[Edit]LW2 v1.2 just isn't fun YET

hermescostell
Posts: 21
Joined: Tue Apr 11, 2017 4:22 pm

[Edit]LW2 v1.2 just isn't fun YET

Post by hermescostell »

I know how things go, and there's going to eventually be a little club of a few hundred players who all continue to exclaim that "it's fun - and if you don't think it's fun, then don't play it"... while the many other thousands of players who started playing the game initially finally gave up and wandered off to other games which were fun. Rather quickly I see all the work that Pavonis put into this mod going towards the enjoyment of that handful of a few hundred (admittedly dedicated) fans, and nobody else.

The learning curve is simply too steep, the risk/reward isn't clearly communicated before the choices made in the game, the smackdown which occurs due to things going badly seems to come out of nowhere rather than due to mistakes which the player made (and sees how to do better next time). The only people we are looking to for examples of "how to do it right" are playtesters with a zillion hours of gameplay under their belts, who are held up as examples of "how doable it is" (xwynns, joINrbs).

Gameplay isn't so much a matter of a "rich experience which can be solved in numerous ways" as it is a feeling of being corralled into stealthing the great majority of missions - and now I hear that's being "nerfed" with 1.3. Great.

Why do we play games? Because they're fun. What makes them fun? The feeling of euphoria which occurs when we successfully navigate and conquer a challenge that we felt was compelling, and feel that we have gained some mastery due to it.
  • Successfully nagivate: Being able to know what to do, given the challenge before us. In LW2 we are presented with a multitude of minefields we can waltz our soldiers across to their doom, and the instant doom of our campaign, with complex and inscrutable hints as to which minefields are doable, and which aren't. Moreover in order to push the campaign forwards you MUST go across enough of these minefields, and at a rather good pace otherwise Advent wins. Good luck.
  • Conquer a challenge: Sometimes LW2 expects you to evac out without having achieved the objective, we are told. Some missions aren't winnable. Back in LW1 it was understood that this was part of the deal, sure - however back then it felt like it was better balanced and made more sense somehow, when the mission fell apart and we needed to run. It felt like we'd been given a challenge which we did indeed screw up somehow and, had we played things right, would probably have been winnable. In LW2 the only missions I feel that way about still are the large-squad combat missions; I still feel that sense that when I lose one of those that it was truly a series of tactical mistakes on my part which made it occur, and the sense that I CAN conquer the challenge remains alive. The stealth missions however, which are the mainstay of missions now in LW2, feel like when things go well it was due to pure luck, and when they went poorly it was due to my not having had luck on my side. Earlier in the campaign when enemies weren't as punishing, sneaking around to the objective, hacking and then getting out felt like skill. Now midway through, when faceless and chryssalids sprint over and jump on my face the moment the hack occurs ... it simply isn't fun anymore. I basically look at the objective spot, see that it's swarming with crap, and realize that the only way I'm going to do the mission is if I'm blessed with luck ... and that I'll need to be lucky to even get that far. And no, it doesn't feel like skill (even though yes of course there is a skill in being patient enough to walk a path that has zero chance of being spotted, while still keeping the timer in check), it feels like luck. And pure luck just isn't fun. Luck COMBINED with skill is fun. Being unlucky and then having that unluckiness make a person have to be skillful to survive is great. Being unlucky and then swarmed and murdered without chance of survival isn't fun.
  • Compelling: Lack of clarity on what the risk/reward is for a mission, so we can judge its worth (having to cross-reference various tables online sucks). Crappy loot sucks. Unclear how XP works, and how much we are getting for a particular mission. Unsure which missions are going to be ok to skip (see the cross-referencing above). Just simply feeling like the mission had some effect or ramification. Yes, yes, yes I know that "it's totally clear in the mission description" - and I'm talking about Guerilla Ops missions here mainly, rather than Golden Path or Supply Lines type stuff. Try asking someone who isn't in the LW2 Fanboy Club to look at the mission selection screen what the effect of the mission is going to be, based on the description, and take note of their response. Notice the silence and the confused look on their face. And then ask them "should you go on that mission?" I usually absolutely don't know whether a mission is important to go on, or is a distraction, or is worth it, based on the information given, so I generally try to go on every one that I can (just like I bet the vast majority of players are) and end up being punished for it. And sure, I get it that "the idea is you're supposed to choose which ones to go on" but the level of complexity, combined with the degree of inscrutability, plus the sheer volume of missions, is such that I haven't developed a solid sense of that after a few hundred hours of gameplay. This inability to discern the importance or effect of going on missions diminishes the compelling aspect of the "fun" equation.
  • Gained some mastery: I do have a feeling of mastery in regard to combat-intensive mission types. I don't have a major issue with LW2 in the late Liberation, Golden Path, Defend type missions in this regard. Any stealth or small-team missions however I absolutely do not have a sense of "mastery" with. That is: I don't feel that I have more than a few repeatable lessons or behaviors learned which I can reliably apply to future missions, and they are very little help. In order to "be challenging" the Pavonis team appears to have gone about actively nerfing any so-called "game breaking" builds or approaches which would make stealth and small-team missions "too easy". Making the solution to problems a moving target which changes with each patch release while keeping the difficulty ratcheted up to a level which necessitates the highest level of gameplay in order to succeed is turning the mod into a sort of arms race between the player and the developer. I can only speculate as to why this is happening on the Pavonis end, but the bottom line is that it simply ends up not being fun on the player's end (oops - again: excepting the LW2 Inner Club). Allowing the players to find and keep tactics which usually work is perfectly fine, and is an integral part of the "fun" equation. The other part of the game which I don't feel I have a mastery of is the interrelation of Intel gathering/spending, squad size, chameleon suit/suppressors, activity level, vigilance, Advent strength in the zone, and expiration time. This is a murky and complex mess which at the moment doesn't offer much chance for mastery other than "put everyone in the haven on Intel, and fiddle with the soldier choosing/loadout until it looks like you'll get 100%". It feels like I'm fumbling around every time I encounter it, and I suspect it could all be streamlined WAAAAY down and be far more fun while still maintaining the core gameplay elements.
Again - I'm putting this forth as suggestions for making the mod appeal to more players, based on my own take on it. Pavonis has put a ton of work into this and I think it's sad how few people will be playing this in the weeks to come if nothing changes to address these issues.
Last edited by hermescostell on Wed Apr 26, 2017 10:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
hairlessOrphan
Posts: 17
Joined: Fri Apr 21, 2017 4:36 pm

Re: LW2 just isn't fun

Post by hairlessOrphan »

Well, the Tactical layer - 4/5 man infiltrations - I'm enjoying a great deal. The Strategy layer, though, I'm not really enjoying at all. It's just... there. Once you learn the system, there aren't really any choices to make. "Should I do this mission? If HQ, then no. Otherwise, yes." Done.

The part of your complaint about the Tactical layer - the stealth missions - I kind of agree with, but also think that's a consequence of the Strategy layer. Doing *some* two-man stealth missions is a blast, but doing as many as I feel forced to, in order to maintain vigilance, feels a little weird. If I'm doing stealth missions, I'd want that to be because I choose to be stealthy as part of my strategy, not because that's the only realistic way I'll be able to complete enough missions to maintain vigilance.

The mechanics of the Strategy layer are clever, but the end results of their interactions are weird.

1) Liberating regions is BAD (straight-up bad). Like, wha? It's true, though, because of the vigilance and Advent strength mechanics, the more regions Advent owns, the easier it is to maintain their vigilance levels and manipulate their regional strength.

2) Using havens to gather supplies is BAD (opportunity-cost bad). Again... wha? As per JoINrbs' post, early on - when you'd most expect to need to build up your supplies - there's little point, and you should instead be running intel and going into debt. Later on, you should be trying to pop as many missions as possible in search of Troop Columns to drive vigilance, and that has the side-effect of taking care of your supplies.

It means there's really only one strategy. The name of the game isn't retaking Earth at all. It's just managing Avatar. Which means you're wasting time and making things worse for yourself if you try to do the obvious thing of liberating regions and forcing Advent out of territory. From a narrative standpoint, it totally feels like a Deus Ex Machina... "You can't possibly win! But the villain has One Secret Weakness..."

I think the Strategy layer could really benefit from a couple more iterations to give players meaningful choices. If Pavonis doesn't intend to invest that kind of time into LW2 (this is not a dis! LW2 is not their main baby, after all), then at the very least LW2 should expose the Strategy layer mechanics so players don't feel like there are lots of choices - only to find out that there's only one good choice.
fowlJ
Posts: 198
Joined: Thu Jan 21, 2016 1:45 pm

Re: LW2 just isn't fun

Post by fowlJ »

hermescostell wrote:The only people we are looking to for examples of "how to do it right" are playtesters with a zillion hours of gameplay under their belts, who are held up as examples of "how doable it is" (xwynns, joINrbs).
While those are the only two I'm aware of that make videos of the mod, there are 11 playtesters for LW2, of whom only 3 play on Legend (none of the actual dev team do either). It is harder than vanilla, and it does have issues with clearly communicating certain things, but it's just plain not correct to say that it is designed only for people playing at that level.
Gameplay isn't so much a matter of a "rich experience which can be solved in numerous ways" as it is a feeling of being corralled into stealthing the great majority of missions - and now I hear that's being "nerfed" with 1.3. Great.
Stealth isn't being nerfed in a vacuum, it is being nerfed as part of a series of changes designed to make it so that players don't feel like they need to do it on every mission. Another, more important part of those changes is that taking a squad of 4-5 soldiers and fighting to the objective will be significantly less punishing (and therefore far more viable) than it was previously.
Why do we play games? Because they're fun. What makes them fun? The feeling of euphoria which occurs when we successfully navigate and conquer a challenge that we felt was compelling, and feel that we have gained some mastery due to it.
Many people find LW2 to provide exactly that. That you don't agree with them doesn't mean it isn't true for them.
Successfully nagivate: Being able to know what to do, given the challenge before us. In LW2 we are presented with a multitude of minefields we can waltz our soldiers across to their doom, and the instant doom of our campaign, with complex and inscrutable hints as to which minefields are doable, and which aren't. Moreover in order to push the campaign forwards you MUST go across enough of these minefields, and at a rather good pace otherwise Advent wins. Good luck.
I think you're presenting it as far more complicated than it is, particularly by asserting there is some sort of 'instant doom of [your] campaign' if you make the wrong move. There are strategic misplays you can make that won't give immediate feedback as to something having gone wrong, and that is a big problem for a new player, but there's honestly quite a lot of give in how 'optimally' you do a campaign, particularly if you are playing on a low difficulty like is recommended.
...The stealth missions however, which are the mainstay of missions now in LW2, feel like when things go well it was due to pure luck, and when they went poorly it was due to my not having had luck on my side. Earlier in the campaign when enemies weren't as punishing, sneaking around to the objective, hacking and then getting out felt like skill. Now midway through, when faceless and chryssalids sprint over and jump on my face the moment the hack occurs ... it simply isn't fun anymore. I basically look at the objective spot, see that it's swarming with crap, and realize that the only way I'm going to do the mission is if I'm blessed with luck ...
Many people feel this way, which would be part of why stealth missions are being so de-emphasized in the next version.
Lack of clarity on what the risk/reward is for a mission
Definitely a real issue, and despite what you seem to think I don't believe you'll find many people who disagree. (People who have more understanding of the game mechanics certainly won't be as bothered by in their personal play, of course, but that's because they personally no longer suffer from a lack of information, not because they don't recognize it as a flaw in the mod)
I do have a feeling of mastery in regard to combat-intensive mission types. I don't have a major issue with LW2 in the late Liberation, Golden Path, Defend type missions in this regard. Any stealth or small-team missions however I absolutely do not have a sense of "mastery" with. That is: I don't feel that I have more than a few repeatable lessons or behaviors learned which I can reliably apply to future missions, and they are very little help.
Well, there are repeatable behaviours you can learn for those missions, though? That you haven't learned them yet doesn't mean they aren't there, and there are a lot of people who can do those missions pretty much effortlessly - again, part of the reason why they are becoming a smaller part of the game soon.
In order to "be challenging" the Pavonis team appears to have gone about actively nerfing any so-called "game breaking" builds or approaches which would make stealth and small-team missions "too easy". Making the solution to problems a moving target which changes with each patch release while keeping the difficulty ratcheted up to a level which necessitates the highest level of gameplay in order to succeed is turning the mod into a sort of arms race between the player and the developer.
Beyond disagreeing with 'difficulty ratcheted up to a level which necessitates the highest level of gameplay in order to succeed' (again, most playtesters (and most players) are not the handful of highly competent Legend players who make XCOM videos), well, yes? The thing that needs understanding is that the mod isn't really done yet. It is still in active development, which does mean that things will change significantly based on feedback and testing. Once the mod is in a place where Pavonis is happy with it and they move on to other projects, players will be able to try and solve the game like you want to be able to, like was the case with LW1, but it's not there yet.
Allowing the players to find and keep tactics which usually work is perfectly fine, and is an integral part of the "fun" equation.
For many people, this is not even sort of the case. It is (once again) a major reason for the stealth nerfs, because the ability to do the exact same thing on almost every mission in the game and win was boring for many people, including, you made it sound like, for you. So they are changing it (and other similar tactics), to try and provide choices that are enjoyable and actually mean something.
Again - I'm putting this forth as suggestions for making the mod appeal to more players, based on my own take on it. Pavonis has put a ton of work into this and I think it's sad how few people will be playing this in the weeks to come if nothing changes to address these issues.
I feel based on what I've seen or heard of it so far that 1.3 will address many of the issues you touched on, and I believe it would be unwise to write it off in the way it kind of feels like you have. (I have no insider information on this, though, so we'll have to wait and see.)
LordYanaek
Posts: 940
Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2017 1:34 pm

Re: LW2 just isn't fun

Post by LordYanaek »

First, why is this in the Strategy subforum and not the general discussions?
hermescostell wrote:I know how things go, and there's going to eventually be a little club of a few hundred players who all continue to exclaim that "it's fun - and if you don't think it's fun, then don't play it"
Worst possible way to start a constructive discussion but let's try anyway.
The learning curve is simply too steep
No offense but which difficulty did you try to play? Anyone saying that the game is too hard who's not playing Rookie or anyone saying that the game is too easy who's not playing Legend didn't understand what difficulty level is for. There is no dummy difficulty in LW2 whose purpose is simply to not be played in order to flatter players ego (because nobody want to play the lowest difficulty ;) ) Maybe it should have another name but blame Firaxis on that.
The only people we are looking to for examples of "how to do it right" are playtesters with a zillion hours of gameplay under their belts, who are held up as examples of "how doable it is" (xwynns, joINrbs).
Who else should we look for? LW2 is a long game and it was released recently so very few people actually had time to play multiple campaigns apart from those beta testers.
Gameplay isn't so much a matter of a "rich experience which can be solved in numerous ways" as it is a feeling of being corralled into stealthing the great majority of missions - and now I hear that's being "nerfed" with 1.3. Great.
It's being nerfed to prevent players from "being corralled into stealthing the great majority of missions" so not sure why you don't like it.
In addition, 1.3 won't just nerf pure stealth (which i hops stays an option as it's also interesting) but also aims to make non-stealth more manageable so it looks like you're complaining about the developers changing what you didn't like :?
Successfully nagivate: Being able to know what to do, given the challenge before us. In LW2 we are presented with a multitude of minefields we can waltz our soldiers across to their doom, and the instant doom of our campaign, with complex and inscrutable hints as to which minefields are doable, and which aren't. Moreover in order to push the campaign forwards you MUST go across enough of these minefields, and at a rather good pace otherwise Advent wins. Good luck.
I don't really understand what you mean here? What are those minefields? The missions? If you could explain more clearly what your concerns are maybe it could help in "making the mod appeal to more players" but vague comments like this one only look like you're frustrated after loosing a campaign and want to vent out that frustration.
If you're talking about missions, well, yes you can loose a squad in LW2 much like you could in XCom2 so again, i don't really see you point.
Conquer a challenge: Sometimes LW2 expects you to evac out without having achieved the objective, we are told. Some missions aren't winnable. Back in LW1 it was understood that this was part of the deal, sure - however back then it felt like it was better balanced and made more sense somehow, when the mission fell apart and we needed to run. It felt like we'd been given a challenge which we did indeed screw up somehow and, had we played things right, would probably have been winnable. In LW2 the only missions I feel that way about still are the large-squad combat missions; I still feel that sense that when I lose one of those that it was truly a series of tactical mistakes on my part which made it occur, and the sense that I CAN conquer the challenge remains alive. The stealth missions however, which are the mainstay of missions now in LW2, feel like when things go well it was due to pure luck, and when they went poorly it was due to my not having had luck on my side. Earlier in the campaign when enemies weren't as punishing, sneaking around to the objective, hacking and then getting out felt like skill. Now midway through, when faceless and chryssalids sprint over and jump on my face the moment the hack occurs ... it simply isn't fun anymore. I basically look at the objective spot, see that it's swarming with crap, and realize that the only way I'm going to do the mission is if I'm blessed with luck ...
Don't compare balance of LW1 when most people actually learned about it's existence after several years of development with balance of LW2 a few month after release, it's not fair. LW2 needs some balance passes to be as polished as LW1 was at the end but the developers are still working hard on improving it.
Stealth missions have few luck involved. Why do you feel like luck is more important in stealth mission past the early game? If you were able to sneak early your skills should still work now unless you are trying to stealth when you shouldn't.
You shouldn't stealth when some Dark Events are active, Faceless infiltrators is dangerous and Crysalids infestation is a big no to stealth. Those are temporary DEs so wait for them to wear off and you'll be able to stealth again. You can try to complete those missions with a non-stealth approach but currently (1.2) GoPs are not very well balanced for small squad fights. It's a real issue the developers are trying to address with 1.3.
Depending on what kind of "crap" is swarming an objective, what's the objective and what soldiers you have, there is usually one way or another to complete it with skill rather than luck. If really you think you can't complete it without luck, well than it's one of those missions you shouldn't try to complete and being able to identify them is part of the challenge but there isn't a lot of objectives that can't be completed with a good combination of Shinobi officer/Specialist/Sniper abilities (depending on what objective we are talking about).
Again, maybe with more precise examples we could help you.
Compelling: Lack of clarity on what the risk/reward is for a mission, so we can judge its worth (having to cross-reference various tables online sucks). Crappy loot sucks. Unclear how XP works, and how much we are getting for a particular mission. Unsure which missions are going to be ok to skip (see the cross-referencing above). Just simply feeling like the mission had some effect or ramification. Yes, yes, yes I know that "it's totally clear in the mission description" - and I'm talking about Guerilla Ops missions here mainly, rather than Golden Path or Supply Lines type stuff. Try asking someone who isn't in the LW2 Fanboy Club to look at the mission selection screen what the effect of the mission is going to be, based on the description, and take note of their response.

If you could quit talking about this "fanboy" stuff maybe i would have an easier time believing you're really trying to help but i'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
Lack of clarity is an issue but you don't really have to "cross-reference various tables online" unless you're curious about the inner working of the game engine. You don't really need all of that to win.
What you need to understand is actually rather simple.
Guerilla Ops are mostly optional missions. The only one you must do is the first liberation 1 and yes, its clear you need to do it, not by the mission description but by the main objective. Others will give you some benefit, which one isn't always clear but you gain something. Basically in those mission you are trying to steal data from ADVENT, what that data will be isn't clear but it will always be useful. It's rarely required.
Note that there is a bug (i think it still affects 1.2 or at least 1.2 campaigns started in 1.1) where you don't get part of the reward so it might explain why you think some missions suck.
Other missions give you some rebels/soldiers/engineers/scientist. It's obvious what the reward is and once you have a basic understanding of the strategic layer you know those are very important early.
Doing missions also keeps ADVENT busy and slows down their AVATAR project giving you more time to win the game.
I think you know everything you need to know. More is for the curious and the min-maxer. Nothing wrong being either but you can't really expect to have every bit of information directly available. Before the internet era such level of information was provided in 200 pages strategy books sold separately from the game.
And sure, I get it that "the idea is you're supposed to choose which ones to go on" but the level of complexity, combined with the degree of inscrutability, plus the sheer volume of missions, is such that I haven't developed a solid sense of that after a few hundred hours of gameplay. This inability to discern the importance or effect of going on missions diminishes the compelling aspect of the "fun" equation.
Again it's not as complicated as you think. Just take as many missions as you can while avoiding dangerous missions. You can tell whether a mission will be dangerous based on the "enemy activity" and the ability to over-infiltrate or not. You can learn which missions are OK and which ones are dangerous through personal experience or online help but you don't need a lot of data.

Too tired to answser your last points but i think LW2 is too young for you and you need to wait until it's more polished and stable and you'll have a much better experience. Give them time, they are trying to address some of your complains but it will take some time and balance passes. If you don't want to deal with a changing environment, wait for a few patches.
justdont
Posts: 113
Joined: Wed Feb 15, 2017 2:36 pm

Re: LW2 just isn't fun

Post by justdont »

I don't think that trying to corral LW2 into "newbies-friendly" area is ever going to end well. Nor it's really needed. LW1 and 2 are really difficult games, and as all really difficult games go, they won't ever be "everyone's cup of tea", nor even come close.

And when the basic premise "it's not for everyone" - then presenting all potentially relevant in-game information isn't particularly important. Yes, you still need to go and read up a wiki, although it's much better than it was with LW1 - this time you can gather quite a lot of information from within the game, and leave wiki only for gritty details that aren't really needed for easy difficulty (another improvement over LW1, now "easy" is pretty easy indeed).

But also quite a lot of "not fun" complaints is currently generated by 1.2 not really being well-balanced in many aspects. This inlcudes, but not limited to, limited soldier classes usage to a narrow amount of cookie-cutter cases (avoid psiops, abuse the hell out of stealth shinobis, etc), limited mission variance (49% stealth runs + 49% zero infiltration corpse hunts, and 2% of the rest), strange interactions between different strategic layer mechanics (as mentioned before, liberating regions is strategically BAD in 1.2) and so on. Lots of these is going to be severely improved with 1.3.
Jacke
Posts: 623
Joined: Sat Jan 28, 2017 1:10 am

Re: LW2 just isn't fun

Post by Jacke »

LordYanaek wrote:Anyone saying that the game is too hard who's not playing Rookie or anyone saying that the game is too easy who's not playing Legend didn't understand what difficulty level is for. There is no dummy difficulty in LW2 whose purpose is simply to not be played in order to flatter players ego (because nobody want to play the lowest difficulty ;) ) Maybe it should have another name but blame Firaxis on that.
The problem with playing LW2 on Rookie is this is a 100+ hour campaign. And as with all XCOM games, playing it at different difficulties is almost playing a different game so much does the balance sway. Play it at Rookie, learn one game, play it at another, find the need to relearn the game.

And after watching all of Xwynns recently completed LW2 1.0-1.2 campaign, I don't know if I could get through a campaign twice. It gets kind of exhausting and the end arc of missions is very much the same. I spend less hours watching with less mental demand than Xwynns spent playing and I don't know how he got through it except to deliver a complete campaign to his audience.

I've played enough of LW2 at Legendary to know I can get through most of the game if I can master some of the strategic and operational difficulties, some of which are shifting a lot with 1.3. That's why I'm not going forward with my current campaign but instead waiting for 1.3 and finding out the intricacies of it here and in videos.

I can also understand people not finding a lot of fun in LW2. As much as Pavonis have worked on it, it is a demanding game in a slightly unpolished state. While others find ways to persevere and some like me decided to put it off until the next release, I can see some giving up. If they can at least say why in a constructive way, there's possibility that Pavonis can make use of this criticism to improve LW2.
Jadiel
Posts: 214
Joined: Tue Jan 24, 2017 9:28 am

Re: LW2 just isn't fun

Post by Jadiel »

hairlessOrphan wrote:The mechanics of the Strategy layer are clever, but the end results of their interactions are weird.

1) Liberating regions is BAD (straight-up bad). Like, wha? It's true, though, because of the vigilance and Advent strength mechanics, the more regions Advent owns, the easier it is to maintain their vigilance levels and manipulate their regional strength.

2) Using havens to gather supplies is BAD (opportunity-cost bad). Again... wha? As per JoINrbs' post, early on - when you'd most expect to need to build up your supplies - there's little point, and you should instead be running intel and going into debt. Later on, you should be trying to pop as many missions as possible in search of Troop Columns to drive vigilance, and that has the side-effect of taking care of your supplies.
This is slightly off-topic, but I don't agree with either of these.

1) Liberating regions is AMAZING (but difficult). Liberating a region wipes 5 points of strength off the map, and gives a boost to vigilance in all regions around the liberated region. If you're way ahead of the aliens and have a ton of vigilance in the liberated region I guess this might possibly lead to a net vigilance loss, but in that case you're already way ahead. But in most campaigns, liberating a region reduces strength, and also gives you control over where the AI will put it's reinforcements (hint: it will stage an attack on your liberated region), so you can intercept them. In addition to all this, liberating a region gives you a ton of resources, and gives a region which will generate even more. From your post you imply that a campaign where you have liberated multiple regions is likely to lose, but any campaign I've seen where the player has liberated 4-5 regions is basically won because the aliens are put so far behind. If you have a campaign where you liberated multiple regions and felt in hindsight that you shouldn't have, I'd be interested to hear about it. Liberating a region is basically equivalent to succeeding a 5 troop columns missions...

2) Using havens to gather supplies early is bad, when vigilance is low. This is primarily because at low vigilance levels, there are many lucrative missions you could do. But later on when vigilance is high, supplies is a very reasonable task for your havens. Yes, you probably don't want to put everyone on supplies in non-liberated regions, but that's not unreasonable I don't think...
Autoclave
Posts: 48
Joined: Wed Mar 01, 2017 8:00 pm

Re: LW2 just isn't fun

Post by Autoclave »

My personal gripe is with strategic layer though. A lot of effort was put into strategic layer ADVENT but it did not enrich the experience for the player in a meaningful way. Apart from continental bonuses (which are mostly terrible numerical bonuses which are borring) all the heavens are essentially the same. The only difference is the number of connections they have, but that's it!!

If there is too much strength in a region, you just go and do missions in another region. Your troops are global and and can instataneously reach any point on the map. Infiltration only limits the available missions and forces you to have a greater soldier roster. Heavens are not distinct enough for me to care about which I expand to and do missions in.

So in this context I don't understand why so much effort was put into advent strength, vigilance and reinforcements mechanics when it didn't add real meaningful value to the player.

Fundamentally the strategic layer in LW2 is a whac-a-mole. You take whatever missions have a good infiltration timer and good rewards.

Ask your players where do they spend more time: equipment loadout screen or the situation room? 99% of us spent more time in equipment loadout screen because those choices are more relevant and important.

You could've just deleted the entire strategic layer and fed us missions on a conveyor belt and it wouldn't make much of a difference.
Saph7
Long War 2 Crew
Posts: 167
Joined: Sat Feb 11, 2017 4:00 pm

Re: LW2 just isn't fun

Post by Saph7 »

I get the sense that people find the strategy layer of LW2 much harder to master than the tactical, maybe because they've already had a ton of experience with the tactical side through vanilla. The strategic side of LW2 really is a completely new game, and quite a complex one, and you can be good at the tactical while floundering in the strategic.
Jadiel
Posts: 214
Joined: Tue Jan 24, 2017 9:28 am

Re: LW2 just isn't fun

Post by Jadiel »

Autoclave wrote:My personal gripe is with strategic layer though. A lot of effort was put into strategic layer ADVENT but it did not enrich the experience for the player in a meaningful way. Apart from continental bonuses (which are mostly terrible numerical bonuses which are borring) all the heavens are essentially the same. The only difference is the number of connections they have, but that's it!!

If there is too much strength in a region, you just go and do missions in another region. Your troops are global and and can instataneously reach any point on the map. Infiltration only limits the available missions and forces you to have a greater soldier roster. Heavens are not distinct enough for me to care about which I expand to and do missions in.

So in this context I don't understand why so much effort was put into advent strength, vigilance and reinforcements mechanics when it didn't add real meaningful value to the player.

Fundamentally the strategic layer in LW2 is a whac-a-mole. You take whatever missions have a good infiltration timer and good rewards.

Ask your players where do they spend more time: equipment loadout screen or the situation room? 99% of us spent more time in equipment loadout screen because those choices are more relevant and important.

You could've just deleted the entire strategic layer and fed us missions on a conveyor belt and it wouldn't make much of a difference.
See to me, this is one of the most fun things about LW2. The fact that I can do a load of missions in one region, and then abandon it and strike somewhere else really makes it feel like you're running a guerrilla warfare style resistance. The management of Advent strength and vigilance so that you get access to the missions you want and the AI wastes a lot of its strength on areas you don't care about make the strategic layer really interesting - I really can't see how you can describe it as whack-a-mole. Then again, I guess I'm not one of the players you're talking about; I definitely spend much longer on the geoscape than I do in the loadout screen, as my soldiers are equipped almost the same way every mission.

If I was somehow tied to specific regions, I think the game would be worse. I guess I'd be ok with some kind of strategic objective in specific regions (and I'd love to see some more interesting continent bonuses), it would mean having to program the AI to deal with them, and I don't know if it's worth the development time.
Autoclave
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Re: LW2 just isn't fun

Post by Autoclave »

The game needs some bonuses for each individual region. These bonuses need to correlate with advent activity in the region. Here is an example:
+15% glonal chance for detecting dark event missions: the more advent strength in the region, the lower the bonus.
This way you will have more choices to consider when expanding and where to go for liberations, troop column ambushes and so on.
Or for those of you that like higher difficulty: turn these bonuses into maluses once the advent strength reachs a certain threshold.

Jeeez, I just made your entire strategic layer 50% more interesting and fun to play.
hewhoispale
Posts: 62
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Re: LW2 just isn't fun

Post by hewhoispale »

Autoclave wrote:The game needs some bonuses for each individual region. These bonuses need to correlate with advent activity in the region. Here is an example:
+15% glonal chance for detecting dark event missions: the more advent strength in the region, the lower the bonus.
This way you will have more choices to consider when expanding and where to go for liberations, troop column ambushes and so on.
Or for those of you that like higher difficulty: turn these bonuses into maluses once the advent strength reachs a certain threshold.

Jeeez, I just made your entire strategic layer 50% more interesting and fun to play.
All you need is another dozen plus more of those and then multiple campaigns of playtesting across various difficulties and tuning the results and more playtesting and then you have a system that players may find fun. It's almost as if actual development is harder than flippantly proposing part of an idea as an un-thought of revelation.

The regional bonuses in LW1 weren't part of the initial release. They were, in fact, added quite late in the process after many other parts of the game were nailed down. Perhaps you might want to wait on the balancing and development of the bulk of the game systems first.
MacroNova
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Re: LW2 just isn't fun

Post by MacroNova »

I think a big part of the strategic layer's problems comes from lack of good documentation, so we don't have the tools we need to figure out how to approach it. This guide by joinrbs is probably the best there is, and I highly recommend it: http://www.pavonisinteractive.com/phpBB ... 16&t=25420

hairlessOrphan's post and Jadiel's reply is probably the most interesting part of this thread, because I'm not sure completing the liberation chain is such a good idea either. You have trapped advent strength in a particular region. You can leave it there, or you can kill some of it and disperse the rest. As for supply, I'll occasionally have a non-liberated region on supply if the haven is full and I don't have enough soldiers to run missions there. I do worry that the optimal approach is full intel, and do all the guerrilla ops with stealth teams if necessary.

As an aside, I actually find stealth missions significantly easier in the midgame, because there are no solo drone pods!
Krzysztof z Bagien
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Re: LW2 just isn't fun

Post by Krzysztof z Bagien »

In my opinion the worst thing about of both XCOM2 and LW2 is the very idea of Avatar project. Remove that, and make it so you have to fight Aliens to liberate Eart, while they try to fight you and regain control, gain strength etc, and game might be actually fun. An arms race, but without a clock ticking in the background. Which of course would be pretty much what we had in XCOM/LW1, so we can't have it, because there must be something new (not necessaryli better).
Devs do here exactly what they did in LW1 - they want LW2 to be hard just for the sake of it, without really thinking whether it does any sense and whether it adds something fun to the game. Things like timers in most of the missions, infiltration (I know why it's there, but really, it doesn't make any sense - you wait for several days in mission area, Advent doesn't know you're there, and you go to hack the device just several minutes before you run out of time - why didn't you do it like an hour earlier?; fatigue from LW1 was better, but default timers also didn't make sense; that's another example of reinventing something that was already there and worked fine with a little tuning), illusion that you have any choice on both strategic and tactical layer when there's only one right way to play... I could go on, there's no point in that though, they clearly have their own vision of how everything shoul work and not going to change it just because I don't like it. And I simply don't like most of it and also don't find LW2 fun to play.
deaconivory
Long War 2 Crew
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Re: LW2 just isn't fun

Post by deaconivory »

No offense but which difficulty did you try to play? Anyone saying that the game is too hard who's not playing Rookie or anyone saying that the game is too easy who's not playing Legend didn't understand what difficulty level is for. There is no dummy difficulty in LW2 whose purpose is simply to not be played in order to flatter players ego (because nobody want to play the lowest difficulty ;) ) Maybe it should have another name but blame Firaxis on that.
At one point prior to launch I jokingly suggest that the existing tiers be renamed to: "Super Challenging Difficulty", "Mega Super Challenging Difficulty", "Insane Mega Super Challenging Bloodbath Difficulty", and "X and JO do Math and Kill Ayys".

In all seriousness, the LW2 Beta Tester feedback was taken from a wide variety of skill levels and difficulties, personally I play Veteran and my forays to Commander were ugly, and ended badly. I returned to Veteran with my tail between my legs and so that is where all of my feedback and recommendations are based. It's obvious that players watching the two Legend Beta Testers very publicly min-max the game hour after hour, can cause players to generalize about the motivation and composition of the Beta Testers as a group, but rest assured that the 3 legend players are in the minority, and besides no one would want to watch me play LW2, trust me.

I would never say that anyone's opinion is wrong about any game, OPs' opinion is his to have, but I will simply echo the sentiment from other comments in this thread that the mod is still in development (at this point entirely by volunteers) and that there are substantial changes being designed and tested as we speak and with hard work, and a little luck most of the common complaints will be addressed. Rest assured we are working around the clock to make a mod that adds challenges to XCOM2, but is also really, really, fun.
Last edited by deaconivory on Fri Apr 28, 2017 7:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
hairlessOrphan
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Re: LW2 just isn't fun

Post by hairlessOrphan »

Jadiel wrote: 1) Liberating regions is AMAZING (but difficult). Liberating a region wipes 5 points of strength off the map, and gives a boost to vigilance in all regions around the liberated region. If you're way ahead of the aliens and have a ton of vigilance in the liberated region I guess this might possibly lead to a net vigilance loss, but in that case you're already way ahead. But in most campaigns, liberating a region reduces strength, and also gives you control over where the AI will put it's reinforcements (hint: it will stage an attack on your liberated region), so you can intercept them. In addition to all this, liberating a region gives you a ton of resources, and gives a region which will generate even more. From your post you imply that a campaign where you have liberated multiple regions is likely to lose, but any campaign I've seen where the player has liberated 4-5 regions is basically won because the aliens are put so far behind. If you have a campaign where you liberated multiple regions and felt in hindsight that you shouldn't have, I'd be interested to hear about it. Liberating a region is basically equivalent to succeeding a 5 troop columns missions...

2) Using havens to gather supplies early is bad, when vigilance is low. This is primarily because at low vigilance levels, there are many lucrative missions you could do. But later on when vigilance is high, supplies is a very reasonable task for your havens. Yes, you probably don't want to put everyone on supplies in non-liberated regions, but that's not unreasonable I don't think...
1) The problem with liberating regions is that "wiping 5 pts of Strength off the map" means nothing after 14 days and a secret space reinforcement. 14 days later, your "Strength" gains are lost, but that region is still liberated, so that's one less region to build Vigilance on. Which means to maintain your global Vigilance > Strength advantage (and hence your Avatar slowdown %), you need a bigger difference per region (because you have fewer regions to work with).

Also keep in mind that secret space reinforcement is a flat value of +4, not a value relative to Advent's global region count. So in the extreme case, where Advent is down to one region, the reinforcement is a flat +4 to regional strength. That is unmanageable. If you only have that one region to scan for troop columns? Yeah, you'll never get their Strength down again.

Whereas if Advent owns 15 regions, that space reinforcement is +~0.25 regional strength, which means nothing. It doesn't even blip your radar until ~56 days (four super reinforcements, which then achieves +~1 regional strength). You have 15 regions over those 56 days on which to look for opportunities to bring down their global strength again. You're much better off that way.

2) I totally agree that when vigilance is high, Supplies is a very reasonable task for your havens. But Intel is still better. The fact is, from a time-perspective, you are only racing against the clock if you can't manage Avatar progression. But if you can, then you *want to extend* the play time. Because that gives you more tech, more troops, more experience, more fire teams through which to slow Avatar progression even more.

In the end, when both teams are at peak - aliens are at full tier, but XCOM has all the tech, fully AWC'ed out, and huge numbers of MSGT troops - it's advantage XCOM in the tactical game. Avatar progression is the thing that keeps you from reaching that. If you can extend Avatar to the point where you can reach All The Toys, then all the pressure is off. All-Intel-All-The-Time will get you there.
Saph7
Long War 2 Crew
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Re: LW2 just isn't fun

Post by Saph7 »

Jacke wrote:The problem with playing LW2 on Rookie is this is a 100+ hour campaign. And as with all XCOM games, playing it at different difficulties is almost playing a different game so much does the balance sway. Play it at Rookie, learn one game, play it at another, find the need to relearn the game.
Also, I wouldn't say this is true at all. I played my first LW2 campaign on Veteran and lost. Started a second Veteran campaign, lost that too. Started a third, won. My fourth one was on Commander, and I found it easier than Veteran, simply because by then I'd gotten good at the strategic game. The strategy side works in pretty much the same way at all difficulties, and it really does make an enormous difference.
hairlessOrphan wrote:1) The problem with liberating regions is that "wiping 5 pts of Strength off the map" means nothing after 14 days and a secret space reinforcement. 14 days later, your "Strength" gains are lost, but that region is still liberated, so that's one less region to build Vigilance on. Which means to maintain your global Vigilance > Strength advantage (and hence your Avatar slowdown %), you need a bigger difference per region (because you have fewer regions to work with).
You don't do liberations for the strength/vigilance – that's just a nice side benefit. The primary benefit of liberating is that it gives you an enormous amount of resources (easily 1000+ supply worth of stuff from the HQ assault alone) and sets you up to safely and efficiently farm the region for supply in subsequent months. Typically if you liberate 3 or more regions you should be able to comfortably win the game off the back of it, since you'll have a massive resource lead that puts you well ahead of the curve.
hairlessOrphan
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Re: LW2 just isn't fun

Post by hairlessOrphan »

Saph7 wrote: You don't do liberations for the strength/vigilance – that's just a nice side benefit. The primary benefit of liberating is that it gives you an enormous amount of resources (easily 1000+ supply worth of stuff from the HQ assault alone) and sets you up to safely and efficiently farm the region for supply in subsequent months. Typically if you liberate 3 or more regions you should be able to comfortably win the game off the back of it, since you'll have a massive resource lead that puts you well ahead of the curve.
Yes, but the point stands that the benefit is a one-time payout and a long-term drag.

Now, if you NEED the supplies right now - if you have backed yourself into a corner, basically, and have no choice - then you do what you have to do and you take on that long-term cost. But if you can manage your income without taking a region, you're better off without it. In other words, the ideal strategy is to use occupied regions for missions (the only way to get that resource, after all), and to get your supplies elsewhere.

The alternative is to liberate a region, bleed it as quickly as possible, and then let Advent reclaim it. I have not done this, so I don't know if the supply payout resets, if the region's supply store resets, etc... If it does, then this would be an even better strategy. Always keep two regions liberated, and always encourage Advent to retake one. Every time they retake a region, you temporarily liberate another one.

PS - I disagree that Vigilance v. Strength is a side-benefit. It is IMO the key metric in the game. It drives the win condition.
Saph7
Long War 2 Crew
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Re: LW2 just isn't fun

Post by Saph7 »

hairlessOrphan wrote:Yes, but the point stands that the benefit is a one-time payout and a long-term drag.

Now, if you NEED the supplies right now - if you have backed yourself into a corner, basically, and have no choice - then you do what you have to do and you take on that long-term cost. But if you can manage your income without taking a region, you're better off without it. In other words, the ideal strategy is to use occupied regions for missions (the only way to get that resource, after all), and to get your supplies elsewhere.
Not the ideal strategy, just a strategy. It has some benefits, but it also has significant drawbacks, namely that you'll get less supply and you're missing out on any mission that spawns in a supply region.
LordYanaek
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Re: LW2 just isn't fun

Post by LordYanaek »

deaconivory wrote: It's obvious that players watching the two Legend Beta Testers very publicly min-max the game hour after hour, can cause players to generalize about the motivation and composition of the Beta Testers as a group, but rest assured that the 3 legend players are in the minority, and besides no one would want to watch me play LW2, trust me.
Maybe i was more tired than i thought and couldn't even make that point clear :oops: What i meant was almost exactly what you said. Every difficulty in LW2 is a real one and "worth playing" unlike some games where the lowest difficulty is never intended to be played but exist purely to flatter players ego, even if it's named "rookie".
hairlessOrphan wrote: 1) The problem with liberating regions is that "wiping 5 pts of Strength off the map" means nothing after 14 days and a secret space reinforcement. 14 days later, your "Strength" gains are lost, but that region is still liberated, so that's one less region to build Vigilance on. Which means to maintain your global Vigilance > Strength advantage (and hence your Avatar slowdown %), you need a bigger difference per region (because you have fewer regions to work with).
Seriously, in how many regions can you realistically operate at once to build-up that vigilance? Having a few liberated regions won't hurt your late game ability to slow down AVATAR because late in the game you'll have more regions than active squads and a single region can keep several squads busy.
On the other hand it will provide a large reduction in strength. Keep in mind that even if 14 days later ADVENT will have recovered from their loss it's 14 days they spent recovering rather than increasing their global alert.
Liberating a region also gives you a nice short term boost in resources which can allow you to develop the Avenger, build better weapons or similar stuff. A liberated region will then provide you with some steady supply income that shouldn't be overlooked.
Also keep in mind that secret space reinforcement is a flat value of +4, not a value relative to Advent's global region count. So in the extreme case, where Advent is down to one region, the reinforcement is a flat +4 to regional strength. That is unmanageable. If you only have that one region to scan for troop columns? Yeah, you'll never get their Strength down again.
You're talking about an hypothetical and totally unrealistic situation. You're not supposed to liberate the entire planet. You're probably supposed to liberate something like 4-6 regions at most out of 16 (it's 16 right? i don't have the game running right now) leaving you with 10 regions to play with ADVENT which should be more than enough.
In the end, when both teams are at peak - aliens are at full tier, but XCOM has all the tech, fully AWC'ed out, and huge numbers of MSGT troops - it's advantage XCOM in the tactical game. Avatar progression is the thing that keeps you from reaching that. If you can extend Avatar to the point where you can reach All The Toys, then all the pressure is off. All-Intel-All-The-Time will get you there.
Not quite. All Intel is only useful as long as you have enough squads to handle all the missions it throws at you. Detecting more missions than you can take (after discarding "bad" missions with too low timer or too high activity) is useless. All the subtlety of the strategic layer is to find the right balance of jobs so that you get enough missions but not too much. Intel is king of the jobs but other jobs are also useful because too much Intel is wasted especially if you can't field all your squads due to resources shortage (by not running any supply job). Finally in order to reliably detect those missions you'll need more than 4 guys in a haven which is why the recruit job exists.
Swiftless
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Re: LW2 just isn't fun

Post by Swiftless »

I registered just because I felt like I had a minor point to be made about the difficulty of LW2 in the context of this thread.

I'm coming back to LW2 after having been absolutely stomped by an Avenger Defense mission in 1.0 where I ended up completely outgunned with a Sectoid and Gatekeepers on the map. It was pretty much a hard 'game over' for me and I haven't been back because of how ridiculously overbearing the mission turned out to be on Rookie after having progressed into the late game.

I'm coming back because I have the bug again and I found Xwynn's campaign play through which has helped to revitalize my interest. What completely floored me was exactly how little information about both the strategic and tactical layer changes I understood. Further lurking and research on this forum, which I didn't even know existed until recently, further exemplifies exactly how little I actually understood. Which brings me to my point; LW2's difficulty is owed as much to obfuscation as it does to actual strategic/tactical gameplay elements. I think if there's any take away from this discussion, that's one of the main ones to consider. This is problematic and is why I personally feel like LW2 teeters on the edge of not being fun. It does a very terrible job of even indicating the context of a decision. Some of this is a carryover from the original game but I think Pavonis has just compounded on it by implementing very deep mechanics without also increasing player feedback. If you do this in the context of invisible opponent actions coupled with high levels of randomness it generally undermines facilitating player interaction. Watching Xwynns play his campaign is a lesson in experiencing a totality of difference in decision making based completely on external knowledge sources (or perhaps more accurately intimate knowledge of internal hidden mechanics). In many aspects it's a classical burden of knowledge issue.

Having said all this I can understand that the devs might be catering to a very specific audience, which is totally their prerogative. The type of audience that I may just simply be hovering on the edge of and will therefore always have difficulty with finding the same level of enjoyment. I just know that LW2's core ideas and concepts far outstrip XCOM2's original aspirations and I resonate with those core ideas and concepts, if not the current implementation. Which is, despite it's issues, why I want to continue playing.
hermescostell
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Re: LW2 just isn't fun

Post by hermescostell »

fowlJ wrote:
hermescostell wrote:The only people we are looking to for examples of "how to do it right" are playtesters with a zillion hours of gameplay under their belts, who are held up as examples of "how doable it is" (xwynns, joINrbs).
...it's just plain not correct to say that it is designed only for people playing at that level.
Then more's the pity, because it very much does play like a game that's designed for a deeply dedicated player, willing to perhaps run 2-3 campaigns (at 75-100 hours per campaign) into the ground until they become unplayable due to cascading missteps and mistakes so that they can finally run the third campaign to completion, aided by under-the-hood knowledge about hidden mission rotation, using nuanced hints about pod placement off-screen in fog, carefully counting units and mathematically calculating where enemies probably are in order to guess whether or not to peek their shinobi around a corner... on ANY difficulty. The Pavonis team might do well to get some fresh blood in the playtesting pool, given precisely as much documentation as the outside world is given (no cheating!) and be radically open to their feedback, if they want to know the truth about how hard the game is or isn't.
fowlJ wrote:
hermescostell wrote:Gameplay isn't so much a matter of a "rich experience which can be solved in numerous ways" as it is a feeling of being corralled into stealthing the great majority of missions - and now I hear that's being "nerfed" with 1.3. Great.
Stealth isn't being nerfed in a vacuum, it is being nerfed as part of a series of changes designed to make it so that players don't feel like they need to do it on every mission. Another, more important part of those changes is that taking a squad of 4-5 soldiers and fighting to the objective will be significantly less punishing (and therefore far more viable) than it was previously.
If this is true that making small-team fighting through classically stealth-only missions viable is happening in 1.3 then I am grateful, and I think it's an important step in the right direction. Knowing how things go with Long War however I find it unlikely to be the case. Is there some documentation around what steps are being taken to make non-stealthing the classically stealth missions more doable, as you say? I think it's unfortunate that stealthing is being weakened however; Why not keep it as-is and strengthen up the 4-5 man scenario so that BOTH become doable? Why move the corral to point in a different direction instead of allowing the cattle to move along both corrals, allowing players to have *gasp* multiple viable play styles? I think the creative vision here is tied to someone for whom a core part of "fun" lies in figuring out what the correct corral is to go through, and they want to gift that style of "fun" to the world, thinking that others will also find it fun to figure out which single, perfect approach they're supposed to use in the game.

I think that the real key, crucial thing here to grasp, which I think Pavonis has probably missed, is that if people are indeed flocking to using an approach which has been brought to light in the community somehow, and is deemed "too easy" then they need to NOT look at why that approach is too easy - and focus on making it not work anymore, but rather to focus on WHY people have been flocking towards that approach instead of using a variety of approaches - most likely because the other approaches have simply been not fun due to being too challenging, and therefore could use work to make them fun again.
fowlJ wrote:The thing that needs understanding is that the mod isn't really done yet. It is still in active development, which does mean that things will change significantly based on feedback and testing. Once the mod is in a place where Pavonis is happy with it and they move on to other projects, players will be able to try and solve the game like you want to be able to, like was the case with LW1, but it's not there yet.
I don't see a "beta" statement next to the title. I'm seeing the version as above 0.x. It is no longer in beta and it's open to commentary AS A FINISHED PRODUCT. Are they working on it? Sure. Does that mean that we need to withhold complaints about issues until the next version release? And what - is there an open window of 7 days for commentary at that point before it's magically closed again while we wait for the release after that one? You seem to be in fact suggesting that we sit back and wait for the "finished product" which will happen when Pavonis "moves on to other projects" ... and is therefore no longer going to incorporate community feedback. Awesome.
deaconivory
Long War 2 Crew
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Re: LW2 just isn't fun

Post by deaconivory »

The Pavonis team might do well to get some fresh blood in the playtesting pool, given precisely as much documentation as the outside world is given (no cheating!) and be radically open to their feedback, if they want to know the truth about how hard the game is or isn't.
New Beta testers have been added throughout the process, including quite a few new volunteers in the past couple months.
Zyxpsilon
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Re: LW2 just isn't fun

Post by Zyxpsilon »

Just wanna throw in my own limited (but clear) comment here...

NO -- it is actually quite fun to play with. Even in its current "near beta" state, the most basic structures are already there & working almost fine as is.
Not much else to say other than the future looks bright for that sort of gameplay.

Right now, i feel v1.3 principles should be'come important enough to bring each of these design choices onto much clearer light.
LordYanaek
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Re: LW2 just isn't fun

Post by LordYanaek »

hermescostell wrote: Then more's the pity, because it very much does play like a game that's designed for a deeply dedicated player, willing to perhaps run 2-3 campaigns (at 75-100 hours per campaign) into the ground until they become unplayable due to cascading missteps and mistakes so that they can finally run the third campaign to completion, aided by under-the-hood knowledge about hidden mission rotation, using nuanced hints about pod placement off-screen in fog, carefully counting units and mathematically calculating where enemies probably are in order to guess whether or not to peek their shinobi around a corner... on ANY difficulty. The Pavonis team might do well to get some fresh blood in the playtesting pool, given precisely as much documentation as the outside world is given (no cheating!) and be radically open to their feedback, if they want to know the truth about how hard the game is or isn't.
Peeking with your Shinobi (uh, i mean Ranger) around any corner is a bad idea in Vanilla XCOM2 because of the way Firaxis designed the stealth system as a total afterthought that's supposed to have a marginal place in the game. Under the hood knowledge is not really required below Legend despite what a lot of people seem to think and post on all possible places, leading more people to believe it to be the case and post again.
If this is true that making small-team fighting through classically stealth-only missions viable is happening in 1.3 then I am grateful, and I think it's an important step in the right direction. Knowing how things go with Long War however I find it unlikely to be the case. Is there some documentation around what steps are being taken to make non-stealthing the classically stealth missions more doable, as you say?
You seem to have a lot of knowledge about how the developers plan for someone who's not even a beta tester!
To answer your question, they are planning a number of changes including
  • More but smaller pods so it's easier to fight them but harder to just sneak past all of them.
  • Longer timers so you can still complete the objective even if you loose some time fighting.
  • On missions with pre-placed evac only, the reinforcement timer will start at the start of the mission making stealth significantly harder on those specific missions. This change will be accompanied by a change in the reinforcement notification to let you know in advance (more than 1 turn) that RNFs will be on you soon.
Those are the changes i'm aware of. Beta testers might be able to tell us more and might not want to because they are still balancing stuff around.
I think it's unfortunate that stealthing is being weakened however; Why not keep it as-is and strengthen up the 4-5 man scenario so that BOTH become doable? Why move the corral to point in a different direction instead of allowing the cattle to move along both corrals
I think it's unfortunate if stealth is being weakened because i like to have that option but as far as i understand they are simply trying to allow both options to be viable which might involve changing stealth so it's no longer a risk-free option once you get the trick.
I think that the real key, crucial thing here to grasp, which I think Pavonis has probably missed, is that if people are indeed flocking to using an approach which has been brought to light in the community somehow, and is deemed "too easy" then they need to NOT look at why that approach is too easy - and focus on making it not work anymore, but rather to focus on WHY people have been flocking towards that approach instead of using a variety of approaches - most likely because the other approaches have simply been not fun due to being too challenging, and therefore could use work to make them fun again.
Which is exactly what they are trying to do with small squad fights.
I don't see a "beta" statement next to the title. I'm seeing the version as above 0.x. It is no longer in beta and it's open to commentary AS A FINISHED PRODUCT.
How many games do you see these days coming out of beta as finished product? Civilization 6 was so badly balanced when it was released that LW2 1.0 looks like a perfectly polished product. Civ 6 barely start to look like a finished product now and was out for longer than LW2, produced by a larger team with lots of beta testers.
Bringing constructive comments and suggesting improvements without being upset if they are not adopted is one thing. Calling everyone who likes the game even in it's rough unpolished state a "fanboy" and implying everywhere that the developers don't really care about what we say when it's obvious for anyone who spent some time here that they do read what we say even when they don't have time to answer is different.
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