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Am I only one sick with comparasion to XCOM?


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Yeah, but I still have seen some posting that indicate that posters want game to BE UFO: Enemy Unknown. Admittedly, mainly on other sites and such.

Edit: Though, now that I thought about it, I guess reason why I so strongly dislike idea of remake of original game is that... Well, both UFO: Alien Invasion and Xenonauts ARE fan remakes of original games and I've heard some people do the "My dream has come true, there is true successor to XCOM!" speech, so my dislike to "True successor" thing has become subconsciously connected with idea of remake of original game that is "true to it" =/ Like only way to be "True successor" is to be "Remake of original with better interface/graphics/few new features" if you understand what I'm trying to say.

Of course, I could be wrong because I'm not psychologist or anything, but thats what it seems like. Anyway, whatever the case is, thankfully neither UFO: Alien Invasion or Xenonauts are going to be exact remake of original game with different paint.

Edited by XenoMask
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I havent heard of the studio that did UFO: After- series. Some czech studio i think?

What makes them official, what makes them not "indie"? Does getting a publisher make you non indie?

I'm sorry, I confused the After- series with Apocalypse and Enforcer. In my mind, they were semi-official games that continued the series, but a short search turns out they aren't. I guess it's because X-COM was UFO: Enemy Unknown here in Europe, so it gels with UFO: After-x. My bad.

About the indie thing, yeah well, definition of indie is always tricky. I'd say it depends on which publisher you get. I believe there are people that go "got a publisher, you no indie", though. But yeah, in the end I just got a little overwhelmed :)

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"got a publisher, you no indie",

More correct - "Don't have a publisher - you are indie " - its just definition. If you got publisher to you independently developed thing - the thing still be independently developed.

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X-Com's a particularly interesting example of the whole remake thing simply because the first game was such a massive hit, and then nobody ever really seemed to capitalise on it. TFTD was literally just a reskin, and Apocalypse was a sort of half-way house with a graphics style not done by the development studio, which makes it relatively easy for "true" fans to dismiss because it really doesn't bear much resemblence to the original X-Com game.

Usually when a game comes out and is successful, loads of very similar games come out - like Doom and Wolfenstein 3D were followed by tons of fairly generic rip-offs. Innovation happened once people had had their fill of that type of gameplay, and the genre evolved with time (in the FPS world, I guess you can look at regenerating health and only be able to carry two weapons now).

That never really happened with X-Com in the years after it came out, so I think people were left wanting more. Then when the generic clones did start appearing, it was so long after the original game that you pretty much had to have innovations in order to not look deliberately retro (3D graphics, real-time combat etc), so there's this big unsated desire people have for X-Com like games where there hasn't really been much innovation. They never had so many X-Com clones after X-Com that they were able to get bored of the mechanics, like happened in other genres.

We're trying to fill that niche by doing the innovation invisibly and keeping all the fundamentals in place. That's my theory, anyway.

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Thats something I've been confused about, unlike most cult games, almost every gamer knows about XCOM and it makes it seem like its not cult series but series that is popular and such. So why there haven't been "Follow the leader" phenomena with it? You can easily find all XCOM like games from XCOM series wikipedia page, but most of them are XCOM fan games and other ones are either Laser Squad/Rebelstar or two some game I've never heard of.(Incubation(part of Battle Isle series, fourth game apparently) and some game with zombies or something)

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Thats something I've been confused about, unlike most cult games, almost every gamer knows about XCOM and it makes it seem like its not cult series but series that is popular and such. So why there haven't been "Follow the leader" phenomena with it? You can easily find all XCOM like games from XCOM series wikipedia page, but most of them are XCOM fan games and other ones are either Laser Squad/Rebelstar or two some game I've never heard of.(Incubation(part of Battle Isle series, fourth game apparently) and some game with zombies or something)

I think it might have to do with the fact that the original game a) did offer an immense level of depth and b) had the pieces fit together very well nonetheless. It's not easy to replicate such a huge level of depth and detail, and still have everything hold together nicely. In fact, I believe it's mainly the "it just fits" aspect of X-COM. It's a game that got near to perfection, and it's difficult to copy that, never mind improving on it.

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Yet I prefer Apocalypse to it :P

For example, one problem I have about first XCOM is that countries really have no face. I mean, they are just funders. You lose them, you lose money. Corporations in Apocalypse had personality and backstory even though gameplay wise they aren't really that different beyond providing different services and having different buildings, but they still were distinct. I guess if they had had feature to capture humans and other stuff they were planning they would have been better done. Anyway, when country falls under alien control in original game, they just cut your funding. When corporation falls under alien control in Apocalypse, they assault your base and attack you with vehicles and such. In original game countries had no other purpose than being source of funding.

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Likely the reason that nobody copied X-Com is it takes a ludicrous amount of effort to produce a game like it. The complexity is a million times deeper than I thought it would be when I started development.

Whereas, say, the Frozen Synapse guys can sell their game for the same price and it consists of one main combat screen and one tileset. Commercially, they made a much better decision than we did.

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30$ would be more than a fair price for Xenonauts (post-release) I think but with so many F2P, fan-made and low cost indie games, many people expect non EA/Blizzard games to be really cheap or free. Some will see 2D graphics and claim that the game should be free or maybe something like 1.99$.

On the other hand you have Conquest of Elysium 3 selling for 29.99$ or Dominions 3 for 54.95$. Silly as that seems, when you have a niche game the fans are willing to pay up more as they have almost nowhere else to turn to satisfy their particular gaming cravings.

I'm not 100% sure why you lowered the price to 20$ Chris (I assume it's a company secret), if it's intended simply as a pre-order discount or what, but perhaps you could go slightly higher after release (if that's even feasible at this point). It wouldn't even be "milking the fans", it's an objectively fair price for a game of this production value and complexity I'd say. Then again there's the Firaxis factor to consider.

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A lot of places offer pre orders cheaper than the final game.

As long as it is clear to people that they have the option of getting in early for a cheaper price or waiting to see how the game ends up but paying a bit more then no one can complain really.

Someone will of course.

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apocalypse was unfinished. had it been finished, and had the xcom team been the ones making the graphics i am sure that it would have been considered a true sequel. in the end apocalypse was overly ambitious in its goals for a final game:

being able to play as key factions (possibly even all of them)

  • abduction missions
  • bug planting missions
  • assassination missions
  • more robust ai
  • more devices

and there was project freedom ridge which was cancelled, aftermath was supposed to this game, but had to be completely rebuilt due to licensing issues.

altair's second game, aftershock, had a bug which wouldn't let you do the final mission, the second to last patch for the game removed the bug, but it was put back in with the last official patch due to infighting between developer and publisher. there were quite a few bugs in the second game that were never resolved.

the third game, afterlight, also had some bugs that were never resolved, though they are somewhat minor.

the first game, aftermath, had a few bugs that were never resolved, again minor ones.

terror from the deep was produced as a marketing decision, in order to capitalize on the success of the first xcom, it was supposed to take 6 months, the only way mythos felt it could do such was just doing a simple reskin.

the original xcom already had a well tested ground combat game engine from the game 'laser squad' before it went into development, which took 3 years.

the reason as to why people want a new xcom has a lot to do with were effort is spent, as well as the scope of the game. pretty much only a couple of modern blockbusters can compare in scope, and even then most effort is spent in making them pretty, rather than fleshing out the game play and core mechanics. i have gathered that chris has figured out what sort of task he has set before himself, hopefully the fans here will understand as well.

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I really, really hope that a combination of Beta and Kickstarter pennies allows for the modification of funding nations, with knock on effects to resources. It would add such a level of depth to the, as you say, faceless status of the funding nations. It's celarly somehting that the original developers thought needed reworking.

the thread linked here picks up on this as well http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/1365-Base-spread-and-the-reasons-for.?p=15663#post15663

I,m all in favour of adding more flavour into the storyline as well, as long as it's kept streamlined. While having MIBs may be beyond the scope of the game, do what the original game did. Have them hinted at in the text for Alien Infiltration. Tie it up with real cold war fears that the game is set in. Comparatively small, but with a big impact.

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