I agree, customization and super features of the soldiers could come from other sources than abilities alone (which are not so unique as we could possibly wish for). Each previous X-COM had many more stats for each soldiers than three and every of them were significant. I would add to the game some psychological features to each soldiers like an unique trait that one individual soldier can have only once a game. This feature would not be possible to alter or to modify (something like a passive ability in Heroes of the Might and Magic for each champion). I would find it more entertaining - especially recruting soldiers in order to find some favourite feature I long for
First of all, I would limit the possibility of using every each ability only once per turn. Spamming abilities makes this game worse than it could be. I know that WPs are supposed to be a resource for the decision making, but the thing is… there is almost no thinking behind utilizing most of the abilities - they are just MUSTS. SO what’s the point? There is not much of a “strategical thinking” here. Things are getting more and more predictible each fight, each game, no surprise.
I don’t see why. The only reason I can imagine is for you the game is too easy and you apply blindly a same series of skills. That’s not my experience of the game.
That said there’s an ambiguity with the use of strategy word only without any mention to tactic. Perhaps you want mean something specific not related to tactics.
Perhaps I need to clarify. Let me put it this way… how many times have you decided to keep some WP for later? Like “this is not the right moment to use Quick Aim” or something. It’s more like - ok, I have my WP and I can spam Quick Aim twice, so why not? I’ll use Quick Aim twice, kill two aliens, get my points back, so I can spam once more… Who wouldn’t spam skills in this situation? There is nothing to consider for me here. Maybe it doesn’t work that way with every skill, but I hope you get what I mean. The idea is already in the game “Rally the Troops” has got it built in… otherwise it would be insane!
Constantly, I don’t spend WP up to exhaustion, and there’s at least a parameter, next turn, sometimes it’s more general.
Woo you one shot kill aliens thanks to Quick Aim? Perhaps you mean an Assault doing a Rapid Clearance Chain.
5 AP, one Dash 4AP, two Quick Aim 6 AP. 15 AP. The WP get from kill is somehow decreasing evolving to 2.
Firstly Rapid Clearance probably needs a limit, how and what limit isn’t clear. Secondly myself I don’t kill aliens so easily, and can’t use as many skills I want at each turn, without to mention many skills won’t bring directly any kill. But if it’s easy, ok WP get back from kills will need be nerfed. But myself I haven’t seen clear problems beside with Vanish and RC.
I don’t see what you mean from my play experience, but for sure if you use as many skills than you want at each turn, I see what would be the problem. But don’t you exaggerate quite a bit? Considering RC is a special case that need some tuning.
Moreover some skills are problematic because of party use, not because of soldier use, two good examples are Electric Reinforcement and Rally.
This thread was a feedback on the BB5. Taking into account what kind of content went into release game, like the whole Anu melee focused faction, that is missing just an ability to ride their animals into battle to become a complete joke (or after last Star Wars we pretend that this could be a thing?). Won’t be surprised if one of the feature DLCs will include some Panda Dragons and new faction of Norse warriors
On a serious note, the devs are clear that they don’t see the whole meta mechanics as a problem, this seams to be their deliberate design choice. At this point my old complains are not something that is going to be addressed in any way so this is more of “ I was expecting it to be a different game”. Fortunately there a quite a few other games out there that worth attention and keep me entertained. I’ll just be more careful in feature when it comes to games made by famous game designers.
Woo you one shot kill aliens thanks to Quick Aim? Perhaps you mean an Assault doing a Rapid Clearance Chain.
I’d actually use Quick Aim as a finisher if possible, just to make it spammable (why wouldn’t I?! :D).
Rapid Clearance is a great example of what I meant - there is no doubt it needs some tuning down - I could easily kill a few aliens alone with one assault guy with shotgun which is rather impossible to imagine if we skip thinking of PP as a turn-based game for a moment and see it from a real time strategy’s perspective. Such an assault guy would run with a speed of a lightning to do all these actions in the same time as other classes could do one/two things at the time. It would look funny tho. I’d love to see PP in a real time strategy fashion, like X-COM Apocalypse could offer.
I don’t see what you mean from my play experience, but for sure if you use as many skills than you want at each turn, I see what would be the problem. But don’t you exaggerate quite a bit? Considering RC is a special case that need some tuning.
True. Maybe I’m too old-fashioned and I keep thinking that the state-of-the-art games are supposed to be more and more complex and more and more difficult, but perhaps I have no idea. Still, you’ve got a point here - I haven’t thought about that RC was the case when you make it turned out overpowered because of its stacking, global power. Let’s say - we scope the range of RC to narrow it, in order to make it less OP, It would take some more thinking to use it and it might be harder to spam… maybe that would work?
Logic and realism are two different things. Let’s take fantasy game as an example: “Spell that allows you to fly 50 meters above ground expires”. Logical is that you fall down. Realistic is that you die of fall damage.
Because it’s a fantasy world, dying of falling isn’t guaranteed for an inhuman being such as yourself. So it doesn’t have to be realistic. But not falling down at all after spell expires is illogical. Logic describes continuity of events under various circumstances, realism is binding the circumstances to our, real world.
Like in a topic about training centers, assumption that multiple buildings allows you to train the same person faster is illogical, and arguing against it has nothing to do with making it more realistic. Making things more logical doesn’t mean making things realistic. Making things realistic doesn’t mean it makes them logical.
Actually X-Men is Superhero fiction, it’s a mish-mash of the fantasy, sci-fi and crime genres. It’s the fantasy element of that which allows many of the characters’ powers to be explained.
It’s fantasy fiction where ‘everything is possible’, the laws of the universe be damned. Sci-fi explores what ‘is’ possible, just maybe not in our time and place.
This is where I have issue with the perks in PP. The game put itself forward as Sci-fi horror, (so blasters and monsters I could buy into) not as Sci-fi fantasy (impossible feats of superhuman power with no explanation for them, which is what it has).
Well ok but who said PP isn’t in same category? I doubt that mind control done with some psychic power has any scientific base. Weapons growing as arm looks even less realistic in context of modern science. Just the skill increasing speed to 150% for one turn will hardly find any scientific base.
Gemaplay is a constant tuning between appearance of realism (that is often just matching rules of older similar game even if look at closer they are totally unrealistic) and gameplay quality including depth and diversity for such game.
Lore could fix many “realism” problems, at end it’s fiction and “suspension of disbelief” management.
PP is the wrong game to expect a higher realism focus because its base is what it is.
EDIT:
Let face it, PP lack a bit of rigor in its “suspension of disbelief” management. A good example are drops or skills or elites spawning before the research are done. Prototypes, mutations, precursors could explain it, but there’s no effort to include it in lore or game story. Players need put themselves lower/higher their suspension of disbelief, or fill themselves the untold hole filling. The game lacked of quality control on that aspect and it’s very very late to target it very well, and multi language doesn’t help. Yeah a point of improvement, but it’s story and lore management only, and no game is perfect. I’d say it will be a good target of improvement for PP2, but for PP1 it’s too late, and it will hardly tune much of it.
And don’t bother compare with games based on true IP, the IP did most of the work for the games.
Mind control - There’s actually a lot of debate on the topic of mind control, I’d put it in the category of ‘may be possible’ and definitely worth exploring as a sci-fi topic.
Weapons growing as an arm - Quite unlikely in the form that this exists in PP, but who knows given an infinite universe. There’s certainly precedent set within nature for weaponised body parts; consider wasps, octopi or jellyfish for instance. Overall, whilst it’s a sci-fi trope, I’d say that this is a lot softer as a sci-fi concept.
Moving at 150% normal speed - For a human body, this is literally impossible within the laws of nature, it’s certainly not something which suddenly happens overnight because you ‘trained a perk’ (and I think it’s a lot more than 150%). This is pure fantasy and has no place within a sci-fi horror setting.
I think you mean ‘suspension of belief’
Not all fiction requires suspension of belief, and in fact a lot of fiction works very hard to do the opposite and make its characters/worlds/stories as believable as possible.
Sci-fi is part of what is termed speculative fiction (along with horror, fantasy and many sub-genres) - which can require suspension of belief, but it’s not as simple as to say ‘this is sci-fi we can do anything’. Suspension of belief works on a scale, it’s not binary and it has to fit the setting along with the rules that have been built up within that setting. (Even fantasy, if you want it to be believable, must be based on some rules).
If 2001 Space Odyssey suddenly had a character gain the ability to run across the space station in the blink of an eye no audience would buy into that, in X-men a character can do this because X-men already sits in that fantasy area where any superpower is expected. The middle ground, and a comparison to where PP is at, maybe Aliens or Predator, maybe Starship Troopers if we’re really stretching it, certainly there’s some requirement for suspension of belief in those stories, but a human character that can suddenly run with superhuman speed? Nah, sorry that still doesn’t work in any of those settings either.
‘Because of lore’ is a poor argument, it’s used only when actual reason starts to fall down. Even then is there any actual lore present in the game that explains these superhuman feats. Or is it just in your own mind because you want to play the game that way?
Actually, the audience doesn’t ‘need’ to do anything. It’s the writers who need to manage their audience’s suspension of belief. - If you work as a carpenter, you don’t make an unsteady chair and then say that your customers need to adjust their flooring.
Yeah, he also did work on a lot of fantasy genre games, too much of which has crept in here IMHO.
What parts, I only quoted sci-fi horror which is a tag covering a huge range of possible fiction, and The Mist which is no hard SF but for sure with a tuned management of suspension on disbelief.
If it’s just that, it changes nothing and you didn’t read much SF if you think that ultra speed and psychic power is only super hero or fantasy. Again the lore/story/texts could explain it and work better on suspension of disbelief.
Pretty sure carpenter wouldn’t manage a video game lol.
XCOM2 has ultra speed, I don’t remind for XCOM1, and both have psychic control quite extended. None bother work on suspension of disbelief.
You asked 'Who said PP isn’t in the same category as X-Men (Superhero or Fantasy fiction). - I showed you.
Mist - Again this is potentially sci-fi, we don’t know what appears in the universe as a whole, a sentient air-born being isn’t beyond the realms of possibility, it would still have to obey the laws of nature to be considered hard sci-fi, but ‘hard sci-fi’ isn’t all sci-fi either.
If you bothered to read, I explained above that psychic power is a valid sci-fi topic. Ultra speed for humans is fantasy, we literally do have the possibility to do that in our present form.
And you have no idea of the extent to which I read sci-fi.
You can give any meaning you want to sci-fi, your definition will stick just be your definition, history of tag use won’t change because of your own perception of its meaning.
It’s not ‘my’ definition, it’s the industry definition. If anything it’s determined by publishers and retailers.
And the industry use of genre labels does change over time. Take H.G. Wells ‘The Time Machine’ as an example. Consider how it’s traditionally classified, and then consider how it would be classified if it were published today.
Your believing that the tag changed, not the reality:
Science Fiction novella, no change, for sure it’s no Hard SF, Sci-Fi is just a different shorter name for Science Fiction tag.
Your point on time evolution is valid but it’s not one player opinion nor even one site or some sites opinion that can change it. It remains that your own meaning of the tag changes nothing.
Lore in the game does not explain why some of mankind idividuals have superhuman abilities. Sure, Phoenix is supposed to be best of the best, the last hope of dying world, but still humans (by large, excluding some factions :P). The setting is defined and I don’t feel like “it is sci-fi, so everything is possible” is anything but wishful filling the gaps between lore and mechanics.
I can understand why Anu may have some abilities, because it is part of the setting. But explanation that common human in this world may also have some “because it is sci-fi” without other justification is a bit insuficient.
Sci-fi (or fantasy) doesn’t mean there are no rules to obey. Like I’ve said, there is a difference between logic and realism. One should not fill logic gaps with assumptions because it doesn’t make them any more logical as assumptions are nothing but personal opinions.
I already explained it’s a matter of suspension of disbelief, the work on it is a bit weak in PP, all those combats realism arguing could get an explanation through lore, which doesn’t mean that it’s done.
If you look at SF writing, you’ll find out of Hard SF many elements not explained at all, some older writing provided some explanations, and the book was focused on different aspects. Some SF writing even just use thematic already explained in past writing without to bother remind any, sure Hard SF fans consider it’s not SF, more Fantasy disguised in SF, except that tag reality make them wrong, a lot of SF don’t explain much and just use cliché.
But PP error is even if some aspect like psy could fit this point, some other points fit less well, and there’s missing work on suspension of disbelief through lore/story/events/texts. At end everything could be fixed that way.
I’ll use Quick Aim twice, kill two aliens, get my points back, so I can spam once more… Who wouldn’t spam skills in this situation? There is nothing to consider for me here. Maybe it doesn’t work that way with every skill, but I hope you get what I mean. The idea is already in the game “Rally the Troops” has got it built in… otherwise it would be insane!
