XCOM 2 Catch-All

kexx wrote:

seeing how the Snakeman (now woman) made a comeback, I'm crossing fingers we'll get to see the Reaper back as well, which basically served the same function, heavy melee hitter.

Also, just for kicks, Celatids and Silacoids need to come back!!

Celatids and Silacoids would be great. They would kind of be like enemy SHIVs. One slow tanky ground unit that pushes you around and out of cover until you deal with it. And a sort-of hover SHIV with acid attacks.

I'm also hoping they bring back the old Chryssalid.

A year after buying XCOM I find myself mostly bedridden with a bad back, so I sparked up XCOM To find it has excellent controller support, once I've enabled it manually. I hope going PC only doesn't prevent that in the sequel. The ergonomics of the controller make it orders of magnitude more likely that I play.

Tamren wrote:
kexx wrote:

seeing how the Snakeman (now woman) made a comeback, I'm crossing fingers we'll get to see the Reaper back as well, which basically served the same function, heavy melee hitter.

Also, just for kicks, Celatids and Silacoids need to come back!!

Celatids and Silacoids would be great. They would kind of be like enemy SHIVs. One slow tanky ground unit that pushes you around and out of cover until you deal with it. And a sort-of hover SHIV with acid attacks.

I'm also hoping they bring back the old Chryssalid.

I like these ideas. That is definitely a way that they would work.

I too would love to see the old Chryssalids, but I just don't see it happening. I too want to have the old, cute sectoids along with the new ones, but I'm sure the old ones are gone.

kexx wrote:

I too would love to see the old Chryssalids, but I just don't see it happening. I too want to have the old, cute sectoids along with the new ones, but I'm sure the old ones are gone.

They don't really need justification to put them in but they could explain the "Old" Chryssalids as being a hybrid of humans and the new bug type ones.

I actually don't mind the new sectoids, even if I miss that "smug" quality the old ones had. It's a shame they didn't do much with them, in the base game you face packs of 3 with mind meld. While they were certainly dangerous at the time they become relegated to simple grenade bait speed bumps as the game goes on, and eventually vanish entirely. They are replaced by sectoid commanders with more dangerous abilities but even those were not a huge threat. The commanders even had a "mass mind meld" ability but you never EVER saw commanders accompanied by groups of lesser sectoids, so that ability never got any screen time.

Long War does a bit to alleviate that. Basic sectoids are MUCH more dangerous and get to use mind fray as a basic ability, combined with Red Fog this makes them a credible threat all the way to the end of the game.

Hahhahahahahahah. That's hilarious.

It's probably already out there. But I'm not going to search for it. I leave that up to you.

Robear wrote:

It's probably already out there. But I'm not going to search for it. I leave that up to you. :-)

I'm certain I can direct you to sites where it can be found.

I took one for the team...

IMAGE(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qq3D8YjZDNk/TMQwwPkO52I/AAAAAAAAAJQ/RsYW5IKpa4o/s1600/Hisss2.jpg)

I can't help but imagine that the people at Firaxis had a conversation that went something like:

"You know what's going to happen if you put tits on that snake right?"

And then someone leaned back in their chair, put on a pair of sunglasses and said:

"YUP!"

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/hbwpGTB.png)

JC wrote:

I took one for the team...

Why does she have a dinosaur tail coming out of her stomach?

Mantid wrote:
JC wrote:

I took one for the team...

Why does she have a dinosaur tail coming out of her stomach?

In terms of the number of questions related to that picture I don't think that even falls into the top 10.

a google search for "snake boobs" can't be unseen....

Hey guys what's going on in this thre...

IMAGE(http://i.minus.com/imZzndNj0QgV9.png)

BNice wrote:

Hey guys what's going on in this thre...

IMAGE(http://i.minus.com/imZzndNj0QgV9.png)

Heheh... that pic is great!

MrDeVil909 wrote:

A year after buying XCOM I find myself mostly bedridden with a bad back, so I sparked up XCOM To find it has excellent controller support, once I've enabled it manually. I hope going PC only doesn't prevent that in the sequel. The ergonomics of the controller make it orders of magnitude more likely that I play.

Over on IGN they said they don't intent to ship with controller support, but do plan to add it in later.

Vargen wrote:
MrDeVil909 wrote:

A year after buying XCOM I find myself mostly bedridden with a bad back, so I sparked up XCOM To find it has excellent controller support, once I've enabled it manually. I hope going PC only doesn't prevent that in the sequel. The ergonomics of the controller make it orders of magnitude more likely that I play.

Over on IGN they said they don't intent to ship with controller support, but do plan to add it in later.

You could always pick up a Steam controller. It's pretty cool that thing will be able to work with any PC game.

Vargen wrote:
MrDeVil909 wrote:

A year after buying XCOM I find myself mostly bedridden with a bad back, so I sparked up XCOM To find it has excellent controller support, once I've enabled it manually. I hope going PC only doesn't prevent that in the sequel. The ergonomics of the controller make it orders of magnitude more likely that I play.

Over on IGN they said they don't intent to ship with controller support, but do plan to add it in later.

That seems like a move backwards to me. But I'll have the steam controller so....

Waitwaiwait... you can hold shift to lock your cursor to your "altitude"?

LarryC wrote:

I'm kind of down on the whole procedurally generated maps thing. Having the same map over and over wasn't fun in XCOM, but on a normal EW play through, they didn't repeat until after you got enough to finish the game easily. That made each map in EW feel truly unique with its own story to tell. Procedurally generated maps are uninspiring and samey. I don't recall a single Diablo map, ever. They're not essential to Diablo gameplay so the fact that they're procedurally generated creates a feeling of variety on what is ultimately background detail.

XCOM maps are not like that. They need character and individuality because they're an essential part of the game. It's one thing to have random encounter tables spice up an evening. It's quite another to have random encounters instead of an actual campaign.

Getting bored with the very limited selection of maps is pretty much what finally ended my X-Com play. In my EW playthroughs, every time that stupid tank park map showed up I had to quit for a day or two before I could steel myself to play through it again - it's SO painfully slow to safely work your way across the map. I have every single one of those maps down to a science, and it makes what should be tense situations merely tedious. As far as I'm concerned, the more variety the better - and of course, procedurally-generated maps don't preclude special location maps that are more memorable and show up only once per game.

While many procedural level generation algorithms are uninspiring, there are quite a few that manage to keep people's interest over the whole game. (Such as, say, in Civilization.) A lot of it comes down to the design. From the sounds of it, these maps will have a lot of ways for the player to interact with them, which will hopefully have a dramatic effect on replayability.

Plus, the secondary missions will definitely add a variety to them that was much needed in EU.

Now I can't wait for E3, and see more of this game. I just know I'm gonna sink in another 1200hrs.

Also, quite curious what the Long War mod team will do with it.

Aetius:

It is incorrect to relate procedural generation with meaningful variety. If your entire random encounter table is composed of variations of goblin, then it's still not going to generate a whole lot of varied encounters. Likewise, procedural generation in Diablo 3 maps doesn't seem to generate a whole lot of memorable or meaningful differences.

It seems that the XCOM team is planning on having specific areas filled with pre-created building and set pieces. Unless those particular bits interact or create different scenarios when placed in different ways then all you're going to have is a bunch of locations that all play the same as they always do randomly sprinkled on a non-unique map.

EW made it so that I only ever saw that tank map once per play through. I see the dam map once per playthrough, though, so I suppose it's the same? Slingshot maps, too.

It'd be great if you could have a random set of side mission content from a wide library of missions, but that's going to take a lot of modders and a very active community. Long War makes me hopeful. If the tools are easy enough, I'll make a mission series, myself! That's worth more than random generation.

Good procedural generation is absolutely about emergent effect between multiple interacting pieces. Having disconnected set pieces adds some variety, but nowhere near as much as when the different pieces play off of each other. Some games understand this; I'd point to Dungeon Crawl or Brogue as being games that understand this. Dungeon Crawl has a ton of prefab bits that it can insert in the dungeon generation, but where it really shines is when the different bits synergize to create challenges you wouldn't have faced otherwise. The same monster means something different in a big, open level versus a tight maze; an ogre warrior experiences the dungeon differently than a Spriggan evoker.

The other significant way to make procedurally generated maps matter is to have the parts of the map be highly interactive. This this why it works so well in Civilization. Each tile on the map has some potential direct utility. Plus, because setting cities is such a significant time cost, some tiles will be indirectly important when you need to control territory.

Now, in XCOM, the maps are about cover. If that's all the new maps are about it'll be tricky to make them meaningful. It can be done: zillions of FPS maps have made cover and shooting interesting when designed by hand. But with only one dimension for the generator to play with it can get monotonous.

However, it sounds like for XCOM2 they're adding a lot of destructibility and interaction to the maps (like in the original X-Com) so they're already thinking along those lines.

Addendum: "interestingness" is a difficult-to-measure but critical part of procedural generation. It often doesn't matter how variable the generator's results are if they're same-y enough that the player recognizes the pattern easily. What you want is a high degree of "uniqueness", combinations that are significant outliers from the mundane, recognized patterns.

The original Xcom maps had limited interactivity. Cover was destructible. That was about it. The limited numbers in which the aliens spawned and the limited alien and Xcom agent interaction meant that action got really monotonous really, really fast. This problem was extremely evident in Terror From the Deep. I'm one of the very few players who actually finished that game and even I can't think of a TftD map that really struck me.

XCOM: EU mechanics have limited interactivity from location to location. Whatever the outside looks like, once you're in a medium size UFO, it played the same way. The original XCOM was like that as well. This does not bode well for procedurally generated maps being relevant.

Even in Civ where procedural generation actually meant something, the extent of meaning was not always well understood or intended so you eventually just end up with a couple possible distinct results - not meaningfully different from just scripting those starts.

Civ's procedurally generated maps fail most in that they don't often result in anything that really affects how you approach the game. Whether you want a tall or a wide Civ isn't that affected by the map you're given, though how well you do in general is map dependent. The ironic thing is that players asked for this. Map scripting used to create results where you're Rome and you can't deploy Legions because Iron wasn't accessible in a timely manner. People didn't like that.

If we're talking about intentional game design, a set of map variables and procedures must be employed with specific randomized results in mind. A mindful DM populates and creates his own random encounter table and crafts it to portray what he wants. The same thing must exist in a game designer. He must exhaustively list all possible combinations and see to each one being an enjoyable experience, with an acceptable and planned breadth of variety.

And now for something completely different!

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/lhjcFFq.jpg)

IMAGE(http://41.media.tumblr.com/64ac21187b3a260f34616bc40002dc8a/tumblr_npcja6sMiP1sqp17lo1_1280.png)

Mantid wrote:

IMAGE(http://41.media.tumblr.com/64ac21187b3a260f34616bc40002dc8a/tumblr_npcja6sMiP1sqp17lo1_1280.png)

Stuff "they" don't want you to know.

LarryC wrote:

Aetius:

It is incorrect to relate procedural generation with meaningful variety.

It seems that the XCOM team is planning on having specific areas filled with pre-created building and set pieces. Unless those particular bits interact or create different scenarios when placed in different ways then all you're going to have is a bunch of locations that all play the same as they always do randomly sprinkled on a non-unique map.

The problem with the existing maps is that I've played them so much I know every sight line and every piece of cover. I know precisely where to put my snipers so that they can wipe out every mob on the map in short order. I know exactly how far I can send someone so that they can see mobs without getting shot. I know exactly where to place MEC shots to provide the right fields of fire. It's boring. A procedural map will prevent that by jumbling up the terrain and tactical aspects of the map, and that's all I care about; I don't mind that the the map "plays through the same" as long as it's not the exact same tactical dance every frakking time.

Gremlin wrote:

Now, in XCOM, the maps are about cover. If that's all the new maps are about it'll be tricky to make them meaningful. It can be done: zillions of FPS maps have made cover and shooting interesting when designed by hand. But with only one dimension for the generator to play with it can get monotonous.

I disagree - it's pretty trivial to change the tactical aspects of a map by changing the terrain, and plenty of wargames do this very successfully. Not having enough maps/not having random maps has killed replayability on a lot of games for me - MWO, WarThunder, and BF4 being some of the most recent.

I think, Aetius, your problem might be one of two things:

1. You always do the same thing.

Civ gets boring really fast if you only have 1 Civ to play. That's the reason for having many Civs. A map played with all snipers can be very different especially if it's a map where snipers don't typically fare well. An open map played with Assaults and MECs against long range alien punishers is played differently. If you always have the same sniper with the same perks on the same map in the same position on the same turn, then it's going to get boring fast. Changing the map won't change that much. Changing the unit composition will do more. If you had a Support instead of a Sniper in that position, the way the map looks will be different.

2. You've played XCOM for over a few thousand hours.

You can exhaust every unit size and composition on every map in every possible tech/perk combo possible. This requires that you play the game for at least a few thousand hours. Frankly, you've gotten much more than what the game is costing at that point. You'd be much better served by a mod community that makes maps intentionally out of parts rather than a randomized set.

The best SC maps aren't random. They're intentionally created for a specific effect by map makers. The same is probably true of XCOM. After the first few thousand hours of play, you should know the game well enough to create specific map with specific opponents for a specific mission effect. That will ultimately serve you and the community much more than a randomized map. Even if you only consume, having map parts that are openly and freely moddable will do more than procedural randomization.

LarryC wrote:

The original Xcom maps had limited interactivity. Cover was destructible. That was about it.

I wouldn't call X-Com's destructible cover "limited" in any capacity.

This is a picture from one of my old GWJ lets plays. We were assaulting an alien base and just about to attack the bridge. Milkman and Cube had entered from the doors on the other end and walked around to the inner doors. Instead of having Khoram and Grubber do the same I had them cut a hole in the outer wall with their heavy plasmas and take a shortcut and take up positions outside the door. As soon as I ended the turn a blaster bomb came down the lift from the bridge, zoomed between Milkman and Cube, out the door and through the hole cut in the outer wall and detonated in the corridor outside. Explosions in X-Com at least try to be realistic and "raytrace" the blast horizontally, the closer you are to the centre of the explosion the more damage you take. This proximity mechanic also applies to cover, the stronger a wall or object is the more force it can take before being destroyed and the less damage is applied to targets behind them.

Khoram and Grubber were saved because the tough alien alloy wall absorbed enough of the blast that their armour was able to save them. Both of them were severely wounded but able to walk away. Milkman had two walls between him and the blast and the inner one was an ultra-tough alien wall that can only be breached by direct blaster hits, other than smoke inhalation he was completely untouched. Cube however was directly in the path of the blast, he took a massive hit to the back and was killed instantly.

If I had not cut that hole in the outer wall ALL of them would be dead. This is the kind of interactivity with destructible cover that XCOM can only dream of.
IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/cszJaUu.png)

LarryC wrote:

1. You always do the same thing.

Changing the map won't change that much. Changing the unit composition will do more. If you had a Support instead of a Sniper in that position, the way the map looks will be different.

We'll have to agree to disagree. On the harder difficulty levels, if you have a support in a sniper position, it does play differently - you all die. That's not really fun. The problem is that the maps, tactically, are relatively simple, and once you've got the layout down (which only takes a couple of playthroughs) it becomes a battle with the RNG.

I should note here that the original Terror from the Deep tried to fix this the wrong way - they thought that map size and complexity equaled tactical complexity. Most of these, like the cruise ship, just devolved into a boring melee slog (or a deathtrap, if you didn't have the right tech).

The best SC maps aren't random.

You know why I quit playing StarCraft? Everyone had optimized the maps down to a science, the first 15 minutes of every game were exactly the same, and it started coming down to how fast you could click. I don't find that fun.

Contrast that to Civ, where every time you start a random map, you don't know what the optimal placement is for anything. You have to explore, and sometimes take sub-optimal positions because you simply didn't know better at the time. I'd love to see that in X-Com because it'll make the game a lot more interesting.