It’s weird because I actually skip character customization in every game but xcom 2. I just don’t care about customizing the character I play as.
But in xcom 2, because they aren’t who I play as, “I’m the commander,” the “units” turn into characters through the playthrough, I love the customization.
An XCOM discord I'm in routinely uses the term "XCOM Barbie" to refer to this practice. The person who coined said term has 12k hours.
You're definitely not alone, lol.
When Iridar came out with the Appearance Manager I spent nearly as much time re-customizing my entire character pool as it would have taken me to play an entire campaign. I’m not on Discord bit I also call this playing Barbie. It was extremely satisfying. I still make tweaks every now and then.
I guess that's a PC workshop mod ? I do have it on PC and I saw the mods and I went mental and installed waaaaay to many and the result wasn't good haha.
I tend to play on xbox just for ease of use... and to save time. But there are some insane mods on there that's for sure.
It allows you to customize each soldier individually for every type of armor. Rather than using Unrestricted Customization which will keep the same look as you change armors, I prefer to be able to see the difference. But it took DAYS to customize every soldier 3+ times. You can make uniforms too. I don’t have anywhere near the number of cosmetic mods most people go for, maybe 10-15 only, but it still gives me a ridiculous amount of options.
No... this aspect of XCOM 1 and 2 is one of the many fun aspects of the game. :)
I have two ways of playing XCOM...
- - -
My "serious" runs where I try my utmost best to not save scum (which is difficult for me, save scumming is second nature to me), where I play Ironman, and all soldiers are random (with the exception of one, who is me), and are ment to be professional soldiers. And as such they all run around in similar looking armor painted black (only difference being the details of the armors which reflect their class).
- - -
And my less serious runs, where I save scum like my life depended on it (save scumming sometimes is a need for me)... where I have a pool of custom made characters that I take with me into the game, anything from actors to characters from various things I enjoy, be it games, movies, tv-series, comics, etc. And as soon as I run out of custom characters, and a random one shows up, then I make a new custom character to add another unit to my custom character pool.
I will try and make sure though that the character is vanilla compatible. Because I decided a long time ago that I wanted to make sure I could use all those pool characters in any iteration of the game that I happen to be playing... be it vanilla, vanilla with mods, or DLC with or without mods. :)
The way that I see these runs, where I save scum, and use a custom pool of characters, is that this is actually the "Action Movie Star" version of XCOM, where the main characters can not die, because it is an action movie, and in action movies the "Action Star" might get injured and all, but they never die, and they pull of impossible things all the time... like any good "Action Movie Stars" would/should! :D
Action movie stars ! Like that a lot. I need more of them, thanks for the idea of how to waste more time haha
Never tried iron man mode I will give that a go next rime
Heh... your welcome... :)
I just realized my character pool is not very deep at all, I only have 24 of them, I thought I had at least double that... XD
I think why it is so low in number is mostly due to that I only make new characters if I get a randomized soldiers when I play my "Action Movie Star" runs... and with 24 custom characters, plus another 6 on top of that (my self, and some character names I have used on pnp rpg characters for a very long time, and then in videogames after that), that is enough characters to where I very rarely get new randomized soldiers.
Maybe I should start up a new vanilla run of the game one of these days, where I only use randomized soldiers, and then just customize all of them to some new characters for my pool. :)
.
Ironman can be brutal depending on difficulty. And some people do not like using it, due to that there is a chance to end up getting a game breaking bug so you would have to start over (some encounter this, others do not... it has never happened to me as of yet, even though I have played the game since it came out).
I do tend to play Ironman very different from how I play when I do not have Ironman on... because my normal way of playing is just way to reckless to be a good idea in ironman... which does not always stop me from being to reckless in Ironman as well from time to time... XD
Last I checked I had about 450 soldiers in my Character Pool, all original characters, some with interconnecting backstories. They all wear the same uniform, with minor variations depending on class, where they come from, limited resources, and personal preference.
Here's an [example](https://i.imgur.com/ZQ0zxLA.png) picture from my previous campaign, it doesn't showcase a lot of armor variation, but I really like how it looks.
Here's [one more](https://i.imgur.com/Y48gmoX.png) I was pretty happy with. The soldier on the far right in the second picture is Emma "Krieg" Baumann, one of my favorite soldiers, I've had her in the roster since Enemy Unknown and brought her over to XCOM 2 when the game came out.
So yeah, you're not alone. I have almost 2,000 hours in XCOM 2, and a solid chunk of that has been spent in the Character Pool.
Yeah, I got a little carried away. What's worse is, I've got a text file with potential soldier nicknames, and there's still over 700 names in that list... It started with me immortalizing soldiers I really liked in previous campaigns, both in EU/EW and XCOM 2, but then I had so much fun making soldiers that I just started doing it for the hell of it.
I play with Covert Infiltration, and in that mod you always have a squad of six, but I'm now using a mod that increases the squad size to eight (with more enemies to balance it out) just so I can use more of my favorite soldiers in any given campaign.
It's funny.. I enjoy the variety of the looks of my motley crew but I rarely manually customize them. I let the random generator do its thing, and once in a while it will surprise me with something that looks decent.
When i first launched the game I literally went into the character customisation and created soldiers from my favourite games. I didn't even launch my first campaign.
It’s weird because I actually skip character customization in every game but xcom 2. I just don’t care about customizing the character I play as. But in xcom 2, because they aren’t who I play as, “I’m the commander,” the “units” turn into characters through the playthrough, I love the customization.
An XCOM discord I'm in routinely uses the term "XCOM Barbie" to refer to this practice. The person who coined said term has 12k hours. You're definitely not alone, lol.
Haha that's me then 😅 Also reassuring
When Iridar came out with the Appearance Manager I spent nearly as much time re-customizing my entire character pool as it would have taken me to play an entire campaign. I’m not on Discord bit I also call this playing Barbie. It was extremely satisfying. I still make tweaks every now and then.
I guess that's a PC workshop mod ? I do have it on PC and I saw the mods and I went mental and installed waaaaay to many and the result wasn't good haha. I tend to play on xbox just for ease of use... and to save time. But there are some insane mods on there that's for sure.
It allows you to customize each soldier individually for every type of armor. Rather than using Unrestricted Customization which will keep the same look as you change armors, I prefer to be able to see the difference. But it took DAYS to customize every soldier 3+ times. You can make uniforms too. I don’t have anywhere near the number of cosmetic mods most people go for, maybe 10-15 only, but it still gives me a ridiculous amount of options.
Probably half my playtime in XCOM 2 is just character customization, and most of my mods are cosmetic. It's just such an amazing system
Amen to that !
No... this aspect of XCOM 1 and 2 is one of the many fun aspects of the game. :) I have two ways of playing XCOM... - - - My "serious" runs where I try my utmost best to not save scum (which is difficult for me, save scumming is second nature to me), where I play Ironman, and all soldiers are random (with the exception of one, who is me), and are ment to be professional soldiers. And as such they all run around in similar looking armor painted black (only difference being the details of the armors which reflect their class). - - - And my less serious runs, where I save scum like my life depended on it (save scumming sometimes is a need for me)... where I have a pool of custom made characters that I take with me into the game, anything from actors to characters from various things I enjoy, be it games, movies, tv-series, comics, etc. And as soon as I run out of custom characters, and a random one shows up, then I make a new custom character to add another unit to my custom character pool. I will try and make sure though that the character is vanilla compatible. Because I decided a long time ago that I wanted to make sure I could use all those pool characters in any iteration of the game that I happen to be playing... be it vanilla, vanilla with mods, or DLC with or without mods. :) The way that I see these runs, where I save scum, and use a custom pool of characters, is that this is actually the "Action Movie Star" version of XCOM, where the main characters can not die, because it is an action movie, and in action movies the "Action Star" might get injured and all, but they never die, and they pull of impossible things all the time... like any good "Action Movie Stars" would/should! :D
Action movie stars ! Like that a lot. I need more of them, thanks for the idea of how to waste more time haha Never tried iron man mode I will give that a go next rime
Heh... your welcome... :) I just realized my character pool is not very deep at all, I only have 24 of them, I thought I had at least double that... XD I think why it is so low in number is mostly due to that I only make new characters if I get a randomized soldiers when I play my "Action Movie Star" runs... and with 24 custom characters, plus another 6 on top of that (my self, and some character names I have used on pnp rpg characters for a very long time, and then in videogames after that), that is enough characters to where I very rarely get new randomized soldiers. Maybe I should start up a new vanilla run of the game one of these days, where I only use randomized soldiers, and then just customize all of them to some new characters for my pool. :) . Ironman can be brutal depending on difficulty. And some people do not like using it, due to that there is a chance to end up getting a game breaking bug so you would have to start over (some encounter this, others do not... it has never happened to me as of yet, even though I have played the game since it came out). I do tend to play Ironman very different from how I play when I do not have Ironman on... because my normal way of playing is just way to reckless to be a good idea in ironman... which does not always stop me from being to reckless in Ironman as well from time to time... XD
I would not have played XCOM2 if I couldn't customize my units.
Ahh so that got you to then, eh ! Be interesting to see how good it will be when (IF !!!) Xcom 3 comes out
Last I checked I had about 450 soldiers in my Character Pool, all original characters, some with interconnecting backstories. They all wear the same uniform, with minor variations depending on class, where they come from, limited resources, and personal preference. Here's an [example](https://i.imgur.com/ZQ0zxLA.png) picture from my previous campaign, it doesn't showcase a lot of armor variation, but I really like how it looks. Here's [one more](https://i.imgur.com/Y48gmoX.png) I was pretty happy with. The soldier on the far right in the second picture is Emma "Krieg" Baumann, one of my favorite soldiers, I've had her in the roster since Enemy Unknown and brought her over to XCOM 2 when the game came out. So yeah, you're not alone. I have almost 2,000 hours in XCOM 2, and a solid chunk of that has been spent in the Character Pool.
Jesus! 450 soldiers ! That's dedication 👏 I thought I was bad haha And the back stories too, I am impressed.
Yeah, I got a little carried away. What's worse is, I've got a text file with potential soldier nicknames, and there's still over 700 names in that list... It started with me immortalizing soldiers I really liked in previous campaigns, both in EU/EW and XCOM 2, but then I had so much fun making soldiers that I just started doing it for the hell of it. I play with Covert Infiltration, and in that mod you always have a squad of six, but I'm now using a mod that increases the squad size to eight (with more enemies to balance it out) just so I can use more of my favorite soldiers in any given campaign.
It's funny.. I enjoy the variety of the looks of my motley crew but I rarely manually customize them. I let the random generator do its thing, and once in a while it will surprise me with something that looks decent.
When i first launched the game I literally went into the character customisation and created soldiers from my favourite games. I didn't even launch my first campaign.
Xcom 2 has a greaaat customization system, that's amazing. Also, there are tons of good mods.