1.2 Campaign Feedback

[DerAva]

My first LW2 campaign is coming to a close and it’s time to consolidate my thoughts on this experience. Before I do that, let me say that I enjoyed the campaign a lot. It was amazing to see this different approach to the XCOM2 experience and I want to thank the Pavonis Interactive team for putting this together.

Some primers about the campaign (some links to part of the reasoning behind those decisions):

• Commander Ironman difficulty
• Grazing Band set to 0
• Aiming Angles reenabled via ini
• AWC perks revealed
• For the first few missions the Yellow Alert System was disabled, then returned to default values

Also, at least as far as I’m aware, this is the only succesfully finished YouTube campaign so far, outside of those by Beta Testers.
I created a spreadsheet showing all the missions, mission types, squad sizes and infiltration % here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... edit#gid=0

This was a somewhat blind playthrough - I did a test campaign playing the first few missions to get a general idea of the game. I chose Commander because the general suggestion was to pick Veteran if you played Legend in vanilla. Resource wise I read through the Archives and the thread with “Tips that were provided to the press”. I avoided any more in depth guides like the “manipulating mission spawn” guide.

I made good use out of the Squad system, keeping some fixed squads together through most of the campaign so that the officers of my primary squads had around 25+ missions served with the main soldiers of these squads. It felt like a rewarding and interesting system.

With 1.3 just around the corner and addressing most of the concerns I would have brought up I’m gonna save you and me some time and not write lengthy feedback on classes, stealth missions and 0% supply raids that will most likely be outdated by the time you’re reading this. I’m just gonna write some lines on a few topics that I just want to talk about. Headlines might be complete clickbait titles with a good portion of “tongue in cheek”.

The Biggest Disappointments

• Finding an “Elite” weapon attachment, thinking that additional tiers of weapon attachments were introduced only to then find out that it was just a needless rename of Superior Attachments
• Seeing people refer to the final mission as “Waterworld”, expecting a fully reworked final mission, only to then find out that it’s still the same (good) old Leviathan
• Stealth Missions
• Flamer Spec Technicals

Tradecraft is the worst Perk in the Game

… because it doesn’t tell you what it actually does. I’m aware of the constraints when it comes to translations and tooltips, but the complete lack of numbers in some perk descriptions is somewhat disappointing. Why do I have to go to the wiki to find out what the perk actually does? I’m not going to just take the perk and test it with the draconian respec times that are currently in the game. If the game expects me to make meaningful decisions then it should provide me with the information that I need to make this decision. Other areas where the information is not available in game and you’ll just have to doublecheck the wiki on a 2nd monitor:

• Enemy counts on missions (Is “Somewhat Light” now more or less enemies than “Kinda Lightish”?)
• Results for proving ground projects
• Lots of perk descriptions

Redundancy of Debuffs

Of the 3 damaging debuffs (Acid, Poison and Fire) the Fire debuff seems to completely overshadow the other two. Completely disabling enemy ranged attacks is huge and allows for an absurd amount of crowd control. I feel like Fire was in a good spot in vanilla, being a 100% counter to melee attacks, but the current implementation just seems way over the top. I can see some attempt to balancing it by adding a rupture effect to acid and reducing fire application, but I don’t think that this solves the issue and I wish the 3 debuffs all had their niches instead of one of them being this superior.


“Balancing” via RNG

XCOM2 is a game where the outcome is heavily dependant on RNG. The great thing about it is that you as a player can usually make decisions that influence this RNG. This is also an important aspect of the game where individual player skill matters. One annoying counter example to this was Skulljacking. This always had a flat 70% chance to hit, no matter how good or bad your soldier was. You could not modify this by proper positioning, choosing the right equipment or perks for this job or by assisting with abilities from your other soldiers. It was a fixed percentage and you were at the mercy of RNG and it felt bad. Especially since it was such a strong ability that could take out any uninjured Advent Trooper.
Flat percentages that can’t be modified by player action feel bad and take away player agency, and I’m concerned that LW2 is introducing more and more of these, especially on high impact abilities. Having an overpowered ability only work 50% of the time doesn’t make it balanced, it just makes it overpowered 50% of the time - or 75% of the time if you’re lucky and only 25% of the time if you are unlucky.
I’d rather have a balanced ability that works 100% of the time than an overpowered one that depends on a coinflip.


Carrot on a Stick

Despite doing a good amount of 0% Raids/Columns in the first part of the game it still felt like LW2 was showing me lots of fancy toys that I could build but wouldn’t be able to afford. It felt like there were way too many items for which I did the proving ground project (to find out what it does in the first place….) only to then never build a single one of them. It will always be more important to upgrade weapons and armor so that it’s hard to justify the cost for some of the more niche items. Also: why are SMGs more expensive than Rifles of the same tier?


So, I hope this didn’t get too ranty at the end. To stress it again: I had a great time, my only regret is that I played on Commander instead of Legend, but then I would have probably lost to the new strategic layer and the doom clock.

Looking forward to 1.3, I was just hoping for having more time to catch a breath before that hits.

Thanks!

[Jacke]

Redundancy of Debuffs

Of the 3 damaging debuffs (Acid, Poison and Fire) the Fire debuff seems to completely overshadow the other two. Completely disabling enemy ranged attacks is huge and allows for an absurd amount of crowd control. I feel like Fire was in a good spot in vanilla, being a 100% counter to melee attacks, but the current implementation just seems way over the top. I can see some attempt to balancing it by adding a rupture effect to acid and reducing fire application, but I don’t think that this solves the issue and I wish the 3 debuffs all had their niches instead of one of them being this superior.

Acid appears to be the tool to deal with the heavily armoured mid to late-game enemies like Gatekeepers and the Big Bugs. It shreds 4 armour and ruptures 1. I know in some battles in his last campaign, Xwynns wished he had/had more Acid Grenades.

Poison appears to be a tool to use against non-Snek non-Mech ADVENT, especially to limit their movement. I've never taken a campaign far enough to test it out. However, I don't think that's significant enough to Grenadiers allocating one of their limited number of grenade slots over another grenade type.

“Balancing” via RNG

.... Flat percentages that can’t be modified by player action feel bad and take away player agency, and I’m concerned that LW2 is introducing more and more of these, especially on high impact abilities. Having an overpowered ability only work 50% of the time doesn’t make it balanced, it just makes it overpowered 50% of the time - or 75% of the time if you’re lucky and only 25% of the time if you are unlucky.
I’d rather have a balanced ability that works 100% of the time than an overpowered one that depends on a coinflip.

I have a problem with all limited-use long cooldown abilities to crowdcontrol in any game. Even as low a chance of failure as 5% means you have to be ready to deal with that significant risk of failure and still avoid wounds and KIAs. I think having a death rate on missions averaging 5% would crush XCOM.

The biggest one I'm worried about in 1.3 is Flashbangs. Many considered them overpowered, but to take a Flashbang means passing up another grenade. And they're still in limited numbers. Now their AoE is smaller and resistive aliens will soon be encountered. And no matter how good the armour or the Will, no XCOM soldier will ever resist an enemy Flashbang.

Carrot on a Stick

Despite doing a good amount of 0% Raids/Columns in the first part of the game it still felt like LW2 was showing me lots of fancy toys that I could build but wouldn’t be able to afford. It felt like there were way too many items for which I did the proving ground project (to find out what it does in the first place….) only to then never build a single one of them. It will always be more important to upgrade weapons and armor so that it’s hard to justify the cost for some of the more niche items. Also: why are SMGs more expensive than Rifles of the same tier?

It seems that in LW2, especially on Legendary, there's research that will never be done and so many items that will never be affordable. And so many Proving Ground Projects and items to build will just end up being a waste of time and resources for little to no effect. And what's worse, without consulting other peoples guides and games some of them won't be seen as a waste before sinking the effort except by luck.

[sarge945]

Finding an “Elite” weapon attachment, thinking that additional tiers of weapon attachments were introduced only to then find out that it was just a needless rename of Superior Attachments

I don't understand this either. It's a small change though, and not exactly gamebreaking, so I guess we will get used to it.

Seeing people refer to the final mission as “Waterworld”, expecting a fully reworked final mission, only to then find out that it’s still the same (good) old Leviathan

You could actually extrapolate this out further. Almost none of the story or DLC missions have really been touched. I would like some new, more interesting mechanics on these. I think it would be great to have some nice surprises, especially when some of the boss enemies can feel underwhelming. The giant Sectopod thing at the end of the Shens Last Gift tower mission is extremely weak with the squad sizes you get in LW2, plus the free SPARK you get on the mission.

Stealth Missions

Stealth missions could be totally fine if there were proper mechanics used in them and based around them - specific perks etc. Instead, Stealth missions just feel like gaming the system, which is totally broken. Luckily, they seem to have been nerfed quite a bit in 1.3

I would actually really love to see Stealth missions introduced in a real capacity - maybe as a proper mission type - with their own mechanics, perks, etc. I understand it would be a lot of work though.

Flamer Spec Technicals

Based on xwynns 1.3 videos, these seem to be buffed/fixed in 1.3. I guess we will see.

Tradecraft is the worst Perk in the Game

… because it doesn’t tell you what it actually does. I’m aware of the constraints when it comes to translations and tooltips, but the complete lack of numbers in some perk descriptions is somewhat disappointing. Why do I have to go to the wiki to find out what the perk actually does? I’m not going to just take the perk and test it with the draconian respec times that are currently in the game. If the game expects me to make meaningful decisions then it should provide me with the information that I need to make this decision. Other areas where the information is not available in game and you’ll just have to doublecheck the wiki on a 2nd monitor:

• Enemy counts on missions (Is “Somewhat Light” now more or less enemies than “Kinda Lightish”?)
• Results for proving ground projects
• Lots of perk descriptions

Totally agreed. This is acceptable in most games, even in vanilla XCOM 2, but Long War 2 is so heavily focused on decision making and tactics that I think this isn't really a good thing at all.

Redundancy of Debuffs

Of the 3 damaging debuffs (Acid, Poison and Fire) the Fire debuff seems to completely overshadow the other two. Completely disabling enemy ranged attacks is huge and allows for an absurd amount of crowd control. I feel like Fire was in a good spot in vanilla, being a 100% counter to melee attacks, but the current implementation just seems way over the top. I can see some attempt to balancing it by adding a rupture effect to acid and reducing fire application, but I don’t think that this solves the issue and I wish the 3 debuffs all had their niches instead of one of them being this superior.

I guess there are some good uses for the others, but I think fire might be a bit too OP, at least near the start of the game. To make it worse, a lot of fire effects seem to be very RNG heavy when determining if a target burns or not, and by how much. Which means one time you use flamethrower, for example, everyone will start burning, and effectively be out of the game, and the next time, nobody will start burning and they can still fight back reasonably effectively.

I'd love to reduce the RNG of fire and maybe nerf it a bit. I do like it's uniqueness though - removing the ranged weapon penalty would make it just like poison, but maybe if it lasted a bit less time and did a bit less damage it could be more of a disable ability and less of an instant win death ability. I dunno

“Balancing” via RNG

XCOM2 is a game where the outcome is heavily dependant on RNG. The great thing about it is that you as a player can usually make decisions that influence this RNG. This is also an important aspect of the game where individual player skill matters. One annoying counter example to this was Skulljacking. This always had a flat 70% chance to hit, no matter how good or bad your soldier was. You could not modify this by proper positioning, choosing the right equipment or perks for this job or by assisting with abilities from your other soldiers. It was a fixed percentage and you were at the mercy of RNG and it felt bad. Especially since it was such a strong ability that could take out any uninjured Advent Trooper.
Flat percentages that can’t be modified by player action feel bad and take away player agency, and I’m concerned that LW2 is introducing more and more of these, especially on high impact abilities. Having an overpowered ability only work 50% of the time doesn’t make it balanced, it just makes it overpowered 50% of the time - or 75% of the time if you’re lucky and only 25% of the time if you are unlucky.
I’d rather have a balanced ability that works 100% of the time than an overpowered one that depends on a coinflip.

PREACH

Carrot on a Stick

Despite doing a good amount of 0% Raids/Columns in the first part of the game it still felt like LW2 was showing me lots of fancy toys that I could build but wouldn’t be able to afford. It felt like there were way too many items for which I did the proving ground project (to find out what it does in the first place….) only to then never build a single one of them. It will always be more important to upgrade weapons and armor so that it’s hard to justify the cost for some of the more niche items. Also: why are SMGs more expensive than Rifles of the same tier?

This seems to be more a case of certain tech just being outright better instead of a case of things being expensive. When there are not enough resources to go around, the less-useful stuff gets cut.

Maybe if there was more incentive to use this stuff, we might see more choices being made. Right now, everyone seems to rush the same kinds of tech and ignore all the others.

[Saph7]

Perk information: Every piece of text in LW2 has to be translated into 10 separate languages. This causes significant problems when something gets rebalanced or rewritten and suddenly has an out-of-date description, and the most common consequence of this is incomplete descriptions. Unfortunately there's a limited amount we can do about this with the time and resources available to us.

Debuffs: Fire, poison, and acid are not supposed to be balanced against each other – that's why Incendiary Grenades have a 1-tile AoE. They're different tools you can buy at varying points in the game and at varying costs.

Flat percentages: I don't think any significant number of these are getting introduced in the new patch? Flashbang resistance is the only one I can think of, and that's extremely rare (I've played a full 1.3 campaign and I think I've had a flashbang resisted exactly once).

Proving ground projects: This is something that several people have brought up, including me. A lot of PG projects have had their costs cut, and the PG itself is cheaper. Armour plates especially are much more accessible now – I went for an early PG in my current game and found it very useful. However, it's probably not realistic to expect it to be worthwhile to build ALL the toys, since a lot of them overlap: it's more cost-efficient to pick a few upgrades you really want and make a lot of them.

[LordYanaek]

• Ingame texts. Having translated the 1.3 text to french i totally understand the difficulty of the task. When considering the amount of mod-added text it's a huge effort that a lot of people have helped with but it takes time. That being said i also think it should be one of the final goals to have descriptions as precise as possible. There will undoubtedly be more patches, i hope at some point the developers have time to review some of those texts and improve the descriptions that cause doubt for some players. Keeping "noob questions" in mind can help identify which descriptions need to be improved because developers and beta testers alike can usually read between the lines of the description but new players can't.
• Debuffs. There's a limited number of ways you can apply debuffs : reduce aim and/or mobility, shred armor or debilitate them is about the only options. I don't really think Poison, Fire and Acid are overlapping. Poison is a mild CC (reduces aim+mobility but doesn't prevent actions), fire is a strong CC (debilitation effect that stops most actions) and Acid is a pure shred effect making the enemy vulnerable to further attacks. The only overlap the DoT they all do.
  I just wish poison wouldn't wear off at the beginning of a turn and poison grenades could be used like an hybrid between flashbangs and damage grenades. Currently the risk of enemies getting rid of the poison before they actually shoot at you is a big con against poison grenades.
• “Balancing” via RNG. I totally agree. It's one of the reasons why i don't like OP abilities hidden in the AWC. As for the OPs example of skullmining it would feel better if you could improve the chances of success by using a high aim soldier, disabling the enemy (stun, disorient ...) or as for LW1 Arc Thrower have them wounded first.
  1.3 introduces such a flat percentage to Venom and Dragon rounds. Even if it's not new to 1.3 the flamethrower is another prime example. Fire is a very strong debuff and to balance it's early availability the flamethrower only have a chance to apply it. The result is that techs are incredibly strong for people playing in "xwynns mode" (he seem to set every enemy on fire almost every time) but not so much in my games (i more than once failed to set any enemy on fire).
• Proving ground and other toys. Yeah i really like that the PG will be available earlier in 1.3. It's a bit sad that you're not supposed to build some pieces of everything thought. LW1 was really fun with all the combinations of items you could equip your guys with. it brought a lot of diversity. I miss the Walker Servos, the different vests that didn't obsolete each other because they had variable movement/defense penalties or the Motion Tracker.

[Saph7]

“Balancing” via RNG. I totally agree. It's one of the reasons why i don't like OP abilities hidden in the AWC. As for the OPs example of skullmining it would feel better if you could improve the chances of success by using a high aim soldier, disabling the enemy (stun, disorient ...) or as for LW1 Arc Thrower have them wounded first.
1.3 introduces such a flat percentage to Venom and Dragon rounds. Even if it's not new to 1.3 the flamethrower is another prime example. Fire is a very strong debuff and to balance it's early availability the flamethrower only have a chance to apply it. The result is that techs are incredibly strong for people playing in "xwynns mode" (he seem to set every enemy on fire almost every time) but not so much in my games (i more than once failed to set any enemy on fire).

I guess there's the Venom/Dragon rounds thing, but in practice that's just another random roll tossed in along with the to-hit. Given that literally every shot in XCOM is also a random percentage, I'm not sure I buy the 'flat percentages are bad' line of thinking. Yes, you can theoretically get every single shot to 100% and eliminate the chance of a miss, but in practice that's not how it works: you regularly have to take a chance on a bunch of shots that might or might not hit, because the costs of getting those shots to 100% are prohibitive. Given that well over 95% of the percentages you'll roll are variable, I don't think having <5% being flat is all that big a deal?

[DerAva]

Regarding the translations:

I understand the constraints and the additional work that is required here, but unless I'm completely mistaken all supported languages use arabic numbers, so if the Tradecraft Tooltip contains a simple (-25%) and you want to rebalance it later down the road, changing the number doesn't require a new translation- again, unless I'm completely wrong about the numeric system used by all those languages.

My main conern in regards to Debuffs right now is that Poison is completely overshadowed by Fire. The only thing poison has going for it is the bigger aoe of the grenade, but that's not relevant for the corresponding ammo.

Regarding the "Flat Percentages":
From the top of my head this is the stuff that just rely on the roll and can't be modified:

• Tier 2 Sword Stun Chance (Vanilla)
• Skulljack (Vanilla)
• Alien Ruler Armor Fear Chance (Vanilla)
• Sting Grenade Stun (1.2)
• Gauntlet Fire/Fear Application (1.2)
• Concussion Rocket Stun/Disorient (1.2)
• Flashbang Resist (1.3)
• Dragon/Venom Rounds (1.3)
• Tier 3 Sword Fire Application (1.3)

Is it a huge problem? Certainly not, and I'm not someone who throws around words like "broken". I personally just feel that these kind of percentages take some of my player agency away, and at some point the outcome of a mission no longer depends on my decisions but rather on lucky dice rolls (heyo, Stealth Missions). There's a huge swing between a Muton Elite being on fire and him being able to take full actions, despite hitting him with incendiary rounds 5 times.

[Saph7]

My main conern in regards to Debuffs right now is that Poison is completely overshadowed by Fire. The only thing poison has going for it is the bigger aoe of the grenade, but that's not relevant for the corresponding ammo.

Venom Rounds come into play vastly earlier than Dragon Rounds. My current campaign is in October/November and I still haven't got the Muton Elite autopsy that's a pre-req for the Dragon project, whereas I've been using Venom for months. Given that I've just queued up Psi Gate, it's looking as though I'll finish the game before I get Dragons.

From the top of my head this is the stuff that just rely on the roll and can't be modified:

If you have any good ideas for how something like Dragon Rounds or Venom Rounds could be made variable rolls rather than flat ones, let me know. It'd have to be something with very minimal coding, though.

[LordYanaek]

I'm not sure I buy the 'flat percentages are bad' line of thinking. Yes, you can theoretically get every single shot to 100% and eliminate the chance of a miss, but in practice that's not how it works: you regularly have to take a chance on a bunch of shots that might or might not hit, because the costs of getting those shots to 100% are prohibitive. Given that well over 95% of the percentages you'll roll are variable, I don't think having <5% being flat is all that big a deal?

It's not just flat percentages, it's balancing an item through RNG. It's the same story with autoloaders even thought those don't have any direct RNG involved. They are limited to the first reloads while it's possible to code them to be used whenever you want and the first argument that comes when discussing why is "because they would be overpowered if you could use them when you want". But that limitation doesn't make them balanced : they are still overpowered when you get several large pods as your first encounter and useless the rest of the time. Being OP half of the time and useless the rest of the time doesn't make an item balanced, it just makes it OP half of the time and useless the rest of the time.
Vanilla Repeaters were the worst weapon upgrade possible for that very reason. If they did trigger on a fresh alien, they were totally OP (hello Berserker Queen) but most of the time they were totally useless. That didn't make them balanced at all and i'm glad they are gone from LW2.

Maybe sometimes there is no other way to balance an ability and it's less an issue when you consider a bonus effect like Venom/Dragon rounds but it's the worst way of balancing something and should be kept to an absolute minimum.

Regarding the translations:

I understand the constraints and the additional work that is required here, but unless I'm completely mistaken all supported languages use arabic numbers, so if the Tradecraft Tooltip contains a simple (-25%) and you want to rebalance it later down the road, changing the number doesn't require a new translation- again, unless I'm completely wrong about the numeric system used by all those languages.

I don't think every number can be easily introduced as a variable in text descriptions thought. Cooldown and Ammo Usage can but those percentages, if they can they would probably appear as 0.25f or something similar that few players would understand anyway.

My main conern in regards to Debuffs right now is that Poison is completely overshadowed by Fire. The only thing poison has going for it is the bigger aoe of the grenade, but that's not relevant for the corresponding ammo.

The incendiary grenade has such a small AoE that i actually never used it while i did use the Gas grenade a few times. I agree that Dragon Round is strictly better than Venom round but you could say the same of Coil weapons compared to Laser. Some items are just meant to replace old tech.

If you have any good ideas for how something like Dragon Rounds or Venom Rounds could be made variable rolls rather than flat ones, let me know. It'd have to be something with very minimal coding, though.

Just throwing ideas here because i'm pretty good at throwing ideas and occasionally those might even end up not being totally dumb
If you score a crit, the effect is automatically applied. On a normal hit there is 50% chance to apply the effect. On a Graze the effect is never applied.
Alternatively the roll for effect application could be a separate one but the chance would be 40+(crit chance/2) or whatever other formula would feel balanced.
Maybe not ideal, maybe not the same "balance" as 50% all the time but at least you have some control by giving those rounds to high crit builds.

[Saph7]

Just throwing ideas here because i'm pretty good at throwing ideas and occasionally those might even end up not being totally dumb
If you score a crit, the effect is automatically applied. On a normal hit there is 50% chance to apply the effect. On a Graze the effect is never applied.
Alternatively the roll for effect application could be a separate one but the chance would be 40+(crit chance/2) or whatever other formula would feel balanced.
Maybe not ideal, maybe not the same "balance" as 50% all the time but at least you have some control by giving those rounds to high crit builds.

I'm not sure why making them better on crit builds should be a desirable goal. Most of the time, an enemy hit by a crit dies in the same turn, either to the crit or to a follow-up shot. Venom/Dragon are strong because you don't need to score a high-damage hit for them to be effective – a graze is still dangerous.

[LordYanaek]

Well, not every enemy dies to a single crit shot. Some are just too strong. Being able to control one really big guy with a crit dragon round could lead to interesting choices (should i wound and control the big guy and let the rest of the squad deal with lesser threats or outright kill the second biggest guy and hope the rest of the squad can deal with the big one).
Or maybe not, as i said i was throwing out an idea that maybe wasn't totally dumb
It was the first idea that crossed my mind when you asked how they could be made variable rolls but i sure won't fight for it.

[Jacke]

Given that literally every shot in XCOM is also a random percentage, I'm not sure I buy the 'flat percentages are bad' line of thinking.

Since most shots aren't one-shot kills, it's a given that standard weapon damage is a war of attrition, trying to CC and eliminate critical enemies first and grinding ADVENT down until they're all dead. There's multiple shots a turn and it's one of the first principles of playing XCOM that only some shots will hit and they will do varying amount of damage.

But on top of that, there's a percentage gate on limited resources (like the new Flashbang resistance) that uses up actions and even have cooldowns for some. Since there's only usually one or two of these a turn and just a few per mission, the attrition becomes more of an RNG gamble on top of dealing with the base variable attrition metagame. It's an unreliable CC tool where extra tools need certainty.

Example: a Gatekeeper will resist a Flashbang 75% of the time. It's likely due to reduced radius each Flashbang will only hit maybe one other ADVENT beside the Gatekeeper. That means Flashbangs are now unreliable for helping to deal with Gatekeepers. Even using up to 3 only gives about 58% to disorient. And those are 3 grenade slots that could have been used for something else, likely more useful to XCOM.

[Sir_Dr_D]

Just throwing ideas here because i'm pretty good at throwing ideas and occasionally those might even end up not being totally dumb
If you score a crit, the effect is automatically applied. On a normal hit there is 50% chance to apply the effect. On a Graze the effect is never applied.
Alternatively the roll for effect application could be a separate one but the chance would be 40+(crit chance/2) or whatever other formula would feel balanced.
Maybe not ideal, maybe not the same "balance" as 50% all the time but at least you have some control by giving those rounds to high crit builds.

I'm not sure why making them better on crit builds should be a desirable goal. Most of the time, an enemy hit by a crit dies in the same turn, either to the crit or to a follow-up shot. Venom/Dragon are strong because you don't need to score a high-damage hit for them to be effective – a graze is still dangerous.

Well here is another idea. Probably be a bit of work, including from the translation side but totally worth it.

Hack right now, is a silly stat that is super high for one class but ridiculously low for all the others. Even it out more (still having Specialist highest though) and make the skill more meanfull. Remame it 'tech'. It represents a soliders ability to use advanced equipment. It is a knowledge and intelligence skill. Hacking itself could be seen as mostly done by Shen's equipment, and the the Tech skill is the ability to properly connect it. Anyway in addition to hack, tech could also:
- effect percentage chance of the Venom/Dragon round effect
- effect skull jack chance
- effect the chance to stun from a tier 2 sword attack
- sting grenade chance
- Gauntlet fear and flame chances
- effect rocket scatter amount (as a bonus in addition to aim)
- flashbang resist
- arc thrower stun chance
- holo targeting aim bonus
- probably a bunch of other things


It would just allow for so many different variations cool soldier builds. You can have a solider with low aim but high tech, be able to make use of a variety of equipment , that a low tech/ high aim could not. And think of the equipment options this would allow for the specialist, which is considered weak right now. And you could give soldiers hacking enhancments items or PCS to help turn that solider into a combat control specialist.

[Sir_Dr_D]

And status effects were mentioned. Here are some additional ones that could work, and add variety:
- remove an action point from the target on the next turn.
- reduce enemies dodge, and defense

Reducing an enemies dodge and/or defense might be a good one to aid to poison (being poisoned makes it hard to concentrate on defense). It would help make it a more usefull grenade.


-----

[Saph7]

Example: a Gatekeeper will resist a Flashbang 75% of the time. It's likely due to reduced radius each Flashbang will only hit maybe one other ADVENT beside the Gatekeeper. That means Flashbangs are now unreliable for helping to deal with Gatekeepers. Even using up to 3 only gives about 58% to disorient. And those are 3 grenade slots that could have been used for something else, likely more useful to XCOM.

Gatekeepers are supposed to be something like the second or third most powerful single enemy in the game. I think JL was specifically trying to make them NOT able to be reliably shut down by a rookie with a flashbang. He's kind of got a point.

[JoeShmo]

I've had my own issues getting through a campaign, and trying to rationalize / accept some of the more blatant changes between LW2 / LW1 / Vanilla. ( I gave up in 1.1 ...hoping that further updates would address concerns ...though it's been months since then and we still don't have 1.3 even )

In general, I've never enjoyed infiltration, other than it being "close, but not quite" a simulation of original Xcom's multi troop-transport gameplay. Even with the changes in 1.3 coming, it wont change the fundamentals with the system, having to arbitrarily wait time to fill up a bar in order to have less problems show up in the mission. It's like telling someone "You could play a game of football right now...or wait 3 hours and you can start at the 30 yard line with only 7 defenders instead" That kind of gameplay doesn't seem intuitive or "fun". And this is compounded with restrictive team choices, because it affects your infiltration..and success odds. I can understand a limit in the number of troops you can field at one time ...but I shouldn't feel like bringing certain classes, or gear, is risking my chances of success before I even get to start the mission.

In that regard, I think the solution to things like "What grenades do I even use?" can come from having a vastly more intuitive and open idea of what each infiltration mission is going to entail. You should be able to gauge, even in limited fashion, whether you are going to go up against heavily armored units..so then you know "Hey, I should bring something that works against that". You wouldn't want it to turn into something binary..where you just always equip based on what the text tells you to fight..but you should be able to gear up for about 70% of what you are going to run into. That makes PG projects more intuitive, since if you start seeing infiltration missions pop up with a pretty solid theme going on..you have a really good idea of which direction you should be going for the time being research wise. As it is right now, its a complete guessing game, between what a research project will get you, and when, if ever, you can utilize that tech.

And that brings us to closing that chapter of criticism: I don't believe players should feel "punished" for making a decision of research / PG / Troop recruitment / etc. You shouldn't be optimal for 100% of choices ..but you shouldn't feel like you literally wasted hours / days of your time on something you thought might pay off. If its generally understood that you're gong to miss 20% of your shots in combat ...then its reasonable to expect that your ship choices should only miss 20% of the time. And like the OP and others pointed out, Xcom is about taking that certain RNG ..and allowing you to modify it based on skill. I think it works counter to that...to have a system where you don't become "Adequate" until you figure that out, or removing the ability to affect it entirely.

I actually don't really understand the need to nerf Flashbang; it's not like grenades had that great of an aoe coverage to begin with, especially with the Z axis. As much as it "Seems" cheesy to disable a unit for a couple turns, you could have outright blown them up with a different grenade, which makes it more useful mid / late game ..where a target is less likely to get 1-2 shot anyway as enemies become giant sponges. The uncertainty of its effectiveness with resistant enemies just rubs me the wrong way on top of it. We already have a counter to flashbangs, mechanical units, which are pretty dang common later in the campaign, where I would say flashbangs start to actually become more useful as a concept.

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On the other side of the spectrum, enemies using flashbangs ( and the like ) against you early game is crippling, especially before you get larger squad sizes and more access to utility talents / gear to compensate for it. Tools that would help you, like smoke grenades, being less useful at the same time, feels like an overall theme of reducing options to the player, by either making what they use less effective, or making enemies just arbitrarily more resistant to it. It would make more sense to have a change be based on AI interaction, or giving alternative options, rather than just make whats available less useful. Restricting hacking of enemy mech units to once per mission seems like a direct correlation to that kind of theme / thinking, "We can't think of a gameplay way to change this behavior..so we'll just cripple it outright". On that though, is there going to be a similar restriction on PSI skills / etc. that disrupt player / enemy interaction? I might be missing some sort of Meta tactic here..but I'm not understanding why just hacking enemy units needs this. It's kind of redundant if the hacked unit dies almost immediately, and one of the primary enjoyments of having that class of unit in your group to begin with. If there was no RNG involved in hacking it, or it lasted 10 turns...I could see the change.
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I'll have to reserve much of my criticism until after the 1.3 patch..so I can gauge whether things I didn't like are still valid, and/or if having a fresh start can make sense of some of the things I found un-intuitive.

[Jacke]

Infiltration is a gameplay mechanism that requires the player to use more than just an A squad with perhaps a B squad of fill-ins, which is what is common in vanilla XCOM 2. It's also appropriate for a game representing an insurgency. XCOM as the weaker force has to conceal its facilities and troops in the field except for the short sharp assaults where ADVENT is weak and XCOM can be strong that gain the desired objectives; then XCOM disengages back into strategic concealment to rest and refit for the next operation.

In LW1, Pavonis used a fatigue system for the same gameplay goal. This could also be included into LW2. In a similar way, Grimy's Morale Mod has XCOM and ADVENT soldiers suffer Will damage in combat, even when only shot at and missed, sometimes causing them to break. On return from missions, a promotion or rest will restore the lost Will for XCOM, with the Bar having slots to improve the Will recovery rate. I like that it gives a function to the Bar. I've tried it out and I think I may have to turn down the Will recovery rate.

[Tuhalu]

Restricting hacking of enemy mech units to once per mission seems like a direct correlation to that kind of theme / thinking, "We can't think of a gameplay way to change this behavior..so we'll just cripple it outright". On that though, is there going to be a similar restriction on PSI skills / etc. that disrupt player / enemy interaction? I might be missing some sort of Meta tactic here..but I'm not understanding why just hacking enemy units needs this. It's kind of redundant if the hacked unit dies almost immediately, and one of the primary enjoyments of having that class of unit in your group to begin with. If there was no RNG involved in hacking it, or it lasted 10 turns...I could see the change.

Full Override a robot at Squadsight. The gremlin does not activate in LW2 (to fix some really stupid activation stuff). On missions with no timer, you could position yourself to attempt a hack on a Sectopod or Super Heavy MEC an indefinite number of times, giving you a garaunteed bullet sponge and trivializing the mission.

Instead, the game will let you try to hack each individual robot once (not one hack per mission!), which prevents the exploit.

[Saph7]

Full Override a robot at Squadsight. The gremlin does not activate in LW2 (to fix some really stupid activation stuff). On missions with no timer, you could position yourself to attempt a hack on a Sectopod or Super Heavy MEC an indefinite number of times, giving you a garaunteed bullet sponge and trivializing the mission.

Instead, the game will let you try to hack each individual robot once (not one hack per mission!), which prevents the exploit.

Tuhalu has got it. Having a source of stealth plus Failsafe on your Specialist currently allows you to completely bypass hack chances by just spamming Haywire or Full Override until you succeed. This not only makes the mission very easy, but rewards incredibly boring gameplay (you can watch xwynns doing this at one point in his Youtube campaign, and even fast-forwarded it's about as exciting as counting sheep).

[JoeShmo]

Restricting hacking of enemy mech units to once per mission seems like a direct correlation to that kind of theme / thinking, "We can't think of a gameplay way to change this behavior..so we'll just cripple it outright". On that though, is there going to be a similar restriction on PSI skills / etc. that disrupt player / enemy interaction? I might be missing some sort of Meta tactic here..but I'm not understanding why just hacking enemy units needs this. It's kind of redundant if the hacked unit dies almost immediately, and one of the primary enjoyments of having that class of unit in your group to begin with. If there was no RNG involved in hacking it, or it lasted 10 turns...I could see the change.

Full Override a robot at Squadsight. The gremlin does not activate in LW2 (to fix some really stupid activation stuff). On missions with no timer, you could position yourself to attempt a hack on a Sectopod or Super Heavy MEC an indefinite number of times, giving you a garaunteed bullet sponge and trivializing the mission.

Instead, the game will let you try to hack each individual robot once (not one hack per mission!), which prevents the exploit.

Right, so what you are saying is that people who figured out how to "exploit" / game the game...wrecked an encounter. I don't see what's wrong here. The change is just overparrenting, without addressing the actual problem; the fact that you could spam hack attempts at no risk. Where's the feedback damage? Enemy alert? Temp buffing the target? Etc. Things that happen on terminals.

The problem is the player behavior / mod itself..not the the gameplay around being able to hack a sectopod and use it as a bullet sponge. That's the rewarding thing about actually hacking at all. It's like saying grenades / rockets launched from 2 screens away is boring an unfair. Uhhhh, it's not like you can just spam it with 100% efficiency.....

Don't ruin something that's fun, because someone figured out how to break it. Fix the broken part of the game.