V6.1. Gameplay feedback from the first half an hour.

[Max_Caine]

I appreciate that current development is mostly focussed on fixing bugs and specific feature rollouts, but I thought it would be helpful to give impressions of the game at different stages of interaction. These are my gameplay impressions from the first half an hour to an hour of play, the point where someone playing makes a decision whether to keep playing or switch off and put something else on instead.

 

Ground Combat

UI: When a soldier has two weapons, one in primary and one in secondary, it's not clear which one in the UI the soldier has in his/her hands at any time. Could it be made clearer in the UI which slot (Secondary or Primary) the soldier has active at any time. 

UI: It seems the only way to select the secondary slot is to activate it, i.e. when I click on the secondary lot, it automatically activates it, even when I only wanted to select the slot, rather than use the item in that slot. Would it be possible to select the secondary slot instead of automaticaly activatig it? 

UI: The portraits at the top are not very useful to me. I care far less about what my soldiers look like and care far more about what they have currently equipped/what they have in their primary/secondary slots. 

Cover: Alien plasma weapons are sufficently frightening (i.e. automatically deadly) that X2 would seem to be about fire-and-maneouvre. However, cover does not feel like cover. I do not feel that putting a soldier behind an item of cover grants any benefit to that soldier. I have had several TPKs where it did not seem that putting soldiers behind cover had any material benefit. 

Human Weapons: Shotguns seem to be the go-to weapon. Despite their short range I am more likely to hit with at least 1 or 2 pellets from a shotgun than I am with multiple shots from an assault rifle. I have personally modded the assault rifle to once again be more of a handy weapon, with snap, normal and burst shots being cheaper. If I want to hit reliably at medium-long range I prefer sniper weapons which stand a much better chance of hitting than assault rifles. I do not like the machine gun - the 5 shots it fires almost inevitably miss. I have found as previously modding the weapon to have 7 shots and a belt size of 35 makes the machine gun more of a viable weapon. 

Alien Weapons: Plasma weapons are very frightening. I think they are wonderful. However, I can imagine that TPKs because alien weapons are so frightening would make for frustrating gameplay. Could there be fewer aliens with plasma rifles on the probe UFO and more with plasma pistols a-la X1 so that people are eased into just how nasty plasma weapons are? Sebillian Mag weapons do not seem half as frightening as Psyon plasma weapons. As Sebillians have poor eyesight, could you perhaps tie that into Mag weapons so Sebillians prefer to autofire Mag weapons, spraying shots to make up for their poor eyesight? It would help to make Sebillians with Mag weapons more distinct from the single-shot Psyon plasma. 

Human Armour: Combat Armour is about as worthless as Jackal armour from X1 or impact armour from Xcom 1994. I saw no material difference wearing it verses Psyons and little material difference verses Sebillians. 

UFO walls: Could the HP/armour mitigation be beefed up on these. My current strategy is to have the machine-gunner blast open a wall with a burst. It seems wrong to be able to do that.

 

Strategy

Geoscape, Strategic Op: It would be visually satisfying to watch teams selected to for a strategic op travel on the geoscape to the op, rather than have travel time amalgamated into the mission timer. Would that be possible? 

UI, Strategic Op: When selecting someone to go on a strategc op, they are not logged as on the Op. Please could they be logged as on a strategic Op

UI, Armoury: Now that the dropship has been decoupled from the armoury, there's a moment of dissassociation when I go to the armory from the dropship screen - I am not sure whether the soldier I am looking at is on the dropship. Could there be some indication which "slot" the solider occupies on the dropship when I go to the armoury, please. 

DEFCON: No more DEFCON? Oh well. Another idea dies on the dusty pile. 

Air Combat: Currently, there is nothing to do in the minigame, I just hit autoresolve as that has the same effect. 

 

[Alienkiller]

The Game comes much better since the first Beta-Version comes out. I like the Style and the new possibilitys on the Geoscape.

In following Points I aggree with you Max_Caine:

UI-Ground Combat (Primary / Secondary-Weapons): You have to choose them manually and you only see what Weapon is active from the Target-Marker [get the Hit-% through].

UI-Ground Combat (Soldier-Portraits): Yep, that Change is perfect and should be retained. The active Weapon from the Soldier is a good too again, but with no-frills.

UI / etc.-Ground Combat (Cover): Yep, Alien-Plasma-Weapons [esp. Rifles] ignore Walls and other Cover. Had a Soldier in Secure of 3!!!! Covers (1x Wall, 1x Boxes and 1x Metal) and get knee the Soldier. The Result: Death with full cover and kneed. That Alien-Weapons have to be reworked, because they ignored Full cover without destroying or damaging it.

UI / etc.-Ground Combat (UFO-Walls and UFO-Internals): Sometimes it would be good to see how much the UFO-Equipment incl. Walls are damaged. The Walls for secondary Entrace and the other Equipment not to shoot there again. All Components are needed for better Eqipment and other Upgrades / new Developments.

Geoscape-Strategic Map (Strateggic OP): In both things I aggree with you 100 %. Nothing more to say.

UI-Strategic Map (Armory): Yep, an Info what Soldier is in Dropship would be good too and in the same breath who is on a Geoscape Missions.

I disaggree at following Points:

UI / etc. (Human Weapons): You have the best of the Best from Human Technology and Weaponary. For the MG´s you need 2 of your best Shooters and for the Shot Guns your 4 best fastest and stabelst Women / Men. All of your Weapons are upgradeable at some Point with more Power, lesser Movepoints etc.

UI / etc. (Human Armor): There I use the Combat Armor as fast as I can. It reduce the HP-Loss from Alien-Magnetic-Weapons very good and reduce the Plasma- / other Engery-HP-Loss about 20 % if I remember correctly. For the Beginning not a bad Compromise. It´s heavy ok, so you have reduce Weapons (like Grenades / the Secondary Weapon like MPs through a Pistol) or in Case other Equipment (like Magazines or Medipaks) to use the Armor.

UI / etc. (Air Combat): I like it, there comes the good old feeling of X-Com (Enemy Unknown / Terror from the Deep) interception up again. 2 or 3 intervention posibilitys were nice (like the Interceptor is to much damaged, get retreat or go nearer to the enemy to get a higher Hit Chance for Short and Medium Range Weapons.

 

 

 

 

Edited July 3, 2019 by Alienkiller

[Chris]

Thanks for the feedback guys, it is useful to have this sort of stuff written down for us. Max - just a quick check you're definitely on V6.1? I ask because it should mark you guys as being on a Strategic Op once they're on it. Or do you mean on the actual panel for the strategic op itself?

Here's some replies to specific points:

• GC Active Weapons: what's the reason for wanting to know which weapon is active? We've actually done away with the concept of weapons being active; a unit can freely use both their Primary and Secondary as if they were both equipped. Overwatch fire is preferential for the Primary weapon (although there's a toggle to disable that) but it'll fire with the Secondary if the Primary can't fire for whatever reason. Is there any functionality you're missing?
• Portrait Weapons: Yeah, I agree with you here - we're planning to add the weapon icons underneath the portraits at some point.
• Cover: Cover is currently extremely permissive, which you can see when shooting at an alien - if you're attacking it from anything other than directly in front your shot will bypass their cover. I need to get a code to look into why this is happening because it's not intended.
• Alien / Weapon Stats: Yeah, some of these were incorrectly set. Alien Magnetic weapons were meant to be just as dangerous as Alien Plasma weapons, but they were actually quite a lot weaker. I've upped their damage and reduced the Plasma damage now so they've met in the middle. Psyons and the smaller Sebillians are meant to have roughly equal accuracy too, so I've nerfed the large Psyon accuracy from 70 to 65 and upper the small Sebillian accuracy from 50 to 60. We'll see how those changes play out in the next build.
• Strategic Operations: Yes, we'll probably have these using actual dropships that fly around the Geoscape at some point.

A few questions:

• When you say the Armory is decoupled from the dropship, what do you mean? And what would you like to see ideally that would make it clear in your mind what role the soldier is currently carrying out?
• Alienkiller - same question to you, and also what do you mean by " color:#262626; font-size:13px; text-align:start">Sometimes it would be good to see how much the UFO-Equipment incl. Walls are damaged"? Could you explain that a little more?

 

[Max_Caine]

Quote

Max - just a quick check you're definitely on V6.1? I ask because it should mark you guys as being on a Strategic Op once they're on it. Or do you mean on the actual panel for the strategic op itself? 

 

Yes, I’m using 6.1. I mean that when you select and assign a soldier on the Strategic Op panel, that solider isn’t then assigned to the Op. The soldier is listed as whatever s/he was last doing, so it’s entirely possible to accidently select the soldier if you go to assign another soldier 

 

Quote

what's the reason for wanting to know which weapon is active? 

 

When I have two weapons and I want to use the secondary, I never use the secondary as a one-off. I will switch from the sniper rifle to the smg because I’m entering a UFO and the sniper rifle is pointless, or I’ll switch from the shotgun to the stun club because I’m going to be laying into a hapless victim. So when I use a secondary I have the expectation I will keep using that secondary until I want to switch back. It’s jarring to have the primary as the “always-on” option as I have a habit of using the primary when I wanted to use the secondary.  

 

Quote

Alien Magnetic weapons were meant to be just as dangerous as Alien Plasma weapons, but they were actually quite a lot weaker. I've upped their damage and reduced the Plasma damage now so they've met in the middle. 

 

I urge you not to just equalize damage levels. I’ve been experimenting with alien weapons and I notice the aliens seem to follow the same pattern they did in X1: they use the cheapest shot type only, they have a base minimum to-hit which prevents aliens from just blasting off shots anyhow and if they can’t shoot they go on overwatch. If you negatively adjust the longrange parameter on plasma weapons but increase accuracy, Psyons will still fire shots at medium range but the shot damage will attenuate making plasma scarier at shorter ranges than longer ones.  

The to-hit ruleset provokes unusual behavior with Sebillian Brutes. As they only use low-accuracy autofire, Brutes tend to go on overwatch most of the time (as there is almost always intervening terrain) and almost always try to get right next to their target before opening fire at which point they may as well beat their target over the head with the thing. I’ve experimented with upping accuracy however that has the effect of making Brute firepower too dangerous! May I suggest you try having species-specific minimum to-hit so you can lower the bar for races like Sebillians, especialy the Brute who I guess the archetype is a Rambo-esque spray-and-pray.  

 

Quote

When you say the Armory is decoupled from the dropship, what do you mean? 

 

Well, as we can now have different dropships, if I go to the armoury it doesn’t automatically mean that any soldiers will go to one specific dropship, so the armoury screen is no longer tightly wedded to one specific  dropship screen. 

  

Quote

And what would you like to see ideally that would make it clear in your mind what role the soldier is currently carrying out? 

 

As each slot on a dropship has a loadout associated with it, and we can now have more than one dropship, I would like some kind of indication on the armoury screen which dropship I have assigned a solider to, and which slot on that dropship so if I then go back to the dropship screen I know where the solider is, both dropship and slot.  

[Alienkiller]

Chris with Pleasure.

20 hours ago, Chris said:

• Alienkiller - same question to you, and also what do you mean by " color:#262626; font-size:13px; text-align:start">Sometimes it would be good to see how much the UFO-Equipment incl. Walls are damaged"? Could you explain that a little more? 

 

The first Question is answered very Easy. If you break a wall you don´t know how strong it is. Do you can break it with an MG-Salvo, Infantry Grenades or do you need X4 to break it. And for the internal Equipment it would be nice to know for the Recovery how usefull the internal Equipment from an UFO are, esp. after a firefight in the UFO and after breaking Walls. Like in XCOM EU / EW and XCOM 2 with much more improvement.

Heavy Damaged: Not usefull anymore for R&D. Sell it for scrap, to get Money!!!!

Medium Damaged: after some Repairs usefull for small improvements for R&D. Like Armor-Upgrade (f. e. make the Armor lighter, get more Damage-Reduction), Weapon-Upgrade (like better Ammo, lighter Weapons), Fighter-Upgrade (same as Armor and Weapons), or something in the Main-Base (like Trainingcenter, Workshop, Research, Radar or whatever) and / or such things like Prototypes

Light Damaged: Repairable and fully usefull for R&D. Can be used for almost anything.

Undamaged: same as light Damged without Repair.

 

The Soldiers are only shown on Missions / Training etc. in the Baracks or if you click on the Geoscape-Mission-Timers. A Info in the Equipment Screen would be nice, which Soldiers are on secret Missions or in the Dropship. Atm you can only see what Soldier is in Dropship if you go to that Screen. As well as sick / hurt Soldiers shouldn´t be able to get to Missions until they have 2 to 3 % to their max Health.

[Ruggerman]

The game is starting to take shape, but it would be nice if one could be further than just after the first month!!

[TrashMan]

Alien UFO walls should not be destroyable by small weapons fire at all.

 

Having said that, when it comes to cover, if you're having a 3D engine and a turn-based game, but are not using actual 3d projectiles and collision detection to work with cover (and hits in general), you are doing something wrong. The only downside is calculating chance to hit, but I never considered that important since I can guesstimate (and real soliders don't know their hit chance either)

[Chris]

On 7/4/2019 at 8:37 AM, Max_Caine said:

When I have two weapons and I want to use the secondary, I never use the secondary as a one-off. I will switch from the sniper rifle to the smg because I’m entering a UFO and the sniper rifle is pointless, or I’ll switch from the shotgun to the stun club because I’m going to be laying into a hapless victim. So when I use a secondary I have the expectation I will keep using that secondary until I want to switch back. It’s jarring to have the primary as the “always-on” option as I have a habit of using the primary when I wanted to use the secondary.  

Yeah, that's a fair point actually. We can probably add a toggle to temporarily disable the Primary weapon so your soldier will preferentially use his Secondary until that toggle is turned off again, or something to that effect. I'll have a think.

[Ruggerman]

When the secondary weapon is clicked it should then move to the primary slot, and the primary to the right hand slot, as not be confusing to the player

[Coffee Potato]

Or just stay on the model for consistancy