[Feedback/Suggestions] Observations at the 50h mark
Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2017 4:13 pm
Having recently clocked in my 50th hour of Long War 2 and I must say that the mod - just as Long War did for EU/EW - has brought the game to a whole new level and actually managed to capture my interest as opposed to the base game that was cute for about 8-10h of play and then faded away.
I REALLY love the infiltration mechanic replacing the fatigue mechanic. Slowing letting your soldiers blend into the area instead of having to buy that the aliens didn't notice the sky ranger dropping a strike team is a brilliant move. The same goes for the enhanced region/haven management, the mission spawn mechanic and the ADVENT responses on the strategic map. It poses an excellent way to earn advantages for your campaign through good decision making.
There are a few things that are - maybe not bad or poorly though out per se - not fulfilling the potential they could have. So let me start with the most fundamental criticism and a suggestion to it:
1) The missions that go according to plan are either mostly/completely stealth or overwatch crawls
I enjoy a dynamic combat. It was one of the things that kind of bugged me even in LW1 - you are punished for advancing aggressively even though that should be something that XCOM does. This affects different missions in different ways:
1a) Un-timed, shooty missions:
In LW1 it was the landed UFO, that calmly waited for you to crawl over it inch by inch instead of after a while just taking off and blasting the skyranger to bits. In LW2 it's the 0% supply raids / troop ambushs, where the mission description explicitly states, that XCOM is mounting an attack striking hard before the enemy has the chance to regroup. Look at the standard tactic of well-known streamers and it's clear a corner and camp in it until the vast majority of pods have suicided into your prepared meat grinder.
Instead of acting according to ADVENTs stated goal (keep the supply train alive or regroup with larger forces), the opponents just wander about and will eventually wander into your kill zone. Is that realistic? Hell no! Is that rewarding good play? Not really.
The main problem here arises from the fact, that in order to create a challenge, enemy density has to be increased, which in turn further pigeon holes you into the camp-in-the-corner tactics because advancing will result in multi-pulls on your turn which will cause you massive pain.
This is further compounded by the disparity of what a pod pull means on your turn vs on the aliens turn..... and is even FURTHER compounded by 0% materiel missions being such a big factor on your income.
Suggestion / Potential Solution:
Ideally the AI is tweaked to react differently. What does do on a defend-the-supply-train mission? Pull in close together and defend. If a human commander knows there is a pod of aliens camping in the corner waiting for you, he would group, encircle and advance in coordinated fashion. So instead of feeding pods into the grinder, please let ADVENT group and advance with 3 pods on the last known position. That allows a clever commander to shift position and pick off pods out of position but also means that you will aggro pods on your turn.
Of course the amount of opponents needs to be adjusted to compensate for the increase in AI quality.
If that proves to be impossible, introduce a generous turn time to reach a certain point on the map to those missions, similar to the UFO-beacons.
1b) Timed stealthy missions:
The introduction of a timer is the obvious counter to the overwatch crawl and forces dynamic movement. Unfortunately, that just mean 1-3 soldier sneak jobs. Don't get me wrong - I really like stealth missions occasionally and it feels good to pull off a 2-man-hack-job. But it seems to me the higher the challenge, the more binary the results become, because with stealth being the prevalent approach, squads are geared towards being REALLY stealthy and even less proficient in a shoot-out.
The main problem here is the fact, that many missions are detected with only very little time left to infiltrate combined with massive penalties for under-infiltration. Throw this together with the fact that failing a mission is not worse than not attempting the mission (apart from the risk to the soldier involved), you are looking at a significant subset of missions that are "stealth or nothing" and "stealth" has next to no risk attached to a potential reward. This is compounded by the fact, that soldiers are good or great at stealth from the start and don't need equipment in later levels that could get lost. The calculation of "I might get an engineer/scientist but might lose 10 supply" can be solved using black market prizes towards "Unless you lose your investment 13-14 times more often than you get the prize, go for it".
Suggestion / Potential Solution:
- Decrease base infiltration time (e.g. based on ADVENT strength) and do not give bonus to undersized squads. -> Increase the pool of missions that can be done by squads than can actually risk a fight
- Let the infiltration penalty affect the readiness/quality of reinforcements more than the amount of opponents present -> Allows for concealment to be broken without immediately having 20+ ADVENT surround you -> less binary missions
- Increase the duration a squad has to interact with an objective for some mission types -> less chance to pull off a job completely undiscovered -> increases the risk of 1-2 man team
2) The interplay between strategic and tactical layer
It is great, that the aliens move around their forces to quell the resistance - however there are a lot of areas that could be improved in the strategic layer. The strategic game boils down to 'train and equip a squad to beat the golden path' - not my words but those of the players that have beaten L/I campaigns. It would be awesome to have the choice not only to train up for the final objective but to soften up the objective. In a similar vein, the impact of a bad slew of dark events has been extensively discussed on the boards.
Suggestion:
Let the alert value modify the force value.
It makes little sense, that the ADVENT elite is EVERYWHERE out of the sudden. Where did all the regular troopers go? If the region alert is higher than the global alert, the force level for missions - not so much for pods on the map but especially for reinforcements - is increased. On the flip side, if XCOM gets active in a backwater region, it faces only the 2nd/3rd string of ADVENT which in turn allows for B-teams / C-teams to be viable choices even when the A-team is available
Suggestion:
Propaganda missions don't generate extra vigilance but draw extra vigilance from neighboring regions.
Currently propaganda missions makes sense only in a very limited context and it's often a good idea to avoid them. On the flip side it often takes ages for a region to cool down. Instead of just being a vigilance spike, let it siphon off vigilance from other regions so you can actually draw away the attention of ADVENT and generate troop movement that you can then ambush
Suggestion:
Let the player invest research time and soldier force into reducing ADVENT capabilities.
This covers a mission path to eliminate a DE-upgrade or event as well as dangerous missions that delay the force level progression. This would allow a campaign that has fallen behind to catch up eventually.
3) Hacking
Hacks fall into two categories. The "let's grab goodies for the strategic game" hack and "let's deal with this robot" hack. The latter is in a good spot, while the former is - well just lame. There is rarely, if ever, a trade-off between the tactical cost of a hack and the strategic gain. When you hack an objective, it's just a bonus on top of the mission reward - you could easily put that reward into the mission reward without losing anything. When you hack a lamp post... well I have never really hacked a lamp post for a tactical reward. I check it if I can get a strategic reward. If I can, I wait until I can make sure that the penalty of a failed hack doesn't hurt me and then hack - usually right before evac. If it's not strategic reward, I don't even bother.
Suggestion:
Multi-layered objective hacking
Hacking an objective has now a variable difficulty level represented by hit points - something that could be easily tied into the infiltration level. You hack the first time, you automatically disable the mission timer and can chose between "Exploring the ADVENT Network" and "Decrypting the files". The first option allows you to search for goodies in the network, the second option allow you to shave off a hit point from the objective. On success, you immediately continue the hack (not expending another action with the hacker) with the objective gaining X hacking defense (e.g. 15-45). Exploring the network gradually gives you information about what rewards lurk in the depth of the system and allow you to pursue them. Investing into file decryption lets you shave off hit points off the objective (or grab it at 0HP).
You can always cancel the hack, if it gets too dicey.
Failure on a hack OR grabbing a reward OR grabbing the objective leads to break of concealment or re-routes the nearest pod towards the objective or shaves off a turn from the reinforcement timer and adds 1-2 more opponents to the drop (in that order or priority).
Note that the actual hack-interfaces does not need to be reworked so I hope that this can be scripted without much of a problem.
The effects on this would be that you trade tactical advantages for strategic advantages, making the missions even less binary but a more graded success. You got to the prison door undetected with plenty of turns to burn? Hack away while the squad covers your hacker. You got there in the nick of time with aliens at your heels? Burn through that lock ASAP and proceed to the evac.
This would alter the stealth mission setup to be more dependent on scouting for patrolling pods.
Suggestion:
Better tactical hacking of lamp posts
First of all, hacking defense should go up when the cover is blown. Also the rewards should change. When in cover, rewards should revolve around misdirection, information gathering and softening of hacking defenses. Examples would be 'False Alert' where the closes two pods are re-routed to the lamp post, 'Virus Injection' resulting a reduction in the hacking defense of the objective or 'Camera Highjack' revealing pods in the fog of war or disable the detection for good. A lamp post could be hacked multiple times for different rewards though the hack defense would slowly increase (by 5-15 each time).
A failure would mean break of concealment for everybody including Phantom operatives and immediately ending the turn for the specialist.
The main cost would be the time investment to hack on time limited missions (ideally hacking a lamp post ends the specialists turn and moving before hacking results in a hacking penalty)
Once the squad is revealed, you could have rewards reducing alert levels (red->yellow->green), spawning loud noises at locations far away, pushing back reinforcements, displacing reinforcements, disorienting robotic units in the area.
Failure should be feedback damage for the specialist and the specialist being stunned for 2-3 turns.
Suggestion:
Failsafe protects only for the first (or first two) failed hack.
4) Class/Perk Balance
This is just a work in progress and it's early in the cycle so I don't worry about that. I miss, however, the option of LW1 where some weaker perks were carrying stat-boni to incentivize picking them up. Needle Grenades could come with +1 mobility to pick up those loot drops. Some of the hacking progression could be moved from the level up to the hacker perks, so that the medic / overwatch specialists don't hack as well as those dedicated to it.
5) UI Improvements
The improvements in 1.1 - specifically the option to train AWC and officer skills from the soldier profile - have come a long way, but I would really welcome to be able to train rookies the same way. Also please give us in the soldier list the squad their are in and the AWC perk icons. When editing the load-out in the mission select, please have the arrow buttons cycle through the selected soldiers first, not randomly through all the soldiers I have. Same when browsing soldiers in the barracks - sort them by squad first then by rank.
So that's it. Sorry for it being a wall of text. If there are specific items of particular interest, We can make a separate thread out of it, but for now I didn't want to start spawning threads all over the place.
I REALLY love the infiltration mechanic replacing the fatigue mechanic. Slowing letting your soldiers blend into the area instead of having to buy that the aliens didn't notice the sky ranger dropping a strike team is a brilliant move. The same goes for the enhanced region/haven management, the mission spawn mechanic and the ADVENT responses on the strategic map. It poses an excellent way to earn advantages for your campaign through good decision making.
There are a few things that are - maybe not bad or poorly though out per se - not fulfilling the potential they could have. So let me start with the most fundamental criticism and a suggestion to it:
1) The missions that go according to plan are either mostly/completely stealth or overwatch crawls
I enjoy a dynamic combat. It was one of the things that kind of bugged me even in LW1 - you are punished for advancing aggressively even though that should be something that XCOM does. This affects different missions in different ways:
1a) Un-timed, shooty missions:
In LW1 it was the landed UFO, that calmly waited for you to crawl over it inch by inch instead of after a while just taking off and blasting the skyranger to bits. In LW2 it's the 0% supply raids / troop ambushs, where the mission description explicitly states, that XCOM is mounting an attack striking hard before the enemy has the chance to regroup. Look at the standard tactic of well-known streamers and it's clear a corner and camp in it until the vast majority of pods have suicided into your prepared meat grinder.
Instead of acting according to ADVENTs stated goal (keep the supply train alive or regroup with larger forces), the opponents just wander about and will eventually wander into your kill zone. Is that realistic? Hell no! Is that rewarding good play? Not really.
The main problem here arises from the fact, that in order to create a challenge, enemy density has to be increased, which in turn further pigeon holes you into the camp-in-the-corner tactics because advancing will result in multi-pulls on your turn which will cause you massive pain.
This is further compounded by the disparity of what a pod pull means on your turn vs on the aliens turn..... and is even FURTHER compounded by 0% materiel missions being such a big factor on your income.
Suggestion / Potential Solution:
Ideally the AI is tweaked to react differently. What does do on a defend-the-supply-train mission? Pull in close together and defend. If a human commander knows there is a pod of aliens camping in the corner waiting for you, he would group, encircle and advance in coordinated fashion. So instead of feeding pods into the grinder, please let ADVENT group and advance with 3 pods on the last known position. That allows a clever commander to shift position and pick off pods out of position but also means that you will aggro pods on your turn.
Of course the amount of opponents needs to be adjusted to compensate for the increase in AI quality.
If that proves to be impossible, introduce a generous turn time to reach a certain point on the map to those missions, similar to the UFO-beacons.
1b) Timed stealthy missions:
The introduction of a timer is the obvious counter to the overwatch crawl and forces dynamic movement. Unfortunately, that just mean 1-3 soldier sneak jobs. Don't get me wrong - I really like stealth missions occasionally and it feels good to pull off a 2-man-hack-job. But it seems to me the higher the challenge, the more binary the results become, because with stealth being the prevalent approach, squads are geared towards being REALLY stealthy and even less proficient in a shoot-out.
The main problem here is the fact, that many missions are detected with only very little time left to infiltrate combined with massive penalties for under-infiltration. Throw this together with the fact that failing a mission is not worse than not attempting the mission (apart from the risk to the soldier involved), you are looking at a significant subset of missions that are "stealth or nothing" and "stealth" has next to no risk attached to a potential reward. This is compounded by the fact, that soldiers are good or great at stealth from the start and don't need equipment in later levels that could get lost. The calculation of "I might get an engineer/scientist but might lose 10 supply" can be solved using black market prizes towards "Unless you lose your investment 13-14 times more often than you get the prize, go for it".
Suggestion / Potential Solution:
- Decrease base infiltration time (e.g. based on ADVENT strength) and do not give bonus to undersized squads. -> Increase the pool of missions that can be done by squads than can actually risk a fight
- Let the infiltration penalty affect the readiness/quality of reinforcements more than the amount of opponents present -> Allows for concealment to be broken without immediately having 20+ ADVENT surround you -> less binary missions
- Increase the duration a squad has to interact with an objective for some mission types -> less chance to pull off a job completely undiscovered -> increases the risk of 1-2 man team
2) The interplay between strategic and tactical layer
It is great, that the aliens move around their forces to quell the resistance - however there are a lot of areas that could be improved in the strategic layer. The strategic game boils down to 'train and equip a squad to beat the golden path' - not my words but those of the players that have beaten L/I campaigns. It would be awesome to have the choice not only to train up for the final objective but to soften up the objective. In a similar vein, the impact of a bad slew of dark events has been extensively discussed on the boards.
Suggestion:
Let the alert value modify the force value.
It makes little sense, that the ADVENT elite is EVERYWHERE out of the sudden. Where did all the regular troopers go? If the region alert is higher than the global alert, the force level for missions - not so much for pods on the map but especially for reinforcements - is increased. On the flip side, if XCOM gets active in a backwater region, it faces only the 2nd/3rd string of ADVENT which in turn allows for B-teams / C-teams to be viable choices even when the A-team is available
Suggestion:
Propaganda missions don't generate extra vigilance but draw extra vigilance from neighboring regions.
Currently propaganda missions makes sense only in a very limited context and it's often a good idea to avoid them. On the flip side it often takes ages for a region to cool down. Instead of just being a vigilance spike, let it siphon off vigilance from other regions so you can actually draw away the attention of ADVENT and generate troop movement that you can then ambush
Suggestion:
Let the player invest research time and soldier force into reducing ADVENT capabilities.
This covers a mission path to eliminate a DE-upgrade or event as well as dangerous missions that delay the force level progression. This would allow a campaign that has fallen behind to catch up eventually.
3) Hacking
Hacks fall into two categories. The "let's grab goodies for the strategic game" hack and "let's deal with this robot" hack. The latter is in a good spot, while the former is - well just lame. There is rarely, if ever, a trade-off between the tactical cost of a hack and the strategic gain. When you hack an objective, it's just a bonus on top of the mission reward - you could easily put that reward into the mission reward without losing anything. When you hack a lamp post... well I have never really hacked a lamp post for a tactical reward. I check it if I can get a strategic reward. If I can, I wait until I can make sure that the penalty of a failed hack doesn't hurt me and then hack - usually right before evac. If it's not strategic reward, I don't even bother.
Suggestion:
Multi-layered objective hacking
Hacking an objective has now a variable difficulty level represented by hit points - something that could be easily tied into the infiltration level. You hack the first time, you automatically disable the mission timer and can chose between "Exploring the ADVENT Network" and "Decrypting the files". The first option allows you to search for goodies in the network, the second option allow you to shave off a hit point from the objective. On success, you immediately continue the hack (not expending another action with the hacker) with the objective gaining X hacking defense (e.g. 15-45). Exploring the network gradually gives you information about what rewards lurk in the depth of the system and allow you to pursue them. Investing into file decryption lets you shave off hit points off the objective (or grab it at 0HP).
You can always cancel the hack, if it gets too dicey.
Failure on a hack OR grabbing a reward OR grabbing the objective leads to break of concealment or re-routes the nearest pod towards the objective or shaves off a turn from the reinforcement timer and adds 1-2 more opponents to the drop (in that order or priority).
Note that the actual hack-interfaces does not need to be reworked so I hope that this can be scripted without much of a problem.
The effects on this would be that you trade tactical advantages for strategic advantages, making the missions even less binary but a more graded success. You got to the prison door undetected with plenty of turns to burn? Hack away while the squad covers your hacker. You got there in the nick of time with aliens at your heels? Burn through that lock ASAP and proceed to the evac.
This would alter the stealth mission setup to be more dependent on scouting for patrolling pods.
Suggestion:
Better tactical hacking of lamp posts
First of all, hacking defense should go up when the cover is blown. Also the rewards should change. When in cover, rewards should revolve around misdirection, information gathering and softening of hacking defenses. Examples would be 'False Alert' where the closes two pods are re-routed to the lamp post, 'Virus Injection' resulting a reduction in the hacking defense of the objective or 'Camera Highjack' revealing pods in the fog of war or disable the detection for good. A lamp post could be hacked multiple times for different rewards though the hack defense would slowly increase (by 5-15 each time).
A failure would mean break of concealment for everybody including Phantom operatives and immediately ending the turn for the specialist.
The main cost would be the time investment to hack on time limited missions (ideally hacking a lamp post ends the specialists turn and moving before hacking results in a hacking penalty)
Once the squad is revealed, you could have rewards reducing alert levels (red->yellow->green), spawning loud noises at locations far away, pushing back reinforcements, displacing reinforcements, disorienting robotic units in the area.
Failure should be feedback damage for the specialist and the specialist being stunned for 2-3 turns.
Suggestion:
Failsafe protects only for the first (or first two) failed hack.
4) Class/Perk Balance
This is just a work in progress and it's early in the cycle so I don't worry about that. I miss, however, the option of LW1 where some weaker perks were carrying stat-boni to incentivize picking them up. Needle Grenades could come with +1 mobility to pick up those loot drops. Some of the hacking progression could be moved from the level up to the hacker perks, so that the medic / overwatch specialists don't hack as well as those dedicated to it.
5) UI Improvements
The improvements in 1.1 - specifically the option to train AWC and officer skills from the soldier profile - have come a long way, but I would really welcome to be able to train rookies the same way. Also please give us in the soldier list the squad their are in and the AWC perk icons. When editing the load-out in the mission select, please have the arrow buttons cycle through the selected soldiers first, not randomly through all the soldiers I have. Same when browsing soldiers in the barracks - sort them by squad first then by rank.
So that's it. Sorry for it being a wall of text. If there are specific items of particular interest, We can make a separate thread out of it, but for now I didn't want to start spawning threads all over the place.