Up to 6 troops were fine for 80% of the original game but some of the terror mission and bases called for 8 soldiers (two squads of 4). I guess the amount of aliens you're up against in the new game will be key.
Up to 6 troops were fine for 80% of the original game but some of the terror mission and bases called for 8 soldiers (two squads of 4). I guess the amount of aliens you're up against in the new game will be key.
In the states it basically means goofy or silly.Originally Posted by SectoidSquisher
What's this expression 'cheesy'? Having troops sitting in the Skyranger doing nothing doesn't strike me as 'cheesy'. Maybe it's a non-British thing, I don't know.
I'm not convinced. With me the majority of deaths came from misclicks or the aliens catching me by surprise as I advance from cover to cover.
You could still theoretically finish the mission with one guy with 1 HP left. What's needed is some way to make it so players are less compelled to save/reload. In UFO: Afterxxxx, you had ~7 guys and if you lost one, you generally reloaded because you'd put so much time and effort into leveling them up via an RPG-esque syste- Oh hey there perks. Seriously though, losing even one guy was a crippling blow.From what they said you can and will take casualties and still be able to finish the mission. Like I said, think more in terms of the movie predator instead of the movie aliens.
The original got around this by making guys valuable, but not too valuable. This game is clearly going for the UFO: AFterxxxx game route, which is extremely unfortunate since the number one biggest problem with those games was how few guys you had.
It can also mean making something easy. Such as something that is too powerful (such as the original blaster launcher or psionics) can be called "cheesy" even though you aren't directly trying to abuse the item. Or if you use loopholes, exploits, or "clever use of game mechanics" to greatly reduce the challenge of something that can be called "cheesy" or "cheesing the mechanic/fight."In the states it basically means goofy or silly.
For example anyone who has played World of Warcraft know that rogues have a ton of stuns and stealth. Many people would call these abilities to be very cheesy even though it is not the fault of the player for simply using their abilities.
The original didn't get around this at all!
I bet half of the people playing the old X-Com were reloading too, if their favorite soldiers died in a mission.
What exactly is the problem with that? People will play however they want and noone forces you to reload it's just an option.
Sure it did. It didn't outright prevent save/reload, but there wasn't nearly as much incentive to abuse that function since, again, soldiers were valuable but not so valuable that you couldn't sacrifice them.
I just don't see how this new system they're going with maintains that.
And I bet that most did not. Neither of us have any evidence for our positions, so who's to say who's right? My point here is that X-Com didn't incentivize save/reload as heavily as a small squad game does.I bet half of the people playing the old X-Com were reloading too, if their favorite soldiers died in a mission.
The problem is that the original made both methods of play viable. If you really wanted to you could reload after every death, but you could also soldier on without having suffered too crippling a loss.What exactly is the problem with that? People will play however they want and noone forces you to reload it's just an option.
Well if you actually trained your soldiers in the original, that took alot of time and effort too. I don't think the new perk system will make much of a difference in that point. But yes, the smaller squad size might pose a problem in this regard. But the fact is, we can't really tell that without having any gameplay footage.
I think with the soldiers getting injured it's pretty likely we will always have enough trained soldiers ready to fill any gaps in the ranks, but again: we can only wait and see how things will turn out
That's how I read the line too. Why would they bother implement a mechanic for of "researching to increase squad size" if you can only do it once and it only increases the squad by 2. Let's give Firaxis a little more benefit of the doubt here.
Why? We've been waiting for weeks for more word, and now they've given it to us. So why give them more benefit of the doubt? If they are being misleading or ambiguous that's hardly our fault
The game is still half a year from release, so they don't know what will be in the final release yet. If they start giving away all the details about the current version people will go crazy if the final version is any different.
In the states it basically means goofy or silly.OK, thanks for the heads up, American friends.
Nope. If one of my best troopers died, I winced, I felt the loss - but I sucked it up and carried on with who was left. Reloading? Pah!!!I hope the new game has a proper 'Iron Man' mode where you can't revive a dead veteran in this way.
I hope you're right. Either way, the unit cap is not going to spoil the game for me even if it can't be modded, but I would prefer a few more squad members.
Yeah, talking about things that need sorting out? I hope someone from Firaxis reads this - sort out the spelling of some words, guys! It's 'Squaddie'. Not 'Squadie'.
Couple of other snippets:
(Caption from a screenshot)Almost everything in this scene is destructible.
The first is great news - the second seems to indicate that the ramp exit from the Skyranger has been abolished. Good, or bad as far as you guys are concerned? Personally, I always found the old way a bit unrealistic and unfair.Jake's mission has loaded, and his squad are standing outside a petrol station.
I would say it's a good thing, and hopefully they made the alien spawn points at spots where you can't instantly start shooting turn 1. Was always lame to step out and get killed due to issues with mechanics (the TU/reaction fire mechanic) and it makes the mission a lot easier when you can take out 1-4 aliens in your first turn out of 14-16.
I found one of the things I missed from Apoc was deployment. I think I can see why they took it out (the deployment section of the map would almost always be a bland "underground carpark" area where your vehicle was parked, and they wanted their maps to be all cool futuristic city). I suppose the ramp might have been a bit unfair in that it immediately tried to make you waste double TUs on sloped terrain (which I always found weird - shouldn't you have been quicker going downhill?), though half the time I just make my guys jump off the side, anyway. I like the way Xenonauts is doing it, with the Chinook.
But hold on a second... weren't they going on earlier about the Skyranger needing to be sized and shaped so that it could visually fit a squad inside it? And haven't we seen it in the background on other screenshots? Perhaps this is simply a case of "here's one we prepared earlier"?
Could depend on the mission too.
Could be, but an urban mission sounds like one on which you would have a dropship, as opposed to, say, a base defense mission.
Yea. I'm trying to think about this. We saw a skyranger in the woods, but not in the city. They landed in the woods because that made sense, but maybe they landed at the city airport and took a bus to where the disturbance was.
... I hope they hired the bus driver afterwards, because that man/woman would obviously come pre-equipped with "Nerves of steel" in one of their item slots :PYea. I'm trying to think about this. We saw a skyranger in the woods, but not in the city. They landed in the woods because that made sense, but maybe they landed at the city airport and took a bus to where the disturbance was.
One of the GI walkthrough screenshots shows your 4 guys standing right next to each other and I thought at the time that soldiers would only be like that at mission start, never from player action.
Maybe the Skyranger isn't ready for press demos, yet. It it isn't going to be on the map then would you retreat from a blown mission?
Hah but the bus speeds away, leaving the soldiers alone there. What really sucks is having to flag a cab afterwards when everyone is covered with sectoid goo.
Part of the problem with the UFO After series was that you had a limited number of guys, too. THAT was the main reason I'd save/reload. It wasn't like XCOM where I could lose a guy and think "Oh, I'll just recruit another batch of 10-15 soldiers to replace my losses when I get home." No, in Aftermath and beyond, you ran the risk of actually literally running out of soldiers, if I recall. And that was a major flaw of design.
Good point; even Apoc had those people tube exits.
... and part of the budget for the month goes to keeping a cabbie quiet by paying for his car to be re-upholstered.
Would that concern stay if you could still recruit as many people as you wanted after the mission?
It depends on how they do it. I personally found it as an important balancing tool in Apoc where I could run out of bodies to recruit for a day or two because they are dying off too fast. Wasn't an issue on easier settings, but on superhuman there were multiple times that I was down to 2-3 usable soldiers once the aliens fielded Dev Cannons (basically heavy plasmas for those that haven't played Apoc) and I didn't have anyone available to recruit cuz I had grabbed all of the new recruits for that day. Without the recruitment restriction it would have been extremely easy to just throw tons of bodies at the aliens and simply overwhelm them through numbers instead of tactics.
Yeah, Apoc on higher difficulty actually provides a challenge throughout the whole game! I cannot count the number of "oh ☺☺☺☺" moments, when a scout party gets ambushed a little too far from the main squad, or when you in an open weapons factory or warehouse get massed against 15 blue guys and skeletoids with dev cannons. This really really called for tactics. Which are available because your squad can make use of cover, aggressivnes stance... and to see that cover being blasted away by a dev cannon!
hmm.. I want to play Apoc!
After that description I'd say "Damnit, reinstalling now", but I already did that about three days ago :P
There's a reason why I play Apoc the most even though I like the story/ambiance of EU the most. And it's because Apoc I find to be the most challenging tactically (TFTD is also pretty hard, but being unable to use various weapons on land takes some of the fun out of it). And when it does start to get easier I start doing things like single soldier alien building raids or small squad enemy org raids. Though it is plenty fun to still take a 36 soldier squad to missions and just level everything because I can.
I tried Apoc recently in TB and I just couldn't get into it - I'm going to try again, but real time this time, the way I did back in the day.
I'm not a fan of it in turn based either. Though brain suckers and poppers are even more lethal in turn based than real time; and I bet people didn't think poppers could be any more lethal!I tried Apoc recently in TB and I just couldn't get into it - I'm going to try again, but real time this time, the way I did back in the day.
I’m not sure how familiar you are with a concept called marketing.
Basically the way it works is this: Give details, Let people stew and chew and eat and discuss and generate hype. When the buzz dies down, give another morsel of detail, and let people stew, chew, eat, discuss and generate more hype. At trade shows, (E3 and the like) reveal a bigger piece. This way keeps the discussion of the games alive.
Now knowing that, I’m a hundred percent sure that there are more than 3 species of aliens. So if there are more than 3 species of aliens, does that mean there could be more features they haven’t revealed to us? We are more than 9 months from release. I’m sure that there will a lot more features, and details revealed.
And that is giving them a free pass and not voicing concerns until it is too late. Better to say something and find out later that its a non-issue than to wait and find out is is an issue once its too late to do anything about it.
Especially with a project like this one where there are so many people interested and NOT interested in the changes. Part of me really hopes that they aren't just assuming those concerned will just 'get over it' and actually pay attention to some of these concerns. Of Course, without any of them bothering to talk to us, it's hard to know which way they're swinging on that issue. Yes, we have mods and forum heads to act as our advocates in Codex's words... But nothing replaces actual word from the horse's mouth so to speak.
Yeah I am actually. But if you read my post and what it was referring to you'll see that I was simply stating that I don't think we should give the devs more 'benefit of the doubt' as to their changes, as we've been waiting for their explanations.
I wasn't asking for more tasty morsels at all, just clarification. Maybe read the posts you're replying to? =p
My point was, even if the developers want to give clarification, there are departments that will not allow them to give the information. As stated in plenty of the interview, Solomon repeats “He’s not allowed to share.”
Every piece of information that is allowed to be shared to the public has to be approved by legal, and then fit by Marketing into the Marketing plan. Once these two checkpoints are cleared, they are available to the public.
Fans may want additional clarification from the developers about Inventory, Special Ability, Perks etc. But at the end of the day, unless marketing and legal give the greenlight, developers are not allowed to talk about it.
I think that is a little tiny bit exaggerated.
Legal has no say in the matter unless the people working on it are bound by a specific confidentiality clause. Guesswho you're grasping at straws while you try to blow everyone else's down as I know you haven't seen those contracts unless you happen to BE one.
Every time you bring a product to market, the product has to be checked against a copy-rights and patents database to ensure that you are not inadvertently infringing on an existing patent. This is typically in product development or inception phase. If you don’t do your due diligence and get the proper permissions, you can easily get hit for monetary fines, cease and desists etc. This can be from anything as simple as a feature or even a piece of design artwork (ie your font looks too similar to the Playstation 3 Font, thereby you are using Playstation brand awareness to sell your product).
We can all agree that development in software is not one continuous item. Various work streams work in tandem to develop the end product. So every item from the GeoScape, to the ground combat are all different codes etc, and needs to be checked against patents to ensure that a cease and desist doesn’t just show up and stop progress in its tracks (A rifle that remotely resembles something from Halo would instantly get a legal notification letter from Microsoft, 343 studios, etc).
I’m not sure what the extent of 2k’s owner ship is. Owning the X-Com name brand may not necessarily entitle them to the coding and development that was under the hood of the original X-Com, and a lot may have to be developed in house.
There are people whose entire careers are built around finding any breaches to copyright and patent law violations (A quick google search turned up http://hadoukendude.newgrounds.com/news/post/288843 on the usage of a Nintendo Sprite). I may not have seen Fraxis one, but in my line of work, I know they exist.
I don’t have to see the contracts. Developers are not just given jobs at publically traded companies. Developers are hired with lengthy contracts explicitly stating breach of contract, property of development, security, disclosure agreements, etc. It is not good business practices in publically traded company to hire a developer without a contract protecting development. The last thing you want is a developer coming in, making something at your company using your resources then going to a rival company and using what he developed at your company. This is the equivalent of doing development for a rival company for free.
Again, its conjecture, but not unfeasible to believe that he wants to share more but is not allowed to. Mr. Solomon repeateldy states “I am not allowed to share/talk/discuss those features now.” Not sure who is controlling the green light. My thoughts are is it’s probably marketing trickling the information out. It is not conceivable to dismiss that legal may be pulling the strings as well.
I do not need an economics lecture from someone using straw man arguments in a blind attempt to defend the idea that this game will be the one to rule them all. Thank you however for confirming that you have not seen said contracts and so do not know precisely what they entail, as it reveals quite clearly that you're merely making an educated guess and staring down your nose at the rest of the people here doing the same. And just like the rest of us, the conjecture you want to spread as if it were gospel is just that. Conjecture. I do not appreciate the attempt to force your view onto others simply because they do not agree with you. It's crude, and frankly obnoxious.
What makes mores sense for why the developers are not revealing everything right now?
A. Other departments want to control the flow of information to the public so it doesn't interfere with their work.
B. They are just mean-spirited.
I think deriding arguments you disagree without really bringing any good reason why the argument should be dismissed is more crude and frankly obnoxious than making the argument in the first place.
Was a bit worried at first when I heard the amount is only four as in the original I usually have 8 + an AFV. Thought it would mean that your soldiers are hard to get killed and you'll easily end up having the same guys until the end of the game. But I dunno, after learning more, 4 to 6 seems OK to me if it's well balanced with the action. I think I'll enjoy commanding an elite anti-alien SWAT team.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote