Still on my first runthrough on Heroic, which I started on Dec 3rd. I don’t get as much time to play as other people (obviously), and because I retreat & don’t Restart, I a) don’t seem to have experienced the ‘difficulty spike’ but b) am progressing through the story much more slowly than most people.
I find this game weirdly and satisfyingly challenging. It doesn’t pander to me, and in the early stages it was constantly forcing me to think outside my usual XCOM-style comfort zone.
Sadly, it has now settled down into a fairly predictable progression of over-armoured Crabbies, backed up by Tritons, Chirons and a Scylla, which can usually be taken down fairly straightforwardly by a Lvl 7 Sniper team supporting a strike team of Heavy, Assault & Infiltrator spotter. Which is why I REALLY want them to implement PROPER evolution, to shake me out of the rut. But I’ve posted on that ad infinitum on other threads, so I’m not going to do it again here.
To support your statement about “tired of life gamers” I haven´t played for a while … Heroic is cheeper troop recruitment without gear, and you have not met difficulty spike?
I’m at 60% ODI, and with the exception of Lairs, which are a special case, the largest Panda force I have encountered is c.15 Crabbie/Tritons backed up by a Scylla and a Goo Chiron.
I’ve had a handful of run-ins with an Explosive Chiron none of which I couldn’t handle; and in Lairs I routinely have to deal with 3-4 Sirens coming at me one at a time.
So no, I’ve never come across the 20-30 Crabbie army backed up by 3-5 Sirens insta-spawning in front of me as others have described. I personally think it’s because I don’t ‘ace’ every Mission - I’m working on an attrition rate of c.1 squaddie per 2 missions at the moment - so the DDA cuts me some slack.
I always 'ace" my missions (on some occasions with help from “load” button ), and I encounter 20-30 crab armies nearly all the time. That is before I start counting them by my fingers. After counting them accurately they usually transform into 6-7 Arthrones, 3 Tritons, 4-5 Sirens and 1-2 Chirons + 1 Scilla. On scavenging mission it is 14-18 Arthrones + 1 Mindfragger. Which is a lot, but usually a team of 8 veteran soldiers can handle this quite reliably.
Indeed… yet they chose to call it fit for release. On steam a game in this state would be released as early access, which is much more honest about its state than a full retail release. Hopefully the future balancing is more balanced.
Well “centre” of the map, usually you don’t run into serious opposition right away and when you do, you’re relatively close to the centre.
Then just have your heavies leapfrog the enemy and presto! No need to use some cheesy pumped triple jump, it’s straightforward enough to hop into places the bad guys can’t see.
Rest of the team provides distraction.
I didn’t know you can disable spawn points. Get close enough and they don’t work anymore?
I’ve accomplished the game 3 times, each difficulty, each fraction to win with.
The game itself is great, but I feel like playing some another backer build. No offense. It’s just like - I see some elements of X-Com Apocalypse here, but I’d love to see more of them since it was such a wonderful game and I know that JG didn’t have a chance to make the best of it. I’d love to see more of the fractions’ culture, make more of fractions’ havens something specific - you almost never take a closer look into the building, population, commander and stuff - a lost potential. I’m really looking forward to playing some DLCs and I hope they are going to be way more than this Living Weapon thing which is pretty lame (I mean the armor is great, but weapons are too weak imho - maybe they are cool early game, but later on, they don’t stand a chance).
I’ve noticed not a big difference among the difficulty levels, but I can bet it’s been like that because of my learning curve. Perhaps it’s because I’ve managed to accomplish X-COM, X-COM2 at the highest level of difficulty (and i found it way more difficult than PP)
My thoughts:
Lair missions were way too easy, as long as there was a clear way to the Spawnery. I’m kinda surprised that there were no buffs this patch, I believe that pure berserkers, heavy guys and pure infiltrators are weaker than intended. Technicans and snipers are doing bit too well, priests are out of this zone for now. I wouldn’t bring vehicles, I can’t imagine taking them instead of soldiers for a mission - only reasoning behind using them is when you have to defend your base or you lost some highly experienced soldiers.
No idea why to nerf Mutdog, why would I even use one?
I really hope that DLCs are going to bring us two new classes, one for Synedrion and one for New Jericho - they deserve them since [SPOILER ALERT] there is no question for me that playing with Disciples of Anu is the easiest way to win.
This geospace’s infection timer isn’t scary at all, I would make it more meaningful - I mean, this makes no sense for me when i get some message of surpassing some % of epidemic and nothing happens - there always should be some consequence.
I also wonder, why there is no way to build some base defense system? This way invasion would feel much more fun, it’s so predictable - we could say that about most of the missions, they are way too easy to crack, since they are the same, so completing the game multiple times, makes not much of a sense.
I hate spamming anything in PP, you got to spam training/medical building and spam WP skills, that sucks - there is no decision-making behind it, it’s just a must.
Capturing an alien is too little rewarding, considering how hard it is…
Overall, the game is great, has an amazing potential to be one of the best strategies of all times, but it takes more love and time to get there. Still, despite of all the game crashing nonsense, it was soo worth to play it even at this state of development - worth every penny and time. I can’t wait to play more when the first DLC will show up.
Thanks JG and the rest of you!
Got to agree with the OP.
Tried playing tonight after a acouple of weeks not playing, and the dash nerf in particular has really annoyed me. When i’ve spent a lot of time building a crew and selecting skills because i know what they do and to get a squad build i want. For the skill function to change, i think at the very least we respec. TBH i feel like i need to start again but i cant face it. I shouldnt been hours in and the fundamentals of my playthrough change to this extent.
Just want to point out, that much of whatever was accomplished with Dash+Shotgun can still probably be accomplished with appropriate perks (reckless+self defense, or infil stealth) and Dash+PDW.
It’s got a 1AP cost now. So use a weapon that also only costs 1AP instead of 2AP and now it’s nearly the same. The thing is, I already have used the Dash+Rapid Clearance+PDW combo because a) it worked for much of the game and b) I could do even more with it than with a shotgun other than taking out particularly chunky targets. It was useful even before Rapid Clearance, but that’ll be less so now with the Dash nerf.
You just need to soften up the targets from a long range Grenadier/Rocket first. Also some movements won’t even require a dash, so a lot of WP isn’t needed. No more solely relying on it to clear everything on a map solo though, which I’ve also done a few times now.
Shhh, quiet or they’ll nerf that next.
You really can’t compare the damage dealt by a shotgun to a PDW though. Reckless makes everything other than pointblank fighting terrible, tho. You really have to commit to the style for that solider, there is no turning back.
The thing that really bothers me about the dash nerf was that it was the combo of rapid clearance+dash that was the issue, not the dash itself.
That’s true. We can still run across entire map with 4 dahses after the patch, we just can’t use it for short burst of movement to get into position. Which was it’s main use I believe (it was for me). I guess we can adapt to this change but we got one tool less to play with.
Though I did not advocate for the dash change, I think it was necessary. The problem was not the mobility, it’s how you could combine it with other skills because it didn’t cost any AP.
With this change it makes (more) sense to combine assault with sniper and give him AR or shotgun to use with quickaim. That way you can still dash (which btw now has a much longer range) and take up to 3 shots with quickaim. I used it yesterday and found it very satisfying without being OP.
@Damian Imho I would suggest devs should add another pre-beta build, a special room for improvement, fix balance and other issue in the current base game system have. Patch should only fix around bugs and other minor issue such as UI’s, custom keybinding and so on, but not forcing players to adapt new mechanic, especially if they at the middle of game progress. It will ruin players builds, times and mood if each patch always change the core game mechanics.
Now fun abilities and abilities which helped with skyrocketing complexity are almost literally removed.
Lairs took long time to do, now it will be even longer without a dash.
Rapid clearance with dash nerf now is wasted talent because it worked with Dash + shotgun and action points only (despite that this talent is high end tier), now it almost the same as removed talent from game
Assaults have to be buffed if you want to remove Rapid clearance like at all , for example rally the troops should be buffed like 2x.
Rifles are just too inacurate and literally do 0 damage against armor, the problem wasn’t in piercing, but that this is the only potentially ussable rifle , i rather play shotguns only anyway and strip armor with snipers before, you should give others rifles like virus and poison instead this nerf, very purely designed i was so surprised when i was reading comment about the rifles.
Now all enemies and missions have to be re-balanced , lots of points mentioned in patch weren’t OP, those were tools which scaled your tactics with the game, yes you can kill 1 Heavy target, but game scales also in enemy number, so if tools are removed, enemy number should be decreased, or improved mechanism how enemies see you, so you dont fight against 14 targets at a time.
To nerf the game so heavely is just disrespect to us, i haven’t finish a game, and i have so many bad runs, and looks like i will not finish the game now, because i just dont want to play it anymore, since my build with 3 assaults with Rapid clearance + dash+ 14Will Points+ shotguns is nerfed to the ground(and those are not snipers with Rage burst), i started to like the game a lot, but now looks like if nothing changes i will not buy any expansion.
I get a feeling that balance isn’t tested at all, and decisions are made just from the stats and not intelectually processed, which upsets me.
You don’t have to nerf op stuff, this isn’t pvp, if there are some OP things which doesn’t ruin the game, but make it fun, for me is absolutely fine and even fun, but once again here those abilities are more like tools which scale up with the complexity of the game.
I get a feeling that good abilities are just becoming as bad as others, which just destroys the wish for replayability and wish to test new builds.
and i even havent tried berserker to comment on its nerfs.
This is an important point, in PvP balance is more important since another player exploiting the system ruins YOUR game and even forces you to cheese it back to have a chance of winning.
But in a single player game I don’t understand. If you thought RB sniper was stupid and “broke the game” the simple solution was to just not to use it!
If dash+rapid clearance ruined your game and made everything boring WHY DO YOU USE IT? IF you are ruining your own game you don’t need the devs to fix it.
Lol, that’s why i never download any patches. Especially from low budget crowdfunded companies like here. They do one thing and then adjust their stuff according to their likes. They never listen to what’s actually going on. Who cares about what’s op and what isn’t in SINGLE player game. This ain’t multiplayer, let players have their op abilities and guns. What’s up with all these moans and groans, op this, op that. I’m glad i finished and forgot about this game long ago. The game made by masochists for masochists. No skills, let’s just swarm 20 enemies next to my units here and now they nerfed everything to the ground. Good luck playing it now, lol. I love firaxis version so much better…
It’s an interesting view point. Maybe all games should be designed as a random collection of mechanics and items and then players just decide on how it works and what is fun or not fun to use. Let’s turn all games into a Garry Mod, sounds like a lot of fun.
On more serious note, there are different reasons why different people continue to play a particular game. Maybe some of us are fed up with the tactical battles and we just want to explore what can be researched, build and used. We are not necessary bored because we can use some chain of abilities to clear a map, but perhaps because that creates at least some level of entertainment compared to slog you have to deal with in a missions with 30+ again and again. I’ve tried to play without using any abilities, just how we played early builds, but it’s not fun anymore because of the other changes that where done to the game. The point of complains about OP abilities or OP chains of abilities is to nerf them to a level where you can make an actual choice that matters. Where you are given tools to solve a problem and you decide how to approach it instead of using just one single tool that always works on anything.
), and I encounter 20-30 crab armies nearly all the time. That is before I start counting them by my fingers. After counting them accurately they usually transform into 6-7 Arthrones, 3 Tritons, 4-5 Sirens and 1-2 Chirons + 1 Scilla. On scavenging mission it is 14-18 Arthrones + 1 Mindfragger. Which is a lot, but usually a team of 8 veteran soldiers can handle this quite reliably.
again and again. I’ve tried to play without using any abilities, just how we played early builds, but it’s not fun anymore because of the other changes that where done to the game. The point of complains about OP abilities or OP chains of abilities is to nerf them to a level where you can make an actual choice that matters. Where you are given tools to solve a problem and you decide how to approach it instead of using just one single tool that always works on anything.