Ok it shows a random range visually, predicted word is bizarre in this context. If it is exploited in the video, a quick watch of some parts didn’t show anything obvious.
In 3D it would not be as simple visually nor as useful to exploit in some cases. It’s not what is changing JA2 deeply or I don’t see some points.
The funny part is that NCTH actually removes most of rng, as it has clear rules as to how the bullet spread is effected. That is the whole idea with it. I’ve already highlighted how that system interacts with other parts of the game and that what makes it a well made system. There is little value in looking at it without other directly effected features, such as movement ranges and suppression.
Of course such system wouldn’t make a difference on its own in X-Com, just as ballistics in PP currently doesn’t!
I’m disparaging PP for having a bunch of features which don’t interact with each other in a meaningful way. The ballistics is one of the examples.
It’s not that I want some realistic simulator, there are other games I can play to get that ich, like Combat Mission. Is it too much to ask to have a system where having a team of soldiers actually matters, it’s a TBS after all? As of now, because of how abilities/classes/weapons work, there is little to no difference what team composition you have. All that matters is that each individual can output some X amount of damage at distance Y, as all of them can flank or defend with ease. Like Divinity Original Sin is not a military simulator, but it is heavily based on the synergy of your team.
The abilities are worst offender here as most of them are just power boosting the same character. They bend rules of action points, that game itself establishes at start. They become the core of gameplay as game progresses. Many of them are meta - meaning their effect is purely game rules parameters change with no connection to some sort of reality in which game takes place. They are unbalanced and can be stacked in ridiculous ways. Most of them have no downsides in using them, besides depleting some meta pool of numbers.
It changes gameplay early to mid game making a clear introduction to effects of the suppression. It keeps all weapon types relevant through out the whole game and emphasize weapon specialization. Without NCTH it’s all about aiming levels and accuracy skill. Which is solved by just training your mercs and ordering specific weapons (typically a good assault rifle, for large mag and variety of attachments). With NCTH burst fire becomes deadly. Snipers become effective at long range. Attachments both upgrade and downgrade your weapons. Machineguns become useful.
Christmas is just a inconvenience that gamers have to suffer. I have boycotted Christmas in our house. Those stupid bits of cardboard people shove through your letterbox. You can’t even wipe your bum on them. Useless.
Then there’s all those daft lights on everywhere wasting the world resources. Should be banned.
And presents. When is a gift not a gift? When you are expected to give it. I give gifts to others when I want to, and not when some snot-nosed celebrity tells me it’s the thing to do.
You know what Christmas is? Christmas is the ultimate lie that will tell to our selves.
And what’s with all this Merry Christmas lark? The only time your merry at Christmas is when your s*** faced, and that doesn’t count.
Come on say “Bah Humbug”
I have to play the game more and experiment to comment on this, because, again, that has not been my experience until now.
I’m using a team of heavy/assault with GL, an assault/heavy with iconoclast/cannon, an assault/sniper, a sniper/heavy, and assaults/sniper or heavy for rally, spotting and mop up, and I find that they complement each other and that I’m having fun.
But if I run into legitimate reasons for complaint, rest assured that I will.
Can you explain how they compliment each other?
What I’ve did so far is everyone is multiclassed into a sniper and gets a sniper rifle or cannon, plus GL with enough strenght. I don’t see any classes or builds that can “support” other team members. There is no need to spot or scout for someone. No reason to lure enemies into a dead zone of your snipers. No reason to have some special build for covering flanks and crowd control as each and everyone can do all that on their own.
Forgive me but one of those statements is objectively wrong, one is probably true and the remaining claim is just plain crazy 
Maybe not for you, but for me it’s a big fat yes. 60+ hours and I am enjoying it more with every day I play. What game does that for you. It’s a buggy, glitchy, 50% finished masterpiece.
You have only to spend some time surfing to see that on launch everyone was painting PP a failure. Most of those people are now saying it’s a good game, tomorrow it will be a masterpiece, just give them time.
I mean, come on. Anyone that plays PP with a open mind is going to love it. Not counting those who are fully down on TB games, nothing pleases those people.
Yeah, it being a masterpiece to you is the bit that is true
Masterpieces don’t merely score above average/good and have such a significant amount of poor word-of-mouth.
Look at No Man’s Sky. They’ve poured their heart and soul into that game since launch and now people say it’s great, much more like the game that was intended. It will never be regarded as a masterpiece though.
Regardless of how much time I’ve spent observing a game, some things always stay the same. When a game ends up having a consensus view of being a masterpiece, you ‘know’ it.
Elite, Ocarina of Time, Deus Ex (2000), System Shock 1&2, RDR, Last of Us, Witcher 3, Super Mario World, Baldur’s Gate 2…the list goes on and on. People didn’t need to wait. It was obvious and people still speak about them in revered tones.
‘When you mention Deus Ex, someone, somewhere will install it’. The same thing is said about UFO: Enemy Unknown.
I would point out that I don’t need to like a game personally to see it’s a masterpiece. I disliked Red Dead Redemption but I can still see the impact and love that game has, even more than a decade later. It is a masterpiece, whether I agree or not. PP is not even close to having that kind of reach, love and praise and, imho, it never will unless the patches and changes bring a significant overhaul over a long period of time.
I approached PP with an open mind, as did, I assume, many others on this forum.
I assumed I’d be playing it into the new year. Instead I’m having to scour the Steam sales to look for turn based games to scratch my itch. I won’t go into all the details as it would be a massive post and I’ve already mentioned things several times on these forums.
I’m glad you’re enjoying it though, and that you’ve got a game you love to take you through the festive period. Have a good one! 
TB games got replace with RTS for such a long time and what few TB games that were on offer weren’t that good or played to death. Firaxis changed all that by bringing Xcom to the masses, and for that, I am forever grateful. Now we are pretty spoiled for TB games, and it’s great.
Yes. The basic combination is sniper scout that spots the enemy, heavy that launches grenades at them after activating biggest boom, assault with shotgun dashes in after the grenades, two assauts with rally give everyone an extra shot, and the other guy is used for contingencies, or harvesting WPs on the map.
So they are all sniper/heavy? But then you don’t have dash or rally.
If you playing only AAA.
They didn’t made X-Com they made a board game in Sci-fi setting, even that got turned into a fantasy later. All it did is shown that you can still sell something that pretends to be something else but designed as a card game. What we got as the result is a bunch of games pretending to be turn based strategies while practically being a dice roll card games. The whole new JA franchise, games like Mutant Year Zero (technically a puzzle), Invisible Corp, Hard West and Phantom Doctrine. They are good games (not new JA) and people like them, but they are far off from being strategy, most are even more simplistic than new XCom.
In which way he can spot enemies that others can’t? So you are using shotguns and guy with GL to enable you to use shotguns. Why bother? I mean, look, I can prepare battle for some melee guy but game mechanics doesn’t really need that and you will be just wasting time. You can run around with infiltrator and “scout” but you can use him to just outright kill everyone and not get spotted.
No, they are all I can get + sniper as second class. For a simple reason than Quick Aim is incredibly good skill that allows to use heaviest weapons twice (or more if stacked with others) and sniper rifle being the most versatile weapon as it has the 2nd highest damage output per projectile, has no downsides in close/long range, pretty much largest ammo clip and highest accuracy.
This reminds me of the Chistopher Odd’s let’s play where he tries to play PP as he played XCom. Sometimes it gets really cringe as you see him struggle to position his assaults with rifles/shotguns. Or going for some sort of ranger build from XCom with shorty and a melee weapon. It still kind of works for him as he spends time thinking about what to do on each turn but it’s hard to watch because you know that all this can be played so much easier, just need to forget about whole “tactics” thing.
He has a personal perk that adds to his perception + light armor he is wearing.
I think this combination maximises damage output, at least for now. Three grenades + three shotguns shots for, say 8-12 wp to position the shotgun assault, 5 wp for max boom, + 8 wp for 2 rallies, not counting the output of the other three guys, one of which will also have 3 shots.
As I said, I haven’t tried going all sniper and heavy when possible, but if you are right it seems to me like it has plenty of easy fixes, e.g. no quickwatch for cannon, making sniper rifle less accurate below certain distance and reducing its mag size. And if there are too many WPs to spend, their cost can be made incremental (e.g. first quickwatch 3p, second 4wp or 5wp, and so on)
It’s a balance, not a design issue.
And that’s everything that’s wrong about the game at the moment IMHO.
You are forgetting Shadowrun, of which Dragonfall was excellent, including the combat.
Yeah, none of them are simulations. Which brings me to my original post and why I think PP deserves praise for what it accomplishes.
I’m still not sure how he can be a “scout”. I get sniper armor for everyone, some guys get jetpack. How much extra tiles of vision do you get from his personal perk?
You can use berserker with GL/sniper rifle to solve all armor problems. His ability strips armor using any kind of attack. I’m just not sure why do you need that. The time and wp it takes to setup and prepare you could just use quick aim couple of times with sniper rifle or cannon. And later with combination of rage burst has enough damage to kill queen in one turn.
I don’t agree with it being just a balance issue. There are multiple things in current design that suggest that developers felt that game is too slow if soldiers can’t move far, even maps got smaller, maybe as a result. Then there is large incentive to use abilities. For example, we asked previously to balance them in a direction where more precise shot would take extra AP instead of less. Nothing happened. There where other abusable cases but what was fixed is the most ridiculous examples where you could not run out of WP and could restore AP again and again.
Modifying some characteristics slightly can be balancing, but modifying them hard enough to a point that overall gameplay changes is not balancing anymore. The example is increase in health pool of enemies and reduction of the fight distances, which leads to ballistics being irrelevant. That’s not balance, that a serious design change.
Yes you can limit some abilities but in absence of changes to other parts of the game, the highest damage output over shot period of time will still be the priority. Which makes assault rifles and shotguns kind of irrelevant as they require preparations. if you decrees armor and health pool, they might become relevant again but then why bother with overkill weapons (sniper rifles was like that before) and tools to remove armor? All that is largely because of how simplistic the armor and health are done. There isn’t much wiggle room to get something interesting.