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Author Topic: Looks good, but not exactly fun  (Read 12279 times)

sjm

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Looks good, but not exactly fun
« on: August 20, 2006, 04:28:00 am »
Well, I downloaded 2.0RC3 installed it an loaded up the game. The UI looks great. I especially liked the models of your recruits when you get to equip them. The 3D combat view is also groovy!

But It's not all plain sailing. The biggest problem is the difficulty, which means that I'm not going to go back to the game after messing around with it for a couple of hours. You really, really (REALLY) need to tone it down A LOT. I played the first mission twice on the easiest level. The first time I managed to kill 1 alien. The second time I managed to hit 2 aliens and kill none. I'm a veteran of all the X-COM games, and none of them were even close to this difficult on the easiest setting.

It's important to give new players the chance to get into the game and give them a feeling of success. It's no fun if hitting an alien 7 times produces no result, but a single alien can pop around the corner and wipe out several of your agents with a single burst of his ray gun (or whatever it is).

The fundamental problems are:
Weapons: the human weapons are either horribly underpowered, or the alien weapons vastly overpowered. In all the X-com games, despite the aliens having superior technology, the human weapons were relatively effective at the start, and it took a while before the aliens appeared with their big guns. As long as you concentrated your fire and had the numerical advantage (and took cover), you could overcome the technological disadvantage. Aliens were not able to wipe out several agents with a single burst at the start. Insta-death is never good for gameplay anyway(!).
Aliens: There are too many aliens (with far too powerful weapons) at the start that seem too powerful as well (in terms of attributes). If you toned down the weapons and the number of aliens (or their attributes), the game would be playable.

I've read a few other posts, and I don't appear to be the only one with this problem. As it is, instead of drawing people into the game and giving them a chance to learn what works or doesn't work (which should be the point of the easiest levels), it's very offputting. On easy level, it should not really be a problem to win the first mission without a single casualty, unless you're really daft. That's why it's called "easy". I shudder to think what the harder difficulty levels are like. Once I know my way around the game (UI, weapons, missions, research etc.) I can up the difficulty level. But if I can't get past the first misson on the easiest level without knowing the game inside out, something is horribly wrong - there is really no point in an "easy" level that expects you to be something of an expert!

If you think of the X-com games, the initial missions were a sort of "training ground" that acquainted you with the basic mechanics of the game, getting the hang of moving your agents and learning to use cover to your advantage.

In Alien Invasian, cover didn't make the blindest bit of difference; the aliens simply came charging round the corner and blasted everyone with a single shot. Not one of my agents managed to fire a single shot on the aliens' turn.

Other than that there also are a few UI problems. I didn't find the method of directing your ship intuitive, for example (shift-clicking), and find it strange to start my craft from the base screen. Surely there should be some means of interacting with your aircraft from the geoscape (or if there is, it's not immediately obvious - I tried to click on the ship, but that just took me to my base). There is also no indication of what the difference between primary and secondary fire modes are (I'm assuming one is an aimed shot, the other a snap shot or auto shot, but if so, name them appropriately).  When purchasing items, such as ammo, which you generally want in large quantities, it's a real pain having to click 20 times. Either use a slider, or at least respond to the mouse button being held down and increase the stockpile appropriately. Think of RSI :D

And in the 3D combat, I'm not convinced with by overcomplicated input system. No right-click to shoot? Middle-mouse to face in a certain direction? How about right-click to shoot or turn depending on where the user clicks (target= shoot, otherwise turn), and use the middle mouse button to rotate and zoom the 3D view, thus conforming to both X-com and 3D gaming standards? :)

Overall, the game definitely has promise, but it appears to me to be more of an exercise in programming an X-com clone than an exercise in making an enjoyable gaming experience - nothing that can't be fixed, but you really need to do some proper playtesting!

Jesterftk

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Looks good, but not exactly fun
« Reply #1 on: August 20, 2006, 02:15:10 pm »
:roll: What do you think everyone is doing here?

HaJo

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Re: Looks good, but not exactly fun
« Reply #2 on: August 20, 2006, 02:15:52 pm »
Quote from: "sjm"
I downloaded 2.0RC3 .. But It's not all plain sailing.

RC3 is getting somewhat old now, and the current version got many bugs fixed.
There should be a RC4 real soon now...

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The biggest problem is the difficulty,... I'm a veteran of all the X-COM games,

Ufo:AI is a bit different, so some of the old tactics need adjustments.

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The fundamental problems are:
Weapons: the human weapons are either horribly underpowered,
or the alien weapons vastly overpowered.

Usually, one of the following is enough to kill an alien:
* Full dose (secondary fire) from assault-rifle or smg
* Full dose (secondary fire) from flamethrower
* 1 normal + 1 double shot from shotgun
* one aimed hit from sniper-rifle + one other hit
* one hit from rocketlauncher + one other hit
* 2 hits from a grenade

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As long as you concentrated your fire and had the numerical advantage (and took cover)

In Ufo:AI the aliens can move a lot, so your cover needs to be out of their reach.
Let them come to you, don't charge them.
And have groups of 2-3 soldiers to shoot at one alien.

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Aliens were not able to wipe out several agents with a single burst at the start.

Remember Alien grenades ?
With a kevlar-vest, soldiers can survive 1-2 hits from a distance.

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too many aliens (with far too powerful weapons) at the start

First mission at Revelstoke (Farm) has only 3-4 aliens.

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On easy level, it should not really be a problem to win the first mission without a single casualty,

I already did that on normal - but I know that level quite well now...

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If you think of the X-com games, the initial missions were a sort of "training ground" that acquainted you with the basic mechanics of the game,

Ok, maybe there should be 2-3 of those "first" intro-levels.
Currently, the quota is set to 0, which means the first mission can be skipped.

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Not one of my agents managed to fire a single shot on the aliens' turn.

Reaction fire must be enabled each turn.

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There is also no indication of what the difference between primary and secondary fire modes are

The effect is shown below the weapon.

sjm

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Re: Looks good, but not exactly fun
« Reply #3 on: August 20, 2006, 11:34:51 pm »
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The biggest problem is the difficulty,... I'm a veteran of all the X-COM games,

Ufo:AI is a bit different, so some of the old tactics need adjustments.

it's too difficult. You need to give the player the chance to discover these tactics, not punish them for not knowing them the first time they play. Imagine what it is like for someone who's never played a TBS game before... Either that, or the reaction fire really screwed  me big-time (see below). But I don't think so; I wasn't particularly effective on my turn (I couldn't hit bugger all anyway, apart from about 3 yards).

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As long as you concentrated your fire and had the numerical advantage (and took cover)

In Ufo:AI the aliens can move a lot, so your cover needs to be out of their reach.
Let them come to you, don't charge them.
And have groups of 2-3 soldiers to shoot at one alien.

As I say I tried that, but it didn't help. It may be due to a different issue though (see reaction fire below)

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Aliens were not able to wipe out several agents with a single burst at the start.

Remember Alien grenades ?
With a kevlar-vest, soldiers can survive 1-2 hits from a distance.

I don't remember any insta-death weapons in the first missions in any of the X-com series; admittedly I haven't played EU or TFTD for years. But I was playing Apocalypse the other day, and I don't think it was that different from the earlier games in terms of general game design. When the more powerful weapons did turn up, you generally would have had the chance to research various technologies that would help you counter these more powerful weapons (psionic attacks, improved armour, shileds) as well as build up your agents attributes. With armour, agents can generally withstand at least one hit from a powerful explosive and several hits from beam weapons.

Either way, 1-2 hits is far too few hits for a kill IMO, especially in the first mission. It's not a good idea to build in insta-death in games anyway, because it doesn't give the player any chance of recovering from an error. We play games for fun; it's not supposed to be some kind of test! All it makes the player do is reload their last save game, which is an unneccesary annoyance and inconvenience. The only game insta-death works in IMO is nethack - and that's because there's no reloading :D

BTW, that also means that I don't think it should be too easy to kill an alien with a single agent in a single round either. Well not unless every round hits :D

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On easy level, it should not really be a problem to win the first mission without a single casualty,

I already did that on normal - but I know that level quite well now...

My point exactly; you shouldn't need to know the game inside out to do decently on easy level!

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If you think of the X-com games, the initial missions were a sort of "training ground" that acquainted you with the basic mechanics of the game,

Ok, maybe there should be 2-3 of those "first" intro-levels.
Currently, the quota is set to 0, which means the first mission can be skipped.


In fact if you think about it, they worked something like this in X-com (and this is good game design):
- The aliens got progressively harder as the game developed. This meant introducing aliens with psionic capabilities, for example. The initial aliens were generally very weak, and it was just important to concentrate your fire. But whilst the earlier aliens were generally weak attribute-wise, some would excel in one specific area. This meant that different tactics were required to defeat different aliens - a means of introducing players to the various strategies that can be used to combat different threats. New aliens were introduced slowyl to give you a chance to get used to them.
-The alien technology also got progressively stronger as the game went on. The initial aliens tended to have pretty feeble weapons (no insta-death!). New weapons were intrdocued slowly, and you were generally given the chance to have researched previous technology that could protect you from later threats by the time they turned up. For example, in Apocalypse (which, as I played i yesterday, I remember better than the others), the initial alien ray guns are no better than the human weapons. More powerful, yes, but they are also exceedingly innacurate. Alien weaponry doesn't really start to get interesting until several weeks into the game (devastator cannon).

In fact there are similiarities between the initial aliens and weapons in this respect; some aliens have many more hps than a human, but to compensate they are slow or innacurate; some weapons are more devastating if they hit, but to compensate they are less accurate. I got the impression that the aliens in AI were superior in both attributes and weapons to an insane degree - wiping out 3 agents in one burst, for example.


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Not one of my agents managed to fire a single shot on the aliens' turn.

Reaction fire must be enabled each turn.

I'd suggest having it they other way round then, because I expect my units to fire if an alien turns up. The only time I can think of when I would want an agent to hold his fire is if civilians are in the way. So the default should really be to fire back. It's what you'd want most of the time; you shouldn't need to activate it each turn. Note that all other games of this type (e.g. JA, as well as X-COM) work like this - by default, if you have TUs left, your agents fire back.

It's therfore in no way intuitive that you need to do this - and it might explain why my entire team got wasted by a couple of aliens.

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There is also no indication of what the difference between primary and secondary fire modes are

The effect is shown below the weapon.

But not on the 3D combat view, where it should be :)

i.e. you need to have it display the weapon-specific info, not primary/secondary mode. Unless you already know all the weapons (in which case you don't need the info displayed on the weapons screen OR on the combat screen), it's in no way immediately apparent. If you displayed the different weapons capabilities there, it'd be much easier to get to know the capabilities of the weapons as well. I can't be expected to remember the attributes of X different weapon types, or to continually refer to the UFO-pedia whilst I'm trying to play the first mission. So instead of saying primary mode, it should say "aimed shot". "full dose" or whatever it REALLY is.



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Anyway, it's quite possible, that it's not as impossibly hard as I first thought, but the reaction fire is really screwed if you need to remember to enable it (and need to know you have to enable it on top of this, when no other game in the genre that I know of works this way round).

You really would be well advised to stick to conventions in that sense. If someone makes a RTS game, where you can't group units, select them and centre on them with alt/ctrl and number keys, people will be flummoxed. That's the de facto standard :D It's the same with the middle mouse button to scroll, right mouse to fire/turn. Don't reinvent the wheel! If you keep to conventions, new players will find it so much easier to get into the game.

Hoehrer

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reaction fire
« Reply #4 on: August 21, 2006, 12:27:28 pm »
Quote from: "sjm"
Quote

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Not one of my agents managed to fire a single shot on the aliens' turn.

Reaction fire must be enabled each turn.

I'd suggest having it they other way round then, because I expect my units to fire if an alien turns up. The only time I can think of when I would want an agent to hold his fire is if civilians are in the way. So the default should really be to fire back. It's what you'd want most of the time; you shouldn't need to activate it each turn. Note that all other games of this type (e.g. JA, as well as X-COM) work like this - by default, if you have TUs left, your agents fire back.

It's therfore in no way intuitive that you need to do this - and it might explain why my entire team got wasted by a couple of aliens.

I've enterd  similar request recently:
[ 1543830 ] Reaction fire: Remember setting after turn

If nobody objects to this I'll try to implement it soon.

Werner

HaJo

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Re: reaction fire
« Reply #5 on: August 21, 2006, 02:11:38 pm »
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Reaction fire must be enabled each turn.

Quote from: "sjm"

I'd suggest having it they other way round then, because I expect my units to fire if an alien turns up. ... So the default should really be to fire back.

Quote from: "Hoehrer"
I've enterd  similar request recently: [ 1543830 ] Reaction fire: Remember setting after turn

If nobody objects to this I'll try to implement it soon.
Werner


Currently, activating reactionfire also costs TU from the current turn.

After reaction-firing, a soldier might not have enough TU to
activate reactionfire again, and have TU left for shooting.

Offline Bandobras

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Re: reaction fire
« Reply #6 on: August 21, 2006, 05:21:21 pm »
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Currently, activating reactionfire also costs TU from the current turn.


So, perhaps automatically pop the reaction fire button when soldier has less than 8MP, then push it automatically again on the next round.


sjm, RC3 is totally outdated, you should have tried the xdelta patches before even posting, IMHO. In particular, in RC3 battlefield difficulty setting is not implemented in the UI and you can easily turn it up to highest just by meddling with the Options menu, which I guess you did. :) Type "difficulty -3" in the console iif you insist on playing RC3.

(Incomplete) info about fire modes is displayed in the bottom-middle window.

Thank you for your advice regarding UI. I didn't know there are any de-fact standards. I hope somebody does something with it. :)

Hoehrer

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Looks good, but not exactly fun
« Reply #7 on: August 21, 2006, 07:12:17 pm »
Sorry for hijacking this thread with the reaction fire discussion. I suggest we continue this in another thread or in the feature request:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1543830&group_id=157793&atid=805245

I've added a first code-diff in the tracker which is already working quite well (see description in the link).
Please test if you can and report your opinions/critics in the tracker

Werner

Offline bkreps

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Looks good, but not exactly fun
« Reply #8 on: August 23, 2006, 01:54:43 am »
I agree with SJM's original post on 19 Aug. 2006 about the difficulty level of the game (RC3).  Given the present level of difficulty the game will appeal to only a small niche group of gamers.  The collective programming group is going to have to code a much simpler "easy level" that allows the casual gamer to successfully complete a campaign without having to attain strategic mastery.  ie.. Let the casual player win.

Sacrusha

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Looks good, but not exactly fun
« Reply #9 on: August 29, 2006, 10:25:39 am »
A tutorial which teaches a player to use the different tactical options might solve the problems of the TE. I didn't look at the current stage of development for a while, but I suppose that isn't implemented yet.

Rani

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Looks good, but not exactly fun
« Reply #10 on: September 06, 2006, 09:22:23 pm »
I , for once, think the difficulty is too easy.

Its just not x-com if you dont have cold sweat
every time you pass a door/turn , if my soldier can take a bull barrage
of alien shots in the start of the game, instead
of dying from each grazing shot, and if my rookie soldiers
can fire back with reaction fire before the alien goes back to cover.

Honestly, I'v had nightmares  when i played terror from the deep  :D

HaJo

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Looks good, but not exactly fun
« Reply #11 on: September 06, 2006, 11:02:46 pm »
Quote from: "Rani"
I , for once, think the difficulty is too easy.
can fire back with reaction fire before the alien goes back to cover.

Do the aliens get to use reaction fire too ?

I have not seen them doing it yet...

Offline Bandobras

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Looks good, but not exactly fun
« Reply #12 on: September 07, 2006, 01:37:06 am »
They probably don't, yet, unfortunately...

Rani

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Looks good, but not exactly fun
« Reply #13 on: September 07, 2006, 05:57:24 am »
Really? Wierd. The reaction fire code is generic.

Offline Bandobras

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Looks good, but not exactly fun
« Reply #14 on: September 08, 2006, 06:57:32 am »
Yes, but the function that calculates what the AI wants to do is too simple. Actually, it would be enough to set the reaction fire flag for aliens once and for all. But what if they carry high-exlosive weapons and/or stand close one to another? Moreover they should 'camp' in some safe places to make a proper use of the reaction fire. Charging in the open and then using all TUs for reaction with no way to hide is not a good idea...