At least you can take comfort that the odds of something that rare happening again being very small. You are extremely unlikely to ever encounter such a series of misses again.

@alexw00d: Yea it can be frustrating, thats why i always keep auto saves on so i can rollback a bad turn.

If you watch impossible difficulty playthroughs on youtube and stuff, players tend to only take shots when they flank or when they have destroyed the enemies cover. That way you basically guarantee a hit. It's not as much a game of depending on good rolls as it is a game of doing everything you can to gurantee a No-miss shot. I feel like i've been getting more bullshit rng moments in the late game though... Hopefully it doesn't get worse.

Maybe i should just go play more men of war.

So, I'm reading two major things here.

First, it seems like the "correct" way to play the game, which limits absurd rng, is to move slowly, never over extending, and physically deforming the battlefield to your advantage.

Second, there are a lot of missions that have time limits.

That's an incredibly dumb conflict of core design goals.

@turambar: on the contrary, it's actually a really cool subversion of design goals. The first game encouraged you to go slow to a fault, so you ended up creepin forward one square at a time to get a sniper ambush on each pod. You wanna play slow, it feels safer, but you need to play fast. That tension is the whole point of the game, and just because you don't like it doesn't mean it isn't awesome.

@nevergameover: I was so pissed off when this happened to me. I was stoked that I took it out before it could get the attack off, then I realised that somehow it would happen anyway. That enemy is a total fucker, tons of health, dodges constantly at close range and it's so mobile it can get to pretty much anybody it wants.

Unless there are mechanics within the game that rewards you for fast play outside of a simple succeed/fail state, then it is mere contradiction. A game cannot claim to subvert existing ideas by adding an additional rule. It needs to build a set of game play mechanics that allows you to follow the additional rule in an engaging way. I have not heard anyone in this thread speak to any aspect of the game that helps support a sudden need to run and gun.

I have to agree with themaintank here. The increased pace of XCOM 2 is a welcome change over the sometimes excruciatingly slow pace of EU. I wouldn't go so far as to call it "running and gunning", though. You just can't sit in the same place for too long without consequences. I'm like 25 hours into the game and I've never failed a mission because of the timer, and never even really came dangerously close to doing so either.

You can still play the old way, just download a mod from the workshop and do away with the timers if you don't like them.

Can't remember the last time I was this impressed with a sequel!!! Well done Fraxis!!

Then you are either not reading the whole thread or misunderstanding what is being said. Because if you read through it a lot of people who have been playing for a good chunk of time now (past the first few missions) mention that the timers aren't a thing. The turn timer is 8 turns and most objectives you can activate at a distance, if someone can't handle the average 2-3 enemy groups in your way in 8 turns, that's generally that players fault. You don't need to run and gun constantly to manage them, you just can't play the super turtle play style.

Like others have mentioned this is a positive change overall. It makes battles more dynamic and varies up the pace from mission to mission (as there about half and half breakdown of also missions with no timers). Anyone who has played the 2012 Xcom "correctly" for more then 1 play through can tell you how monotone the overwatch turtle strategy got eventually.

And yes there are absolutely additional mechanics to deal with the timers. Stealth and faster movement in it, ambushes and remote hacking among them. There was many a mission where I could reach my objective on second or third turn, if so desired.

I am not sure how you are making such broad judgements on game mechanics of something you haven't played over those who did and given by them evidence to the contrary. Seems a bit weird to me. /shrug

I actually like the different mission types because they kick you out of your comfort zone and make the game that more tense. Also the levels with time limits, so far, seem to have a hard cap on number of enemies. I havent encountered a timed level without more then 9 to 12 enemies yet, where as I've had multiple levels without a time constraint that are throwing 24 or more enemies at me.

By the way, how awesome is skulljacking, right? You literally stick a ME style holographic wrist blade up into a dudes skull in order to "hack" them for info and lifting them up into the air in the process by their chin, after which they promptly die (regardless of armor or health amounts). Xcom hackers are probably the most macho hackers ever. So good.

I am having this problem now too :/

Graphics aren't everything but I expected the graphics to look better. I feel they are a bit lazy and, other than new stuff, this looks pretty similar to the original.

I'm not enjoying the added difficulty because it feels like there is 0 risk and reward, which is what I like. The aliens can mind control or bring the dead back with 0 penalty or difficulty. If I kill someone directly linked to a Sectoid they should take damage or a debuff or something. At some point a game goes from being challenging but rewarding to just just poorly balanced and made. X-Com 2 so far feels like the later.

@sammo21: Try flashbangs to deal with Sectoids. When I first started the game I thought they were overpowered as well, but really, I would rather a Sectoid used reanimate than shoot at one of my soldiers. When they reanimate it's like giving you a free extra turn to deal with them, and the zombie is going to die instantly when it's controlling Sectoid does anyway.

@turambar: The "correct" way to play isn't really that slow. The more I learned about the new classes the more I realized that the game isn't really about sitting back and taking pot-shots at enemies in cover anymore (or setting up overwatch traps). They've put in way more tools that allows you to approach the game much more aggressively. Just the simple fact that end-game soldiers have toolbars bigger than there are number of hotkeys shows that you have so many more options in this game. Plain shots and overwatch very quickly become inferior options, and with the exception of sharpshooters you're almost always better off by moving in closer then using an ability.

This was my entire experience with overwatch during early missions. Set overwatch trap during concealment, trigger the mob with last guy, watch action cutscene of my soldiers missing moving targets, cross fingers and hope the enemy doesn't fuck me up too badly before I get another turn. Overwatch has an aim penalty apparently but afaik the game doesn't tell you what it is (could be 5%, could be 90% for all I know), so how you're supposed to take it into account and plan accordingly I have no idea.

After watching this tactic fail a few times I gave up on it and resorted to the only early tactic which isn't a coin toss: throw grenades at everything.

Neither of these states are inevitable. Plenty of strategic / tactical games rely on understood rules and 100% predictable moves (Chess being a pretty popular example - no random dice rolls required there). Not all games have to adhere to that approach ofc, I'd just personally prefer it if so much of XCOM2's gameplay wasn't based on chance - especially early on where there's little room for luck to 'even out' and 2-3 bad rolls can defeat perfectly sound play.

The 'unstoppable death squad' thing is common, perhaps even desirable for many people, but not inevitable. There are various mechanics they could employ to avoid it or counter it if they wanted to.

Well, that's it. I can put XCOM 2 to bed for a bit, at least until they sort things out enough for me to try an Ironman Legend run. I can safely say that if anyone thinks they are having a hard time right now, you just wait until the last mission. It's easily the biggest difficulty spike in the game by a mile.

My strategy (grenade everything, then pistol everything) worked incredibly well. I didn't lose a single solider, and the vast majority of the game (the last 70% or so) was a total cakewalk. Even the first part of the final mission, which gives you easily the toughest pod you will ever encounter (two 25+ HP, 5 armor Sectopods with two Heavy MECs on Overwatch) was pulled apart in one turn before it had a chance to fire.

...And then I ran out of grenades. And then I ran out of everything. And they just kept coming. The objective the game forces you to do is very, very hard. Far harder than anything it has asked you to do at this point. You thought turn timers were bad? You'll be begging for a turn timer, just so the pain can end.

Do you want to know more? I'll keep it vague (no names, no plot points), even in spoilers:

If I were to do it again? Mind control. I would run six Magus and mind control an army as I went along, as the enemy seems to prioritize units that are under your spell. Grenades can run out, mines can run out, mimic beacons can run out, and hackable enemies can run out, but psionic powers recharge.

Still, what a mess. You snooze your way through the game and then it slaps you in the face.

Here's my results (should be spoiler'd in case you don't want to see the stats screen, but there's nothing earth shattering on it:

Vigilo Confido, Commanders.

@mirado: Sounds like that final mission is a response to the criticism of the final mission in EU. I'm glad to hear it's hard.

Which by the way, I'm very satisfied so far with how they handle difficulty. It certainly gets easier, but there are still moments where I was overwhelmed. Uncovering 2 Andromeda's for the first time not knowing what they were for instance was a disaster. I think they do very clever things in the mid-late game by spiking the difficulty just because of enemy design.

At least right now, I'm far more satisfied with XCOM 2's progression than EU. I feel like I'm getting stronger, but I don't feel like I can do 'whatever'. I still need to be tactical. I like it. A lot.

@jimbo: My arguement during darkest dungeon was, essentially, you need a "the game if played perfectly, always results in victory" for a rogue-like to be good. That, I think is the fundamental game-design element I am trying to find a better way of phrasing.

Example. Chess. If played perfectly, Chess can not be lost. At some point the entire game will be 'solved' such that if each player plays perfectly, one side is always going to win. The game of chess needs that 'nirvana' state because, otherwise, there is no point in continuing to learn. A good rogue-like, and a good strategy game..perhaps just a good game in general however makes such an end point, such a 'nirvana' to be essentially impossible, or reserved for only the very very top of the curve, the 0.001%.

Note that while I say that about Chess..its only theoretically true. If given enough brain power and time, you could chart out every single possible variation of possibility and thus make the correct choice among the available options, every time. The fact that such a state exists means you can always get closer and closer to it.

To switch back, thats what makes the best rogue-like, angband and etc, so uniquely good. They have that 'absolute perfection =victory, always' but, like chess, such a state is extremely hard to achieve. Its existence however means there is always something more to learn, or once you know it all the satisfaction of knowing that every failure is not random chance, it is your own doing.

Strategy games I think might be better if they were able to copy that formula exactly? But the vast majority of them do no. As you mention they could eliminate the random chance from X-com and make it a more chess like game. But as people have said, it thus ceases to be X-com at that point. Thus my point that most strategy games (perhaps not all I will grant) are considered good/great, when the "lost at start' and "can't lose" are at the extreme ends, with lots and lots of room for learning and "ok this lose was my fault, not the A.I.s' which is what you need to achieve the "holy crap I did it! That was close but I, me and me alone not RNG, did it woho!"

@zevvion: Those units may be my favorite in the whole game. "Ha! They're just tougher Mutons! What's the point of tha-oh, wait, that's not good."

And yeah, anyone who bitched about the ease of EU's ending deserves everything they are going to get from this one.

@mirado: Heh, ye, the last mission is pretty fucked. I'm wondering how many of the people who are playing ironman blind are gonna regret it once they get screwed at the very end.

I'm enjoying this game so much. Tough but not too tough, a fleshed out strategic layer, timed objectives to keep you pushing forward and a better balanced set of abilities for your troops... I'm just so fucking happy :D Oh and the setting is great. I even have little bios written for my guys, it makes losing them all the more bitter!

Shame about the poor optimisation, I expected more from a big developer making a PC only title. But given how much fun I'm having I can ignore the frame rate issues and occasional weird lag. Bad news for people with more serious issues, I hope that it gets patched soon.

No more unlikely than the first time it happened, assuming the values shown to the player are accurate (which is probable but not necessarily a given).

It actually might not be a bad idea for the game to include some kind of short term 'luck balancing out' mechanic for instances like this. Like if you miss a 70%+ shot your squad gets a 'Concentrate' status aim bonus for a couple turns or something.

Just started a new campaign: first mission after blowing up monument I miss a couple of 80+%s point blank on the first sectoid, he reanimates a dead guy and mind controls one of my team, reinforcements teleport in behind me and half my squad is wiped out before I can get enough shots to land. IDK what the late game is like but early missions are pure luck. I haven't seen early game design like this since ~Baldur's Gate 1.

@jimbo: The game is not 10% luck, 90% chance. Get a grip man, tone down the hyperbole a little bit. If that was the case every mission you played would have 45% chance of failure even for a good player. In reality, if you are a skilled player you will succeed in most of your missions but not necessarily all. Skill nearly always trumps RNG in this game. I'm a couple of months in now, I've lost 6 guys but haven't failed any missions and I'm playing third highest difficulty. It's tough but not too tough. RNG could fuck you on a single mission, but if you are losing consistently it's because you are not playing well.

They have this in Dota for (some of the) percentage based skills. Pseudo-RNG they call it. If you miss the first crit for example, and it's 15% chance of proccing, each time it doesn't proc it goes up and then resets when it does. Now obviously that wouldn't work perfectly here with xcom cause of variables, but I'm sure they could do something to balance this shit out.

@arabes:I'm talking about single missions. Over 100s of turns luck will even out. Over half a dozen turns it can easily not even out, which early on can easily make the difference between a solid start or a crippling blow which leaves you chasing the difficulty curve from the get go.

The game is structured such that any setback makes the game progressively harder and any success makes the game progressively easier. That's perfectly fine (if unusual), but it does mean there can be extreme ramifications for a couple of early dice rolls going against you. The guy I was replying to shouldn't feel like he sucks just because the game rolled a dice and decided he lost, any more than anyone should be too stoked because the game rolled a dice and decided they won. I got through that same mission as him with a flawless rating and strongly suspect I was just luckier with hits and misses than he was.

I've had another early mission where failing a tower hack (25% chance) with a specialist as levelled up as he could be at that point alerted everyone and called down an extra squad + robot from the sky and an inevitable wipe. Reloading and succeeding the hack (75% chance) avoided the reinforcement, gave me control of the first robot, control of 2x turrets and an effortless victory. The mission difficulty could swing from impossible to trivial on a single dice roll. If the 'smart' thing to do is not interact with the tower on anything less than 100% certainty then I guess I'd argue why bother having that mechanic at all at that point. imo the specialist should either have been capable of hacking it or not.

So I had this certain special mission thing randomly trigger somewhat early on? EMP beacon

I don't think the question of wether luck has a significant influence on success or not is very interesting. The basic fact of the matter is that luck IS significant, and if you don't like that then the game is not for you. That facet of XCOM is not going to change. XCOM like any game with dice rolls is a game about playing the odds. Play some Blood Bowl as an amateur against someone who really really knows that game and tell me they don't smash you every single time. Sometimes the dice gods want to put you in your place, sometimes they bless you, but it's always influenced by the decisions you made as to when those dice rolls would take place. Saying dice rolls don't matter and saying skill doesn't matter are equally ridiculous points of view.

I think i am on the final mission and ive enjoyed a lot about the game. Early on the choices i made were completely wrong and set me back quite a bit but thats the fun part of the game. Ive always felt that early on its a struggle but theres a point in each XCOM game where you climb over the mountain and it becomes much easier. None of squad members have died but a lot of them a severly injured, so the final mission will be a challenge hopefully.

@jimbo: I had a similar discussion with Bladededge (I think was the name) about Darkest Dungeon.

I don't want everything to be in my control, I don't think it should be. I enjoy when I don't know how something is going to pan out, that element of risk makes it exciting. If hackers succeeded every time then I would use them every time. Because they don't succeed every time, I usually only use them once cover is blown (assuming the penalty for failure is to reveal your guys). However, when the shit hits the fan and I'm in a bad way I tried risky hacks (25% chance of success) when they've failed I've lost guys :( But when they succeed and allow you to turn the tables then high is amazing! You beat the odds and came out on top! That's what games with RNG have that others don't. The uncertainty leads to higher highs and lower lows. And I love games that elicit that kind of emotional response in me.

If you don't like that that's cool, there are other games you can play (frozen synapse and Invisible Inc.) for example. But I think you need to be careful in your criticisms. Overall this game is far more about skill than it is about chance. maybe that other does in fact suck at this game? Lots of people do, it isn't an easy game to master. Blaming all all successes and all failures on RNGesus betrays a lack of understanding of the game's systems and a refusal to play the odds and mitigate your chance of failure.

I can tell you how it worked in the first game, but I can;t say for sure that it is the same. In the first game, the penalty was that the hit chance was multiplied by 0.7, so a 10% chance was reduced to 7, a 50%chance was reduced to 35, and 100% to 70. It also had 0 critical chance. This would then be applied again if the enemy was dashing, so against an enemy that dashes your hit percentage goes from 100% to 49%. Of course I don't really know how that interacts with other penalties and bonuses. The calculations the game shows you suggests that bonuses are applied before penalties though.

I think this is why they've included the stun lancers in the game. It's a pretty smart move if they want to try and break people's dependence on overwatch, in a way. They have a potentially devastating melee attack that they can perform from a long way away while dashing, so you have to priorities killing those guys, as overwatch is a pretty poor defense against them.

I think overwatch is best used situationally: supposedly in the first game, an enemy unit would not move if it saw one of your soldiers go into overwatch, choosing instead to fire on you (although their ability to see the battlefield was worse than the player's, so frequently they would not be able to see a soldier go into overwatch unless they were quite close). This meant that there were times when you couldn't get a good shot at an alien, and so it was better to go into overwatch to pin them down, force them to take a bad shot at you behind full cover, and get them the next turn. Or even if your hit percentage was low enough, you might fancy your odds at hitting them out in the open a little more, even with the aim penalty. As with a lot of things, later on your soldiers are so good that this kind of situation doesn't come up as often...

I heard you should try being a Chimpanzee force, that helps.

I love everything except the timers, both in-mission and on the map (global game over thing). I modded out the mission timers but can't find a good mod for the map one.

@galiant: The map one isn't really a timer, more of a counter of how many "things" the aliens have finished. And you can "unfinish" most (if not all?) of them by following your objectives.

I'm loving it, other than it running like shit that is. Hope it gets a optimization patch soon.

@galiant: If you really wanted to, there are console commands for reducing the Avatar project meter. You don't need to though, at one point my meter was completely full and now I'm down to only 4 bars filled in.

I failed my run. It all started going sour after I encountered Andromadons for the first time. I uncovered 2 at once, didn't know what they were. One soldier died, and I was surrounded and overwhelmed to extract. I was surviving, but the timer ran out and all 5 others were captured. I had no good items and only half of a good squad left. One more soldier died later because I uncovered 3 Archons, an Andromadon and one of those Gatekeepers. Missed most shots, Archons wiped house. Later, I lost another 2 soldiers because of poor rolls. Missed 70+% shots constantly. Only had one Colonel left at some point, and one Psionic soldier. Only Squaddies otherwise. I was starting to get less unlucky and win some missions, but getting promotions was slow work. Then, I failed 3 Council missions in a row, because of nonsense. They were all 'protect this object' missions, which are total garbage. In the first, a pod spawned right next to it on the first turn. They did about 15 damage each turn. 4 turns into the mission they already destroyed it. Even if I dashed to it, I wouldn't have been on time because it was on the other side of the map. It felt incredibly cheap. It caused me to lose control of the region. Next mission failed too. I don't precisely remember why. Last one also failed, because while I was totally on time, it somehow got destroyed anyway for no reason. Started to lose control on the map everywhere, Minor Breakthroughs happened, and I couldn't do the facility missions because I had no control in the regions they were at. I had to reclaim 2 regions before I could even access the closest facility. I didn't have the Intel to do that.

They won, completed the Avatar project. Boo. Those Council missions are dumb. Don't have them attack the thing on turn 1, that's super cheap.

@iodine: Try switching to Borderless Window, that seems to have fixed my crashing at least for now.

edit: nevermind, it's just crashing in a slightly different way now. Oh well.

@zevvion: Not to say you could salvage your run with that amount of bullshit pod spawns, but here's a tip; if you Skulljack an Officer and get the "facility lead" option on your hack (or any other way, the key is that particular reward), you can assault a facility without making contact with that area.

My campaign spawned me in the worst possible spot (arctic Asia, top right corner), so I had to rely on jamming dudes in the brain in order to take out places in North America until I could make the long series of connections necessary to reach those territories.

People who are having framerate problems: Turn off VSync, and set your AA to either "Off" or FXAA. The VSync in XCOM 2 is problematic and needs to be adjusted in a future patch.

Okay, I'm starting to get into it now, 15+ hours in...

I fucking love it and hate it in equal measure. I just finished a facility mission where through my own stupidity (hacked a turret that pulled 3 additional pods) I had to fight off about 12 aliens simultaneously. With one dead, another unconscious, and the rest wounded, I had to leave behind someone to set off the explosions and distract the reinforcements so that the rest could escape. Now I am itching to get a rescue mission cause I'll be damned if I am going to let those alien bastards dissect and study my soldiers like I dissect and study theirs. FOR EARF MOTHERFUCKERS!

Are we going to get a proper QL of this?

Edit: nevermind, there's already a thread on this

The game came out on Friday...it's only Monday.

Okay sure but the embargo has been up for a full week.

So I've kinda lost motivation to quickly finish the game. I'm steam rolling everything, and making stupid mistakes cause its gotten so mindless. My newest tactic is to say fuck walls and just blow giant holes in buildings and obliterate anything that dare's poke its head out. I pushed back my avatar counter to 4-5 pips with no skull-jacking, and officers die so quickly even with extra armor it's hard to get close.

It feels like they learned nothing from EU in a way. I keep letting units get extra armor and reinforcements. Still steam roll like they're nothing. At one point there apparently was new robot unit, but it died so quick I didn't notice till the corpse list.

@beaudacious: I just finished the first black site mission for the first time. At the start of the mission, I come up to a building which turns out to be completely empty except for the turret on the roof. Can't go out the front door without being spotted. And just outside out of the front door is the first pod. Parked a grenadier on the roof just outside of turret range and everyone else inside on overwatch. Lobbed a grenade blowing out the front wall and causing the turret to fall, instantly die. Now all my overwatched guys inside have shots on the first pod. I wish I could have saved that as a replay.

Yeah, I tried that twice but it always failed. It's too bad. I came back from so much, but in the end I just couldn't prevent the thing from completing. I will say that I really like the difficulty curve. It doesn't feel like the endgame can be done with your hands tied behind your back. I will say though, that as the game progresses, I found setting up ambushes from concealment less and less appealing. Them getting their turn immediately afterwards makes it extremely dangerous if you miss all the shots.

Next time, I might just use Aid Protocol and Threat Assessment on my Specialist himself, so he still gets the reaction shot, and then is left with one turn after the enemies scatter to toss a Mimic Beacon if necessary. Might be a good solution to one problem.

But yeah, I was just fucked with bad luck. The Skulljack only worked twice out of 10+ times I used it (70% chance), all others straight up missed. There was more RNG nonsense going on. If you'd ask me now, I'd tell you that swords have about 10% chance to hit. Because they missed on my playthrough 9 out of 10 times. And Bladestorm only hit once in my entire playthrough. It must have procced at least 15 times.

Bad rolls on RNG in combination with that terrible council mission of 'defend the object' where it gets destroyed 4 turns in (seriously, what are you even supposed to do about that?) resulting in losing contact really made it a uphill battle.

Luckily, I can assume since it was my first playthrough that I didn't optimally plan the meta-game, so this second run will surely succeed. Since that is really the part where it went sour.

I'm already at my 4th run after failing to manage the resources, research, resistance contacts in Ironman mode. Damn Dark Events and Project Avatar is putting too much pressure and my soldiers are always gravely wounded. T___T