Skitso Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 (edited) Okay, last night I had another of my Xenonaut Noob friend to play the game with me. He has played a bit of Firaxis' Xcom but otherwise he's rather unexperienced with stragey games. We played on normal and I helped him to get the first base running and gave few tips here and there as he was quite clueless at the beginning. Here's some of his thoughts and my observations from his time with the game: He had trouble with the UI text size. I tried to explain the engine restrictions etc. to him. We ended up moving the 46" television to the couch table right in front of us. He built his first base to Northern America and had huge difficulties to shoot ufo's over land to create crash sites. It was literally so bad, we decided to restart the game and start from Middle east. He thought that the air combat camera was too far away on default as he always needed to zoom manually before taking actions and wondered if some kind of auto zoom could be implemented. He felt the game didn't progress that well at the beginning and forced him to play "pretty samey" missions too many times. I kinda agree with this: The light scout/scout -phase drags on too long and the ground missions feel dull as there are so few aliens roaming about the map. He didn't like the early crash site maps and felt they were boring and empty. (we did have a lot of open desert maps) But he liked the one industrial one we had later. He was dissapointed in Hunter. After the money and time invested, he felt it was lackluster. He commented that some buttons in the base (adding scientists, if I remember correctly) felt frustratigly unresponsive - registering clicks inconsistently, also the feedback on clicks was sometimes bad as the click sound didn't always play. He noted that in the menu where you select which interceptors to launch, the selected planes blue highlight is exactly the same as the header, making him confused. (I'm not entirely sure if this is a game issue or with my Oppressive UI Mod) He felt the manufacture menu was unintuitive as the two columns (categories and items) looked identical. He suggested a tree form or at least different size / color texts to differentiate them. (for example smaller and lighter font for items, larger and darker for categories) He never realised he could build another base until I told him. He wanted to edge scroll the geoscape and it to autozoom to points of interests. (i.e. alien base found -> camera zoom in to show it) He had difficulties with the grenade quick selection button the same way my other friend did. He also commented that when he selected a new grenade from quick selection menu, it should be throwable right away after selecting it so he wouldn't need to first right click (open menu), then left click (select grenade), then left click (activa throw) and left click once (confirm throw) We noticed few times an alien that didn't do anything in it's own turn, even when it was a few tiles away from a xenonaut. (passive alien inside an ufo) Otherwise he praised the AI and said it was one of the best AI's he has seen in any game. After ten or so totally unsuspenseful walk in the park scout missions, the first alien base had way too steep difficulty spike for my friend. (I felt the base was OK or maybe a bit too difficult, but the missions before were too easy with too few aliens so the contrast was quite substantial.) Edited March 30, 2014 by Skitso Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dpelectric Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 Yes, as others have mentioned, there should be more aliens wandering about outside on scout/light scout missions. This would stop them from feeling "boring and empty" after repeated visits, and allow you to ramp up your soldiers more rapidly in preparation for the challenges ahead Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
victorix58 Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 My personal play preference is to do four or five scout missions and then never do them again. I airstrike everything after that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thixotrop Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 He felt the game didn't progress that well at the beginning and forced him to play "pretty samey" missions too many times. I kinda agree with this: The light scout/scout -phase drags on too long and the ground missions feel dull as there are so few aliens roaming about the map. I agree to that, the roaming aliens are encountered quite fast, but then the site is empty. The aliens inside the ufo are too passive. He noted that in the menu where you select which interceptors to launch, the selected planes blue highlight is exactly the same as the header, making him confused. (I'm not entirely sure if this is a game issue or with my Oppressive UI Mod) It is not your mod, the column header and the selected aircrafts have the same background colour. He never realised he could build another base until I told him. Funny, I thought this was just me. When I start a new game after some time and want to build a new base I always forgot to know where that button is and looking for quite some time. He wanted to edge scroll the geoscape and it to autozoom to points of interests. (i.e. alien base found -> camera zoom in to show it) Tried that also, but the geoscape map moves when you use your mouse wheel for zooming in and out with the cursor at the side area of the map. Did not concern me as this is quite usual with CAD software, for instance AutoCAD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lifehole Posted March 31, 2014 Share Posted March 31, 2014 Yes, as others have mentioned, there should be more aliens wandering about outside on scout/light scout missions. This would stop them from feeling "boring and empty" after repeated visits, and allow you to ramp up your soldiers more rapidly in preparation for the challenges ahead Yeah, the scout-light scout to corvette-landingship/small alien base jump is kinda severe if you're on ironman, or first time player, or just unlucky. The routine for me during the light scout-scout phase was pretty simple stuff, got kinda monotonous. Use shields, scout until you find someone, spam kill them, repeat. Once you get to the UFO you just flashbang with a shield a few times then either use explosives or guns. This really is my routine for all missions early-mid game but with the lack of enemy variety and enemy population during that time it gets boring fast for scout missions. My personal play preference is to do four or five scout missions and then never do them again. I airstrike everything after that. ^ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TacticalDragon Posted March 31, 2014 Share Posted March 31, 2014 I'm beginning to suspect about your friend, is bald, overweight and has disheveled beard? Maybe is some one that want to keep his identity free of judgment of other community members? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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