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So what`s with this mentality of Devs \Publishers? With Graphics vs Depth.


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It always puzzles me this...

You get a game like Xcom unknown released by firaxis and the graphics are great and immersive, just what I like- BUT the depth is shallow, like the toddler section of the swimming pool, wasting a potentially superlative game.

Then you get Xenonauts, excellent depth that keeps you really going, but when you want to see that soldier closer blasting that alien closer in the graphically enhanced neighbourhood... well you get a very 2D far away view instead. Except for the UfO-Air intercept which is the best yet!

Why can`t someone make a spread-sheety game like Xenonauts with the eye-ish bleedin` graphics of enemey unknown?

I don`t see why the two need to be apart save for money constraints. I mean a spreadsheety, graphicy game can always have a `simpler` mode as well, pleasing all.

It seems the mindset of publishers\devs is either spreadsheet or glossy graphics but never the twain to meet!:confused:

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Because you can't have both at the same time. Also, i find it puzzling that you liked the disgusting cartoonish cardboard graphics of firaxis spawn. It was horrible, just horrible. Also, what's a spreadsheety game? Xenonauts? Did you see paradox strategies yet?

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I think you can have both at the same time.

Spreadsheety is a term for games that go into loads of depth with stuff like ammo, cash, stores, etc. Basically it`s just a numbers game.

As for the graphics well, I don`t understand your aggressive attitude and assumptions. All i`m saying is it would be nicer for the graphics to be better, perhaps to the level of Silent Service- have you tried that? But I found the graphics in enemy unknown very acceptable.

I`ve seen paradox stuff.

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Good graphics is good, but what firaxis made is anything but. I see the same trend everywhere, with warcraft 3 looking worse than warcraft 2, ra3 worse than ra2, tibwars and tibtwilight absolutely disgusting even not compared to tibsun, etc. If you want truly great graphics, with 3d and all that jazz - it takes a lot of time, money and worhours that could have been spent on content of the game. So, the better it looks, the worse it gets on the inside. Unless you have unlimited time and resources, of course.

As for spreadsheety, xenonauts is not that at all. There's very little to calculate, move around and things like that.

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I don`t see why the two need to be apart save for money constraints.

I think this is more or less your answer.

That aside, games with lots of micro-management tend to be more niche than those without. Therefore they tend to be games made with small budgets and therefore less developed graphics. Don't want to imply that this is universally true, but I think this assertion stands up more often than it doesn't.

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The answer is simple. Two things, one the games with awesome graphics and sound cost a lot of money to produce. It takes dozens of artists and designers to produce them that's big $$. So, they dumb down the game to appeal to largest possible audience because they need to sell a lot of copies to recover their investment. Teenagers and children that like shooters aren't going to play Hearts of Iron, etc... Second reason, the is tied to the first reason, the game has to run on a console. Again, this is to sell to the largest possible audience. That means it needs a simple interface that you can easily operate with a console controller. Simple interface = simple game. One really good example of this dumbing down is MorrowWind -> Oblivion -> Skyrim. You can see a progressive removal of features and complication with each iteration. Anytime big business gets a hold of anything and marketing and accounting people get involved any type of thinking requirements go to hell. They even dumbed down Dungeons and Dragons to increase the audience. Blockbuster movies have simple plots and lots of special effects. Same principle.

Edited by StellarRat
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This is not a mentality issue, it's a reality issue.

Modern 3D graphics cost a lot of money to produce. A lot. Cutscenes, animations, everything. Xenonauts had 155k $ on Kickstarter. That's much less than the cinematics in the Firaxis game alone. To make a profit, a game like the Firaxis XCOM needs to sell a lot of copies. Hundreds of thousands of copies just in the first post-launch months. Otherwise, the game will not succeed financially.

A company like that also understands that you can only sell so many companies by having the appropriate game mechanics. Something like Xenonauts is a nice game. It's too complex to sell a million copies. You have to make a game that's mechanically simpler to sell that much, and actually Firaxis is quite good at that balance. They have probably the most complex games that still enjoy triple-A level sales. XCOM, and the Civ series, are really pushing the amount of complexity that can still be sold in those quantities.

There isn't a big reason not to have both apart from money, but money is a big reason. A game like Xenonauts would not even have been developed had the initial budget been in the hundreds of thousands dollars - originally it was being paid for out of Chris' own savings, and with an estimated development cost of just 14 000 USD.

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It always puzzles me this...

You get a game like Xcom unknown released by firaxis and the graphics are great and immersive, just what I like- BUT the depth is shallow, like the toddler section of the swimming pool, wasting a potentially superlative game.

Then you get Xenonauts, excellent depth that keeps you really going, but when you want to see that soldier closer blasting that alien closer in the graphically enhanced neighbourhood... well you get a very 2D far away view instead. Except for the UfO-Air intercept which is the best yet!

Why can`t someone make a spread-sheety game like Xenonauts with the eye-ish bleedin` graphics of enemey unknown?

I don`t see why the two need to be apart save for money constraints. I mean a spreadsheety, graphicy game can always have a `simpler` mode as well, pleasing all.

It seems the mindset of publishers\devs is either spreadsheet or glossy graphics but never the twain to meet!:confused:

I have seen time again and again about Firaxis Xcom "BUT the depth is shallow, like the toddler section of the swimming pool" liek posts and i must strongly disagree.

It seems one thinks he looks smart and sophisticated if he says that , that its fashionable. Well I have alrdy sunk a fair amount of time in Xenonauts and i wouldnt say Xcom EU is more shallow then Xenonauts.

Xenonauts is more complex, got much more moving parts, and tries a bit more to be realisitc in place of pure gamey approach of Firaxis Xcom, but depth wise im not sure i see a clear winner here.

If you choose the right difficulty level for you personally to tax you (for me it was Impossible diff) in Firaxis Xcom , you start to see how each decision is important and linked to other parts of the game, how deep the game truly is , even thedeceptively simple geoscape.

Firaxis Xcom and Xenonauts are different games, but imho both quite deep and very good.

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I have seen time again and again about Firaxis Xcom "BUT the depth is shallow, like the toddler section of the swimming pool" liek posts and i must strongly disagree.

It seems one thinks he looks smart and sophisticated if he says that , that its fashionable. Well I have alrdy sunk a fair amount of time in Xenonauts and i wouldnt say Xcom EU is more shallow then Xenonauts.

I tried to show both sides, but as usual on the net more is taken out of what I said. I actually liked Xcom - a lot, I thought that was clear. I played it to the end and and enjoyed it for the most part. It`s racey, the music`s great and it has some immersion. However, when I am unable to do something as simple as pick up an Arc-Thrower or rpg dropped by the only guy who had one because the Devs decided it would `appeal to as broadest amount of people as possible` then i`m afraid that`s when the `toddler end of the pool` analogy, compared to say Xenonauts, comes in- is it not?

Thankfully, they just saved it by keeping the difficulty level.

Anyway, I appreciated all of your responses. i hope one day someone will try to include depth as well as eye-candy and who knows, it might even be me putting up the capital! :rolleyes:

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Nah. Firaxis Xcom is dumbed down to the core. You want complexity? Too bad, here scripts.

But it really isn't. It's certainly a lot more intricate than the original X-Com ever was.

(That's not to say that XCom is flawless. It isn't. But it nevertheless does have a lot of depth to it.)

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I tried to show both sides, but as usual on the net more is taken out of what I said. I actually liked Xcom - a lot, I thought that was clear. I played it to the end and and enjoyed it for the most part. It`s racey, the music`s great and it has some immersion. However, when I am unable to do something as simple as pick up an Arc-Thrower or rpg dropped by the only guy who had one because the Devs decided it would `appeal to as broadest amount of people as possible` then i`m afraid that`s when the `toddler end of the pool` analogy, compared to say Xenonauts, comes in- is it not?

Thankfully, they just saved it by keeping the difficulty level.

Anyway, I appreciated all of your responses. i hope one day someone will try to include depth as well as eye-candy and who knows, it might even be me putting up the capital! :rolleyes:

Yeah but does really being able to pick up stuff really add to depth of gameplay?

Xcom is a tactical game , and what it really aims at and excels is a chess like gameplay, the ccoperaton of your soldiers on the battlefield, flanking, destroying cover, using the abilities and it where the depth is and where it excels.

It doesnt want try to be any kind of simulation , it has abstract rules a bit like chess, and like chess, its hardly shallow.

I read once and found again a very good article about this http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/EricSchwarz/20121116/181726/Why_XCOM_Didnt_Work_For_Me_Simulation_vs_Strategy.php

altough i personally disagrtee with the conlculsion , imho firaxis XCOM is a great , deep game. But imho the article captures perfectly the different approaches and feels of the games. Much of what in the articles descibes the orginal game can be applied to Xenonauts.

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Thinking that Firaxis XCOM is relatively shallow has nothing to do with being "fashionable." It just is. Heck, there's not even an AI to speak of, and aliens just kinda appear.

I'm not sure the mechanism by which aliens come to engage your soldiers in XCom is really any different to that in Xenonauts. In both games, aliens patrol around minding their own business and will sometimes home-in on your troops. In both, aliens will put out a call for assistance to other aliens when they are engaged. But in neither will the aliens deliberately make an effort to flank, surround or otherwise outmaneuver you (which I'm taking to be your complaint with XCom). So there's not really a great deal of difference at all so far as I can see.

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Usually it is money, and how fucked the industry is these days.

Big publishers have been pushing more and more money to theyr games, so you need to make more money too. Consumers expectations of graphics and such have been raised to higher and higher in result. Now what that leads to is minimizing the risks, mainstream/streamline it, so on. You want as big focus group as possible.

So, we get X-Com 2012. Was it's focus group all those people who have been asking years and years remake, or new broader audience, majority of them don't even know what X-Com is. I think every one who played the game knows answer to that. It had the bones of X-Com, but all the meat was chopped of, and those bones broken or deformed to new shape, and all frapped in nice pretty package.

Smaller budget game, less risk involved, more freedom to move away/stay away from the path of "mainstream". Ofcourse other case when you don't have publisher, crowd funding instead, you have more free reign, but not necessary the funding.

I don't know, OP dissing 2d graphics. in Xeno there is couple art assets that bothered me, but in generall I love the in-game art style, I like the fact they kept it "real" to the original, Xenopadia and backrounds in genrall look awesome too. Good looking game isn't same as the latest and greatest game engine.

Mechanics always > Graphics tought. In spread sheet games presentation isn't about flashy effects, or camera runs or such, but transparency and functionality. You could potentially have both, but would you have the money and resources to do both, and keep the intgrity of your game the same? USually the answer would be no. Some rare examples is there, like Civilization serie, and I would say TW-serie, but Rome 2 was so many steps backwards in terms of mechnics and depth, and steps forward in terms of visuals, with the biggest budget ever for TW-game, I think it is good example how the industry is in deep hole (from the point of view of gamer), and they are themselves digging it.

Joes review of Rome 2 at 19:30 minute mark and minute forward express perfectly how I felt after playing Rome 2 and X-Com. Quite common thing these days.

Edited by kahvipannu
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I'm not sure the mechanism by which aliens come to engage your soldiers in XCom is really any different to that in Xenonauts. In both games, aliens patrol around minding their own business and will sometimes home-in on your troops. In both, aliens will put out a call for assistance to other aliens when they are engaged. But in neither will the aliens deliberately make an effort to flank, surround or otherwise outmaneuver you (which I'm taking to be your complaint with XCom). So there's not really a great deal of difference at all so far as I can see.

What? Did you never notice the way most packs in the Firaxis version don't activate until you enter visual range? It's completely different. They just sit there until they are spotted, which is why they get an extra turn. They can literally be sitting one tile beyond visual range while a battle is going on, and will not move until you move a little farther forward. That (and a couple other factors) means you basically don't have to worry about getting sniped from beyond visual range. I'm sorry, but if you didn't notice the differences, you weren't paying attention.

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What? Did you never notice the way most packs in the Firaxis version don't activate until you enter visual range? It's completely different. They just sit there until they are spotted, which is why they get an extra turn. They can literally be sitting one tile beyond visual range while a battle is going on, and will not move until you move a little farther forward. That (and a couple other factors) means you basically don't have to worry about getting sniped from beyond visual range. I'm sorry, but if you didn't notice the differences, you weren't paying attention.

In the Enemy Within expansion, the alien packs at least move around a bit. I've had instances where I was fighting Sectoids and some Floaters came by and killed my guys.

That said I do prefer Xenonauts.

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What? Did you never notice the way most packs in the Firaxis version don't activate until you enter visual range? It's completely different. They just sit there until they are spotted, which is why they get an extra turn. They can literally be sitting one tile beyond visual range while a battle is going on, and will not move until you move a little farther forward. That (and a couple other factors) means you basically don't have to worry about getting sniped from beyond visual range. I'm sorry, but if you didn't notice the differences, you weren't paying attention.

And ofc, mr. know it all , you got it wrong. In Enemy Unkown most of the alien spawns are moving all around the map, and when they enter your los are activated. Some sit in place, most jump around the map all time, and will enter your los even if you dont move.

What it accomplishes is you dont have to creep throgh the map ultra slow, cause you got only to worry if you activate a pack. I think both soltuions have its advatages, and disadvantages.If in Xenonauts you didnt have shields, on veteran difficulty scouting would be a bloodbath, you would loose half your squad on scouting.

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What it accomplishes is you dont have to creep throgh the map ultra slow, cause you got only to worry if you activate a pack. I think both soltuions have its advatages, and disadvantages.If in Xenonauts you didnt have shields, on veteran difficulty scouting would be a bloodbath, you would loose half your squad on scouting.

Well you know that is exactly what people call simplification. Which is what people are talking in this thread, not fun factor. Firaxis game was fun. But game complexity is not the same. In Xcom EU devs took out the big choices you have to make from you to concentrate on GC so basically if you do well in GC it s really really hard to loose (not to say impossible, or arbitrary in the higher game difficulties but not choice driven). Which creats a game WAY less complex than the original or xenonauts.

Moreover on the subject of enemy procs i dont know why they choosed this method. It is one of the big let downs for me. I wonder why they did it tis way? Simpler to implement or Simpler for the player to predict ennemy position? Seriously where did they find this weird spawn idea?

edit: and by the way i dont like your tone insulting other posters with mr know it all and the likes. Dosent speak well of you.

Edited by Saskali
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What? Did you never notice the way most packs in the Firaxis version don't activate until you enter visual range? It's completely different. They just sit there until they are spotted, which is why they get an extra turn. They can literally be sitting one tile beyond visual range while a battle is going on, and will not move until you move a little farther forward. That (and a couple other factors) means you basically don't have to worry about getting sniped from beyond visual range. I'm sorry, but if you didn't notice the differences, you weren't paying attention.

But they don't just sit there until they are spotted, at least not all of them. Some patrol, some stay still. Either way, sometimes they will move to assist other alien groups (although this is partially difficulty-level related). Those are precisely the three basic behaviours that aliens in Xenonauts use.

Yes, there's some oddities in terms of how the XCom system works like the one you described. But you could make similar complaints about aliens in Xenonauts (they don't tend to bad together to form groups; aliens in UFOs tend strongly to stay in them with some small exceptions; the AI will sometimes freeze and not do anything or wander around aimlessly, etc.). Non-optimised AI != No AI.

(That said, from a game mechanics point-of-view, waiting for the player to spot AI units is actually more advantageous than the AI moving to attack the player in XCom because of how alien activation works. So waiting for the player can in many ways be the better option for the AI to take!)

(Also, this is entirely ignoring the tactical AI which kicks in when aliens in XCom are activated.)

As for getting sniped from beyond visual range: how many people actually want that? Xenonauts has this, and I've only ever seen people complain about it. (Ironically, I'm fine with it, but it just wouldn't have worked in XCom for all manner of reasons.)

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People complain about anything. That doesn't make removing features any less of dumbing down.

I'm not even sure why some people try to defend that horrible abomitnation firaxis game was. Is it fashionable to be against the general stream, to paraphrase some firaxis defender? Seriously, it's like some kind of mmorpg met x-com and they spawned a hybrid that got everything wrong. All the special abilities like "FIRE A MISSILE" made me die a little inside, and the general tone of this game was about bunch of superheroes mowing down dozens of aliens with their superweapons who mostly didn't even activate until you went further, thus reducing almost every mission to boring shooting range. (i played at maximum difficulty of course)

And i'm not even touching the geoscape and "strategic" part of the game, that with only one base, interceptions even worse than in the original (how could that even be possible?), inability to react to different missions at once, hit points instead of proper armor... all in all, this is just cartoony farce instead of a proper remake.

But yeah, it sells better.

Just don't sell it here.

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