What game options do people want?

[Dangermouth]

Give anything arbitrary a toggle so some of us who like to play long term, with multiple bases, etc can do so without being railroaded into what essentially feels like a pre-determined, programmed process that isn't fun.

 

Options for more ships/missions/different missions. If the game's fun it'll be played a lot on the tactical screen so the more, the merrier.

[Alienkiller]

You will have in every Game of that Gerne a Time-Limitation. 2 (720 Days) or 2,5 (850 Days), evtl. 3 Years (1.080 Days) is the Option you can get. That’s the maximum Time you will get in such Games with a big Research & Development-Tree as well as very good Storyline.

Or you play Games like the Sims / Diablo / Managers like Motorsport Manager / F1 Manager where you have unlimited Time. 

The second is doable later on with Mods after the Game is fully stable with the Endgame-Parts. But there will be the hard coded Limiters for the maximum Time / maximum Bases / Story and similar which haven’t to be touched.

[Dangermouth]

Could we have a game that is  ... "Fun"...?

TFTD: I have played this for over 1000 hours. I finished it once but the third time round I just play it because the mechanics of the game are ... "Fun".

Same with APOC, same with Fallout 4 on Survival, etc. I didn't realise JA2 could be completed by people so quickly because I was having too much  ..."Fun"  to even think about it. If you want a toggle and to restrict yourself to "this is how this game MUST be played" then you go ahead and follow orders. There is an option for six bases. Not much point having it there if you can't' 'choose' to make use of them. If your 'choice' means you 'fail' the  game because it's so prescriptive then for this kind of game it's not a game: it's a process. Welcome to the factory. The game currently looks and plays like a bad version of X1 reskinned (and that is itself very unimpressive) with a few ideas taken from other, comparable games, with a heavy dose of the abomination that is Phoenix Point thrown in. What has been copied has been poorly implemented. Not in a technical sense, but in a design sense i.e. that someone thinks they can do better than what came before. There is also, of course, a marked lack of originality at all. No siree. My Steam review is unlikely to garner sales should things not change.

Here is a recent frustration: I am on day 60 or thereabouts. The aliens have been doing their thing where I can only see the effects and we know that's what happens. I have only now just downed a scout. And I have a terror mission. I'm merrily fighting Wraiths with my starting gear because I have nothing else. The last playthrough I had 17 ground missions by the end of the year. So progress is slow and this affects everything else because you just watch your soldiers heal one atom at a time. I do hope this minimalist invasion is togglable to more than perhaps the occasional daytripping Sectoid on a bombing run.

If the game is going to be 'enforced' to occur in a short timeframe then something has to happen or I might want to go out for a walk. And if I have fun in so doing then as a substitute for playing the game there is little for it to offer as a better proposition.

The 'economy' is geared towards ...I don't know what actually. I have to build a helicopter that's a thing that is being produced already, I can't sell stuff of any value and I can't make stuff so I'm in effect a government world-wide sponsored gang so there's a demonstrable lack of thought there, etc, etc. I could probably spend hours on picking this apart but the point about customisation means you get the chance to play with the one hero you choose and be Rambo or you go and have some fun. This type of game has pretty much allowed this, even the ones by Altair which were a little departure from the norm.

 

 

[Chris]

On 6/8/2023 at 9:27 AM, Dangermouth said:

Could we have a game that is  ... "Fun"...?

TFTD: I have played this for over 1000 hours. I finished it once but the third time round I just play it because the mechanics of the game are ... "Fun".

Same with APOC, same with Fallout 4 on Survival, etc. I didn't realise JA2 could be completed by people so quickly because I was having too much  ..."Fun"  to even think about it. If you want a toggle and to restrict yourself to "this is how this game MUST be played" then you go ahead and follow orders. There is an option for six bases. Not much point having it there if you can't' 'choose' to make use of them. If your 'choice' means you 'fail' the  game because it's so prescriptive then for this kind of game it's not a game: it's a process. Welcome to the factory. The game currently looks and plays like a bad version of X1 reskinned (and that is itself very unimpressive) with a few ideas taken from other, comparable games, with a heavy dose of the abomination that is Phoenix Point thrown in. What has been copied has been poorly implemented. Not in a technical sense, but in a design sense i.e. that someone thinks they can do better than what came before. There is also, of course, a marked lack of originality at all. No siree. My Steam review is unlikely to garner sales should things not change.

Here is a recent frustration: I am on day 60 or thereabouts. The aliens have been doing their thing where I can only see the effects and we know that's what happens. I have only now just downed a scout. And I have a terror mission. I'm merrily fighting Wraiths with my starting gear because I have nothing else. The last playthrough I had 17 ground missions by the end of the year. So progress is slow and this affects everything else because you just watch your soldiers heal one atom at a time. I do hope this minimalist invasion is togglable to more than perhaps the occasional daytripping Sectoid on a bombing run.

If the game is going to be 'enforced' to occur in a short timeframe then something has to happen or I might want to go out for a walk. And if I have fun in so doing then as a substitute for playing the game there is little for it to offer as a better proposition.

The 'economy' is geared towards ...I don't know what actually. I have to build a helicopter that's a thing that is being produced already, I can't sell stuff of any value and I can't make stuff so I'm in effect a government world-wide sponsored gang so there's a demonstrable lack of thought there, etc, etc. I could probably spend hours on picking this apart but the point about customisation means you get the chance to play with the one hero you choose and be Rambo or you go and have some fun. This type of game has pretty much allowed this, even the ones by Altair which were a little departure from the norm,

We're happy to listen to community feedback in an attempt to improve the game, but it's difficult to pick out what is genuine feedback we should try to act here on and what is just ranting and exaggeration. Can you give a bit more detail on:

• What version of the game you're playing? I assume it's not the Experimental version?
• What happened that meant you could only get your first Scout on day 60? UFO waves spawn on day 13 (at least one in the region of your starting base), and then day 34 and day 44? Could your interceptors just not catch one prior to day 60? That's not intended but I guess it's possible in a game like this.
• Why do you still have your starting gear if you've had a Cleaner Site and an Abduction Site to fight in the meantime? Don't they at least unlock accelerated weapons?
• What do you mean about the one Rambo hero you choose or go have some fun? I couldn't quite understand the point you were making there.

It sounds like you managed to somehow not get a crash site until the fourth UFO wave. If that's true then yeah, you're going to have a pretty boring time of things because so much tech is unlocked from the UFOs. Was it just back luck? We can probably find a way to make sure the game keeps spawning UFOs near your base in the early game until the player actually gets to shoot one down, but I think I need to know how you got into this situation first. Where did you put your first base?

When you say you previously had 17 missions by the end of the year, are you saying that 17 missions isn't enough in a year? Or you think the current playthrough has been slowed down way too much compared to the previous playthrough.

[SoftwareSimian]

I like the campaign difficulty options, but I would like to see expanded ranges of the options into the almost-cheating range (e.g. 200% funding) and where the values are too-easy for even Recruit achievements, achievements should be disabled entirely. Single-player offline games like this should give the player the option to play "easy mode" if they so choose, it doesn't affect anyone else's enjoyment.

 

I would also like to have the option to display out-of-ammo indicators on the soldiers the same way the "bleeding" icon shows up.

Edited June 13, 2023 by SoftwareSimian

[Skitso]

On 3/2/2023 at 4:47 PM, Chris said:

I'm currently scoping out our expanded campaign options, which will allow players to fine-tune the difficulty of the campaign a bit if they want. As part of this we may also add various options that allow people to change certain aspects of the gameplay too. If you've got any requests for game options that don't currently exist, please post them up here and I'll consider them.

For example:

• An option to disable displaying the Health numbers above the enemy heads
• etc

Got few more ideas:

• Dark nights: on/off - make night missions extra tense. Fov visuals fade to black like in original xcom and view cones are reduced even more
• Dark alien bases: on/off - Cleaner and alien bases are played with night rules/visuals. Why not ufo interiors too?
• Invasion escalation speed: slow/normal/fast - self explanatory
• Base attack ufo aggression: off/low/normal/high - sets how fast, determined, strong and well escorted the base attack ufo's are.

Edited July 15, 2023 by Skitso

[Boris Eysbroek]

Would love an option for adjustable font size. 

[DaviddesJ]

On 6/8/2023 at 4:27 AM, Dangermouth said:

Could we have a game that is  ... "Fun"...?

TFTD: I have played this for over 1000 hours. I finished it once but the third time round I just play it because the mechanics of the game are ... "Fun".

 

 

I'm having a really hard time understanding how you could have played X2 for over 1000 hours (a playthrough is maybe 20 hours or something of all of the content currently in the game, so that would be like 50 complete playthroughs), especially if you think it isn't any fun.