Koriel

I had to chime in, since I see these types of concerns over streamlining, simplification or even "dumbing down" of gameplay in a lot of talks over games that try to reimagine older titles, and while some of them are warranted, I feel like many of them are not. For me, a lot of the so called complexity of older games does not bring meaningful gameplay options but rather a lot of tediousness. For example, the current X1 soldier attributes implementation and progression, for me, is a rather uninspired and annoying system, because instead of bringing interesting options to manage your soldiers, it forces the player into repeating certain actions in order to optimize the campaign. Having to consume 500 TU on each soldier moving them back and forth on every mission (even on early small maps), to ensure the 2 TU permanent bonus is just tedium most of the time. The same for cycling through them to get a reaction shot or just a normal shot, or prolonging a mission with a psionic enemy for bravery boosts. You can say that you don't have to do that, but when playing on higher difficulties, every bonus you can get is needed, and not doing it is practically gimping your team. I find no practical reason for not automatically giving these boosts to a soldier at the end of every mission (imo bravery should increase guaranteed every mission; it makes no sense for me that a veteran of 30+ missions can run screaming like a little girl from some wounds or seeing someone shot). An alternative that would keep the current attribute system and still not forgo immersion, would probably be to offer a training area where you can select for each soldier what attribute to train in, between missions (ex: cardio for TU, shooting range for accuracy, hand-to-hand combat for reflexes ) so the player can actually specialize them. Maybe even get some perks at certain attribute levels. Unit crouching is another example that I feel doesn't bring any significant gameplay options in X1, as it's something that you always want to do, for the passive accuracy and defense bonus and thus, every turn I have to keep taking into consideration the 6 TU to reserve for standing and crouching and tap that C button on each soldier. There's very few situations where I want to keep a soldier standing and even those can be solved automatically by the engine (like when shooting over someone, that soldier can just simply duck by himself). So, if the tedious necessity to crouch every turn is removed, while still keeping the tactical aspect of it, I'm all for it. On the topic of reduction in base count, I'm rather split. I generally don't like having to replicate the same base layout everywhere and repeat the same actions in each one. That's why I make all my bases with a specific role in mind: one for troops, one for research with all the laboratories, another for manufacturing, with all the workshops. I still hate it that I have to build hangars and radars in each one to be efficient, rather than separate air force bases and utilitary bases (since each would require command center upkeep and build time). I would have preferred it if I could just start digging an elevator shaft in some corner of a continent and start building my labs or workshops directly, while in another area drop a control tower and hangars, no need for a CC in each base, that should be only required for the main one. As for the engine, the move to 3D instead of isometric 2D is absolutely needed. The one thing that frustrates me the most in X1 is the asymmetrical Line of Sight / Line of Fire. I hope there will be no such situations in X2 anymore where an enemy can shoot at me from some obscure spot while I can't even see him to shoot back. Overall, what I'm personally looking for in games like these is strategical and tactical options. I do not care to micromanage every sandwich a troop puts in his backpack and on what side of their mouth they should chew it or for how long. Note: please forgive me if I misunderstood some of the X2 gameplay elements, as I haven't followed it's development closely, but I wanted to make it clear that not all simplification is bad, on the contrary. When adding gameplay elements, they should be meaningful and provide real, tangible tactical options. Adding complexity just for the sake of it does not make a game more interesting, but rather more tedious and grindy.