I'll take the bait.
Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2016 11:56 pm
"We do read these threads, and when we have something to announce, we'll announce it, but there just isn't anything to report right now. I should add this forum isn't just for promoting our work but a place to chat about XCOM modding in general." - johnnylump
okay, I'll bite. I've been thinking about this quite a bit over the past month or so- I'm not sure that a "Long War" style version of XCOM 2 is a thing that will come around- or- at least- not for awhile, organically. What I believe will happen- and- what I already see happening is a "Long War" style that develops from an amalgamation of mods- and I actually believe we (as a community) are closer than we probably think; we just need the correct group of mod authors to come together with all of their pieces and start to put it all together and then rebalance things.
What I've been watching for within the XCOM 2 modding section are things that- at their base level make XCOM 2 a.) longer b.) tougher c.) maintain balance and d.) add more/new tools. (One of my favorite quotes is from jlump where he said they wanted to show the players that running away could be an effective tool). I would submit that those are at heart the pillars of what made LW so great.
Here is a basic list:
Max Squad Size / Max Squad Size Fix
Soldier Fatigue
Start Your Own Mission
Increased Enemy Squad Size
*Avatar Project: Reworked
*Class Mods*
One of the easiest things to notice about vanilla XCOM 2 is that at face value, it doesn't really lend itself to a LW style of mod. All things considered, the game is pretty linear, there are only ever "x" amount of missions at once time, you can only delay the Avatar Project for "y" amount of time, etc...
Max Squad Size- As shown countless times in TLW, upping the squad size even from 6 to 8 greatly increases the players tactical choices and flexibility when planning missions.
Soldier Fatigue. Again, as shown in TLW, if something isn't broken, why fix it? Most people that played TLW, I think, liked the idea of having to have a deeper bench of soldiers instead of the Superhero Squad we had through both Vanilla Games. As I played through vanilla, it became quickly evident that having a secondary or tertiary squad wasn't really all that feasible (possible, yes, I'm sure there are plenty of people that will talk about having two or three squads) and, lets be straight, to me, it was never really something Firaxis was all that interested in to begin with. Sure, they attempted to make it "more impacting" when a soldier was hurt by giving him retarded high heal times for losing a pip of health, but, to me, it fell flat. The reason it isn't all that feasible is because you only ever get "x" missions with "y" amount of aliens and there simply isn't enough to go around for everyone. In TLW, this was handled by giving you more UFOs to shoot down- which brings us to...
Start Your Own Mission. I'm a huge fan of this mod, because, while, yes, you could just make .ini edits to increase the number of missions each month, I find this to be a much more elegant solution. XCOM isn't really in the shooting-down-ufos business anymore, but, this mod does two things; increases mission count and makes XCOM appear to be less REACTIVE. Why is a global resistance movement so entirely dependent on random resistance groups to feed them information and do all of the scut work for them? Isn't it feasible to say that XCOM would also have their own shit to do? What makes the most sense would be to equate XCOM to the British Special Operations Executive during World War 2; which was a global resistance that started in London and worked with other organizations (such as the French Underground) to disrupt the Nazis. They worked with host nation resistance elements when possible, but, they also had their own operatives and their own operations going at all times as well.
Increased Enemy Squad Size. Because challenge and balance.
Avatar Project: Reworked. This has a caveat because, while I agree with the overall goal of the mod (in that it needs to make the not optimal strategy to ride the Avatar timer), I'm not sold on the implementation of this mod. Discuss.
Class Mods. Lets be real, the vanilla classes are pretty terrabad and there are some key elements missing- some of which have begun to be sorted out through mods (Rifleman and Infantry come to mind for me right off the top of my head). The game also needs a dedicated healer class that doesn't suck and some work on the support side.
One of the biggest problems that I have with XCOM 2 was Firaxis's decision to make everything so prohibitively expensive in order to as they put it "make choices feel more impact". At heart, I think this is a pretty failed concept (or- at least the way it was implemented here). I obviously don't believe you should be able to do everything, however, I do believe that for a Long War type of game to be reasonable, you need to be able to do more. One of the things I'm working on, but, haven't really begun to tackle is with all the new added capability, how do you rebalance finances for XCOM? For instance, I reduced the cost of all of the missions in SYOM because I want SYOMs to be something that expounds on the campaign and gives you the freedom to level up multiple squads and be able to take a hit and not have it be the end of the campaign because you "only" ranger just got curb stomped. The problem with doing this is that everything is out of whack now- starting a Supply Raid is 30 Supplies and 25 intel, but, hiring a new Sergeant is 300 supplies? The equation isn't balanced on both sides of the equal sign anymore.
Now, I'm sure one of the reactions to this post will be point/counterpoint of "well, why didn't you include this mod or you should totally consider that mod."- and that's fine. Discussion is good and we can debate things all day long. I'd be curious as to others input. Tell me how crazy I am.
okay, I'll bite. I've been thinking about this quite a bit over the past month or so- I'm not sure that a "Long War" style version of XCOM 2 is a thing that will come around- or- at least- not for awhile, organically. What I believe will happen- and- what I already see happening is a "Long War" style that develops from an amalgamation of mods- and I actually believe we (as a community) are closer than we probably think; we just need the correct group of mod authors to come together with all of their pieces and start to put it all together and then rebalance things.
What I've been watching for within the XCOM 2 modding section are things that- at their base level make XCOM 2 a.) longer b.) tougher c.) maintain balance and d.) add more/new tools. (One of my favorite quotes is from jlump where he said they wanted to show the players that running away could be an effective tool). I would submit that those are at heart the pillars of what made LW so great.
Here is a basic list:
Max Squad Size / Max Squad Size Fix
Soldier Fatigue
Start Your Own Mission
Increased Enemy Squad Size
*Avatar Project: Reworked
*Class Mods*
One of the easiest things to notice about vanilla XCOM 2 is that at face value, it doesn't really lend itself to a LW style of mod. All things considered, the game is pretty linear, there are only ever "x" amount of missions at once time, you can only delay the Avatar Project for "y" amount of time, etc...
Max Squad Size- As shown countless times in TLW, upping the squad size even from 6 to 8 greatly increases the players tactical choices and flexibility when planning missions.
Soldier Fatigue. Again, as shown in TLW, if something isn't broken, why fix it? Most people that played TLW, I think, liked the idea of having to have a deeper bench of soldiers instead of the Superhero Squad we had through both Vanilla Games. As I played through vanilla, it became quickly evident that having a secondary or tertiary squad wasn't really all that feasible (possible, yes, I'm sure there are plenty of people that will talk about having two or three squads) and, lets be straight, to me, it was never really something Firaxis was all that interested in to begin with. Sure, they attempted to make it "more impacting" when a soldier was hurt by giving him retarded high heal times for losing a pip of health, but, to me, it fell flat. The reason it isn't all that feasible is because you only ever get "x" missions with "y" amount of aliens and there simply isn't enough to go around for everyone. In TLW, this was handled by giving you more UFOs to shoot down- which brings us to...
Start Your Own Mission. I'm a huge fan of this mod, because, while, yes, you could just make .ini edits to increase the number of missions each month, I find this to be a much more elegant solution. XCOM isn't really in the shooting-down-ufos business anymore, but, this mod does two things; increases mission count and makes XCOM appear to be less REACTIVE. Why is a global resistance movement so entirely dependent on random resistance groups to feed them information and do all of the scut work for them? Isn't it feasible to say that XCOM would also have their own shit to do? What makes the most sense would be to equate XCOM to the British Special Operations Executive during World War 2; which was a global resistance that started in London and worked with other organizations (such as the French Underground) to disrupt the Nazis. They worked with host nation resistance elements when possible, but, they also had their own operatives and their own operations going at all times as well.
Increased Enemy Squad Size. Because challenge and balance.
Avatar Project: Reworked. This has a caveat because, while I agree with the overall goal of the mod (in that it needs to make the not optimal strategy to ride the Avatar timer), I'm not sold on the implementation of this mod. Discuss.
Class Mods. Lets be real, the vanilla classes are pretty terrabad and there are some key elements missing- some of which have begun to be sorted out through mods (Rifleman and Infantry come to mind for me right off the top of my head). The game also needs a dedicated healer class that doesn't suck and some work on the support side.
One of the biggest problems that I have with XCOM 2 was Firaxis's decision to make everything so prohibitively expensive in order to as they put it "make choices feel more impact". At heart, I think this is a pretty failed concept (or- at least the way it was implemented here). I obviously don't believe you should be able to do everything, however, I do believe that for a Long War type of game to be reasonable, you need to be able to do more. One of the things I'm working on, but, haven't really begun to tackle is with all the new added capability, how do you rebalance finances for XCOM? For instance, I reduced the cost of all of the missions in SYOM because I want SYOMs to be something that expounds on the campaign and gives you the freedom to level up multiple squads and be able to take a hit and not have it be the end of the campaign because you "only" ranger just got curb stomped. The problem with doing this is that everything is out of whack now- starting a Supply Raid is 30 Supplies and 25 intel, but, hiring a new Sergeant is 300 supplies? The equation isn't balanced on both sides of the equal sign anymore.
Now, I'm sure one of the reactions to this post will be point/counterpoint of "well, why didn't you include this mod or you should totally consider that mod."- and that's fine. Discussion is good and we can debate things all day long. I'd be curious as to others input. Tell me how crazy I am.