PhoneLobster wrote:
I never called for a faithful remake.
Then why are all your complaints
comparisons of old Xcom mechanics to new ones - based on your faulty remembering of how old Xcom actually played?
Again, the reality is you're part of the crowd that didn't want a "remake". You wanted an
expansion of the old Xcom. You wanted old Xcom with new graphics and that list of features you wanted.
The problem again is old Xcom is a fucking 90s design. It was great back then and it's still a good game if you're willing to put up with 90s design paradigms.
However it is
not going to sell in the modern era when
design has moved on. This is why Xenonauts and every attempt to be like old Xcom has failed. This is why Long War is mainly a mod for oldtimers and
not part of the standard package.
Respecting a player's free time and head space - meaning acknowledging that they don't actually want to spend so much time or stress buying individual ammunition clips - is already part of modern design which the cranky oldtimer crowd typically dismisses as "dumbing down" a game.
Now, with
other games you can certainly make an argument that they dumbed it down for the worse, but Xcom's success and pedigree all point away from that direction.
One of Xcom's lead designers for instance is Ananda Gupta - a guy whose career started in euro boardgames (you know that hipster thing in the 90s that has now pretty surpassed tabletop RPGs and is feeding off its bones) and he had the best-ranked boardgame on BGG for several years despite it being published by a virtually unknown publisher. His designs are all about respecting player time and head space, to the point people who've played his boardgames a lot can tell which ideas were his and which were from someone else.
This is why the second best-known turn-based strategy game in recent times is not Xenonauts but Invisible Inc, which was again all about paring down squad sizes and meaningless accounting in favor of an actual compelling core turn-based stealth mechanic.
In short, the old Micropose model of presenting a Happy Meal that packs many different games in one - which is the Xcom model (base-building game + alien hunt game + air-to-air battle game) - has been supplanted by a model where you have just one or two great mechanics that are then supported by complementing elements. That's what
great design in the modern era actually is.
And really, the game
you keep describing that you actually want is already out there - it's called Jagged Alliance 2 1.13 mod. That's a game that
relishes micromanagement and sends your 12 guys against 30 all the fucking time; and unlike in old Xcom or new Xcom they actually come all at once with 30 guys so you're facing
actual lopsided odds.
The thing is it's an actual
hard game without understanding the spotting mechanics (and even then it's chancy) which is why most people just play Jagged Alliance 2 vanilla where the opposition kindly sends in troops in smaller groups instead of an actual mob,
