Just finished playing through the original X-Com, here's what I deeply want from Xeno

[Oathbreaker]

1. No linear weapon and gear upgrades. I like seeing my team's faces and heads, it makes them somehow seem a bit more human, although ofc no-one in their right mind would go into a set combat situation without a helmet (some high-speed raiding excepted, I know). Put a big heavy power suit on that's simply better in all respects as a clear across-the-board upgrade, and I just don't like the look of the game. With the only brake on that being cost of Elerium. Perhaps have the upgrades be useful but in a slightly different way so the previous stuff still has its uses?

2. Don't one-shot said dudes in said expensive power suits with blatantly overpowered weapons. Blaster bombs, sigh. Apparently I should have known about that. I'm cool with getting ambushed and losing if I don't play well. But the lower difficulty settings are fairly boring since there's very few aliens on each map, and you spend the time just walking interminably. Losing a few to a runaway Reaper or some Chryssalid - no problem, my own dang fault. I didn't put smoke down before exiting Skyranger - my own fault. Blaster bombs from nowhere - wtf, dude? Not fun. If I care more about the loss of a piece of armour than I care about the loss of the dude inside it, then something's wrong somewhere. I want an emotional connection. Not to a piece of metal.

3. Not too many dudes/chicas. I'm not much of a fan of controlling robotic tanks, so generally go with full human complements. Then again, controlling 14-20 people is just too much. XCOMEU the reboot did this mostly right, perhaps a tad under-numbered.

4. I don't mind being up against Psi enemies. I do mind if this just takes over the game, to the point that it completely changes how you play, because it makes it just so easy to just MC your way to victory without worrying about ...the actual combat. It's no longer a tactical sim, it's a game of who can MC first. Silly.

5. I really like weapons technology that I can kind of recognize. Rifles, shotguns, pistols, SMGs, machine guns etc. I can deal with Laser weapons being a straight upgrade if they're just scarce enough that it doesn't turn into the new regular weapon. I don't want massive huge upgrades to big huge plasma weapons and then just a power fantasy game from there. Then again, many people just want to be a space marine badass superguy unbeatable invincible superhero, so maybe I'm the minority.

Edit: oh, and for gods' sake, make the "stop and pause before jumping over a wall" turn into the same exact thing without the "stop and pause" part in the animation sequence. Not that that is terribly game-breaking. Category filed: Slight Visual Annoyance.

Other than that, thanks for continuing to try to pull this thing off, I expect to see a final-ish product mostly bug free and playing smoothly somewhere around Xmas 2013. Nothing wrong in that, cheers to all.

/rant off

Edited February 10, 2013 by Oathbreaker

[Gorlom]

I think most of those points are adressed already:). except number 5 and possibly part of number 1.

[djlogue]

Now you have played through EU94 why not play Terror from the deep. Or maybe use sebs ufo extender/loader mod to tweak the game play and bash it on superhuman mode (that actually works cos it is bugged under normal circumstances)

[Tacobandit]

1. No linear weapon and gear upgrades. I like seeing my team's faces and heads, it makes them somehow seem a bit more human, although ofc no-one in their right mind would go into a set combat situation without a helmet (some high-speed raiding excepted, I know). Put a big heavy power suit on that's simply better in all respects as a clear across-the-board upgrade, and I just don't like the look of the game. With the only brake on that being cost of Elerium. Perhaps have the upgrades be useful but in a slightly different way so the previous stuff still has its uses?

2. Don't one-shot said dudes in said expensive power suits with blatantly overpowered weapons. Blaster bombs, sigh. Apparently I should have known about that. I'm cool with getting ambushed and losing if I don't play well. But the lower difficulty settings are fairly boring since there's very few aliens on each map, and you spend the time just walking interminably. Losing a few to a runaway Reaper or some Chryssalid - no problem, my own dang fault. I didn't put smoke down before exiting Skyranger - my own fault. Blaster bombs from nowhere - wtf, dude? Not fun. If I care more about the loss of a piece of armour than I care about the loss of the dude inside it, then something's wrong somewhere. I want an emotional connection. Not to a piece of metal.

3. Not too many dudes/chicas. I'm not much of a fan of controlling robotic tanks, so generally go with full human complements. Then again, controlling 14-20 people is just too much. XCOMEU the reboot did this mostly right, perhaps a tad under-numbered.

4. I don't mind being up against Psi enemies. I do mind if this just takes over the game, to the point that it completely changes how you play, because it makes it just so easy to just MC your way to victory without worrying about ...the actual combat. It's no longer a tactical sim, it's a game of who can MC first. Silly.

5. I really like weapons technology that I can kind of recognize. Rifles, shotguns, pistols, SMGs, machine guns etc. I can deal with Laser weapons being a straight upgrade if they're just scarce enough that it doesn't turn into the new regular weapon. I don't want massive huge upgrades to big huge plasma weapons and then just a power fantasy game from there. Then again, many people just want to be a space marine badass superguy unbeatable invincible superhero, so maybe I'm the minority.

Edit: oh, and for gods' sake, make the "stop and pause before jumping over a wall" turn into the same exact thing without the "stop and pause" part in the animation sequence. Not that that is terribly game-breaking. Category filed: Slight Visual Annoyance.

Other than that, thanks for continuing to try to pull this thing off, I expect to see a final-ish product mostly bug free and playing smoothly somewhere around Xmas 2013. Nothing wrong in that, cheers to all.

/rant off

That sounds like EU 2012 in a nutshell.

[Thomas]

Personally i like xcom(2012)..but of course i went in and modded out all the cheating alien crap like automatic 20% crit increase, +15% at accuaracy, and plasma weapons able to shoot across the whole map. After that was a fairly good game, I still fire it up from time to time but won't pay for the 5 map DLC crap they are peddling.

I haven't played the original in 8+ years..I can't coupe with the horribly dated graphics, lame i know but it bugs me.

Edited February 10, 2013 by Thomas

[thothkins]

1. Yeah, I missed seeing faces once Power Armour was on the way. One solution would have been modular armour, sort of like X-Com Apocalypse. However, it does make some sense that the systems are integrated necessitating the use of some sort of helmet. Art already complete for the armours, so the decision is made one way or another.

Hopefully, the range of weapons in Xenonauts, will help at least a bit in the tier department. Or at least there will be multiple useful options at each tier, rather than everyone just going for the Hvy Plasma.

2. No Blaster Bombs in Xenonauts, so it should go just the way you say here. There are psionics, so mind control from afar is always a possibility.

3. I really only take a tank if the game is pretty much telling me I'll lose troops unless I have something to soak up some fire in the first few turns. I may have seen 16 somewhere in the Xeno-files, but that will probably be for later missions. You can always decide to take fewer of course!

4. Ah, see "2." Humans don't have any, so at least it solves that issue.

5. I like to see research steps where you can see the progression. Not "Hey! we've discovered fire!" straight to "Now we can channel the heart of a sun from another galaxy!" Small steps also work best in keeping previous tiers somewhat viable too. So far, that's the case in Xenonauts. At the very least, the aliens have lots of goodies before you do, so you are researching alien tech that has been kicking your butt for a while.

Slight Visual Annoyance: I'm still getting over surprise that they can do it after so many EU1994 games.

[Gorlom]

Slight Visual Annoyance: I'm still getting over surprise that they can do it after so many EU1994 games.

Would you mind elaborating a bit? Apparently my brain decided to strike shop and go home early today. Who are "they" and what is "it"? and how is this related to visuals?

[thothkins]

"they" you know. Them

Oathbreakers visual annoyance was referring to Xenonauts jumping over walls animation. So "they" is Xenonauts" and "it" is wall jumping.

Others can jump in with who they felt "they" were and what the "it" was that they were doing

[Gorlom]

Hmm. I missed that completley. (I think that I pressed the respon buton before his edit but took me 8+ minutes to type that out for some reason.)

[thothkins]

heh no wonder you were wondering what I was going on about. Not that this doesn't happen for a number of my posts

[Tacobandit]

Personally i like xcom(2012)..but of course i went in and modded out all the cheating alien crap like automatic 20% crit increase, +15% at accuaracy, and plasma weapons able to shoot across the whole map. After that was a fairly good game, I still fire it up from time to time but won't pay for the 5 map DLC crap they are peddling.

I haven't played the original in 8+ years..I can't coupe with the horribly dated graphics, lame i know but it bugs me.

That's funny, because they did the same thing in UFO Defense.