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My List Of Pet Peeves In V19


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The game is not done, sure. But it's still pretty playable in its current state. However, there are several things that positively make me cringe and/or grind my teeth on a regular basis. Here they are, grouped by gameplay area:

First, the more benign and easily fixable stuff:

Graphics And Interface

  • Trigger-happy right clicks. Opening a grenade menu takes several attempts, fine. But opening/closing a door suddenly eats all your AP.
  • Why can't I see the state of my aircraft in a table without spending 5 minutes selecting a UFO and pressing 'Intercept'?
  • Two words: Invisible enemies. And stuff hidden behind a wall that's next to impossible to target.

Next, the stuff that is most likely to get fixed, as it's by no means finalized. Also, some stuff that, sadly, won't get fixed, as far as I understand:

Content/Balance/Global Strategy

  • Pregenerated maps. Effectively removing 50% of replayability, and trekking over the same terrain, unsurprisingly, gets really dull after a while. Also, one of the farm maps has a 'void hole' that is rather puzzling to see.
  • Bloody. Impassable. Solid. Massive. Hedges. Everywhere on the farm maps. Would be nice to have a flamethrower and burn them to the ground. Go have a look at a real farm.
  • Researching '#####' to be able to produce '#####'. Placeholder texts, anyone? Other things have them, e.g. 'alienbase.sebilian.medium' or somesuch.
  • No viable production-based economical strategy. Stuff you produce has exorbitant production costs, and sells at ridiculously low prices. The only option is to do as many missions as possible. On repeating maps. Ugh.
  • Automated Research/Production. This is a controversial one, but I have fond memories of having to build alien containment (containment escape missions, anyone?), manage the stockpiles, build ammo and juggle dozens of research projects.
  • Lore inconsistency. First, we have radio-based telepathy, then genuine psionics? If their telepathy is radio-based and we have decoded the language, wouldn't it make immediate sense to produce field/global radio detectors to track units in combat and decipher UFO targets and intentions.
  • No psi/advanced training??? Actually, no training, period.
  • Nine shots per magazine. To be consistent with the chosen upgrade mechanics (upgrade by magic), it would make sense to have some technologies affect the ammo capacities of weapons.

Combat. I intentionally omit all the bugs.

  • Lack of strafing. Limited mobility options in general.
  • Why the hell is the UFO in combat a selectable object? I had a really bad time trying to target an alien who was sitting in the open right next to it, because the cursor jumped to the Battleship itself. I had to send a soldier to open the front door to turn the UFO to it's 'blueprint on the ground' state before I could target him.
  • Useless stun gas.
  • Missing grenade effect areas.
  • Hidden movement mechanics. The camera is not exactly helpful there.
  • Teleporting and shooting wraiths.
  • Enemy/Civilian AI in general.
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The game is not done, sure.

That's your answer right there. "Beta", or "not done" means "lacking features and placeholders, and various quirks in terms of gameplay and balance". If it was finished and polished, the game by definition wouldn't be "not done" in the first place.
No viable production-based economical strategy. Stuff you produce has exorbitant production costs, and sells at ridiculously low prices.
Balance feature.
No psi/advanced training???
Likewise.
Actually, no training, period.

Please explain.

Edited by Safe-Keeper
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That's your answer right there. "Beta", or "not done" means "lacking features and placeholders, and various quirks in terms of gameplay and balance". If it was finished and polished, the game by definition wouldn't be "not done" in the first place.

Well... Actually, what you described above is normally called "Alpha". The general common definition of Beta is "a product that is feature-complete and usable, with almost all content legitimately reachable; however, the product can have bugs, balance or stability issues; some assets may be placeholders". And Xenonauts, for the most part, fit that description, so yes, the game is in Beta. And most of the stuff I listed has to do with the usual Beta-specific problems.

However, psi training is a rather large feature that is either present or not. As of now, the soldiers have this Bravery bar that is used for diddly squat, and that's about it. Whether it's supposed to have something to do with psi powers, remains to be seen.

Please explain.

There is a #### button in a #### window in the people screen. I heard it does training for the unassigned people, but it had no effect on my troopers, and then became simply unpressable.

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That button is going to vanish in the UI update. It used to be a button that would train your privates so they would get an automatic stat boost and ranked up to corporal (I think it still works that way). However, Chris got loads of complaints that the "training button doesn't work" even though there was a big-ass message right next to the button stating exactly what the button did.

So the button went. Or rather, the writing for the button vanished, and in the previews off the New UI there is no training button. End of.

EDIT:

You'll find these scattered around the forum, but I'll list the things from your pet peeves that as far as I know are deliberate design decisions.

  • No profit from production
  • Auto ammo
  • Auto autopsies/ufo info
  • No training
  • No psychic powers for squaddies
Edited by Max_Caine
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A production strategy is something I would like to see as well. It's easily modded in though, so no sweat here.

I can also see where the whole thing is coming from. A lot of the design philosophy involves not being able to go for an easy mode and just skip ground combat except for some necessary missions.

No training, no production for money, you got to go down and dirty for that. If you do it your units get better and there is a nice little bonus for money.

I think it's better that way, not giving you an option to just skip a part of the game. And as said before... the basics to mod all that stuff in are there. I'm sure a mod letting you train your people more than once as well as upping the selling prices will come to be sooner or later. Good luck on the balance though :)

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  • Trigger-happy right clicks. Opening a grenade menu takes several attempts, fine. But opening/closing a door suddenly eats all your AP.

Does this refer to repeatedly clicking on a door and it opening / closing more than once? Or just you accidentally click on a door and because the opening cost is high, it screws up the remainder of that soldier's turn?

Thanks for posting up your thoughts.

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Well I was going to make my own list, but this beta has gotten or is gettng on my last nerve:

Maybe this is a bug, but sometime the screen is too dark at random time when entering the battle-scape.

Why do the aliens get 2-3 shots for my own idiotic target my own team (did I say idiotic) soldiers?

It's incredibly unbalanced against the humans. I just lost 20 solidiers as this feature came into play. I am frustrated that I cannot seem to get my trrops out of their own way. Also for all the experience their stats have in the troop set up they seem like you took 20 idiots off the street and said, "shoot that way."

I know it's beta, but unless there is some slight modification it's impossible to play.

The music needs to be a little upbeat. This is the saddest draggiest music I have ever heard. I understand strings mean mysterious, and the homage to ufo defense, but geez. . .lighten it up! It IS a game.

How come I cannot have my scout cars refill their ammo? How is it that the jackal armor is sometimes stronger than the scout car? Really?

How about a destructible helicopter? Maybe the team needs to build armor out of the helicopter cause that seems to be impervious to everything. How about NPCs actually aiming?

I could go on, but I am too annoyed.

And I have played on each settlng . which by the way is hard to say as the check boxes all do not work.

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@Mattster

I got the part about not reloading vehicles and about the helicopter being indestructible, but otherwise I have no idea what you're saying. Did you blow up 20 of your own soldiers with friendly fire and think the game is too hard because of it? How on earth did you manage that? In any case, friendly fire is reduced in the next build.

The aliens get 2-3 shots through burst firing, which your soldiers also can do.

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Jackal armor is not stronger than the armor on the Hunter (which is a scout vehicle, not a tank). And balance on vehicles is very much a work in progress.

The music is deliberately that way, and happy/upbeat music would be really weird given the overall tone of the game.

I'm not sure what the rest of your post is bitching about? Is is about reaction fire? Friendly fire (which is entirely the player's fault if it occurs)? Night combat? I'd gladly discuss your concerns, but I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

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I'm saying that the soldiers aim seems to be remarkably off and friendly fire on "clear sunny scapes" seems to be no impediement to shooting your fellow man.

So my bitching is that there is a lack of balance on the ground combat . . .the aliens are so far beyond what you have that it is almost impossible not to lose everything.

I didn't say make happy upbeat music -- I said what is used is such a downer as to detract from the game. In Enemy unknown, I would not say the music is to the effectof hey I gotta hum that on the way yo the work, but it is more interesting. In the original XCOM the music at battlescape was a bit slow, but if I recall nto a slow as this -- the map screen was more "airy" as if to say in space.

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And as you say Dranak, this is a work in progress. . I am hopeful that these items will be addressed. As Tobbzn says, friendly fire will be reduced. So that way when a kneeling soldier to the right is shot by a standing soldier to the left and the alien whom is indestructible apparently, and in front of the standing soldier, won't get shot anymore.

It would also be nice to rotate the screen. Sometimes aliens hang in the corner that's hard to see -- green stuff with the green alien.

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I agree it would be great if we could rotate the map, but unfortunately (unless my memory is horribly wrong) the devs have said that because of how the tile/sprite system works, map rotation won't be happening.

The aliens are generally supposed to be tougher than your soldiers, although I disagree greatly about the difficulty. Losing a few soldiers is easy, but losing more than that seems to generally require pretty poor play on most missions (especially after getting Wolf armor).

The shot scatter system was overhauled in v20, but I haven't had a chance to really test it out yet. I do agree that the shooting-the-guy-next-to-you should be fixed (and may be in v20?) but it's not difficult to play around that particular behavior either.

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Does this refer to repeatedly clicking on a door and it opening / closing more than once? Or just you accidentally click on a door and because the opening cost is high, it screws up the remainder of that soldier's turn?

That referred to multiple click events apparently going through without any delay. Example: a soldier stands next to the UFO door, having around 60 AP. I right-click on the door, hear a bunch of door sounds and the door remains open while the soldier has 5 AP left.

Now this may or may not be a mechanical problem in my mouse, but still rather unpleasant. Perhaps some short timeout can be implemented?

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The shot scatter system was overhauled in v20, but I haven't had a chance to really test it out yet. I do agree that the shooting-the-guy-next-to-you should be fixed (and may be in v20?) but it's not difficult to play around that particular behavior either.

V20 is the first build I've tried since back when the only missions available were small crash sites, and the aliens had no AI and just ignored everything you did, but I've read people's complaints about the huge firing cones and absurd friendly fire that resulted. I don't know what it was like before, but I didn't seem to see any of it in v20. My only friendly fire incidents in v20 were when my men were clearly in the line of fire, and the only time I got pissed off at friendly fire was when my men took reaction shots when there was clearly a friendly standing right in the freaking way.

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V20 is the first build I've tried since back when the only missions available were small crash sites, and the aliens had no AI and just ignored everything you did, but I've read people's complaints about the huge firing cones and absurd friendly fire that resulted. I don't know what it was like before, but I didn't seem to see any of it in v20. My only friendly fire incidents in v20 were when my men were clearly in the line of fire, and the only time I got pissed off at friendly fire was when my men took reaction shots when there was clearly a friendly standing right in the freaking way.
Well you missed all the "fun" then. That's a good thing, trust me. The reaction fire thing has been complained about and I will also join in saying that it really needs to be fixed.
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The music needs to be a little upbeat. This is the saddest draggiest music I have ever heard. I understand strings mean mysterious, and the homage to ufo defense, but geez. . .lighten it up! It IS a game.

Well, Aliens are invading the world. Not a really happy end to that. ;)

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