Feedback from no <50% infil campaign
Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2017 10:46 am
My current game is reaching the point where I’m so far ahead of the aliens that I feel like I’m in victory lap mode, and finishing Golden Path missions is a formality. I should probably go ahead and finish the game, but the temptation to restart is rising (and I always like to start fresh when a patch is released), so here’s feedback from this playthrough.
Difficulty: Legendary
Ironman: No - I don't save scum, although I do restart missions occasionally (maybe 5% of the time?) and I reload misclicks and cases where the game seems buggy (e.g. LoS)
LW version: 1.1
Dead Soldiers: 7 (mostly low rank - I don't think I lost anyone valuable on this playthrough)
Mods: Overwatch/Evac All
Options: Graze band = 10%, no Red Fog, no .ini edits
The biggest difference between this playthrough and the last one was that I set myself a house-rule of not going on any missions at less than 50% infiltration. This meant there were far fewer Supply Raids than before, and that the economy felt a lot more balanced. I focused a lot more on liberating regions (and protecting them from invasion), and they became my main source of resources.
General Feedback
I enjoyed playing the game this way a lot more than the numerous 10-man supply raid/troop column of my previous campaign. I’d both recommend other players try a game like this if you haven’t done so already, and I’d also tentatively suggest that the devs try and tweak the gameplay so that there are fewer incentives to take 10 men to every corpse collecting mission that pops.
Campaign timeline
I went for a mag rush this time, and found it to be very strong. I got basic Mag weapons online on the 4th May, and then Advanced a couple of weeks later. April was tricky, and I leaned heavily on Needle Grenadiers and Technicals (with a particularly dicey Troop Ambush at the end of April). I had already unlocked the network tower in my starting region, and had done 2/3 lib missions in another region. I sent a team in with shiny new Mag weapons to take one tower, and then the other, and had another 8-man team ready to take the HQ as soon as Adv Mag was done. The campaign proceeded as follows:
Predator armor unlocked: May 28th
1st region liberated: May 31st
2nd region liberated: June 12th
3rd region liberated: July 4th
Basic Coil: July 10th
Adv Coil: July 23rd
4th region liberated: July 30th
Warden Armor: August 2nd
Mission mix
I enjoyed the mission mix a lot more with my 50%+ rule. HQ Assaults are big-stakes ‘bring 8+ soldiers’ missions, with strong upsides for winning, but they don’t happen all the time and the occasional ‘sit in the corner and take what the aliens bring you’ mission is fun. The decisions to bring 8, 9 or 10 soldiers is also interesting, because of the huge effect on infiltration timers. I didn’t miss the supply raids at all (I think I did one in my whole campaign in July, as that was the only one I ever got where I had enough time to infiltrate 7 guys). My regions were bringing in $1000/month from July onwards, so with Elerium purchases from the Black Market, it felt like the resources were much better balanced, with never having enough for everything I wanted, but always having enough for everything I needed.
LW2 needs more 6 man missions, and missions with relevant reinforcements
I had a lot of fun 6-7 man troop ambushes (and I really enjoy Network Tower missions), but I do feel that LW2 needs more missions aimed at that size. I would like to see more missions which encourage aggressive play though (rather than turns of waiting for pods to patrol into your OW wall) – one mission type I found particularly engaging was Intel mini-retals (I have almost all my rebels on intel outside of liberated regions). The mission really incentivises you to move towards the objective, and there are interesting strategic decisions where you often end up with both aliens and xcom caught between enemies on both sides of them. On other missions, reinforcements ought to achieve this, but they don’t really, as in my experience they are very rarely seen (outside of Haven Defence missions). My missions are either stealth (in which case I’m usually evaccing the turn I activate the first pod, so no reinforcements) or Materiel missions with no reinforcements (Ambushes, HQs, that one supply raid, UFO missions).
Sabotage the Monument could fill this gap (especially as part of the liberation chain) with good rewards
I actually think the mission type which is missing is already in the game, but no-one ever does it: Sabotage the monument. There you can’t sit in a corner and overwatch, because as soon as you break concealment you’re on a reinforcement timer. There’s no incentive to go in at 0%, because you don’t get to keep corpses, but it has the small squad combat that people feel is missing from the game. The problem is that the reward from doing it is not particularly desirable. It feels like it should really be part of the liberation chain, which would introduce some variety (at the moment, all three lib missions are stealth missions), and also make more sense? Sabotage feels like it ought to be lib1 (and signposted as such), followed by either a hack to find the right person to extract who can tell you about the Tower location, or the other way round. I’d also like to see the reward for it changed generally, as I think most people ignore ‘vigilance spike’ missions. We already have Dark VIP missions for that, and I really don’t think we need two types (early game play of sending a solo rookie in to fail the mission feels like it’s not really WAD anyway). You could have ‘interested parties’ contact the resistance offering cash/elerium/alloys for the sabotage, or give +contacts which fits thematically, or maybe extra rebels? I feel like any mission which both uses the Reinforcement mechanic and has a sweep objective (but doesn't give Materiel) would give the game more of the mid range tactical combat it feels like it's missing, and if you're planning to design another mission type after Smash and Grab, one of these would fit really well into the game.
Killing VIPs with suicide soldiers doesn't feel very epic
While I enjoy using rookies as meatshields (it gives me those OG XCOM feels), I didn't really enjoy suicide Dark VIP missions. The ones where you take a sniper and line up the shot from a nearby building to kill the lead scientist on the latest DE project before making your getaway feel awesome, but the ones where you grab a poorly statted squaddie assault and run and gun into the room before evaccing your shinobi and watching the assault die feel much less awesome. I don't really like having this in the lib chain (though I think it works well as a DE or vigilance spike mission), as in suicide mode it feels way too easy especially with Command Oscar Mike Run and Gun letting you charge to the VIP from miles away. I think these missions would be amazing if you had to capture the VIP, as that's really hard to do with stealth, and requires you to bring a combat squad. I'm pretty meh about Relay missions in the Lib chain (why does destroying the relay reveal the location of the Network tower again?)
Sniping at Relays also feels lame
Speaking of which, sniping at alien relays doesn't feel particularly epic either. While I find the AI deals much better with squadsight sniping than it did in LW1, and it doesn't feel like nearly as much of an 'I win' button, it doesn't deal well with relay sniping at all. The fix seems really obvious here (add a line to Squadsight saying it only works on enemies), but the technicalities may be much harder to implement. It's a shame, because relay missions are another great example of missions which should be 5/6 man combat, but at the moment don't fill that purpose.
The mission variety in LW2 is really good, it just needs a bit of tweaking
I really enjoy stealth missions, and I really really like the variety of missions LW2 throws at you (you can do a solo mission, a 6 man troop column, a 3 man mission then a HQ assault in quick succession). However, I do feel that the mission mix balance is slightly mistuned at the moment. Having said that, I think if you repurposed ‘Sabotage’ missions with a good reward and added Smash and Grab (as long as they don’t turn out to be more 2-3 man stealth missions), then that could put things in a good place.
I think the xp balance should be moved more toward kill xp and away from mission xp
Finally, the last thing that I think should be looked at again is the split between mission and kill xp. I love that you get a substantial proportion of your xp from completing the mission objective, and that completing the mission without killing anything feels like ‘I won’ not ‘I missed out on a lot of valuable XP and loot’. However, I think it’s currently tuned too far towards mission xp. At the moment, if there are soldiers I want to rank up, I send them as a ‘third wheel’ on stealth missions, rather than sending them on combat missions, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Moving more of the xp to kills would make stealth ops where you go loud feel less like failures, and incentivise you to kit your troops out for combat rather than going as stealthy as possible.
Class & Item Balance
The more I play the game, the more I find the classes are better balanced than I thought, and the more I appreciate the design of the current trees. So my feedback on class balance is pretty sparse.
OW Rangers take a long time to feel worth it
I think these guys just don’t fit my playstyle well. I rarely take Sapper on my Grenadiers, and even if I decided to use Demolition so that the Ranger can finish up, I rarely feel like I need both shots. I want to like these guys more though, so I’m going to experiment with using them more in my next playthrough. I think they would benefit from a buff to respec times. I understand that perk choices should be costly to change, but I think halving the AWC respec times would introduce a bit of flexibility without making perk choices meaningless.
Assault scale super hard, and are really cool
I really learned to love this class on this playthough. They are tricky to use, and charging forward and pulling 2 additional pods is definitely a thing, but these guys scale so hard, and do so much damage late game. I also experimented with training pistol skills on my Assault, and will definitely do it again.
Conceal feels a bit too game-breaking
I haven’t got any experience with sword-spec Shinobis, so I’ll just talk about Stealth specced ones. They fit their role well, they make great scouts on combat missions. I think their tree is fine with one exception: Conceal. This perk is so strong, it trivialises a lot of stealth missions late game. I stop taking specialists on Hacking missions, because it’s easier and less-risky to do it with Shinobi duos. Part of me just wants to see the perk removed from the game, or if it stays in it should really move to MSGT (maybe instead of rapid fire?) There isn’t really a good stealth perk at MSGT at the moment, and its power level is definitely appropriate. I’m not sure what you’d put in its place. With current perks, Sprinter would work well, and would be competitive. If there’s a possibility of a new perk, maybe a perk which increases Hack skill would be nice? It would be a nice perk to put on the AWC (although not available to the Specialist) so that those people who can’t stand going on a mission without getting the hack rewards don’t feel they need to take a Specialist every time.
Mag tier weapons don't need buffs!
I really like the lasers vs. mag choice which exists at the beginning of the game, and the fact that there are players who swear that their approach is the best on both sides is a good sign. I’ve found mag rush to be very strong, as the power spike in May/June is huge when you’re liberating your first couple of regions. I know some have been calling for mag buffs, but the mag tier *really* doesn’t need any buffs.
Core upgrades dominate all other choices for research paths
At the moment it feels to me that unlike LW1, core upgrades (weapons and armor) dominate all other choices (autopsies, etc). None of the autopsies provide items which feel necessary, and the damage and survivability upgrades make such a huge difference to your effectiveness in the tactical layer. I’d like to see more incentives to research different ammo (ap and tracer rounds are both strong enough that other ammo types just don’t feel worth it), and I think you could buff defensive items also (ablative/+hp items). You could balance this by buffing lvl2 and 3 aliens, or nerfing higher level armor. I just feel like rushing to coil/warden is always the best choice at the moment, and I’d like to see more variety in research paths.
Difficulty: Legendary
Ironman: No - I don't save scum, although I do restart missions occasionally (maybe 5% of the time?) and I reload misclicks and cases where the game seems buggy (e.g. LoS)
LW version: 1.1
Dead Soldiers: 7 (mostly low rank - I don't think I lost anyone valuable on this playthrough)
Mods: Overwatch/Evac All
Options: Graze band = 10%, no Red Fog, no .ini edits
The biggest difference between this playthrough and the last one was that I set myself a house-rule of not going on any missions at less than 50% infiltration. This meant there were far fewer Supply Raids than before, and that the economy felt a lot more balanced. I focused a lot more on liberating regions (and protecting them from invasion), and they became my main source of resources.
General Feedback
I enjoyed playing the game this way a lot more than the numerous 10-man supply raid/troop column of my previous campaign. I’d both recommend other players try a game like this if you haven’t done so already, and I’d also tentatively suggest that the devs try and tweak the gameplay so that there are fewer incentives to take 10 men to every corpse collecting mission that pops.
Campaign timeline
I went for a mag rush this time, and found it to be very strong. I got basic Mag weapons online on the 4th May, and then Advanced a couple of weeks later. April was tricky, and I leaned heavily on Needle Grenadiers and Technicals (with a particularly dicey Troop Ambush at the end of April). I had already unlocked the network tower in my starting region, and had done 2/3 lib missions in another region. I sent a team in with shiny new Mag weapons to take one tower, and then the other, and had another 8-man team ready to take the HQ as soon as Adv Mag was done. The campaign proceeded as follows:
Predator armor unlocked: May 28th
1st region liberated: May 31st
2nd region liberated: June 12th
3rd region liberated: July 4th
Basic Coil: July 10th
Adv Coil: July 23rd
4th region liberated: July 30th
Warden Armor: August 2nd
Mission mix
I enjoyed the mission mix a lot more with my 50%+ rule. HQ Assaults are big-stakes ‘bring 8+ soldiers’ missions, with strong upsides for winning, but they don’t happen all the time and the occasional ‘sit in the corner and take what the aliens bring you’ mission is fun. The decisions to bring 8, 9 or 10 soldiers is also interesting, because of the huge effect on infiltration timers. I didn’t miss the supply raids at all (I think I did one in my whole campaign in July, as that was the only one I ever got where I had enough time to infiltrate 7 guys). My regions were bringing in $1000/month from July onwards, so with Elerium purchases from the Black Market, it felt like the resources were much better balanced, with never having enough for everything I wanted, but always having enough for everything I needed.
LW2 needs more 6 man missions, and missions with relevant reinforcements
I had a lot of fun 6-7 man troop ambushes (and I really enjoy Network Tower missions), but I do feel that LW2 needs more missions aimed at that size. I would like to see more missions which encourage aggressive play though (rather than turns of waiting for pods to patrol into your OW wall) – one mission type I found particularly engaging was Intel mini-retals (I have almost all my rebels on intel outside of liberated regions). The mission really incentivises you to move towards the objective, and there are interesting strategic decisions where you often end up with both aliens and xcom caught between enemies on both sides of them. On other missions, reinforcements ought to achieve this, but they don’t really, as in my experience they are very rarely seen (outside of Haven Defence missions). My missions are either stealth (in which case I’m usually evaccing the turn I activate the first pod, so no reinforcements) or Materiel missions with no reinforcements (Ambushes, HQs, that one supply raid, UFO missions).
Sabotage the Monument could fill this gap (especially as part of the liberation chain) with good rewards
I actually think the mission type which is missing is already in the game, but no-one ever does it: Sabotage the monument. There you can’t sit in a corner and overwatch, because as soon as you break concealment you’re on a reinforcement timer. There’s no incentive to go in at 0%, because you don’t get to keep corpses, but it has the small squad combat that people feel is missing from the game. The problem is that the reward from doing it is not particularly desirable. It feels like it should really be part of the liberation chain, which would introduce some variety (at the moment, all three lib missions are stealth missions), and also make more sense? Sabotage feels like it ought to be lib1 (and signposted as such), followed by either a hack to find the right person to extract who can tell you about the Tower location, or the other way round. I’d also like to see the reward for it changed generally, as I think most people ignore ‘vigilance spike’ missions. We already have Dark VIP missions for that, and I really don’t think we need two types (early game play of sending a solo rookie in to fail the mission feels like it’s not really WAD anyway). You could have ‘interested parties’ contact the resistance offering cash/elerium/alloys for the sabotage, or give +contacts which fits thematically, or maybe extra rebels? I feel like any mission which both uses the Reinforcement mechanic and has a sweep objective (but doesn't give Materiel) would give the game more of the mid range tactical combat it feels like it's missing, and if you're planning to design another mission type after Smash and Grab, one of these would fit really well into the game.
Killing VIPs with suicide soldiers doesn't feel very epic
While I enjoy using rookies as meatshields (it gives me those OG XCOM feels), I didn't really enjoy suicide Dark VIP missions. The ones where you take a sniper and line up the shot from a nearby building to kill the lead scientist on the latest DE project before making your getaway feel awesome, but the ones where you grab a poorly statted squaddie assault and run and gun into the room before evaccing your shinobi and watching the assault die feel much less awesome. I don't really like having this in the lib chain (though I think it works well as a DE or vigilance spike mission), as in suicide mode it feels way too easy especially with Command Oscar Mike Run and Gun letting you charge to the VIP from miles away. I think these missions would be amazing if you had to capture the VIP, as that's really hard to do with stealth, and requires you to bring a combat squad. I'm pretty meh about Relay missions in the Lib chain (why does destroying the relay reveal the location of the Network tower again?)
Sniping at Relays also feels lame
Speaking of which, sniping at alien relays doesn't feel particularly epic either. While I find the AI deals much better with squadsight sniping than it did in LW1, and it doesn't feel like nearly as much of an 'I win' button, it doesn't deal well with relay sniping at all. The fix seems really obvious here (add a line to Squadsight saying it only works on enemies), but the technicalities may be much harder to implement. It's a shame, because relay missions are another great example of missions which should be 5/6 man combat, but at the moment don't fill that purpose.
The mission variety in LW2 is really good, it just needs a bit of tweaking
I really enjoy stealth missions, and I really really like the variety of missions LW2 throws at you (you can do a solo mission, a 6 man troop column, a 3 man mission then a HQ assault in quick succession). However, I do feel that the mission mix balance is slightly mistuned at the moment. Having said that, I think if you repurposed ‘Sabotage’ missions with a good reward and added Smash and Grab (as long as they don’t turn out to be more 2-3 man stealth missions), then that could put things in a good place.
I think the xp balance should be moved more toward kill xp and away from mission xp
Finally, the last thing that I think should be looked at again is the split between mission and kill xp. I love that you get a substantial proportion of your xp from completing the mission objective, and that completing the mission without killing anything feels like ‘I won’ not ‘I missed out on a lot of valuable XP and loot’. However, I think it’s currently tuned too far towards mission xp. At the moment, if there are soldiers I want to rank up, I send them as a ‘third wheel’ on stealth missions, rather than sending them on combat missions, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Moving more of the xp to kills would make stealth ops where you go loud feel less like failures, and incentivise you to kit your troops out for combat rather than going as stealthy as possible.
Class & Item Balance
The more I play the game, the more I find the classes are better balanced than I thought, and the more I appreciate the design of the current trees. So my feedback on class balance is pretty sparse.
OW Rangers take a long time to feel worth it
I think these guys just don’t fit my playstyle well. I rarely take Sapper on my Grenadiers, and even if I decided to use Demolition so that the Ranger can finish up, I rarely feel like I need both shots. I want to like these guys more though, so I’m going to experiment with using them more in my next playthrough. I think they would benefit from a buff to respec times. I understand that perk choices should be costly to change, but I think halving the AWC respec times would introduce a bit of flexibility without making perk choices meaningless.
Assault scale super hard, and are really cool
I really learned to love this class on this playthough. They are tricky to use, and charging forward and pulling 2 additional pods is definitely a thing, but these guys scale so hard, and do so much damage late game. I also experimented with training pistol skills on my Assault, and will definitely do it again.
Conceal feels a bit too game-breaking
I haven’t got any experience with sword-spec Shinobis, so I’ll just talk about Stealth specced ones. They fit their role well, they make great scouts on combat missions. I think their tree is fine with one exception: Conceal. This perk is so strong, it trivialises a lot of stealth missions late game. I stop taking specialists on Hacking missions, because it’s easier and less-risky to do it with Shinobi duos. Part of me just wants to see the perk removed from the game, or if it stays in it should really move to MSGT (maybe instead of rapid fire?) There isn’t really a good stealth perk at MSGT at the moment, and its power level is definitely appropriate. I’m not sure what you’d put in its place. With current perks, Sprinter would work well, and would be competitive. If there’s a possibility of a new perk, maybe a perk which increases Hack skill would be nice? It would be a nice perk to put on the AWC (although not available to the Specialist) so that those people who can’t stand going on a mission without getting the hack rewards don’t feel they need to take a Specialist every time.
Mag tier weapons don't need buffs!
I really like the lasers vs. mag choice which exists at the beginning of the game, and the fact that there are players who swear that their approach is the best on both sides is a good sign. I’ve found mag rush to be very strong, as the power spike in May/June is huge when you’re liberating your first couple of regions. I know some have been calling for mag buffs, but the mag tier *really* doesn’t need any buffs.
Core upgrades dominate all other choices for research paths
At the moment it feels to me that unlike LW1, core upgrades (weapons and armor) dominate all other choices (autopsies, etc). None of the autopsies provide items which feel necessary, and the damage and survivability upgrades make such a huge difference to your effectiveness in the tactical layer. I’d like to see more incentives to research different ammo (ap and tracer rounds are both strong enough that other ammo types just don’t feel worth it), and I think you could buff defensive items also (ablative/+hp items). You could balance this by buffing lvl2 and 3 aliens, or nerfing higher level armor. I just feel like rushing to coil/warden is always the best choice at the moment, and I’d like to see more variety in research paths.