XCOM EU How will Xcom 2 compete with long war?

[daegog]

On the reasonable guesstimation that an xcom 2 will show up at some point, I have been wondering how it will stack up against what the Long War guys have created?

 

The depth and scope of the game at this point has made me delete xenonauts (which i like, but it just isnt as nice).

 

Whatever they do with xcom 2, im praying that at the very least they put in a robust modding tool system (with map making abilities), to show some love to the guys that have made their game into awesomesauce.

[Charly03]

Its pretty clear from playing Long War that more maps are needed, as this is the only thing I find that becomes a bit stale replaying the same maps over and over. It seems a bit of a joke that there were no randomly generated maps like in the original which is now 20 years old. Surely in this day and age the developers could have done this without any problems? This would improve the replayability immensely.

 

Long War went a long way to correcting most of the obvious problems, such as larger squad sizes, having to chose which abduction site (WTF is that all about?), and made the game feel like you are fighting a war with an army at your disposal, rather than a special ops unit. The inventory system. No ammo, not being able to pick up other weapons. Shooting terrain. Aliens Spawning. Not really sure I like the idea of classes restricting your weapons, although the role play element is good. It worked much better in Long War as the amount of additional weapons at your disposal make up for the restrictions. Id rather have a system where anyone can use any weapon, perhaps at a penalty. Time Units.

 

The whole rank structure was silly as well, and Long War managed to pull this one out of the fire too (It looks like it took an act of genius or insanity to make that work within the confines of the game)

 

I get that the game has to be dumbed down to make it effective on a console, but in a sequel, why not have a scaling up function that allows you to set your squad size maximum, and then builds up the game around that, perhaps with the option of a simplified research tree, and a much bigger one.

 

Don't get me wrong, they did a lot of things right too, but they seemed to reduce the strategic element to focus more on the tactical deployments, when one of the most engaging parts of the original was the resource management of the geoscape, and building up your economy.

 

An improved UFO intercept would be nice too, as the newer version shows almost no improvement (at least use the original music... actually the music is pretty good all the way through the new game).

 

I have a feeling they probably wont implement any of the improvements from Long War, as they will still be limited by what a console can offer as playable. Hopefully it will be more than the skinjob that TFTD was.