XCOM General - /xcg/

Yeah, I usually don't look at the chat but today salt just hurts to watch.

He had to end it today early because of things. Even so, starting a new campaign at this time would just be gatecrasher and then that's it.

It seems i was fortunate that the dlc came out very late in my campaign.

i like the rulers, but i feel like the devs just said "fuck it lets give them op weapons to make up for the balance"
in a perfect world the rulers would have been designed around the tools we already have and build up from there

And that's another happy ending

Too bad that was only one block on the avatar project

>is that why the stream was so short?short in comparison to the other week

Nah, I have to call someone to wreck my car because it's unregistered and it'll cost too much to make it roadworthy again.

I don't like people dickriding me just because I'm me either, but on the opposite side of the scale I also don't like people hating on me because I'm me.

As far as I can remember the only time I've ever been legitimately mad on stream is the time Mikey dying to the Seeker. I'd had a really bad fight with Jamball the night before and I was in a pretty awful mood, so when that happened first thing in the morning I just *lost it*. Point being, that was about personal life, the game just triggered it.

Anyway, my point is I don't like that I can't speak out against things without people saying I'm having a fit. I've seen enough of the reaction mechanic by now to say I didn't think it made sense, and in practice, it doesn't make sense - there's a lot of reasons that design-wise I just think it's a bad introduction that restricts player choice without providing or encouraging any new playstyles that would work better against the rulers. I can see why they did it - vanilla Legendary is a joke so throwing in something so blatantly broken kind of evens out the balance somehow - but I don't think that makes it a good addition, particularly if you've spent the last few months since release making the game more challenging already and you don't need alien superman to do that for you.

I don't like the idea of toning down or disabling a vanilla mechanic but if it's just going to frustrate me right when I've got the game feeling interesting and challenging again, I'm not really interested in slamming my head against it and learning how to cheese the reaction mechanic properly. It's not something I'd see myself keeping around for any other reason than to stop people from complaining I made my game easier.

Hi :3

Shit dude, I hope things get better

Thanks for clearing that up here, good to see you still browse on occasion! A lot of the negativity comes from standard issue 4chins elitism so don't stress it - and I say that as someone who likes and will defend rulers in most cases.

New balance looks great, look forward to seeing it in action more!

Just so we know, do you normally lurk or do you drop by when you catch wind we're having some banter about you? Just curious

I remember when this got posted, it was hard to believe that actually happened. Those are some really cute titties too.

I fapped to them. I bet this girl is really pretty too. If you're still around then pls be my gf

>not fapping to snek
>not fapping to patsy

NORMIE OUT REEEEEEEEEEEEE

I didn't mean to bang on you dude, I agree with the crux of what you were saying - you shouldn't have to play entirely differently just because something MIGHT happen, that's dumb.

>>Mikey

Seekers actually flanking -and- shooting was quite the wake up call to the new changes to the AI that day. Not only it did hurt but losing a Base Defense survivor was quite the kick too so no blame for the rage of that day.

But don't get it wrong, the chat 'hurts' in the sense that they don't see the whole picture. Plus, when you add those crits through cover and the generally more pressing sense of urgency of the mods that are active makes for a much harder experience.

It was quite hard to face that Ruler alone, especially when you add the extra 'moves' it has when you consider the extra Operatives, but it was quite over when those extra patrols made it into the firefight.

Disabling the Rulers is quite a good alternative as re-balancing them will take way too much consideration unless someone gets a lucky idea to do it. Is more promisiong to start with the Stunt Lancer and see how they can get into a much more acceptable position.

Yeah disabling is the right call. Trying to get a big modded campaign running in a semblance of balance and not breaking is hard enough, but alien rulers just introduce a complete curveball to the equation.

Alien rulers is a challenge dlc, plain and simple, and they don't fit in with a vanilla campaign, and especially not with a campaign that is already supposed to raise the difficulty and changes how alot of vanilla balance.

Just slap the DLC tick off and don't look back until people have actually had enough time to figure out how to actually modify rulers and have new concepts on balancing them. Can't wait for the new campaign tomorrow even if I'm sad this one got cut short.

I'm sorry for the shitflinging we can have about you here, I hope you know it's not at all representative for how the majority of us look at you and your content. It's easy to see the bad feedback more than the good, so I'm suprised you even come here considering how pissy people here can be when talking about you or other e-celebs. Anonimity is a curse and a blessing, really brings out the worst in people - I hope it doesn't drive you away from us as a community, because we really do appreciate you and the fact that for a lot of the LW-era your streams held this place together. Hell, just look at the strawpoll for our Veeky Forums league roster where you took it home by a landslide.

That notwithstanding, I don't agree with you about rulers. I mod my game extensively - you can ask some anons here about my Long DongCOM campaign - where I have squadsizes of 8-10 + way long fatigue timers, and I still don't really agree with your complaint that the reaction mechanic is broken/can't be countered, because it can - in a lot of very interesting ways tactically that make items I would never have considered before AH seem really, really viable. It also makes the earlygame easier by introducing the new items, which is great because vanilla XCOM2 legendary suffered from frontloading what little difficulty it had into the first one or two months.

Alien Hunters to me is variation in a game which sorely needed it - the major gripe with AH is that it also introduces no-win scenarios where a series of ifs can lead you into a spot nobody could make it out of unscathed, and that sucks. It's unrewarding and antifun. This happened in your stream today because of all the extra difficulty and hoops you have to jump through in order to evac, but I'm positive that rulers could work - and be really fun - in your campaign with a bit of balancing to counteract the general difficulty jump you've created in everything else.

It's 7am and I'm too tired to post anything cohesive though

>>snek
>>patsy

I'll rather go Prude.

Basically this.

Rules add too much into the equation at the moment for them to be part of a challenge mod.

i have been thinking for a while, what if the rulers only get to reaction after a soldier used both actions?
i feel like that could give to a lot of skills that dont end your turn their time to shine
for example a grenadier with salvo and heavy ordinance could stun lock a ruler by its own and the giving the chance to reload and fire the bolt caster on the same turn without reaction considering that its not even a guaranteed hit or stun
AoE abilities like devastation would be possible to blue move most of your soldiers (depending on how early on the turn is) out of range but by that token you are committing your first action to that and risking putting your self on danger of more pods or the ruler itself

Thanks! But things are fine, just the same amount of frustration and obstacles anybody has to deal with.

Glad you like it, it's important to me that the modding is enough to make the game more fun and interesting for me to play but restricted enough that it didn't suck the fun out of it for you and others to watch.

I come here every so often now. I used to browse after every stream at least but I fell out of doing that as a habit when XCOM 2 was coming out, where there was a lot of negativity about me. I don't say that to guilt anyone, just that matter-of-factly coming here to read people saying Hurtful Words on the Internet was getting to me through the volume and regularity of it that was posted. Though it did make it harder to parse legitimate feedback from people just being assholes - like I said above it's important to me that the modding is restricted enough, because I saw a lot of people with legit feedback who didn't like how much modding I was doing and that it hurt their enjoyment. The main thing I like seeing here is what people really think so I can adapt and improve. If people say they're having a good time to my face but are actually disappointed with the streams or video, it doesn't help me be more entertaining for them in the future, so it's good that people are honest here. Though I'll admit it hurts to see people say they feel like they've lost a friend because they don't enjoy watching me anymore or that they 'miss when I was good' - but again, that comes from a place of honesty, not from anyone trying to be mean, and that's something worth hearing.

No worries at all.

>Disabling the Rulers is quite a good alternative as re-balancing them will take way too much consideration

That's how I feel and it goes hand in hand with restricting from going nuts on modding. I could try to do any number of ideas to rebal rulers but none will be unilaterally agreed with or liked.

>Yeah disabling is the right call. Trying to get a big modded campaign running in a semblance of balance and not breaking is hard enough, but alien rulers just introduce a complete curveball to the equation.

That's the bright side, I'm really happy to have the campaign modlist/setup in a place that seems more or less unilaterally liked/enjoyed from the audience, and also that I really enjoy as well. After being wowed by every mod that got released since launch, I think pulling back and restricting how many are enabled was an obvious choice, but I didn't see how much the modding both obsfucated my and the audience's enjoyment of the game fast enough. When it feels like this big mess of a mod orgy and dozens of tweaks, it's obviously not going to be fun for anyone, which I should've seen sooner.

No worries at all. It is much, much easier to focus on negative feedback than positive, and the real tickler is when that negative feedback is half legitimate and half not - when I started to agree with people writing sincere posts about how they were disappointed, it made it hard to then ignore people just being assholes which is common no matter what - if you listen to one type you feel like the other is true as well. But seeing people be happier with the recent modlist campaign and say it's the one they've enjoyed the most since XCOM 2 was a thing reinforces that there's legitimate issues that needed to be repaired in what I was playing, and also *when* I was playing - not having to get up at 4 AM helps a hell of a lot.

I'd be interested to talk to you more about how you think the reaction mechanic should be countered play-wise. Perhaps you can help me see something I'm missing that's key to understanding them. I like the Rulers as an idea and I love the items and art and themes the DLC introduces.

>I'd be interested to talk to you more about how you think the reaction mechanic should be countered play-wise. Perhaps you can help me see something I'm missing that's key to understanding them. I like the Rulers as an idea and I love the items and art and themes the DLC introduces.
If so, you've actually already got my e-mail! You may/may not remember me as the dude who e-mailed you and Jambs a while back to tell you I appreciate 'ya and also ask about how the hell DefaultMissions.ini worked
I'll write you when I've gotten some sleep, I like discussing XCOM.

To sum up my thoughts about what should change with AH balance briefly with a lot of time clocked with it, the problem is that it punishes the player for doing anything at all, not only aggressive moves. To me, it'd make perfect sense if a Ruler were to retreat after every shot you got at him, and got a free shot back in a riposte-type of deal. Basically, were it up to me I'd give him two actions points per reaction - but only in response to the player making aggressive moves, so a player A) Actually had the tactical option of retreat without being chased down and B) Could reorient his squad to engage an incoming ruler without immediately getting punished for what is in all regards the only sound move to make.

It's great to have you back in /xcg/, man! I hope you can bear with us and start dropping in after a few more streams.

Would you ever consider releasing your ini files for the streams you do? I know there is a gdoc with your mods but stuff like grenadier tweaks and other miscellaneous things would be nice to have for people that want to try what they see on steam (im not alone am i?). I also realize you probably change stuff all the time trying to find a balance and that it would take extra time and that you have no obligation to. Anyway, just an idea i had.

not him but i think you underestimate how god damn easy it is to tweak stuff like skill trees in the .ini

I agree with that, that'd make sense. When I say the reaction mechanic is really bad I mean as introduced currently - reactions for any half action, for everything the player does. I agree with you that the system can work, but as it stands it just punishes the player for doing *anything* - which is also why I have a habit of arguing with anyone who says it simply encourages a different playstyle.

I'd like to release those changes but doing things as simple .ini file uploads in this complex time of steam workshop mods and etc feels like it might not be ideal. But on the other hand I don't have the familiarity with modding tools to make a steam workshop mod of what I've tweaked. Maybe if I play more of this campaign setup and it continues to be fun and enjoyable I'll zip up the ini files I've changed or get someone to help me push them to a workshop mod. Until then though I hope people can use the gdoc as instructions to tweak their own .ini's - shouldn't take too long once you know how.

You're right, i haven't done much with the inis apart from adding a squad member which was very easy. Is there a centralized resource i should look at?

>as it stands it just punishes the player for doing *anything* - which is also why I have a habit of arguing with anyone who says it simply encourages a different playstyle.
That's fair, it is weird that it punishes a player for doing anything but to me it's also a great way of spicing up gameplay that in vanilla rapidly regressed back into alpha-striking every pod all the damn time. I like AH because it broke off the monotony, but that doesn't mean I'm blind to the fact that it IS unfair.

>Maybe I'll get someone to help me push them to a workshop mod
I could do that, if you'd mail me your files and tell me roughly what you've edited. Could send over the mod package once I'm done so you could publish it on your own Steam, more people would probably find it that way.

They should just make it so that the Ayy Rulers counter your attacks. That way they don't rape you when you move or reload, but they still get their bullshit turns in between your attacks, and it would probably make frost grenades or whatever more useful.

I dunno, i haven't actually fought an Ayy ruler yet.

Kind of, but imo this'd be too much of a nerf - I say do this, but give 'em two actions on every attack/grenade/flashbang. Anything which applies a debuff or damages the ruler and it gets two actions. Still gives you a LOT more leeway than vanilla because you can actually position properly.

PISTOLS

40th for cyclops eye mod when

Please consider doing Fanart sections once more.

Seconding this. Really brings the community together. Maybe just set it to like a 30 minute time limit if you feels it always drags on too long.

SWORDS

are useless

Wanna know the real reason fanart became something that fatigued me and I stopped doing it?

Because it's easy to talk about and highlight the various excellent pieces that were sent in once a week, but in order to highlight *everything* including stuff that wasn't as good or hadn't had as much effort put in, it was a huge chunk of time for one and required a lot of good spin to avoid hurting anyone's feelings.

I appreciate the time and effort of anyone who's going to create something and send it to me, so I don't want to exclude people by picking and choosing only the best pieces to highlight and then making others feel like they're not good enough or their piece isn't appreciated. But at the same time I feel like that policy also just encouraged more people to send everything and anything in - and when you're getting dozens of pieces in a week and half of them are made in MSPaint, it takes a considerable chunk of time to go through and give each of them their due. That started to feel like it was bogging me down and the stream down, so I stopped doing it.

I still highlight the most amazing or excellent stuff I see through my twitter or otherwise, because people who put in a huge amount of effort and talent into their art deserve that recognition and appreciation regardless. But I never intended the fanart highlight section to become a sort of 'memery' where I read jokes and comics out loud for an hour - that's the kind of stuff I'd rather read and look at in my own time, not on stream. I don't think there's any way to seperate the two without putting rules and exclusions on who can send in what and who gets shown on stream, which whether it's too sensitive an approach or not, the bottom line is people's feelings will get hurt some way or another and if I can avoid that I will.

OUT WITH YOU

I understand from where you come from with that policy but even then I would still prefer a 10-15 minute dash through the best fanart (or the ones that made you laugh) rather than no fanart section at all.

>I understand from where you come from with that policy but even then I would still prefer a 10-15 minute dash through the best fanart (or the ones that made you laugh) rather than no fanart section at all.

Maybe. Would probably have to be last week's that I check throughout the week and then decide on choices for the day, if anything.

Works for me.

editing ini files and "rebalancing" abilities/skills/values is not modding

On an unrelated note, Are you planning on streaming the new DOOM?

Maybe you could even use as a way to pad your youtube? Just a sort of archive video of the previous weeks fanart. That seems pretty simple, and also gets everyone piece out there. Then again that may take longer then I think. You could even maybe delegate it.

That's what I'm betting most people suspected. I know there were some times when you genuinely wanted to just skip over all those shitty 5 second doodles you got every stream.

Choosing not to look at some of them might be a little touchy as some of those could be from subscribers, and those are the ones literally paying you to say their name on stream, they could feel betrayed from not getting special treatment.

>Choosing not to look at some of them might be a little touchy as some of those could be from subscribers, and those are the ones literally paying you to say their name on stream, they could feel betrayed from not getting special treatment.

Man, subscribing and donating is interesting like that, in the context of streaming. Most people are good human beings who don't expect anything special and just want to help out, others do it for special treatment.

I feel bad for the latter not just because I try to treat everyone equal paying or not, but because I feel like I'm ripping them off. If you pay me money for special treatment for me I feel like it's ridiculous that they'd want it from me of all people. I'm not worth the money. At least when people subscribe to hot chicks on twitch for attention I get the reasoning, but I'm not hot *or* a chick.

I've played a few hours of the new DOOM and I really like it. I'm recording it offline and hoping to make videos out of it instead of streaming it. Though I'm a little worried there'll be too much swearing and yelling in it for some viewers.

>Though I'm a little worried there'll be too much swearing and yelling in it for some viewers.
Sounds like a good time

>>Though I'm a little worried there'll be too much swearing and yelling in it for some viewers.

I like where this is going already.

AAAAH ENEMY SPOTTED HELP ME MUTON

Looks like I missed a shitshow last night.

Speaking of YouTube, Planning of keeping up with those campaigns?

Is x-com 2 good. Do I need mods

XCOM2 is good. You don't need mods, but you'll want them. I recommend sticking to fixes, cosmetics, and quality of life mods until you complete a campaign. Check the pastebin in the OP for recommended mods that work.

> Have ranger
> Give him superior speed
> Arm him with an SMG (mod) that increases his mobility
> Give him serpent armor
> He can now move literally halfway across the level in a single fucking turn

And he just got promoted and I gave him implacable. He can literally run across half the level up to an enemy, stab the bitch, and then run half way back to where he was before. I've created a monster. Oh and he's got Run and Gun for additional fun

That's a big question

You need to give him the T3 armor that lets him walk through walls now.

...

...

airgame is useless

fuck off

Right back at ya.

U S E L E S S

Say that to my G U N

F U N

>Sectopod gets discovered
>next turn it walks through an entire building, KO's one of my guys
>entire squad panics for 2 turns
>another Sectopod appears and kills my medic

Fuck sectopods.

This mission is so quiet, i managed to get into the building with the objective without spotting any pods, i hear footsteps nearby whenever it's the ayy turns but i can't see shit, there's even a thunderstorm going non. It reminds of the crashed ufo missions from EW, it's almost, spooky.

Uh oh they're coming in from behind

And i guess everyone else is outside the building, but still right next to the objective.

Welp they found us, and these snipers man, what the fuck.

Uh oh, that's one A team member down.

It took me a little while to realize you could send multiple interceptors in Xenonauts so I had been wondering what the fuck the point of MiGs were when they only had two missiles and nothing else. At first I figured they were supposed to be used for hit and run tactics, i.e. have them soften a UFO up with a couple missiles, retreat, and then let another interceptor with MGs finish the UFO.

Still, I like that aspect a lot since it allows for a more dynamic approach to taking down UFOs than just sending interceptor after interceptor at it.

And then a Muton knocks unconscious the A team rocketeer.

The wraith suit? It doesn't grant a mobility boost like the serpent suit does. Pretty sure that's one of the major parts of the mobility buffs he's got.

Also took down the flying bitch king. Sanic the ranger ended up being the one who finished it
> Shit's bad
> Sanic's down to two hit points.
> One more attack and he's done
> Oh yeah axe throw
> Chuck axe at flying faggot
> Hits
> Charge it with axe
> Please work please work please work
> Sanic nails the fucker dead on with the axe nailing it for 6 dmg and killing it

It's ogre. It's finally ogre.

>Codex shows up with 4 Sectoids

A B team scout gets killed by the long dong muton and an advanced trooper with warcry, if you look hard enough, you can see his legs on the bottom left corner as his corpse falls down a hole.

Uh oh say goodbye to the A team scout too!

> Berserker queen
> Supposed to be a female berserker
> Doesn't have tits

Well fuck you too Fireaxis.

And after a couple of plasma grenades from our top grenadier all the sectoids and the codex are dead, silly codex took cover behind some explosive forklift or something and it died instantaneously.

Our A team scout survived the Muton, the advanced trooper ran into a bolt from our rocketeer after he woke up and now i think, i think only the long dong muton is left.

> Plate armor

Yep, there's your problem.

Things didn't go well man, our Colonel gunner never missed a shot and she was op as fuck, but she got gangbanged by an Archon and a Muton, shit's getting all fucked.

>haha you want to rest? TOO BAD HERE AYYDVENT

I remember during my first campaign, i complained that there were too many advent and not enough ayys. That even the mutons were rare.

Well, they sure fixed that problem.

Sauce?

>almost die from panic when even just 2 muton appear because they will grenade my ass
>tfw seeing this

friendly reminder the firebrand lost
strawpoll.me/10319861/r

Are you stupid? All the berserkers are female mutons.

Also them not being human and being hopped up on shitloads of alien roids to make them HUEG is additional factors.

Things went well, i had 2 grenadiers and 2 rocketeers so all those mutons got roasted pretty fast.

Remember to remove your ayys.

What do you guys think of the Rulers DLC? How difficult are the new ayys?

poor balancing and campaign integration, awful visual style

trophy room is neat, Rulers are artificially difficult and i've stopped playing with AH installed until they balance them

...

Having a ruler take a turn every time you do any action IS artificial Difficulty.

There's little you can do about it. There's no skill involved or counter.

>just use frost bomb guys then take your 1 and a half unit turns and kill it :^))))