Yeah, I have to agree with Yokes on this one.
EDIT: @MichaelIgnotus not that I agree with Yokes that you are saying that. I’m commenting on the argument itself.
I mean, I understand and subscribe to the argument leave the powerful skills & combinations in so long as they don’t break the game because they are fun, but not “leave them in because we need them because the game is too hard” (and, IMO, much of the difficulty arises because the rules are too complex and not properly explained).
*and though what is “fun” is subjective, I think whatever idea of it we go by we have to make an effort of framing it in the context of playing the game, not toying with it. I had fun as a kid playing Doom with Godmode on, as I’m sure did everyone else who tried it, for the first 5 minutes at least.
@Ementrude there are different kind of exploits in games, and among the differences some of them require wilful intent to use, a particular combination that if not activated remains inert. The thing with Terminator Builds is that it’s not a particular combination, or even a number of particular combinations - it just happens if you consistently follow the path that the game itself encourages. The game encourages stacking buffs and combining skills, this is something that is clearly there by design. The game never penalizes stacking, it never says “careful, you don’t want to increase damage too much because then the enemies will do so and so”. It’s always “keep piling on!” You can now move pretty fast, right? Well keep investing in mobility, try on differenet armors, augs, etc see how far you can go then.
That’s why tbh I find unfair the argument that “hey, some players broke the game for themselves” or “some players will always try to find exploits”. No, we were not looking for exploits; we only did what we were encouraged to do at every turn by the game itself.
I spend much less time playing the game than writing about it, because this I can do while multi-tasking. It took me 60 hours of playing 1h a day to come across the Terminator Builds. I played Firaxis XComs for 1000s of hours without ever breaking them.