Leaderboard

Thanks. Yeah, I think that's a sensible approach. I think you'll enjoy the process much more if you just drop in for a bit now and then and provide feedback, then give us a few months to change things. I'm better aware of the pacing issues in the game now so hopefully when you next play it things will flow better in the mid-to-late game at least.

I agree with @Alienkiller - some players (especially those of us who are female, though I accept that we are possibly a very small proportion of the player population) often enjoy the narrative and the progression of the story more than the "competitive" aspect of the game itself (for want of a better term). By which I mean, we will often play games at a lower difficultly level because we are more interested in the storyline, things like the research tree, how our decisions influence the outcome, etc. And we prefer the game to have a bit of a slow-burn build-up leading to a crescendo rather than the whole thing coming at once. All puns and innuendos intended. So, as Alienkiller points out, the cleaner story arc is all over too quickly which I feel is a shame because it is a good idea and more could be made of it.

I would bear in mind that the OP, @Jet Jaguar, appears to be a newbie (apologies to them if they're not!), whereas us old-hat beta testers have been playing this game for ages so we know what to expect and how to play it. I think OP is probably right about the balance at that stage of the game - maybe there needs to be a couple of "warm up" abduction missions. As an aside, the cleaner story arc is over way too quickly - you do the first couple of missions, then the intel collection mission, then the super-hard boss base mission. I think it would be better if there were a few other cleaner missions before you end up doing the base, even if they are abduction missions or raids of some kind), partly to get some XP for your troops, but also to give you time to build up your forces and tech). I don't like the idea that there is a fixed deadline for the endgame either - it feels like you are forced to get to the end too quickly instead of enjoying the story of the game. Yeah, it is true that the missions can get a bit "samey" after a while, but @Chris has said previously that there are other biomes etc in the pipeline. And, again, they are samey largely because we have played literally hundreds of play-throughs! That said, it would be good to have some "optional" lower-level missions (i.e. they aren't life-or-death terror missions that destroy the panic levels totally, and can decimate your squad which sets you back a LOT if you screw up). Such lower-level missions would earn you some coins, but also allow you to get XP's for replacement troops if you have had a crappy mission where some good troops have been killed. While we're on that topic, the replacements you can purchase need to be less awful as the game progresses because they are no match for the higher-level aliens, especially when you're outnumbered and outgunned!