I don't mind games that have a degree of chance in them, if it's done well and it's expected. Rogue-likes and other RPGs are a prime example, where stats affect your dice rolls, but there's still an element of chance. Things can go wrong. But where a game loses me is when the dice rolls are opaque and unpredictable, and make planning impossible. This is doubly a problem if planning is the whole point.
Enter X-COM 2. When you line up a shot, you have a chance to hit. The problem is, this isn't remotely accurate, or at least doesn't feel like it. I am currently 1 for 5 on shots with >80% chance to hit (and this is across multiple restarts, not re-loads, since it generates the seeds per save). This includes two shots where the person was literally standing in the square adjacent to an enemy, only to miss. I know this series is supposed to be hard and whatever, but hard because of bullshit like that stops being fun really quick. It means flanking is basically impossible, since you can't assume kills even from point-blank range, and the first mission at least is laid out so that you can't flank one enemy without in turn being flanked by another. The result is that you just have to sit behind cover and take pot-shots at around 50% to hit and hope that the RNG is on your side rather than the enemy's.
This is without getting into the fact that they got rid of the thing from the first game where you could "hear" enemies off screen and position yourself accordingly. You now have no idea where they may be coming from. My first re-start on mission 1 came from the fact that the second round of enemies spawned, got cover on my flank, and killed one of my people in a single turn.
I enjoyed Enemy Unknown a lot, at least until the late game where I have a squad of unstoppable Colonels and I was just grinding psychic powers. But this stopped being fun in the first mission, and I'm done.
So, to that end, what's everyone playing these days?
X-Com randomness is bad because a bad roll might screw you, and a good one is not satisfying. Compares to a roguelike.. You have ton of random stuff adding up: you roll for Initiative, then for hit chance, then for enemy dodge, then critical hit, then damage. And the odd of have the worst outcome, or the best one, are pretty slim. It's satisfying when everything goes your way (init / hit /Critical / max damage), it's not so bad when everything goes bad because you hardly can be 1-hit killed. If I remember correctly the first X-Com (from the 90's in DOS) was a bit more like a RL (you had more crew member, each with more hitpoint, and the aliens did not get the weird first move when spotted, those were alleviating part of the randomness).. It was still infuriating at time. Giving more hit point to your soldiers and to alien would be a great way to make the randomness more manageable. But like the 90's version (or a RL) it will become very tedious when you exchange fire for a few round with almost no effect. Another frustrating bit is the fake randomess. In my experience it happen in X-Com. And developer explained how they did it in Civ5: Player expected to win almost every time when shown a 80% win chance. And win half the time with a 20% chance. So they developed a system to mimic those expectation. In the end, the percentage does not make any mathematical sense. And when fight after fight, you experience a 99% success rate on a 80% shown rate, it become more frustrating the 1 time when you miss. Tricking player brain, even for their own enjoyment, always backfire in my opinion. Playing "Tales of Maj Eyal" (800+ hours so far). A Very pretty , rich and enjoyable roguelike... You can be almost 1-hitted but you probably had it coming when it happen.
Oh cool, gonna check that one out. Going to give another shot Legends of Grimrock, too.
Maybe it was just faulty RNG on your end. I know I had ludicrious misses when I played either of the new ones, but most of the time, it worked well enough for me to plan according to the weaponry my squad was carrying. Sucks to hear you had such a terrible experience with the game. I had a lot of fun with it, though I did occasionally put myself into terrible spots, tactically. Never had to worry about strategy because I cheated for cash and chips. I'm playing Dota 2, mostly. The matches average up to an hour each, so I don't have much time for anything else. Not that I have access to much else, this being a student laptop. I'd love to try Mass Effect: Andromeda, but that won't happen any time soon.
I understand, definitely, and I was kind of bummed too. But there's plenty of other games out there, to be sure. I know the pain of a laptop -- my main desktop is a good 5 years old now (hoping to build a new one this summer), and I spend a decent amount of time on a laptop as well. Thankfully the explosion of indie gaming makes it easier to find stuff that will run. If nothing else, Dwarf Fortress will work on just about anything...
The thing about indie games is one is not like another, at their engine. Where one simple-looking game might go on with flying colors on the laptop (say, MHRD), another would lag as if it has some 3D behind it, which it decisively doesn't (like TIS-100). The thing about Dota 2... I was able to launch it on a 10' laptop with 1 GB of RAM. It took space off some of the system resources and built it up to the very brim, but it launched. Didn't go very far, mind you, with only 5 FPS or so, but the fact it was capable of being launched on such a low-end system is astonishing. But to play it now, I have to switch back to my HDD manually every time. The system is entirely capable of running the game, but inclusion of SSD ruins CPU-intensive games (and only games) for some fucking reason.
I realized that I'm like Kirk...I don't enjoy no-win scenarios.
So I did end up getting it. I haven't downloaded it yet though. Question about the Long War though: is the difficulty increase from vanilla to LW as it was with Enemy Within? I had a blast with LW in Enemy Within until I got to the sectoid dock mission, then it was just too brutal for me.
When you played Long War did you play it with the Enemy Within expansion? I'm wondering because when I played it with the expansion, there are some missions that have their difficulty designed on the vanilla game, but when you apply the LW changes, the difficulty spikes to exceptionally berserk for just that one mission.
Right. And more to the point, in this context I think human perception is actually more important than true randomness. I get that what happened to me is consistent with the laws of probability, but it makes for a frustrating experience, especially because planning becomes so difficult.
Looks kind of intriguing ... I think I'm still pretty zombied out though.
Disregard my last, I'd forgotten the context. I do like a good action RPG.