An absurd ending...

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johnnylump
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Re: An absurd ending...

Post by johnnylump »

[AvatarProject_LW X2EncyclopediaTemplate]
ListTitle="Stopping The Avatar Project"
DescriptionTitle="Stopping The Avatar Project"
DescriptionEntry="While we have limited understanding of the nature of the aliens' work, we do know that every successful battle we fight against them forces them to divert resources away from Avatar and toward pacifying Earth. That gives us more time to learn about the nature of the project and find ways to stop it."
Clibanarius
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Re: An absurd ending...

Post by Clibanarius »

Why even bother playing the game if you aren't going to read the in-game manual that you are instructed to read every step of the way? The glowing Commander's Quarters after Operation Gatecrasher isn't the first one; the LW2 SteamWorkshop page tells you that you should read it, too. Second paragraph: Many of the mod's new mechanics are described ingame in the XCOM archives. Players are strongly encouraged to read those entries immediately after finishing Gatecrasher.
Tuhalu
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Re: An absurd ending...

Post by Tuhalu »

DerAva wrote:I think Marbs mostly tried to play "proper" missions, so he had to skip a lot of the missions coming up. I'd say in the current state of 1.2 you have to either abuse Stealth missions or 0% Supply Raid/Troop Column missions to be successful, and he did neither of these.
In my 216 missions, I played about 3 stealth missions and no 0% supply raids. The stealth missions were for a few rare dark events that I didn't have sufficient time for otherwise and I really wanted to stop. Nearly all supply raids were in the 15-25 enemy range as I planned for infiltration to get me the numbers I needed.

One of the critical elements in my strategy was spending Intel correctly to allow me to engage in many more missions while still expanding at a reasonable speed. Combined with datapads from successful early liberations (I liberated all of Africa in the first 3 months), I was able to keep on rolling with full combat missions and wound up with 38 MSGTs by Waterworld time.

It also helps to have a highly aggressive strategy with regards to research. I was able to push to Coil tech in the first 3 months as well with only about a dozen weapons made at the laser and magnetic tech levels before that.
JulianSkies
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Re: An absurd ending...

Post by JulianSkies »

nightwyrm wrote:
JulianSkies wrote:
LordYanaek wrote:I usually don't care much what someone "more or less" said because it's usually less rather than more and out of context so i'd like to know where he actually said that :roll:

As for Vigilance level, there is a big difference between knowing how it works (be it from an official manual or community documentation) and actually having the numbers visible.
A good compromise would probably be to have some sort of indicator but not the direct number. Something along the lines of Low(1-4))/Medium(4-8)/High(9+) would give us an indication without making abusing it easy. Of course calculative players would be able to tell that the moment vigilance goes from low to medium it's exactly at 5 but those are probably already counting missions/week for an even more efficient control of the vigilance level so they won't really be affected.
For what it's worth, global vigilance, what slows down avatar progress, is shown in the haven management menu
However, there is little to no indication that Global Threat Level is linked to how many missions you're completing. For someone with no in-depth knowledge of the game, it would not be unreasonable for them to think it could be linked to how many regions you've contacted or how many rebels you have or how far along you were on the Golden Path or how many mission of a specific type you're doing, etc.
Isn't there a thing that mentions that, though? In the archives? Maybe not, I don't know. This game's a game for spades, I expect only having information after the community dug it out, I just meant to point what is perhaps the only indication we have right now. Maybe some documentation relating to that mentioning what it means and how it's good for you might be useful, though.
Tuhalu
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Re: An absurd ending...

Post by Tuhalu »

JulianSkies wrote: Isn't there a thing that mentions that, though? In the archives? Maybe not, I don't know. This game's a game for spades, I expect only having information after the community dug it out, I just meant to point what is perhaps the only indication we have right now. Maybe some documentation relating to that mentioning what it means and how it's good for you might be useful, though.
Did you miss johnnylump quoting the ingame Encyclopedia earlier in the topic? It explicitly tells you that doing more missions slows down the avatar project, giving you more time to win the game.
JulianSkies
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Re: An absurd ending...

Post by JulianSkies »

Tuhalu wrote:
JulianSkies wrote: Isn't there a thing that mentions that, though? In the archives? Maybe not, I don't know. This game's a game for spades, I expect only having information after the community dug it out, I just meant to point what is perhaps the only indication we have right now. Maybe some documentation relating to that mentioning what it means and how it's good for you might be useful, though.
Did you miss johnnylump quoting the ingame Encyclopedia earlier in the topic? It explicitly tells you that doing more missions slows down the avatar project, giving you more time to win the game.
Fairly certain I did, gomen.
Edit: Yes, yes I did. Curse the option of going straight to the comment you were mentioned in instead of going to the newest.
Zarkis
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Re: An absurd ending...

Post by Zarkis »

johnnylump wrote:[AvatarProject_LW X2EncyclopediaTemplate]
ListTitle="Stopping The Avatar Project"
DescriptionTitle="Stopping The Avatar Project"
DescriptionEntry="While we have limited understanding of the nature of the aliens' work, we do know that every successful battle we fight against them forces them to divert resources away from Avatar and toward pacifying Earth. That gives us more time to learn about the nature of the project and find ways to stop it."
But how many successful battles are you supposed to fight? Marbozir did a lot of successful battles. LW2 gives you the illusion, that you can pick your battles, and everything seems to be be right until November/December, when the Avatar counter suddenly begins to accelerate. In my game on veteran the threat indicator was on high during my whole campaign, but high doesn't seem to be high enough... :) So, how many missions am I supposed to do per month and which ones? From what I have read on the net, many people thought, to keep the advent strength level low, you should avoid the sabotage monument missions, but here people say you need to do them...?

My basic problem with the design of long war is: you can achieve a failstate in the first 3 month, but this only shows 10 months later. And looking back, you don't really know what went wrong, and you need people with knowledge of the game files to explain it to you. In vanilla XCOM if you fail or not on the strategic level is more related to you performance in missions, which is a much more intuitive concept. Loose too many missions and too many guys and the aliens will overwhelm you. This is clear even at the beginning of the game. So, if you loose, you understand why, because it is directly related to your performance. In LW2 you can win every mission you picked and still loose the game.

Anyway, my feedback is probably only a reiteration of stuff, that was said already a hundred times. ;) It's not that I had no fun with LW2 and I will maybe try my luck with 1.3 again, if I find the time.
wizard1200
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Re: An absurd ending...

Post by wizard1200 »

johnnylump wrote:[AvatarProject_LW X2EncyclopediaTemplate]
ListTitle="Stopping The Avatar Project"
DescriptionTitle="Stopping The Avatar Project"
DescriptionEntry="While we have limited understanding of the nature of the aliens' work, we do know that every successful battle we fight against them forces them to divert resources away from Avatar and toward pacifying Earth. That gives us more time to learn about the nature of the project and find ways to stop it."
That description is not clear enough. Imagine what would the players say if the tactical game would be vague, too:
26 % chance to hit could be displayed as "Probably not"
57 % chance to hit could be displayed as "Likely"
89 % chance to hit could be displayed as "Very likely"
Zarkis wrote: But how many successful battles are you supposed to fight? Marbozir did a lot of successful battles. LW2 gives you the illusion, that you can pick your battles, and everything seems to be be right until November/December, when the Avatar counter suddenly begins to accelerate. In my game on veteran the threat indicator was on high during my whole campaign, but high doesn't seem to be high enough... :) So, how many missions am I supposed to do per month and which ones?
That is exactly the problem.
Tuhalu
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Re: An absurd ending...

Post by Tuhalu »

There isn't an exact answer to "how many missions is enough", because every campaign is different and not every mission is created equally. I succeeded at a speed of about 18 missions a month on Veteran. This was clearly massive overkill on my part.

JoINrbs succeeded with about 13 missions a month on Legend.

Xwynns campaign is nearly won with 125 episodes over 12 months of gametime (just 2 missions to go!). Hard to say how many missions that was as sometimes he had 2 or 3 episode missions and sometimes he had up to 4 missions in an episode. Probably somewhere between 11 and 13 missions per month.

Marbozir did about 7 missions a month, which seems to be insufficient to achieve the strategic objectives of the game.
Krzysztof z Bagien
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Re: An absurd ending...

Post by Krzysztof z Bagien »

Wait... weren't we supposed to choose our battles and so on? Devs explicitly said we can't win all of them and have to skip some. And this guy did exactly that, which means he lost a game he was playing the way it's supposed to be played.
Zyrrashijn
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Re: An absurd ending...

Post by Zyrrashijn »

It's not that Xwynns and JoInrbs and such were not skipping any missions. Marbozir maybe just skipped too many, or did not contact enough regions and so on. LW2 is definitely not won by fulfilling one parameter.
Kyrsoh
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Re: An absurd ending...

Post by Kyrsoh »

I followed Marbozir's campaign. He did a few missions each month, and had an uber-squad with decent weapons and skills but not an army. He did not liberated a lot of regions and did not fought against the growing ADVENT strenght. In my opinion you have to liberate regions and manage/control ADVENT strenght to win. More missions = more XP, loot, personnel, resources (AND slower Avatar project)!
chrisb
Pavonis Dev
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Re: An absurd ending...

Post by chrisb »

Krzysztof z Bagien wrote:Wait... weren't we supposed to choose our battles and so on? Devs explicitly said we can't win all of them and have to skip some. And this guy did exactly that, which means he lost a game he was playing the way it's supposed to be played.
Your also not supposed to sit back and let Advent get on with their research. The general idea with LW 1 & 2 is that you won't be able to do every mission that pops up, there are generally too many of them. But you are supposed to do as many as you can and should be maximizing this as much as possible. The more you can do, the better off you'll be.
Tuhalu
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Re: An absurd ending...

Post by Tuhalu »

Krzysztof z Bagien wrote:Wait... weren't we supposed to choose our battles and so on? Devs explicitly said we can't win all of them and have to skip some. And this guy did exactly that, which means he lost a game he was playing the way it's supposed to be played.
If you play the strategic layer well, you'll ignore 2/3 of all missions and still do up to 150 missions in a year. Right now, the game is almost overbalanced towards spreading out and focusing on Intel heavily in unliberated regions. Supplies tend to be restricted to liberated regions and Recruiting is a low key activity for bringing your numbers in a region up to par.
ndessell
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Re: An absurd ending...

Post by ndessell »

azarga wrote:
JoINrbs said in one of his recent videos that LW2 is mainly aimed at players who are "intelligent enough to dig info they need from game files or at least read the wiki" - something along those lines. Players are expected to read wikis/forums/reddits/etc - work as a community - when they play this mod and get all the essential info and cookie-cutter strategies from there.
.... but that is terrible game design. It's one thing to have the rare obscure mechanic that need outside knowledge or advantages of being extremely knowledgeable of every minute mechanic. But building around required meta-knowledge of inscrutable game elements is just assinine.
johnnylump wrote:[AvatarProject_LW X2EncyclopediaTemplate]
ListTitle="Stopping The Avatar Project"
DescriptionTitle="Stopping The Avatar Project"
DescriptionEntry="While we have limited understanding of the nature of the aliens' work, we do know that every successful battle we fight against them forces them to divert resources away from Avatar and toward pacifying Earth. That gives us more time to learn about the nature of the project and find ways to stop it."
Wait that was talking about vigilance, I thought that was the generic call to arms in every game and most of those entries were hints for scrubby noobies to a strategy game. Better go back with my moon logic monoculars, this time.
Jadiel
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Re: An absurd ending...

Post by Jadiel »

ndessell wrote:
azarga wrote:
JoINrbs said in one of his recent videos that LW2 is mainly aimed at players who are "intelligent enough to dig info they need from game files or at least read the wiki" - something along those lines. Players are expected to read wikis/forums/reddits/etc - work as a community - when they play this mod and get all the essential info and cookie-cutter strategies from there.
.... but that is terrible game design. It's one thing to have the rare obscure mechanic that need outside knowledge or advantages of being extremely knowledgeable of every minute mechanic. But building around required meta-knowledge of inscrutable game elements is just assinine.
I agree it's not ideal, but this is a mod, not a fully fledged game, and there are limits to what can be achieved. The fact that you are modding someone else's game means that you are very often put in a position where you have to choose between making a game highly replayable (which usually means you're working under the assumption that the player is well-acquainted with all the mechanics of the game), or focusing on giving the player a good first playthrough (which means you give more room for error, and assume that the player doesn't always know how things work). LW1 and 2 have always prioritised the former over the latter.

The classic example is the New Foundland mission in LW1. In the original game, that mission is designed for players who don't know that they will be facing a map full of chryssalids and zombies. Once you've played the game once, you know what the mission is when it comes up, and you take a squad you'd never dream of taking on a normal mission, which makes the mission trivial. Suppose your making LW1. Do you say "Everyone knows this mission is chryssalids and zombies, let's rack up the difficulty and make it more interesting", or are you worried that players with a more conventional squad loadout might be steamrolled? LW1 obviously chooses the former. And there are consequences to that choice. I know players who skipped straight to LW1 without playing the original, and who squadwiped on that mission because they brought a standard squad and were destroyed when a pod of 5 chyrissalids made mincemeat out of their LCPLs.

Yes, in an ideal world you'd build a game so intuitive that players would not understand the underlying mechanisms any better on their 10th playthrough than they did on their first. But it's actually really hard to do that, and not many games can pass that test. Given that this is the case, you have to decide: Do you balance it for the people on their 10th playthrough (or maybe the people on their 3rd playthrough who have spend a lot of time reading wikis and reddit), or for people on their 1st? I'm not sure you can label either of those choices 'terrible game design'...
RantingRodent
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Re: An absurd ending...

Post by RantingRodent »

ndessell wrote:Wait that was talking about vigilance, I thought that was the generic call to arms in every game and most of those entries were hints for scrubby noobies to a strategy game. Better go back with my moon logic monoculars, this time.
I'd accept this line of reasoning if the in-game archives weren't specifically called out as being Long War 2's equivalent to a manual in several places. We were all told to take the archives seriously as an explanation of the mod's mechanics.
ndessell
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Re: An absurd ending...

Post by ndessell »

RantingRodent wrote:
ndessell wrote:Wait that was talking about vigilance, I thought that was the generic call to arms in every game and most of those entries were hints for scrubby noobies to a strategy game. Better go back with my moon logic monoculars, this time.
I'd accept this line of reasoning if the in-game archives weren't specifically called out as being Long War 2's equivalent to a manual in several places. We were all told to take the archives seriously as an explanation of the mod's mechanics.
It is a needlessly obtuse and vague statement. My first play through I was lead to believe it was referring to advent strength. The fact that doesn't even referance vigilance is a problem. How would you go about learning a mechanic if you don't even know it exists and the only other observable reference to the mechanic is buried in a subscreen of the UI. Again it is inexcusable and assinine to obscure critical mechanics.

Hell changing the entry to, " While we have limited understanding of the nature of the aliens' work, we do know that every successful battle we fight against them makes Advent's Forces ever more VIGILENT and spurs them to refocus their STRENGTH ; diverting resources away from Avatar and toward pacifying Earth. That gives us more time to learn about the nature of the project and find leads to stop it.", Would greatly improve the in-game teaching of systems. Its like they wrote all this stuff out and didn't bother to check if they got the point across.
RantingRodent
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Re: An absurd ending...

Post by RantingRodent »

Why are you even bringing Vigilance or Strength into it? The archive entry just says "Doing missions diverts attention from the Avatar project". The more missions you do, the slower it gets. You don't even need to know what Vigilance is for this entry to tell you what it needs to tell you.
Dlareh
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Re: An absurd ending...

Post by Dlareh »

You're both wrong and right to some extent.

There's no reason for it to get into details like vigilance of course, that's more of an underlying mechanic number that's deliberately not explained so as to make the mod more immersive (one of LW2 developers' goals)

But the phrasing could be improved. It is not so clear as: "Doing missions diverts attention from the Avatar project"; if it was, people like Marbozir and many other players wouldn't miss this important understanding.

The actual text is: "every successful battle we fight against them forces them to divert resources away from Avatar and toward pacifying Earth."

Players might mistake this for suggesting that you need to be successful at fighting to liberate regions to have a greater chance of beating the Avatar project, for example, rather than guerrilla missions which are often more stealth operations than "battles" currently.
Excitement continues to build as city centers across the globe prepare for the latest incarnation of Groundhog Day.
ndessell
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Re: An absurd ending...

Post by ndessell »

RantingRodent wrote:Why are you even bringing Vigilance or Strength into it? The archive entry just says "Doing missions diverts attention from the Avatar project". The more missions you do, the slower it gets. You don't even need to know what Vigilance is for this entry to tell you what it needs to tell you.
It highlights the mechanics you interact with and gives just enough idea to work on them at a basic level." make advent vigilant and draw strength to your activities to detract from the avatar project". Also, it gives players a foothold to go learn more, think about how many people complain about avatar advancement beeing too fast, but don't even ask about better vigilance management.
hairlessOrphan
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Re: An absurd ending...

Post by hairlessOrphan »

RantingRodent wrote: I'd accept this line of reasoning if the in-game archives weren't specifically called out as being Long War 2's equivalent to a manual in several places. We were all told to take the archives seriously as an explanation of the mod's mechanics.
johnnylump wrote:[AvatarProject_LW X2EncyclopediaTemplate]
ListTitle="Stopping The Avatar Project"
DescriptionTitle="Stopping The Avatar Project"
DescriptionEntry="While we have limited understanding of the nature of the aliens' work, we do know that every successful battle we fight against them forces them to divert resources away from Avatar and toward pacifying Earth. That gives us more time to learn about the nature of the project and find ways to stop it."
Just registered to post in response to this, because it's been bothering me a lot. There's a problem with writing manual entries to look like flavor text. If you already know what it means, then it seems super obvious, but if you don't know what it means, it doesn't mean anything.

When I first read this entry, I thought it was telling me that doing missions would give me more infiltration time on other missions. That seemed like a totally reasonable reading, given that the only mechanic I was told about was Infiltration, so I had no other mechanic to apply this entry to.
DaviBones
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Re: An absurd ending...

Post by DaviBones »

hairlessOrphan wrote: Just registered to post in response to this, because it's been bothering me a lot. There's a problem with writing manual entries to look like flavor text. If you already know what it means, then it seems super obvious, but if you don't know what it means, it doesn't mean anything.

When I first read this entry, I thought it was telling me that doing missions would give me more infiltration time on other missions. That seemed like a totally reasonable reading, given that the only mechanic I was told about was Infiltration, so I had no other mechanic to apply this entry to.
The primary issue here as I see it is insufficient communication by both sides: the entry is slightly vague, I agree, but the players need to be more proactive in solving the puzzle themselves.

I figured out vigilance well enough to not lose a Commander Ironman campaign, just by noticing the "Global Vigilance: XX, Avatar progress slowed by XX%" in the resistance management screen. Hadn't even read the log in question, just saw the number, and being worried about Avatar progress, checked it after doing certain things, and sure enough, certain missions seemed to raise the slow-factor by several percentage points.

Then again, I am used to playing super obtuse strategy games (Dwarf Fortress, OG Long War) so of course it is not reasonable to expect gamers newer to this style to understand everything their first time. However, let me point out that the fun in games like this is supposed to be in the learning experience, not the outright victory (although that is surely nice when it comes). Losing is part of learning, and is part of fun.

Again, let me be clear I do not disagree with making the entry slightly clearer; like any miscommunication, improvements can be made on both sides.

I also believe that "marketing" issues are at play here. I'm not sure the sheer volume of attention LW2 has gotten is necessarily healthy for it... LW2 wasn't made in an effort to please every gamer that liked any of the XCOM games, but that seems to be the expectation applied to it by the internet. Although I could be totally off base there.
hairlessOrphan
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Re: An absurd ending...

Post by hairlessOrphan »

DaviBones wrote:
The primary issue here as I see it is insufficient communication by both sides: the entry is slightly vague, I agree, but the players need to be more proactive in solving the puzzle themselves.

I figured out vigilance well enough to not lose a Commander Ironman campaign, just by noticing the "Global Vigilance: XX, Avatar progress slowed by XX%" in the resistance management screen. Hadn't even read the log in question, just saw the number, and being worried about Avatar progress, checked it after doing certain things, and sure enough, certain missions seemed to raise the slow-factor by several percentage points.
That's incredible, and kudos to you. Meanwhile, I have finished missions and seen my Resistance Threat go down and Avatar Progress speed up. Which I now know has something to do with either invisible vigilance decay or invisible super reinforcements, but I don't know how you're supposed to know that from in-game. I have finished missions back-to-back and seen my Threat go up and then go down, but mostly I've seen it stay the same. I've finished missions and seen Advent Strength go up, though I've also seen it go down but usually it stays the same. I've scanned POI's and seen Advent Strength go up. I've recruited at Havens and seen my Resistance Threat go down with and without Advent Strength going up.

My conclusion was there wasn't enough information for me to figure out what was happening.
DaviBones
Posts: 75
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Re: An absurd ending...

Post by DaviBones »

I wasn't trying to brag by explaining how I figured out, I was just pointing out that it is in fact possible with the tools they have given us to figure it out without looking online.

I think we can safely say that an overabundance of information would hurt the gameplay experience, not help it. "Paradox-style" information (CK2, EU4, Stellaris) where you can hover over anything and instantly understand everything about it, for example regional vigilance levels and where they came from, would not only take months if not years to code, but would ruin the "guerilla" feeling the game has. Personally, I think listing regional vigilance levels at all would do the same.

Perhaps, though, there could be a small chance that scales with your intel level in a region, to get a notification of some sort detailing the present level of vigilance in that region. Perhaps after a mission or something, the test is made. It would only appear that once, you would have to succeed the RNG a second time to see it again. Just an idea, trying to come up with something that perhaps Pavonis hasn't thought of, rather than coming up with ideas that they obviously have thought of and questioning their months of hard work by suggesting it myself, which seems to be the norm on this forum. Not taking shots at anybody, just trying to make the atmosphere a bit more productive if possible.
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