LW Rebalance: Some Thoughts

For what it's worth, here are my thoughts on the LWR Discord, the state of the game, and what I would change.

One huge difference between LWR and other versions of XCOM is that it is still being developed, very actively, and players can provide some input into that process. It’s not a bad thing, but maybe less of it would be better.

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A Modest Suggestion: Less Meta Game

I think most players have been spending far too much time worrying over all the imperfections in Long War Rebalance. I know I have. And here is the thing - I don’t think it’s helping all that much. Yes, it does lead to some much needed nerfs/buffs, and some valid feedback on new mechanics, and such. But the noise to information ratio in these discussions is too high, and the sheer quantity of complaints/suggestions is also too high, and some of discussions have veered off into angry outbursts. I want to focus on one particular problem which is that often the true goal of many suggestions is to make the game easier under the guise of making it better, and this understandably leads the arbiter on these matters (Ucross) to be skeptical of suggestions which make the game easier, but in an effort to help that player, he still considers those suggestions, and then tinkers with balance, endlessly, which probably does make the game better, but not easier, and thus not appeasing the player who made the complaint in the first place. “This aspect of the game is just too damn hard, please make it easier” is a perfectly valid request. And if that is what you feel, then that is what you should say. But Ucross may still deny this request, because as he has noted, most of the time when people complain about the difficulty of the game they are just inexperienced and made poor decisions, and are now salty over the outcome (I believe this is true, and also totally understandable). I myself have made some complaints only to later learn how to handle that situation by changing my tactics. But some criticisms are correct, and so, the question is which is which. And this is hard to answer. The proper metric is what the community of players, divided into tiers based on skill and experience, are capable of dealing with and makes the game more fun and rewarding for them (which of course requires a good degree of difficulty), and to determine this Ucross will take several steps, such as asking other players if they can deal with that challenge, and watching players face similar adversity on youtube or wherever, and requesting feedback from players who have completed a campaign and have dealt with that challenge and every other challenge and can weigh them against each other. And yet this approach often does not make the game better, in my opinion. The reason is that Ucross is still Ucross, not me, and not you, and what he thinks the game ought to be is not what I think it ought to be, not exactly. This is the real problem: where I want the difficulty to be is not where he wants it to be. No amount of tinkering or balancing is going to change his ideal to match mine. In fact Ucross has made the argument that players don’t know what is best for them in this regard (that we undervalue hardship; and don’t appreciate how the lows make the highs better, the losses make the wins matter, and so forth) and he has a good point. But this also means he can’t trust us when we tell him it’s too hard, or prove that it’s too punishing, because suffering is a necessary step towards exaltation, but it’s also a step we are trying to avoid. And that is why playing the LWR Meta Game (trying to win improve the game by changing the rules) is usually a waste of time. Also, I suspect that this process is taking up too much of Ucross’s time, which would be better spent doing the thing he really needs to do in order to better judge game balance and difficulty, which is, as we all know, to play his own damn game.

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Some More Reasons to Avoid the Meta Game

Ucross has probably already heard your suggestion.

Fairness is meaningless. This is a game where your team always gets to shoot first and your adversary lacks a brain.

Perfect Balance is less fun. Also, if all the builds are perfectly balanced, the game will actually be harder to win.

Ucross has been doing this longer than you. Believing you can sway him is like believing you can out negotiate a car salesman.

If you complain that something is impossible to handle, you are inviting an audit into all of your builds, loadouts, and tactics, and that can be unpleasant.

Accepting the rules will help you play better.

Constantly complaining is super annoying.

Asking Ucross to change something is like wishing on a monkey’s paw.

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Ucross is the Monkey’s Paw

Once upon a time, I was nearing the end of a Brutal campaign. It took far longer to complete than it should have, this due to an insufficient supply of ethereal corpses. Back then ethereals were less common, appearing mostly at random, and only guaranteed on Overseer UFOs.

And so I wished upon the monkey’s paw for there to be a solution to this problem, and even suggested some ways this could be accomplished. But that is not how the monkey’s paw works. My wish was indeed granted, but not in the manner I had hoped; instead, ethereals were added to all UFOs once the aliens reach a given research level. If you were wondering where that change came from - you’re welcome.

I also complained that psi soldiers have lower psi defense than other types of soldiers… but instead of raising the psi defense of psi soldiers, the monkey’s paw lowered it for everyone else.

I complained that “the Temple Ship requires too much foreknowledge and hackery.” A couple waves of the monkey’s paw and now it requires much much more than foreknowledge and hackery.

Other player’s have also been wishing on the monkey’s paw. Stefan criticized Incursion. He didn’t like how it was making late game missions even more difficult, and to keep Incursion in the 80s as long as possible he decided not to run an ABA. In response the monkey’s paw raised the minimum level of Incursion from 80 to 100.¹

(To be fair, a few of the suggestions I made were implemented as I had hoped, eg. Engineer to remove Corrosion; breaching ammo more effective against armor. Some changes are better than my proposals, eg. eliminating flat DR, Base DR dropping as armor is removed, etc. And maybe the Temple Ship changes are great as well, I can’t say).

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Impossible is Too Hard

I’m going to be a bit of a hypocrite and do the thing I am advising against, which is to complain about some of the imperfections in LWR and suggest a few changes. In my defense, these remarks are all well considered, and seconded by other players. Most importantly, I’m going to to try to refrain from arguing them on the discord and just lay them out in this post, as best I can, then deal with whatever the rules end up being in my next campaign.

My main concern is that Long War Rebalance is Too Hard. Which is to say, that I could not win at Impossible difficulty, after a prolonged and concerted effort, and based on my previous victories at every other version of XCOM, I would expect to at least get further than I did. If I was the only highly experienced player who couldn’t win at Impossible, then maybe this complaint should be ignored, but my impression is that very few players who attempt Impossible manage to win, and most of them are also really good at XCOM. And so I think that the game should be made easier so that more than a few players are capable of winning at Impossible, and everyone else will survive longer, and see more of the campaign, which in turn, might help us to eventually win.

So, if I just want to win, why don’t I just drop down to Brutal difficulty? I did that! I dropped down to Brutal and made it all the way to the Temple Ship on version 1.36. A year later I took a 1.43 campaign into December, successfully raiding an overseer and winning the Base Defense. That felt like a winning campaign, though I never finished it (because IRL stuff, moving to Seattle, new job, etc.) A few months ago I started another Brutal campaign. Even though I was out of practice I still crushed the aliens in the early months. Eventually Incursion spiked and some strategy layer mistakes² caught up with me. At that point I decided that I might as well play at Impossible difficulty believing that the Incursion mechanic was going to make Brutal almost as hard.³

So I moved up to Impossible difficulty, and after playing for a few months I made it to September in very good shape. Then a couple disastrous missions (along with the intimidating challenges ahead) sapped all my confidence and desire to play further.

Eventually I will come back to LWR, but I don’t see how I can drop back down to Brutal. March through June were far too easy for me, and that was before I was able to hang around till September at Impossible.

It feels like LWR does not have a difficulty level suitable for me. There is a huge gulf between Brutal and Impossible, and no joke. I don’t have a problem with there being a super challenging difficulty setting, but it is supplanting the difficulty level that I typically play at. It would make more sense if Impossible difficulty was more in line with other XCOM mods, and there existed another tier of difficulty (Impossible Plus maybe?) which the elite players could opt for if they want more of a challenge.

Incursion was perhaps intended to remedy the gap in difficulty, but it causes more problems than it solves.

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Incursion is Mostly Bad

The problem is that you can run up the score against the aliens in the early months, only to hit a brick wall when AL goes up. Difficulty is already going up as the campaign progresses, and so Incursion is a ramp laid on top of another ramp, making the slope even steeper. And while adding 2-3 enemies is not a big deal on most missions, it is absolutely a big deal on hard missions. This is because when you reach the tipping point, the place where an encounter goes from manageable to out of control, any additional hardship can dramatically change the outcome. Or to express it mathematically, the relationship between X (more enemies) and Y (probability of casualties) is not linear - it’s parabolic. At Incursion over 130 you are well into that ugly upward trajectory. For situations that were already risky (small maps, multi-pod activations, hard abductions, etc.) the danger is compounded. At Impossible difficulty, this is just not manageable.⁴

Here is the map for my abandoned Brutal campaign on July 11, soon after completing the ABA in the US.

You can see Incursion is at 131, and the aliens are not likely to take over another country anytime soon. My next mission is on a narrow map filled with Mutons who all activate simultaneously. The extra 3 or so aliens added by high incursion really magnified the difficult on this mission and it devolves into a minor disaster. I retreat 4 soldiers - but Incursion barely drops.

One of the main reasons I want to stay at Impossible difficulty is because it reduces the significance of Incursion. I suffer more casualties and the aliens are quicker to take countries, and that keeps Incursion between 100 and 120 most of the time. At least, that’s been my experience. I have heard one report of extremely high levels of Incursion at Impossible difficulty because the aliens failed to take over countries. This is really bad. Impossible is hard enough without high Incursion.

Along with capping Incursion at a lower value, I would suggest also having it decay faster. Currently Incursion decay doesn’t come close to matching it’s accumulation, and only the flipping of countries, or a disaster at the tactical level, can keep it in check. Looking at my most recent Impossible campaign, I averaged 9 missions per month from June through August, which if successful would add 18 to Incursion per month. In order for Incursion to remain stable at 120 (avg. decay of 6); 12 more points of Incursion would need to be subtracted via soldier death, failed missions, or flipped countries. That degree of soldier death or failed missions is unsustainable. Only flipped countries are a viable way to keep Incursion manageable; usually the aliens help us out here.

But it would be better if flipping countries and winning ABAs were much less significant. Right now, those events are far too dominant in the calculation, and often beyond player control. Their significance should be reduced, and replaced with a bump in the rate of decay. Failed or skipped missions and soldier wounds should also reduce Incursion.⁵

Another problem with Incursion is that it punishes the player for winning. This is annoying. It would be nice if Incursion also rewarded the player in some way eg. for every 10% of Incursion, the aliens could lose 2% research speed. (They are moving some of their lab technicians onto the battle field, I guess.) This will make the mechanic more palatable, incentivize winning, and also make the late game a bit easier.

Incursion is one of my least favorite game mechanics but there are a few others I want to disparage. Before I talk about those, I first want to establish what I mean when I say that something is bad.

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What is a Bad Mechanic? What does Bad even Mean?

Players use a variety of terms to describe the game mechanics they don’t like; Punishing, Unfair, Not Fun, Bullshit, Exploit, OP, Abusive, and so forth.

But if you think about it, many of these descriptors can apply to essential components of the game. The game should be punishing when you play poorly. You made bad decisions and now you must face the consequences. And there are situations when the game should be unfair (bad activations), or not fun (soldier deaths), because that’s XCOM baby (terrible dice rolls). And regarding the abusive bullshit OP exploits granted to the aliens, those are often necessary for the AI, which is dumb as a fucking rock, to offer a worthy challenge.

So let’s be clear. What exactly do we mean when we say something is [Insert synonym for Bad]? If an enemy has an ability with a 100% chance to hit, we will call it bullshit OP, but only if it does a significant amount of damage. If not, then we just deal with it. If an enemy can turn invisible and pull ugly flanks, well that’s stupid abusive. Unless we can reveal that enemy, and shut down that maneuver. Then it’s okay. The mechanic must be both devastating, and also unmanageable. Combine those two qualities, and you’ve got yourself some [Insert synonym for Bad].

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A Short List of Bad Mechanics and Some Suggestions to fix them.

• Incursion. (Already discussed this one)

• Drone Orbital Ray. This ability would be fine if it could only be initiated when in LOS. Otherwise, the drone could be behind a wall, in a UFO, behind a ledge, above a doorway, or in some other tricksy location. Yes, this is rare. On the other hand, it’s really bad. It’s happened to me twice in recent memory, once resulting in a dead soldier, the other time ending the campaign. Either diminish the harm (hits 1 or 2 targets rather than the whole squad) or limit it’s use to when the drone has LOS.

• Sectoid Psychic Storm. Same as above.

• Cyberdisc crit. Cyberdiscs have extremely high aim and solid damage, but the bigger problem is that their crit chance ends up being quite high as well; starting from a high base, then often bumped further by aim in excess of 100, cyberdiscs often have a coin flip chance of landing a crit. Because the aliens will often target low health soldiers, this mechanic can result in quick deaths to soldiers in good defensive positions, because of bad luck, even when playing well. If a double cyberdisc pod is lucky, there is not much you can do. I think it might be an improvement to lower crit damage for all aliens and XCOM, and encourage more lengthy shoot outs.

• Sneak. On a couple occasions the aliens have gained Sneak without me anticipating it (or deserving it). Typically this is when they run away from me, then come back later. Every enemy hits hard, but especially when flanking your soldiers, and that is made much more likely when they gain invisibility, especially when I don’t know they are invisible. I would suggest that when an enemy breaks LOS, it becomes ineligible for the Sneak status.

And that’s about it.

I could list a few other complaints (Muton Leader Shred is high, Sectoid Will scaling is high, etc.) But these are smaller concerns by comparison because there are ways to deal with those enemies.

If I had made it further into the campaign, I might have added some late game issues, but I didn’t, and so I will leave that for others to discuss.

I am kind of surprised by how short this list ended up being, as my sense of the game while playing it is that it is extremely hard and unfair. In retrospect I think most of the time this is caused by the culmination of numerous factors rather than any one mechanic (ie. fighting mutons on a narrow map all activating at once, or any triple pod activation under bad circumstances with bad enemy draws) and this can’t really be avoided. If the game is going to be challenging most of the time, then it must sometimes tip into excessive difficulty.

The list was also made shorter by some recent changes that helped us deal with Seekers,⁶ and nerfed Sectoid Commanders.⁷

One thing I’ve noticed is that a bunch of these punishing mechanics seem to have been designed to discourage players from breaking LOS (I am thinking of Orbital Ray, Psychic Storm, and Sneak). The thing is, I almost never completely break LOS, which feels like an exploit to me, and which can easily backfire. It is not a bad idea to discourage disengagement, but I am getting hammered by these mechanics even when I consistently press the attack. It’d be nice if that wasn’t the case.

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One Other Thought:

LWR is fucking great. A lot of improvements from a year ago. Some of my issues may just be related to moving up from Brutal to Impossible, and needing to toughen up a bit and accept more losses.⁸

1. At Impossible difficulty

2. not buying enough soldiers; retiring too many

3. I was wrong about this, of course. Brutal difficulty at high Incursion will certainly not be as hard as Impossible at modest Incursion, but that is how it felt during that mission.

4. Perhaps it is true that some players were capable of dealing with 150 Incursion on older builds, but I suspect it was probably because they were mostly encountering missions where increased enemy counts are less significant. In any case, the game is harder now, and I doubt any player is happily managing 130+ incursion on Impossible.

5. Skipping or losing missions is just terrible for the campaign. Injuries are less awful, but still pretty bad.

6. Detection Mechanisms were too wonky and unreliable in version 1.49, given the danger posed by invisible enemies. The Proximity Sensor has been made better since.

7. Bubble Tanking was bad.

8. This thought reinforced by watching Stefan suffer through far worse.