Pavonis Interactive Forums

I've played a fair bit of WotC, but not to completion. Started up a new LW2 game today just on a whim. So much more enjoyable than WotC:

-WotC feels 'gimmicky', esp. with the new troop types and how each has some unique thingie
-managing the havens and deciding on infiltrations so much more interesting
-squad building as opposed to pairs (that again, feel kind of gimmicky...give a buddy an extra move)
-won't even mention the photo thing (being my best Cicero there!!)(anyone know that reference??)

Like many, I'd hope to see a LW2 WotC version at some point, I do like the different promotions in WotC, esp. being able to go back and choose a previous one you skipped.

The biggest problem with Wotc is that I have to not use a better mod in order to play it. If i didn't lose so much content i would enjoy it more.

I killed the 3 Chosen and started a new 1.5 LW2 campaign. I felt I had already done everything at that point and was gonna win anyways even if I was encountering sectopods all over the place.

Do you refer to "Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas" perchance ? The photobooth is just a quality-of-life feature. There were already players doing Let's plays the old-fashioned way, by writing and posting screenshots. Up to War of the Chosen the integrated Steam screenshot feature was used, which is not perfect, especially if you want to show off your favourite soldiers.

To provide some counter-points:
- The new troop types fill important tactical roles for advent. The Priest is essentially a buffer, they had the Sectoid but that unit is more offensive and debuffs your own troops. The Spectre is a force-multiplier - it takes a soldier out of the fight and provides a new unit for Advent. The only thing they had close to this was the Codex and that one is quite rare, for good reasons. The Purifier is a front-line crowd-control unit, that is also anti-mêlée (since it will explode most of the times on death). It also ties perfectly with the Lost.
- Haven management in LW 2 has no serious impact on gameplay. You can still get by with 0 rebels on either Suppliers or Recruit, as the economy is balanced towards selling loot and then buying what you need from the Black market, including new soldiers. In almost all of the cases you will want rebels on Intel or Hide. Infiltration management is only important in the first 3 months when you do not have enough soldiers and equipment and want your best for a specific mission. Afterwards you really only go through the motions of sending a squad to a mission.
- The pair-bonding resembles what the Officers do in LW 2. They have additional abilities and can help out other soldiers. If anything I find it better balanced than the Officers, since it does not affect every soldier in the squad. An Officier in LW 2 just gets additional abilities on top of the regular ones, with no limitations on whom they may be used.
- I have already touched on the photobooth. It is a nice feature, yet I do not use it that often.

Some things that are actually great in War of the Chosen:
- Negative perks, often received after getting wounded. Those are very atmospheric and make you think twice when just using a soldier as a bullet sponge.
- Will actually being a key stat. As Will drops during the mission, it gets a lot riskier to continue forward, especially against PSI enemies. Also having high Will to start with is key now.
- Being able to train your soldiers with Ability points, including taking all possible abilities on a single soldier, if you want to.
- The new missions. Assassinating a target which has 4 turns to escape once they know you are there. Supply drops where you race against Advent to clear the place out of enemies or just pick up more crates than them. They new Avenger defence mission with the enemy cannon. And a lot more.

It is a different beast altogether. I would advise to play it like people used to play JA 2: Unfinished business and JA 2: 1.13 mod. They have different goals and features and hopefully will be combined one day, like it happened with Jagged Alliance 2.

8wayz wrote: It is a different beast altogether.

That and the different levels of polish. LW2 had a year after XCOM 2 vanilla to come out and then half a year more of balance polish. WotC is barely out in the wilds. It's a given that Firaxis has to aim the vanilla difficulty at an accessible level to appeal to more players. So for players who want a tighter challenge, they must wait for mods. Some promising things are starting to come out, but I want to see where WotC gets to in January 2018. Right now only quick projects are being done, like class/perk tweaks, tactical tweaks, etc. A serious strategic layer change will need time.

Given the modding community is paralysed in uncertainty over what Pavonis Interactive will do for LWotC, chances are the first few strategic makeovers will be more modest and probably not aim for LongWar length campaigns. Likely there'll be a push towards experimenting with Covert Actions.

Psieye wrote:Given the modding community is paralysed in uncertainty over what Pavonis Interactive will do for LWotC

This right here is everything that I dislike about how things were done with XCom 2, artificially placing one group over the rest [in the form of more direct support, earlier access to new content, etc.] only served to hurt modding for XCom 2 instead of helping. PI has done some amazing work and I LOVE the Coilguns, but the entire situation kinda puts off modders, especially those that don't have the time to dedicate to modding in order to put out big changes. That's not even getting into the demand from the community to make mods compatible with LW2, so other mods had to not only be compatible with vanilla but also LW2...

I won't try to nitpick reasons for going back to LW2 cause I can see the appeal that others might have, even if I don't feel the same pull to it, LW2 does provide a more challenging and different experience. Hopefully an announcement comes soon on the front of, "We're getting close to an initial release of LWotC" so that everyone can experience the new additions to XCom 2 the way they prefer.

dethraker wrote:Hopefully an announcement comes soon on the front of, "We're getting close to an initial release of LWotC"

Personally I'd rather see an announcement of "we're looking for associates to help us make that initial release of LWotC so our core team can focus on Terra Invicta". A quasi-recruiting ad leading to selected candidates receiving instructions and coaching to flesh out LWotC. Maybe even go as far as having these from-outside modders do design work too. Initiative is possible without waiting in the dark deadlock for months.

Psieye wrote:

dethraker wrote:Hopefully an announcement comes soon on the front of, "We're getting close to an initial release of LWotC"

Personally I'd rather see an announcement of "we're looking for associates to help us make that initial release of LWotC so our core team can focus on Terra Invicta". A quasi-recruiting ad leading to selected candidates receiving instructions and coaching to flesh out LWotC. Maybe even go as far as having these from-outside modders do design work too. Initiative is possible without waiting in the dark deadlock for months.

Huh ... thats a cool idea. But I will settle for "LWotC is coming soon".

WotC introduced some very cool ideas. To be honest I prefer their idea of covert ops to LW as sometimes it seems I can get 2 days of scanning without some mission showing up, or infiltrating needed to get done. The idea of "these are the possible ops for this month - choose which ones you will do" felt nicer to me. More so when you take into consideration the missions that show with short infiltration timer and how punishing it can be to do missions that are under infiltrated.

Psieye wrote:Personally I'd rather see an announcement of "we're looking for associates to help us make that initial release of LWotC so our core team can focus on Terra Invicta". A quasi-recruiting ad leading to selected candidates receiving instructions and coaching to flesh out LWotC. Maybe even go as far as having these from-outside modders do design work too. Initiative is possible without waiting in the dark deadlock for months.

Not sure how I'd feel about this personally, "volunteers to do the work for us" sounds really bad. Now if they were going to be paid sure and that would go along with how I feel about the entire LW2 "mod" since, well, it's not really a mod but rather free dlc paid for by 2K to be created by the development team Pavonis. I doubt that Pavonis would be paying anyone cause they probably have limited funds as it is and they definitely can't approve a bigger budget themselves since 2K is calling the shots on that front.

I do however wait for the day when there is more to be announced regarding Terra Invicta, that's actually the main reason I am on these forums, I just also browse the active topics for things that interest me.

Dwarfling wrote:I killed the 3 Chosen and started a new 1.5 LW2 campaign. I felt I had already done everything at that point and was gonna win anyways even if I was encountering sectopods all over the place.

Same here with 3 Chosen. Later i tried with better Advent, but when you try LW, other mods are not enough. Short and simple.

redsky14 wrote:Same here with 3 Chosen. Later i tried with better Advent, but when you try LW, other mods are not enough. Short and simple.

In regards to there not being other major overhauls that are fairly well balanced I can agree with that. In regards to the changes made and comparisons to WotC we'll just have to agree to disagree.

I highly doubt we'll see other overhauls until Pavonis completely stops modding XCom 2, the demand to make mods "compatible with LW" would be too great and most modders don't want to deal with that in regards to a complete overhaul.