Been having a ton of fun, so much was implemented well. Then I encountered Anu Priests with Virus guns. I understand that there are counters to virus, but none are available for me right now and virus’s problem isn’t that it’s strong. I can protect a soldier that’s panicking.
It’s problem is that it prevents mission completion. I complete the objective, but one of my dudes is still virus panicking. So I sit around for many turns defending him…during which another priest shows up and shoots a new soldier. So I kill the priest and now must defend the new soldier for an additional X turns. During which 2 more priests show up and get off a single volley each.
I’m not losing. No one is dying. But I can’t go back to the Evac point. Respawns are forever and even with meticulous overwatch (Which is tedious and boring to do for panicking soldiers) I’m not going to be able to kill every priest before it can fire once.
I’m not a game designer so I won’t offer a solution, I’m sure y’all can think of a few. But this is an unfun mechanic. The moment I’m told it’s fixed I’ll reinstall and hopefully get to enjoy this otherwise amazing game.
I am not sure in current state, but in other “versions” I have “left behind” panciked and paralyzied soldiers, and they got back home alright.
They can´t be in the midddle of a shot-out. Then they get killed. But if they seem sate, try to run for exit.
Are you saying that if I evac all my dudes except para/panic’d the mission will end? That might help, but it also means if your run everyone else away and a spawn pops on your panic dude at the last second they are dead.
I can’t give you any details, but I know that the devs are working on solutions to both the Virus and Paralysis Lock problem.
I know that if you evac with a Paralysed Squaddie on the map, the Paralysed Squaddie is evac’d with you. I’m not sure whether this is also true of Virus Lock, but I’ll feed back to the devs and see whether it can be patched as an interim.
Will do. I’ve asked the devs to let me know if Viral lock gets evac’d like Paralysis. If it doesn’t I’ve suggested that they add a patch to enable that as an interim fix while they work on the problem.
They are aware of it, and they are figuring out what to do about it - but they are a small team trying to make a VERY BIG game, so these things take time.
That’s such great news! I’ve never had these problems probably because of my playstyle (I tend to deploy alpha tactics and a more distant approach) but I’ve seen it in YT videos and it’s something that really makes the player lose all patience with the game and rage-quit.
Yea, the devs are aware of the problem and are talking to us about it - which after all is what we’re there for.
Thing is, both Paralysis and Viral are good non-lethal systems that can take out a Squaddie without actually killing him - and given the choice, which would you rather: an incapacitated Squaddie or a dead Squaddie?
But as they currently stand, they can slow down the endgame of a mission so badly it’s painful. So the trick is to find the right balance of mitigation that doesn’t completely trivialise their effect without completely locking the soldier.
There were some suggestions in past topics like a usable counter or something like diminishing returns leading to a maximum of 5 turns of effect, but I’m sure they’re already taking them into account. The OP situation with reinforcements is a special case that also needs to be considered… maybe reinforcements with these kinds of weapons could spawn farther or have a smaller chance of spawning.
What could help is simply a carry ability for any soldier, so that we can carry paralysed or knocked out soldiers to evac. We should also be able knock out panicked soldiers by our self, so that we can also handle the virus deadlock.
Except it’s not ‘simply’ a carry ability. It would involve a whole new series of animations and collider effects to make it look right - and that’s just the visuals.
I agree, a carry ability is the obvious and best solution, but it really isn’t simple - remember it took XCOM nigh on 7 years before you could do that in XCOM2.
So for the moment the devs are working on an interim fix that will make Virus and Paralysis lock less mind numbing for the players.
I said I’d not offer up my own ideas because I’m not a game designer, but now I’m gonna do it anyway.
This probably flies in the face of the spirit of the game seeing as evac points are a thing but…my idea is auto-evac when a mission is essentially over. Here might be the conditions:
Objectives all complete
All starting enemies dead (Only respawns alive)
No respawns currently in a threatening range
The solution fails on missions where the player decides when they have done enough (scavenging missions ect) since part of the challenge of those missions is to not only get your loot, but to bring it to the evac point. But if you gave auto-evac a party-wide large stamina hit, it might be fair.
Honestly I really don’t enjoy the evac part of any mission. Most often it’s just clicking 6 different people over the course of 3 turns and telling them to move max distance to the evac point. There’s very little action and protecting your sprint back with spamming overwatch doesn’t make it exciting. In my perfect world, every mission would end without evac with evac points only existing as a means of ending a botched mission early.
My favorite missions are the ones that end when I’ve done all the exciting stuff.
@Krytor the evacs were an attempt to make more diverse missions. A failed attempt at that, I agree, because it sure is boring at the end. However, before that most missions were “kill all enemies” and we complained about that. I think this was probably an easier change to implement, that would impact this feeling. It did impact, no one complains about it anymore, but it needs to be tweaked.
I think having to evac in enemy bases makes thematic sense and can be a thrill. A tweak that could be made would be that a few of the reinforcements, specially weaker ones, could come in between the player and the evac zones, while others come from afar as today. That would give us a pause and action moment instead of just movement, while also enabling some of the far away ones to catch the player, and turn it more exciting. The same can be said of scavenging missions, with the same tweak.
This would allow us to keep diversity and see if they become less boring at the end or even a real thrill. Of course other types of missions could exist.
I’ve just created a canny post about this, vote up if you agree:
I didn’t mean to write this comment, but you wrote the phrase “interim fix” Three times!
The SG is very bad at working on the Balance in the game, this is already an indisputable fact. And to “beg” them to make a “interim fix” = delay the solution to the problem for the distant future.
IMHO, these 4 years consist of continuous “intermediate fixes”, and the coming All of 2021 does not want to Fix a terrible tradition.
And Mind Control.
All of these Abilities have similar implications and either must be subordinated to a common logic, or each must have its own Logical / Plausible path.
