Pavonis Interactive Forums

I really like 1.3 so far. I thought it would be nice to start a thread with some 1.3 love, plus I'm interested in learning about some of the cool changes that I haven't encountered yet or thought much about.

What are your favorite things about 1.3?

My favorite thing is that there are more pods with fewer aliens, and that infiltration times for very small squads have dramatically increased. This has helped return the classic "5-man squad" feeling of vanilla XCOM2, and I didn't quite realize until now how much I missed it. (Although the extra drone patrols can go rot in drone hell!)

I'm loving it. I really like the small squad missions in 1.3. In 1.2 I disliked the gamey 0% supply raids in and found the covert missions interesting to start with, but very easy and boring after a while.

I am appreciating the accuracy increases at close range for Shotguns, SMGs and Rifles. It's a huge difference early game when you can move aggressively close and get that much closer to 100% accuracy. Even low accuracy soldiers aren't so bad if you have the speed to let you get close.

I really like that facilities no longer have maintenance which caused some illogical strategic decisions early.

I love the change of pace, using a 4 man team on most missions now. S&G is very fun, good job with that one.

My favorite thing is just that it's finally completed and released.

In many ways it's a huge and long-awaited improvement in overall balance and reduced gameyness. You could feel the mod's potential in earlier versions, but there were so many really bad and annoying rough spots that are now gone.

I love the lower pod size as well as the accuracy buff on very short distances.

The former makes fighting through pods more viable, which I love because I've always sucked at stealth, but felt I had to do it because one pod was a significant hurdle.

The latter enables me to plan better, as I like to outmanoeuvre, which was far too chance-based before.

Favorite thing so far is that the mechanic for reinforcements and increased mission timers.

Man, when those reinforcements start dropping it gets really tense! I find that I'm on the edge of my seat more often in 1.3.

My best things:

The move away from stealth towards a really good variety of mission experiences with different emphases that I have to plan around (e.g. jailbreaks are speed, S&G are burst violence, sweeps are big, long fights, etc).

The new soft timer / rnf system, with its fancy traffic light indicator. I've had some epic escapes.

Making psi great again.

Missions not being stealth mandatory anymore is the biggest improvement in my book. I did one mission with two shinobis yesterday but I did it because I chose to and because I felt it was worth the risk. I lost a rookie shinobi but I managed to rescue 4/5 haven members, which is nice.

Pod fighting feels great now and S&G is awesome. Raid supplies and column are super rare now, still hadn't the chance to do one.

Loving the change in maps. A lot bigger, with the evac point usually being more of a hike than before. Fits well with the hard timer increase. S&G is friggin' awesome, too. I love those a ton thus far. The changes to Overwatchers to make them more viable early on is awesome, too, with Specialists getting Sentinel so early and EV being a Ranger LCorp skill as well.

The changes to timers/RNFs in this patch have brought the perfect balance between timers and time to plan for me at least. I feel like I get to do a reasonable amount of planning and maneuvering while at the same time keeping an eye on both counters. When that flashing sign goes yellow, I start sweating, but I still feel like I have some room to plan instead of panicking and dashing for the evac.

I really like that facilities no longer have maintenance which caused some illogical strategic decisions early.

What?? I must have missed that in the patch notes. Wow!

What I probably like the most is that ADVENT strenght seems more manageable during the early game. I'm playing on Legendary, it's April and I've been spamming missions on two regions almost non-stop, yet my home region (which has Lib3 queued) is Strenght 2 and my 2nd region is at Strenght 1. I did set some of my rebels on Hiding and the rest on recruit when I contacted the 2nd region (strenght 3). Usually my home region would be at Strenght 4 by now, sometimes even higher. Weirdly enough, my home region once hit strenght 1 without going into hiding. Hopefully the situation holds for the mid game, where I used to have multiple 8+ strenght regions and only 1 or 2 regions I could actually do missions on.

I also really like Smash & Grab. Not so much the mission, which I do like, but the strategic importance of it. No longer I'm gambling on getting an early Supply Raid with good times to infiltrate, S&G gives me the resources I so badly need to get my building and research going.

Probably the big buffs to SPARKs to make them scale a lot better. Although losing NCE (buggy though it was) made me sad.

I haven't yet experienced all the changes, but so far 1.3 looks like a HUGE improvement over 1.2 in almost every way. And I definitely like new mission balance, now it feels much more natural than 1.2s "stealth + 0% raids win the game".

Similar to others, I'm really enjoying the move away from mandatory stealth and toward smaller engagements that are more tactical. I enjoy stealth in most games, but I found its success in 1.2 too dependent on pathing RNG, which I had no control over, and for some reason it always felt like either cheating or an exploit. I'm also enjoying some of the class variety. For the first time ever I'm building an Overwatch Specialist, which is pretty cool. And I suspect Psi ops will be usable this time around.

The team did a really nice job. I know they catch a lot of heat for various things, and I haven't been shy about pointing out various UX issues either, but for me LW2 is clearly a better experience than vanilla XCOM2, which is the best complement I can give. Well done. )

Had to create a pavonis forum account just to say this mod is amazing with the new 1.3 update, much better balance and levels feel much more winnable than the previous patch, larger map's are easier to traverse in time.

Fantastic work.

justdont wrote:I haven't yet experienced all the changes, but so far 1.3 looks like a HUGE improvement over 1.2 in almost every way. And I definitely like new mission balance, now it feels much more natural than 1.2s "stealth + 0% raids win the game".

+++To this statement

In 1.2 i had few other mods that change gameplay a bit, like the true concealment mod, but in 1.3 everything seem great.

I like that is harder overall and very well balanced.

The only thing i don`t like are the number of enemy perfect shots, even through high cover, and the amount of graze shots from my men.
But today I tried to lower the graze brand to 4% and i like it so far.

Congratulations to Pavonis Interactive having made the 2nd best mod af all time!

I like the new pod types/compositions. I was pleasantly surprised to be confronted by a 6-7 pod of all robots, it was a change of pace and made me actually consider to bring an EMP bomb next time around (although probably not, it's so rare).

I like the overall smaller pods on general ops. I remember once making a direct comment on how size 4-5 pods just killed any hope of bringing middle man squads, and they listened!

I like the psi ops changes (surprisingly many of them were suggestions I made! and I was beginning to lose hope because in 1.2 we only saw some very limited and underwhelming changes to psi).

I like the subtle buffs to the specialist. With more drones on maps and more fights = more wounds, there's a subtle but very real encouragement to bring specialists on regular fights (field surgeon is great to reduce wound time, and I've been getting more bleedouts due to all the fighting so it's nice to be able to stabilize from squadsight). I was strongly considering dumping the specialist because they offer very little combat punch and hacking felt like a crapshoot, but in subtle ways in 1.3 it makes more sense to bring them.

Alketi wrote:For the first time ever I'm building an Overwatch Specialist, which is pretty cool.

Ha! Same here. I'd never built an overwatch specialist before, not in any version of XCOM or LW, but 1.3 made me try one out. And I kinda like it.

Lots of good stuff in this thread that I also enjoy. Smash and grab missions. The reinforcements warning and mechanic (when that baby gets to yellow, especially the second time, I find myself thinking frantically, "Time to make like a hockey player and get the puck out of here!"). I'm looking forward to exploring the revised perk trees, and the SPARK and psi classes.

Thanks for sharing the love!

Oh, I absolutely love the reinforcement counter. I forgot that. I shouldn't have, because it yields so much insight into how safe your squad is, as opposed to just giving you one turn to prepare for an onslaught as before.

I'm enjoying 1.3 quite a lot, just as I enjoyed the previous versions too in their own way. I'm not too far into new campaign, but it does seem that the enemy is "smarter" now at tactical level, the cumulative effect of the various changes. A bit more challenging at least on an individual level even if the missions themselves seem to be easier and faster. I'm going to bump difficulty up a notch on this V/I campaign and see how it goes. I was happy with 1.2 and mission variety, but I'm happy to enjoy adapting to 1.3 just the same. I wasn't convinced by the desire for mid-sized squads, but I see now that it does speed up play compared to top heavy 1.2 squads, while providing the tension of battle. I liked stealth from time to time (particularly as you were never forced into it, even if it was best choice sometimes) and wonder if there will be a little too much gameplay similarity in how 1.3 missions play out over a campaign. But I'm not worried as it is fun anyway and interesting to experiment with abilities and tactics. Hell, it's a free mod that is absorbing and satisfying.

What this team has done without charge is absolutely amazing and really deserves immense respect. Like many others here I'm certain, I will buy TI without hesitation when it comes out, as a sign of appreciation and respect for PI's generosity, expertise, and commitment. Plus, TI will be great too!