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Tough Love


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As a massive fan of the first game, I have been testing the new Xenonaughts 2 on and off, hoping to see a direction change which I feel just doesn't seem to be coming. I've included a recording to my review of this so far (08/08/2018), and sincerely hope the dev's listen, or at least explain their choices.

Xenonaughts 2, as it stands today review:

 

For reference, this is my review of your first Xenonaughts title, where I go in to a lot of depth about what makes it attractive, and what, in my and many of my associates minds, made it so good:



Like the title of the thread, this is not meant to put you off; see it as tough love. I want you to succeed, but after seeing many reviews of this which clearly miss the point and the magic of your first game, I felt I had to make this.

All the best, and I do hope you see this review for what it is intended to be.

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I am the 2. One who watched it, just wanted to see what is so bad about game. 

But you only said something about cover for 5 min and then you start to talk about numbers.. I stopped there. You can't talk about balance at an early alpha test release. 

I don't know how you can deside about whole the game just playing with that alpha build too. 

You did not put game play to show your points. It's just a screen and very slow talk with very few info for 10 min. 

Anyway.. It's your desition. 

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Yeah, it's much more helpful if you can summarise your views in text because it takes me 11 minutes to watch a 11-minute video but I can read most forum posts in less than 2 minutes when I get a few moments of downtime during the day. Just makes it much easier for me to digest the information around my other work.

If some of your concerns are about balancing, then don't worry too much about those - we've not even started balancing the game yet. I've just dumped in a bunch of the X1 values and given the aliens loads of HP because they currently have incredibly basic AI. 

(EDIT - moved the thread because it's about Xenonauts 2 rather than Xenonauts 1.)

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15 hours ago, Chris said:

Yeah, it's much more helpful if you can summarise your views in text because it takes me 11 minutes to watch a 11-minute video but I can read most forum posts in less than 2 minutes when I get a few moments of downtime during the day. Just makes it much easier for me to digest the information around my other work.

If some of your concerns are about balancing, then don't worry too much about those - we've not even started balancing the game yet. I've just dumped in a bunch of the X1 values and given the aliens loads of HP because they currently have incredibly basic AI. 

(EDIT - moved the thread because it's about Xenonauts 2 rather than Xenonauts 1.)

That's a completely valid point; my intention was not to take up your day. I find verbally talking about something more efficient for getting ideas out there, but I can see why I should have included a summary. Also, my bad, I'm pretty new to actually posting on here, rather than just reading, and thought I WAS on the xenonaughts 2 section haha.

Okay so in summary, my main issues I am seeing so far are these (I understand its in Alpha, but these are why I am bringing these up now):

- The graphics. The first game had such an impressive style, I really am shocked you have moved away from that. It was both simplistic, but also had a place of its own. I get that the introduction of 3d will change how it looks, but its the separation AWAY from the style that I am getting at, more-so.

- TU overhaul. It makes sense, not completely against it, I just feel that it needs work for balancing. There DEFINITELY needs to be a TU penalty for accessing the backpack. As it stands, TU does not feel anywhere near as important as it did in the first one, and it seems to have lost its sense of "urgency". Have you yet to balance this, or is currently just a placeholder?

- Game balance. As you have already stated you haven't even looked at that yet due to the production stage, no dramas - thanks for clarifying.

- Portraits. Your portraits in this so far are superb, BUT I feel don't really fit the time frame. Does that make sense? Not trying to crap on the effort the artist has put in because they are REALLY well done, but in the first game they had the 80's mustache, hair, etc, that made it really breath the time it was set in. As it stands the portraits, while great, look like modern day (2018) characters.

- Absolute lack of cover needed. This may be a game balance thing that you have yet to address, I am not sure. As I don't know, I needed to include it. In the first game if you didn't grab cover your soldiers were dead, almost in any stage of the game. In the demos I have played so far cover is really, really not needed and almost seems tedious given how little impact it offers.

- Stance doesn't affect accuracy. This is a decision I can't understand; if you have the time, what led you to this choice? Was it a coding thing, or was it simply outside the scope of what you wanted to do this time around?

- Phone game appearance. With the new way you are going about the game I am unsure if how it looks visually (character and environment design-wise) in its current form, is close to how you envisioned it. If that IS the case, I STRONGLY suggest you try to flesh it out a bit, given that the current look shares visual elements from stuff I could imagine seeing on an involved phone app.

 

Cheers for reading, and for replying earlier. Like I said in the video, I am only saying these things because I WANT Xenonaughts 2 to succeed. What I saw in the first game is nothing short of brilliant, and I am looking forward to the final edition of Xenonaughts 2; in saying that, I am giving my personal feedback to try to give some perspective that I feel is maybe lacking in a lot of the feedback I am seeing sent your way online. I am SURE there is many that I can't see as an external body, but just in case, I decided to address it.

Best of luck with the game; I hope it works well for you!

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16 hours ago, drages said:

I am the 2. One who watched it, just wanted to see what is so bad about game. 

But you only said something about cover for 5 min and then you start to talk about numbers.. I stopped there. You can't talk about balance at an early alpha test release. 

I don't know how you can deside about whole the game just playing with that alpha build too. 

You did not put game play to show your points. It's just a screen and very slow talk with very few info for 10 min. 

Anyway.. It's your desition. 

Hey there,

That is correct, it was an audio track I made after playing through the most recent public build. If you want to see a review with gameplay, I have included the my first video, which goes over Xenonaughts 1.

I have included the dot point summary above^ of the main things I talked about in the 10 minutes. As I said with this thread, I have not decided about this game whilst it is still in Alpha. On the contrary, I made that audio track and have started this thread to discuss with the creators (and the community) about issues that don't seem to be being talked about. In fact, almost every major publication that has covered Xenonaughts 2 seems like they have not played it, or its prequel, and are making wild claims about it. That is dangerous, because without honest feedback, developers won't be able to get reliable third party opinions to base some key decisions off of.

p.s, I have gone back through the video to try to see what you mean by "start to talk about numbers". Do you mean the example reviews I have been finding online? If so, that's examples of what is being said about the game, which Chris just proved my point above^. The reviews that are circulating are being made by people who clearly didn't play it, or else they wouldn't be making claims like the weapons and damage are balanced... Chris himself just said they aren't (and that makes sense for this part of development; thanks for clearing that up Chris!).
 

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On 8/9/2018 at 4:21 AM, The_Hibbity said:

That's a completely valid point; my intention was not to take up your day. I find verbally talking about something more efficient for getting ideas out there, but I can see why I should have included a summary. Also, my bad, I'm pretty new to actually posting on here, rather than just reading, and thought I WAS on the xenonaughts 2 section haha.

Okay so in summary, my main issues I am seeing so far are these (I understand its in Alpha, but these are why I am bringing these up now):

- The graphics. The first game had such an impressive style, I really am shocked you have moved away from that. It was both simplistic, but also had a place of its own. I get that the introduction of 3d will change how it looks, but its the separation AWAY from the style that I am getting at, more-so.

- TU overhaul. It makes sense, not completely against it, I just feel that it needs work for balancing. There DEFINITELY needs to be a TU penalty for accessing the backpack. As it stands, TU does not feel anywhere near as important as it did in the first one, and it seems to have lost its sense of "urgency". Have you yet to balance this, or is currently just a placeholder?

- Game balance. As you have already stated you haven't even looked at that yet due to the production stage, no dramas - thanks for clarifying.

- Portraits. Your portraits in this so far are superb, BUT I feel don't really fit the time frame. Does that make sense? Not trying to crap on the effort the artist has put in because they are REALLY well done, but in the first game they had the 80's mustache, hair, etc, that made it really breath the time it was set in. As it stands the portraits, while great, look like modern day (2018) characters.

- Absolute lack of cover needed. This may be a game balance thing that you have yet to address, I am not sure. As I don't know, I needed to include it. In the first game if you didn't grab cover your soldiers were dead, almost in any stage of the game. In the demos I have played so far cover is really, really not needed and almost seems tedious given how little impact it offers.

- Stance doesn't affect accuracy. This is a decision I can't understand; if you have the time, what led you to this choice? Was it a coding thing, or was it simply outside the scope of what you wanted to do this time around?

- Phone game appearance. With the new way you are going about the game I am unsure if how it looks visually (character and environment design-wise) in its current form, is close to how you envisioned it. If that IS the case, I STRONGLY suggest you try to flesh it out a bit, given that the current look shares visual elements from stuff I could imagine seeing on an involved phone app.

 

Cheers for reading, and for replying earlier. Like I said in the video, I am only saying these things because I WANT Xenonaughts 2 to succeed. What I saw in the first game is nothing short of brilliant, and I am looking forward to the final edition of Xenonaughts 2; in saying that, I am giving my personal feedback to try to give some perspective that I feel is maybe lacking in a lot of the feedback I am seeing sent your way online. I am SURE there is many that I can't see as an external body, but just in case, I decided to address it.

Best of luck with the game; I hope it works well for you!

I anwser why the people look like they have modern haircuts and looks. Because they do as Xenonuauts 2 is set in alternative history where the Soviet union hasn't collapse ( maybe the aliens have something to do with that) and such the cold war is ongoing up until 2018. 

 

Also I believe officially the Xenonuauts are consider a terrorist organization, so human forces will fighting against the Xenonuauts as well.

Edited by Wolfshield
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Third paragraph in: "The action takes place in the modern day - but in an alternative timeline where decades of alien interference has prevented the end of the Cold War, leaving NATO and the Soviet Union teetering on the brink of a catastrophic nuclear war."

On 8/9/2018 at 4:21 AM, The_Hibbity said:

Stance doesn't affect accuracy. This is a decision I can't understand

There a lots of reasons why this could be the case. Original X-Com had it that way. Crouching at the end of everyturn and before every shot is tedious. The 5% bonus is too difficult to balance around, floating between absolutely necessary (and not a real decision at all) and useless (meaning there's no reason for the feature.) Don't forget that the main difference between a normal game and a veteran game is a 10% aim boost for the aliens and that creates such a huge difference that you get practically a whole new game out of it. So a 3% bonus might make more sense balance wise but such a tiny bonus makes it so that players who want 'optimal play' over all else will get a more tedious game while everyone else ceases to care.

Honestly, it makes you sound like a bad reviewer if you can't even think of a single reason why this would be the case. And missing out a piece of information that's literally on the kickstarter page gives a feeling that you're just here to rag on the game, not provide well considered opinions.

Also, you're reviewing a tiny Not-even-a-vertical-slice version of the game. A pre-alpha that hasn't been balanced, optimized, or even had all of the features put in. This is the engine foundation and some art assets to ensure that the game is possible. It's like reviewing a house based on the hole in the ground that's going to be the basement. That's not to say it's above criticism, but that your criticism should not be aimed at, "this house doesn't have walls," but, "the concrete is cracked over here."

In otherwords, you should be talking about how not knowing your soldier's exact cone of vision affects the game. How moving objects in the scene (such as the helicopter blades) changes the verisimilitude of the battlescape. Or how there doesn't seem to be a good system in place for figuring out if a soldier would be able to see an alien from a given tile.

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On 8/11/2018 at 10:26 AM, ApolloZani said:

Third paragraph in: "The action takes place in the modern day - but in an alternative timeline where decades of alien interference has prevented the end of the Cold War, leaving NATO and the Soviet Union teetering on the brink of a catastrophic nuclear war."

While it's natural for the Soviet Union to be still intact, given the circumstances, the continuation of the Cold War doesn't make much sense for the exact same reason.

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  • 2 weeks later...

@The_Hibbity Apologies for the slow reply; I’m on vacation at the moment. I’ll quickly address some of the points - the brevity is because I’m on a phone.

Graphics - this is somewhat subjective I think. I’m not sure what specific things trigger the “phone game” reaction to you so I can’t really comment too much here. The graphics will be improved before release but not THAT much, so I don’t know if we’ll address whatever the issues you are having or not. You were playing on Fantastic settings, right?

TU overhaul - if it’s the inventory changes you’re talking about here, they’ve been updated somewhat since we posted up the Kickstarter with regards to the backpack. But the intention is still to reduce the amount of item juggling the player has to do to access their secondaries and belt equipment; it’s quite a big quality of life improvement as far as I’m concerned.

Time period is now the modern day, as other have mentioned before - the logic is just because the actual 70s kinda looks ridiculous in modern times (e.g. haircuts, computers, etc) so we ended up using quite a lot of modern stylings in X1 anyway. Alternate history modern day is just neater and simpler in many ways.

You’re right about the cover density, that’s something we’re already addressing internally. Crouching I changed because it was too overpowered in X1; there’s never really any reason not to crouch with a soldier.

(So much for brevity!)

 

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