Feedback from a returning player

[Keneco]

Hello, returning Xenonauts EA player here (bought that game 30 JUL 2013). Haven't touched the game since ~2015 nor followed the Xenonauts 2 development since then.
After playing Xenonauts 2 up to day 150 on Veteran difficulty Milestone v1.22 (Endgame progress: ~50%). My first impressions/feedback:

The good:
- I like how this game is much more smoother than the first and there's less hung ups in enemy computation
- I loved the air combat system in the first game; the second game is a significant improvement to it. However I reckon the aerial combat pacing is slightly too fast and could be slowed down a notch.
- Game feels more forgiving and easier than Xenonauts 1 EA - guess I need to increase the difficulty. Atm I feel like the air war is 'off-paced', it took up until Day 140 for me to feel some pressure. My memories of Xenonauts 1 was getting thrown into the thick of it and I could not produce enough fighters to shoot down everything.

Questionable:
- Mechanicals seems rarer and easier to deal with this time around. Without the androns, I felt like the game lost a good deal of charm. I liked the pressure that enemy type gave out and when a horde of them slowly walks to your line it did feel menacing.
- The cleaner arc is way too short, the concept/idea seems cool but I would like to see them do things that the player can see/interact with instead of geoscape notifications. Maybe they conduct scouting missions with the possibility of an early base invasion? (I clearly didn't play through the entire xeno2 tutorial )... Perhaps upon taking out their HQ, their remnants launches an early terror mission as a last ditch reprisal - surely they couldn't all be chilling at base?

Bad:
- Needing to hold down CTRL to free-aim isn't intuitive at all, I prefered the first game way of doing things. During the demo, I was led to believe that free-aim got removed and it turned me off from the game.
- I felt like the UI have taken a step back in some aspects compared to Xenonauts 1; obstructions should be highlighted in red the small red text isn't that noticeable especially with how smooth the graphics are now. 
- UFO designs are too simplistic right now and it's the weakest point of the game for me right now. Though it is a step up from the first game where the scout UFO has enemies squatting in a ~5x5 ship. Would like to see larger ships and more environment props; where destroying that tile affects the mission rewards.

Also I understand what vibe xenonauts is aiming for. But I feel like the weapon/tech system needs a massive rework for it to be more engaging. It needs more side-gradeability/options so things feel less clear-cut. Maybe something like:
Accelerated weapons - make them significantly cheaper; right now since the early game is shorter than the first game it feels like a massive trap to invest into this tech.
Lasers - weaker damage, higher armor damage and high terrain destruction capability; maybe interchangeable ammo across all guns etc.
Gauss - high damage, low armor damage and low terrain destruction capability

Wishlist:
- We need more tooltips to guide the player. Right now since I'm operating on my recollection of the first game, I prioritized air control and sold off so many items to do so. This might be overlooked but I think a more modern/intuitive approach to the storeroom would be appreciated (tooltips that tell which item boosts research speed and which one is junk/sellable etc). I don't know, I always sold the alien magnetic/plasma weapons; hopefully it wasn't a mistake... 

[Chris]

6 hours ago, Keneco said:

Hello, returning Xenonauts EA player here (bought that game 30 JUL 2013). Haven't touched the game since ~2015 nor followed the Xenonauts 2 development since then.
After playing Xenonauts 2 up to day 150 on Veteran difficulty Milestone v1.22 (Endgame progress: ~50%). My first impressions/feedback:

The good:
- I like how this game is much more smoother than the first and there's less hung ups in enemy computation
- I loved the air combat system in the first game; the second game is a significant improvement to it. However I reckon the aerial combat pacing is slightly too fast and could be slowed down a notch.
- Game feels more forgiving and easier than Xenonauts 1 EA - guess I need to increase the difficulty. Atm I feel like the air war is 'off-paced', it took up until Day 140 for me to feel some pressure. My memories of Xenonauts 1 was getting thrown into the thick of it and I could not produce enough fighters to shoot down everything.

Questionable:
- Mechanicals seems rarer and easier to deal with this time around. Without the androns, I felt like the game lost a good deal of charm. I liked the pressure that enemy type gave out and when a horde of them slowly walks to your line it did feel menacing.
- The cleaner arc is way too short, the concept/idea seems cool but I would like to see them do things that the player can see/interact with instead of geoscape notifications. Maybe they conduct scouting missions with the possibility of an early base invasion? (I clearly didn't play through the entire xeno2 tutorial )... Perhaps upon taking out their HQ, their remnants launches an early terror mission as a last ditch reprisal - surely they couldn't all be chilling at base?

Bad:
- Needing to hold down CTRL to free-aim isn't intuitive at all, I prefered the first game way of doing things. During the demo, I was led to believe that free-aim got removed and it turned me off from the game.
- I felt like the UI have taken a step back in some aspects compared to Xenonauts 1; obstructions should be highlighted in red the small red text isn't that noticeable especially with how smooth the graphics are now. 
- UFO designs are too simplistic right now and it's the weakest point of the game for me right now. Though it is a step up from the first game where the scout UFO has enemies squatting in a ~5x5 ship. Would like to see larger ships and more environment props; where destroying that tile affects the mission rewards.

Also I understand what vibe xenonauts is aiming for. But I feel like the weapon/tech system needs a massive rework for it to be more engaging. It needs more side-gradeability/options so things feel less clear-cut. Maybe something like:
Accelerated weapons - make them significantly cheaper; right now since the early game is shorter than the first game it feels like a massive trap to invest into this tech.
Lasers - weaker damage, higher armor damage and high terrain destruction capability; maybe interchangeable ammo across all guns etc.
Gauss - high damage, low armor damage and low terrain destruction capability

Wishlist:
- We need more tooltips to guide the player. Right now since I'm operating on my recollection of the first game, I prioritized air control and sold off so many items to do so. This might be overlooked but I think a more modern/intuitive approach to the storeroom would be appreciated (tooltips that tell which item boosts research speed and which one is junk/sellable etc). I don't know, I always sold the alien magnetic/plasma weapons; hopefully it wasn't a mistake... 

Great, thanks for writing this all out. This is really useful stuff!

Although I really wish there was a way I could just get returning players to play the tutorial so they could understand how to do force-fire and the shoot-move preview!