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Plese don't balance it like OpenXcom


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I just spent half a day playing with the free OpenXcom, which is a free much improved version of the original Xcom. Although it has been 10 years since I played the original, I don't remember it being this difficult. In my first mission, 4 of my soldiers were killed before they got their feet on the ground: as soon as a soldier steps on the ramp, he is picked off my an alien, and if he manages to jump to the side after the alien has used up his 3 shots, he is immediately picked off by one or two other aliens. I figured maybe I was just unlucky, so I continued with the next mission, which happened to be a Terror mission (daylight). My whole squad was killed before they killed a single alien - as soon as an alien came into sight, it reaction fired and killed the spotting soldier. Another mission to a crashed scout had a similar result, so I gave up. Too bad, this could be a fair aspirin until a really playable version of this one comes out. BTW, reloading a saved file is no help, because the game will just repeat what already happened.

So I just hope that the devs will not make THIS game that difficult. There are players who like the original Xcom just because of this difficulty, but I am no masochist and I believe that the "easy" level should be just that.

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The last time I played on Steam I came under some serious fire in the opening few missions. So it may not just be Open X-COm, or it may be my memory, it may be law of averages, or it may be I should try an easier difficulty setting.

Actually, now I think about it, wasn't there a difficulty bug in EU1994. Every game was an easy game. So, if that's fixed then it will be harder.

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I've played around with OpenXcom too and had exactly the same experience - even set to Beginner difficulty, my first mission resulted in half my squad dead before they even left the transport (as I forgot my smoke grenades!). I don't necessarily think this is unique to OpenXcom, the original game was dead hard without quite a lot of careful, "systems aware" playing.

Edited by Aaron
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the original game was dead hard without quite a lot of careful, "systems aware" playing.

Precisely this. As much as I love it, I'm not actually convinced that good tactics made very much difference in the OG. The key 'strategies' involve being able to exploit the game mechanics, like shooting from outside of an aliens sight range so they can't reaction fire back, or turning corners at an angle so you can force the mutual surprise rule. In fact, since being shot either by reaction fire or by aliens outside of LOS (in the dark) were the key ways soldiers died in the OG, anything which countered those two things was king.

One of the things I've really enjoyed about Xenonauts is how that's not the case. Or at least, the mechanics are sufficiently intuitive that using good tactics and knowing the mechanics seem fairly synonymous. Is my feeling, anyway. I enjoyed the OG's brutality, but Xenonauts manages to keep some of that while not requiring 'gamey' playing.

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I agree that games requiring gamey play to win is not the same as requiring good tactics and strategy. I also agree that Xenonauts is very promising in this respect.
Both are good, if it takes skill to figure out the "gamey tactics". All games require gamey play, so it's silly to argue against it. If you don't like it, stick to reality.
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Not sure if it is too different.

Terror missions in Xeno are just that :) Maybe it's just the Veteran level but you start the mission and you're facing a reaper and two sebs... all in cover right off the bat. Never mind that out of the line of sight are 8 more seb's just waiting to give any exiting soldier a burst and then a single shot each. Given that it takes several direct hits to score a kill and you've only had time to put jackal armor on a Cpl of guys... if you haven't brought in smoke grenades to cover your exit you're dead in your first turn and you're facing injuries regardless :)

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