Messages

1

Open Feedback / A Challenge

« on: August 05, 2024, 05:10:27 am »

Lots of people play on higher difficulty levels. Here's my challenge: Can you beat the game without taking *any* casualties? Can you avoid having any soldiers die? If not, how many missions can you accomplish?

It's a very different game when you don't want to take casualties -- which is how I play, and why I am so disattisfied with the game. As shipped, it's a meatgrinder.

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Open Feedback / Mitigating flaws in XCOM/Openxcom

« on: August 05, 2024, 05:08:18 am »

There are obviously huge differences in what players want. Most of the players who come here like the classic game (or like it but want it to be more difficult). I'm not one of those. I liked the original when it came out, but I'm not sure I'd like it today.

Grenades (especially alien grenades) are too powerful in the original. It's easy to put an alien in a difficult to assault position that commands a strategic passage and lob grenades at any soldiers who approach. In general, grenades do too much damage over too wide an area.

Some aliens (Chryssalids come to mind) are just too powerful, period. Ethereals before you know about mind control. There are ways around this, but they all seem to involve exploiting other design flaws (e.g., aliens not picking up weapons).

Soldier reaction fire is completely stupid. They might as well be robots. A soldier with a rocket launcher will respond by launching a rocket into a group of its fellows if an alien shows up. It completely breaks any immersion in the game, it's so stupid. There should be a way to set reaction fire only if it won't likely result in friendly fire.

Are there mods that seek to rectify any of this?

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Open Feedback / Re: 12 avalanche missiles (that HIT) fail to take down a Large?

« on: June 19, 2024, 10:25:49 pm »

Maybe so. Games that require slogging turn me off massively.

Fundamentally, XCOM wants to force me to make choices I don't want to have to make in a game because I don't find them fun. That's it. There is always a tension between the simulationist viewpoint -- make things feel more real -- and the desire to play games for fun, in a  more  light-hearted, somewhat unrealistic way. And of course *some* people like slogging, and don't mind horrific casualties, etc. We all vary.

When XCOM came out, I played it and enjoyed it without really understanding a lot of the mechanics. I was pretty new to PC games in those days. So I enjoyed it and didn't really notice a lot of these things. Now, I feel like I'm being slapped in the face.

Another icon of my youth falls by the wayside.

4

Open Feedback / Re: 12 avalanche missiles (that HIT) fail to take down a Large?

« on: June 19, 2024, 05:16:19 am »

Hit it again tonight, after not playing it for most of a year, and had the same reaction.

Beyond flat-out not finding it plausible, I don't play games that force you into impossible situations. Indians defending teepees against tanks is not an interesting game. I want to believe that deaths come from bad tactics, not impossible death traps you cannot avoid. The game tries to force you into invading a full, undamaged battleship, and I don't want to. Seems lame.

Just not for me, I guess. I thought it was brilliant when it came out 30 years ago (-ish), and I'm sure it was, in context. There are still things I like about it, but I'm fundamentally not a fan of games that railroad your tactical options.

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Open Feedback / Re: 12 avalanche missiles (that HIT) fail to take down a Large?

« on: January 01, 2024, 07:47:35 am »

Probably my sense of physics, and the fact that even being hit with one missile is enough to bring one of our planes down. It's too big a brick to swallow comfortably.

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Open Feedback / Re: Skyranger placement is insane

« on: January 01, 2024, 07:43:30 am »

If I load a d20 to favor rolls of 1-4, it might still be "random", but the attack rolls would be kind of tough. Similarly, if the designer puts in a bunch of tough scenarios (that seem unlikely -- why would the pilot put down in a position potentially surrounded by aliens?), randomly selecting between them does not demonstrate the innocence of the design.

I get that it's the kind of game they wanted, but every time I see the skyranger in such a situation, the implausible nature of the scenario irritates me. After 30 years, I get that it's just a flaw of the game.

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Open Feedback / Re: Dumb question, but... new Alien races?

« on: December 30, 2023, 07:12:47 am »

Thanks. I have only played "straight" openxcom.

8

Open Feedback / Re: Sectopods - Can't be Psionicly captured?

« on: December 30, 2023, 07:12:03 am »

Off-topic, but I was able to stun and capture a Sectopod. That surprised me greatly.

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Open Feedback / Re: 12 avalanche missiles (that HIT) fail to take down a Large?

« on: December 30, 2023, 07:10:58 am »

Bluntly, that may be true (given the way the game works) but it is insane and unbelievable. IMO.

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Open Feedback / Re: Skyranger placement is insane

« on: December 30, 2023, 07:08:28 am »

Well, maybe you thought that's what your post communicated. It didn't communicate any such thing to me. I don't even understand what it is intended to show.

But even if "code" (speaking loosely) showed the difficulty came from another mechanism, how would that demonstrate that the design intent wasn't for those situations to be crazy difficult? I don't really follow your reasoning.

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Open Feedback / Dumb question, but... new Alien races?

« on: December 23, 2023, 01:48:18 am »

Has anyone added completely new alien races?

12

Open Feedback / 12 avalanche missiles (that HIT) fail to take down a Large?

« on: December 23, 2023, 01:47:12 am »

What the heck? 6 missiles not killing it I could believe. 12? No.

And it was definitely a large, not a very large.

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Open Feedback / Re: Skyranger placement is insane

« on: December 23, 2023, 01:45:20 am »

No, it's because of:

Code: [Select]

    commands:
    - type: addUFO
    - type: addCraft
    - type: addBlock
      size: 2
      executions: 2
    - type: fillArea

And it's quite believable.

It's not; it makes no in-game, meta-fictional sense. Humans wouldn't do that.

14

Open Feedback / Skyranger placement is insane

« on: December 19, 2023, 03:36:24 am »

<vent>
I know, this is classic x-com. But who the hell would put the Skyranger down in between buildings and the alien spacecraft? Why the hell would you do that?

The real reason, of course, is that the game designers wanted to put you in a more difficult position. But it's unbelievable.

I find myself tired of the whole "guys who can't shoot put on impossible missions" theme. There are many good parts to this game, but that isn't one of them. It just makes me want to play a better game, that knows how to make gameplay interesting in other ways.
</vent>

15

Open Feedback / Grenades

« on: December 08, 2023, 06:43:44 am »

I've played this game a lot. I hate grenades. I hate the aliens use of them. I hate it when I use them. They are too powerful on small maps (particularly alien grenades, which are ridiculous).

I hate blaster bombs for similar reasons.

It's a classic, but there are a lot of aspects that don't wear well over time.