What do we want from Xcom 2?

My friends, Xcom was a huge hit. And assuming we get a sequel for next generation consoles, what would you like to see?

e.g. No fucked up "ultra realistic" art direction, keep it like toy soldiers.

I wouldn't be surprised if fire axis does another expansion before that.

Sounds good to me.

I want realistic art style, not the ugly bs they have. a powerful engine like UE4 to run the game. much more weapon varieties like virus weapons or acid. remove the useless defend the satellites mini game. make it M for mature and put shitload of gore in it, i want to blow da fk up some aliens. that's all i want.

a lot more R&D

Right now Enemy Within is a completely broken and a buggy mess on consoles (I would assume PC as well). Ironman is unplayable, the game glitches up if you get two events at the same time, etc. Firaxis has been insultingly silent on a console patch.

On to the subject at hand, what I want from XCOM 2:

Takes place 50-100 years in the future. The Earth has been ravaged by a limited nuclear war over dwindling oil stockpiles and the now very finite supply elerium. Certain countries were wiped out overnight while others have merged into new economic blocks. This was of course preceded by widespread misuse of the alien technology that XCOM in their need for funding during the Alien Invasion so liberally spread around (ecological disasters, etc). Adding to humanity's misery is now the polar ice caps are melting and several of the remaining planet's major cities are now underwater. Humans have adapted to this by looking to the sea more than ever and have begun experimenting with gene augmentation to make us more adaptable to that environment.

Then at this pivotal point in Earth's history there are lights in the sky and underneath the sea......................

Basically I want the form of the original trilogy to remain intact. Elements should be there from XCOM: Terror from the Deep and the third one should be XCOM: Apocalypse.

should be more like gears of wars

I want an X-COM TFTD reboot, with some of the classical features brought back:

- Dogfights should be more meaningful and a possibility of 3v1 fights
- Remove the mechanic which allows aliens to hide upon being discovered during my turn. It's MY TURN. Reaction shots are fine, but not full movement.

- Multiple bases on the globe

- BASE DEFENSE!!!

And you call yourself a PC defender? You don't deserve to be one, despite your over-zealous fervor. God knows if you even played the original X-COM.

I disagree my friend. The art direction is rather beautiful.

would've never imagined some1 saying that

Better AI. Enemies should use proper tactics to attack in group and use their abilities.

When aliens are discovered the player should have the advantage, maybe give free reaction shots if they move or highly restrict their movement on the first move?

Better technology tree. Many stuff was useless to begin with or became inferior quickly almost destroying any strategical sense since it is mostly a linear tree progression. They should also fix how research and laboratories work in general.

Random base defense.

Less strategy

Hmm, as a long time X-com fan, I would not like to see a TFTD (while I really liked it, I am unsure if another game so closely fitting in story and buildup would be a good idea). But instead jump to and reboot the earth migration.

Key point here is reimagining it, and NOT take from any of the other XCOMS since only the original 2 were any good.

What I would like to see:

first 25% centered about managing and patroling earth as to where we left off in X-Com:EU it having the adiotion of Building and maintaining smaller stace stations, it being such a losing battle that earth is more or less unsalvagable.

at the 25% to around the 50% mark soley focus on the operations of X-COM on the migration fleet from earth, starving off the attacks of the Aliens, while also dealing with riots and such, while evolving tech for said migrationfleet

at around the 50% mark to around 75% in addition of having to fend off assaults, scan and patrol for possible planets suitable for human life.

at the 75% mark having the Irony of invading any suitable planet for repopulation by killing off local sentient life, and sort of going almost full circle in a morbid fasion (y7eah I know that the point in Enemy unknown was not to take the planet from "us").

Gameplay wise:

More focus on base management, weapon management, more types to request,s and would be need if more of the buy/sell types of Things would appear, giving nations ability to fend a bit for themselves. but the possability of any Group/nation which were given too much high end tech, would try to start wars with other nations for resources (having wo think about the requests, and weigh in the sanity of those)

I would want more playroom with structures and placements, I can still live with one mainbase to keep focus, but atleast allow for more then just planes at others (such as defences and manufacturing orders).

More types of aircraft, and groundunits.

ability to move the fleet around in Space, built and upgrade those, and eventually able to build osme kind of "Space city" Movement would likely have to be a risk kind of thing to Work even in the slightest :\

Ability to make WAY more dubvious kinds of research pure ethically (kind of what EW tryied to do, just way more fleshed out and with positive and negative consequences).

Keep the squad size small, for better or worse I kind of liked the lesser people to manag,e but would like roaming Aliens, and perhaps allow for MEGs and Shivs to be upgraded possible slots and not take the slot of normal soldiers (something Akin to having the 6 typical squad size, and then an aditional 2 slots soley for vehicle and armor types of Things, should be odfset by more enemies on maps).

And ofcourse all the above text is the reason why I do not Work in the gaming industry ;)

I personally think that your ideas have too much of a detraction from what X-COM represents. It would end up trying to do too many things and probably fail in all of them. Most of your ideas would be more suited for a space colonization game rather than X-COM, which has always been about defending yourself. And I don't think introducing more equipment or aircraft will necessarily help the game. Research time in X-COM games have always been rather long, but on the flip side, the discoveries are made to be meaningful.

XCOM 1 had Interceptor, Firestorm and Avenger. XCOM 2 had Barracuda, Manta and Leviathan. XCOM 3 had a range of purchasable aircraft at the start, but you had Retaliator and Annihilator in the end. The formula is the same - one normal ship, one intermediate, and one ultimate. There's not much variety in the way of ships, but each upgrade is a very meaningful one, and you can feel the tide turning in your favor with each upgrade. I don't think introducing another 3 or 4 ships in between is gonna help the game. Everyone will just skip them and go for the meaningful upgrades. Not to mention the time you'd spend researching the ships you won't even bother using.

The same formula actually applies for the weapons. In TFTD for example, you have two main directions to head in at the start - go for the alien's sonic weapons, or go for earth's own gauss technology. Sonic is more powerful than gauss....BUT....sonic equipment requires Zrbite (the equivalent of Elerium) which can only be found via salvaging. Gauss is weaker but can be mass produced without the constraint of salvageable resources. When you look at it, there isn't much technological variety, but the implicated consequences are severe. If you don't manage your Zrbite consumption properly, you'll be stuck with weapons without ammo. This applies to both ship and personal weapons.

The point I'm trying to make is, X-COM games never really relied on wide variety. What the game did is put more weight behind the few choices you had. In X-COM Enemy Unknown, ammunition was unlimited, so I can see why people forget that whatever I said used to be a primary consideration in the game. In the older X-COM games, you really had to be careful how often a weapon is fired. If a weapon (say...rifle) took 3 shots to kill an alien, you'd be using 2 or 3 clips per mission....compared to another weapon (say...cannon) which took only 1. However, one is lighter and the other is heavier, which affected your time units. And since the new X-COM didn't use time units, again it's easy to see how all this doesn't become a gameplay consideration. As a result, there's no opportunity cost to your equipment choice. Why would you use laser when you had plasma? Why would you even research laser if you knew plasma was down the pipeline?

I am hoping for some of those classical mechanics to come back.

Having a COOP campaign would be nice.

Hmmm. While I like most of these ideas, I too like jhcho2 feel they don't represent XCOM. XCOM has always been about defense, defense, defense, with a little offense mixed in.

As for humanity migrating to another planet, even with Alien tech do you realize how extremely far off in the future that is? Maybe for XCOM 3 some of these ideas would fit.

@Boddicker: @jhcho2: And that is why I stated that I was no game developer ;)

however, if we took the facts that there were Space stations after the second X:com back then (intercepter was chronological after 2 I think).

and X-com 3 had huge selfreliant domes due to the earth being a wasteland uninhabitable by humans, and the game had notions of "leaving" it is not that far fetched.

Oh and the first and second X-com had 4 "aircraft" (since 2 was ofcourse subs), had multiple ammo types, so those are not that far off either.

lets just leave out the "synthetic humans" for now. Never liked those in apocapypse ^.-

Off the top of my head ...

Much less linear missions.

No static enemies - enemies roam off screen much more and should be turn based as XCOM soldiers - no more jumping to cover after an XCOM unit inches forward - should be alot more aggressive.

XCOM craft capable of carrying many more XCOM soldiers.

Should have multiple bases and they should be vulnerable to attack.

Enemy should have discoverable bases.

A bigger and longer campaign option.

I'd like to see a bigger research tree and more ability to make soldiers customisable through a more in depth skill tree.

Being able to fully kit out your soldiers like the original games.

Did you like count the transport craft as a separate craft? Classical X-COM games generally have 1 default transport, 1 default fighter, 1 alien-tech transport, 1 alien-tech fighter, and the ultimate transport-fighter hybrid. That's how it was in the first and second one. That's still not much of a variety if you ask me. Of course, in Enemy Unknown, your transport craft is totally out of the equation. So if all 3 craft variants were only fighter crafts, then that would be quite a lot by X-COM standards.

I numbered your suggestions for ease of responding.

1) XCOM: EU/EW had linear missions. I don't think anybody can deny this. The original trilogy did not. It hurts the replay value. End of story.

2) Totally agree with this. You should be able to get the jump on aliens and the free discovery move into cover is BS. Though I can understand why they did it that way.

3) Gotta disagree with you here. At first I thought the squad size of 6 would ruin XCOM, but it made me enjoy it more. It kind of evens out with perks and can make for interesting squad builds.

4) Yes and Yes

5) Yes. They should also be randomized too. I remember in Terror from the Deep the alien base locations were fixed. I tried building my base near one and it did not end well.

6) Yes, definitely

7) Definitely a bigger research tree. EW added some new items but the majority of them are useless. A big yes on the skill tree being fleshed out more. Maybe 3 or 4 choices per rank instead of just 2?

@uninspiredcup: A completely new game with a new engine. Enemy within was basically DLC.

Before the rise of console internet connection and the corruption of publishers pc games use to have expansion packs. These meaty products cost about half the price of the full title with almost the same amount of content. Sometimes more.

Then the dark days came, the cancer of gaming. The xbox. Soon publishers began selling half a ginny worth of maps. Items. Content was withheld. Put on ransom. Now, cheats are being sold.

Enemy Within encapsulates those great days of old. Before consoles tainted the pool with it's seed.

Isn't Enemy Within nothing more than an add-on pack? An expansion is like Baldur's Gate: Throne of Bhaal, Starcraft: Brood Wars, Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark or even Dragon Age: Awakening to some degree. What an expansion should not do is force you to replay the same game you've already played and finished, but with new features and items.

I may be wrong though. Maybe my impression of what Enemy Within is, is completely misguided.

Give freedom back to the player that Enemy Unknown removed. Bring back economy and choice. The reboot was so casualized it was painful.