Gameplay feedback

[Zolden]

Hi, I'm Zolden. I'm not only a player, used to make games too. Created alot with SC2 Editor. But recently moved to Unity3D engine.

I used to play the first two classical xcoms sometimes, as they are one of my favorite games. But this time I realized, that there's this new game, and tried it, because, man, someone had to true-remake xcom already, and that new 3d game made by big studio was a fail. Good graphics not worth simplifying gameplay. It's a strategy, should be complex! That Firaxis thing, though, a well known good game ruiner, they did bad things to HoMM, to Civ, and now XCOM ;/

But Xenonauts proved to be the remake I wanted. All good features of the original game kept with love, and so many inventive improvements! I was practically obsessed. Played 4 days in a row with only pauses to sleep and eat. Finally interrogated the praetor, and soon this going to end.

I'm sure, the community has already expressed all their positive feelings about the game and every one of its features. So, I won't mention what exactly I liked about the game, it would be a long list. Well, probably criticism has been expressed too, so I think, I may not say something that hasn't been already said. But still I will. I understand, Xenonauts are already finished, so, this feedback may only affect future games. Cause, I see, the developers working on new games of the same genre, and I hope it may give them ideas of how to make those games better.

So, there's a little list of gameplay issues that could be fixed.

1. The amount of tactical missions is too big. I've done about 50 during the game, and it was a bit too much, I almost got bored. For now I just want to see how the game ends, but I don't feel that much excited about each tactical operation. Why? Cause they rapidly get boring due to repetitiveness, and they are not that much rewarding. In classical xcom we used to gain alot of stuff per mission. Here we just get some cash and some alloys, and some levelup for the troops, which is capped by 100.

So, I think, number of missions should be reduced. I mean, the game should be configured the way, that gaining enough of everything (cash, artifacts, materials, troop stats) should be doable through about 30 missions per game.

But simply reducing isn't enough, missions must me more complex and interesting. AI should definitely be much stronger. It should surprize every game. The behaving shouldn't be just pre-scripted, enemies must analyse the surrounding situation and plan further actions, predict and counter player's actions, collaborate with enemies that happen to be nearby. Alos, scripted behavings should sometimes change.

For example the guards of the ships, that sit inside usually have one active alien, and 2-3 passive ones. Active can open the door, and shoot, others always sit and wait. Why don't they group together and leave the ship to attack the xenonauts? Such unexpected maneurs would excite the player, force him to improvise evey time instead of using almost the sae approaching tactics.

One more thing: the levels. They should be different. Best solution is random generation. By random generation I mean the smart one, where things self-organize alot to form a realistic environment instead of just chaotically spammed objects. Simplier solution is to create levels manually, but it's time consuming, I guess.

Another ting: more different kinds of missions. I've seen 3 kinds: grounded ship, base, terror. Need more. Oh, btw. I only had a terror site once! It was a great battle, but dude, if I managed to play good and intercept ufos early, then no more terror missions for me? Is this rewarding? I want fun fights!

To summarize: more rewarding missions of lower number. Missions must be more different by environment and objectives, more interesting and challenging.

2. Bad financial situation. It's a minor issue, just feels a bit imbalanced. I tried realy hard, built low amounts of buildiongs, visited all crashes to gather maximum money, but still had problems with cash in middlegame. There should be ways to generate income. Why can't I use my production facility to produce good for sale? Also, why all things are so money expensive? I'd prefer to spend more allenium/alloys, that I'd have to get from missions, instead of spending hugetons of cash.

3. Some weapons are imba. That shotgun branch, for example. My squad had like 2-3 assault soldiers with those low range 3-projectile carabins. They have 3 times more kills than other squad members. Because approaching an alien takes no problems, they almost never react fire, so it's so easy to come face to face and snap-shoot the beast with all 3 projectiles. In the meanwhile, sniper weapon is a ridicule. For objects block rifle shots with 45% chance. Why should it be 45% for the sniper gun again? It has the optics, to aim better and throw the plasm in lien flesh instead of wooden trash! Also, why rifleman with a rifle has the same 95% chance on aimed fire from the same distance as my sniper with higher accuracy stats and sniper rifle? It feels wrong. I want sniper to always have higher hit chance under the equal conditions compared to the rifleman.

4. Jumping suit engine sound sucks: harsh, unpleasant white noise. I'd recommend to re-record it. Example of good sound is a noble barely hearable bass spectrum engine sound of the hover tank.

Ok, maybe I forgot something, will add later if remember.

[drages]

Nice and long critic.. we all know them. For that reason they are very hard working serious ppl at modding right now.. u can check them or even join them to help and create ur dream game

[llunak]

I understand, Xenonauts are already finished, so, this feedback may only affect future games.

This is, and isn't true. There is the community edition, which will continue to evolve as long as there are people making that happen. Which can be also you, so if you e.g. do not like the flying suit sound, make a better one. If others will also see it as a better one, it can make it in. And even if not, you can still provide it as a mod.

[Zolden]

Oh, I'd probably be interested in modding, if I didn't have my own games to work on. It's funnier to create new things, than to modify the existing ones.

And the addition to the main feedback post:

5. The save/load style should be fixed. I'd like to play without, but stats of the troops still mean too much to just waste them to the randomness of hits. Even with greater role of weapons and armors, still TUs and accuracy mean too much. Theay are the main reason to go to missions, and soldiers die too easy to not use save/load.

And the fixing idea is to make the soldiers to be learning robots. "Learning" so they gain stats after each missions as humans. And "robots", so they'd have an undestructible core of their personalities, that could be able to be retrieven after the battle even if the robot dies. So, at base the robot would be built again with the same core and a new body. So, no stats lose. And that would completely remove the necessity of save/load.

Missions could be funnier then: soldiers would die one after another, and even if only one of them survives and kills the last enemy to win the mission, they all still get repaired at return.

And without "save while on mission" option, the game would be more exciting. Player would have to take a risk to go into the dangerous mission with weak squad to get a valuable reward. And would have to pay more attention to the tactics. But the missions would feel more real and dangerous.

[Chris]

Thanks for the feedback, I'm glad you liked the game.

I think several of your criticisms come from the same basic issue - it sounds like you had too many bases / planes. It sounds like you were struggling with maintenance costs, which meant you had to do every crash site to get maximum money (which is why you had to play so many missions you got bored) which allowed you enough planes to shoot down most of the UFOs...which means you only got one terror site and never got to play a Xenonaut base defence mission.

You're actually only meant to do about 25-30 missions across the game. Part of that is a balancing issue on our part because a lot of users struggle with it, but part of it is just because of the way an X-Com game has to work and unfortunately if we'd changed it too much then it wouldn't have been a proper spiritual successor.

[Reiver]

Y'know, one thought I'd had while playing through last time was that an option could have been to make crash sites miss vital equipment - and perhaps a science popup after the first time you did one warning you so - while the 'live' saucers had the real bounty.

This would encourage you to actually let some land, and scramble a strike squad to do the harder missions in order to get the pay, whilst also meaning you'd be more time-constrained on how many you could do per wave (because live sites are shorter lived than crash ones).

Was this paradigm tested at all during development? It feels like something that on paper could certainly encourage variety, but maybe it'd fall apart. Hm.

[Jasmine Moldovia]

That sounds like counter intuitive play, your job is to stop the invasion, so your supposed to let one land... while it makes sense from one perspective (IE stuff might otherwise get blown up) from the stance of the setting, it doesn't fit at all.

[Reiver]

It is and it isn't - after all, you'd want a splash screen to pop up and note that stuff is being busted on landing, so you need intact examples of each UFO in order to properly study them. This is both consistent with the original (In which you needed to do this if you wanted to see Elerium any time soon), and with real world missions; the british in WWII sent a commando raid to capture a german radar, after all. You're after intact UFOs so your scientists can analyse them and harvest their parts, nothing more weird about deliberately letting them live than there is on using nonlethal weapons to capture alien officers; it's just hardware instead of wetware this time.

[Solo4114]

Dunno how possible it is to add this to the game, but I'd say a better approach would be that scientists work more productively with fully functioning gear, than with broken gear. So, crash sites are a mix of functional and broken gear, meaning you can maybe start to research something sooner, but the progress will be slower because what you're researching is broken. By contrast, if you get a working one, research goes faster.

You'd still have sort of an incentive to do ground missions against landed ships, but you'd survive just fine if all you ever did was shoot them down.

[TheGrover]

Well surely the ship on a base construction mission is carrying the base core anyway? So there could be a chance of it surviving and being recovered from the wreckage during a ground mission.

Still prevents the fun missions though, maybe in the late game (when ET has surveyed potential sites from orbit) the ships could head straight to the terror/base site with no window of opportunuty to intercept? Not all of the missions should be done this way and probably only one each month depending on difficulty.