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Discussion / Final Feedback (2.5)
« on: October 18, 2012, 01:14:17 am »
Hi. I know I've never posted on these forums before, but I've been playing this game since somewhere in the 2.3 stage of development. I've pondered posting on several occasions before now, but never felt that it was necessary because for the longest time I felt that game development has been moving in a positive direction. Even when that changed, I remained quiet because I held the belief that things would eventually sort themselves out based on feedback that other members were giving here on the forums. Lately, I've had a change of heart in that regard. The game's development is consistently taking it in directions that I feel it shouldn't go, and this is the part where I find some other project to invest myself in.
I understand that the developers like feedback, so I'm leaving them some before I go. It's probably a lot wordier than it needs to be, but I prefer to be thorough with these things. My apologies.
One last cautionary before I begin, though: I don't want anyone to think that I'm some kind of master strategist or tactical genius going into this, because I am neither. I may be a fan of the X-Com franchise, but I'm very much the everyman gamer when you boil it down. Perhaps the game was developed with that niche of folks who felt that Terror from the Deep wasn't brutal enough in mind, but I'd like to think that the opinions of the rest of us matter, too. That said, on to business:
1: The problems all began with the laser nerf. Lasers were a tactical mainstay in my arsenal because their lower damage was properly offset by the fact that even rookies could reliably hit things with them. It made building the accuracy stats much easier, and a group of soldiers trained on lasers would become an utter killing machine when upgraded to plasma. After the nerf, lasers became both so weak and so inaccurate that I don't bother researching them until I'm ready to start looking into electrolasers. Range is the only advantage that lasers still have over SP weapons, but that range doesn't matter because it's impossible to hit anything at that distance with the accuracy penalties. I had better luck keeping my soldiers equipped with assault rifles until I'd researched enough technology to start giving them plasma weapons.
Considering that you have to invest research into CWL theory, deuterium fluoride cartridges, and each individual weapons chassis - and then you have to produce these things once you've figured them out - I feel that laser weapons should be a straight upgrade from the SP weapons you start with.
2: The next problem I've encountered with UFO: AI is one that's been around from the beginning: base design. In the original X-Com, bases could function more or less independently because each individual base was capable of housing all the various support structures necessary to keep it comfy. Losing a base was a setback due to loss of invested time and capital, but it was by no means a game-ender.
Base design in UFO: AI, on the other hand, is a colossal headache. Several of the structures you need to build a fully-functional base are essentially dead-space that never even comes into play unless your base is invaded; they fulfill no function beyond checking off a pre-requisite that allows something else to work. Additionally, many facilities which only required a single space in X-Com now require two spaces in UFO: AI. So you're stuck with choosing to build a base that does one function very well to the exclusion of all others, or building a multi-purpose base which does nothing well at all. It's even worse when you factor in the blocks of indestructium which appear in every base beyond the first.
The end result is that I spend way too much time and money trying to establish base coverage. Worse, everything tends to come down like a house of playing cards if anything bad happens during the months of investment it takes to get those bases operational. I'm not going to say you need to go the way of the new XCOM, but it might be worth considering the idea that simplicity isn't always a bad thing.
3: Soldiers in X-Com are essentially 1 hit-point wonders, and the single biggest reason I stuck with this game was the simple fact that soldiers in UFO: AI had several orders of magnitude more survivability. Even in the beginning of the game, a soldier wearing basic combat armor could theoretically survive a few shots from a plasma pistol before going down. It was a basic form of forgiveness for those of us who aren't experts at the game, and it was very much appreciated.
Additionally, the fact that most of the human armor remains unimplemented means that soldier promotions are vital to the success or failure of PHALANX. I found that the key to survival was to make the first shot, and make it count. Troopers can't earn promotions lying around in a hospital bed, so the idea of using a medkit to shave literally weeks of recovery time off of a soldier's time in recovery was really central to me. That philosophy died when the new wound system came into play, because it ensures that my troops are going to spend ungodly amounts of time in the hospital and not earning promotions.
When you combine this with my next point, you can perhaps understand where I'm coming from when I say that the little bit of forgiveness I mentioned two paragraphs ago doesn't exist any more.
4: I could say nothing beyond "the new personnel system is specifically designed to screw you," not explain the problem any further, and everybody would still probably know exactly what I mean. I'm going to elaborate on the problems I have, though:
• Because my soldiers are spending more time in the hospital, I need more soldiers. The problem is that my soldier recruiting pool is very small and the quality of my recruits is very poor. I have run into situations where I simply can't keep the happiness of the funding nations up because I don't have enough warm bodies to get the job done. I've also lost the game a few times because aliens decided to visit my base after I'd packed all my wounded soldiers into a transport just to try and salvage my world standing.
• It doesn't matter whether or not I have the money to build laboratories any more, because I never have enough scientists available to keep research moving at an acceptable pace.
• The same is true of workshops. I can't keep my teams outfitted with the gear they need because I don't have enough people to keep production moving at an acceptable pace.
When the happiness of the funding nations goes down, they send you less people. When they send you less people, it becomes fundamentally impossible to recover because you don't have the warm bodies to get the job done. The original X-Com gave me an endless supply of goons as long as I could pay for them; why can't UFO: AI operate along these lines? Again, simplicity isn't always a bad thing.
5: Research and development in this game is a complete and utter fuster-cluck, and it's one area in which a lot of the problems from the original X-Com were carried over. I used the laser example above to demonstrate a three-tier research project which yields dubious results, but let me use another example I've been saving for a while now: chargers for the basic plasma weapons which are available from the start of the game.
In order to build plasma chargers, you need alien materials. Unlike X-Com, you can't build these yourself; they MUST be salvaged from a UFO. This means that in order to make plasma chargers, you must first build a UFO Yard, retrieve a UFO, research UFO theory, research that specific UFO, disassemble that UFO for materials, then have your same workers finally get around to building the plasma charger. Good thing plasma chargers are given to you by the sackload, huh?
Another problem with R&D is the amount of stuff that hasn't been implemented, even though the game devs are gleefully adding more and meaner aliens to the game. Is there a development schedule? Does it need to be on medication for schizophrenia? The last time I played, nanocomposite armor was still the best protection that humans muster, and that armor starts losing relevance about the time that the aliens break out the plasma rifles. What about UGVs? Is humanity even trying to win this war?
Then there are the research topics that just flat-out yield nothing of value. What more can I say about this? These need to disappear entirely. They weren't a positive feature in the original X-Com, and they're not a positive feature here.
6: When I think about the game's economy, I find myself wondering if I ever did anything to the game devs in the past that warranted a system which is apparently designed to screw me over at every possible turn. I really, really wish that the game developers would set their vision of how this game should be aside for a few minutes, if only to stop and think about this game from the standpoint of playability. Others have complained about this in the past, and I'm going to add my voice to the pile: getting rid of production-based profit has eliminated a safety net that this game needs even moreso than the original.
It's bad enough that you spend the entire game dependent upon the funding nations for personnel, but in UFO: AI they're also your primary source of income throughout the game. This isn't necessarily a bad decision in and of itself, but the problems begin when you realize that it's almost impossible to keep the funding nations pleased. They expect you to magically sprout bases all over the world, and then they punish you financially when that doesn't happen. With less money to go around, it becomes even harder to maintain coverage worldwide, which results in even bigger funding cuts being made. It becomes a cycle from which there is no escape.
I understand that the developers like feedback, so I'm leaving them some before I go. It's probably a lot wordier than it needs to be, but I prefer to be thorough with these things. My apologies.
One last cautionary before I begin, though: I don't want anyone to think that I'm some kind of master strategist or tactical genius going into this, because I am neither. I may be a fan of the X-Com franchise, but I'm very much the everyman gamer when you boil it down. Perhaps the game was developed with that niche of folks who felt that Terror from the Deep wasn't brutal enough in mind, but I'd like to think that the opinions of the rest of us matter, too. That said, on to business:
1: The problems all began with the laser nerf. Lasers were a tactical mainstay in my arsenal because their lower damage was properly offset by the fact that even rookies could reliably hit things with them. It made building the accuracy stats much easier, and a group of soldiers trained on lasers would become an utter killing machine when upgraded to plasma. After the nerf, lasers became both so weak and so inaccurate that I don't bother researching them until I'm ready to start looking into electrolasers. Range is the only advantage that lasers still have over SP weapons, but that range doesn't matter because it's impossible to hit anything at that distance with the accuracy penalties. I had better luck keeping my soldiers equipped with assault rifles until I'd researched enough technology to start giving them plasma weapons.
Considering that you have to invest research into CWL theory, deuterium fluoride cartridges, and each individual weapons chassis - and then you have to produce these things once you've figured them out - I feel that laser weapons should be a straight upgrade from the SP weapons you start with.
2: The next problem I've encountered with UFO: AI is one that's been around from the beginning: base design. In the original X-Com, bases could function more or less independently because each individual base was capable of housing all the various support structures necessary to keep it comfy. Losing a base was a setback due to loss of invested time and capital, but it was by no means a game-ender.
Base design in UFO: AI, on the other hand, is a colossal headache. Several of the structures you need to build a fully-functional base are essentially dead-space that never even comes into play unless your base is invaded; they fulfill no function beyond checking off a pre-requisite that allows something else to work. Additionally, many facilities which only required a single space in X-Com now require two spaces in UFO: AI. So you're stuck with choosing to build a base that does one function very well to the exclusion of all others, or building a multi-purpose base which does nothing well at all. It's even worse when you factor in the blocks of indestructium which appear in every base beyond the first.
The end result is that I spend way too much time and money trying to establish base coverage. Worse, everything tends to come down like a house of playing cards if anything bad happens during the months of investment it takes to get those bases operational. I'm not going to say you need to go the way of the new XCOM, but it might be worth considering the idea that simplicity isn't always a bad thing.
3: Soldiers in X-Com are essentially 1 hit-point wonders, and the single biggest reason I stuck with this game was the simple fact that soldiers in UFO: AI had several orders of magnitude more survivability. Even in the beginning of the game, a soldier wearing basic combat armor could theoretically survive a few shots from a plasma pistol before going down. It was a basic form of forgiveness for those of us who aren't experts at the game, and it was very much appreciated.
Additionally, the fact that most of the human armor remains unimplemented means that soldier promotions are vital to the success or failure of PHALANX. I found that the key to survival was to make the first shot, and make it count. Troopers can't earn promotions lying around in a hospital bed, so the idea of using a medkit to shave literally weeks of recovery time off of a soldier's time in recovery was really central to me. That philosophy died when the new wound system came into play, because it ensures that my troops are going to spend ungodly amounts of time in the hospital and not earning promotions.
When you combine this with my next point, you can perhaps understand where I'm coming from when I say that the little bit of forgiveness I mentioned two paragraphs ago doesn't exist any more.
4: I could say nothing beyond "the new personnel system is specifically designed to screw you," not explain the problem any further, and everybody would still probably know exactly what I mean. I'm going to elaborate on the problems I have, though:
• Because my soldiers are spending more time in the hospital, I need more soldiers. The problem is that my soldier recruiting pool is very small and the quality of my recruits is very poor. I have run into situations where I simply can't keep the happiness of the funding nations up because I don't have enough warm bodies to get the job done. I've also lost the game a few times because aliens decided to visit my base after I'd packed all my wounded soldiers into a transport just to try and salvage my world standing.
• It doesn't matter whether or not I have the money to build laboratories any more, because I never have enough scientists available to keep research moving at an acceptable pace.
• The same is true of workshops. I can't keep my teams outfitted with the gear they need because I don't have enough people to keep production moving at an acceptable pace.
When the happiness of the funding nations goes down, they send you less people. When they send you less people, it becomes fundamentally impossible to recover because you don't have the warm bodies to get the job done. The original X-Com gave me an endless supply of goons as long as I could pay for them; why can't UFO: AI operate along these lines? Again, simplicity isn't always a bad thing.
5: Research and development in this game is a complete and utter fuster-cluck, and it's one area in which a lot of the problems from the original X-Com were carried over. I used the laser example above to demonstrate a three-tier research project which yields dubious results, but let me use another example I've been saving for a while now: chargers for the basic plasma weapons which are available from the start of the game.
In order to build plasma chargers, you need alien materials. Unlike X-Com, you can't build these yourself; they MUST be salvaged from a UFO. This means that in order to make plasma chargers, you must first build a UFO Yard, retrieve a UFO, research UFO theory, research that specific UFO, disassemble that UFO for materials, then have your same workers finally get around to building the plasma charger. Good thing plasma chargers are given to you by the sackload, huh?
Another problem with R&D is the amount of stuff that hasn't been implemented, even though the game devs are gleefully adding more and meaner aliens to the game. Is there a development schedule? Does it need to be on medication for schizophrenia? The last time I played, nanocomposite armor was still the best protection that humans muster, and that armor starts losing relevance about the time that the aliens break out the plasma rifles. What about UGVs? Is humanity even trying to win this war?
Then there are the research topics that just flat-out yield nothing of value. What more can I say about this? These need to disappear entirely. They weren't a positive feature in the original X-Com, and they're not a positive feature here.
6: When I think about the game's economy, I find myself wondering if I ever did anything to the game devs in the past that warranted a system which is apparently designed to screw me over at every possible turn. I really, really wish that the game developers would set their vision of how this game should be aside for a few minutes, if only to stop and think about this game from the standpoint of playability. Others have complained about this in the past, and I'm going to add my voice to the pile: getting rid of production-based profit has eliminated a safety net that this game needs even moreso than the original.
It's bad enough that you spend the entire game dependent upon the funding nations for personnel, but in UFO: AI they're also your primary source of income throughout the game. This isn't necessarily a bad decision in and of itself, but the problems begin when you realize that it's almost impossible to keep the funding nations pleased. They expect you to magically sprout bases all over the world, and then they punish you financially when that doesn't happen. With less money to go around, it becomes even harder to maintain coverage worldwide, which results in even bigger funding cuts being made. It becomes a cycle from which there is no escape.