubt "permanent dark events are bad and lazy design, and I don't want them in my game because they're stupid" type comments will get much traction. Like... at all.

For those folks, as always, there is the option to mod them out. It's a single player game, play how you want. Just don't assume that everyone has the same preferences as you or that the devs are stupid/lazy/whatever for putting something you don't like into the game. That's neither courteous nor helpful.

Just push them off the first month entirely, and have a soft caps on month 2 and 3. Once you get going and have a few sergeants / extra gear running around they're not too much of a problem and scale reasonably well. Though if you don't get grenade / weapon upgrades reasonably quickly, that can be frustrating to play around (but: thats long war). The problem is when you roll month 1-3 in Legend (and im sure the lower difficulties too) and the AI has grazing fire, armoured troopers, and scopes when you just got your first couple of officers and AWC/GTS up and running.

The mod is reasonably well balanced as a whole, but the few months are just really really RNG heavy and this is one of the things that it affects.

[Arcalane]

However, this could lead to another issue if the game is balanced with improved Aliens in the end. If someone actually fights every dark even, the end game might become too easy like in the base game. So why not use some sort of hybrid system between the old (LW1) research and the new Dark Events.
Basically, Advent would use research to improve their troops. That research would accumulate like the avatar project blocks, and once they reach a given level, the first upgrade (be it +1HP or something else) will be discovered, then Advent will accumulate research towards the next upgrade. If the developers don't want totally linear progression, i'm sure it's possible to implement groups of upgrades so all the group1 upgrades must be researched first before moving to group2.

This technically already happens, and I think it happened as early as vanilla for that matter.

Pretty much every enemy, in any case, has variants, and those variants have levels M1 through M3. Let's take the humble Viper for example. She has two variants, the Naja and the Sidewinder, and two upgrades of her own. Each of these can upgrade to the Serpens (mid-rank, M2) and then the Elite (max-rank, M3)

Likewise, the ADVENT Trooper spins off into the Engineer (then Grenadier, then Heavy Grenadier), Rocketeer (then Heavy Rocketeer, then Elite Rocketeer), Sergeant (then First Sergeant, then Commando), and so on and so forth.

M2 and M3 variants are superior to the M1 variant in basically every way, featuring new perks (Commandos have +100 Dodge until they first take damage), new skills, greater stats (more health and armour), deadlier weapons (Naja Elites have Pierce 2 or 3!).

There are a few cases where there's no M3 (Sectoids, notably) and less rank shenanigans (like Chryssalids, but they have the Soldier variant which can smash through walls) -- but you get the idea.

[The Boz]

Chryssalids have the Soldier variant which can smash through walls

Oh... Crap...

[johnnylump]

Permanent dark events that affect the tactical layer will not be removed from the game or made temporary. There's no particular reason they should be temporary from a narrative or gameplay perspective; it's the way we set things up to mimic the navigator upgrades from LW1, but give you a chance to delay or stop the upgrades' implementation.

With that in mind, we can do lots of things to adjust them. They aren't fully random when they appear; most of them have triggers to only occur after you've seen a certain enemy, or hit a certain date. If feedback suggests one comes too early in the campaign we can adjust it. They all have varying durations -- in some cases as long as a month -- in which a mission is on the map and you can detect and stop that particular event. Those durations can be tweaked -- which has the effect of delaying the aliens starting additional upgrades. Which enemy types and the % of each enemy who gets the bonus can be adjusted. So lots of levers in play, but we're not going to nuke the concept.

[The Boz]

Any chance of linking some permanent DEs to a regional-HQ-like facility mission, so that it is counterable, but very hard, and taxing to infiltrate?

[johnnylump]

You mean after they are completed?

[The Boz]

Yes. Once completed, spawn a Facility on the map somewhere. To reveal the region of the facility, you need to spend Intel (like revealing a DE in preparation), and then you need to generate Intel in that region to actually reveal it and infiltrate. 50% chance that the region is the same continent as the mission to stop it was.

[mattprice516]

@spyker I don't remember the specifics at the moment, but tactical DEs are indeed prohibited on at least the first month (for Rookie-Commander at least, not sure about Legend).

[DerAva]

My biggest issue at this point, if I understand the system correctly, is the random nature of the missions that cause the Dark Events. If these can spawn and complete in a region that you haven't contacted yet, effectively giving you no opportunity to counter them, then this creates a balancing issue. Player A gets a TDE in his home region and counters it, Player B gets the same TDE in a not-contacted region and it completes without them having a chance to prevent it. Will the rest of the game be balanced for Player A or for Player B?
Game elements that have such a significant impact on the gameplay (and events like Viper Rounds or Grazing Shots seem really strong for Advent) should not rely on random chance.
I feel that the bigger the impact on the gameplay is the less it should be determined by RNG.

[TechnoMage]

It would be cool to be able to effect even just the amount of enemies receiving the upgrades if not remove it all together by hitting training facilities and manufacturing plants.

[nightwyrm]

So....with the Tactical DEs, the best way to win Long War 2 is to keep it as short as possible....

Or restart, I guess. An early month uncountered Formidable perk DE would pretty much mean game over.

The implications for Haven management is also pretty big. You will always want somebody on Intel in every region, even if you don't plan to do any missions there (laying low coz AS too high, want to focus on supplies, etc.), just so you have the possibility of detecting these TDE missions.

[johnnylump]

Yes. Once completed, spawn a Facility on the map somewhere. To reveal the region of the facility, you need to spend Intel (like revealing a DE in preparation), and then you need to generate Intel in that region to actually reveal it and infiltrate. 50% chance that the region is the same continent as the mission to stop it was.

That's actually a pretty interesting idea. But it's non-trivial to set up. My main concern would be 20+ facilities clogging up the geoscape. Anyway, will toss this on the ideas pile and return to it as time permits.

[Kail]

Yes. Once completed, spawn a Facility on the map somewhere. To reveal the region of the facility, you need to spend Intel (like revealing a DE in preparation), and then you need to generate Intel in that region to actually reveal it and infiltrate. 50% chance that the region is the same continent as the mission to stop it was.

This is something I would totally go for as a happy median. Why can't we say infiltrate and assault the production facility for Advents viper rounds? Or say assault the lab where they are genetically altering vipers to have hunters instinct? Would it make the game easier being able to counter dark events even after they are completed? Definitely but make em difficult and also make the DE renter the pool of events that occur again.
Choice is never a bad thing.

Edit-
Something else would be making it so you have to scan with the avenger to find the facility. Just having rebels on intel won't cut it. Make finding this facility a time sink, not a quick ordeal to fix.

[johnnylump]

My biggest issue at this point, if I understand the system correctly, is the random nature of the missions that cause the Dark Events. If these can spawn and complete in a region that you haven't contacted yet, effectively giving you no opportunity to counter them, then this creates a balancing issue. Player A gets a TDE in his home region and counters it, Player B gets the same TDE in a not-contacted region and it completes without them having a chance to prevent it. Will the rest of the game be balanced for Player A or for Player B?
Game elements that have such a significant impact on the gameplay (and events like Viper Rounds or Grazing Shots seem really strong for Advent) should not rely on random chance.
I feel that the bigger the impact on the gameplay is the less it should be determined by RNG.

It's a fair point, but the logical extreme of resolving that issue is a fully scripted campaign, which I don't think you are proposing. The idea is that there will be some variance between campaigns (which enhances replayability) but in the aggregate each campaign is winnable. That's the way we did Long War for EU too -- buncha problems, buncha tools, and we balance to soften some sharp corners rather than to create a puzzle with a specific solution in mind. If the Grazing Fire is too nasty to pop in May, we can delay it till July, for example.

The problem with putting them in only contacted regions is twofold: One, it creates a perverse incentive not to expand the Resistance. Two, in testing one of our players beat pretty much all of the DEs and had a campaign that tipped over into the too-easy.

That said, I can code up some more levers on DE generation that are difficulty specific. I'm wading through the feedback and trying to determine how much is actually grounded in play experience -- I understand the list of completed DEs is daunting, but in practice -- how bad is it? Let me break down a few of the DEs people are talking about:

* Grazing Fire: It takes 12-16 days for this one to finish, so if it pops in a contacted region and you have a decent intel section, you should often be able to address it. It can pop at any time after DE's are allowed (Week 4 on Legend, Week 7 on Veteran and Commander, and Week 10 on Rookie). It has a 33% application chance to all Gunners, the endgame Captain, Sentry, and Troopers, the Muton Elite and the Avatar. So if you get it in June it really only helps Gunners.

* Formidable: It takes 14-18 days to finish. It can only pop after you've seen a second-tier captain. It applies to 16% of Captains, Shieldbearers, Grenadiers, Advanced Rocketeers (tiers 2 and 3), the Muton Centurion and the Muton Elilte, and Avatars.

I'm not saying these numbers are perfect, but I'm putting them out to demonstrate that we have certain levers on these things and they have been used.

[mustangdood]

My biggest issue at this point, if I understand the system correctly, is the random nature of the missions that cause the Dark Events. If these can spawn and complete in a region that you haven't contacted yet, effectively giving you no opportunity to counter them, then this creates a balancing issue. Player A gets a TDE in his home region and counters it, Player B gets the same TDE in a not-contacted region and it completes without them having a chance to prevent it. Will the rest of the game be balanced for Player A or for Player B?
Game elements that have such a significant impact on the gameplay (and events like Viper Rounds or Grazing Shots seem really strong for Advent) should not rely on random chance.
I feel that the bigger the impact on the gameplay is the less it should be determined by RNG.

It's a fair point, but the logical extreme of resolving that issue is a fully scripted campaign, which I don't think you are proposing. The idea is that there will be some variance between campaigns (which enhances replayability) but in the aggregate each campaign is winnable. That's the way we did Long War for EU too -- buncha problems, buncha tools, and we balance to soften some sharp corners rather than to create a puzzle with a specific solution in mind. If the Grazing Fire is too nasty to pop in May, we can delay it till July, for example.

The problem with putting them in only contacted regions is twofold: One, it creates a perverse incentive not to expand the Resistance. Two, in testing one of our players beat pretty much all of the DEs and had a campaign that tipped over into the too-easy.

That said, I can code up some more levers on DE generation that are difficulty specific. I'm wading through the feedback and trying to determine how much is actually grounded in play experience -- I understand the list of completed DEs is daunting, but in practice -- how bad is it? Let me break down a few of the DEs people are talking about:

* Grazing Fire: It takes 12-16 days for this one to finish, so if it pops in a contacted region and you have a decent intel section, you should often be able to address it. It can pop at any time after DE's are allowed (Week 4 on Legend, Week 7 on Veteran and Commander, and Week 10 on Rookie). It has a 33% application chance to all Gunners, the endgame Captain, Sentry, and Troopers, the Muton Elite and the Avatar. So if you get it in June it really only helps Gunners.

* Formidable: It takes 14-18 days to finish. It can only pop after you've seen a second-tier captain. It applies to 16% of Captains, Shieldbearers, Grenadiers, Advanced Rocketeers (tiers 2 and 3), the Muton Centurion and the Muton Elilte, and Avatars.

I'm not saying these numbers are perfect, but I'm putting them out to demonstrate that we have certain levers on these things and they have been used.

I appreciate the turn to calm and meaningful discussion.

I would just add one additional comment, take it for what it's worth to you. Don't get completely submerged in the numbers, because that doesn't encapsulate the experience as a whole. Ask your Testers and Players to also give feedback on how much "fun" they are having. Is this game mechanic enjoyable? How much enjoyment does it offer across the campaign as a whole? If it's only creating moments of misery, you would be foolish not to take a step back and think bigger.

As an example, if people take the time to come to your forum and say that permanent Dark Events suck the fun out of the game, that can trump everything else. If this was a product someone paid for, they might seek for a return of their money and offer a bad review because of this one tiny thing you failed to give credence to. You can build a very complex and beautiful bridge, but if that one support beam out of a 100 is no good, the entire bridge is no good.

Don't choke on what "enjoyable" means either, it's subjective and yet very meaningful. This is X-com, your player base already gets enjoyment out of tactical combat that is a challenge, so the granularity is baked in.

Be open to new design solutions. If you are too rigid and dogmatic with questionable design, that is what leads an Indie Studio to financial success or financial ruin in the real world of paid for products. This is an early learning opportunity before you reach that milestone.

[Sair]

Permanent dark events that affect the tactical layer will not be removed from the game or made temporary. There's no particular reason they should be temporary from a narrative or gameplay perspective; it's the way we set things up to mimic the navigator upgrades from LW1, but give you a chance to delay or stop the upgrades' implementation.

With that in mind, we can do lots of things to adjust them. They aren't fully random when they appear; most of them have triggers to only occur after you've seen a certain enemy, or hit a certain date. If feedback suggests one comes too early in the campaign we can adjust it. They all have varying durations -- in some cases as long as a month -- in which a mission is on the map and you can detect and stop that particular event. Those durations can be tweaked -- which has the effect of delaying the aliens starting additional upgrades. Which enemy types and the % of each enemy who gets the bonus can be adjusted. So lots of levers in play, but we're not going to nuke the concept.

Thank you for the reply. Personally I like the idea of permanent dark events, the idea of the aliens doing their own research to improve their troops like you do goes well with the commander vs commander aspect of the long war 2 campaign. However I think the rate at which the Dark Events are thrown at you are a little too overwhelming at first. In the beginning of the game when you only have access to 2-3 regions its very easy for the Dark Events to start piling up because of your inability to scan for them. All I could do was just hope that it was not a particularly damning set of Events. For example in my earlier campaign I was dealing with 10+ events including +2 health and resistance to explosions, which made large groups of Advent Troopers very difficult to deal with. As I'm sure you know health bonuses in general hold a very large sway in difficulty as just adding 1 health to a normal trooper in the early game can bring them out of range to reliably 1 shot.

If you are looking for feedback then mine is that the way Dark Events work right now is unbalanced, and in my opinion not fun to deal with. The number of Dark Events you are forced to deal with each month vs your ability to counter them seems off. The rate of which Aliens complete permanent Dark Events seems off(Correct me if I'm wrong but it feels like i only have 1 month to deal with something that effects my entire campaign) The rate of the appearance of particularly damning Dark Events and their potential to combo with other damning Dark Events also seems off. These elements coupled with the random nature of how Dark Events work make it very frustrating. Losing a play through that you've spent hours in because the Aliens just happened to research a set of killer Dark Events in regions that you just happened to not have contact in just...sucks, especially now that they are permanent.

In Long War where everything takes...well longer, it seems like Dark Events move too fast.

[Valaska]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =854420428

Problem solved

Kind of but not exactly... I would like a cap so they are you know, competitive with coilguns and beams but yeah I guess this is a band-aid fix .

Or is there a cap? Sounds like it by what he said above.

[knrp]

I guess I was just almost wiped by 2 gunners who both got it at the time, but grazing fire feels on a whole different power level from most other upgrades.

It's a lot weaker (but still good) on player gunners, since you tend to set up good shots anyway, and w/o red fog you're damaging an enemy only to kill, so spending your turn for half damage often isn't that desirable.

But the main crowd control methods rely on giving enemies like 0-15% shots (or 10-25 after graze band). Where scopes give extra hits roughly 5% of the time, grazing fire gives them an extra 35-45% of the time, up to quintupling their output. And for an enemy doing any damage at all is good (more than most advent manage).

In addition, I do not think the number of days to finish is a meaningful balance metric for unique upgrades (it could be for the expected number of +hp upgrades you'll counter), as which individual DEs you can counter is mostly up to luck anyway.

[Zerikin]

Grazing fire doesn't seem nearly as bad knowing the exact mechanics of what enemies get it. I think some the problem is that of perception, in that we really don't understand the mechanics of LW2 yet.

Hitting a pod of two gunners with grazing fire sounds brutal though.

[Phantom]

So i really like what LW2 did with the dark events. It adds just so much more depth to the game. I also like the list (UI), where you can see all of them, nice. I also had the option to counter them in GOPs so that they will not happen, but i was not able to counter them because of low time and of course not all of them appeared...... I am fine with that and I really like the idea of randomness in dark events (you could even go further and make the strategy ai even more smart for example dark events have higher chance based on player actions (advent fire vests, immunity to fire, when player build fire nades or a specific research is completed.))

What i do not like is the idea of dark events not able to terminate them. I had the dark event "conditioning" (enemies get +1 hp). I failed to counter it and then it was activated. Everything is fine so far, but there should be a possibility to terminate this dark event again later in the campaign. For example there can be a GOPs missions (like the prevent dark events GOPs) to destroy advent supply routes or something like that, which will cancel in this case the conditioning dark event. Now the active dark event will be canceled and can go back in the pool of possible dark events for next month again....

So what i want to say is that the dark events should be permanent but there should be missions to cancel them again, then it would be perfect in my opinion. (I am sorry if that is already the case and I am miss understanding something.)

It is a little bit frustrating to see all the dark events and knowing you are not able to terminate them anymore in the whole campaign.

[Torquemada]

The problem with putting them in only contacted regions is twofold: One, it creates a perverse incentive not to expand the Resistance. Two, in testing one of our players beat pretty much all of the DEs and had a campaign that tipped over into the too-easy.

First of all thanks for being so forthcoming with design issues Some designers aren't interested in the player's opinions and that's a shame.

I don't have a definite fix for the issue but I often wonder how the design process went. Did you guys ever consider the following:

* Have more DE insight than just which one it is (e.g. tell in which region it's in, how far along it is, who it's going to affect,etc.)
* A specific mission that rewards DE insight
* Being able to spend intel not only in unlocking the DE but also gain some other insight into it
* Having the option to set haven personnel to specific mission types and not just generic intel (even if only after getting that type of mission at least once, or as a research project that costs intel, or as a reward from dark VIP missions, etc.)

I ask because I often get the feeling there's very little I can do about DEs and I don't see the game losing its balance if the player was able to go out of its way to deal with the DEs at the expense of something else. Thanks!

[brunodema]

Maybe couple active DE's with Avatar facilities? So when you take one facility down you remove avatar progress and also remove one of the actives DE's?