Dare to be Different. Dare to be Better.

[Bobby Gontarski]

Dear all,

I’m very excited to have discovered Xenonauts and to see that a second part is planned.
I must admit, that I have not had the chance to play Xenonauts 1 yet, but I purchased
it from GOG and am looking forward to discovering and playing it! :-)

About the upcoming part 2, I am old ‘connoisseur’ and lover of properly ‘ripened’
Tactical Turn Based games. Over the years I have played some of the best and
I have thought a lot about what makes these games so darn gripping and addictive
- especially compared to real-time games, which is not self-evident and I think really
worth contemplating and thinking about.

Right off the bat, my two all-time favorite turn-based games are probably Jagged Alliance 2
and, before that, The Bard’s Tale IV (on C64). (Of course, XCOM original and Shadows over
Riva (Das Schwarze Auge 3) were awesome too!) Never mind the Bard’s Tale, that’s
probably too old for today’s gamers (but do check it out if you want to see the
appeal and great identification happening with first person view combined with a
multi-character party and turn based tactical combat).
I would very, very strongly suggest to everyone EVER developing a turn based
tactical game to have played Jagged Alliance 2 at least once in their life.
Really, if you haven’t done it yet, you really, really should do so now!
Why?
Because in that game, a lot, lot, a lotlot of things were done right. Especially and
most of all, under the hood! And unfortunately, these are things which many modern
turn-based games, such as the new XCOM 2 have forgotten, simply because their
developers seem to be too young to ever have played it and learned from it!

I think there are a lot of things learnable from other great turn-based games such as
JA2 which the new Xenonauts 2 could profit of tremendously. In that regard, I would
like to suggest to “Dare to be Different” from the original XCOM and the first
Xenonauts (although as said, I haven’t even played that yet), and to shamelessly copy
some of the very best things from other great games. And by that I don’t mean just
superficial things, but most of all, core game and (game) combat engine design
decisions.

If you have ever played Jagged Alliance 2 (and don’t bother with part 1), and then
play the new XCOM 2, you will be GREATLY disappointed by the sloppy, half-baked
and just generally lacking in every division but graphics combat engine of XCOM 2.
Sure, it looks nice, but there’s nothing under the hood compared to Jagged Alliance 2.
And make no mistake:
The combat engine is the heart of every turn-based combat or tactical game!
So it’s the most important thing. Mark these words.

Let’s take a look at some of the differences:
At first view, you might only see on the surface, that in Jagged Alliance there were
not only tons more, different weapons, where in XCOM 2 there seem to be only 4
different weapons. Namely the ones of the Ranger, the Specialist, the Grenadier
and the Sharp Shooter. In JA2, there were I think, without exaggerating, at least
50 or probably more likely about 100 different weapons, modeled after real-world
weapons. AK-47’s to weird hybrid British prototypes and secret US military
sniper rifles, everything. Really, the Terminator (in part 1) would not have been
able to ask for any kind weapon which the game didn’t carry!
And that’s not all. Not be fare. After all, what’s a name if there’s nothing beneath
it to back it up? The weapons were so elaborate like characters! They had a
whole set of characteristics which really made them behave VASTLY different
in the field / Game!! The had characteristics like:
- Weapon range
- Weapon accuracy (close range and max range)
- Percentage to jam (those cheap Asian guns just suck!)
- Chance (%) and time (Action Points) to unjam a jammed weapon
- Reload time (in Action Points)
- Type of Ammunition needed
- Damage (single shot and burst shot)
- Clip Size
- Firing Time (Action Points to fire, single and burst fire)
- Automatic Mode (Single and Burst Shot)
- Addons (silencers, etc.)
- etc.

This really made weapons the second protagonist in the game.
And the angry exclamations of characters missing a shot, like Bobby Gontarski, such
as “There is limit to what I can do with these goddamn cheap supplies!!” *really*
had a real-life or real-simulated background!
And finding something that really was of good quality really felt like Christmas.
Currently I am playing XCOM 2 with the Jagged Alliance 2 voice packs and it
really shows, or *tells*, what XCOM 2 is missing! Where weapons in Jagged Alliance 2
were like women, some a little unpredictable perhaps, but if you treated them good,
they rewarded you with good service through an entire life, err game-time, in XCOM
they are just bland and boring pieces of cardboard. Without any character or
personality, or background or life of their own.

But that’s just the surface...

If you dig deeper, you will find much more things which make XCOM 2
not really work. Things where Jagged Alliance 2 shines. Really shines, as
in The Shining ;-).

One of the worst things about XCOM 2 is, that it does not feel realistic.
Jagged Alliance 2 is the PURE opposite of this! Where XCOM 2 feels like
it is totally and shamelessly CHEATING on you, always processing hidden
numbers, which the computer players should not have access to, Jagged
Alliance 2 *never ever* feels that way. The pure opposite!

Like have you ever had your guys set up an ambush with ‘Overwatch’
and then have the computer move a guy precisely to that square where
your invisible visibility supposedly stops, only to throw a hand grenade
at you without triggering your overwatch? The AI is CHEATING!!
And that’s by far not the only time XCOM 2 does this. You can just
feel it doing it all the time and in all kinds of circumstances.
The sad thing is, kids of today who never played classics such as Jagged Alliance 2
which did not do this kind of cheating or peaking behind secret game data
don’t know any better. They believe, that’s just the way turn-based games were...

Jagged Alliance 2 *always* feels totally realistic and predictable and it never ever
feels like the computer or AI is accessing game data that the real enemy would
not have (it if were an equal other player). That’s what makes combat, and thus,
because combat is the heart of every turn-based game, the entire game so
believable and therefore so damn fun, realistic and great!

This feeling of the game cheating on you really has a bad impact on XCOM 2.
I’m talking just for starts, for instance about the to hit percentage numbers.
Sometimes you have a to-hit percentage of like 90%, but every time you take the shot
you miss. Ten times in a row! Of course this has a lot to do with the random seed, or the
dice roll that is stored within in the Save Game. When you miss a shot and load a
Save Game, you will miss it again, because the to-hit rolls have been pre-rolled and stored
inside the Save Game. How stupid and messed up is that???
So those fancy hit percentages lose any and all of their believability and credibility, when
you miss an 90% hit 10 times (or infinite times) in a row.
And besides this, a lot of calculations are also just flat out false. Sometimes you can
shoot enemies right through solid walls, were the hit chance should be 0% and
sometimes you’re standing right next to a big alien, and the hit chance is like 36%
for no apparent reason. This kind of stuff totally wreaks havoc on the initial trust
you have in a combat engine, in the believability and realism of a game.
Is very bad.

Now, let’s look at why Fireaxis went to such a pain of storing pre-rolled to hit
chances inside the Save Games:
The problem was, Fireaxis did not want people to be able to simply re-load a
Save Game when they missed an important shot. Why not? Good question.
Probably because even Fireaxis understood at least partially, that you cannot have
a good and exciting game, if that same game is not at the same time also capable
of frustrating a player (Fireaxis just didn’t understand, that this frustration must
be perceived to be “fair” or realistic). If players can just walk through a game without
any effort and simply re-load every time they miss a shot, why bother for upgrading
your weapons? Or your characters? Etc.

The problem is, Fireaxis, like many other modern games, goes about this the
entirely wrong way. I said previously that Jagged Alliance 2 and The Bard’s Tale IV
are my all-time favorite turn-based games (along with XCOM original).
Now both of those games did something very, very important to create realism:
They both disallowed saving games during combat entirely (or JA2 at least
was built with this as the way it was supposed to be played and later added
a weanie-non-ironman-mode for beginners). And frankly, I am convinced, that this
is mandatory to create a really good turn-based combat engine. And since the
combat-engine of a turn-based tactical game is it’s heart, this I believe is also
MANDATORY for a good turn-based tactical game.

At this point, many people will probably ask why this should be so important?
ESCPECIALLY those who have never played games that disallow saving
during a turn-based combat. These kinds of people always argue, that you can
have BOTH, if only you build-in the possibility of saving games during combat,
because then, supposedly, those people who don’t want to load or save games
during combat could simply abstain from doing so.
 – Or, a little more limited, you could add different difficulty levels which would
allow such or disallow it.

The whole problem, however, as can be seen with XCOM 2, is *NOT* the players,
but the developers!!!!

If a game such as XCOM 2 is DEVELOPED, right from the start, with the possibility
to save and load games during combat, - even if it’s just for beginner players – then the
whole combat, and thus the whole game will be built around that! And this, in such a
manner that it becomes fun / playable ONLY WITH that feature!

On the other hand, if a game, such as JA2 is built right from the start WITHOUT
the option of saving or loading a game during combat, then the whole combat
system and thus the heart of the game, the most important part of the game and
thus the whole game will be developed and built around that. In such a manner,
that the game becomes fun / playable WITOUT that feature!

And the big thing about this is, that the second option, a game that is PROPERLY built
without allowing saving during combat is A HELL OF A LOT MORE fun to
play, because the combat engine, the heart will be made so much more fair, predictable
and realistic, if the developers had to play test it and play it like that all the time,
as opposed to being able to load and save during combat all the time.
In this sense, really, the developers ARE the most important players of a turn-based
tactical game. That’s why you, as an independent developer have EVERY possibility
to make your games exceed, where big commercial games such as XCOM 2 by
Fireaxis must fail: Because you can actually take the time to play test your game,
and just like in Jagged Alliance, re-build the combat engine from scratch 3 times (!!!)
if you see that the game would profit of it!
(I think this is mentioned in the book “Jagged Alliance 2 Boss Fight Books #5”
by Darius Kazemi.)

Look at it this way: Compare turn-based combat to chess:
What is chess, if you look only at individual moves?
Isn’t that as crippling as looking only at an individual frame of a movie?
Say you drop in a chess game in the middle, with half the figures already gone.
It becomes a stop-motion type of deal. That’s what happens when you allow
saving during combat.

Turn based combat, just like chess, or a movie, can only start moving, can
only star writing its own glorious story, can only come to life, even more,
can only become poetry, when the individual moves of all turns in a combat
become one inseparable and entire entity that goes down into history and
memory as a whole piece that is not, and must not be hacked into pieces!
Only then turn-based combat can become more than the sum of its individual
components, only then can turn-based combat become poetry, and create a
life of its own. If you keep saving and loading during combat, as you must if a
game has been developed with this feature in place, combat becomes a stupid
succession of individual freeze-frame puzzles or pictures, that lack the
correspondence and interdependency of previous and later events / frames.
Only if turn-based combat is NON-INTERRUPTED, can it really shine.
I felt this very strongly in JA2 and in Bard’s Tale IV. The suspense which you
experience during combat, while it may be great even in games such as
XCOM 2, literally becomes almost unbearable when you know, that you cannot
save or re-load, until the conflict is fully resolved (and your guys dead or alive).
And, this is only possible, if a combat system was designed and developed from
the start, to be like this. Which is so clearly not the case with the combat engine
in XCOM 2, which feels so extremely unfair and cheating. Just play about 5 – 10
good fights in Jagged Alliance 2 (after rolling up your main character) and you
should start to notice the difference!
Yes, not being able to save or load during combat may require re-playing a few
combats from scratch one or two times. And yes, that will make the game take a
little longer to complete. Just a little. But it will add TREMENDOUSLY to the overall
game quality. Why?

Because it will FORCE the developers, even against their wills, to make the
combat FAIR, PREDICTABLE and REALISTIC! Which XCOM 2 fails at
miserably and what is missing so direly in XCOM 2 (everyone agrees, less
randomness, and thus more predictable realism in XCOM 2 combat is the most
important thing to want to get more of). And if the combat is forced to be
developed more fair, predictable and realistic, then, the *ENTIRE* combat
engine will be better, much more honed out and filed to greatness!
And if the combat engine is the heart of turn-based games as I said it is, then
that makes the entire game so much butter.

So you see, you must disallow saving during combat, not as much for the
players, but most of all for the developers and the development process.
And when the game has been developed to greatness without the option
to save during combat, really, nobody can add any fun by putting it back in.

So, long post short advice:
Do not allow saving the game during combat. Don’t add the option, don’t plan
on adding it, don’t even think about it. Make a game, that is fair, realistic
and works great, if you like with different difficulty levels, but WITHOUT any
option whatsoever to save or load a game during combat!
Believe me, the game will profit of it. Tremendously!
More than anybody, not even the developers can possibly *ever* forsee or imagine!
I believe that’s what happened with JA2 and Bard’s Tale IV.
Remember, Jagged Alliance 2 re-designed their combat engine from scratch
3 times! They took their combat engine, and thus combat very seriously.
And you can’t take a movie seriously, if you are only looking at it frame by
frame. You *must* look at it in motion and most of all, develop it, from scratch,
to be looked at and experienced only in motion by everyone. Otherwise you
should perhaps produce and sell photographs, not movies.
That’s why JA2 is so good and XCOM 2 is so poor (below the glossy
graphics).

Bobby Gontarski

 

 

[Ninothree]

Restart whole mission >> saving repeatedly throughout

[Drakon]

Greetings.

Firstoff a clarification: a combat engine deals with probability to hit, reload mechanics or movement options. The issue you are talking about is what is usually referred to as "AI", even though in fact it is merely a glorified decision tree.

Apart from that ...

I understand your argumentation, and do think it has a lot of merit. I would like to point out a different aspect of your suggestion, though:

If you disable the option to save games during a mission, you also intrinsically constrain yourself to that all missions must be short enough to be finished in one session.
How long "one session" is, depends a lot on the player. For a pupil on holidays it may be fine to spend twelve hours of a day on a computer game, but as age progresses the time that can be spent on computer games usually decreases. Half way through an interesting session there might be some minor emergency because one of your kids caused some sort of havoc, which just takes precendence over finishing the level of the computer game you are playing.
I feel that is particularily of note for Xenonauts, because in my opinion it is targeted at older players. The big competetor is Firaxiscom [2], and when i talked with some friends about why I prefer Xenonauts over Firaxiscom 1, i managed to convey my feelings pretty well with that Firaxiscom is just so horribly neon, while Xenonauts is of a quite welcome sepia. I never finished Firaxiscom 1, because once i had flying soldiers with plasma snipers and soldiers that could stealth and the enemy just didn't have anything that could compare, the game became boring for me. Firaxiscom is to a large degree about the power fantasy of building this ultra-teched elite force of superhumans - genetically spliced or mechanically augmented, and preferrably also with psionic powers to boot. Xenonauts on the other hand is more about the gritty, somewhat desperate fight of "normal" men and women against an overwhelmingly powerful outer force - a fight that needs to be won through determination and smart application of tactics rather than just superiour hardware (this is one of the reasons why i personally hated the "we out-teched the aliens in a few months" rail weapons of Xenonauts 1 and am eyeing the currently suggested alenium supertechnology with a bit of apprehension). I do think it is natural that as age progresses preferences shift from extreme power fantasies towards more realistic darker stories.
As someone else mentioned (i think it was Conductiv) there is not much point in trying to outfiraxiscom Firaxiscom, especially if you are already operating with a smaller budget. Much smarter choice of action to focus on one's own strengths and a different playerbase than try and compete with a bigger company in areas where money determines the winner.
So under the assumption that Xenonauts is generally more targeted towards a slightly older audience, you'd have to limit your missions so that 90% of them can with certainty expected be finished in an hour or less, even by somewhat inexperienced players (you might have a few gamechanging missions like the last one that will take two hours). Would you personally state that this trade off for a probably better AI is worth it?

Regards

Drakon

 

[Shoes]

I didn't read over your whole post, so I hope I didn't miss arguments or justifications.

You seem passionate about this, so I hope I don't appear dismissive. It seems to crux of the argument is to have fair, realistic and predictable gameplay, achieved in part by not have the ability to save. But who doesn't want fair, realistic and predictable gameplay? I think the devs tried to achieve that in Xenonauts 1, and will try to get it in 2 as well. I appreciate the idea that a player that is unable to save will only like the game if it is flawless (otherwise, bugs will ruin the experience), but again the devs are already aiming for a flawless experience. Not being able to save is only going to exacerbate any problems the devs were unable to fix, not to mention alienate players who can't play nonstop, as Drakon has covered.

[Bobby Gontarski]

Hello Drakon and Shoes

Thanks for taking an interest in my long post! - Those who read it! ;-)

Here's another one! ;-)

 

@Drakon:

I know the difference between a combat engine and AI. I was talking about both. In XCOM 2 I like a lot that it's turn-based tactical combat. But that's about it. I don't like the combat engine, because it's sloppy, crude and all gloss and whistles, but no love and predictability - coupled with the ability to amaze with creative and unexpected procedurally generated outcomes - under the hood. You can literally tell that this engine is a sloppy job from the first new XCOM Enemy Unknown, and never got an update. You can tell this engine did not have 3 complete re-writes before it was put in the original game, but only about 0.5 play tests. Too little time, too much cost, too much pressure to release not in 3 months, but 2 days ago. And even with that little playtesting it must have gotten, the bugs found were not eradicated.

What's more about thoroughly play-testing a combat engine, is not just finding bugs though! It goes much deeper than that!

You must, must playtest turnbased combat engines thoroughly. And you must enjoy doing so (meaning the developers!).

That's the whole point: While you play test a combat engine, you get new ideas how to improve it and what would be fun to add and improve.

That's an important part of development. Starcraft (realtime) is another game where the developers had tremendous fun playing the game themselves and played it and played it and played it and played it. And had tremendous fun. It just shows. They filed the hell out of it. Kept adding good ideas which sprang up during playtesting. Supposedly the code his horrible spaghetti code, but boy is that game honed and filed to perfection! That's what playtesting does. And that's what my argument about not allowing saving during combat is about! Exactly that!
To FORCE developers thereby, to experience combat the only and true way it really, really, really needs to and must be experienced: As a one-stop - or rather nonstop express ride to hell and back!

Anytime you get a game with a combat engine that was not debugged properly, you also get a combat engine that was not filed and honed to perfection and to really, truly be fun.

Combat is an inclusive experience. It should *NOT* be broken down into separate parts. Not even if it takes several hours. Doing that, takes everything important out of the little witty bit of realism, which a combat on a computer monitor might have. Especially turn-based combat. I understand if you want to save a real-time game or a FPS game during combat, but please, not a turn-based game. If you absolutely must have a save option, - which really ruins a battle or even an entire trip or foray into the wilderness, because you forget all that went on and by the time you return and load the game again and drop into the middle of an ongoing life-or-death-situation, you will have forgotten everything, lost the mood which led up to that point.

If you've ever played tabletop roleplaying games, it's the same there! Hell, it's even the same with books! Even films! You simply *DO NOT* walk away from a life-or-death situation in a pen & paper RPG! This is not just out of respect for the other players, as you might believe, it's also about YOUR OWN respect for the game, and most of all, for the gravity and seriousness of the situation, which your VIRTUAL characters are facing, RIGHT NOW, in their virtual world...
Nor do you end the chapter of a book in the middle of a horrible life-or-death situation. It's like advertisements right before you see if the main character dies or lives. No movie maker, NO movie maker at all who takes his movie seriously would voluntarily allow and admit this. Not if he has respect for his own work. But game developers voluntarily put into their games because players who demand it, don't know how much cohesion and believabiliy it destroys. You don't pause a movie when it's at it's climax. These are ALL situations, which a book author, a movie creator or a game author must use to his fullest advantage to create tension. And to *not* loose it by poorly placed pauses or breaks.

Note: I'm not against saving per se. Only against saving at moments when that can and does have a negative impact on tension created in the player. At moments when there is zero tension and zero risk, it's find to save a game and reload it as often as anyone likes. But not when the game and the current situation in it demand the player's undivided attention.

In Bards Tale III (I think it was 3, not 4 as I mistakenly wrote in my first post) on the C64, it was even better: You could not only NOT save during combat, but you could not save *ANYWHERE* in the wilderness AT ALL! :-))) You could only save the game when your party was safely parked in a guild / tavern in a city. It was awesome! Tremendous tension when in wilderness!! Believe me! You don't know if you haven't played!!
That's the whole lure of rouge-like games. Or it has a lot to do with this.

What did that do, not being able to save anywhere but in a major safe city? Yes, you had to THINK ahead before staring to play. Playing the game was really just that: Like a trip into the unknown wilderness in real life. How cool was that!!! :-) You don't start such a trip if you know you won't have the time. Or you plan ahead and make sure you can return on time. It was awesome. You went out, battled to your last hit point - always lured by treasure and experience points, and the wonders of the world to discover, and then, on your way back to the safety of the city and savepoint, you literally sweated blood if you even saw a goblin or any other threat from a distance. If they caught up with your weakened party now, that would be it! The whole trip would have to be experienced again. - But that wasn't so bad, because a lot was created procedurally. At least all the encounters. No other game could duplicate that. Jagged Alliance 2 does a good job in Ironman mode though. No saving during combat.

If you absolutely must have the option to save during combat, you could add a ONE-SAVE-ONLY option. For instance, like "Swords of the Stars - The Pit" implements. That way you can save the game, walk away, and continue when you come back, but can't savescum. Not in the least. This does force the developers to GUARANTEE that combat is fair and entertaining. And that's what's so extremely important.

 

But let's talk about AI as well:

In XCOM 2, the bad combat engine goes hand-in-hand with a CRUDE AI.

I my view, a proper AI needs to deal with as far as possible *EXACTLY* the same data, which a player in the shoes of the computer would have. In other words, no cheating on dice rolls, no peeking in the cloud of war (from the computer character's perspectives), in player's stats, etc. No peaking what weapons with what range player weapons have etc. If an AI can only even stand a chance against a player by the programmers taking peeks at the player's stats, positions, etc. for the computer to work with, that makes for poor game play and poor battles that seem mechanical. An AI should be as human-like as possible, without undue possibilities or cheats which the player doesn't have also. Of course, that makes AI more complex.

Same with difficulty levels: Instead of having an AI cheat and auto-adjust difficulty levels or aggressiveness based on player's strength, levels or party members, which XCOM 2 implements religiously, like its gender-equality political over-correctness, players much rather should have a choice to pick their battles. There's no trace of this in XCOM 2 either. In Bard's Tale III that was perfectly implemented: You left the guild with your party where you last saved the game, left the city, and explored new parts of the world, then went back, drooled over the treasures you found, hopefully without loosing anyone, and finally saved again. This way experiencing the whole game was not so much like a book that you could stop anytime, but like a series of real forays into another world, which just happened to exist in your computer monitor. If the area you picked for your foray was too tough, had monsters in it which you could in no way handle yet because you just didn't have the necessary level yet, NPCs warned about this (big baaad monsters there, believe me!) and if you didn't listen, you died and had to start again from the last time you had saved. Teaches you respect, not just for the game, but for the actual world it simulates. And that respect is mandatory for... BELIEVABILITY. Then of course, you chose another, more timid part of the world to explore first. All this saving scheme not only made you take the game very VERY seriously (mom, wife, kids: DO NOT DISTURB ME FOR 3 HOURS! I must face a life-or-death-battle in...), but MOST OF ALL, the world and its NPCs. After all, they are the ones who can warn you about this. The game tells you to take it seriously. And not allowing saving at any point is the only true leverage the game has in this world here, where we live. Get the point? Isn't that exactly what a game is all about? That the player takes the created virtual reality seriously? As a replacement for our dull and safe reality in the real world here? Saving at any point, or especially, at high-tension points really wreaks havoc on this. Psychologically, for us, the users, for our minds. That's just the way the human mind works.

The suspense, cohesion and the sense of this not just being a stupid little fiction game that you can walk away from at any time you so happen to please, in other words, believability, is what is destroyed, wantonly and with not enough justification, by allowing saving at any point. You think you only win liberty to help your kids and run away in emergencies, but you loose so much which you do not realize. Wantonly in my view.

Another big point is difficulty. Saving at any point is grossly abused by developers, to implement a more modest difficulty. XCOM 2 is a prime candidate for this. By allowing the player to save before every shot and move, really takes the tension out of knowing, that now you must have your shit together and everything must work now. Instead of adjusting the combat engine and AI to be so realistic and predictable, that you can survive, if only you really got your act together, they can simply offer the ability to save and reload. Then, anytime the game does something stupid, everyone can say, oh, no big problem, just reload and do something different, so that UNREALISTIC thing which happened there doesn't happen. - How often has this happened to you in XCOM 2? I'm not finished yet, but I estimate about 1000 times so far. Or more. If saving during combat were NOT POSSIBLE, the developers would have been forced literally FORCED to correct this. In their and their game's own best interest. Adding the ability to save during combat destroys this fail-safe mechanism.

Turn-based combats should be creative. Things should be able to happen during combat, which not even the programmers though would happen or be possible. Cool things which amaze everybody. Or make you laugh. Or swear, etc. Things which make you say: Wow! That was awesome. Even if it was an amazing computer move to take you out. Battles should be remembered for the amazing and creative twists and turns they take, in context. It's like my old D&D sessions: You just don't allow players to run off in the middle of the climax of a battle to go to the bathroom. If they do, their character dies because he stood there, motionless, like a dumbf*** while the monster bore down on him! Should have though of that before opening that last dark door on the lowest level on that unknown world which every NPC warned them about! Don't listen to the NPCs, don't listen to the game, then learn to pay respect. Die and reload from BEFORE the combat (or even the entire episode / foray / etc.). - As said, a ONE SAVE option like in "Swords of the Stars - The Pit" seems acceptable to me. I would never use it during serious combat, except in extreme emergencies (which are rare enough to not need the option), but I can see it as an acceptable compromise. ;-)

 

 

 

@ Shoes

Yes, that's right, everyone wants fair, predictable and realistic gameplay.

So, how do we get it?
Simple: We get the developers of the game to make it that way.
And how do we achieve this?
By forcing the developers to *NOT BE ABLE* to cheat and savescum when their supposedly wonderful combat engine or AI makes awful blunders and mistakes, which ruin fairness, predictability, realism and believability, which can only be elegantly swept under the carpet by re-loading a previous game save.

The point is this: If a game is developed, from the start, with any kind of ability to save games during combat (at least if this is not a one-save only scheme like in "Swords of the Stars - The Pit"), it WILL - by Murphy's Law and any other game development experience, create a DIFFERENT combat engine and AI, than, if it is developed, right from the start, with NO possibility to save during combat (except perhaps a mentioned one-save scheme which does *NOT* allow going back in time in any way). And guess which combat engine and AI will be better?

In other words, not allowing saving during combat, is as much a measure to improve fun for the end user, AS IT IS a measure, to guarantee proper game development! In other words, it is a part of what I would call "best practice" development for turn-based tactical computer games. You don't need to do it, but it does help.

:-)

As you said correctly: "Not being able to save is only going to exacerbate any problems the devs were unable to fix".

THAT is exactly the purpose! By exacerbating those exact problems, the devs are *forced* to fix them or die!! :-) It is as much, or even more so, a tool to influence the development process, in a positive way (and the devs themselves after all must agree to it and see its merit out of their own will), than it is an extremely strong tool and means to increase tension and thus fun in the end user. It does both, elegantly and at very little cost. Thanks to the hard-coded and premeditated lack of any possibility to be able to reload previous moments or turn back time in any way during combat.

It's just realistic: In combat you really need to have your sh** together! That's realistic. And that adds realism like not much else. That's why you can't just go back and just nullify any mistakes you - or an unfair, faulty, unrealistic or unpredictable game engine or AI made (like in the movie "Live Die Repeat", doesn't that movie just remind you of XCOM 2 like hell?). Get your sh** it together if you want to play a game which simulates realistic life-or-death situations with turn-based combat! :-) - After all, you already have superhuman powers by your character's fictional abilities, which should be enough!!!, and almost endless time!!! - and thus intelligence - to chose the next action for every character. So you do *NOT* ALSO need the ability to shift time arbitrarily back to any point in the past, just because you, or the devs made a mistake. At least not during combat! If combat is too hard, the devs should have added levels with lover level monsters that are easier to beat.

Saving more than one game save and the ability to reload it when you made a mistake is the game development and game experience crippling ability to turn back time arbitrarily in life-or-death moments. It is the insanely powerful ability to shift time arbitrarily. And thus to have endless lives. It's not needed in a world where you already have superpowers, magic, any kinds of super weapons and the ability to think 30 minutes about life-or-death battle situations which, in the simulated world, would need to be decided upon in split-seconds. We, and the fictional simulated worlds have enough fictional (and hard to believe) powers already. And that besides the corrupting influence, which being able to turn back the time during combat has for the development of the combat engine and AI.

Regards,

Bobby

 

Edited January 20, 2018 by Bobby Gontarski

[Shoes]

I will point out that, in order to bugfix the game, devs need to be able to reproduce conditions that caused the bug; a saved game would save tons of dev time. I will also say that the goal is to create a fun game, and fairness/predictability/realism all contribute to that, but to a limit. Having the Geoscape time pass at a 1:1 scale compared to real life would be realistic. Waiting literal hours for your radar to pick up a UFO is realistic. But it's not fun... unless you're really into that, which I am willing to bet some people are!

There are two games that come to mind that I wonder if you've tried: the first is Frozen Synapse; it is as predictable as it gets. There's no "50% chance to hit", but instead it's "0.5 seconds to kill". Due to the deterministic nature of the combat, you're encouraged to simulate scenarios while you're planning to really tighten your tactics. Take a look, any gameplay video should convey what I mean pretty quickly. The other is Achron, which would be the opposite of what you want; it's a meta-RTS game. You can rewind events and try them again, so save-scumming is built in. You are literally achronal, and able to manipulate time. However, so can your opponent.  

[Max_Caine]

@Bobby

The impression I get from your posts is that you want Jagged Alliance 2 with aliens. Jagged Alliance 2 has aliens, just select the Sci-Fi mode before running the game. I think you will be disappointed, as Chris has previously indicated he does not want to to make a simulator in a similar vein to JA2.

[Chris]

Welcome to the forums, Bobby. A lot of the regulars on the board will have played Jagged Alliance 2 and it's a game regularly quoted in suggestions for this game, and it's also something I've spent quite a bit of time with. I agree that it's a great game, but bear in mind that it's not exactly the same type of game as 1994 X-Com and not everything that was cool in JA2 will necessarily improve Xenonauts.

My thoughts in brief - I think you should probably play Xenonauts 1 and possibly OpenXCom before you post up too much more. Most of the points that I agree with you on are already present in Xenonauts 1, whilst I think the points where I don't agree with you would be easier to understand if you'd played the game. Your post is too long to respond to in full, so just a few specific points I wanted to highlight... firstly, the main areas where X-Com / Xenonauts and Jagged Alliance games are different.

In Jagged Alliance, you have to carry around all the equipment and supplies you will need for all the battles you will fight until you return to one of your own towns to resupply, whereas in Xenonauts you return to base after every single mission and re-arm. This means that a number of the systems in JA2 don't translate across well - e.g. things like jamming weapons makes sense when you are using the same varying quality weapons over the course of multiple days, but makes less sense if your squad are taking fresh weapons from an arms locker full of well maintained military-grade hardware before every mission. Similarly taking a realistic amount of ammo and grenades along in a Xenonauts mission would mean that the player would never run out of either, because every mission is a self-contained affair with only about ten minutes of actual combat ... whereas in JA2 you have to think about how much ammo / grenades to save for future battles, too.

Also, much of the realism from JA2 is lost in a game about killing sci-fi aliens. It matters in JA2 whether you're using 5.56mm rifle with AP rounds or a 7.62mm rifle with hollowpoints, because those are real things that have predictable effects in the real world against human enemies. However, nobody knows what effect those rounds will have on a fictional alien, and it's actually not really worth thinking about in much detail because you'll have entirely replaced ballistic weapons with laser weapons 1/3 of the way through the game, etc.

Secondly, I think you've made a few wrong assumptions about saving. JA2 by default uses a save system that allows you to save any time you want, or you can use an optional "Iron Man" mode which prevents you manually saving but automatically saves the game when you exit or after every major event (the idea being to make you live with your mistakes, but still allow you to shut down your computer). This "Iron Man" mode is probably what you're talking about - but it's not unique to JA2 and actually originally appeared in the X-Com series back in 1994, and is also already present in both Xenonauts and the new Firaxis XCOMs (and in both cases endorsed by the developers as the "correct" way to play the game). It's not anything particularly special to JA2 and thus I think you've extrapolated far too much from it.

Ultimately I think you'll find a lot to like in the detailed combat systems of Xenonauts 1 and OpenXcom (which is an open-source update of the 1994 X-Com), but just be aware that we're trying to make an X-Com here game rather than a Jagged Alliance game. The two are close cousins but they aren't exactly the same.

[Bobby Gontarski]

Hey, hi Chris and all!

Thanks for the elaborate reply!

Yes, yes, certainly, I need to play Xenonauts 1 soon, and I will.
Just not sure at this point, whether I should finish XCOM 2 first or not. ;-)

I am more than pleased that lots of regulars here will have played Jagged Alliance 2! :-))
That's great to hear!! :-)
I think it really set a standard in many ways which I wish some games would copy more of.
Of course I can see that lots of stuff from Jagged Alliance cannot be copied to an XCom style
game like Xenonauts. For instance, the other awesome thing I liked a lot about Jagged Alliance
was the realism of the victims of war: How bodies of killed enemies, were, realistically,
and unlike in so many other (crummy) computer games, *not* removed. In fact, they slowly started
rotting and decaying, attracting vultures and whatnot and comments from your troop.
A little grisly, but it really added to the atmosphere. In an XCom type of game I guess that
doesn't make much sense because you hit-and-run and hardly never return to previous
battle sites. Oh well.

I think you're right about the saving mechanics of Jagged Alliance 2. I suppose I had that a little
blurry in my memory because I played the game back then from start to finish about 4 or 5 times,
always in Ironman. - And never figured out that you could leave the game during combat... ;-)
Oh well. Didn't miss it. ;-)

The reason why I don't like Ironman in other games is because I *do* like to save my game,
before and after important large-scale decisions, just not during combat. Many games such as
XCOM 2 I think only offer an Ironman mode which does not allow saving hardly at all. That's too
harsh if you haven't finished the game before. You need to know what to build when, etc.
I think that's something else and not allowing saving here does not add to the fun at all.

The point is, Jagged Alliance 2 was not hard at all to finish for the first time in Ironman mode,
because you could save anytime, just not during combat. That's how I liked it and I must agree
with the creators of XCOM 2, that that is how I too feel tactical games should really be played.
The thing just is: If they already know it and say it, why don't they IMPLEMENT it? I mean
properly. Not the crippled way they did, but from the outset. So EVERYONE can play the
game that way, even beginners?
The problem with XCOM 2 is that it just seems to me that it's too hard if you can't save during
combat - I save all the time during combat, as said, like in the movie "Live, Die, Repeat - Edge of
Tomorrow", but hate the experience all the same. If I wouldn't save, I'd get my favorite soldiers
killed way too often.

But anyway, even with my false assumptions about Jagged Alliance 2's save game mechanics,
my argument against allowing game saves during combat that allow the player to jump back
in time (such as in XCOM 2) still remain. I think it's a bad idea. Including for beginners.
If the devs of XCOM 2 thought so too, they should not just have said so, but made the game that
way. Then, they would have been forced to implement a combat system (and AI) which allowed
for beginner players to get through combat as well, without loosing half their squad or having
to reload every turn 5 times.
Mind you, I don't mind restarting an entire battle - I've done so many times in Jagged Alliance 2
when one of my mercs got wasted. - And, once again, here: You only don't MIND starting
and entire battle AGAIN, from scracth, if the combat engine is really good and well-programmed,
and even combat with known enemies and a known map is still great fun to play through,
even if you have to start from scratch once or twice. JA2: Yes, XCOM 2: No.
Another reason to make the combat engine better, err., so good, that nobody needs to or
wants to save during combat and hence, doesn't need to be implemented.

Ok, sorry if I go on about this, but now about Xenonauts 2:

If I recall correctly, you stated somewhere that Xenonauts 1 was a lot like the original XCOM,
and that in Xenonauts 2 you might be willing to leave that a little and develop more of your
own ideas, to make the game stand out more as its own.
I just though that was a cool idea (without even having played Xenonauts 1, but the original
XCOM, and liked it) and thought maybe stuff from other great games such as Jagged Alliance 2
could be borrowed. At least some of the coolest things. - Believing that life might be too short for
you to also make a Jagged Alliance 2 style game after Xenonauts 2!
In this regard, you wrote about how the whole complex weapon system of Jagged Alliance 2
with it's often less-than perfect weapons (but much better soldiers than in XCOM 2) and different
ammo, etc. could not apply to a game like the original XCOM.

Maybe not, but how's this idea:

Imagine a new XCOM style game, where everything is reversed:
You don't have a chance against the aliens superior technology.
Try as you might, in the few months that you have to fight off the alien
invasion, you can in no way catch up hundreds of years of superior and
advanced alien weapons technology.
What to do?
Instead of trying to research alien technology, go renegade and GUERILLA.
[Hehe, like in Jagged Aliance 2... *hehehe*.]
So instead of researching and developing your own weapons - and unlimited
supplies of them - you are renegades and pick up what you can get from
killed aliens and downed UFOs. - Along with *all* conventional earth weapons
of that time that you already have access to. I'm sure even aliens can be made
to feel the difference between a  5.56mm rifle with AP rounds or a 7.62mm rifle
with hollowpoints. - Provided the combat engine is sophisticated enough. 
Now, all of a sudden, finding weapons and ammo in the field from downed aliens
is an awesome thing. Just like in JA2. I don't think it's impossible to make a fun alien
invasion game that's based on this more guerilla and poor man and poor supplies
use-the-enemies-weapons-against-them type of game.
You could say there was a world war III right before the alien invasion, destroying
all research facilities on earth. ;-)

Of course, that would make large parts of the whole research tree and researching
new weapons kinda obsolete. But think about the huge fun you will have in finding
new weapons (or laser blasters for ships and airplanes) in the field like in JA2! :-)
Tremendous fun!
And, if you still want research, you could allow some tinkerers to combine conventional
earth-weapons with alien tech, like plasma grenades and mine throwers for instance...
;-)

Just an idea.
Or are you all set already about how Xenonauts 2 should come out to be?

I'm just saying these things now, because by the time I will have played Xenonauts 1
and OpenXCOM, I fear you will have been progressing further down the line with
Xenonauts 2, and these suggestions that I am making here, are pre-development kinda
suggestions I think. You need to think about these kinda things before starting development, no?

Regards,
Bobby (not my real name... ;-)

 

 

Edited January 23, 2018 by Bobby Gontarski

[Chris]

XCOM / XCOM-2 isn't actually as hard as it seems in Iron Man mode; one of the best things about Iron Man mode is that it forces you to keep playing in a spot where you think you're about to lose your whole squad ... or to push on with a game even though three or four of your best soldiers have died in the last mission.

Every time that happened I found that things weren't actually quite as bad as I thought they were, and some of my favorite moments were when I found I could get everything back under control after a couple more tense missions. Without Iron Man mode I probably would have just reloaded to an earlier point in the game because I mistakenly thought the game was completely lost. I'd definitely give it a try if you have time!

Anyway, I just wanted to say that most of the development time for a game like Xenonauts or Jagged Alliance goes into "invisible" stuff that the average player doesn't really consider - making the tile grid work, making a level editor and writing the systems that load the appropriate combat level from the strategy layer, creating a turn system or writing the line of sight / fog of war mechanics, etc. I'm pretty certain that making a successor to Jagged Alliance with our Xenonauts-2 tech would be a smaller job than creating Xenonauts-2 from scratch has been, because many of those background systems are very similar for both games.

I'm not promising that we'll make a JA2 successor after Xenonauts-2, but we're definitely going to consider it. I'm therefore not as bothered about trying to merge in potentially unnecessary stuff from JA; there's a fair chance that I'll be doing all that "properly" in a couple of years anyway.

[Xeryx]

@Chris

Thank you for being so active on the forums.

I have to say I completely disagree with this statement

Quote

Also, much of the realism from JA2 is lost in a game about killing sci-fi aliens. It matters in JA2 whether you're using 5.56mm rifle with AP rounds or a 7.62mm rifle with hollowpoints, because those are real things that have predictable effects in the real world against human enemies. However, nobody knows what effect those rounds will have on a fictional alien, and it's actually not really worth thinking about in much detail because you'll have entirely replaced ballistic weapons with laser weapons 1/3 of the way through the game, etc.

One of the things I miss most, is ammo diversity for weapons.Your argument is not really valid, because each alien has it's weaknesses and strengths against particular types of weapons. If you look at just ballistic ammos of today there are many types of ammo's that could help the player in so many ways. White phosphorous rounds for a sniper rifle for instance. HE rounds for a cannon, or even slugs or a stun round for a shotgun. So you honestly, cannot tell me that Ballistic rounds cannot remain relevant in later parts of the game, which I feel is needed. The grenade launcher is a superb example of how diverse ammunition can affect the battlefield. Of course the player would need to invest in the research for these ammos, but the possibilities could be endless for modders.  Now, I am not saying every gun should have a different type of ammo available. But I think that that mechanic is sorely missing from Xeno1 and this game, and it should at least be in place to be used. One of the best strategies is to be able to carry a couple of different ammo's to be able to deal with aliens and different situations.

This is most apparent when you use a rocket launcher in xeno 1. I always carry different rounds to meet different needs on the battlefield.

Edited January 25, 2018 by Xeryx

[Chris]

It's certainly possible to create a range of different ammo types to keep ballistics relevant into the late game, I just don't see why you'd want to do it? I mean, one of the cheese strats in Xenonauts 1 is just to spam rocket launchers and grenades because they stay relevant throughout the entire game and upgrading their ammo is free.

Let's say we implement researchable white phosphorous rounds 1/3 of the way through the game that give your ballistic weapons a major damage boost - why does the player then require lasers, or other advanced weapons?  Fundamentally I think most players would say it's far cooler and more fun to be given a shiny new laser cannon rather than a new type of ammo for their M16s if the two are going to have essentially the same effect.

Sure, having different types of ammo that are useful against different types of aliens might be cool (XCOM2 does it, despite it being nonsensical as soon as you get past ballistics). But that only really works if you are fighting an assorted "zoo" of different aliens on any given mission like in XCOM2, otherwise you'd always just give everyone the anti-Sebillian rounds when fighting Sebillians, etc. At that point you've just added a very fiddly UI system but you haven't actually added any more skill to the game.

 

[Xeryx]

Thanks for the response Chris.

Well from what I take away from your post, is that in your opinion you are doing nothing more than taking away player and modder options and assuming that all players would want that shiny new laser. Here is my aguement based on the new system implemented for alenium use. What if I am low on alenium for my lasers? What am I suposed to shoot at the aliens then when my ballistics have become obsolete? One of the best things about these types of games is options. There should always be more than one way to win a fight.  Your argument does not hold water about having "anti-Sebillian" ammos, because firstly you would not know what you are facing at a landing point and secondly weapons themselves are viewed the same as using a different ammo type. If I know that I am facing, say Sebillians then I am going to take the weapons that is most effective, whether it be a flame thrower, laser, or a can of Raid.  Ammos and grenades would be no different, especially for players that might want to play with ballistics longer. This argument isn't only for ballistics. This is for any weapon really. By changing an ammo you can completely change the characteristic of any weapon.  Maybe I could take that useless laser pistol and make it a pulse laser or a burst shotgun effect. I am thinking in a BIG picture frame of mind. I think if players want simplification, the can go play Xcom2, they would not be here hoping for more from Xenonauts 2.

I simply want those options available to me as a player, just like I want attachments for weapons. I want them available to me at the games release even if  in a limited form, because I know modders like myself will take them very far. Limiting those kinds of options because you may not like them or see the usefulness is a mistake. I know that these kinds of "systems" take a lot of work to put into place from a developers standpoint. But if you look at how your initial project for X2 started and where it is now,  it is more like an updated X1. What does that tell you? Don't mess with success and overall I think X1 is an outstanding game sorely in need of updating.

[Shoes]

@Xeryx, careful about calling arguments nonsensical, as we're discussing the effects of RL ammunition on entirely fictional beings. For all we know, these aliens don't have solid bodies, and so any sort of ballistic would be useless!

[Chris]

17 hours ago, Xeryx said:

Thanks for the response Chris.

Well from what I take away from your post, is that in your opinion you are doing nothing more than taking away player and modder options and assuming that all players would want that shiny new laser. Here is my aguement based on the new system implemented for alenium use. What if I am low on alenium for my lasers? What am I suposed to shoot at the aliens then when my ballistics have become obsolete? One of the best things about these types of games is options. There should always be more than one way to win a fight.  Your argument does not hold water about having "anti-Sebillian" ammos, because firstly you would not know what you are facing at a landing point and secondly weapons themselves are viewed the same as using a different ammo type. If I know that I am facing, say Sebillians then I am going to take the weapons that is most effective, whether it be a flame thrower, laser, or a can of Raid.  Ammos and grenades would be no different, especially for players that might want to play with ballistics longer. This argument isn't only for ballistics. This is for any weapon really. By changing an ammo you can completely change the characteristic of any weapon.  Maybe I could take that useless laser pistol and make it a pulse laser or a burst shotgun effect. I am thinking in a BIG picture frame of mind. I think if players want simplification, the can go play Xcom2, they would not be here hoping for more from Xenonauts 2.

I simply want those options available to me as a player, just like I want attachments for weapons. I want them available to me at the games release even if  in a limited form, because I know modders like myself will take them very far. Limiting those kinds of options because you may not like them or see the usefulness is a mistake. I know that these kinds of "systems" take a lot of work to put into place from a developers standpoint. But if you look at how your initial project for X2 started and where it is now,  it is more like an updated X1. What does that tell you? Don't mess with success and overall I think X1 is an outstanding game sorely in need of updating.

So in the current design there are advanced weapon tiers that don't require Alenium, but they're less powerful than the ones that do require it. So part of your research planning is deciding whether you've got enough Alenium to justify going for a specific tech or whether it is best deployed elsewhere.

In terms of what you want from the game - in most cases that gameplay functionality is already in the game, but it's often handled a little differently to how you've laid out. At the moment there are upgrades available for ballistic weapons that increase their damage, but when you research them they actually replace your ballistic weapons with entirely new weapons that look identical to the old ballistics but do more damage. Similarly, you may well be able to turn a single laser into different types of laser - but that's probably going to be handled through the attachment system (giving you the choice to use different lenses). Potentially different ammo could just work as an attachment, too - you pick one and then you're committed to it for the mission?

There is actually already code in place for the full on-JA2 mid-mission ammo swapping, where weapons can use a variety of different types of ammo and each type can do different types of damage and have their own magazine size and damage multiplier. However, the UI doesn't support this. It's a lot of work to add in lots of UI panels that allow you to unload and reload weapons with different types of ammo mid-mission (not only do you need the ability to do it, but you also need a way of easily displaying the available ammo on each soldier, etc) and given there's easier ways of getting the same effect in the game we're unlikely to do it. It's much simpler to just have a system where you choose one type of ammo per weapon to bring to battle.

So if you want to take the game to JA2 levels of weapon customisation, the code is there, but you'll probably need help from the community coders to get the UI to support it. The base game will only support about 70-80% of the functionality you're after.

[Bobby Gontarski]

Hi Chris

Thanks for the hints on XCOM 2! :-)
X-Com in general is just a lot less character driven than Jagged Alliance.
In Jagged Alliance, you really care about your guys, even if they are just mercs.
In X-Com style games, your soldiers are by default, impersonal and expendable. One is like the other.
Fireaxis realized that those who play computer games like to identify with their soldiers. So they started to mix. They started to add a level-system, names, abilities, customizable looks, etc. However, that does not go well together with a combat engine that really just likes to critically would or even kill your heroes. In short: It pisses people off to get their heroes killed. At least, if they feel it was unfair, rigged or they had no chance.

Now, what Fireaxis did, is two BIG No-Nos:
1.) They implemented a half-hazard combat engine and AI, that strongly likes to kill or critically wound (taking away will) your soldiers, even if you played good and made no mistakes.
2.) Because that was just really spoiling the fun, they didn't write a better combat engine and AI, like Jagged Alliance (2) did, but instead, they made half-assed cheap fixes. For one, if you miss 3 shots in a row, your aim is secretly put up by 20 points or so. If you lose a soldier or one is critically wounded, the aim of all enemies secretly goes down by 20 points. - Or something like this, don't quote me on this, I'm not back-checking this right now. This shows the attitude that went into developing the combat engine and AI of XCOM 2. It's shit. It's not even properly started yet, let alone finished or acceptable.

Because of this approach in Fireaxis games, you have two options as a player:
1.) If you like to identify with your characters, you will not like to get them killed. Hence, you will have to reload often, creating the "Live, Die, Repeat - Edge of Tomorrow" effect. Plying in Ironman is not possible.
2.) If are willing to sacrifice some soldiers, you can play Ironman and a few soldiers will die. But in return, you get the experience you, Chris mentioned, where you can seeming pull through tight spots, thanks to "just coming through in the last moment". Now, these "tight spots" most likely are created by the AI actually cheating, giving you secret bonuses if you take a pounding. It creates a SIMILAR effect as in a good combat engine and AI, like Jagged Alliance 2 had, but not an equally - or even comparably good effect.

At least, that's my take from my current knowledge about the MASSIVE CHEATING that is going on behind the scenes in the Firaxis combat engines and AI to make combat even half-fun / acceptable. It's shit and a shit approach and everyone knows it or should.

Now, don't get me wrong, the Jagged Alliance team had the same problem:
Making a realistic combat engine and AI turns out to be not much fun at all. The computer, at least if programmed properly, is just too efficient and methodical in disposing your guys. So efficient, that it's not fun. Like REAL combat. In real house-to-house combat, the mortality, at equal weapons and equal ability is: 50:50. Both teams loose half their guys. That's why the Americans like to use A-Bombs instead. Loosing half your guys doesn't mix well with computer game players (or voters') desire to experience a kind of a hero story, where their superior guys beat all odds. And all this is compounded by the fact, that most players will not be nowhere near as good when they start out, as the programmer needs to make the AI for the really good players or for the end of the game. The only proper solution therefor is, to "dumb down" the enemies. At least in the beginning and / or for beginner difficulty levels. But this has to happen in a realistic way. Some enemies are smart, some are not. Jagged Alliance did an EXTREMELY good job at this. In fact, the best in the gaming world. At least in regards to turn-based 2D combat. Their secret to success was: PERFECTION. They did not accept cheap solutions, such as cheating behind the scenes, like Fireaxis did (and has to, due to financial pressures to sell). Instead, they programmed the best turn-based combat engine and AI the world of gaming probably ever saw. And for that, one of the main motivations of Ian Currie, one of the lead developers was, not only that the game and thus combat should be fun, but also that the player never blame the game when something went wrong. And having to reload a previous game save during combat was seen, from the start, as something which the game was at fault for, therefore to blame and thus something he did not want:
I'm currently reading "Jagged Alliance 2" by Darius Kazemi from Bossfightbooks.com. It says that initially, Currie wanted to make a real-time game with Jagged Alliance 1, because he never played a turn-based game that he really liked before. He hadn't played D&D or the early turn-based computer games, because he felt they were too statistics-driven (like many who are new to turn-based). But then, while making Jagged Alliance 1, he realized, that you CAN NOT control 6 characters simultaneously in real-time in a battle situation. You cannot micro-manage them as a party-driven game like Jagged Alliance requires, with each different character doing totally different kinds of things.
There's only two solutions: Make the characters half-automated, where some kind of AI takes over when the player doesn't micro-manage them, or turn-based, where the player is forced to take complete and total control. - And then also can't blame the game for letting his character do something that got him killed.
Ian Curry had a very, VERY strong will about not wanting players to blame his game for anything they were unhappy with.
Now, if you have some kind of AI filling in the gaps which a player couldn't micro-manage in a real-time combat with 6 soldiers (and 6 - 8 opponents), that AI would either have to be so good, that no soldiers ever got killed. That would make the game boring. Or it might allow a soldier to get killed. But if that was the player's favorite character, which he spent so much time to develop and with which he identifies very strongly, he will be very pissed. I quote from the book, Ian Currie:

"You order that character to patrol an area [or do anything else, half-automated] while you take care of something else. You come back after two minutes [or two turns] and that character is dead. You feel robbed of something that you had no control over and you reload a previous game save."

Ian Currie did NOT WANT THAT! Despite being AGAINST turn-based IN GENERAL, due to his personal background of never having experienced any fun with turn-based games or combat systems, Ian Currie switched the entire game over to a turn-based combat system. JUST BECAUSE OF THAT! Just because he did not want players to reload a previous game save because they felt really, the game was to blame for something. As in: "Stupid shit game! It's messing everything up! Now I have to reload again!" These are the kind of thoughts, Ian Currie did not want his players to experience. And he and his basement-team took great lengths to realize it. The outcome is, eventually, the combat engine and AI of Jagged Alliance 2. It is much better, and much more sophisticated, under the hood, than Fireaxis' current XCOM 2 engine and AI. Yes, you cannot see that, like the pretty graphics, thus, it doesn't sell games, but in the long run and adult computer gamers will notice. That's what's happening to XCOM 2 and what happened to Jagged Alliance 2. XCOM 2 sells, because its nice graphics, but it's crap, seen in the long run. Jagged Alliance did not sell very well, because it didn't have nice graphics, but under the hood, oh boy. And people realize it, even by the time they do (now), it's too late and the company has long since gone bankrupt, etc.

 

 

23 hours ago, Chris said:

Anyway, I just wanted to say that most of the development time for a game like Xenonauts or Jagged Alliance goes into "invisible" stuff that the average player doesn't really consider - making the tile grid work, making a level editor and writing the systems that load the appropriate combat level from the strategy layer, creating a turn system or writing the line of sight / fog of war mechanics, etc. I'm pretty certain that making a successor to Jagged Alliance with our Xenonauts-2 tech would be a smaller job than creating Xenonauts-2 from scratch has been, because many of those background systems are very similar for both games.

I'm not promising that we'll make a JA2 successor after Xenonauts-2, but we're definitely going to consider it. I'm therefore not as bothered about trying to merge in potentially unnecessary stuff from JA; there's a fair chance that I'll be doing all that "properly" in a couple of years anyway.

 

THAT's exactly what I am saying: Most development time goes into stuff the average player doesn't really consider.
DO NOT CONSIDER THE AVERAGE PLAYER AS TARGET AUDIENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At least not in regards to anything but offering him a difficulty level with which he can have fun with the game.

That is my one best suggestion to any game developer.

That's what ALL modern games are doing, exclusively and what makes them crap compared to older games: They consider the average player. They want to sell to 9 year old kids, so they remove blood and guts and gore and sex and adult content. And they put in nice graphics and assume nobody will notice a dull, cheating combat engine and AI.

NO! This is YOUR strength as an independent developer:
MAKE YOUR GAME FOR THE MOST PICKY, SOPHISTICATED, ADULT, PROFESSIONAL, SERIOUS gamer! Not for the average player!
Then, magic will happen! Namely, the picky, sophisticated adult player will like it.
And guess what? So will the average player!!!! - Even if it's just after a while and BECAUSE the adult, sophisticated player is talking about it all the time. The only thing that might stop an average player from liking a game, is if it's so hard, that he can never master the learning-curve. Put in a beginner difficulty which does NOT break the great achievements implemented for the professional adult player, and you got a great game on your hands. In other words, do not make combat acceptable, by implementing behind-the scene cheating or requiring (frequent) reloads (- or even allowing such as I strongly advise for) during combat.

Do *NOT* underestimate Jagged Alliance (2)! Do not underestimate the effort and sophistication that went into it's combat engine and AI. As you said yourself, most things that really matter are things you do not see. If you really want to make a good turn-based game like Jagged Alliance, I recommend not only the short little booklet about the development of Jagged Alliance 2, "Jagged Alliance 2" by Darius Kazemi from BossFightBooks.com, but also that you deeply study - and perhaps even shamelessly copy concepts of, if not necessarily code itself, the original source code of Jagged Alliance 2, which has been made public: http://kermi.pp.fi/JA_2/Mods_Vanilla/Source/
 

Kind regards,
Bobby

Edited January 26, 2018 by Bobby Gontarski
Long post, many typos...

[Shoes]

1 hour ago, Bobby Gontarski said:

2.) Because that was just really spoiling the fun, they didn't write a better combat engine and AI, like Jagged Alliance (2) did, but instead, they made half-assed cheap fixes. For one, if you miss 3 shots in a row, your aim is secretly put up by 20 points or so. If you lose a soldier or one is critically wounded, the aim of all enemies secretly goes down by 20 points. - Or something like this, don't quote me on this, I'm not back-checking this right now. This shows the attitude that went into developing the combat engine and AI of XCOM 2. It's shit. It's not even properly started yet, let alone finished or acceptable.

I didn't google this for very long, but I didn't find any sources for this. The wiki doesn't mention anything of that sort. 

The tone of your posts are very "JA2 is the best game in the world, and I deserve to have you make me another JA2". 

[Chris]

XCOM does indeed weight the percentages behind the scenes - I don't have sources to hand, but the developers are on record saying that if you've missed a lot of "easy" shots then you get a bonus to your next shot. And I believe 95% chance actions succeed more than 95% of the time, etc.

That's nothing to do with laziness, though - it's just a basic understanding of human psychology. It's extra work for them to add in those smoothing mechanics, and it's more effort for them to design an entire new combat system from scratch rather than just re-using the old TU system from X-Com. You might not like the system that Firaxis came up with but the decisions made were not made because they were bad designers nor due to laziness, it's because they were designing to appeal to a specific audience ... one which not everyone is a part of. XCOM is an excellent game when measured on its own merits. It's obviously not a good game if you want it to be Jagged Alliance, just like it's not a good game if you want it to be a flight simulator or open-world RPG. That's not what they set out to make.

EDIT - having said that, I will also say vanilla XCOM2 is actually kinda weak relative to the rest of the series and I didn't overly enjoy playing it; XCOM1 is much tighter bith thematically and from a gameplay perspective, whereas the expansion for XCOM2 adds a lot of gameplay variety and complexity, which massively improves the game (even if it does leave it in a rather weird place thematically).

@Bobby Gontarski It's worth noting that JA2 was a game with a multi-million dollar budget that was a relative commercial flop upon release. Making a very large, complex and expensive game that only appeals to a very narrow minority of players isn't exactly an appealing business prospect. There's a reason why JA2 hasn't really been properly remade since: the sums don't really add up. Either you're an indie studio who struggles to raise enough money to build a game with the quality and complexity to match JA2 (in which case your game is pointless), or you're a big studio with a big budget who needs to appeal to a big enough audience recover that cost (and therefore can't concentrate on relatively unprofitable niches).

I'm fine - I know this sort of game inside out, we're reasonably well-funded and Goldhawk specialises in this sort of thing, but for 99% of developers trying to make a game anything like Jagged Alliance is going to end in disaster. The last Jagged Alliance game (Flashback) blew up the entire studio that was working on it because they ran out of money halfway through development - sadly (if predictably), it turned out that there weren't enough of the "PICKY, SOPHISTICATED, ADULT, PROFESSIONAL, SERIOUS" gamers to fund development.

[Ninothree]

I feel a rage against capitalism coming on...

[Pave]

On 26.1.2018 at 7:18 PM, Chris said:

I'm fine - I know this sort of game inside out, we're reasonably well-funded and Goldhawk specialises in this sort of thing, but for 99% of developers trying to make a game anything like Jagged Alliance is going to end in disaster. The last Jagged Alliance game (Flashback) blew up the entire studio that was working on it because they ran out of money halfway through development - sadly (if predictably), it turned out that there weren't enough of the "PICKY, SOPHISTICATED, ADULT, PROFESSIONAL, SERIOUS" gamers to fund development.

On somewhat staying on the topic, there are two majour "motives" also that can cause a similar end result:

- Mismanagement
Quite self-explanatory: It's simply not managing the expenses or otherwise "blowing-away" the money.

But it all could also simply be:

- "The Producers / Uwe Boll"-fraud / scam
Not the official terminology (if there is any). But the end-result is still exploit any related loopholes in the whatever-system(s).
In video-game world, you can make a very interesting and otherwise marketable title. Once you have enough of audience and funding, you simply sabotage your product to not be profitable anymore (I.E. introduce a game breaking bug you won't even bother to acknowledge, at least not in public); sort of like deliberately causing the "software / bit rot".
Then suddenly at some point you simply announce to end the product or otherwise closing your studio; whatever you can think of. And then collect the "jackpot"; whoever gets kicked out with empty hands can simply be random. But at the very least you still keep the money customers and the "business-angels" gave you.

(( Due the semi-legal reasons, I cannot name any particular games and/or studios that have pulled off this stunt. But if one does enough research, they can quite easily notice them via public-records (even if they don't contain any bank-transaction-notes or something else related; just reading through where the "betrayal" happens are usually the best indications of putting the "cashing-phase" into motion. ))

---
---

So yeah, like in everything, some people are there to "just make money" disregarding ethics or otherwise practising all the possibly shady policies / whatnots.

But thankfully it's not everyone; it's just unfortunately have become more common than before however...

---
---

I personally would like to think that "Jagged Alliance 2" was mainly a flop due simply bad timing: Until 2005'ish personal-computer-games (and generally video-games) were very "niche".
(plus having the markets limited to only small part of Europe and USA didn't help either, especially during 1999).
(( Japan "indie"-industry in general had a huge advantage since pretty much everything-everything in that country was very "tight-knitted"-together. E.G. chances were that you were simply fan of "eveything" to begin with plus the access to internet other marketing avenues was quite abundant
( if the amount of single-developer and the "buddy-groups" even back then is to be believed ).

Before 2005 the availability of affordable internet-connections were also non-existant; up until that point you'd had to pay at least 30€ per month here in Finland for a "256 kbit/s / 256 kbit/s" (b = bit) connections; middle-part of 2005 was the "breakthrough" point since the ADSL-connection-prices pretty much got halved (E.G: "1 Mbit/s / 512 kbit"-connections were 50€ before, and now they were ~25€) and "Fujitsu-Siemens" quite dominated the low-budget-pre-build-personal-computer-markets (ah the times when 80-gigabyte-hard-drives were more than enough).

Today the internet is available for almost everyone in the world primarily also thanks to the wireless-connections (E.G. "4G) (as in there is no need for physical cables in bit more remote locations).
Yes, "information-overload" is a thing. But at the very least we have much more possibilities to get the word published in the first place instead not at all.

I'd like to still stick to the personal-saying: The good will sell by itself as long as all the obstacles are taken into account and then worked with.

---
---
---

Edited February 3, 2018 by Pave