Why did you return to X1 system of shields?

[kingsword]

Hi there, long time player of the series but I had to come back 10 years after my last post because I've been told on Steam that "feedback from players resulted in shield change". I also couldn't find a thread about this change so here it is:

The shield system in X1 was, frankly, terrible. Shields are inherently add-on armors carried by people as the first layer of armor. They aren't magical black holes that suck up any damage and then suddenly disintegrate at a set point. Ancient shields, modern shields, they all work through either blocking the attack attack entirely or if they got penetrated, reduce the energy that arrives on the body or the next layer of armor that is body armor. Hence I was ecstatic to see that X2 had the shields working as an add-on armor. They are in fact a ballistic plate that takes up a hand slot instead of inventory or armor slot.

Gameplay-wise, the trade off is that you don't lose the shield entirely soon but it can let through powerful shots. It'll keep supplying gradually lessening amount of protection rather than vaporizing and leaving you with a pistol where the shield soldier is practically useless with neutered defense and already compromised offense. I don't know why this change was reverted to X1's inferior system where shields were fundamentally useless. It was the one thing I really thought X2 did great compared to the myriad games in the genre where we could have a breacher tank akin to SWAT officers that lead the teams.

Why the change? Is there any thoughts of reverting back to the proper X2 system later? If not, is it moddable? Because I just don't feel like playing the game after I saw the regression in gameplay in EA version.

[alienman]

That system was useless, since you always took damage with your shield users. I don't understand the positives at all tbh, I just don't see. Not then, and not now.

[kingsword]

You sometimes took damage and healed it, kept pressing on. Now you lose the shield after you open a door and then die because there is no more defense. I don't see how blocking 1-2 shots entirely, then losing your tank/mobile cover entirely is better than just healing when necessary. If the damage is already too high then that shield is gone to begin with now.

Now it's no brainer to just dump the shield and play it like any other SRPG out there, hiding behind environmental cover. Shields are useless. Better to use powerful 2H weapons instead and kill them before they kill you as your shield won't be there to protect you and they're still so heavy that you can't carry a backup 2H weapon.

[Conductiv]

45 minutes ago, kingsword said:

You sometimes took damage and healed it, kept pressing on. Now you lose the shield after you open a door and then die because there is no more defense. I don't see how blocking 1-2 shots entirely, then losing your tank/mobile cover entirely is better than just healing when necessary. If the damage is already too high then that shield is gone to begin with now.

Now it's no brainer to just dump the shield and play it like any other SRPG out there, hiding behind environmental cover. Shields are useless. Better to use powerful 2H weapons instead and kill them before they kill you as your shield won't be there to protect you and they're still so heavy that you can't carry a backup 2H weapon.

It is unlikely to be changed back as many people really seemed to prefer the X1 shields. personally, I feel both systems have their benefits.

in the current system: being able to soak 1-2 hits without taking any damage is a fairly large benefit, especially in a game where an unarmored soldier is routinely 1 shot and an armored one might get 1-shot based on an RNG roll. its also unlikely one won't get shot atoll as the opponents love hiding around corners and frequently reserve TU for reaction fire. in the end, its a sort of temporary HP stack that acts like a hard wall because as long as the shield has at least 1 HP it will eat the full damage of any non explosive attack (that dahm tank drone). this means the power of the attack doesn't matter as much

The beta system had a system most akin to the MARS now, the ability to stack large amounts of armor so you could take multiple hits with very little damage. It benifited most from stacking all the armor boosts together as to get the maximum reduction. instead of the mars instant repair however, you simply rotated shield tanks. the benefit here is that its extremely effective against small hits that fail to penetrate the stacked DR..but gets one chunked or killed the second heavy weapons or unlucky enemy damage roll RNG decides to screw you over.

I don't think shields where useless in either system 

[kingsword]

Can we mod this? There's a massive difference in being able to rely on a 50 weight item through an entire mission versus it evaporating second turn and effectively losing a soldier since wielding a pistol you can as well load that troop back onto the helicopter.

I don't really understand why armor and ballistic plates don't just change into HP = armor as well if this is really what people prefer. Gimping only shields is so arbitrary that I can't really fathom the logic here. In all of these situations weight and offense is traded for defense.

I can't overstate how disappointed I'm to be honest. It's EXTREMELY rare nowadays to have a game where we don't see Firaxis' corruption of protection. X2 was going to be an oasis among the desert that is nowadays' "hide and never get shot" games.

[A_Magical_Potato]

Well im sorry to tell you this but X1 and X2 are both "hide and never get shot games" the point of shields isn't to make your units tanky but to give infantry a buffer, a "get out of jail free" card so to speak.

The point of tactics games is to minimize the amount of incoming and maximize the outgoing damage and a 80hp buffer is massive. This means that shield units can take 1-2 hits scot free and is huge in the long run as a limiting factor even mid game to sortie rates is units getting wounded. If anything making shield into armor is a nerf as this guarantees that shields would take damage and in that case why not just bring a 2h gun and "hide and never get shot". The fact that as it stands shields act as a second hit point pool means I can comfortably get the shield in close knowing they can take 1 hit and deploy smokes/stuns so the squad can follow up is invaluable even if they lose the shield on that sortie as if they take no damage I still then follow up with a squad to the next drop.

While I understand the benefits of extra armor it would arguably do the same job if not worse, that is unless it we to give such a large amount as to completely necessitate the rebalancing of the game.

As it stands the current "buffer" model fulfills the design goal, an "armor" based tank that is effective would probably either be worse or overpowered as you would able to face tank and heal several hits.

Overall i think that this model has great potential but im not sure if it fits into the current framework of the game and if anything would feel less realistic.

[kingsword]

No, you didn't need to "never get shot" in closed beta. You could get shot and heal up, continue. It was possible to finish the mission with shielders remaining the point men till the end with careful and conservative play. The point of shields was leading the charge like in RL SWAT.

It's not a "second HP pool" as obviously you don't comprehend how the system works. HP is protected by armor and can be healed with medikits which is not the case for X1 shields. It's a fixed point damage sponge that vaporizes and leaves you naked with a gimp pistol. Then they no longer have any purpose in the squad. They can't protect, they can't deal damage. They're effectively dead until the next mission.

The game was balanced, shield and the rest of armor deteriorated but the level of protection had a gradual change rather than "completely immune -> naked" which is good gameplay vs bad gameplay. That's why TU system of Xenonauts series is good as TUs allow gradual movement and offense compared to ON/OFF action/move of Firaxis XCOM. That's why armor system of X2 is good. It's again a gradual change instead of "you're naked now" like in FXCOM. The same logic applies to shields.

No it doesn't fulfill the design goal, shields are wasted bytes on the SSD now like in the first game. Worse gameplay altogether because no more breacher role in the squad. Now it's about moving from cover to cover like FXCOM. Altogether a much less realistic, much less tactical and a much less enjoyable game.

The most ironic thing is that devs were defending that system in the forums back in February but somehow today we ended up with this garbage system for the release. It's a shame when devs don't ignore bad feedback that goes against their vision of the game.

[A_Magical_Potato]

Well I'm sorry if I wasn't clear but it seem you misunderstood what I was getting at. As it stands shields are a "buffer" or a "second HP pool" it eats 80 damage and then goes away, yes?

Well that is the entire role, and in of itself is incredibly powerful. To argue that they should be able to be healed and do more than that would be to argue that they should have a more powerful role. Although i do agree with the sentiment that the granularity promised by the "armor" system would indeed be more interesting as this allows you keep putting the solider back in the crux is how much damage can the unit take?

If the unit is supposed to take 5-6 shots that would be incredibly broken and would make it a necessity to bring shield. If its only 1-2 as most people envision then what is the difference? Yes you could heal and stick the shield back upfront but game design would necessitate that that guy still dies the net shot anyways.

As it stand if given the choice take 2 hits and have a unit with no damage or take 2 hits and have to heal the unit then I would take the first choice.

I do wanna stress this is just my opinion though and if the game were to use your system I would not be upset and in fact I agree with you and think it would be an interesting bit of granularity and would love to see it as a mod. I just disagree with the statement that they are useless.

[GreyICE]

Just wanted to chime in to say that Laser Pistols are really far from useless.  They do a chonking 33 damage for 20/30% TU cost, and have great accuracy at short range.  They're not shotguns, but I've found them surprisingly great at handling problems.  Lots of times I've killed everything from Sebillians to Reapers with just the pistol after the shield went bye bye. 

Do wish there was an intermediate upgrade after you discover alien alloys for an 'alloy shield', halfway between reinforced shield and basic shield.  Right now the gap waiting for the second tier is ridiculously long, a middle tier right around lasers would be nice. 

[kingsword]

@A_Magical_PotatoI just don't get this constantly oscillating argument. When I advocate it as a better system it's called overpowered, when I ask why people wanted the old system, it's being called underpowered. Which is it? It was already balanced, did anyone even see how it was in closed beta? It's being talked as if I'm talking about an imaginary system when people already tested it. No it didn't mean the soldier could go in Rambo, it could let in damage and it was already susceptible to armor shredding like any worn armor. However its benefit didn't entirely go away too fast, it rewarded careful approach and support by other units. Take more than 3-4 hits and the unit was probably in a similar situation to losing the shield, not to mention that big alpha damage always posed a threat.

The difference is it's either ON or OFF now. When it's on, it's unrealistically, magically too powerful and when it's off it's nothing. Not to mention that it's incredibly unrealistic. If we don't care one bit about realism, we could just adopt FXCOM stuff like unlimited ammo or explosives as class skills as well. If I wanted that kind of non-sense, there are already too many games with that with magic abilities and armor = HP.

It's not my system, I didn't tell the guys at Goldhawk to implement it. They did it, they defended it but somehow they bailed out. I'd like to see their rationalization to be honest.

@GreyICEThey're alright with a shield. They're crappy without a shield. There's a reason why SWAT doesn't use pistols if they don't have a shield.

I agree that the game should have several shields to go along with other techs. Like, we sprayed alloys on our armor but somehow we don't know how to do the same on a flat surface.

[Skyfire]

@kingsword Real-life infantry tactics in the present day are almost entirely cover-based don't-get-hit combat, and the available evidence suggests we're going to move further in that direction rather than away. In the constant weapons-vs-armour arms race, weapons are winning right now - and the proposals for improved weapons are currently more promising than the proposals for improved armour. We know what lasers and railguns look like, and there are working prototypes out there (at a bigger-than-man-portable scale, but still). Armour that's better than kevlar and ceramic inserts is still mostly at the handwave stage. The 'realistic' version of near-future infantry combat is 'if you take a solid hit it's probably gonna mess you up pretty bad, and the job of your armour is mostly to help you survive to evac rather than actually keep you in the fight'.

The one case where shields do get used is the SWAT teams you mentioned, and they're used in one specific niche - short, explosive close-quarters breaches. That's more the equivalent of having your shield soldier chill in the backline till you're actually breaching the UFO, not having them take point the entire way. Even then, it basically seems to be a police thing rather than a military thing - I suspect that it's at least partly about minimising collateral damage in a civilian environment. For a military storming a hostile UFO, the breach protocol would be less 'shields first' and more 'grenades first, point man needs a real gun in case anything's still moving'.

 

As for realism in the damage model, we have numerical HP without a red-fog mechanic, powerful and very fast on-the-field healing, and complete recovery from major wounds in a matter of weeks. We're so far into gameplay-over-realism with this stuff that nit-picking details just seems like cherry-picking - the fact that the soldiers have a boolean instant-failure-at-zero-hp is massively more unrealistic than the fact that shields do. It's actually somewhat plausible to have a shield block 100% of the damage from a shot but get mangled in the process.

 

Finally, the devs' have been fairly clear about their reasoning for the change. At the risk of putting words in other people's mouths: the majority of players didn't like the new shields, and many didn't understand them either. It seemed clear that the new shields were overall decreasing the enjoyment of the playerbase, so they made the choice that would make the game feel better for the largest number of players.

[Shadeth]

Just wanted to add my opinion.  I think the shield should have a fixed amount of health (maybe buffed with research), so that it could take multiple small weak shots, or maybe just one or two massive damage shots.  Vanishing after two of any shots does not make any sense and is not a good experience, nor is it even remotely realistic.  I didn't even realize it worked like this until reading this post, no wonder the mechanics of it are not intuitive. 

[Skyfire]

4 minutes ago, Shadeth said:

I think the shield should have a fixed amount of health (maybe buffed with research), so that it could take multiple small weak shots, or maybe just one or two massive damage shots.  Vanishing after two of any shots does not make any sense and is not a good experience, nor is it even remotely realistic.  I didn't even realize it worked like this until reading this post, no wonder the mechanics of it are not intuitive. 

That's exactly how it does work already.

Baseline shields have 80 hp, and will break after taking that much damage. That might be half-a-dozen small hits if the enemy keeps low-rolling damage, or it could be one crit from a plasma rifle. Upgraded shields have 160 hp, and again will take exactly that much damage in however many hits are needed to reach that total.

Ignore the 'shields can only take one hit!!!' talk - a lot of players only pay attention to the enemy high-rolls on damage, so they talk as though every enemy shot is always guaranteed to do 80-100 damage. That's simply not true.

[Mr.Xia]

Never heard about the change, but I assumed that the fun factor with the current shields is that it provide immediate feedback. With a shield, your soldier is a death catcher(of at least 1 direct hit), with the high one-shot death rate of early gameplay, reflects its importance as an reaction shot trigger tool, to allow your other soldiers to move forward to attack without catching a plasma bolt and die just by appearing. And if the shield disintegrates, your soldier serves that role(and for balancing purposes to have that limited hp).

It's goofy, I give it that, but for a turn-based high stakes ground combat, the current system works if you play it that way, instead of a mobile survivor unit,  it is an anti-reaction dude coming in to pray that the alien doesn't burst fire his 1/80 hp shield.

I assumed the new shield system(never was there before the change) was a damage reduction absorber and while that might make more sense to me, it is in the heart of an X-Com game, where RNG is the difference between a flesh wound and a one-shot death, which players encountered shield troopers dying to shots similar to unshielded ones, and find the RNG to be more grating than it should.

Edited July 31, 2023 by Mr.Xia

[kingsword]

@SkyfireWeapons had been winning until the last 20-30 years, infantry hadn't been wearing armor for centuries while every respectable military and law enforcement service employs widespread armor now. If we apply alien techs on top of that, sure we will have railguns and lasers but also exotic alloys and other systems. So yeah, there's really no reason where 'less than a milimeter thick' heat shield can overcome atmospheric entry, suddenly it cannot be applied on a ballistic shield to shrug off many threats.

Yeah this game has that one case and it has shields. It has shields period, to be employed. The designers thought the game is one where they can be utilized unlike 99% of the SRPGs, I can think of like one other example over the last decade. Modern era SRPGs avoid it so adding it already shows an intent in design. The intent that the combat is SWAT combat, not military combat. Heck, if this was military combat, we should have been using tanks, drones, copters etc, not blood and meat infantry.

There we have the game tropes which are mostly necessary and some of them can be better or worse, I wouldn't say X2 is the best I've seen in its systems but among the better ones in these recent times where FXCOM is treated as a great game. This whataboutism is pretty pointless and the game already used this system so it has a proven track record that it's better gameplay while also being more realistic. The fact that soldier health system is basic is irrelevant to this. If it was up to me, I'd change the armor system too but it's still infinitely better than this HP = integrity non-sense.

Alright, I understand that devs listened to bad feedback so it's an EA hazard. One solid reason why they should have released the full game. Moving on from this since they apparently didn't have the will to persist on their own new better design. Happens to many companies sadly.

Can we mod back to the old system? I have seen HP change modding but that's obviously not what I care for.

Edited July 31, 2023 by kingsword

[doubleskulls]

After finishing a campaign, on Commander, I've come to the conclusion that as things stand shields make the game a bit too easy. For most missions taking 2-3 shield units (with other soldiers dropping spares in the dropship) you can slowly move forward with very low levels of risk and use your snipers and other soldiers to shoot anything that is revealed. They are also good at providing cover when it doesn't already exist.

 

[Chris]

On 7/29/2023 at 10:36 PM, kingsword said:

Can we mod this? There's a massive difference in being able to rely on a 50 weight item through an entire mission versus it evaporating second turn and effectively losing a soldier since wielding a pistol you can as well load that troop back onto the helicopter.

I don't really understand why armor and ballistic plates don't just change into HP = armor as well if this is really what people prefer. Gimping only shields is so arbitrary that I can't really fathom the logic here. In all of these situations weight and offense is traded for defense.

I can't overstate how disappointed I'm to be honest. It's EXTREMELY rare nowadays to have a game where we don't see Firaxis' corruption of protection. X2 was going to be an oasis among the desert that is nowadays' "hide and never get shot" games.

The previous mechanics are still in the game; they're still used by the frontal "armour" on the Cyberdrone (which is effectively just a combat shield). Once the mod tools are set up it'll be very easy to switch the X2 human shields back to the old mechanics if you want to play with them instead. It's just a single value on the shields (it might even be possible with text editor editing right now).

We changed the shields back because they were very badly received by players - I think you're the first person I've seen complaining about them switching back, and we got a LOT of complaints about the previous set of mechanics for them.

[Vitruviansquid]

I think shields are fine as they are currently as a chunk of hp.

I think shields take care of this problem in the game that there was not really a safe way to enter a closed space and turn a corner, in case some dude was there with a big cannon and good reflexes. Having a chunk of hp as a buffer allowed you to encounter that dude with the proper soldier and come out feeling like you outplayed the situation because a disposable shield took the damage and not a soldier who needed to heal or be replaced.

If shields were armor, it wouldn't feel as good because your soldier might be a lot more likely to survive the hit, but then need to be healed. But it's also problematic where there are multiple different alien guns with different damage, armor destruction, and armor penetration profiles. I think shields being armor might create a situation where it was hard to balance shields not being too strong against smaller alien guns and not also being too weak against the bigger alien guns.

Quote

Alright, I understand that devs listened to bad feedback so it's an EA hazard. One solid reason why they should have released the full game. Moving on from this since they apparently didn't have the will to persist on their own new better design. Happens to many companies sadly.

But on the topic of the EA feedback - I wouldn't use language as aggressive as this, but I wasn't a beta tester, and my experience when I bought the early access was "hey! This is mostly just X1 again!" Whether or not development up to this point has been strongly focused on beta testers' feedback, decisions have been way too conservative, in my opinion.

[Senteliks]

I don't know. Shields are useful at beginning especially with soldiers that simply have terrible stats. The most terrible soldier paired with a shield, laser gun and Warden armor, can roll over most tier1/2 aliens. 

So the whole argument, I don't like shields, because you get hit all the time and lose them is funny. And even in mid game they have their uses. You can position heavy, glass canon hitters behind the meat fodder soldiers (shield) and do some heavy mayhem, or it's just a free bail card for some crazy maneuver that you can pull, especially when capturing aliens.

The shields are not the problem, it's what you think they should be. Buff them too much, and then what's the point of going without shield? Having monster soldier(s) that can carry them in off back doing god what, without suffering TU penalties for instance. A bit OP? And to come up with countering that, other things would need to be re-adjusted, why should that be the case? 

I am under one those that think shields are decent and good trade off as they are now. Not long now, there will be mods that change that, but overall vanilla should not go through such phases and needs to keep neutrality. 

[doubleskulls]

I think Shields are a bit overpowered as is, as they massively reduce the risk of taking losses when scouting. i.e. the shield can soak up reaction fire, and then the rest of the squad kill revealed enemies. Rinse, repeat, mission done. Carry 'spare' shields with your other roles mean even if they lose the shield you just run back to the dropship and equip a new one. Timed missions make that approach harder, but after initial 3 cleaner missions there is just the odd abduction mission with any timer. 

In terms of alternative mechanisms I don't know what was experimented during the closed beta phase, so its hard to comment on those. I'd question whether shields are even needed at all, and making us focus on high reflexes as the critical scouting attribute may be enough. 

[Mr.Xia]

Shields are a clutch for newer players to provide a get out of jail free card and are a great meta for experienced ones who wants to use unconventional risky tactics.

It's best to retain the old system, I feel. Shields provide a different tactic than who can provide the highest reflexes, and its simplicity prevents it from spiraling out of requiring to balance everything to fit its role in.