LXant
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Posts posted by LXant
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Yes, I'm pretty much in the same boat. I like the game and I'm passionate about it. It's just that there are really strange moments that feel like the Matrix is glitching or something. Things that just shouldn't be.
I still enjoy it, but the devs probably want honest feedback. That is what I'm providing here.
In that spirit, good huntin'!
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9 minutes ago, LoboNocturno said:
@LXant Once we mod the game, we seriously need to re balance the weapons, make the assault rifles obviously stronger (they were the primary weapons of our mercs but in JA3 its the sniper rifles.
I'm looking forward to it! I really like the concept of stroming into enemy positions and shooting things up and close to mid range. Just that the game heavily disfavors everything but single shot snipes from a distance. The scarcity of ammo or basic items like flashbangs, grenades or molotov cocktails kind of forces an approach that doesn't waste a single bullet. That, and that most enemies can tank assault rifles.
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8 minutes ago, Tzg said:
It is JA game. I guess you never played any of it. I understand. It is and always was stats and modifiers based. So if your merc suck, your guns suck, and your ammo suck and generally you suck because you picking up wrong tools for the action then yeah it happens.
THIS IS THE GAME it supposed to be. You just don’t understand what you are playing - I guess you also want CtH etc. Well shit - this is not that type of game.
Huh, seems like there's a discount on bad arguments... "It is JA game" is probably the weakest and cheapest argument available on the entire market. "Yes, it's unrealistic, but that is the game, it's supposed to be that way"? And I only don't like it because I "don't understand" what I'm playing?
Are we really discussing why it makes perfect sense that a bullet to the head doesn't impede the target whatsoever? That it depends on personal skill if a bullet to the head kills or not? What kind of nonsense is this? We're talking about guns, not a sword or hammer that depends on the personal strength of the wielder.
What's next, you're going to defend that it is perfectly fine to spawn 10 enemies into a room which I previously fully explored, out of thin air, because "it is JA game" and that is what naturally happens when you click "activate hydraulics"? A perfectly fine and logical outcome? (and yes, this is exactly what happens in that one room)
If you like absurd and unrealistic things in the game, then great, you have what you want. But I don't like it, and that's all there is to it. The devs will read the feedback and act accordingly, or not. It's up to them. Just don't tell me it's my own fault that I don't like what I think is bad combat design.
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49 minutes ago, Tzg said:
Not true. You can literally blow enemies heads off. With one shot. Boom and dude has no head and dies instantly like in JA2 or Fallout.
What do you mean, "not true"? Have you even played the game? A shot to the head can kill, but will not always do so. Play the game and you'll see for yourself.
Just a few minutes back I encountered a "Veteran Brute" with a shotgun. Shot him right in the head with a M24 sniper rifle for 90 dmg. You know what he did? He turned towards me and shot back, hit me and put a bleeding debuff on me. Then I took took a 2nd shot from an Anaconda revolver to his arms for 20 dmg, you know what he did? He turned towards me and returned fire, hitting me again and once more with a bleeding debuff.
Believe me or don't, but I know what I see and it's getting ridiculous.
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26 minutes ago, Melliores said:
The best would be headshots to impose a certain status on the target. However due to game balance (you almost always being the attacker) I can see why this would make players go for headshots even more. And why the dev team decided to not overbuff them.
That is what I mean. Splitting the head open, putting a bullet in it, is more than just a little bit of inconvenient pain that can be safely ignored. It's something that is life-threatening, usually lethal, and should leave the victim - if alive - at the very least incapacitated.
There's no way someone with a bullet or an axe in the head could just walk it off and shoot back as if it was nothing.
The game is missing this currently. Shooting someone in the arm gives a bigger penalty to accuracy than shooting someone in the head. That seems awfully wrong.
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1 minute ago, sandman25dcsss said:
I am not sure. Are you playing on the last difficulty level? Primary difference between difficulty levels should be number of shots it takes to kill an enemy. If all ordinary enemies die from a single headshot no matter what difficulty level, you are left with either increasing number of enemies or decreasing your own accuracy. First option does not work that well because of stealth kills, second option either does not work or makes the game too random depending on exact accuracy penalty.
Instead we're left with standard enemies able to tank hits to the head. I know, it's a game and all that, so I expect that to a certain degree. But still, it's a game about shooting people. A game that tries to include realism. So why don't they die when I shoot them right into their face?
I think it was a mistake to include aiming at body parts, at least in the current state of combat. By offering options like a headshot, they opened the door to realism, but then pulled back at the last possible moment by removing the realistic consequences of actually getting shot in the head. Same with hits to the arms or legs. Hit to the arms: they drop their weapon. Hit to the leg: enemy drops to the ground. But neither happens, they get a slight debuff to accuracy, but then still fire suppressive fire from across the screen hit me behind full cover. Where does such a state of combat leave us?
And no, I'm not playing the highest difficulty. For the time being, to get a feel for the game and its mechanics, I play on the recommended standard difficulty. I don't know what higher difficulties actually do. Do they give the enemy better stats? Do you get higher item wearout, higher scrap costs and less money from mines? I don't know.
What I know is that shooting someone in the head with a gun, outside of a boss fight, should kill them. Leave dmg sponges to the higher difficulties, which suspend realism in favor of an unrealistic challenge.
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As you see in the name, it's not a mutated croc, just a normal animal. Either the guns are underpowered, or enemies are way overtuned. I'd say it's a mix of both.
With boss characters like Pierre I'm actually okay with a bit of unrealistic dmg sponge behaviour. If he dropped dead from a single pistol headshot, it would make the game trivial. The fight is memorable exactly because I had to focus fire on him.
But for normal unnamed enemies, for random ecounters, for nameless grunts? Headshot = kill. End of story. That they throw a lot of enemies at you, all of which can tank dmg as good as Pierre does, is just overtuning things way too much.
The appeal of the game is that we play a bunch of elite fighters against a military junta. While we're tough, tanky, high-accuracy and high-dmg output, stealthy and incredibly versatile, the enemy has none of that, but better supplies, numbers and initial control over the map. That is supposed to be the basic setup. Some key positions are then held by their elite, maybe even by a tank, and that gets you to the limit of your abilities, a tough nut to crack.
But that's not what happens in the game. The enemy militia is also tough, tanky, high-accuracy and high dmg output, with incredibly good self-dissolving equipment, while still bringing huge numbers and unlimited supplies (which we can't take for ourselves) to the table.
Just now I had entered a sector that I was told had 8 enemies in it. But when I enter the sector, a cutscene plays and I get 30 seconds to prepare for an assault of 15 enemies. They all come at once, in one big group, each one of them can tank two hits to the face before the 3rd drops them. They all come with sniper rifles, assault rifles and shotguns, they throw grenades and my cover is a bunch of cars, which can (and will) blow up in my face if I don't move quickly. Not to mention that I don't have enough ammo to actually kill all of them, and they don't drop enough to replace what I have to shoot at them. It's frustrating game design.
I think a combat rebalance is in order.
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2 hours ago, Solaris_Wave said:
What kind of weapon were you using that needed six headshots to kill a croc? I am curious about this. It also sounds as if those shots were forced to be grazing shots due to the fog.
I have said it before. Fog should limit your ability to see the enemy. It would also dampen sound. It wouldn't make a bullet weaker though. Once you see an enemy and pull the trigger, that bullet would do what it would have done in clear conditions, especially at the closer ranges possibly forced by fog.
It just sounds like a "Wouldn't it be cool if…" idea that was agreed upon and would elevate a threat such as a crocodile. The thing is, you are then forced to close in with the animal to where, it being a close combat orientated creature, then gets the advantage. It also sounds, from your description, like it gets some short ranged area of effect attack. With me being unable to buy and play the game at present, I can only speculate on what it is like and as you say, it sounds like one of those 'gamey' implementations.
I had two Gewehr 98 rifles, one AK 47, one Uzi, one MP40 and one .44 Peacemaker. Due to the fog I made sure to be close enough to not have grazing hits, which was dangerous, as crocodiles get automatic overwatch in a radius of 2 tiles around them and can move and attack over a bigger distance each turn.
36 headshot dmg from 5 tiles away, at max aim, look like this. You can also see how little 36 dmg are actually taking off from the total HP, which is somewhere at ~150 hp.
I have a Kevlar vest, which gives me 40% dmg reduction when hit. Crocs have 50%. Why can't we make suits of Croc leather for the same effect, if the game makes them more durable than modern Kevlar?
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Since I already gave my thoughts on the things I'd like to improve here, I'll take the opportunity to give my positive feedback in this thread.
For one, I love the music and art style, it captures the feel of the old games while coming in a more modern look. The merc management, the notebook, the map, all of that feels like I always imagined a new JA to look like. Well done.
I also appreciate that we can make our own merc via the IMP test. It's especially well received by me since it likely wasn't always planned to include it.
What I also like is the combat range, which is on average bigger than in modern turn-based tactical games (like XCOM). It could be bigger, yes, but it's not in a bad place right now and I can engage enemies at a good distance.
The big variety of ammo, the weapon modding, the inventory space (which is determined by strength) all make sense and have great potential.
Then there's the modding support. Whatever weaknesses the game currently has, it's only a question of time before mods bring some variety or unbalance the game in a way which the devs would never dare. That the game comes with the (very convenient) Steam Workshop is a huge bonus in my books.
Would I recommend it? Probably, but not to everyone. And that's for the reasons @GODSPEED already mentioned. You're often fighting arbitrary rules set by the game that don't make much sense. Just now I had an encounter with two crocodiles in a foggy area. Why do I need 6 headshots to kill one single animal? Why does it get free 60+ dmg melee crits in a 2m radius around it? Some enemies are just overtuned, and with the forced grazing hits in fog you kind of have to get close here. I don't appreciate challenges that don't make much sense, it just feels too game-y.
And now I ran out of ammo for my AK, after killing a group of enemies that came with AK's, but didn't drop any loot/ammo. What should've felt like a victory feels like a loss. I won, yet I'm off worse thanks to it.
But the good thing is that those details are just a question of balance, not of inherent flaws around which the entire game was built. It's not a bad game by any means, and probably the best 'true' JA successor after JA2. That alone is more than I could've hoped for, given the disastrous track record of horrible JA games in the last decade or two.
So, for all the little things that annoy me, I'm overall happy with the final product. Well done, devs, well done.
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Now that I played for a while, I agree with what most people say here. The pause button is desperately needed to make stealthy takedowns better.
Things I noticed and would love to see them changed eventually:
- Knifing down an unaware enemy from behind should always be a guaranteed insta-kill. There are insta-kills for some stealthy knife action, yes, and they're satisfying when they work, but they're far too unreliable
- Since we're already at surprise attacks, the free movement towards cover doesn't work well for this game. It was needed for XCOM, where you'd otherwise outflank and wipe the floor with surprised 3 alien pods. But in this game the enemy has so much HP that it's kind of too much to also provide them with free cover. They already come with what seems to be unlimited ammo, more hp and higher numbers, and shooting alarms everyone in the vicinity, so there's really no need to overdo it with the movement as well
- In general, I'd really love to have the pause function to allow for stealthy takedowns of more than one enemy at a time. The game doesn't support stealth as much as it should, at least according to my own observations
- Headshots should count for much more damage. When I shoot someone with an AK into the unprotected head with a burst of 3 hits at point blank, I expect them to die, not just to take 70% dmg
- Show armor on characters. The amount of half-naked people fighting me, only to find out that they're armored, is kind of annoying. You rely on visual cues when planning your attack, i.e. who holds what weapon etc. The same should also go for armor, I want to see who wears what, so I can plan ahead
- Scarcity for the sake for scarcity is kind of annoying. You get attacked by a bunch of people with assault rifles, you kill all 10 of them, and all you get is a pistol and a flak vest? I don't expect to get all their stuff, or to get unlimited cheap ammo from the internet, but have killed enemies drop at least their ammo and some scrap to make winning fights worthwhile
- A major annoyance is the uncanny hit chance of even basic enemies. They're supposed to be untrained savages, brainless brutes, who are capable of little more than torturing defenceless villagers. But when you fight them, it turns out that they're actually olympic athletes, who can run, climb, hide and snipe you all in one turn... come one, we're not talking about their elite, but the basic grunts. Have them behave as such. The amount of times they hit be behind full cover with their burst fire after moving seems suspiciously like the AI isn't playing by the rules...
That's it for now. Game is fun and I enjoy it, but I wish the aforementioned things would change rather sooner than later.
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Considering all the (failed) attempts at making a worthy JA successor after JA2, I really like the results so far. Especially that they included I.M.P.; not having your own merc was probably my major complaint initially.
I suspect it helps that I generally like the style of XCOM2, which isn't a sentiment everyone shares as far as I'm aware. I was optimistic about the game at first, but now I'm convinced that we'll get a genuinely good strategy game and not a shameless money grab.
The only thing that I'd love to see expanded at some point is more customization for your mercs, not just the three equipment slots. Having ballistic goggles, a helmet, equipment for night and thermal vision, maybe a bandana for good measure, isn't done justice by having just one simple slot "head". Same for body armor and legs, a single slot is not much - unless, of course, we get very in-depth customizing with every armor/equipment item we find, not just weapons. Then I'm happy here.
That aside, a high degree of visual customization would also be welcome. Again, I know XCOM2 isn't liked by anyone, but the visual customization options in that game are absolute top tier and gave a huge amount of freedom. I could sink hours in it, I think it added a lot to the game.
Anyway, the previews are great, Haemimont did a great job so far.
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I would've liked it to have the choice, to either always show their standard clothing or to show their full equipment, body armor included.
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On 8/12/2022 at 10:21 PM, ghostmech007 said:
So no sign of IMP. Which isn't a dealbreaker but a big bummer.
I feel the same and my hope is that it'll be included somehow, if not with 1.0, then at the very least through some kind of expansion/DLC.
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It's not so much the amount of inventory slots that does it for me, but the amount of customization you can apply to items going into those slots.
I'd be perfectly happy with a very minimalistic inventory like in XCOM or JA: Rage!, if we could expand items by adding things to them. Like night vision equipment etc. on a helmet, or separate slots for armor plates, additional pockets for ammo/grenades, camouflage equipment and so on for body armor.
Then there's the whole question of visual customization. I really hope we'll get quite a bit of options here, or at least a high degree of moddability.
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Yes, @Hendrix, that's probably not too far from the truth.
The whole corporation/holding is in a volatile situation, they spend huge amounts of money and have little to show for it. At least for now. So it's only natural to reveal some of the more advanced projects, so they can list them on their quarterly/yearly reports as upcoming AAA titles. Gives the shareholders more than just a short "We work on X unnamed AAA titles".
Everyone who has ever written a paper or two knows the situation: you try your best to fill the pages if you have to fill a quota. You take everything you can get. Sometimes quantity becomes a quality on its own. And sometimes an early announcement can make the whole difference.
If you want a prominent example, look at Bethesda (before MS bought them). They got under fire for their dumpster fire that is Fallout 76. So, what did they do? Todd Howard revealed a 30 sec clip of a landscape and a slogan "Elder Scrols 6". That's it. It has been four years since then (with 4 more years to go, I reckon), but people were happy with that, and the outrage about Fallout 76 suddenly died. Bethesda became everyone's darling again.
The exact opposite was what Blizzard did. People expected the announcement of Dialbo 4 at BlizzCon 2018. Dedicated and hyped PC gamers paid for tickets, travel and accomodations to be there. And they got a f*cking mobile game announcement. Sure, D4 was also in development back then, but they chose not to reveal it, went with the mobile cashgrab instead and got burned.
The Activision Blizzard stock price fell hard by around 30% in the following days, from the 60s to something in the 40s. It stayed there for almost a year. It took another half a year to reach the level from before the announcement disaster; not even the announcement of Diablo 4 in Nov 2019 could salvage the mess they created the year before.
Paradox is the better publisher in that regard. They are smaller and rely heavily on the interaction with their customers. Understandable, as they sell niche products to begin with. They can't afford to have a bad standing with their gamers. And it showed in how they handled Haemimont's Surviving Mars development and PR.
THQ/Embracer is different, and that's not a compliment here.
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So 11 months between announcement and the first news drop. Can't say I like that, but now we know when to expect more.
Thanks @Wigen for giving us those news!
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8 hours ago, Wigen said:
Sometimes I wonder what the collaboration between Haemimont Games and Paradox Interactive would look like in terms of providing information about the game.
8 hours ago, GODSPEED said:I wonder how the development of Surviving Mars went (HG+Paradox). Anyone followed that one?
I didn't follow it back then, but everything is still available. Here's how it went: It was announced end-August, first DevDiaries came out in October and the game released in March, a bit over 7 months after the initial announcement.
All in all, a much smoother experience for the players. That's why I don't blame Haemimont for the lack of communication, since I know they're more than willing and able to do it.
JA3 isn't the only game THQ announced, and all of them suffer from the same absence of news.
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1 minute ago, Hendrix said:
If I were Haemimont (and were ready for more reveals) I would frequently voice my concerns and say: We want to communicate with our potential customers!
Does this forum only exist becauses they started to take preorders for the game?
Haemimont isn't part of THQ Nordic, nor of any other entity within the Embracer Group. They're just a Bulgarian studio contracted by the Austrian THQ Nordic, a subsidy of the Swedish Embracer Group, to develop a game. They get money from THQ for their work, but everything else lies within THQ's responsibility.
Maybe they voice their concerns, maybe they don't. We have no way of knowing. All we know is that the publisher, who is responsible for community management, is rapidly growing and probably a bit overwhelmed with establishing a new modus operandi. They have to bring dozens of new studios in line, so I imagine expecting them to communicate with an external studio would be of an even lower priority. Right now their main concern is a good financial report.
And if I may say so, I've once worked for a company that was held by a Swedish parent company. If that experience is anything to go by, chaotic would be a good way to describe it. Scandinavian workplace culture (at least in big corporations) is vastly different from Central Europe (where THQ Nordic is) and both are vastly different from Eastern Europe (where Haemimont is). Miscommunication is common here.
It was a better fit when Paradox contracted Haemimont to make Surviving Mars. With both of them being two small-ish partners they had announced the game end-August, released the first DevDiaries in October and released the game in March of the following year. Haemimont is capable and willing, if the publisher is behind it.
When I look at the whole Embracer/THQ thing, I smell a lot of corporate bullsh*t getting in the way of things. This forum here is also registered and owned by THQ Nordic, not Haemimont. The devs have nothing to do with it.
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As a side note, for anyone who's interested in the larger picture, I looked into it (a little bit at least) and it seems like the whole parent company is suffering from a lack of cohesion, as they're in the process of growing very fast and re-organizing themselves.
I'm talking about the Embracer Group, the parent company holding THQ Nordic, Koch Media and others. Currently they're bigger than even Activision-Blizzard or EA. They have close to 200 games in development (most aren't announced yet) with close to 90 internal game studios and they've casually bought 37 studios in 2021 alone, with 37 more planned for 2022.
I also looked at the other 5 games that were announced together with Jagged Alliance 3. The situation is very similar to JA3, with little more, if any, information following the initial September 2021 articles that came right after the games were announced. Not much more of substance to this day, so we're not alone with our problem.
All those games, and JA3 is among them, are still listed as "Announced Releases as of February 17, 2022" in the Interim Report 3 21/22 for October - December 2021 of the Embracer Group. So it's being worked on and scheduled for a medium term release date, probably later this year.
If I had to guess why there's this huge lack of communication, I'd go with it being a consequence of their rapid growth and the resulting lack of established cohesion between all parts. It's not unlikely that no one feels responsible for small things like community management for games that aren't close to their release date. Let there be some employees leaving the company, let new hires come in, and you can expect some things falling off to the side without anyone noticing.
What could that mean for JA3 as a game? Well, in my experience it's almost never a good thing if a developer lacks any direction from their publisher, if there's no one with a clear strategy who can and will guide the studio through the process of making a successful game. But on the bright side: the devs are most likely undisturbed and can work without pressure, as they don't need to do anything else.
What can we do about it? For now, most likely nothing. Since we aren't shareholders, our opinion won't matter much. But we can certainly look up some guys from THQ Nordic marketing and tell them how the lack of community management has the potential to damage the image of their product. Send it to more people at the same time and it's hard to ignore.
And if we decide to be brave, like our beloved mercs in their fight against a whole country, we could even write to some people in the parent company Embracer Group. Escalate enough and something ought to change.
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I completely agree with everything you've said. Many factors put me at ease regarding the quality of the upcoming game. But the ongoing silence makes be increasingly nervous.
Why is there absolutely nothing from the devs, no sign that the project is still alive? Is it because the game doesn't come together as Haemimont envisioned it and they need more time? Is it because they have nothing good to say about it? Is it because of internal cuts and problems? Is the development even failing as a whole? Or is it just bad marketing from the publisher? Maybe THQ doesn't care at all?
We don't know, but the silence doesn't instill any confidence. It's the opposite, it makes us think that there's something they want to hide.
If they didn't plan to communicate anything with us, they wouldn't have opened this forum in the first place. But they did, and only after the fact did they decide not to talk about their product. Brad Logston was last active mid October 2021, that's almost half a year back. Doesn't bode well.
56 minutes ago, Hendrix said:It would be interesting to know whom is responsible for communication, is it THQ or Haemimont?
It's THQ as the publisher. They decide if and what and when things go out. The devs aren't at liberty to disclose anything without the publisher's approval.
The process is much easier if the developer is their own publisher at the same time, like with Paradox or many indie studios.
So, if there's someone we have to press about the lack of communication, it would definitely be THQ.
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The utter silence almost a year after the initial announcement is a bit disconcerting. I hope we'll see something like a DevDiary soon.
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On 10/6/2021 at 5:27 PM, GODSPEED said:
Xmas 2022 right?
Looks like you were spot on! 😅
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We have a dev studio with a history of good games, one of the better publishers out there, and the announcement trailer was not only well done, but had - if that's something to go by - above average clicks compared to the other games that were announced.
It indicates that there's some sort of a fanbase interested in this game and its success; that part plays a key role when it comes to allocation of resources.
While it is good to remain cautious, I also think that we have some good reasons for optimism this time around.
But @THQN Fabian, a DevDiary and/or the FAQ would certainly help. 😉
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16 hours ago, Wigen said:
The game developers have questions. They even found some of them interesting.
They found them 'interesting', hm? That's usually an euphemism for 'wtf' 😅
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First impressions
in General Discussion
Posted
I didn't meet the elite yet, but Veterans. In another post I described how he managed to tank a shot from a M24 sniper rifle to the unprotected head for 90 dmg, turned around, shot me with his shotgun, hit, inflicted bleeding. Then I shot him with an Anaconda piston into the arm for 20 dmg, he turned around, shot me with his shotgun, hit, inflicted bleeding. The 3rd shot finally brought him down.
So yeah, I can see where the road leads. Higher accuracy, even more hp, better weapons, more enemies.
I really wish I had the ammo to keep up with the hp inflation. Anyway, due to the scarcity of ammo and the nature of combat in general, I now play the snipe game and abuse the sneak/hide mechanic to clear out sectors. I'm a bit sad that this seems to be the only working strategy that can deal with both the enemy and the ammo shortage. I was hoping for more assault rifle action and cinematic shootouts.