Soon I think I will ACTUALLY play valkryia chronicles, the old japanese game that fixes all the classic xcom problems, just so I can have a reverse-rant about how putting a sniper's crosshair over the visible portion of an enemy in cover feels better than it saying 60% chance to hit. Clearly it isn't trying to simulate the abstractions of combat, but the extra control and illusion of realism really helps, I think. If it was marginally less anime it would be everything I wanted from xcom. One day, these worlds shall collide...
Do you know of Phoenix Point? It's an XCom clone in almost every way (modern XCom, not classic XCom), but it does let you aim manually. Valkyria Chronicle isn't that comparable i'd say, because it's less XCom and more puzzle, i.e. the way to beat pretty much all missions in all VC games is to figure out precisely how to immediately rush the objective with a single unit, ignoring everything non-essential along the way.
Excited for Valkyria Chronicles. Have you played the third game in the series? It's probably the best one in terms of gameplay, in my opinion a rather ironic result of the limitations of the system it's on. Also, your commentary on cover mechanics and so on brought to mind an older, somewhat janky game with X-COM-style combat called Silent Storm. It still has %-chances to hit, but the selling point is that everything is completely (early 2000s simulated) physics based. This means that the initial dice roll simply determines whether your soldier points their gun in a direction that will allow it to hit your chosen target. As soon as the bullet leaves the barrel, everything is in the hands of the physics engine. As I said it's rather janky, but also very unique and representative of a potential path not taken for turn-based strategy games.
Vc3 is actually the only one I haven't played. Time to whip out the old psp emulator? Someone else mentioned Silent Storm too. Probably too annoying to program or something, I can see why that sort of thing didn't get used more. Reminds me of red faction, where they had to get real engineers in to make an actual physics based combat system, but I bet they considered it a waste of money by the end of it. Also in reply to mckitten, yeah vc is more like a puzzle indeed. I'd like see its combat in an xcom-style game with more realism, basically. In cases where you are shooting at enemies in a 'normal' sort of way, it does precisely what I want xcom to do.
@@OffyDGG VC3 is definitely worth a shot. It's still a puzzle game in the sense that your primary objective is usually capturing the enemy's flag in as few turns as possible, but you actually have to work towards that goal unlike in 1 and to a lesser extent 4. The main reason for this is in my view that its missions are made up of multiple smaller, tighter, connected maps. This is likely the result of the limitations of being on a handheld console, but it does wonders for the gameplay. Tighter maps means that there are more enemies you can't bypass and have to deal with at some point. and there being multiple increases the number of deployment choices such as, for example, which one warrants the use of your only tank. That said, I can't personally weigh in on how it compares with VC2 as I've never played that installment. The general consensus among people who have, though, seems to be that 3 is a major improvement in pretty much every single way.
Very true about it Xenonauts 2 basically being a clone. I liked the sneaky trick of cutting footage of the Xenonauts 1 into the first part of the video. Took my a couple of cuts to realise. They are just that similar.
One of the things I liked about XCOM 2 having you be this barely-alive resistance cell is that it fits the squad-based gameplay so much better. Why do you have only 6 guys on a mission? Because you have maybe 50 people on Earth you can even trust anymore. Why are you critically underfunded? Because your only income is protection rackets and looting. Imo a good "as the invasion is happening" squad game would be one where most governments refuse to acknowledge it, or are collaborating with them. Or hell, have it occur during a major global conflict so nobody has the resources to handle it properly, and human threats are more material than alien ones.
On the topic of the boring movement between enemy pods, I think one idea would be to remove the movement limit when no enemies are detected + tactical scouting abilities. When the coast is clear, let the player have 1 turn where they can move all units as much as they want until an enemy is detected, or an enemy detects you. This allows a shorter delay between pod fights, allow player to position units as they want, add exploration tension to the atmostphere without being tedious. The game risk is that you can be ambushed by hidden enemies if you move too carelessly. Good scouting abilities and tactics are needed to avoided the player from "moving 1 tile, check for enemies, repeat": higher vantage point, tiny scout drones, passive and active sensors, stuff like that.
That sounds good to me. I also think that sometimes you should simply have full map vision, for more variety. Like if you fight in the open, you can see everything because you have drones or whatever, but inside alien bases and stuff its more like creeping around a completely unseen map. Would make those inching forward parts feel cooler if they only happened now and again.
The game looks so similar to the first one I am dumbfounded it took them years to make and it's still not complete. Not to mention the reason for making it this way in the first place.
Tbf that's what their existing player base wants. Improve Xenonauts. Most of the improvements are supposedly on the engine side, the previous engine had a lot of jank when it came to corners. For everyone else ther is Xcom.
it always feels weird to see how small-scale those 'global defense organizations' are, so i developed my own headcanon for them 1st (boring) one is that Xcom/Xenonauts are just some private companies, ran by some rich dude who really hates aliens and has access to military surplus warehouses. 2nd is that they're basically Scooby-Doo type enthusiasts, who pretend to be only true saviors of human race. The armies of Earth are fighting across the globe, but these nerds just happen to be extremely lucky and end up in the right place in the right time. That certainly would explain why they're so shit at combat I think only Terra Invicta presents alien invasion from a proper, massive strategic standpoint - but it's also made by devs of XCom Long War mod, so it comes with its own set of nightmares that make it painful to play
I like the Scooby Doo head cannon. It explains exactly why these guys are so bad at their only job, and games like these are often comedy for that reason. 😂
The scoobydoo theory is irresistibly good. If we imagine the whole thing is a rich guy's out of control larping project with a cult of true believers, we could even imagine that there is no alien invasion at all, and xcom are international criminals on the run, battling the authorities and seeing alien creatures in their place. The truth is revealed!
RNG serves a crucial role in giving you something to blame. This game involves having dudes with names and statsthat you can get attatched to and having those dudes die horribly. If you have no RNG, the game either has to either permit you to have no casualties ever, or just have actions where your dudes die no matter what which would be unfair. Compare modern xcom, where it is trivial to end game with no deaths, or Mechanicus, which has no RNG and you need to actively fail at the game to have any deaths. With RNG, the game requires you to have backup plans, there are risks to take, rather than bland oscillation between "Always win" and "Pick a sacrifice"
I suppose I am fine with the game forcing you to lose guys, or have retreat be an option. Tactical sacrifice is fine by me! Rng pretty much does this anyway unless you want to save scum.
I'll also add that making so playing well avoids casualties is always an option. There is also still rng in the form of not knowing what the enemy will do, where they are, map layouts and such. So there is still stuff to plan around and develop fallback schemes for. I suspect that with less rng to worry about, actually balancing a long game like this might be easier, so having a rewarding challenge could be achievable too.
You might appreciate a game called Phantom Brigade. It has the same structure of XCOM with an over world strategy layer and a turn based combat layer, but what it brings to the table is that all action in a turn are planned first then played out in real time. So despite planning for what happens when it all plays out unforeseen interactions occur.
My favourite one of these type of games is Mechanicus, its a warhammer 40k game. The fights are there own zones with written bits in between with choices. But the attacks don't have RNG hit chance, which is nice. And there is a lot of choice for equipping your team
I tried picking Xenonauts up hoping for a better version of the original XCOM. Bounced off it pretty hard due to problems with line of sight, cheating AI, and a lack of interesting tech tree (weapon upgrades are just straight more damage with nothing interesting, no tradeoffs anywhere.) Recently found out about the X-Piratez total conversion for the original XCOM. Having a total blast, it's still the janky XCOM engine and UI, but it's got some QoL features and more importantly it's got content! Tons of variety in missions, weapons, soldiers, techs, vessels, etc. I've been playing ironman runs on the 3rd difficulty and wiping every 3-5 months ingame and still constantly finding new stuff. Cured me of my 'Maybe I just don't like these games anymore' cynicism.
Funny thing is, Open X-COM mods did all that and more. Things like UNEXCOM or Files all have expanded mechanics and are fun to play, plus they're completely free. The other thing that bothers me from lore/reason perspective is how are Xenonaut soldiers better than real ones? I mean they have the same training, the same weaponry, the same stuff, but they're far fewer. Why cannot local military just mop up those aliens and they have to call in a tiny squad from the other part of the world? Hell, an irl Russian rifle squad has 1x RPG 1x PKM 2x underbarrel GL and 6x AK, there are 3 such squads in a platoon + HQ section, with a BMP for each for good measure. Meaning a single motorized platoon would just dogpile almost any low tier UFO. Late game sure, it makes sense. But for early fights it's kinda weird.
It's an immersion breaker for sure, there isn't any particular reason why xcom/xenonauts are so weak and are being used as the first line of defence, other than that back in the day it would have been too hard to program something more complicated than 10 guys vs 10 aliens. Now it's just still here since those old mechanics are being copied endlessly in the future, it seems!
@@OffyDGG Old doesn't mean bad. I mean in oldschool X-COM it is explained that you're the only ones in the world having experimental tech like the Skyranger, etc. TFTD is even more convincing with the specialized submarines required for the job. Files also deals with this by literally starting you off as ten dudes and a car. X2 doesn't do any of those, you're pretty much a military unit, but without the military. Now it would have been nice to have a trained commando unit which has some special advantages, but as things stand now the "elite" team is somewhere between Star Wars stormtroopers and Russian mobiks, which kills it off for me.
Plus UNEXCOM does the "cold war" thing way better by letting you ally with the US, Europe, the USSR or stay independent, which gives you different (dis)advantages and techs based on your choices. As you progress, the nations get stronger- for example (spoilers) there's a moon mission where you fight alongside Soviet space troopers armed with laser rifles, or terror missions where literal tanks fight off alien mechs in a huge battle.
Sounds like just the sort of thing I would have hoped xenonauts would try. truly the modding scene has saved the day once again. I wonder if any xenonauts devs tried any of these.
@@OffyDGG those are large projects btw, still being updated. Seriously, those are hands down the best games that came out in the last few years. I think they might have played, as fighting off an Earth- based organization is a concept straight from Files, where the entire beginning is about you infiltrating and eliminating five different terrorist organizations, each with their own ideology- from a Cthulhu cult to US based mafia selling alien- based drugs. Compared to that X2 looks poor and bland.
Don't quote me on this because I didn't follow the development of the game but I think this is a case of overambition resulting in going back to basics. Let me explain. The game was announced in 2016 and released a public demo on GOG in 2017. They apparently never changed that demo when they released a new one on Steam somwhere around 2022. I played the more recent one first and it's very much like you played but the GOG demo was, a lot more 3D if that makes any sense. Not exactly like modern Xcom but somewhat close. So what i'm guessing happened is either they ran into financial trouble and cut back on the 3D graphics or they lacked experience in making a full 3D game so they just fallback on what they knew. It could be one of those reasons, it could be both but no matter what happened, the game fell into developpment hell. Only now do we have a definitive version of the game somewhat. Now from what other gameplay I have seen and yours, I dissagree that the game is bad because ''it's just like Xenonauts 1''. I see it more like those platformer games from the 2000s, where a sequel wasn't really different from the first game. New levels, new gimmicks, somewhat better graphics but nothing that fundamentally changes the games. I see how it could be dissapointing to some but there's nothing wrong with building upon what was here without completly revolutionizing the series. I have not bought the game and probably won't until it gets out of early access and I feel like playing Xcom. I just want to say that there's probably more to this story than ''the developpers were lazy and ctrl+c'ed their old game''
No doubt it was difficult, and that explanation does make sense. I suspect leadership/decision making brought us to this strange place. I find that rather than feeling it builds on the previous game, is it a lesser version of the same product. So rather than being more content using a likable set of mechanics, it's the same experience entirely (only it's missing stuff). I think ideally, one new gimmick was needed. Perhaps deployable walls or traps. Even just one thing would probably put me in agreement with you and I could say 'at least it's got more than the old one'.
Having played the first when it was new and having followed development in the beginning, the original intent for X2 was to basically make the same game again, but with a newer better engine, that could do fancy stuff like real lines of sight in 3D terrain etc. Nothing fundamentally different, just better (and bigger). The game then entered some sort of development limbo for years, where updates didn't really report any progress and release dates passed without notice. Now, i don't know why that happened, but the visible result of the game now, is certainly far from what X2 was supposed to be.
I would be very interested to see you play either the X-Files mod or the X-Piratez Mod and compare them to these modern iterations and against the original as they both bring a lot of interesting takes and story beats to the table while being solid iterations on the original x-com. I feel like a good modern remake would try to take a lot of ideas from the X-Files mod as it starts very small with your two agents a car and some pistols against the world, starting with small cults and strange creatures slowly building up to the alien invasion it has a very good story progression especially at the start and explains how x-com becomes so powerful as you do have to battle against other organizations like yours at points. While the X-Piratez mod i would almost compare to frycry blood dragon where it goes completely off the rails being after the aliens won and your some super human experiments that broke out and decided to be pirates. I would be very interested to hear you rant about the absolute inventory nightmare these mods turn into when you have your choice between some 70 odd weapons and 12 armors.
damn that sounds pretty good, exactly the kind of cool thing that a studio with a budget might be able to do real good. A few people have recommended these, sounds like I need to look into them. Inventory nightmare sounds delightful!
After playing this game I recently went back to xenonauts-1 and downloaded the X-division mod. Kinda like long war mod for xcom. Anywho that mod feels more like a sequel than this sequel does but who knows, maybe they'll buckle down and make a cool game in the end. On another note I havn't really had much time to play anything else but baldurs gate 3 ever since it came out. The game is based off dungeons and dragons and I've got practically no experience in the tabletop game but the sheer quality of this classic rpg has ensared me. If you want to play an actual "great" turn based game it's there and it's been a long time coming. Though I have to say the tutorial leaves much to be desired and frankly I probably shouldnt of put it on the hardest difficulty for my first playthrough ;(
I saw all the fanfare around that game, makes me wanna try it for sure. Probably going to wait for sale since I've lots of other things, but I'll be watching it. And yeah I saw some people in the steam reviews saying modded original is the better way to go, haven't tried it myself though. Still, goes to show how nothing cool or special about the new game is grabbing people.
@@OffyDGG Yeah 100%, no harm in waiting and forever may we bless the constant and benevolent steam sales. Especially on everyones favourite game Godless Tactics. On a side note Valkyria Chronicles aint a bad choice of game either. If you do play it just letting you know the 4th game is practically the sequel to the first game since 2 and 3 where kinda inconsequencial spinoffs basically. Also if a remember correctly scouts were practically king in that game so if you don't wanna cheese the whole game with orders and scouts go ahead and methodically go throughout the levels with a balanced battlegroup and that's the most fun way to play imo.
Damn, I went this whole video forgetting to mention how much better godless tactics is, silly of me. I remember using scouts a lot in VC, since often doing some crazy run to capture bases early helps, or just completes the mission early. It's a game where getting shot a lot and using terrible tactics often works out well, which took me a while ot get used to, but I ended up liking how wild plans worked, and it was cool to look for a turn order that cleared pathed through to the objective quickly. Hopefully I won't go back to it and decide it sucks or something, since I have good memories of it.
Funny because I found Xenonauts 2 much more fun and brutal than X COM 2, as much I try to like X COM 2 I couldn't because I couldn't learn the mechanics of the game, and it seems that the game want to be serious and be parody, the first one was more a closer to a parody of the fifty parody of UFO, like Xenonauts, but X COM 2 want to be the same thing at the same time and fail at both, to be honest I find much more fun fighting with giant robots in Battletech than X COM 2.
its really weird but the best notxcom is just the mod xpiratez for the original xcom game. the big problem with Xenonauts 2 is that not only is it not an improvement over the first one in its series its that it doesn't seem to improve anything from the game that came out over 30 years ago that it wants very hard to be.
Re:RNG It looks to me that the natural evolution from RNG is to move to the use of action points and your possible actions each costing a certain determined number of points. This makes it easier to plan, but still a challenge.
[Note: Don't be alarmed at the length of this comment. I am not stalking you, I am something of a writer and I sometimes use youtube comments to draft thoughts. I'm drafting an essay here.] You are completely right in your introduction. While also managing to be completely wrong. It's half funny and half frustrating that you can say that Xenonauts 2 is pointless. That you can question why it has to exist. You *are* right. It is an absurd game. Years to reproduce something we already have. From here the first, and more obvious following point to make which could have occurred to someone other than me already, is that Xenonauts 1 was already doing this. In the time it took to develop Xenonauts 1 an open-source port of the original X-Com was made without any funding or full time effort as far as I know. Xenonauts 1 seems to have emerged from an RPGcodex style "reaction" mindset, that I remember being quite big around the time. "We need to worship ashes and go back to the good old days". Rather than being a means of realising an artistic vision, doing something cool or an incremental step in the process of realising more and more fun things to do on the computer, a way that a thing was in the past becomes sanctified and a self-sufficient end point which it is good to ritualistically bring into existence over and over again. Xenonauts being a rather absurd case of basically making the same game again, so that it can again be in fashion. Once again an empowered social phenomena. Hopefully inspiring a wave of X-Com-likes (X-Comvanias? Boomer-Strooters?). Because if you're really a "fan" of something in this sense, the logical conclusion of "fandom" is praying that one day the entirety of human culture is converted into a Von Neumann Machine, converting all human creative potential into repetitions and iterations of your particular object of adoration. The second following point, which nobody anywhere seems to want to say, is that the same line of attack is equally valid for virtually the entire "Western PC Strategy" medium. You are so close here, but so far. Every other thing you say is a potential jumping off point to a genuinely new way of looking at all of this, but we just aren't quite getting there. What is the point of Xenonauts 2 you ask? But every other game covered on your channel (a channel I am very fond of) is a sterile mechanical analysis of "Endless Space Empire 5", the spiritual successor to "Space Imperium 2", an unlicensed adaptation of the boardgame "Lords of the Stars". Xenonauts is not an "xcomlike", it's just X-Com made again. I also take a rather narrow view of the "PC Strategy Game", seeing it as less of a genre, and more like maybe five or so different games which are also just made over and over again. For decades on end. There is nothing wrong with traditions of form. Great things can be done within them. An established frame to work within can save some work on the doing end, provide some direction and inspiration, the audience is already there and has expectations you can work off of. But without a vision it's all just dead wood. There's no fire or life. Mass recognition of a "genre" is not a very good reason for anything to exist. The best of new WESTERN strategy games, among which I would sincerely count your own, function interestingly as something between puzzle boxes and little worlds on a wire. But the forms are set, and nobody thinks of making a "strategy game" to express something new, so there's no organic incentive present to push beyond these. Even if we perfected these systems what would we have? Skirmish simulators, continental conquest simulators, more elaborate games of Risk or Sniper. A real question that's just come to my mind. Have you ever come away from a game you've played for this channel feeling truly satisfied? Like your life was enriched by the media in question? And if not, do you think the issue is ultimately mechanical? Adjust how the systems interact and model reality? When it comes to thinking within the conceptual box of "Strategy Games" I consider you absolutely brilliant. Your observations are always funny and interesting and relatable, and Godless Tactics contains many fantastic and downright inspired ideas. You're brilliant at thinking about what does and doesn't work in this kind of game *as this kind of game*. As a world on a wire and puzzle box Godless Tactics is better than most other strategy games. I love watching it unfold. I love solving individual problems within it. It's a big living puzzlebox. I mean that as very high praise. If most strategy games are part world on a wire part puzzlebox yours is one of the most pleasingly elaborate I've played. But it's not really that part that made it a striking experience. What was striking was where it was different to what other games was doing. And what made those differences was striking was knowing that the game was made by one person, and I'd heard you talk a little about it before playing. I knew every part of this thing was some thought and judgement from you. Yes, every game is deliberately assembled, but with one developer you know it's one mind. You can follow the thought. And you have very interesting thoughts, expressed clearly through realised intentions. While playing the game I felt like I was experiencing a discourse between a clever person and a stiff tradition. Most games if I imagine the mind behind them I get "maybe it'd be cool if we kind of...", or "to be different maybe we could..." but Godless Tactics is "these games should all do this". You knew what you wanted, and you cut right to it. Have you ever been told that your *Strength of Character* is why your game worked? Because it is. PLEASE follow up on your thinking and play Valkyria Chronicles. It contains more answers to get us out of the hell of mediocre and unsatisfying "strategy game" experiences than you could presently imagine. The hint on why it works is kind of in your own comment. "If it was marginally less anime". Valkyria Chronicles works precisely because it is an anime. It's a multimedia work with intentions that are first expressive and aesthetic. And then they decide to realise these creative intentions through a "strategy game", which is to be embedded within the greater work. Its idiosyncratic nature through which it surpassed many points on which conventional strategy games were deadlocked is largely owed to the fact they did not see themselves as working within a strategy game tradition, and were instead thinking as multimedia anime directors. Why does this turn based game make you control characters from a close up third person action perspective? To *look nice*. To show off Raita's beautiful character design work. Why do you fire a gun through three dimensional space by aiming a crosshair, because this is visceral, tense, stressful, VISUAL, the aiming itself is a striking image. The reticle closing on a distant human figure. The miniature cutscene initiated when you hit fire, with its own dynamic cuts before handing control back to you. These elements grew out of very UNSTRATEGIC considerations, but, with some happy experimentation, it turns out they can be integrated wonderfully within a strategic frame. As I said above, your game was enjoyable as far as I could see human expression within it. Be careful about dismissing something for being "too anime". Even if Valkyria Chronicles is a somewhat "stock anime plot", anime is a foreign media. This is a foreign culture talking about some heavy stuff. This is the Japanese trying to make WW2, one of the most significant events in our shared world history, fun, while also expressing their sincerely felt values on violence and human destiny. Traditions of japanese pop-art, western war media, *AND* mechanical battle simulator gizmos are all colliding. The human animal is putting on one hell of a show here. It would be a SHAME to tell yourself that VC is a good "STRATEGY GAME" with some unfortunate "anime" appendages. All of the parts are essentially bound, as expressions of their creators. You started this by asking "what is the point?". The most dangerous question in art. I was going to place this essay elsewhere, then you laid down the challenge. If you are going to play Valkyria Chronicles and do the thing justice you must at least acknowledge "the point" according to its creators, which is to create a work of multimedia, even if *your* point in exploring it is to analyse the thing as a "Strategy Game". If there is something to be learned from Valkyria Chronicles it is not "how fun is it to line up sights compared to rolling dice?", though that's also something we can observe. What's to be learned is how intentions, traditions, and angle of approach can fuel those coveted x-factors of art. "Creativity". "Character". "Fun". Henry Ford said that if he asked his customers what they wanted they'd have said "Faster Horses". Western Strategy Games can make some damn fast horses now, we've been refining the process for some time. But dammit the Japanese just keep inventing cars and blowing right past us after periods of apparent dumb stagnation. How did these people who enjoy Dragon Quest create the best x-com successor all the way back in 2008... and then just move on to other things like it wasn't even a big deal? Do they understand something we don't? When's the last time you wondered what was the point of a Japanese game?
Played the new one, liked it as much as the first one but it is true that it feels almost exactly like playing the first game. I was hopping that with Unity there would be a huge improvement to the visual immersion part of the game (shadows, shaders, textures, lightning etc) making the missions far scarier but that just wasn't the case. Feels like a missed opportunity since other Unity games such as Sons of the Forest which has graphics that match those of Unreal Engine and then we get Xeno 2 graphics which hardly improve upon their old home made engine's graphics :(
"It looks like I'm playing an old sprite-based game" I had no idea what Xenonauts was, and upon clicking this video, that's exactly what I thought it was - a game from the late 90s or early 2000s. I actually figured it might have been one of the games the creator of XCOM made before he actually did XCOM, but no, this is a 2023 game, so of course its unfinished and in early access. We can't have *finished* games in this day and age, no no, that would be just awful.
Listening to your commentary makes me think you should try to pick up Phoenix Point when you can. Things like the cover system, the ability to aim at certain body parts, the pointed overwatch, the use of abilities, and more "control" over your units makes me think you might enjoy its current state, especially when it feels a lot like the middling child of Old Xcom and Firaxis' NuXcom.
Sounds good, it's on my wishlist. Got quite a few turn based tactics games to try out from the comments of this video, perhaps the world shall be redeemed!
Great video ! By the way any chance you can put a Terra Invicta review in the pipeline? I love the game and just want to see you play it and hear your take on it.
Yeah I even have the game already, I think its published by the same company as xenonauts and they sent me review copies of both. I think I didn't play terra first because the version number was quite low, like 0.4, so I figured it was unfinished. But a few people have recommended it, so I will give it a try.
@@OffyDGG oh boy that will be something to see, 2 game systems haphazardly meshed together, one too complex and one too simple and all in an early access state. :D p.s. the people making it are mostly the same people who made the Long War mods for Xcom 1 and 2.
@@OffyDGG i'd wait for some patches (and maybe a mod or two), it has a pretty bad interface (it doesn't tell you what Feats you learned) and quite a few bugs. Also their implementation of 5e is somehow worse than the table top which isn't that fun to play to being with.
You do realize that Fast and Hard is going to make a game like Xenonauys slower, more tedius and more unforgiving since you usually attack and thus will get instantly killed by the defending enemy everytime. Forcing you to inch closer even more, smoke every inch of the map and so on?
Not at all. I'm thinking something were shooting the enemy from the front removes their overwatch, and shooting from the flank kills them. So you always want a team advancing to the enemy flank each turn, trying to stop them being flanked in turn by using careful placement of your own overwatch. then smokes and flashbangs are just more tools to make it work. The inching forward thing is more of a problem when you can't see the enemy at all, a different problem really. Run at the enemy = die. They run at you = they die. Shoot at the enemy = something good happens, be it suppression or a hit (probably no rng on it). Pretty basic, but that's where the real strategy can start to build up and get satisfying, chaining moves together.
@@OffyDGG hold because if you can shoot them they can shoot you, and since they are defending you are walking into their overwatch and thus your guys will be dead or suppressed on first contact. And for flanking to work you need full map vision, which is rather silly, else you run into ambushes and again die because they as the defender will shoot first (you are the one entering their range). And if you have full map vision shouldn't the AI have it as well? Wouldn't they see you flanking and adjusting accordingly? Smoke? That works both ways doesn't it? Nobody will be able to shoot through it and the first to leave the smoke cover will be shoot and lose. And the defender has no reason to leave the smoke cover, you are the one who has to clear them out they can wait till the end of time. In a fight where both sides have the same range, vision, damage and numbers the defending side will always win. And if only you are the one with superior range, vision, damage or numbers where's the challenge? Not that slowly moving dozens of cannon fodder soldiers around in turn base is any fun to begin with. Moreover where's the incentive not to inch forward to within your range but outside their range and just sniping them one at a time? How would that even make sense in the context of fighting an alien invader with superior technology? "that's where the real strategy can start to build up and get satisfying, chaining moves together." Is that strategy or is that a puzzle? Glorified chess? Isn't that what Into the Breach is? Now yes I agree that Xenonauts has far too much RNG but your alternative sounds really tedious to someone like me who has played a couple of games that tried to do some of the things you said and ended up becoming puzzles games with 1 solution and countless wrong moves.
I just don't see these situations being so extreme. There're a thousand ways to solve all the problem scenarios you suggest there. "need full map vision" not at all, fog of war is where the rng element stays in, and what you use to not get shot i.e. flank the enemy when they don't have line of sight on you. Smoke is for moving across the open without the AI seeing you, rather than used for cover like in xenonauts. "defending side will always win" not if the attacker uses a strategy! Strategy game! blow up a wall and burst in blasting, use four guys to attack two enemies in a blind spot, force the enemy into your overwatch by spreading a fire, anything really. I just want it to be viable, and satisfying to pull off. Xenonauts starts going that way, but the random elements make it safer to play it the edging around way. You perhaps think its the other way around, but I just don't see that.
Hey Devin, have you thought about playing Jagged Alliance 3 or 2? Both are a content mine when it comes to "game design" Edit: Yeah, Xenonauts 2 is a huge dissapointment.
I hadn't really looked into those games before, but I will wishlist ja3 I think, looks interesting. I guess what I really want is that kind of refreshing or innovation on xcom specifically, so if cool new turn based tactics games are coming into existence, this is a positive step 😁
1. Its xenonauts, does not need to be ruined by trying to be different, like new xcoms were too simplified. Its perfect as it is and x2 should have great modding potential when its finished so it will truly shine then. 2. RNG, you want to make it always hit within certain range? Are you sure you want enemies to always hit you and dont have lucky misses and bonuses from cover and crouching? Again, no need to change that is already good, original xcoms had rng, apocalypse had rng, jagged alliance 2 had it fallout 2 had it, jagged alliance 3 has it and its great x2 has it. You can improve your RNG chances, train soldiers, improve them in combat, use equipment, get closer etc. Its called tactically strategising and its what makes turn based games great and not making them RTS games. In short, get better at playing the this type of game or just go play diablo or command and comquer type, no one is forcing you to play it.
1. If xenonauts is perfect, why remake it? If you honestly didn't want there to be new features, then x2 just isn't for you in principle so I am not sure what to say. 2. You went too far. No cover + within range = hit, so flanking shots usually hit, depending on the weapon. Cover and line of sight still work, potentially making all shots have surpession or overwatch cancelling effects so there is reason to shoot at enemies you can't hit. Overall, much more similar to how it works already. Even though other games use rng, the rng part is always what people dislike about them. Watch any veteran of turn based tactics and they moan about the rng aspects because it hampers their ability to play more cleverly. It makes these games less strategic and rewarding and encourages save scumming. You seem to think the opposite, but my theory is that if people were given skill-based systems instead they would usually prefer it. Most games and genres do this already, and I want turn based tactics to embrace it as well. Valkyria chronicles is the go-to example of this being done.
@@OffyDGG If xenonauts is perfect and if x2 is modern copy of it then its logical that x2 is also perfect. X2 still hasnt reached even milestone 2 which will be changed so much that saves wont be backward compatible let alone when game is finished. What you are looking now is an very early access, it will have new features and lots of mods when its finished. No cover + within range still does not equal hit, is it a hip shot, is it a snap shot is it aimed shot? Are you hurrying and under pressure because another enemy is nearby? Even in real life no cover and within range does not equal hit, that is what RNG systems are trying to reproduce faithfully. Less strategic and rewarding? Quite the opposite, if you plan and dont rush, if you use building walls and smoke screens to get closer etc. its quite rewarding when it pays off. There is no need for save scumming, occasional casualties and wounds make it more thrilling and connected with the gravity of the situation world is in. In the end, those who do moan about RNG tend to overlook when it works in their favor, its human nature to notice and remember bad anomalies, part of the survival instinct, but when an enemy misses point blank shot humans tend to forget that luck in next turn. Just wait until game is finished and modded, it will be great just as original was, I have played it and its mods many times, replayability is huge with xenonauts, as is the atmosphere and feel.
I'm a little confused, but if you are saying x2 is perfect as it is then I suppose I just disagree, because I already have x1 finished and moddable ready to go. Obviously x2 will improve later, but this video is only on the game in its current state, since it has gone onto the market like this. Regarding hipshot etc. that is something I want to see made into skill based mechanics. You are right that the rng is there to simulate the unknown factors not present in the game, but for me that is not worth the trade off of reducing the player's involvement. You could imagine a similar mechanics where the aiming reticule gets smaller the longer you aim, but if you run out of time for your turn you won't have time to aim. This is something very similar that will still create unreliable and risky plays without it ignoring player skill and input. What you said about the negativity bias, ignoring when it works in your favour, is the core reason why rng is bad, I think. Because the good luck doesn't offset the bad luck for the average human, the disappointment overrides the joy overall. This is not a defence of using rng to me because the goal should be entertain the player - again I think a skill-based, player-input based solution is always going to feel better, even if all that does is make it use rng in a different way. To put it another way: you *do* want heavy random elements to be there to force strategy and unknown situations upon the player, mainly through enemy behaviour/placement being unpredictable. You *don't* want to outcome of the player's basic inputs to the game to have a chance to fail, no matter how fair it would be, because the players will perceive it as unfair overall. I think the age of rng, especially for attacking hit probabilities, needs to come to an end, and games need to step up and start to actually simulate some of the factors that the rng is abstractly representing instead.
@@OffyDGG X2 will be perfect when its finished, currently its still enjoyable to play as a whole but not yet perfect. Personally I dislike early access releases but its semi standard for non AAA games nowadays, what can you do... You dont want outcome to have a chance to fail? As some would say get better at a game, my X2 colonel snipers have 100% hit chance at 20+ tiles even through multiple covers, same goes for my colonel assaults when they close in on helpless suppressed enemies, game has same enemy behavior as X1, they push attack until 70% are dead then you go and mop up the rest. While they push you set up clear lines of over-watch and mow them down before they can even shoot, in base defense mission in X2 I stationed my soldiers infront doors where you start the mission and every turn opened doors that auto close at end of turn, any enemy that opened door and entered adjacent room got killed instantly, with help of 1 MARS and 2 Sentry turrets owerwatches, also forget about unfinished grenade launcher, thrown grenades are the way to go... Finding out which tactic works is half of the fun in turn based tactical games and defeating the RNG is the large part of the fun. I have beaten Jagged Alliance 3 by finding out which weapon attachments ignore cover after 3 levels of aim giving my snipers (almost all mercs had a sniper) 100% for headshots, combine that with sneak and crits and most enemies never fire shot at you. Possibilities are endless, all one need to do is play the game and find out what works, games that lead you by hand are boring, heck even in Baldurs gate there is RNG with dice, resistances, penalties etc. that affect the chance if action will hit yet its still mega hits, all 3 of them and just like any other good game you can improve your RNG chances with lots of things. So hopefully good games will stay just like they are and age of RNG will never end.
Interestingly, your description of why you like rng has now become 'because I play without the rng', so I suspect you are much closer to my position than I thought. The thing you like is not the rng itself, but the fact you found a way to get rid of it. And with that barrier overcome, 'the possibilities are endless', as you said. I have completed the game, and it's true that after a while you get 100% chance to hit regularly. I prefer this immensely, since strategies like overwatch and storming rooms become effective. It sounds like you at least partially agree with this! Now I sort of agree that defeating rng is fun, but again I say that rng should be things like enemy behaviour rather than making player inputs have a chance to fail. In other words, I want xenonauts to naturally play like *your* experience of it already is, but at all times. The challenge doesn't come so much from luck management units, and more from multi-stage plans to inflict damage safely. From there, the devs can really start to design challenging encounters without worrying about people saying it's 'unfair' so much, I think. Like you, I think basically all players in rng games are striving to not have to use it.
Xenonauts 2 is such a huge disappointment. It’s like they made a knockoff of their own game! Why do that? Such a wasted opportunity to build upon the first game that yes wasn’t perfect but did have some decent gameplay ideas. Instead, as you say and I agree, it’s a worse remake of the original.
Because that's what their core base wants? The big complains from the fans about 1 was that the engine got really screwy with line of sight and line of fire. So going 3D in unity was supposed to fix all of that and give the player the "real" Xenonauts experience. For other styles you will always have old X-com, New Xcom, Even newer Xcom 2, slightly different new xcom but also quite buggy and boring Phoenix Point, real time with pause X-com the UFO series (Aftermath, Aftershock, Afterlight) and so on.
@@Palora01 Oooh, that sounds like an IRL Infinite Money cheat! Exploiting a fanbase for a relatively niche genre, make that same game over and over again with tiny incremental improvements on the the smallest issues, label each as being a sequel... And get infinite money from those fans because they have very few similar games to play if they want to scratch that itch of theirs!
@@The-Plaguefellow you mean the EA business model? Fifa, NFL, NBA etc. Or Activision business model (COD)? Or Microsoft (Halo)? :D The problem with doing that is that if there's enough money in it soon enough you'll get competition. On the other hand... if that's all you know and wanna do as a developer I don't really see the problem as long as you don't lie about. People can see what they are buying, if they wanna pay for it that's on them.
