Again this stupid little sidekick to savescumming, pointless.
But i give it back to you:
This is only realistic if you try to tackle the game with only one active ‘A-Squad’ with inactive reserves as with FXCom, and then especially in your beloved ironman mode. The game enables and forces you to have several active squads at the same time in order to master the many dangers that, in contrast to FXCom, can all occur relatively simultaneously. FXCom is almost exclusively linear and cannot be any different, since there is no way to have several active teams, because you only have one DropShip. PP is much more parallel to this with several DropShips and therefore also several active teams. There is no reason, apart from the very beginning, to concentrate on just one team. On the contrary it is, in my opinion, actually a huge strategic mistake to try to do so, especially when it comes to ‘ironman’ and you want to avoid ‘savescuming’.
If you work with several active teams, the complete wipe of one entire squad is for shure a hard hit but far from being a game break.
For me personally, this focus on just one team together with ‘ironman is a must’ is much more like an ‘FXCom’ syndrome.
And now what? If this is such a global strategic mistake as i assume, should it be compensated by any technique in the game?
I personally don’t think so. Players should be able to recognize their mistakes and for that they should also be ‘punished’ in order to realize at some point that their strategy may not have been the right one. If, on the other hand, they are caught up by some system again and again, it doesn’t make them think twice.
TLDR: PP is not FXCom and that affects not only the tactical part but also the strategic part.
This is actually not true. Assumption one dropship forces you to single squad is just wrong. FXCom doesn’t even need a dropship, as this is just visual representation of you going to destination point and serves absolutely no other purpose. It doesn’t limit you in any way, you can train as much teams in parallel as you like. Mission pops up? Pick whoever you like, send for a mission. Doesn’t have to be same squad every time.
Sure, that’s just a visual representation, but still the missions in FXCom are all linear, there are no simultaneous attacks or similar, in PP already.
Of course you can also mix and exchange your squads in FXCom, but it is not absolutely necessary, you can play through the basic game with just one A team, even on Legend / Ironman. WOTC has brought a lot in there to force the players to a larger roster, but it was not necessary for the still basically linear game system.
Not that I think FXCom is a bad game, I really enjoyed it very much, but in my view it basically has a completely different strategic approach.
Edit:
My point with the difference is in FXCom you can for shure handle a big roster, but you are not forced to do so (in the basic game, with mentioned additionally WOTC you should not try this ;-)) and there is no way to handle more than one active squad (Active squads != reserve roster).
In PP you are more or less forced to work with multiple active squads and additionally handle a roster as reserve to compensate losses or to shifting soldiers arround, propably on a Trainingbase with TCs.
That happens only mid game and even then you can handle everything using one team if you restart missions on losses. So I don’t see how game “enables or forces” you to do that. Unless it’s not your first campaign and you know more about meta-strategy.
Take into account that there maybe like 10 people who are still here since release of the game, the rest are new posters or people who don’t post anything. So retention is very low which makes me think that most of the players never finished campaign or even didn’t get to the middle of it. It’s far from ideal to ask people to spend 20+ hours on a game just to learn some super important meta-strategy rules without which their campaign is doomed.
All together fair enough.
And yes, if you restart or reload, you can play the entire game with one main team. You lose quite a few Heavens, but somehow you will also get into the endgame, I have succeeded in doing just that myself. But in Ironman mode? I very much doubt that.
On the other siede, isn’t it clear that from a certain point not that long after the early beginning it is almost impossible to trade all of these attacks with just one team? I mean, after few hours and long before the real midgame I realized that this FXCom style doesn’t work here and I just have to build more teams and planes (for what else they are in this game?) to protect all these heavens alone in my half of the world.
In fact, I simply ended and restarted my first playthrough for similar reasons, I was at a point where my previous mistakes simply did not allow me to continue playing with fun. Not a real problem for me and is somehow part of games like this, just learning and adapting. Was the case with FXCom 1 and 2 and only WOTC, thanks to many previous experiences, got off to a good start and I was able to successfully complete my first campaign.
In my experience, PP is everything but this. Recruitment is hadicapped, recruit usefulness minimal, recruit training via combat inefficient because of uselsessnes, training by facility very slow until you build a training farm which isn’t going to happen before mid game. On top of that there’s DDA, that punishes you for doing well and rewards for doing not so well, and basically expects you to take casualties no matter what you do, because if you don’t, it will try harder next mission.
Game expects you to powergame, even against the lore like ie: steal an aircraft from nearby heaven ASAP instead of building one so you’ll not waste resources needed for recruitment. Build TC farm ASAP. Get OP builds ASAP. Game never expects you to react, but to be prepared in advance. If you’re not, maybe next campaign you will. It is much closer to teaching you how to make more-less flawless (to already have solution for everything that may happen) run by trial & error. Just like game was a puzzle and not turn based strategy.
To illustrate bad game design, I love to share this example: what about team wipe after 10-15th mission? You’ve lost whole team. Almost no chance to recover: so savescum and reload or restart campaign, regardless of difficulty level. Terrible experience. And as I read the forum, can happen quite often considering new acid grenades.
I understand your point but having multiple teams only makes it possible to play on Ironman. It doesn’t mean that it makes it a fun experience to replenish losses.
If game would be made in such a way that every soldier has its own tree of skills/abilities and they would be hidden from you till he reaches a certain level. Maybe they even have some personal challenges overcoming which gives them extra abilities and some hidden flaws that can be discovered during the game. Debilitating injuries and personal opinions of each other and etc. Then we could argue if you should grow up the skill trees for few or go wide in soldiers hiring.
Instead we have classes that don’t make much sense in this settings and only gating some dozen of unique abilities. Inside of the class there is no branching and multi-classing is very utilitarian as you tend to build one specific composition of team. So Mr Rookie replacing KIA Mr.Sniper-Heavy is going to be Mr.Sniper-Heavy Mk2 and on his path to level 7 there won’t be anything different or significant happening compared to previous guy.
This happens because there is no real progression in the game in terms of tech or exploration, just soldier levels. You keep fighting the same battles again and again. So when you lose someone on the team or a whole team, you are not facing a new challenge you just get rolled back to some hours ago. I don’t think it really matters how many teams you have, if you have enough it just sucks less. This is much deeper design issue than a balancing of few thing here and there.
I personally don’t like this example but to give you an answer, yes, this is what i expect if something terrible happens: reload, restart mission or at least the whole campaign.
For me personally a good game design decision, even better than any form of automatic comeback function that let you make terrible mistakes and you can always comeback more or less easily instead of learning, reloading and simply do it again but better.
If the game itself would permanently push almost any player helpless in such situations then it would be a bad design. But it never happens to me and what i can read also not to that many other players. And some posts are … dramatic and I am often unable to understand it, simply because i don’t have these problems.
I don’t do it often but I have no problem restarting a mission when something goes terribly wrong and in most cases it was my own mistake that got me into this situation. And I never noticed anything from the DDA, more specifically I never noticed an increase in difficulty after a restart or reload.
In the end, something like ‘good game design’ is a pretty personal point of view and ultimately, what counts for the developer is what most people like. Then it was good game design.
@BoredEngineer:
Almost good points and i understand what you mean.
Basically I’m also rather unhappy about introducing a kind of RPG class and skills system but on the other hand pushing the players to work more broadly. That doesn’t really go well together, but for me it was already a problem in Firaxis XComs and was only made worse with Long War and WOTC. FXCom1 and the base FXCom2 were still super playable in a form of RPG style, Long War never really appealed to me and I found many elements in WOTC that just require a broad recruitment base unsuitable (and I partly minimized it myself by modding the INIs).
Why not? It happens and exposes design fails in recruitment and resource management. You’ve mentioned keeping rooster to compensate losses, but seems like this feature is restricted for mid-late game and with limited use. Lore is about Phoenix organization and last hope of humanity, but turns out game is about few random soldiers that can’t even train a peasant to point a boomstick in the right direction.
So, you choose to avoid consequences of failure entirely. How reload isn’t the most extreme and cheaty form of automatic comeback? You said it like recovering from terrible event wasn’t learning the lesson, and only reload gives you the experience to make it better. That’s save scumming, and you used to be like that:
Are you punished at all, if you undo whatever happened and try again? And is this a good game design, because you don’t use game mechanics but reload button? Or do we consider Save/Load as a part of ingame mechanics and it is somehow explained by lore?
What happened since then?
Like I’ve said, game has much more in common with a puzzle game and forces you to be prepared for everything (or reload/restart) instead of reacting dynamically to situation. There’s no strategy here, just more-less flawless powergaming run till you see end credits.
You may like it and I’m not the “quit having fun!” guy. What is fun is subjective and I get that, but it doesn’t mean I can’t say outloud what’s wrong with the game design and why it isn’t fun for me and some other people. For me it’s a save scumming and I don’t find reloading game/mission fun at all. Did one NJ win pre-DLC and I haven’t played since then because it’s even worse right now.
Mostly, you have your thoughts and i have mine. At the end two pretty different points of view.
But …
No, i go with most of the consequences of my choices and so with most of my failures but not with the worst that will end my game entirely.
First, as long as it is a normal game feature it has nothing to do with cheating, this is a stupid argument.
Second, it isn’t automatic because i by myself decide when i do that.
Exactly, if my mistakes are recovered without consequences more or less by the way playing simply ahead then i wouldn’t bother the same way about these mistakes as when i restart.
When i reload or restart i make other decisions for this given problem, i try other things, i get a wider experience over all the possibilities.
Call it like you want, for me it is what i try to describe.
What ever happens isn’t undo by reload, I’ve done what I’ve done and the ‘punish’ by itself still hurts, it is not simply away after reload. I only try it again to make it better.
For me it is a good game design, but i already said this is very subjective, and for me the reload button is also a game mechanic.
We? I don’t know, i for myself use it because for me it is an ingame mechanic.
For shure not, your point
Let’s stop that here and just try to have fun with the game. I for myself have it to play it like i want and i hope you find your own way to have a bit more fun.
Assumption one dropship forces you to single squad is just wrong. FXCom doesn’t even need a dropship, as this is just visual representation of you going to destination point and serves absolutely no other purpose. It doesn’t limit you in any way, you can train as much teams in parallel as you like. Mission pops up? Pick whoever you like, send for a mission. Doesn’t have to be same squad every time. 