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Discussion about X2 as a whole


Dagar

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Dear Goldhawk Interactive,

dear reader,

this first post aims to present my personal thoughts about Xenonauts 2 and the path the game takes from the information that is given until now, but I invite you to discuss the matter, disagree with me, add points or do whatever you feel appropriate.

I am not an expert in the first game (I am still in my first campaign), neither in the old XCOM games (I played a bit of Afterlight and Aftershock), but I am quite familiar with XCOM: Enemy Within, Long War and XCOM 2. However, I really enjoy Xenonauts and I want the second part to be a success.

Xenonauts 1 aimed to recreate the feeling and gameplay of the original XCOM (or UFO). I cannot really comment on how well this goal was achieved, but I like the outcome. Xenonauts feels like a solid and round gaming experience, which has some rough edges that I generally take to be amicable characteristics that make the game stand out rather than flaws.

From what I have read so far (and I have read the majority of forum threads here) X2 wants to reimplement X1 with better graphics, smoother gameplay and better story. That involves leaving out a fair chunk of mechanisms (which in itself is not bad; "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."), including vehicles (or at least the bigger than one tile ones from X1; entities like drones or SHIVs from XCOM EW might be there), the workshop/lab duality, the story driving research, multiple bases the consequential progression of your area of influence, and troop transport aircraft.

Other mechanisms are altered, like the base layout (slots instead of a grid), the air combat (from single aircraft to squads, more tactical), a perk tree for your soldiers unlocked by 'achievements' in the engagements for soldier progression, the randomized tactical map layout, story and goals for the player and the aliens.

New things also are to be added, like the Psionics system for humans (which already was in the original XCOM) and more mission types.

You, Goldhawk team,  have established a new franchise with Xenonauts, that primarily was there to satisfy gamers that wanted that 'old XCOM' feeling back. Most of the ideas I read about X2 point in a direction of cutting everything that did not work well in X1, and adding mostly better graphics, comfort and story and its related mechanisms.

Your crowd of people are players of the old XCOMs and openXcom for the most part. I think, in general, they are like me in believing that better graphics are nice, but secondary at best. Comfort functions are good and in some places direly needed (like showing which obstructions my shot will have from a certain location). Story in a 'real' Cold War setting is very promising, but from what I read, this might not be all that well implemented.

The bottom line here for me is: you take a bunch of choices we had in X1 (paragraph of things cut) and seem to not replace them. Strategic and tactical games are all about choices the player has, even more so if they are turn based (as you have unlimited time to choose). Where is our East vs. West balancing? If the Aliens try to weaken mankind, the most obvious way would be to make the Cold War go hot. Where are our benefits in more aligning with the Soviets or the Capitalists (i.e. making more missions for them, strengthening their military and independence)? Why are there 5 slots each for management, research and military in the base? Why not make all slots available and let the player choose what he wants to build in them? With more buildings than slots, these will still be meaningful decisions, just more free than in your plan. Why are soldier perks collectibles that are tied to achieving something on the battlefield? There is no real choice there, a sniper will always have to ramp up kills to get these aim perks. What about achievements that give us choice of perks? What about trade-offs of the type '+5 aim, no damage grenades'? Just fulfilling mini missions in the missions is not a real choice, at most a choice of prioritizing. Why have multiple weapon tiers when there are clearly better ones? Instead of limiting our use of tiers by imposing an artificial ammo infrastructure on us, why not make them differ more? Laser weapons could be more accurate and long range, plasma could penetrate armour better, mag weapons could have a chance to panic the enemy, coil guns could have a higher chance to suppress. Even if damage increase during the game should be a thing, why can we not upgrade these systems to have similar damage output in the end to use these unique properties? Why can our soldiers have all their TUs with 30kg of equipment and less if they carry more, but not the other way around? Why only one base raid mission when the aliens clearly could start multiple attempts? Why not a choice between translocator or troop transports? Or both, but none of it that well.

In X1, I built one base with only scientists and a second with only engineers to help their respective output and keeping the infrastructure streamlined. I also had multiple bases with squads in order to answer to multiple simultaneous UFOs shot down. Not all players have one main base in X1 and only bare bones secondaries for scanner coverage and pilots. With only one base, fixed slots for buildings, instant deployment and access to the whole globe from the beginning, you leave a hole in our decision space that should be filled by new, meaningful and thematic choices. I have read little here that resembles these filler choices. Sure, the whole stealth vs. going loud aspect of the geoscape is interesting, but inevitable. You only choose the point in time you do it, and this choice will vanish with experience (namely knowing when you are ready to take on the base assault).

What X1 missed for me was some comfort (like waiting for dawn before going on a mission and the already mentioned shot preview) and more equipment (night vision, smoke vision, heat vision, armour that makes you harder to hit, repair kits for shields, more rocket variants, a camera drone to scout, ...), not that R&D were one and the same or a perk system instead of the rank ups and stat increases.

I know from experience that one's own vision of a product can differ vastly from what a customer might want, and I am just one of them, so please take this post as what it is meant to be: one person's opinion. Just take away from this wall of text that there are people out there that care for depth more than they care for a shiny wrapping. And depth in video games is usually created with meaningful choices.

 

Best Regards,

 

Dagar

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Lol. This is a discussion I wanted to start with my summerisation thread.

I used to feel this a few days ago.  The firaxisation reached a new height with the inventory slot proposal.  But as I review the proposed changes, I realise that this is too early to say which changes will make it or not make it into X-2.  We don't even have a strategic layer yet.

Or, rather, one has been prototyped and scraped, because it doesn't work out as well as expected, and can't fallback gracefully to X-1 model.  So I'll trust that, as long as budget allows, X-2 will discard plans that are not fun and revert to tried systems.  The X:CE model is also a textbook demo of how a trusted community can help improve the game after delivery. :rolleyes:

 

On the other hand, I agree that many choices are being removed from the proposals, sometime for tacking a obvious problem (translocator, shot preview, soldier stress etc.), but sometimes "more interesting choice" is cited as a design reason.  Example: merging lab and workshop force player to choice whether to upgrade now or race to next big tech, the inventory system forcing each soldier to have one main weapon on the ground.

Some of them I can agree with, like squadrons and soldiers attritions forcing players to not fight every mission they can, or to maintain a bigger force than they'd like.  I wish they can be cast in a better light, like instead of "ufo will always shot down some fighters, even against the best players", we can have top condition for squadrons bonus and merely sending them out will drop them to good or average conditions - same mechanic, but instead of penalising player with cost, this reward the players for their choices.

Some of the "hard choice" simply remove strategic depth in my eyes.  Merging lab and workshop, for example, does not force player to make a new choice - X-1 player is already making a choice of build or upgrade by investing more in one or the other, and it's a deep choice because it is slow.  The player can't just shift gear from research to production by relocating staff.  Learning whether they need sci or eng more, and when, is part of mastering the game.  Same for slicing the base into three parts; keeping a generic slot/grid will only make the space contest more dramatic.  If the players want to spend half the base on air control stations (hangers), instead of wanting other facilities, this is a balance problem that should not be solved by an artificial limit.

The inventory slot system is an extension of this "streamline by hollowing" mindset to tactical combat, I think, not to mention the time it takes to design and balance the quick weapons that is a lesser copy of primary weapons, and the limit on play style it may impose (would you not bring psi-shield to fight praetors?).  I can already imagine that when these lesser weapons are in the game, we will see the same problem as weapon upgrade in X-1 and say perhaps we can differentiate them and give player more reason to choice them, or make the primary weapons more expensive to fire to, hay, make the choice "more fun"!

Upgrade is an upgrade.  Players need to be rewarded, instead of facing penalties around every corner - a feeling that we are all too familiar with in X-1 alien bases.

 

I am not against streamlining.  I am all for auto crouching, quick inventory use (not management), chopping multi-tile units, or removing multiple bases.  Sometimes taking away choices will create more depth - decoupling air and ground is one that I see as a win even when player lost the choice of stopping the war in the air.

So, despite the trend that worries me, I still see lots of good and lots of promise in the proposed changes.  I have hope that as these proposals get prototyped, we will be able to iterate and discuss them better and help mould a true successor of Xenonauts, instead of a spiritual successor of XCOM 2. :cool:

Edited by Sheepy
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I can understand where the perception of us overly streamlining the game comes from, but you should also remember that Xenonauts 1 made a bunch of design decisions during development that sections of the community considered massively "dumbing down" the game ... for example removing early game ammo management, or the entire firestorm over having "indestructible" interceptors. However, post-release I saw very few complaints from people that had played the final game and considered it to be too simple.

This doesn't mean that your complaints are necessarily wrong, of course - but be careful of just looking at the stuff we're taking out of the game and ignoring the new stuff that's being added. A lot of people have an instinctive negative reaction to new ideas just because they are different and unfamiliar, but I'd ask the community to try and look past that reaction and test the new mechanics with an open mind. We've no intention of making Xenonauts 2 a simpler game than Xenonauts 1, we just want to make it equally complex in a different (and more fun) way so you're not playing exactly the same game in 3D. We're not chasing the Firaxis XCOM market other than by having better graphics and hopefully a better tutorial this time around.

If the new systems are worse than the original ones then we can always go back to the old ways, but I'm not going to avoid trying anything new because people have dismissed them without actually playing them. Even if only half of them are worthwhile improvements (and we have to abandon the other half) then we'll end up with a much better game than Xenonauts 1.

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Thanks Chris for the answer,

I hope that is not what you took away from my post (the language barrier might have done some harm here, I am no native speaker). I am not a person to criticize new ideas, very much to the contrary, and I love the fact that you try to transport the cold war feeling more than you did in X1.

I just wanted to encourage you to not just remake X1 (as in staying very conservative with changes) or bring X2 closer to 'contemporary' games like XCOM 2, but to build and follow your own vision for the game. From what I have read, much of this vision involves streamlining, which is okay, but with every element you remove as well as with every new element introduced, you should ask yourself not only if it works in the context of the game's setting and rule system, but also if it brings with it interesting decisions, and not only for the first playthrough. You have the rare advantage that you have a fan and player base that likes games that stem from a time where the game did not take the player by the hand and lead him (or her) through every step of the game. We are an audience that likes to find out things for themselves; you had no need for any equipment restrictions for classes, you left it to your players to find out what works best for them; you did not need to press players into building a second or third base and hint what rooms they should be composed of in X1; we found out ourselves that this is a good way to prevent countries from decreasing funding and what it takes to keep them operational. Do not restrict us on needless things like what number of buildings for each type we may build in X2; we will find out what works for us. Do not make soldier development a no brainer achievement collection; give us choices and opportunities to specialize; present us with trade-offs and hard decisions.

I do not fear new mechanisms to learn, I fear that there will be no consequences of what I am doing or that the optimal path will lay out very clear.

@Sheepy: I thought so, but I was not completely sure and did not want to hi-jack your thread.

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Fair enough - then I'll just ask you hold off your judgement on the new ideas until you play them (although I'm not saying you shouldn't voice criticism of the fundamental idea in the meantime). It's just that it is easy to pick holes in the suggested mechanics but the initial forum posts probably don't represent the final form of the new systems, they just give a starting point for the idea that will evolve over time.

As you mentioned yourself we have the advantage of an excellent community here and the feedback and the suggestions from forum users such as yourself help us balance new mechanics or make changes to them which make them work much better. It frequently takes quite a few iterations to get a system right, so if something sounds overly restrictive from the forum post it might not end up that way. I've just seen concerns about streamlining or being overly restrictive mentioned a few times on the boards, and whilst people have every right to voice their thoughts on how the systems sound at this early stage I also think it's important that people remain willing to test the new systems and try to improve them. I wasn't trying to single your post out specifically; I just imagine this thread will become one of the main areas of discussion on the topic so I thought I'd lay out my point of view early on.

As a specific comment on your post; the one thing that strikes me about your thinking is that you're very keen to encourage the notion of interesting choice. All the changes I've suggested to the game have been made with exactly this in mind, but I think it might be necessary to restrict the player's actions somewhat in order to provide for interesting choices. For instance, you're keen to have either / or stat perk upgrades but you're not so keen on a base or inventory system with limited numbers of slots that force you to choose between several powerful items / buildings that could go in each. Aren't they the same thing?

Ultimately the reason why you have restrictive slot system is that you can then put things in the game that would be game-breaking if the player was able to build lots of them. If you have to balance the player being able to combine anything with anything else then you get quite a bland selection of entities that all have broadly similar power levels. To me, that would lead to less interesting choices rather than more.

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Okay, I understand that you wanted to write your position on the topic in a prominent position before any prolonged discussion arises.

I also am aware that the game is in a very early state and that, naturally, you are doing the best job you can to give us a great game, and it is good to read that you have interesting decisions in mind as a leading factor to design the core mechanisms.

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I think it might be necessary to restrict the player's actions somewhat in order to provide for interesting choices. For instance, you're keen to have either / or stat perk upgrades but you're not so keen on a base or inventory system with limited numbers of slots that force you to choose between several powerful items / buildings that could go in each. Aren't they the same thing?

No, they are not. What I had in mind is that you keep your achievement driven upgrade system for soldiers, but give players the opportunity to choose what bonus they want to get once they unlocked an achievement. Let me give some examples:

  • In my game of X1 I use Specialists as mules, basically. They can shoot alright, but they are there to carry rockets for my rocketeer, ammo for my MG gunner or medkits. Let's say there is an achievement where a soldier has to go 5kg overweight into a mission in order to get a bonus to carrying. Now the player can choose between giving the character more strength, a bigger inventory or less TU costs to use or drop an item from the backpack or belt. That way the player can choose one of these that fits his play style and the character the most; is there enough room and he just is there to carry another ammo box more, give him more strength. Do you want more utility (e.g. make him carry a riot shield for better protection), give him more inventory space. Do you want him to be a medic or c4 throwing specialist, give him the TU reduction.
  • One achievement for good shooting could be to kill 3 aliens who had cover against the soldier. Now you could choose a flat accuracy increase, a slightly lower TU cost for aimed shots or to omit the accuracy penalty after movement.

Now, still each soldier can do each achievement and the order in which you attempt them is still as important as if you just have one bonus for one achievement, but you have some choices and therefore means to fit your troops to your needs and play style. This is not the same as your restriction to base slot usage (I have not said anything about the inventory and I am not sure atm what you plan with it); it would be the same if you allowed each soldier only to get five achievements each from the accuracy/reflexes category, five from strength/hp and five from TU/bravery.

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If you have to balance the player being able to combine anything with anything else then you get quite a bland selection of entities that all have broadly similar power levels.

Here we have different opinions. X1 allowed any soldier to carry anything, and still we equip them differently (not just from soldier to soldier, but also from player to player) and there are different roles they naturally fill on the battlefield due to the equipment you brought, the properties they have and where they fit in the squad. It could have been even better in my opinion, but not with any restriction, but rather with a system that rewards not packing your backpack to the carrying limit (e.g. with additional TUs or less TU cost for shooting) and having enough equipment that the decision the player makes is not 'do I take a smoke grenade or a gas grenade more?' (implying that I already have at least one each) as it is in X1 but rather 'I really want to take the heat vision goggles, but I'd have to leave either the grappling hook or the heavy plating. Do I exchange better vision for mobility or survivability?'

Concerning your examples of base buildings in the respective categories, I do not really see any overpowered combination that you prevent by your type restriction, but of course, I might be wrong there.

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