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Collected musings from Xcom fans


Solver

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I spent some time reading Xenonauts discussions on forums that are mostly about XCOM:EU  / XCOM2. Thought it might be an interesting different perspective. The main source of these is /r/xcom on Reddit. For entirely understandable reasons, Xenonauts comes up now and then among discussions about the two Firaxis games, and also understandably many of the same people love the 1994 game. There are some recurring comments, so maybe these can be of interest to Chris, although I do not think there is much radically new. Still, interesting given that many of these comments are from people who spent relatively little time with the game, unlike those on this forum.

Xenonauts is often characterized as 'dry', 'bland', 'lacking personality'

Whatever this elusive personality is, many comments feel that it's lacking in the game. Many of these comments cite character appearance - the bland appearance of the aliens, and your own soldiers not looking too special. One poster called them "janitors with an attitude". I think we're all mostly aware of these opinions, but it's worth noting that there are two looks people really like - the high-tech look (like late-game with Sentinel suits and mag guns), and the creepy, monstrous look (like the '94 game). X2 is certainly heading in the right direction as far as the aliens go. Another takeaway might be that it's good if your own soldiers start getting some distinct sci-fi gear after just a few upgrades.

The other thing driving these comments seems to be that the game isn't particularly creepy. This could be taken to be both in looks and in gameplay - but I would have to agree that the original game somehow felt creepier. Maybe it's the night missions.

The air combat is very popular

Says it all really. The air combat minigame is one highly praised aspect. It's a part of Xenonauts I do not personally enjoy, but I seem to be in the minority on that one.

The Chief Scientist is no less popular

I couldn't help but notice the high amount of comments praising the writing for the Chief Scientist. Definitely should be kept in minded when writing X2.

Much criticism for psionics

Some people don't like the removal of human psionics, some others feel the alien psionic powers are unfun.

Ground combat itself highly praised

Again unsurprising - feedback for the actual ground combat part is, in general, very positive. The greater depth is in particular contrasted with the Firaxis games.

Difficulty curve

This is an interesting one. Some people talk about the difficulty curve of all the games, and here Xenonauts fits with the rest in terms of the early game being more difficult - your soldiers die in one hit, you need to supply new rookies and get your economy up, etc. But many people seemingly miss the drop in difficulty that the Firaxis games have at the end, and it's an interesting thought. In XCOM:EU and in XCOM2, your late-game squad clearly surpasses the aliens. This is largely due to the perk system - every soldier class has some devastating abilities. Xenonauts doesn't really have this. Yes, your late-game squad that has Magstorm+Predator and Mag+Sentinel outfits feels strong, but doesn't give you the same feeling of dominating.

Again something worth thinking about. I do think balancing is very important, but in these games the feeling of beating the aliens is very rewarding. I liked how in XCOM2, I could towards the end have a few missions where I mop the floor with the aliens. It's satisfying. X2 might do well to occasionally let you experience this.

Reaction fire

Another recurring comment is that the reaction fire mechanics are difficult to understand, even if they work just like in the 90s, because they were also difficult to understand then. A fair point perhaps - when I first played the original X-Com, it took me forever to understand that mechanic.

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Lack of character and unbalanced (highly exploitable/cheesable) air combat and big bonuses for metagaming were my biggest gripes with the first instalment. So let me elaborate on those points.

 

 

Lack of character. Games need a theme that is not only there but is constantly showing it's head in a way that is engaging and reinforces immersion within the game. That is how I would separate simulators from games. Xenoanauts lacked in that department, as it's storytelling was comparable to that from TFTD and tools progressed a lot since. To give few examples, I will bring up X-COM(s) from Firaxis, who did great on that front. They did so through stuff like cut-scenes for research that immersed you into the lab and shown that muton bashing on the glass wall of the lab. Or those theatrical zoom-ins when some shots and actions are taken on the grid, adding a dramatic touch to the rather tactical action. Similarly, the rich environments in X-COM 2 with ok animation when stuff explodes and is destroyed. And of course character customisation and generation, even with just random squads, you eventually start to recognise the faces and clothes, get attached to your troops.

All this stuff, when done right and in correct amount (lord prevail from having action-cam on every shot) make you feel like part of the game, rather than moving anonymous units across the map. Another great example of that is Disgaea, which took a very bland, story-wise, concept of on-grid tactical turn based game and slapped insane amount of humour, graphic, and, well, character into it, making it very attractive to people who would usually do not play the genre.

 

Air combat. Oh my, I so loved the concept when I've started out, and so hated it as progressed through the game. You very quickly figure out the best meta approach to it, and how to later cheat the auto-resolve system, how to set up your ships to win with it a fight you couldn't physically win otherwise - not enough damage even if you empty everything right on target to take it down for example. And you wind up setting up your fighters to win via auto resolve, rather than having to repeat the same tactic over and over again (there were only that many combos of alien ships). This really must be rethought to either not be repetitive, or for auto resolve to be a more realistic representation of combat sim.

 

Metagaming. This touches partially on Air combat, where it was most visible, but in the same fashion you could've gamed around on the ground encounters. Avoiding fights at nights was the most famous example I think, where with no penalty you could almost always time missions to not fight in the evening, as there was no reason to do it besides being a masochist. That is getting addressed in X2 which is great, as any resolution will be better than the old system.

 

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Good idea Solver.  I just combed the first few pages of XCOM 2 forum's search result on Steam, and get a slightly different picture.

Xenonauts is hardcore, a true successor of the classic x-com.

Xenonauts is similiar with new XCOM, but they caters to different market.  Most veterans, but not all, praise Xenonauts for its balance and depth.  Because of the simplistic strategic layer in XCOM 2, X-1's strategic layer got some good cheers.

I don't see them talking about X-1's streamlines much.  Or the air combat, perhaps because there's no air combat in XCOM 2.  When they do discuss them, they are pretty positive.
 

Xenonauts looked promising.

I noticed that in XCOM EU/EW's old discussions, the players were more forgiving of the then unfinished Xenonauts.

By the time of XCOM 2, more players are criticising its weaker designs.  2D graphics.  Fixed perspective.  Air superiority ruins the game.  Lack of mods.  Bugs.  Complicated cover and reflex.  (But they like the sturdy covers instead of the flimsy walls in XCOM 2.)

It doesn't help Xenonauts that XCOM 2 improved many shortcomings of XCOM EU/EW, which makes it a pretty good game.  But many players who have also played Xeno still like the tactical and strategic challenges of X-1.  Including freedom of inventory.


Xenonauts is dull.

Graphic is dull, Mission is dull, Weapon is dull, Enemy is dull, Soldier is dull, Gameplay is dull.  If you want to stop the Xeno propaganda, these are some of the best points that fans can't refute, esp. in comparison with XCOM 2.

Dull in both breath and depth.  X-1 soldiers, for example, not only does not have customisable options, they are also disposable: a new recruit can shot as many bullets as veterans, and is not much more vulnerable when the veterans die from one shot more often than not.
 

2D graphic is putting players off.

Many artists complain about this, but reality is games are for gamers, not for artists or game designers.  So... good job in switching to 3D.
 

And I'll skip the usual dramas.  Psi or no psi.  Inability to hit anything.  TU micromanamgement.  etc.
Here are some of the longer discussions:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/268500/discussions/0/412448158142638115/
http://steamcommunity.com/app/268500/discussions/0/523897277916713512/
http://steamcommunity.com/app/268500/discussions/0/523897277911953111/
 

One of the commenter noted that even XCOM EU had better review % than X-1, so I went to look at the most helpful post release -ve feedbacks...
and see another picture.

Camping is the biggest cause of negative reviews.

As you can expect in negative reviews, many things are being criticised, from story to music.  The recurring / strong feeling ones seem to be lack of animations, bland graphic, line of sight / fire (i.e. alien snipe you and you can't shot back), limited sight, low accuracy, grenade, psi attack, cascading morale disaster, boring air combat (funny how this is the opposite of xcom 2 discussions), developer did not listen to feedback, or save / load bugs (that is still hitting me in v1.65).

But the single biggest complain is camping.  There are many issues that amplify the problem: flimsy soldier, bullet sponge, non-obvious reaction fire formula (more than one commenter think it is random), dread aura etc.  Regardless of the number of problems and examples cited, camping is a big frustrating experience that compels some players to write beefy negative comments.

 

Which is pretty interesting because I can't remember seeing this come up in XCOM 2 forum - they pointed out quite a few frustrations, but not camping.  This make me suspect that if they like XCOM 2 and they try X-1 and hate it, they don't go very far in the game.

In other words, I guess a they think X-1 is dull / repetitive / tedious and give up before they reach the most frustrating part.

Edited by Sheepy
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I think the complain about being bland is about how Xenonauts was much less consistent in the way it did things than X-Com. I'll explain what I mean.

In X-Com, every single object and item was the same sort of thing. You could get it on the Battlescape, you could store it in your storeroom, and you could transfer it. In Xenonauts, much of that is abstracted away - corpses are disposed of, alien weapons are sold off or sent to Research, some things are automatically upgraded, other things aren't. It doesn't feel as authentic.

That, and the fact that there are less "Cool tactics" you can do in Xenonauts. In X-Com, you can prime C4 and have your men suicide bomb the aliens. Not so in Xenonauts. 

It just isn't as cool, isn't as interesting. The game's atmosphere is absolutely great, and gets just as tense as X-Com ever does. That isn't the problem.

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Thanks for collating this stuff. I'll have a more detailed read later (and people are free to continue to add more to this thread) but it's probably worth taking all of this with a pinch of salt; if you read feedback on this forum then you'd probably come to the conclusion that the Firaxis games were complete abominations that nobody wanted to play. There's always going to be an element of people being drawn to what they like and I don't think we'd be able to make a game that will entirely appeal to many XCOM fans without losing what is intentionally different between the games.

Of course, there's probably plenty of valid criticisms in there too. Xenonauts feeling dull and having sub-par graphics are something we should be thinking about, whereas gameplay issues I'd be a bit more cautious about "fixing". To be honest, I'd be most curious to hear where people think Xenonauts falls down against the original X-Com games, as they're our inspiration rather than our competition.

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1 hour ago, ArcticWinterZzZ said:

I think the complain about being bland is about how Xenonauts was much less consistent in the way it did things than X-Com.

That, and the fact that there are less "Cool tactics" you can do in Xenonauts. In X-Com, you can prime C4 and have your men suicide bomb the aliens. Not so in Xenonauts. 

It just isn't as cool, isn't as interesting. The game's atmosphere is absolutely great, and gets just as tense as X-Com ever does. That isn't the problem.

Yes, I saw one or two complains on UI consistency.  HUD shows health for interceptor but damage for UFO, weapon stat only visible in one small part of the game (that I also had difficulty finding at first too), bullet size etc.  But they are not common.  (Unless you count accuracy and LoS/LoF as same consistency problems.)

Although a few players think X-1 is not a worthy successor, they are mostly vague.  I can't remember any concrete complains on auto upgrade or auto sell.

What I mean by dull is lack of variations.  For example, "dull graphics" is me summarising comments that the palette is bland, that view angle is static, that battlefield lacks animations, that simplistic air combat display, that flat globe, and of course that 2D is dull.  (I count dull enemy design into dull enemies.)

And "gameplay is dull" is my summerisation of optimal base placement, optimal strategy, tactic (air and ground) stays the same throughout the game, equipments and their options is boring.

Keep in mind that these comments are in comparison with XCOM 2 and as Chris said should be taken with a pinch of salt.

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4 hours ago, ArcticWinterZzZ said:

In X-Com, you can prime C4 and have your men suicide bomb the aliens. Not so in Xenonauts.

Incorrect, you can totally do that. In fact, my first use of C4 was exactly this - I did not realize it could be thrown and that a time of 1 would mean detonation at the end of the turn - rip my first specialist.

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46 minutes ago, Dagar said:

Incorrect, you can totally do that. In fact, my first use of C4 was exactly this - I did not realize it could be thrown and that a time of 1 would mean detonation at the end of the turn - rip my first specialist.

This is true, but the general point is correct that there's definitely less "cool" (by which I guess I mean "unusual") gear than in the original X-Com though. Motion detectors, psionics and proximity grenades are all things off the top of my head.

There's definitely less scope for weird playstyles; part of the reason for this was that things which broke or changed the combat rules were difficult to do in a messy codebase. Hopefully it'll be easier to include those sort of things this time around.

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3 hours ago, Chris said:

There's always going to be an element of people being drawn to what they like and I don't think we'd be able to make a game that will entirely appeal to many XCOM fans without losing what is intentionally different between the games.

Absolutely, I've kept this in mind - there are of course some comments that simply don't reasonably apply to Xenonauts, and I've omitted those.

 

3 hours ago, Chris said:

To be honest, I'd be most curious to hear where people think Xenonauts falls down against the original X-Com games, as they're our inspiration rather than our competition.

So for whatever reason, a lot of that is about atmosphere and character. It seems to be a very common opinion that the originals are atmospherically superior to Xenonauts. From reading the comments that talk about this, I think it can be broken down into several aspects (this is my interpretation of other people's opinions):

  • The alien appearance. Again, a well-known issue, no more needs to be said.
  • The general creepiness. Come to think of it, Xenonauts didn't seem to try for creepiness. The original had some battle music that was more creepy than intense, several alien enemies that were designed to be creepy / off-putting, more night missions with aliens in every shadow, etc.
  • Lack of "integration" of the Xenonauts story with pop culture. The original had some unmistakable references to general UFO, alien and conspiracy lore. The Sectoids are basically the aliens from X-Files and abduction stories. Alien abduction stories are reflected in the game, there's even an abductor UFO that has cows. The final mission lore is entirely inspired by alien lore popular at the time. Xenonauts has no such connections. As a personal note, I feel that conceptually the Cold War setting is far superior to the near-future of every other game, but admittedly Xenonauts did nothing with that setting.

Another interesting complaint is that Xenonauts doesn't, early on, give the same feeling of being outgunned and dominated as the original. Upon some consideration, this is perhaps a fair criticism. The very predictable alien invasion progress in Xenonauts also doesn't throw any curveballs at you. In the original, you could get unlucky and get an early terror mission... and if it were anything but Floaters, you were pretty much screwed. Cyberdiscs took forever to kill with basic weapons, Chryssalids would eat all your rookies. Xenonauts has mechanics that prevent early terror missions or base assault missions, and doesn't allow for the sudden appearance of stronger-than-normal aliens.

This is also related to squad sizes. In the original X-Com, you started with a squad of 14 (and you got 10 if you used a tank). This meant that the slaughter of your troops felt brutal but was more possible to deal with. You could lose 2 soldiers just trying to get out of the Skyranger, but you'd still have 12 left. Of which another couple would die during the mission. Xenonauts can be almost as unforgiving as the original (after all, your rookies probably do die in one hit) but even so, the smaller squad means you cannot lose 2 guys just getting out of your dropship.

Some people also miss blaster bombs but I cannot understand why.

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---
This is a very obvious "shameless-self-promotion", but I'd say I did a decent and quite "objective"-summarizations between "Xenonauts" and "(Open)Xcom":
http://steamcommunity.com/id/PaveMentman/recommended/223830/

( The link above contains a link within itself to further details. )

And for the sake of "collection", here is another link of my general opinion on "Xenonauts":
http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/index.php?/topic/14301-january-update-planning/#comment-159387


A summary of mine being: "Xenonauts 1" was a nice and fun streamlined "(Open)Xcom" both in good and bad-ways.
...But the worst thing is the lack of charts / graphs / statistic / records / spreadsheets /*anything-that-is-collection-of-numbers*!!!

Other than these links, I personally don't right now have anything extra to comment on this thread.

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3 hours ago, Solver said:

...snip...
...You could lose 2 soldiers just trying to get out of the Skyranger, but you'd still have 12 left. Of which another couple would die during the mission. Xenonauts can be almost as unforgiving as the original (after all, your rookies probably do die in one hit) but even so, the smaller squad means you cannot lose 2 guys just getting out of your dropship.
...snip...

Yes.
I experienced that in Xenonauts.
Not nice.
Androns and discs everywhere. Me constantly retreating direct from the start. Total desaster, "Judgement Day" like.
andron terror mission.jpg

 

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I have also had the experience, also in some very early versions of the game. There was a time when terror missions were basically Chinook defense missions because every alien would just rush towards it. Note you still have your 8 guys in that picture though! In the original X-Com, there'd be four bodies lying around...

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On 28/02/2017 at 1:35 AM, Solver said:

Alien abduction stories are reflected in the game, there's even an abductor UFO that has cows. ... As a personal note, I feel that conceptually the Cold War setting is far superior to the near-future of every other game, but admittedly Xenonauts did nothing with that setting.

Another interesting complaint is that Xenonauts doesn't, early on, give the same feeling of being outgunned and dominated as the original. ... Xenonauts can be almost as unforgiving as the original (after all, your rookies probably do die in one hit) but even so, the smaller squad means you cannot lose 2 guys just getting out of your dropship.

Some people also miss blaster bombs but I cannot understand why.

Oh yes I remember that poor cow. :D XCOM 2012 has (snake)man-in-black.  And a lot more, but pop culture is not something I am good at.
Despite the lack of futuristic feel which some consider less cool, I also appreciate the fact that X-1 reversed the trend and put it in Cold War (courage!).

The difficulty of X-1 is ok for me.  The number of soldier seems to me a good balance between 1994 and 2012.  It is hard to lost two soldiers on the get go, but does not demand an immediate retreat either.

I think XCOM 2 did well in resurrecting the blaster launcher while limiting its number and ammo.  I also miss throwing items around (much more efficient than walk and drop), mind probe, proximity mine, footstep sounds, and the ability to grab enemy weapons and make good use of them.  On geoscape I miss the 3D globe, although I can see why the new XCOM opt to present it like a board.

If we are not limited to 1994, newer xcom is doing better on ground combat evolution.  Grapple, Run and Gun, Invisibility, Null Lance, Teleportation... Even Apocalypse had flying armour and self guided missile right off, and personal shield and teleporter later... More tactical options, that gradually opens up and shape your tactic and style, this is something I very want to see.

Edited by Sheepy
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  • 4 years later...

If it weren't for the ability to edit xenonauts to my taste and play style, I would have stopped playing them after a dozen missions.

On 2/27/2017 at 8:35 PM, Solver said:

This is also related to squad sizes. In the original X-Com, you started with a squad of 14 (and you got 10 if you used a tank). This meant that the slaughter of your troops felt brutal but was more possible to deal with. You could lose 2 soldiers just trying to get out of the Skyranger, but you'd still have 12 left. Of which another couple would die during the mission. Xenonauts can be almost as unforgiving as the original (after all, your rookies probably do die in one hit) but even so, the smaller squad means you cannot lose 2 guys just getting out of your dropship.

I agree.

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