RPS interview going up tomorrow RE: Lethality, GlamCam, Soldier Oneliners!

[katscan]

Yeay! They heard me (yes I will take the credit). Sounds like they are going to comment on 'one liners' and soldier voice confirmations tomorrow on Rock Paper Shogun. I just hope its something substantial ! Also, more on lethality, although today's interview is pretty positive in this regard (22 losses with a core group of 12 guys sounds awesome !)

Also, the other thing that people have been freaked out about: The glamcam. It sounds like they are actually going to talk about it in regards to the criticism its gotten, which is great.

Can't wait. There was a ton of great stuff in today's interview that wiped away many doubts I had. Lethality is a big one, game length is another.

[ShredZ]

All he's going to say about glamcam and soldier responses is that what we saw was demo magic and not to read into it too much - glamcam is only going to be used to reward you for an alien kill or dramatic scene. I doubt the glamcam will do any of those shots from the trainyard demo of a soldier just running!

Mortality rate and length of game look quiet good so far.

[dannysquid]

I always felt that the way your actions played out visually was one of the weakest parts of the original. Isometric perspective is great for planning but not so wonderful for action. Particularly after long range firing. A little bullet pinging between flickscreens. It was as least as disorienting as a dynamic camera and did nothing for atmosphere. I'm surprised anybody is upset about this.

[Inkidu]

Yeay! They heard me (yes I will take the credit). Sounds like they are going to comment on 'one liners' and soldier voice confirmations tomorrow on Rock Paper Shogun. I just hope its something substantial ! Also, more on lethality, although today's interview is pretty positive in this regard (22 losses with a core group of 12 guys sounds awesome !)

Also, the other thing that people have been freaked out about: The glamcam. It sounds like they are actually going to talk about it in regards to the criticism its gotten, which is great.

Can't wait. There was a ton of great stuff in today's interview that wiped away many doubts I had. Lethality is a big one, game length is another.

You know what would be funny? If he said that in regard to soldier V/O, "You know there's this user on the forums named Katscan, and I wish he'd shut up about the soldier V/O."

Yeah, that would be funny.

[DP1982SK]

Hmm... I still have some worries... I mean... It seems the game will be well balanced for the team of 4-6, but I just can't picture some really big assaults where you'll be pitted against 20-30 aliens like it was in the original

If his top soldiers got 40-50 kills.... and it was a long game... doesn't look too warlike...

How many UFOs he's been to? How many terror missions? how many missions in general?

I get these numbers with top soldiers on games with 16-20 missions (Fallout Tactics), so I hardly see here Terror mission 20 and UFO 112...

[katscan]

You know what would be funny? If he said that in regard to soldier V/O, "You know there's this user on the forums named Katscan, and I wish he'd shut up about the soldier V/O."

Yeah, that would be funny.

HAHAHA ! Yea I was thinking that too ;P

DP1982.. I thought he said 70 missions.

@shredz - No. I don't think so. I think the way the RPS interviewer put the question forward, it isn't going to be ABOUT the glamcam (we already know how it works, etc.) but rather about the devisive opinion on the glamcam. I am expecting him to talk about why he thinks it will not disrupt the atmosphere of the game, how they handle unseen shots (not sure if he will ask this), etc.. We already know about its funtionality, but now the questions are more about his response to the community reaction.

Hopefully, thats what I am expecting with the "soldier barks"... more commenting upon how it holds up with the games atmosphere rather than how it works (we already know that).

[Inkidu]

Hmm... I still have some worries... I mean... It seems the game will be well balanced for the team of 4-6, but I just can't picture some really big assaults where you'll be pitted against 20-30 aliens like it was in the original

If his top soldiers got 40-50 kills.... and it was a long game... doesn't look too warlike...

How many UFOs he's been to? How many terror missions? how many missions in general?

I get these numbers with top soldiers on games with 16-20 missions (Fallout Tactics), so I hardly see here Terror mission 20 and UFO 112...

I don't think I've ever killed 20 or 30 aliens ever (barring Cydonia), I often got 10 to 15 average.

[alexey7891]

☺☺☺☺ just got real

[DP1982SK]

I don't think I've ever killed 20 or 30 aliens ever (barring Cydonia), I often got 10 to 15 average.

Then your heavies are lazy or sloppy :P

On my very first terror mission, Yuri (random name) launched a large explosive rocket into three reapers and as collateral he also killed a hiding floater

So if the game takes long, and your heavy support dudes are lucky of not getting shot at, they can easily cramp up a lot of kills during the campaign.

On the other end of the chain are close combatants. Scouts (high TU, decent shooting and throwing, for smoke screens) got the highest KIA rate and lowest kill to death ratio, followed by assault/storm troops (high reaction and high HP dudes with at least average TU).

The second group with very high kill to death rate, are grenadiers. Grenades are the most reliable tool of death in early game, and you can get soldiers with decent str (near 40) and high throwing accuracy (above 70). Unfortunately they need to be at closer range to the enemy, thus they sometimes get mowed by alien misfire or random explosive...

[Inkidu]

Then your heavies are lazy or sloppy :P

On my very first terror mission, Yuri (random name) launched a large explosive rocket into three reapers and as collateral he also killed a hiding floater d

So if the game takes long, and your heavy support dudes are lucky of not getting shot at, they can easily cramp up a lot of kills during the campaign.

On the other end of the chain are close combatants. Scouts (high TU, decent shooting and throwing, for smoke screens) got the highest KIA rate and lowest kill to death ratio, followed by assault/storm troops (high reaction and high HP dudes with at least average TU).

The second group with very high kill to death rate, are grenadiers. Grenades are the most reliable tool of death in early game, and you can get soldiers with decent str (near 40) and high throwing accuracy (above 70). Unfortunately they need to be at closer range to the enemy, thus they sometimes get mowed by alien misfire or random explosive...

Uh... that actually has nothing to do with anything. I mean I've never seen or killed twenty or thirty aliens at a time. I've never ever killed that many. I think I got nineteen on a base raid. What does my heavy use or speed have to do with that?

[ShredZ]

I think the soldiers that got 40-50 kills are ones that were prolly not alive at the beginning of the game, those initial troops are probably long dead. So 40-50 kills starting maybe half way thru the game? Just guessing of course - I don't think that's unreasonable.

As for glamcam stuff, I'm not sure what else he could say about the community reaction, unless he gets into specifics (doubtful?) he won't spoil anything thus will only be able to say wait and see, demo magic, focus groups , play testing blah blah... It would definitely be nice to know how the camera will show 'shots from the dark' in which case we don't understand it's functionality.

So far whenever he's defended a gameplay change from the original, it's been the same with TU, squad size, etc etc it's been the same thing, they play test it, they go thru meetings, they decide if it was less/more fun, and then keep it. It's getting quiet predictable actually. The only thing we can do is steal some new morcles of info and speculate them to death.

[DP1982SK]

Uh... that actually has nothing to do with anything. I mean I've never seen or killed twenty or thirty aliens at a time. I've never ever killed that many. I think I got nineteen on a base raid. What does my heavy use or speed have to do with that?

I believe you misunderstood me.. Not in a one mission, I mean throughout a one campaign... 40-50 is low count for the whole campaign, which can have a lot of missions and in the first X-Com, the small scouts had like 6-9 crewmen on higher difficulty. That's a first mission you are deployed into. (unless you stingray a tiny scout).

His best soldiers in campaign had 40-50 kills... that's a very low count, for what's supposed to be a long play through...

So it is either very hard to keep some heavy or sniper from start to the end of campaign, or there isn't much opposition in terms of Aliens numbers.

have a link at numbers for each UFO type in the UFO:ED

http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Battleship

[Inkidu]

I believe you misunderstood me.. Not in a one mission, I mean throughout a one campaign... 40-50 is low count for the whole campaign, which can have a lot of missions and in the first X-Com, the small scouts had like 6-9 crewmen on higher difficulty. That's a first mission you are deployed into. (unless you stingray a tiny scout).

His best soldiers in campaign had 40-50 kills... that's a very low count, for what's supposed to be a long play through...

So it is either very hard to keep some heavy or sniper from start to the end of campaign, or there isn't much opposition in terms of Aliens numbers.

have a link at numbers for each UFO type in the UFO:ED

http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Battleship

Ah, see no, look at what I quoted. He's talking about taking on twenty or thirty at a time, and I've never had that happen. I know career kills can bank into the hundreds if you're really active.

[mstorey]

I've played through the original several times and have never had one of my guys rack up 40-50 kills. Seems fair to me.

[mstorey]

To be fair, none of my guys lived too long in the original either...

[Inkidu]

I think the best I had was a Captain named "Cap" He was a day-one survivor. He was such a damned good sniper. Nailed on guy down on the other side of the map through two windows. I wish I could have recorded it. He racked up 21 kills before I lost the game.

[ShanDaMan]

For me the ones with the most kills soon were promoted and became too valuable to risk where they were likely to get lots of kills. Sometimes they carried a Blaster Launcher and were able to get occasional targets of opportunity, however.

[Inkidu]

For me the ones with the most kills soon were promoted and became too valuable to risk where they were likely to get lots of kills. Sometimes they carried a Blaster Launcher and were able to get occasional targets of opportunity, however.

I never quite got the logic of that. Your best people who are the most accurate, deadly, hardy, probably had the best kit, and could reaction-fire an alien from across the map gets stuck where he can do basically nothing.

I mean, I get not risking them, but some people never have them leave the ranger. XD

[Dn0uk]

I never quite got the logic of that. Your best people who are the most accurate, deadly, hardy, probably had the best kit, and could reaction-fire an alien from across the map gets stuck where he can do basically nothing.

I mean, I get not risking them, but some people never have them leave the ranger. XD

I used to set up my highest ranking officer with a blaster launcher and jet pack em up on top of the ranger between the tail fins.......craven I know but I'd grown attached.

[obi-one-kaboozi]

Where can we find the link or details to this interview?

[Lavanese]

It's up!

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012...onal-kill-cam/

[Jeep-Eep]

You also have the option to turn off soldier voices.

Happy, Katscan?

[Dn0uk]

Have to say I'm happy with the option to turn off health bars and damage indicators, it's a major plus for the 'oh sh*t!" moments!

[Luthorian]

Agreed, and the game now forces you to pick what you really want from the aliens, kill them for resources or capture them for their weapons.

[Jeep-Eep]

Have to say I'm happy with the option to turn off health bars and damage indicators, it's a major plus for the 'oh sh*t!" moments!

Yes. With that, my final reserve has been dissolved. I'm going to preorder this for sure.

[IrishSamurai]

Ok, good news on the optional soldier voices. Glam cam i'm actually looking forward to provided it's used sparingly. Also good to hear that we can shut off health bars...though i wouldn't mind having it tied in with research on some sort of scanner or probe. I do have two small criticisms though.

1) Jason seems easily distracted and at times incoherent. Maybe it's just how the interview is transcribed though. He started talking about Classic Mode and his goal for it, then goes totally off topic and raves about the Memorial. Then he never returns to the Classic Mode topic. This is what i'm talking about...

"Jake Solomon: It depends. Let’s say you were to play classic difficulty. My goal with classic difficulty is to have an experience that’s not about winning the game. That’s what classic difficulty is. I’m not saying that people won’t win that difficulty level, I’m sure they will, but that’s not what I’m intending with it. I guess that what I’d say is that because I just finished the game last night, and I lost twenty-two soldiers, which is a significant amount, and again I went on a mission where I lost four out of my six, and one of those had already been on twenty missions.

You can go to the memorial wall where you can see all the guys who have died, and it tells you how many kills they had, how many missions they went on, what operation they died on..."

2) I seem to recall in earlier interviews that you would have to make tough choices when it came to research. That researching one tech would close the door on another tech. Now it sounds like you can research everything if you stretch the game out, with the only real cost being time and resources. I kind of liked the idea of not being able to research everything in one game, requiring multiple playthroughs.

Ok, bonus nitpick/gripe: This talk of Operations, like what operation your soldier was on when he died. I noticed in the first demo that the mission appeared to be called Operation: Enduring Sleep. Call me old fashioned, but i never liked this trend towards referring to modern military actions as Operation Desert Storm, Operation Iraqi Freedom, etc. War is war. Conflict is conflict. There hasn't been an official war since Vietnam. It's like giving them fancy names makes them less depressing or something, but I digress. It's just that i'd rather see that my soldier died during the Chicago Terror Attack than Operation: Stalwart Resistance or something.

Ok, done ranting. Overall, i'm pleased with the information in this latest interview.

[Gazz]

Jason seems easily distracted and at times incoherent. Maybe it's just how the interview is transcribed though.

That's actually a common trait of creative people. Leaping from thought to thought like a squirrel on crack... hmm, we should have an alien that can leap great distanc... err, what where you asking? =P

That's why companies often lock them up safely and let public relations types do the talking. =P

[Luthorian]

I believe the tough research choices were directly tied to time and resources, not locking out tech.

[Gazz]

That's how I read it, too.
Unlike other games you do not have to go through a static chain of 5 other research projects until you are allowed to research the plasma rifle you just captured.

[Zxc]

If I read it correctly, it sounds like they replaced the stun rod with an Arc Thrower which sounds like it is still a "melee weapon" as opposed to a ranged weapon. I wonder why. I like the idea of the imbalance between a lowly human stun rod and a high tech alien stun launcher.

Oh well, I trust Firaxis play-tested it.

[heniv]

I found this really interesting:

RPS: In terms of research, is it a fixed linear tech tree , or branching? You could have gone down human or you could have gone down alien, say.

Jake Solomon: No, it’s a big, big tree and what we’ve tried to do is also, speaking about interrogations, in the original there wasn’t as much value sometimes in autopsies and interrogations. They were awesome narratively, but there were techs that actually wouldn’t grant anything, and so one thing we did was we made sure that every tech grants something. It has to grant something.

The way that actually works, there is something like that, but we have the actual alien tech, and that’s what your scientists work on. In addition to that, there’s a facility called the Foundry, which is almost like an engineering tech tree, and so when you build that, that’s how the player builds SHIVS, which are the tanks in our game, and that’s sort of like an engineering focused thing like ‘Oh, here’s improved pistols’ or ‘Here’s the different types of SHIVS’ and here’s all these things, and so that is in essence a tech tree.

And then of course you have the Ops which is almost like a soldier tech tree, but it’s pretty flat, I don’t want to misrepresent it, it’s more like upgrades for your soldiers. And so we have these different facilities, one: you have to build the facility, and then two: you’re never going to be able to do everything unless you just really stretch out the game. So it’s the sort of thing where on my last game, I wanted to, I set out being like ‘Oh, I’m going to do a bunch of engineering stuff, I’m going to build a bunch of tanks.’ I just never got around to it, just because resource-wise I didn’t spend it on all the tank upgrades.

So the science tech tree branches in all kinds of different directions, but at the end of the day you could conceivably map out the entire tech tree if you really took a long time. And based on what bonuses you got, you could conceivably do the entire tech tree. So it’s not an either/or thing, but then when it comes to the Foundry and the tech tree, you have to make choices about what you want to spend your resources on.

It does look like they have expanded/remade the techs-advancement in this game.
- Science Labs seems like the place scientists research Alien tech unlocks.
- The Foundry seems to have similar upgrades/unlocks.
- "The Ops" (Officer Training School? RPS typo perhaps.) for soldier upgrades.

I really like the width of all the "research" and the different paths they seem to take you. Not the linear progression tree with some additions like in the old game.

[SectoidSquisher]

Good: we can turn Alien health bars off. That'll be the first thing to go in my game.

When they die their weapons self-destruct but if you capture those aliens, then the weapons don’t self-destruct, and then you can research those.

I called that first.

Stun gun of some sort is in.

In your base, whoever it is you brought back last, you can actually go down there and look at them and there’s your scientists kind of standing around, looking at the alien containers and taking notes, and there’s this big Beserker behind the glass pounding on the window.

Ha ha!!! Love that!

What I don't understand is 'gating' - what is 'gating'?

Jake Solomon: No, it’s a big, big tree and what we’ve tried to do is also, speaking about interrogations, in the original there wasn’t as much value sometimes in autopsies and interrogations. They were awesome narratively, but there were techs that actually wouldn’t grant anything, and so one thing we did was we made sure that every tech grants something. It has to grant something.

Good, good.

Oh just shurrup and give us the game!!!!

[heniv]

What I don't understand is 'gating' - what is 'gating'?

I assume it's when you put something in the way of gameplay progression. Like a physical gate. Hence you need a key or something to pass that point, much like research.

[Dn0uk]

Oh just shurrup and give us the game!!!!

Agreed! I wish they hadn't mentioned anything till July/August, it's killing me!

[ShanDaMan]

So alien weapons self destruct upon their owner's demise, but stunned aliens' weapons are available for research? So to research the new version of the Blaster Launcher (hopefully in the new game) I have to send my guys to zap it's carrier while not getting blown to bits? Can't wait!

[ShredZ]

It almost sounds like you cant manufacture alien weapons, or ? If you capture a live alien you can research his weapon to use it, but you still only have that one, it didnt sound to me like you could get lots of them, maybe thats just me.

Also, turning off health bars on the aliens to me would feel like you are bumping the game up a difficulty level, or maybe half of one. Just like he said, you might be wasting your last shot on something thinking fer sure its about to die, when its got a lot more health than you thought.

Im glad for the stun-gun arc thrower, electrocuting a berserker is going to be amazing!

This waiting for the game is definitely testing my patience.

[Oathbreaker]

Option to turn off floating health, floating damage numbers. I'm sold. Take my money. SWEEEEEET!

[Usul]

RPS really makes good interviews. They ask the right questions and we recieve new information. Thumbs up for them, while everyone else is doing the same old interchangeable boring interviews.

[DazzD]

It was a very good interview and answered more forum questions than the last several put together

1. I love the sounds of the weapons self destructing. Means if we want them we really need to earn them!
2. We can toggle on and off all the UI items that are pissing everyone off!
3. Stun gun/wand is back in the game!
4. It sounds like the weapons are fairly open for us to get (not a set path of one to the next) but again we just need to 'earn' them.

That's 4 wins in my book. OK take my money... I never see it anyway!

[Aknazer]

Gating is putting something in your way to prevent you from doing something until later. For example if you had to research elerium before researching plasma weapons that would be gating because even though you have the plasma weapon, you can't research it until the "gate" (elerium) has been passed.

The arc thrower sounds like the new cattle prod, err stun rod, and is a slightly gated item. "...You have to gate it a little bit because you don’t want the experience to be ruined, but first you have to build the Arc Thrower, you have to build the alien containment facility..." so depending on how you start your game and how soon the first mission is, you might not have the cattle prod for a little bit. Plus I wouldn't be surprised if you can't capture their weapons if you don't have an alien containment facility (since w/o one the alien would die). Also I don't know if a small stun launcher will be in the game given this line: "...I never liked the small stun launcher in the original, I always liked that real terrible moment of ‘get in there with the stun rod’..." so it is possible that the aliens won't have a stun gun this time around.

Overall I'm looking forward to this game. Also having the ability to remove damage/health info will help make it much more like the original game and should make it more fun.