The Exquisite Corps: XCOM: Enemy Within - Part 19

@bunguskhan: Thanks for letting us know

@mellotronrules: There is a massive gulf between expecting pro-level play and expecting them to read the text that the game puts in front of them to explain how it works.

This game provides a bounty of fodder for drama, hijinks, and insanity all on its own. But when the "drama" is coming from the fact that nobody on the team has the slightest clue of how EXALT works (see Abby today), or how the base building functions (see Dan last week) 15 episodes in it ceases to be entertaining and just starts to get hard to watch.

I don't know about you, but I enjoy watching people play a game, not fight against it constantly because they just impulsively click through everything that pops up.

@aizo: Agreed!

I don't mind the crew making mistakes at all and even Dan's recklessness can be pretty fun to watch. It gets a tad annoying for me to watch them make the same fundamental mistakes over and over again though. I guess much of that is because of the fact that they have three people playing the game and the break they took for Christmas, but still.

Still love the recent GBEast content though. Between this, Steal My Sunshine, 13 Deadly Sims and more there is just so much great stuff to watch. And occasionally complain about... ;-)

Making mistakes is fun to watch if they are reasonable mistakes and people learn from them.

It feels bad to watch someone make mistakes, not learn from them, and blame the game for being broken when it has been consistent with its own rules and communicated those rules to the player who clicked through all of the explanations without reading.

Abby and Dan are in a heated contest to determine which of the two is worse at this game... and reading.

I don't understand Abby's constant whining each time she makes a bad decision or misclicks in this feature. She is constantly blaming the game, and it's a real bummer. She is getting paid to play video games. Is it really that miserable?

I remember hating this mission.

I love this series, but... Boy, oh boy... I don't want to watch who gets the base invasion mission...

Honestly I think part of the problem is that Vinny needs to be more on the ball with explaining basic operational mechanics -- not necessarily playing the game for them but watching them flail around trying to figure out how the MEC upgrades worked for 10 minutes was kind of a thing

@busmute: The quick and easy answer is that she's going to get shit from people at any and every mistake. Even when the feature sets them up to make mistakes by making every session far apart and not even in full control of the play through.

Yes, it most definitely can turn into a miserable experience, or at least a dreadful one. Because it's like you said, "it should be great", but it ends up being needlessly stressful.

If I had something bad to say about this feature, it might be that it creates this less than ideal situation and relationship between them and their audience. They are actually doing pretty well considering they are making it super hard for themselves.

This is my favorite show right now, Giant Bomb or otherwise. Really hope they do XCOM2.

Question - "Why did that happen?"
Answer - Your inputs told it to.

i guess that's just different strokes for different folks. i for one CANNOT WAIT for the (potentially major spoiler) xcom base defense, because it's almost certainly going to be a bit of a shitshow and ostensibly none of them are expecting it.

for me the comedy of errors is what's compelling me to watch- it's probably part of the reason this video series is structured as 'pass-the-controller' itself (that sort of thing lends itself to potential pitfalls, not optimized play). i get it can be frustrating to watch someone wrestle with the basics- the 2 month break was long for both the players and the audience- but ultimately i find the frequent 'bull in a china shop' attitude pretty fun. if they make it to the end in spite of this, it'll be all the more satisfying.

@spedstyle: It is at the beginning when he is choosing his team. Dan doe

To be fair, the pop up says, "Are you sure you want to dismiss [soldier name]". The permanent part is on the rollover text in the menu itself. Also dismiss is not a clear choice of words. This is a thing i think came up at the very beginning of the series. Also wouldn't be an issue if the people playing weren't playing an hour every 3 weeks.

Guys got to remember that not only was there a long break since they last played, each of them only plays for like 1.5 hours a month because Dan, Abby, and Alex rotate. I'm surprised they remember as much as they do, honestly.

A lot of the little details are going to be up to Vinny to remind them of stuff like "hey, scroll up to select a higher floor so you can navigate certain areas more easily" (if he remembers that himself lol).

As far as what I'd suggest for combat tactics to the team going forward:

• Remember full and half cover works for enemies, too. That's why your shots on some aliens was around 40%. They had full cover, which gives a huge penalty to your aim.
• If you're not sure which mouse button to click and you want to back out of something like firing a rocket, always just hit escape. Escape is always safe. It can be confusing remembering which mouse button does what action.
• Keeping your sniper back is good, but only to a point. They can't shoot through objects or around corners, so if there's a doorway up ahead, it's best to line everyone up by the door including the sniper and then breach the door on the next turn when everyone has their moves.
• When pressing forward (especially if there's no cover), don't forget you can move back if you spot enemies. So move just to the edge of the blue movement range and if you find some bad guys, move BACK to the cover you came from (which means you're dashing, but you're also safe).
• Dashing is OK! There's a lot of instances (like the one I just mentioned) where dashing isn't reckless.

@matiaz_tapia: Exactly this. With comments like these, which I'm sure she does her best to avoid but still to some degree reach her, I'm sure A LOT of the enjoyment gets taken out of the game. It's not hard to figure out, people. You and I can sit on our ass with our pants unbuttoned and our gut hanging out and chip dust on our chest and just enjoy games for what they are. Meanwhile, while they obviously also enjoy games too, features like these make me wonder why they do them when huge segments of the community act like complete jerks in the comments, which I'm certain leads to stress/lack of enjoyment/overall sense that they aren't doing their job "well enough".

I, for one, enjoy this show a lot for all of their successes and their failures, and still think Dan dismissing Gita and the fallout it caused was one of the funniest things in a long time.

This series started at the first week of August. Doesn't feel like it's been that long.

"Can you shoot after moving?" at the end of the mission was godlike.

@staplegun: absolutely correct, sir. I was yelling at my computer when they did that.

I will never be upset about people making mistakes, but all the whining really gets to me.

I've not really been critical of their actual play before because this game is a dick to people new to the series but when you go Misclick, misclick, misclick... "God this game sucks!"

Nope, that's not how it works.

@vinny: You can only build fresh Mech Suits that are Level 1. Then you need to upgrade them to level 2, and after that, to level 3. It's a bit of an investment if you want to make a real hot-ass mech. But we both know that hot-ass mechs are always worth it.

On the subject of Biotic engineering, there are no draw-backs, other than the 3 day absence of said soldier. As you're running kinda' low on meld, I'd recommend doing it for some of your better soldiers after a mission when you got some time. You can give one soldier multiple upgrades, though not from the same tree. By that, I mean that a solider can only get 1 "Eye" upgrade, but he's free to choose a leg or lung upgrade to go with it.

Done with Abby's whining and blame shifting. I think some of it has to do with age, but it's very grating.

I'm fine with mistakes being made, but whining about it like the game is unfair seems immature. My advice to Abby is to hate the player (herself), not the game. None of the things that went wrong were glitches or bugs, they were Abby hitting the wrong button when she meant to cancel. Alex rarely makes input mistakes but I recall him owning up to them when it happens, Dan has occasionally made these mistakes and is usually just bewildered by how it happened and then moves on, and both of those reactions are preferable over whining.

That being said, Vinny needs to break out of the habit of telling commanders to move the back people first so they're "in range", should the forward people discover new aliens. This makes no sense; if you just move the forward people first, you'd still have time to advance the back people to fire on newly discovered aliens.

What I'd suggest Vinny do is tell the commanders to assess which of their 6 units they want to be the point man, who will be the one moving into unexplored territory and possibly find new aliens. This unit should usually be an Assault, Support, or MEC. Move this "point man" first; if new enemies are found, engage them, if not, have the other 5 units regroup near the point man, uncovering as little new territory as possible. Heavies and Snipers should NOT be your point man, because if you're ever moving them first in a turn, then you're limiting your options because they can't fire their rocket/sniper rifle now that they've moved.

Here's the list of reasons Jeff died, and some tactical lessons you desperately need to learn:

• Jeff was the most forward unit yet you moved him dead last. This is bad. You didn't quite know where the aliens were coming from, but for future reference, Jeff was the closest to all the metal structures which means closest to the ship, which generally means he will be closest to the aliens 90% of the time. The other 5 units were moved first, then for some reason you ran Jeff forward as far as you possibly could, uncovering 2 Mutons and 1 Berserker. Since you wasted everyone else's turn setting up in random positions already, you had almost no moves left to actually do anything proactive to the 3 newly discovered aliens. It immediately put you on the backfoot because you overextended too much. If you hadn't pointlessly moved and hunkered down your snipers first, it's possible one or both of them could've fired on a target.
• Jeff fired on the 3 aliens he discovered when he was way far ahead of the rest of the group. This is bad. The 3 aliens are not going to waste their turn scouting around for the 5 XCOM soldiers they can't see; instead all 3 are going to fire on Jeff, the only guy they can already see. You never want one soldier to have that much aggro, even a MEC. It was a minor miracle Jeff even survived a turn (the Berserker hit with melee because that's a 100% chance, but both Mutons missed with their plasma rifles which is quite lucky). Jeff's first move was running way too far ahead and uncovering 3 enemies; his second move should've been to Dash as far back to the rest of the group as possible. You'll lose vision of the 3 enemies, but that's fine - they'll also lose vision of you. They'll often advance to where they think you might be, but since you had people on Overwatch and generally in partial or full cover, this is fine. If you uncover a dangerous, overwhelming number of enemies, remember that nothing is forcing you to stay there; if you have a move left, just have that unit run back the way they came to the safety of the group. If the enemies do advance and still manage to damage Jeff or someone else, at least all squad members are near each other and in better range to heal and protect each other.
• If for some reason you really want Jeff to shoot somebody instead of retreating, you targeted the Berserker. This is bad. You absolutely should not have had him target the Berserker. It has so much HP that even if Jeff got a crit (11-13 damage), it wouldn't kill the Berserker. Yes, it was almost a guaranteed hit, but so what - merely damaging the Berserker removes no threat from the playing field, and no matter what, the Berserker will live to melee Jeff on the enemy turn. Jeff had vision of the other 2 Mutons, and while his shot percentage wouldn't be as great on them because they were farther away and in partial cover, Jeff's weapon has a chance of killing normal Mutons in a single hit (Mutons have 8 HP, Jeff's railgun does 6-8 damage). It's a significant gamble, but if it pays off, you'll suddenly only be facing 1 Berserker and 1 Muton. I think firing in that situation is still a bad move, but at least trying to one-shot a Muton is calculated risk that could pay off in some way; firing on the Berserker was never going to pay off and still left Jeff in range of 3 enemies. Yes, you fired on the Berserker one turn, then punched him to death the next turn, but this was at the cost of Jeff's life. You can't afford to do 1:1 trades of soldiers's lives for alien lives, or you will quickly run out of soldiers.
• Even if we go along with the timeline where Jeff discovers the enemies, then fires on the Berserker, you had him spend his next turn punching the Berserker instead of retreating out of range of the 2 ranged Mutons. This is bad. Having Jeff stand his ground and take that shot was spicy as hell, but somehow only the Berserker hit him and both normal Mutons missed Jeff. When you get that lucky, don't push your luck by keeping Jeff within enemy range. Have him run the hell back out of range of those Mutons, and let the rest of your squad finish off the Berserker. Again, I think you need to get more comfortable with the idea of units falling back if they're in too much danger - you seem too focused on maintaining line of sight with enemies even if it means putting 1 unit at extremely high risk of taking lethal damage. Usually the only reason to be spicy in this game is to try to reach Meld before it expires; if you're not even really trying for that, play as cautiously as possible whenever you can, always putting the safety of your soldiers as more of a priority than ending a skirmish quickly.

There were numerous points where you could've done something to keep Jeff alive, but at almost every possible turn you took the choice that did the most high-chance-to-hit-damage right now, that also kept Jeff at maximum risk to take damage and die. If you continue this line of thinking, it will continue to get soldiers killed.

Honestly, now that Tactical Tuesdays are thing over at Waypoint, I am perfectly happy to watch the Exquisite Corps burn everything to the ground. Chaos reigns

There is no shame in retreating soldiers that are exposed and badly hurt.

Oh cool another hour long video of Abby complaining nonstop. Glad I paid for this.

That was a hard watch. It seemed that Abby forgot everything about Xcom: SHO can move and shoot, weird move actions and cover.

That saïd, the end result was sad but not bad.

I look forward to every Monday morning for this series even when it's frustrating as all hell to watch.

But honestly, the idea that "I'm right next to this alien, why is my shot percentage 40%?!?" is still a thing 19 episodes in confuses the hell out of me. Cover applies to all shot situations that aren't flanks, regardless of distance. And it works both ways, thankfully.

Good luck Alex!

I agree that it's anybody's guess. Just when it seems like they're doing alright, I'm reminded that all 4 of them barely have any idea how anything works, and any mission can go awry at any time.

For now, they'll keep winning missions because Dave Ryckert is a Sniper Colonel, and that's just a really good unit with insane range and damage and abilities, and they'll be able to send him on just about every single mission because Snipers rarely ever get wounded since they're so far back. They're probably going to keep losing frontline soldiers periodically to boneheaded tactical decisions, but Dave will continue to carry the whole squad.

IF a mission goes so badly that the other 5 soldiers die, and Dave is left alone and can't retreat back the drop ship and dies, or IF the squad gets flanked and a lucky critical instantly kills Dave, then they are well and truly fucked. They don't have many high rank soldiers, and Dan dismissed 2 mid-rank soldiers last episode because he and Vinny were temporarily menu illiterate. Dan is THE high-rank soldier carrying them through missions at this point. Headshot is one of the only soldier abilities that they actually remember to use and they use it effectively, so the loss of Dave would be devastating because they don't have a high- or even mid-rank sniper to replace him with.

It's hard to estimate their chances of losing, since you have to fuck up a LOT on Normal difficulty for 8 countries to leave XCOM and end the campaign. Also panic is quite low right now because of the successful base mission.

That being said, their aircraft are still pretty poorly equipped so if they actually have to shoot down a UFO there's like a 50/50 chance that they fail at this task (eventually satellites will get shot down if they don't fix this). They're taking forever to build satellites, so abduction missions are going to continue to escalate panic for months and months to come (this panic could cause countries to leave). And their research is really haphazard and behind because they're capturing zero aliens and they're letting EXALT hack their research, so who knows how long it'll be until they acquire better armour and weapons (if they fall far enough behind on tech, their units will get outclassed by the harder enemies later into the campaign). They're going to have to buy all the weapons because they aren't recovering any plasma weapons from live captures.

It's going to be an interesting ride.

@mellotronrules: Yep. Considering it's almost been ::checks:: three months since Abby played this game, and also adding onto the fact that everyone plays only an hour of it every three weeks, I'm not expecting much. I figured the whole point of this was to go as far as they can and not necessarily finish the game. Either they win or they die. I guess I enjoy watching them mess up as much as them completing a mission perfectly; it's part of the fun.

It may also just be me, but it feels like this feature ran its course last year and continuing it again after a long break is more mandatory than something they're excited to do. Jeff and Dan are excited about DBZ. Alex and Vinny (and sometimes Dan) were excited about Yakuza 0. They could still be enjoying themselves, but this feels a little compulsory so they can finish what they started. Who knows.

@bisonhero said:

I'm looking forward to Site Recon, then!

My only complaint is the lack of interest in ever reading anything.
I get that they want the video to progress, but just take 30 secs to read giant text on the screen.

Blaming the game when it behaves as expected is always a great look.

@robaota: So, never?:D

@sectus: I don't think anybody here after 19(20) episodes is expecting a perfect playthrough. Actually, the comments are are always rewarding when they pull through tough missions, even if at tactical level they make loads of mistakes. I think it's more that, except for Alex, they still miss the understanding of basic mechanics. They still don't understand how angles, flanking and heights work and are bewildered when they move closer to an enemy in full cover from the same direction and hit percentages don't change, or sometimes even worsen. They still hunker down instead of switching to pistols to overwatch. They still forget that after moving they can't shoot rockets (and Vinny, being present for every episode, should absolutely, 100% know if they can throw a grenade after moving). They put the Jason with a freakin shotgun on overwatch miles away from anything, as he could do anything but miss. They spottily remember witch abilities their soldier have (see Jason's Close Combat Specialist, which worked in their favor last time without them planning it, and punished them this time). They still bring soldiers underequipped to mission (see here with LMG, or the current covert op with the basic pistol instead of a laser one) not as a consequence of a thoughtful decision, but simply because they don't notice/forget. I could go on and on, but as you can see i'm not talking about advanced tactics, just the basics.

They biggest one is that they still often don't read and mentally register the informations the game is presenting right in front of them. How many times per episode they fail to notice, or mistake/misread, the (often red) writing that tells them exactly why they can or cannot do something or what the consequences will be. And you can see the situation on the strategic level (squad management, research and buildings; what are we working towards now...a couple of useless basic generators and an uplink? Has anyone of them, even just once, simply scrolled through the list of of rooms to read exactly what every building can do and require? Or read the research descriptions beyond time needed?). So, considering they played 6/7 episodes each (of course over the course of months) and Vinny 20, I think the thing that makes people rile up the most is the lack of general improvements in their playstyles that should have been absorbed through normal playthrough and reading. If you told me this wasn't the 19th episode but the 3rd I would absolutely believe you.

It's just, as i said in a comment in the previous episode, the usual way GB play games, so nothing will change going forward, and is par for the course for people to leave comments to vent frustration for the playstyle (when was the P4 ER, 9 years ago? Watch some episodes and read the comments, it's exactly the same as now)

@matiaz_tapia: I don't disagree with your statements about there being a long lay off between each GBE member having a turn at the controls, or that it creates more tension and could certainly lead to bad decision-making. As others have stated, I'm not expecting a perfect play through. I've never played XCOM, and this feature certainly made me want to play the game. I just think Abby's attitude toward the game and the feature is a bit of a downer, especially juxtaposed with Alex and Dan (who have both also made plenty of mistakes or had weird unexpected problems with the camera controls).

One of the reasons playing with a controller is so much better is because it's harder to misclick and do things like move when you meant to open a door.

I'm very, very sad about the loss. But Alex is next and I always have full faith in him righting the ship when things are at their lowest.

I love people in the comments whining about Abby whining.

This series has been hilarious, frustrating, and rewarding, all in one. Fantastic.

Damn everybody needs to chill with that backseat gaming in these comments. This is a great feature, especially when shit goes sideways.

@mellotronrules: so much this! A comedy of errors.

This series would be boring if they breezed through the game.

The only complaints I can agree with are 'refusal to read in-game text' ones.

The Sectoid Commander is a unit with a defense of 20, which means all shots against it suffer an automatic 20% penalty. When it is behind high cover, it gains an additional 40 defense. This explains why a soldier right beside it might have only a 40% chance to hit.

The game helpfully provides this information with click on the "?" icon

I think it's always been a fundamental mistake that they only do one 45-70 minute episode a week, and I wish they would've scrapped that idea within the first couple episodes. I think the whole video series would work better if they did two 45-70 minute episodes per week. Yes, this would be more work to record and edit, and they'd probably have to cut some other video feature or livestream to make room for 2 episodes of Exquisite Corps per week.

But on the upside, with 2 episodes a week the series would probably be done or close to finished by now, and Vinny might have observed the game often enough to remember more of it and advise better. In its present form, they play it so infrequently that they make dumb menu mistakes in the base, and they still forget incredibly basic characteristics of the soldier classes (heavies can't fire rockets after moving, snipers can't fire rifles after moving, etc.).

It feels like this feature is twice as long as it needs to be because they committed to really short episodes once a week, and it seems like at least some of them find it frustrating/stressful how constantly out of practice and unfamiliar they are with the game (except for Alex, who has been practicing at home on his own time). It's already enough of a handicap to pass your save off to 2 other people and only sorta understand the mechanics when you jump back in because you missed a bunch of story and gameplay mechanics that the other 2 people saw but you didn't; I think it's really too much that on top of those handicaps they also only get to play once every 3 weeks. Playing once every 1.5 weeks feels like it would've helped a lot.

I think with 2 episodes a week this feature could've been a tight 5-6 months where some players halfway know what they're doing as they go, but at 1 episode a week its going to be a glacial ~10 months where the players and audience are frustrated by the frequent beginner mistakes happening even months and months into the feature.

Personally, I think that things like mis-clicks are just going to happen when you play once every 3 weeks (or less in this case. And, yeah, they will be extremely annoying. And the inexact way that XCOM handles the 3rd dimension is something that people have to learn how to finagle. Again, frustrating.

In the end, the main thing they need to figure out is how not to activate pods of aliens at the end of their turns and certainly to not hunker down soldiers before everyone has moved. Once the aliens are out and fighting, anther easy trick is to start with the soldiers that have the fewest options. For instance, if a sniper has only one target you might as well take that shot instead of having another soldier use their turn to take out that alien and leave the sniper with nothing useful to do.

These larger ship can be a real trap. Certainly, one could do worse than losing two soldiers. I think Abby got a little lucky when the Seekers forced her to slow down and put everyone on overwatch.

Honestly I have no real qualms with the gameplay choices, they are what they are and they can be made entertaining in most circumstances. Hearing "This game is fucking stupid, ARGH," every couple minutes, especially when it's not on the game, is a real downer no matter what. Beast in the East had the same problem when Dan was obviously not into playing a lot of the longer fights near the end