Post campaign feedback
Posted: Sun Oct 15, 2017 10:37 am
So here is my feedback after completing my last campaign-perhaps not worth much but offered in the spirit of helping to improve LW2!
Overall
I think LW2 is an awesome game. Each mission presents a deep (and varied) set of tactical problems that are rewarding to solve (albeit that sometimes there isn’t a solution to be found – that’s Xcom baby!). I think the strategic layer supports and enhances that tactical experience. The effect of the RNG, to me, is not overwhelming but helps to increase the strategic depth because of the range of outcomes you need to consider. I have limited gaming time, so I try to spend it wisely – LW2 is the only game I’ve played in the last 5 months. So if I mention negative things below, please remember that is me talking about the 5% that (in my opinion) might be improved, rather than the 95% that is fantastic already.
Setup stuff
I played vet ironman. Some UI mods (gotcha again, perfect info etc) but nothing touching gameplay. HP and NCE but no red fog. SLG and AH DLC on. I did turn AWC trees on. Oh and towards the end I had the tactical Killcounter mod that showed me number of enemies on map (mostly because of interrupted gaming sessions where I couldn’t remember how many I had killed previously!). This was my third campaign (real life times - first campaign in Jan-Feb 2017 (lost), second campaign from March to May (won), this one June to October(won))
I estimate that a dozen times (across five months remember) the game crashed. I think that’s pretty good for a modded game! I was taking backups of the ironman save but never had to use them, the standard save reloaded fine.
Big picture
I won 12 January. Had avatar easily under control this time, so to be honest I was cruising a little to try and finish the tech tree – but it takes so long I still gave up. Lots of proving ground stuff I never researched either, a lot of it seems no point? The late game grind for necessary corpses was definitely a downer. Overall, I echo the sentiment that some of the late game tech/gear seems like it isn’t really intended to be used (or needed).
I found that all classes were useful and had particular places to shine. In fact, about halfway through I began to impose upon myself strict barracks equality – had to promote equal numbers of each class (including psi but not sparks). So if you have six soldiers of every class except for assaults and technicals (five each), your next two GTS trainees have to be assigned to those two classes. I actually recommend this if there are some classes you often overlook, forces you to think about how best to use each class. Also I allowed mission reward soldiers (but not bought soldiers) as an exception to the strict equality rule (so that makes them slightly better rewards).
I ran specialist officers on most squads – two exceptions were trial by fire officers (one psi, one holosharpshooter).
Campaign progress
I tried to spread as wide as possible at the start, rather than progressing up the objective chain. I found that smash and grabs (+ avenger excavation) were enough supplies for the first few months – but once liberated I was 100% supplies in that region. I didn’t rush psi, but did it after lasers (I think this is standard?) and so had them much earlier than my previous run. I also paid more attention to the recruit job, couple in each region generally, and jailbreaks kept giving me rookies it seemed. So it was really noticeable how much broader my barracks was, compared to my previous run. By three months in I had eight teams in the field at once (none smaller than 4, most at 5-6). All with some old hands and noobs, spread equally. This changed when I sent 8 of my 10 top soldiers to the first HQ, I think this was four months in. From then on I did try to have somewhat streamed teams (alpha team with best gear etc) and match missions to team ability.
There came a point though where junior soldiers (like Sgt and below) were just a liability, even for ex light/ very light missions. I squadwiped a seven strong team with a two squaddies but the rest old hands on a v light mission (reasonable gear too). It became hard to find suitable Trial By Fire missions (long infil, low alert), then it became impossible. Basically, I drew a line and said ‘no more new soldiers’ because there was no reasonable way to promote them up to be useful. Still, this was OK because I already had a deep enough pool to draw from (68 soldiers at max I think?).
Maybe two months after that, I hit the point where the elite mutons and naja elites and superheavy mech balls and gatekeepers and hive queens and sectopods made pretty much every guerrilla ops a potential deathtrap, even for a good squad. So then I had the alpha team infiltrating the major missions (very long infil times of course), the beta team on standby (ufos hunting avenger, plus retals), and then the rest of the barracks sitting around twiddling their thumbs cause I couldn’t send them out on any sort of mission. This period feels… wrong. I know part of it is that you’re meant to be in a race (aliens getting to force level 20 etc) but when you have avatar under control (I had lots of vigilance slowing avatar) then the optimal play is to not do missions (bar the golden path of course). It just feels very gamey!? I was just sitting around praying for troop columns with enough infil time so I could send half the beta squad (+ extras from C grade squads) to try and find those precious corpses.
Difficulty via obscurity
I felt this time (more than the previous run) that unclear mechanics (or interactions between mechanics) caused me to lose soldiers. Sure I misplayed stuff (and ironman, had to live with it), but there are just so many areas where it’s not clear exactly how things work. On the tactical map it’s usually because of border cases or uncommon perk interactions that you rarely run in to – but there are lots of these individually so they do happen a fair bit in aggregate! The only solution is to play an awful lot (not an option for some of us) and remember the last time you came across this particular weird scenario many months ago (I struggle with that too). Pop quiz: which aliens can still melee attack you while burning? Which passive perks are still active while burning? What is the full list of actions you can take that won’t set off that covering fire overwatch? Most of the time, of course, these details won’t matter – but when they do, they really do.
Difficulty by obscurity is also a problem on the strategic layer. I have read pages of stuff on this and I still have no real clue about pretty important strategic mechanisms like mission generation – e.g. what missions will be available to spawn, what the likelihood of the various ‘hidden’ missions will be. I have never seen a UFO mission, for example. Beats me how XWynn knows where supply raids or troop missions are about to spawn. Of course, you can beat Veteran without this stuff – but it does have the feel that the barrier to going up to Commander/Legend is this sort of difficulty by obscurity.
I am aware that this is somewhat unreasonable criticism – the nature of a game with so many different perks/weapons/equipment etc is that there will be lots of potential complicated interactions. The primary thing would be to have better documentation/tooltips, but I know LW2 needs to support many languages and the additional localization is really tough to do. At its core, I guess, you just try and reinforce clear rules and systems so that it is possible for someone with a moderate amount of experience to work out in advance what will happen when encountering a rare interaction. This also means looking very hard at ‘exceptions’ to the normal rule which are great in isolation, but need to be carefully considered in aggregate because of what they do to the accessibility of the game.
Overall
I think LW2 is an awesome game. Each mission presents a deep (and varied) set of tactical problems that are rewarding to solve (albeit that sometimes there isn’t a solution to be found – that’s Xcom baby!). I think the strategic layer supports and enhances that tactical experience. The effect of the RNG, to me, is not overwhelming but helps to increase the strategic depth because of the range of outcomes you need to consider. I have limited gaming time, so I try to spend it wisely – LW2 is the only game I’ve played in the last 5 months. So if I mention negative things below, please remember that is me talking about the 5% that (in my opinion) might be improved, rather than the 95% that is fantastic already.
Setup stuff
I played vet ironman. Some UI mods (gotcha again, perfect info etc) but nothing touching gameplay. HP and NCE but no red fog. SLG and AH DLC on. I did turn AWC trees on. Oh and towards the end I had the tactical Killcounter mod that showed me number of enemies on map (mostly because of interrupted gaming sessions where I couldn’t remember how many I had killed previously!). This was my third campaign (real life times - first campaign in Jan-Feb 2017 (lost), second campaign from March to May (won), this one June to October(won))
I estimate that a dozen times (across five months remember) the game crashed. I think that’s pretty good for a modded game! I was taking backups of the ironman save but never had to use them, the standard save reloaded fine.
Big picture
I won 12 January. Had avatar easily under control this time, so to be honest I was cruising a little to try and finish the tech tree – but it takes so long I still gave up. Lots of proving ground stuff I never researched either, a lot of it seems no point? The late game grind for necessary corpses was definitely a downer. Overall, I echo the sentiment that some of the late game tech/gear seems like it isn’t really intended to be used (or needed).
I found that all classes were useful and had particular places to shine. In fact, about halfway through I began to impose upon myself strict barracks equality – had to promote equal numbers of each class (including psi but not sparks). So if you have six soldiers of every class except for assaults and technicals (five each), your next two GTS trainees have to be assigned to those two classes. I actually recommend this if there are some classes you often overlook, forces you to think about how best to use each class. Also I allowed mission reward soldiers (but not bought soldiers) as an exception to the strict equality rule (so that makes them slightly better rewards).
I ran specialist officers on most squads – two exceptions were trial by fire officers (one psi, one holosharpshooter).
Campaign progress
I tried to spread as wide as possible at the start, rather than progressing up the objective chain. I found that smash and grabs (+ avenger excavation) were enough supplies for the first few months – but once liberated I was 100% supplies in that region. I didn’t rush psi, but did it after lasers (I think this is standard?) and so had them much earlier than my previous run. I also paid more attention to the recruit job, couple in each region generally, and jailbreaks kept giving me rookies it seemed. So it was really noticeable how much broader my barracks was, compared to my previous run. By three months in I had eight teams in the field at once (none smaller than 4, most at 5-6). All with some old hands and noobs, spread equally. This changed when I sent 8 of my 10 top soldiers to the first HQ, I think this was four months in. From then on I did try to have somewhat streamed teams (alpha team with best gear etc) and match missions to team ability.
There came a point though where junior soldiers (like Sgt and below) were just a liability, even for ex light/ very light missions. I squadwiped a seven strong team with a two squaddies but the rest old hands on a v light mission (reasonable gear too). It became hard to find suitable Trial By Fire missions (long infil, low alert), then it became impossible. Basically, I drew a line and said ‘no more new soldiers’ because there was no reasonable way to promote them up to be useful. Still, this was OK because I already had a deep enough pool to draw from (68 soldiers at max I think?).
Maybe two months after that, I hit the point where the elite mutons and naja elites and superheavy mech balls and gatekeepers and hive queens and sectopods made pretty much every guerrilla ops a potential deathtrap, even for a good squad. So then I had the alpha team infiltrating the major missions (very long infil times of course), the beta team on standby (ufos hunting avenger, plus retals), and then the rest of the barracks sitting around twiddling their thumbs cause I couldn’t send them out on any sort of mission. This period feels… wrong. I know part of it is that you’re meant to be in a race (aliens getting to force level 20 etc) but when you have avatar under control (I had lots of vigilance slowing avatar) then the optimal play is to not do missions (bar the golden path of course). It just feels very gamey!? I was just sitting around praying for troop columns with enough infil time so I could send half the beta squad (+ extras from C grade squads) to try and find those precious corpses.
Difficulty via obscurity
I felt this time (more than the previous run) that unclear mechanics (or interactions between mechanics) caused me to lose soldiers. Sure I misplayed stuff (and ironman, had to live with it), but there are just so many areas where it’s not clear exactly how things work. On the tactical map it’s usually because of border cases or uncommon perk interactions that you rarely run in to – but there are lots of these individually so they do happen a fair bit in aggregate! The only solution is to play an awful lot (not an option for some of us) and remember the last time you came across this particular weird scenario many months ago (I struggle with that too). Pop quiz: which aliens can still melee attack you while burning? Which passive perks are still active while burning? What is the full list of actions you can take that won’t set off that covering fire overwatch? Most of the time, of course, these details won’t matter – but when they do, they really do.
Difficulty by obscurity is also a problem on the strategic layer. I have read pages of stuff on this and I still have no real clue about pretty important strategic mechanisms like mission generation – e.g. what missions will be available to spawn, what the likelihood of the various ‘hidden’ missions will be. I have never seen a UFO mission, for example. Beats me how XWynn knows where supply raids or troop missions are about to spawn. Of course, you can beat Veteran without this stuff – but it does have the feel that the barrier to going up to Commander/Legend is this sort of difficulty by obscurity.
I am aware that this is somewhat unreasonable criticism – the nature of a game with so many different perks/weapons/equipment etc is that there will be lots of potential complicated interactions. The primary thing would be to have better documentation/tooltips, but I know LW2 needs to support many languages and the additional localization is really tough to do. At its core, I guess, you just try and reinforce clear rules and systems so that it is possible for someone with a moderate amount of experience to work out in advance what will happen when encountering a rare interaction. This also means looking very hard at ‘exceptions’ to the normal rule which are great in isolation, but need to be carefully considered in aggregate because of what they do to the accessibility of the game.