[CE Vision and Purpose] I don't think there should be a Community Edition rebalance.

[Max_Caine]

I've been on this forum long enough to know there have been long standing (and occasionally quite bitter) gripes with a spectacular array of balance issues. Everything from the amount of damage that a grenade should do to the amount of ammo certain weapons have. Those people who can mod have basically said "okay! Ima go do this myself", and as a consequence we have things like Magnum-nauts, XNT, Xenophobia, and so-on, and so forth. They've all become established in their own right.

But that's for the people who can. I'm certain at some point someone who can't mod is going to come here and view the Community Edition as an opportunity to get all the issues that they have with balance ironed out. "It's not canon", they're going to say "but it'll do". Now, I'm reminded of the stated purpose of CE:

To enhance and improve the original Xenonauts gameplay experience without fundamentally altering the gameplay, whilst also allowing improved mod integration and offering a larger range of optional game customisation options to those that wish to use them.

Would a "Community Edition Rebalance" be considered outside of these bounds? I personally think it would. The GC/Geoscape/AC balance forms the fundamental building blocks on which gameplay is based. Every change to balance alters the gameplay, and even very simple alterations can have far reaching effects. Consider how when people changed sight ranges, when they reported back they commented on how completely different gameplay was.

Furthermore, the state of balance has come about from hundreds of hours of dialog between Chris, Aaron and the community as a whole. That dialog has been usually polite, but we have seen that Chris, Aaron and individuals within the community have wildly differing ideas on how to improve balance. Certain communal things bubble to the top, but there are many more grey areas where one man's poison is another man's meat and drink. A Community Edition rebalance would take up as many hours of dialog, but I can very easily see sides been drawn up over points of order. I firmly believe that rebalancing the game should stay in the realm of the mod, as different people with different visions of how the game should be balanced can do it there, and players can pick the vision which most closely suits their own.

[kabill]

I'm 100% behind this. But - is this something you see happening now in XCE, or something you anticipate happening, or something that you think other people are pushing for at the moment and want to guard against it? It's not something I've seen happen so far, but do you disagree?

[Max_Caine]

You only have to look at the general discussion board to see that there's a significant number of new players who are dissatisfied with how Xenonauts plays and come on the forum with their ideas of how Xenonauts should be. More often than not they don't simply want extensions or UI fixes (although there are quite a few playesr who just want that, especially UI fixes) - they want fundamental changes to the balance of the game and get in a strop when they're told "development has finished on Xenonauts".

CE isn't the best known - it isn't really known outside of this forum (even though you can get it on Steam!) and it isn't all that well known inside the forum but CE is where development of Xenonauts continues. How long is it going to be before word about CE finally leaks out to a large enough pool of people that instead of coming to the general discussion board, they come here instead? How long will it take before the essays on "what's wrong with Xenonauts and how to fix it" start appearing here? I believe (and this is pessimistic of me, I know) it's not a question of if, it's a question of when.

Edited August 24, 2014 by Max_Caine

[Solver]

I am all for CE becoming better known, I think the experience provided by it is clearly better than the original.

Nonetheless, my position regarding balance overhauls is simple - not going to happen. I will gladly add modding features that allow people to mod some balance aspects (as I have already done), but I do not want to see balance changes with wide-reaching consequence as part of X:CE itself.

Broadly speaking, X:CE makes balance- or gameplay-affecting changes when either:

1. Those are things acknowledged by Goldhawk to be wrong and that should be changed; or

2. It actually is something that Goldhawk tried to do but that isn't working properly in vanilla due to bugs (see: berserk, fleeing).

[ViewThePhenom]

Agreed that people looking for their personal vision of Xenonauts will start posting the balance change essays here. I propose a sticky, in bold red lettering if possible, that states the purpose of the Community Edition and requests that posters do not consider it an opportunity to push their requests for balance changes on the developers. Possibly include a statement that all such topics will be removed immediately, and follow-up on it.

They will come, though.

[thixotrop]

In my opinion the "original game feeling" - as Goldhawk has wanted it - should stay in the CE too. That doesn't mean the bugfixes and adjustments here and there of CE should go, as the CE doesn't alter the vanilla version in its fundamentals as it is its purpose.

However, I agree with Max_Caine the demand is already close behind the horizon.

Would it be very complex allowing mods or options of balancing? So that the player can choose to play the game with vanilla style balance or others. I can see a sort of slider or checkbox group saying what will the balance option bring.

[kabill]

I think Chris has made some mention of something like this before. I.e. using mods as optional extras that can selected in game/via the launcher.

It would actually be fairly easy to produce some basic changes using the modular system, actually. For example, difficulty level currently doesn't affect the number of aliens on missions. But it would be really easy to construct a mod or two with scaling alien numbers that the player can choose from.

Indeed, I guess it would work a little like XCOM:EU's Second Wave options. There's probably quite a lot of little things you could do with that, actually. This gives me an idea.

[thixotrop]

... This gives me an idea.

When you say that I am quite sure it will come out great.

However, I think balance changes call for a lot of playtesting.

[ntalas]

In my opinion the "original game feeling" - as Goldhawk has wanted it - should stay in the CE too. That doesn't mean the bugfixes and adjustments here and there of CE should go, as the CE doesn't alter the vanilla version in its fundamentals as it is its purpose.

Brilliantly put. Allow players to enjoy the vanilla version with all the improvements / bug fixes that the CE brings, but also give a few options based on "Community experience".

As also said by others before me, vanilla balance includes countless hours of discussions, gameplay etc. And since the smallest change can have a far reaching effect, it is best to leave this option intact. If possible of course.

[Solver]

That picture up there is essentially what the mod launcher is going to look like in the future.

[llunak]

I think it's practically inevitable that X:CE will rebalance things at least slightly. While some of those can be kept to mods (for example, I'd like to rebalance geoscape to avoid having obvious ideal spots for bases), other either can't or shouldn't be done that way. It has in fact already happened in a very small way, by having air combat AI implemented, which makes the AC harder. It's enabled only by xcesettings, but that in practice should mean it's enabled for most X:CE players, and it does not make sense to not have it that way.

It's very likely that there will be other fixes and/or improvements that will work better with matching rebalancing, and those may have more significant impact on the game.

[endersblade]

Agreed. I'm one of those who felt the game needed some rebalancing, figured out how to mod, and I do it myself. I doubt anyone would want to play like I do, and I doubt I'd want to play how many others do. Leave balancing to the community and other modders. X:CE should keep tweaked numbers to a minimum as far as balancing goes, and stick to the general quality of life/bug fixes that it has already been doing.

[Solver]

Of course it's not like X:CE has an actual organization or structure, really, it's essentially a few guys doing whatever they feel up to

[Xeryx]

Here is my .02 as a modder and being new to Xenonauts. This is what XCE should concentrate on.

1) First and foremost make sure XCE works 100% to allow modders to do their bidding.

2) Opening up access for addition items to mod.

3) Fixing broken elements that developers can't or won't fix.

4) supplying modders with help, advice, or tools to do their job. Ultimately, you guys know the game code better than many of the modders. You are the level between the game designers.

This allows the XCE guys to be the most useful in the community, without getting bogged down in a quagmire of balancing the game.

Leave that to the modders, as there are enough of modders to be able to bring enough variety for the average player.

Edited September 12, 2014 by Xeryx

[andreasg]

I think the community edition should fix some very obvious oversights.

For example, one huge beef I have with the air combat is the alien air supremacy missions.

If you are intercepted by one, you can not choose "disengage" and fly away. You're forced to either accept the outcome of the auto-combat (likely with a 0% win chance), or fight manually.

But if you choose to fight manually, you can just disengage without any trouble, just instructing your planes to turn away. Totally negating the fact that you were forced to fight.

I think it's a huge design issue and/or bug, and it seems unintentional?

I mean, either you should be able to just choose "disengage" from the start, or the enemy UFOs should be able to fly faster or somehow punish a player that instantly tries to escape.

I guess it stems from the fact that they gave up trying to balance manual air combat, but it just seems exploity and half-baked... In my opinion the community edition should work to fix things like this, because it detracts from the whole experience.