Sinfullyvannila

They are talking about profits from sales, not number of games sold.

They fixed the teleport bug(happened to me like once in 100 hours), and cheap alien bonuses is par for the course as far as X-Com in general goes.

double post

It's hardly the sole survivor of the genre. It's simply the newest and most marketed. Well, the financial system is awful and the biggest reason I don't play it anymore(it makes the game too tedious and keeps me from what I enjoy about it), so I stand by what I said.

You probably are just dismissing the people who praise the new game, and see minor complaints as abject condemnation. I see that in the "old guard" camps of any popular game. As for the second point, I'm going to call you the pot, because you have championed some truly awful aspects of the old games.

Not really. I feel no need to defend the game. This is literally the only site where the people who complain about EU isn't in the vast minority. It's more to paint both games in a realistic light, and sometimes to manage expectations. The people in this "I hate EU club" seem to think UD is flawless(and unmatched in the genre lol) and that every change in EU is horrible. That's just not the case. I'm fully capable of determining good from bad. EU is not without flaws or relative weaknesses. It has some bad bugs and it KB/M scheme sucks. It sucks that everything is scripted in the Geoscape and you can't seek out supply bases and such. The game isn't perfect, but it's still definitely excellent.

I either think those things were poorly implemented in the original(total inventory control, war profiteering), or thought that certain things in the original would have made this version of XCOM worse(Free Fire, ability to loot the dead). I prefer the class system, because it was annoying and tedious to control how your soldiers improved in the original. This is what I'm confused about, because this is clearly what UFO ET:G is. It's a strictly better version of UD in pretty much every sense. If you were disappointed in ET:G, I can pretty much assure you that you will be disappointed in XN because of your attitude.

It was a response to the threads he linked on a post that followed mine.

Those games didn't come out 20 years ago. I'm not going to argue which have more replay value, I'm just saying, $50 for 100+ hours in the course of a couple months without burning out on it to the point of never wanting to play it is money well spent. And the original X-Com had a comparable amount of bugs. I beat both UD and TFTD ages ago and they never compelled me to play through them again. I'll play them for about 10-20 hours now and then until it gets to the point in the game where it slows to a crawl due to micromanagement and becomes unpleasant. I read both of the posts. I don't agree with them as a whole, and only agree with a couple of negatives from the one that lists a ton of negatives. I even thought most of them were positive changes(no free-fire, limited explosives, inability to pick up gear from dead soldiers, class system, no longer being able to sell manufactured weapons, smaller teams). I've had this discussion before, and don't see the point of revisiting it. Sorry you didn't like the game. You are in the minority, hope Xenonauts works out for you. If it doesn't, I highly recommend UFO Extraterrestrials: Gold.

I got over 100 hours out of it, and have been thinking about playing through it again, so $50 was definitely a fair price.

My expectations were exceeded. It's a great game and a great XCOM.

You only really needed to build extra Bases past Radar/Hangar bases in UD one on impossible, since you needed to build extra hangars in your main base so that you soldiers spawns don't get overwritten by the enemy. And you really don't need to build any labs or workshops in UD, either.

It would be really easy to teach the pros/cons if you just put a line on the AA's description saying something like "unfortunately, the drawback is that batteries are a little TOO effective, in that they obliterate the target, making it impossible to salvage valuable artifacts from the crash site". Or you could just make them extremely expensive. Or both. And why is it so important whether or not the defense is the "right" choice? As long as both choices have viable pros and cons, the choice is the reward in itself. That's the point, to make it so that there isn't a blatantly right or wrong decisions, so that the decisions themselves are interesting. And like someone said before, base defenses were in the original, my suggestions doesn't add a new choice, it tweaks the old one so that it's viable(which Base Defenses aren't in the original). Personally, I wouldn't be overly frustrated at all. And that's the whole point of including a failsafe option, to mitigate possible frustration. Changing the mission's loss outcome would address my particular issue with the design concept. I think it would have other drawbacks like... Doing the above would change the atmosphere too. I don't mind that there is a loss condition, I just think it's dumb that it's introduced because you were doing well. Exposing you to another lose condition for doing poorly would intensify the "make it or break it" mood of the mission. Also, this kind of stuff is extremely subjective. I just think rubberbanding is bad in general. I haven't found anyone on any other forum who thinks that the philosophy is a good idea, unless it's just in there as a reverse handicap for people who haven't played the game often(which is why I think that it's ok for it to be an optional feature in competitive games). Which is why I think changing the trigger would solve the problem. I really don't see how it would affect anyone who likes to do base missions negatively in any way, as long as there are valid advantages to doing the base missions, and maybe, which I hadn't thought of before, a way to aggressively "provoke" a base attack, other than just passively doing well. I can imagine them implemented properly, which is why I'm making suggestions on how I feel they could be. If it were like you said, I wouldn't even be attempting to do it. Also, to clarify, my suggestions aren't avoiding Base Defenses, they are providing an option to pro-actively deal with them. I read the Don't Starve article, I'm going to reread it, but from my initial read, I could see where you are coming from with it, but I don't really think it's the best comparison in this argument. And one last thing, I don't have a problem with the way that Xenonauts is handling Base Defense triggers, just X-Coms way.

Your suggestion might as well force it out of the game. there is no practical distinction since that is what is going to happen unless you can elaborate and describe the mechanic that motivates you to actually try/do a base defense mission. The choice you claim is still there is just an illusion of a choice. I'm working under the assumption that everything else remains the same. I.E. If you blast down the UFO with AA, the craft is completely obliterated, if you shoot the ship down with an Interceptor, you get limited salvage, if you face the base defence, you get full salvage. Even if that weren't the case, I don't see how it's a false choice. You choose between spending resources on safety, or risking it and saving resources. So you want to replace something you have decided to see as bad (despite your own admittance that "you can spin it any way you want", ie see it from other angles) with something utterly horrible? (or don't you see anything wrong with the game being frustrating?) Do you mean it's not the "punishment" aspect you have problems with... that you could happily see the players situation spiral out of control into game over and feel that is a good mechanic? I have absolutely no problem with the game making you face an uphill battle for making mistakes. Isn't that the whole point of strategy? Eliminating mistakes? That's what happens in every strategy once you make a mistake, it gets harder to recover, and eventually it can spiral out of control. You learn from those mistakes, thus making an effective strategy. That as long as you don't encounter anything challenging because you did well you are happy? Ignore any reasons as to why the mechanic is actually there? If you encounter it because you are doing well, at least then it stands to reason you can handle the additional challenge. To get it when you are doing poorly is just frustrating and turns it into a really bad mechanic. The problem is that the only additional challenge from base defence missions in X-Com is due to programming limitations. They are MUCH easier than other missions once you work around those.. This suggestion like an attempt to effectively remove base defenses from the game. Sure it's not technically gone, but you're not likely to encounter it unless you mess up in a very particular manner. You claim you have nothing against base defenses that it is just the principle but reading your posts I can't see any trace of anything but distaste for the missions. You don't try to preserve any important bits when you "fix" it. What are the important bits? I don't like the base defense missions in X-Com, because aside from the basic design issues I have with them, they are extremely poorly implemented from a technical level. Did you read that article about goals and rewards in "Don't starve"? (Just to consider what signals you are sending to the player with certain mechanics) Did you read the post by Max_Cain about collected information about base defense? I skimmed over the base defense mission thread. I don't know what "Don't Starve" is. PS. why do you never use the quote or multiquote functions? I use quote when I respond to just one person. I didn't know of multi-quote.

I think his case comes from the fact that the only way to discourage the aliens from keeping sending ships into the teeth of your base's defense until the end of time is to let one succeed in invading your base and having to risk it's facilities to firefights (So fun when blaster bombs got involved) just so the aliens decide that because they lost one ground party, (when you could have been vaporizing battleship after battleship with Plasma or Blaster Bomb base defenses) they should leave your base alone. This is in fact my big point about freedom in this case. Sure, you can shoot down scouts, but that leads to more retaliations. There are base defenses, but they are absolutely useless in themselves. The only consistently viable way to deal with them is to let them happen. And if it's done that way in srsbsns, there's no reason not to do it in a game. I think you missed my point. Most people don't play poker because the game is fun. They play it because they enjoy gambling. The game isn't(and shouldn't be) designed to be fun in itself, it's designed to make gambling be as interesting as possible. Even if it weren't purely gambling though, you're still talking about a game rules in the context of competition. People generally don't compete just for the fun of it, they do it for accolades or rewards, and rules in competition are designed for fair play and even competition, not for fun. Forcing the gameplay that is base defense out of the game (by sidestepping it automatically per your suggestion) because you see it as punishment doesn't give anyone any freedom. My suggestion doesn't force them out of the game. It gives you an option to deal with them. You still have to make the choice whether you are going to deal with them or not. If you can find any other that you don't see as "playing good" please share. How about if you fail to shoot down a UFO, or if you fail a mission, the UFO has a chance to track your aircraft back to the base? Why is it OK for you to attack alien base, but not OK for them to attack yours? Because it's a lot easier for a defending force to locate and destroy an invasion beachhead than it is for an attacking force to detect a hidden defensive structure. Again, I never said "take out base defense". I said if they are going to do it, do it right.

The 4X comparison is totally bogus, since the win/lose conditions are static throughout the game. That doesn't address my argument at all. Poker isn't a video game. It's gambling. It's serious business. That's not even apples to oranges, that's apples to hummus. And I'm really not scared at all about games with a loss condition, heck, we had a long conversation about Roguelikes the other day. And weren't most of you guys going on about how X-Com was great because of all the freedom you had, and now you are defending a system that has no freedom whatsoever? Most of the time you have no choice but to defend your base, because there isn't a feasible way to do anything else.

The game is ok but I got ticked off once i learned that they are selling DLC before throwing in a fix. They aren't doing that. I had 2 soldiers 1 tile away from a floater they both had 55% chance to hit same as one action ago... IIRC, if a floater is airborne, it gets the same bonus as being in half-cover.

The problems with it are mostly that all of a sudden, there is a new lose condition, and it's solely because you are doing well. Compounding the issue is that there is no effective way to prevent being exposed to the lose condition until later in the game(because early base defenses are awful) other than to stop shooting down UFOs. My suggestions would allow you to prepare for the lose condition and sidestep it.

Since I started with TFTD, the only problems I had with the Originals Base Defense missions were the 80 item limit and preferential enemy spawns(I just thought that it gave you a random item selection), which there is absolutely no way to learn about unless you code dive or look it up on the internet(which wasn't available to me back in '96). Everything else you learn the hard way from Base Attacks(like how your base was set up by an idiot), I had already worked out. Other than the way it was implemented being anathema to game design(which I'm not the only one who shares this sentiment, just ask fans of Fighting games how much they like rubberband mechanics), there were plenty of problems with base designs from the original.

It's blatantly what the game is doing. The game even tells you that's what it's that's what it's doing right here. That's a fact, it's not up for debate. The game basically tells you "Good job, now defend your base or lose." And like I said before, I don't have a problem with the concept of Base Defense, just how it was implemented in the originals. If they're going to put in a flawed mechanic from the original, they'd better damn well pull it off right. Don't just "kitchen sink" those features in without regard to how it will affect gameplay. If they are putting it in there, don't make it a punishment for doing well, or at least if they are going to do that, put in effective countermeasures for it that you can access early in the game. Like, maybe stationary AA batteries or some way to "dummy" a base signal. Make those AA batteries really cost ineffective and the base dummies so that it targets a nation's base instead and you will lose out on long-term benefits from them. And as far as being immersive and believable goes, that's really not a great idea at the sacrifice of gameplay. Look at Wing Commander Privateer vs Frontier: First encounters. FFE's physics attempt to be as realistic as possible, whereas WCP's are laughably unrealistic. Ask anyone who's played both games which one they had more fun with, and I'm sure they'll all say WCP.

You can spin it however you want, but if you ask people who play video games if they think that it's good game design for a game to punish you for doing well, they will generally tell you no. Base defense doesn't really force you to make complex decisions. Just keep like a dozen extra soldiers on the base, and create a chokepoint. You want to do that anyway, since you are going to eventually buy a ton of soldiers for PSI testing and to make sure you are never short from injuries/deaths.

I should clarify that I have no problem with the concept of Base Defense in general, I do have a problem with how it was implemented in the originals. If you are in a situation where you are being punished, you should be there because you weren't playing well, not the other way around. Also if there wasn't anything that "punished you for doing well" ie held you back you wouldn't get that smooth difficulty curve reward would you? you'd be punished with too easy enemies because you ran to far ahead of the curve and the game stopped being rewarding in that aspect. Like I said before though, they aren't any more challenging than the regular missions though(as long as you know how to get around the various bugs and limitation concerning them), so they don't contribute to the curve. You keep refering to the blue koopa shell. IS the blue koopa shell in mario kart such a bad mechanic? Isn't it possible that it can still be done well? Probably the best way for it to be done well is to take it out of Single Player, and make it optional for Multiplayer. I'm referring more to the "Blue Koopa Shell" design philosophy than the specific mechanic itself.

Umm, that's the worst argument ever, first off, you say that it is objectively not punishment, then you say one can define anything as punishment. First off, I'm not saying that punishment in itself is bad. If you are making poor decisions or playing neglectfully, punishment is a good thing. The problem is when a game punishes youfor doing well. A game should punish you for playing poorly, but reward you for playing well. In the case of "punishment" in a storyline twist, progressing the story is a reward, not a punishment at all, since that's the players main goal in a story based game. More challenging enemies isn't a punishment, since a smooth difficulty curve is a reward. The difference is that base defense missions AREN'T more challenging than any other mission type(in fact, they are by far the easiest mission type), it's just that they suddenly put you in the situation where you can lose based on the outcome of a single mission.

Please explain how punishing you for doing well is brilliant game design. This is the Blue Koopa Shell of strategy games. People universally complain about any game that has a feature like that. And they should, it's fundamentally flawed, and it makes a game less than it can be.