Lost my Campaign - No idea why

AegixDrakan
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Re: Lost my Campaign - No idea why

Post by AegixDrakan »

Jackal wrote:my question would be: all those missions and he wasn't given the chance to liberate a haven? is that due to bad luck?
Can totally happen. I was in one region for like 3 months doing leads before I FINALLY got the liberation chain going. By the time I was able to attack the network tower the region was strength 3 and had 6 mecs, an archon and a swarm of other guys were at 200% infiltration. x_x Did not survive.
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Devon_v
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Re: Lost my Campaign - No idea why

Post by Devon_v »

nightwyrm wrote:
Shadow86 wrote: On a less chastising note, can the war really go on indefinitely if facilities are periodically destroyed, setting back the doom counter? Is there a limit to how powerful the aliens get or can Dark Events stack up endlessly? I heard you can buy time destroying facilities and the like, but that the main alien HQ periodically adds progress to the counter, and that can't be undone.
You cannot play indefinitely. The main HQ will eventually accumulate pips that you don't have a way to remove.
RemoveFortressDoom :roll:
DuskNite
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Re: Lost my Campaign - No idea why

Post by DuskNite »

Shadow86 wrote:One of the main problems with the Liberation missions is the "Find a lead vs. Find a Lead" nonsense, which is completely confusing unless you've been reading around the forums. The whole Liberation mechanics are thoroughly obscure without external reading, and it's key to advancing the war effort. Many players miss these subtleties and end up losing otherwise successful campaigns.
Actually, the Find a lead and Find a Lead thing is VERY LIKELY an error. I think that the actual thing they want us to notice is a 'Find a Lead' mission without an intel package.

However, I don't disagree with your other points. Was forced to drop one of my 5 month old veteran runs because I always skipped those missions with a single intel reward, and was wondering why I couldnt complete my Find a Lead quest.
LordYanaek
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Re: Lost my Campaign - No idea why

Post by LordYanaek »

DuskNite wrote: Actually, the Find a lead and Find a Lead thing is VERY LIKELY an error. I think that the actual thing they want us to notice is a 'Find a Lead' mission without an intel package.

However, I don't disagree with your other points. Was forced to drop one of my 5 month old veteran runs because I always skipped those missions with a single intel reward, and was wondering why I couldnt complete my Find a Lead quest.
Yes. It's a bit counter-intuitive but the first liberation mission has find a lead (don't care about capitals) in the objectives and no intel package as reward. As such it appears less attractive then other guerilla missions when you don't know what to look for while actually it's a requirement for victory. Intel Packages give things like PoI and Factory lead.

I expect such issues will be "polished" in future patches once they have ironed out most bugs.
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Shadow86
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Re: Lost my Campaign - No idea why

Post by Shadow86 »

Devon_v wrote:
nightwyrm wrote:
Shadow86 wrote: On a less chastising note, can the war really go on indefinitely if facilities are periodically destroyed, setting back the doom counter? Is there a limit to how powerful the aliens get or can Dark Events stack up endlessly? I heard you can buy time destroying facilities and the like, but that the main alien HQ periodically adds progress to the counter, and that can't be undone.
You cannot play indefinitely. The main HQ will eventually accumulate pips that you don't have a way to remove.
RemoveFortressDoom :roll:
I believe you can also tweak the chance a new pip is assigned to the HQ instead of a regular facility, as a somewhat less cheaty alternative.

It appears to be a setting related to the difficulty level ("Chance to Transfer Regional Doom to Alien HQ"). By default, it's 10% on Rookie, 20% on Veteran, 25% on Commander and 30% on Legend. At least according to the wiki.
Mooncabbage
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Re: Lost my Campaign - No idea why

Post by Mooncabbage »

LordYanaek wrote:
DuskNite wrote: Actually, the Find a lead and Find a Lead thing is VERY LIKELY an error. I think that the actual thing they want us to notice is a 'Find a Lead' mission without an intel package.

However, I don't disagree with your other points. Was forced to drop one of my 5 month old veteran runs because I always skipped those missions with a single intel reward, and was wondering why I couldnt complete my Find a Lead quest.
Yes. It's a bit counter-intuitive but the first liberation mission has find a lead (don't care about capitals) in the objectives and no intel package as reward. As such it appears less attractive then other guerilla missions when you don't know what to look for while actually it's a requirement for victory. Intel Packages give things like PoI and Factory lead.

I expect such issues will be "polished" in future patches once they have ironed out most bugs.
This baffled me. I've made it all the way to October without liberating a single area. I haven't even started the liberation chains. Suspect I'm about to lose, but I'm having too much fun with my current lineup to care that much. Still, a frustrating oversight.
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Shadow86
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Re: Lost my Campaign - No idea why

Post by Shadow86 »

LordYanaek wrote:Yes. It's a bit counter-intuitive but the first liberation mission has find a lead (don't care about capitals) in the objectives and no intel package as reward. As such it appears less attractive then other guerilla missions when you don't know what to look for while actually it's a requirement for victory. Intel Packages give things like PoI and Factory lead.

I expect such issues will be "polished" in future patches once they have ironed out most bugs.
It is quite counter-intuitive, and the mission indeed looks less attractive to those without the outside information to know better. Combine this with the volume of missions cropping up every month and their individual potential lethality and you produce the ideal circumstances for players to naturally avoid these ops and eventually set themselves up for an abrupt campaign loss too many hours down the line.

While not technically a major bug, it's a considerable design oversight that should be rectified as soon as possible.
gimrah
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Re: Lost my Campaign - No idea why

Post by gimrah »

Liberation missions will generally look unattractive: short infiltration times, high enemy activity and low resource reward.

So if you didn't know to prioritise liberation you probably just skipped them every time.
LordYanaek
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Re: Lost my Campaign - No idea why

Post by LordYanaek »

gimrah wrote:Liberation missions will generally look unattractive: short infiltration times, high enemy activity and low resource reward.
Well, apart form liberation 1 which isn't shorter or harder than any hack mission, every further liberation mission has liberation in the objectives so they don't look less attractive, they look like a different sort of mission.
So if you didn't know to prioritise liberation you probably just skipped them every time.
But you know you have to prioritize them since it's the first major objective given to you at the start of the game. So unless you decided not to pay any attention to the major objectives, you don't want to skip them every time (skipping a few really short ones is OK and won't cost you your game).

There is an issue with liberation 1 looking like a poor mission if you didn't read about it, but that's it. Further missions (those that are actually harder) are clearly identified and you know you have to play them. Well, unless you didn't know you have to build a skulljack or investigate the blacksite in Vanilla XCom2 since objectives are exactly at the same place.
Shadow86 wrote: While not technically a major bug, it's a considerable design oversight that should be rectified as soon as possible.
I agree about Liberation 1. There should be something that makes it attractive, or it should be the first mission to show in every campaign to make sure nobody just accidentally ignores it.
nightwyrm
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Re: Lost my Campaign - No idea why

Post by nightwyrm »

LordYanaek wrote: But you know you have to prioritize them since it's the first major objective given to you at the start of the game. So unless you decided not to pay any attention to the major objectives, you don't want to skip them every time (skipping a few really short ones is OK and won't cost you your game).
It's been weeks irl since I liberated my first region on my campaign so I'm a but fuzzy on it, but did the objectives actually have "Liberate a Region" listed? I remember it having something like "Build Resistance Network" which if you just came from Vanilla without reading any wikis might have meant you should contact a bunch of regions like in Vanilla.

But even if you know you should liberate a region, Lib1 looks just like a bad Find A Lead mission unless you find out about it somewhere else.
Jackal
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Re: Lost my Campaign - No idea why

Post by Jackal »

gimrah wrote:Liberation missions will generally look unattractive: short infiltration times, high enemy activity and low resource reward.

So if you didn't know to prioritise liberation you probably just skipped them every time.

how would we know to prioritize liberation without these forums... hell, i STILL don't think anyone has properly explained hiding etc to me yet...

still love the game, but i fear that I too am gonna lose before I see the light of day
trihero
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Re: Lost my Campaign - No idea why

Post by trihero »

While I do enjoy LW2 overall, one of LW2's weaknesses is the extreme "black box" feel of so many mechanics. While an attempt is made in game like in the avenger archives to tell you what's going on, there are just so many things you wouldn't know without .ini digging that give you an extreme advantage in mastery of the game - like knowing what the minimum number of rebels is to trigger a retal, how to do liberation, how to generate/take advantage of guerilla ops, the list goes on and on. These are just things it would take a million years to learn by playing alone which is really really bad game design. What happens I'm so worried about things I'm missing because I'm not a good dataminer, rather than puzzling out how to play the game better within the game itself.
LordYanaek
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Re: Lost my Campaign - No idea why

Post by LordYanaek »

nightwyrm wrote: It's been weeks irl since I liberated my first region on my campaign so I'm a but fuzzy on it, but did the objectives actually have "Liberate a Region" listed? I remember it having something like "Build Resistance Network" which if you just came from Vanilla without reading any wikis might have meant you should contact a bunch of regions like in Vanilla.

But even if you know you should liberate a region, Lib1 looks just like a bad Find A Lead mission unless you find out about it somewhere else.
Yes.
"Liberate Region from ADVENT Control" is the first major objective. It will be further separated in sub-objectives with the very first one being simply "Set Resistance Priorities". As soon as you had a look at the resistance management (even if you don't change any job) it's marked as completed and you get "Discover a lead" as your second sub-objective. You can see all current and past objectives with detailed explanations in the Command room. I know it's the room nobody ever opens but given the more complex nature of LW2, maybe we should ;)

Liberation 1 appears less interesting if it's not the first guerilla mission you encounter which can occur because of the random detection. Forcing it to appear before other guerilla missions would solve the issue. After you complete it, the rest should be obvious to anyone actually reading the objectives. This would certainly help a lot of players.
trihero wrote:While I do enjoy LW2 overall, one of LW2's weaknesses is the extreme "black box" feel of so many mechanics.
While i agree that in general that LW2 currently lacks information on some aspects, most of the information you get from digging inside INIs isn't required to play or enjoy the game. It's only required if you want to min-max your strategy. Some game mechanisms don't need to be detailed to the 4th decimal to actually play correctly. Taking your example of Guerilla OPs, really all you need to know is that you should put a lot of guys on Intel to find them and that running a lot of missions in the same region will get Advent's attention, which is not necessarily good. We definitely don't need to know the statistical distribution of the detection chance. Part of that information is actually given in the in-game help.

So yes, there is missing information but at the same time, some players should really RTFM ;)
trihero
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Re: Lost my Campaign - No idea why

Post by trihero »

While i agree that in general that LW2 currently lacks information on some aspects, most of the information you get from digging inside INIs isn't required to play or enjoy the game. It's only required if you want to min-max your strategy. Some game mechanisms don't need to be detailed to the 4th decimal to actually play correctly. Taking your example of Guerilla OPs, really all you need to know is that you should put a lot of guys on Intel to find them and that running a lot of missions in the same region will get Advent's attention, which is not necessarily good. We definitely don't need to know the statistical distribution of the detection chance. Part of that information is actually given in the in-game help
There's a big difference between a player that knows the threshold values for retaliations vs that who doesn't. Retaliation missions are hugely punishing and if you know that at X rebels it can't happen, that gives you a massive leg up on how to avoid them.

For guerilla ops, it's more than what you say. If you watch joinrbs video, the real point is that missions have cooldowns, so the best strategy is to drill hard for a rewarding mission (rescue vip -> engineer/scientist/soldier), then move to another region and find that rewarding mission there, and eventually come back a few weeks later when the cooldown is done. There's a huge difference between someone who knows this versus someone expecting to find multiple jailbreaks or rescue missions back to back (hint: it's impossible due to cooldown, but how would you know without ini digging?).

There's a big difference between a player that knows about the hidden doom counters on objective missions and a player who doesn't.

There's a big difference between a player that knows the signs of a snare mission and one who doesn't.

There's a big difference between a player that knows when it's possible for an invasion to occur, and one who doesn't.

The list goes on and on and on and I feel like I should be making you do the list instead of me because you'd be getting more out of it.

When you combine big differences without a reasonable way to find out through regular gameplay, it's a disaster game design.
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3tamatulg
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Re: Lost my Campaign - No idea why

Post by 3tamatulg »

LordYanaek wrote:While i agree that in general that LW2 currently lacks information on some aspects, most of the information you get from digging inside INIs isn't required to play or enjoy the game. It's only required if you want to min-max your strategy.
This is probably a point of dispute for a lot of people.

I think if you're playing a strategy game you're by definition min-maxing.

Min-maxing factoring in probability and risk is fun.

Min-maxing factoring in that you don't know everything about the problem you're trying to min-max is not fun.
Sir_Dr_D
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Re: Lost my Campaign - No idea why

Post by Sir_Dr_D »

I wish there was more story behind the missions. It just seems like you go on a bunch of random missions that don't seemed linked in any way, and suddenly a haven is suddenly liberated. It ruins immersion and any sense of working towards a goal. Perhaps if the missions were worded like:

"Do to the information your troops were able to recover by hacking into the computer, we have learned that advent is looking for an escaped prisoner. This fugitive may have valuable intel that could help our operations. We were able to track down this individual and must now extract him from the city."

"The escaped prisoner has been able to provide us with valuable intel. From him we have learned of an approximate location of some sort of centralized control center. We have been trying to find the exact location of it, but unfortunately Advent has been using some sort of jamming device to block our signals. We must destroy the jamming device."

Descriptions like that would at least tell us why we are doing the missions.
shhfiftyfive
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Re: Lost my Campaign - No idea why

Post by shhfiftyfive »

it truly sucks that the avatar project progression bar is hidden from you. i too have gone 100+ hours w/o revealing it, and can expect that means i will get the same abrupt ending because i'm totally in the dark. LW2 should hint to you that you need to do "something" to learn about the avatar progress, ASAP... instead, LW2 just leaves us to wade around in the dark with no clue how things work or how good/bad we're doing. the council at the end of the month doesn't say a word about it?!?!?!!

in xcom EU/EW and LW1 you had a big RED display at the top of your satellite screen saying HERE AR THE LOSE CONDITIONS> DO NOT LOSE X AMOUNT OF REGIONS, OR GAME OVER, GOT IT?

in LW2, this big warning and tracker is sorely missing.

in vanilla xcom 2 it can be expected to be not a big deal. at the end of each month you are told about the avatar progression, and your monthly "score" from the council (satisfaction or disappointment) is reflected in that....

but LW2 hides this from you and from the monthly report, overwhelms you with missions so you can easily never get around to completing the things you need to reveal this visual.
LordYanaek
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Re: Lost my Campaign - No idea why

Post by LordYanaek »

3tamatulg wrote:
LordYanaek wrote:While i agree that in general that LW2 currently lacks information on some aspects, most of the information you get from digging inside INIs isn't required to play or enjoy the game. It's only required if you want to min-max your strategy.
This is probably a point of dispute for a lot of people.

I think if you're playing a strategy game you're by definition min-maxing.
But is LW2 a strategy game? XCom2 certainly wasn't (it was a tactical combat game), LW2 goes several steps towards strategy but is it enough to consider it a strategy game beside titles like Civilization?
I don't really disagree and in fact i'm convinced too much information can't hurt while too few can, but maybe the developers never considered LW2 as a strategy game and simply designed the strategy layer to have a more dynamic world. Most of the action still occur in the tactical layer and the strategy layer isn't complicated enough that you need precise numbers to manage it. Personally i like to have that information but i wouldn't presume my point of view is representative of a majority of XCom2 (or LW2) players.

That being said, it's a common trend in many strategy titles currently to hide the complicated details behind a simple (simplistic?) interface as if developers were afraid of their game looking "too complicated". Look at Civilization 6 for example! This one is clearly a strategy title and yet a lot of information in purposefully hidden from the player. We live in a world of tweets and SMS where long explanations are often skipped completely. As a result games try to look as simple as possible even when they use complex mechanics. The result is missing information. I don't like this trend, i don't defend it, but it could explain the lack of information we see in LW2. For a developer who knows everything, it must be hard to tell what exactly the players need to know to understand the game "well enough" so either you put all information visible (i like it but it can make the game look very complicated and in the case of a mod, you are limited by the underlying game engine) or you try to provide what you think is essential (and possibly fail to give enough).
shhfiftyfive wrote: in LW2, this big warning and tracker is sorely missing.
It's only missing until you liberate a region which should occur in the first 3 months (2 or even 1 if you actually try to liberate it) unless you completely missed Liberation 1 (this is the real issue in the liberation chain) or you purposefully ignored your main objective (then sorry to be rude but you deserve to loose)
shhfiftyfive
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Re: Lost my Campaign - No idea why

Post by shhfiftyfive »

LordYanaek wrote:[
shhfiftyfive wrote: in LW2, this big warning and tracker is sorely missing.
It's only missing until you liberate a region which should occur in the first 3 months (2 or even 1 if you actually try to liberate it) unless you completely missed Liberation 1 (this is the real issue in the liberation chain) or you purposefully ignored your main objective (then sorry to be rude but you deserve to loose)
let me correct you. it is possible to liberate a region in that time frame, but the game does not push you to that goal. instead it feeds you with meaningless extremely light missions every 3 seconds until you want to puke. nowhere does it say in game that the doom meter will display just as soon as you liberate a region...

i had several regions unlocked. i had worked my way up the liberation chain on many of these regions. but i never bothered to complete the last mission on the chain. why? reasons. mostly my men were still poor, starting gear. my geared squad was out fighting dark events. i had no idea the avatar project had started. i thought maybe its just a case exactly like my other theory which held true. which is... if you do not complete the skulljack research/proving grounds item, then you will not see any codex enemies... so it was not far off to consider maybe the avatar project had not started until i fight that first blacksite... sure i was wrong, but i was not wrong to think the way i did. sadly, this contributed to what was a lesson that took 100+ hours to learn on my own. not good design. i mean i love when games reward you for knowing all the in's and out's of the intricacies of the game mechanics. i do love those games. but this is a case where you have book with no book cover.



totally separate gripe:
also, i really want the little circle icons on the global map, next to the regional scan/radio tower icon....that circles that show liberation progress. the ones you have to leave the global screen to go back to the avenger, then go to the resistance menu to see the list of all havens on one screen. only on that screen can you see collective progress on all havens at a glance. if you were to click a region from the global screen you would not get this info, and if you just look at the global screen info itself it is also missing.
LordYanaek
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Re: Lost my Campaign - No idea why

Post by LordYanaek »

shhfiftyfive wrote: let me correct you. it is possible to liberate a region in that time frame, but the game does not push you to that goal. instead it feeds you with meaningless extremely light missions every 3 seconds until you want to puke. nowhere does it say in game that the doom meter will display just as soon as you liberate a region...
Yea, and it's not like the game gives you any hint about liberation being an important objective from day 1 either!
Image
I'm sorry, there are issues with LW2 and there is an issue with Liberation 1 but i'm somewhat tired of players seeing issues where they are not. If you don't try to complete the first objective you are given in a game, why are you surprised to loose?
shhfiftyfive
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Re: Lost my Campaign - No idea why

Post by shhfiftyfive »

post screenshots all you want. doesn't change what i said. nowhere does that say "the avatar project has already started. do this specific thing for the ability to track the hidden and already active doom timer"

did you not read what i wrote? and was a wrong about codex not spawning before you complete skulljack production? no... so where's the logic in the avatar project beginning before codex are even spotted in your game?

and really, the 1st mission you get, as you say.... okay. that 1st mission does not describe how to be complete until you actually get close to completing it... you gotta read the wiki to understand it is a 5 part quest, with 5 specific things to look for, that some are easily confused with the generic missions they bombard you with.

and its a buggy mess. you see how you only have 1 subgoal on this mission listed in this screenshot. it says "set resistance priorities" but clearly with playtesting, you could do exactly that (change staff jobs in haven, place an advisor), and the box will NOT mark as complete, because??? bugs. the game only finally gives you the next phase of that quest later on when it realizes oops... you've already done that... same for a follow-up instruction, where it says "find a lead" when in fact you've already found the lead! in fact you've already found the lead in more than 1 region! yet the box still isn't checked? because bugs! nothing to be confused about, you say?! yeah. okay.
LordYanaek
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Re: Lost my Campaign - No idea why

Post by LordYanaek »

shhfiftyfive wrote:post screenshots all you want. doesn't change what i said. nowhere does that say "the avatar project has already started. do this specific thing for the ability to track the hidden and already active doom timer"
But the game says "Liberate a region" and when you do what the game asks you to do, you learn from the recovered files that Advent has bigger projects than what the resistance suspected.

To be fair, you're not responsible for being misguided. You were misguided, but not by LW2! You were misguided by all those CRPGs giving you important quests and then allowing you to cross the world twice and have the quest stay there. The village under siege by the army of darkness will never fall, the dark wizard will still be in the process of summoning the doomsday beast. Most games have totally static worlds that don't change until you change them. Not LW2. I probably had an easier time understanding this coming from LW1 where aliens would actually do missions all over the map and try to actively bring countries down if you didn't act. However it's not a flaw in LW2, it's a flaw in all those games that gives you "urgent" missions and allow you to ignore them without registering a fail!
did you not read what i wrote? and was a wrong about codex not spawning before you complete skulljack production? no... so where's the logic in the avatar project beginning before codex are even spotted in your game?
The codex does exist but doesn't show itself until a "security breach" is detected in the psionic network. Aliens are working on their Avatar project whether you know it or not. The world is not static. The dark wizard will actually summon the doomsday beast even if you never visit the oracle who should warn you as ordered by the master of your order. Sorry but finding all the lost cats of village girls wasn't your main quest. ;)
and really, the 1st mission you get, as you say.... okay. that 1st mission does not describe how to be complete until you actually get close to completing it... you gotta read the wiki to understand it is a 5 part quest, with 5 specific things to look for, that some are easily confused with the generic missions they bombard you with.
You will get the next step explained in game each time you finish the previous one. There is a real issue with the first part of the quest being easily confused with generic missions as you say. I've said this already. This issue is real. Later missions are clearly marked "Liberation" so ignoring them is just ignoring your goal.
and its a buggy mess. you see how you only have 1 subgoal on this mission listed in this screenshot. it says "set resistance priorities" but clearly with playtesting, you could do exactly that (change staff jobs in haven, place an advisor), and the box will NOT mark as complete,
Now, that's just bad faith

Image
Jacke
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Re: Lost my Campaign - No idea why

Post by Jacke »

LordYanaek wrote:Sorry but finding all the lost cats of village girls wasn't your main quest. ;)
If you can't find all the lost cats of the village girls AND stop the dark wizard from summoning the doomsday beast, I'm sorry, but you're just a substandard hero and need to step up your game. :)
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