New feedback after more than 120h

Hi all.

I had done a feedback after 50h of play.
Now, with more than 6 days of playtime, I’m doing a new feedback, including the new path delerict.

Well I begin with a shocking fact, I give up for a while.
But I have to congratulate the dev team for the efforts done the last weeks.
Many changes are good and the game become better.

To be shorter in this post I will concentrate about problems I see in this game.

The first problem I see is flight management. We have planes with 6 slots but we can engage up to 8 soldiers. At the begining I’d not see this fact, so the game was very hard, even in rooky mode.
So it’s mandatory to have 2 planes per full squad.
This force us to build very expensive and long time buid planes to be efficient, even in rooky mode !
This bring us to scavange the more we can or defend all havens we can but it become boring, especially if we manage many planes. Ok, it’s the core of the game, it’s a choice.
The plane selection is awfull, we have to select 2 planes to fight well…
And when you have 4 or more planes it’s a pity to select the ones you want. Maybe we can have fleet management to be able to manage 2 planes at once ?
For me the concept we have more soldier rooms in combat for our plane capacity is weird.

Second problem I see is the soldier progression, perks are so powerfull at level 6 and 7 so the gap is very big.
The personnal secondary perks can be great or simply unusable.
Many perks should be added and cooldowns not sufficently used. As le long war of XCom2 mod (this mod add a very big amount of play time and tactical posibilities).
The armor set never upgrade, it do not give us a progress feeling. We have have to get fraction armor sets but the values do not change a lot (especially for armor).
There is a progression about weapons but at the and we use sinedrion gears at 80% of time.
So we have a clone effect from mid to late game and it’s so boring (no color personalisation, no hiden helmet to spot soldier better…).
Well I never use vehicle because of the so big amount of slot to use it…

Now I will talk about ennemies. To few ennemy types so we encounter trash mobs or titan ones.
So we have to use the famous first strike (death mark + 5 strikes). It’s so powerfull that we do not have the choice to use it to survive.
80% of our soldier have the ability to fire with sniper rifles and more often with the famous 5 bulltet strike. Where is the tactic ?
Now, so many problems are from artillery and chirons. We can’t counter this. No global shield, some times no rooms to hide (for example my last combat on a citadel , the first round 2 chirons explosive ones, the second round 4 deads, 1 without arms and another without legs…
And the fact we don’t have many ennemy types so there are big gapes betwwen each type we encounter. It’s not enough smooth.
So, It’s very frustrating at the begin and very boring at the end.

I continue with replayability. Yes we have 4 possible ends and we can try to play all.
But the game is so unbalace and so frustrating/boring that do a new game to just have a new end is not enough.
I quote another game I play over 500h : battletech. Initially the game is scripted and have a story. But after some games, it’s not enough to continue to play.
So they add a carrer mode : we play a mercenary for 1200 days of ingame play and the goal is to survive and do the best score as possible and the best gear as possible.
You should find a way to increase alot the replayability. This include a big gear changes and a better qualitiy of play. But it’s possible.

There are many other things I can talk about but this post can’t be more longer I guess.
So I will stop to play for a while. Maybe I will resume a party or never I don’t know yet.
Have a good play. My goal is not to disgused all to play but to talk about my feeling and my point of view.

4 Likes

I read some interesting statements in your post, I played Veteran ( three different ends) and now Legend level (close to final mission).

If I understand it correctly the problem is about balance, before midgame too difficult, later too boring and repetitive. I agree, obtaining SP after many battles will create OP team-A(first squad) soldiers.

But when you play a lot more hours, you find the beauty in self restrictions, you are not forced to use 5 snipers, or 5 soldiers with Rage Burst skill, dashing twice every time, Rapid clearance and Rally.

You have choices and there you find replayability. It is not about a different end, it’s about creating different Squads with mixed abilities completing each other, synergy. Multiclass allows a lot of room for experimentation. Sniper/Assault , Assault/Priest, Assault/Heavy, I enjoy new campaigns because of that.

And I will like to use vehicles (maybe taking 2 slots instead 3, and Manticore alowing 7 slots) like I used to with original XCOM , but maybe in the future devs will change it.

3 Likes

I don’t feel forced. 6 man squad is efficient enough to fight any enemy in most of the cases.

If you want to have full squad then use Tiamat (Airship of Disciples). So higher deployment allowance than aircraft allows is not a problem.

And you switch aircrafts with Tab key. Just remember about hitting Space after giving each order (this is annoying).

We can counter. Use Scarab, use Goliath. Use Electric Reinforcements.

Well you have whole new world generated, with other events and different placement of alien bases. That is quite interesting. And as etermes said build different squads with different skills. Not just the most efficient and simple one.

I think that’s pretty much the consensus, or at least a very common complaint on all difficulty levels.

I play like that too, but using self-restrictions is not a satisfactory solution by any stretch…

Well, new generated world, it’s not enough to push me to do another game, clearly.
You like it, and I say, I’m pleased for you, but for me it’s not the most interresting in this game.
The problem is there are not enough ways or solutions to finish the game or juste have enjoyement playing it.

I have different skilled squad, but generally I have a sniper skill line, so sniper with heavy can snipe AND use goliath I use often. I have some assault/heavy too but most of time with the sniper rifle perk because most of the time you have to fire the farther you can to avoir overhelmed situation and grenade launchers. Why ? Because assault rifle are so poor in front of a new ennemy with full armor. Using a sniper with armor breaker is so better, the assault can fire after, I can use it for spaweries as heavy NJ weapons. Even for sleeping weapons the best are snipers ones.
Electric reinforcement is usable at end game because you have to wait advanced havens + level up the soldier.
Finelly I realise, like Voland, you build your game as you love it, it’s normal.

But it’s not my pleasure, my game vision, there is too much lacks to have a good game I like to play, so I say again I give up for a while. The responses you give to me do not change my point of view, it’s the reverse, you defend the game instead and argue to me the game is good enough. I’ve posted many suggestions (canny site), maybe some will be used, but at this time I can’t continue to play at htis time.

In all cases, I can wish to all good games ! And have fun. It’s just a game.

I’m far from it. For me geoscape is shallow.

Fine. I also think game lacks quite much. But I will try it at least few times more. :slight_smile: Good game then!

just to be clear, I am not defending the game, there are bugs and questionable game design decisions

But I see potential, at the end if you don’t enjoy the experience giving up is for the best

Other games like Gear Tactics or Corruption 2029 don’t have Strategy Geoscape layer, direct action but I prefer TBS games like Xcom

I agree, but changes are on the way, checking canny

I’m finding planes design a bit lacking. It looks somewhat fine on the paper: there’s a tradeoff between speed + range and squad size (though range is most of the time meaningless and speed takes to much hit - Anu ship is to slow to be really useful).

However in real game there’s not much of a tradeoff but rather micromanagement issue. It’s not hard to get any number of Syn ships, so if one’s accepting increased micromanagement (sending 2 ships instead of 1) Syn is always a better option.

Things might change though with air DLC.

1 Like