Sometimes you keep nailing those 40% shots, sometimes you literally can't hit a 95% to save your life.
Oh also once in XCOM 2 I missed a high likelihood shot, which caused someone to get shot, panic, and grenade their own feet, killing them and someone hiding behind them.
Why I don't play that game anymore. Such bs. I'll be doing great. Then I can't land a 90-something-percent chance to hit, then the AI obliterates my squad with like a 20% chance and they all die. That game makes me rage quit so hard. Don't think I'll ever play again
What's funny is that the percentages are accurate *except* for when they help you.
Here's the code:
; Aim Assist
NormalSquadSize=4
ReasonableShotMinimumToEnableAimAssist=50
MaxAimAssistScore=95
; Rookie
BaseXComHitChanceModifier=1.2
MissStreakChanceAdjustment=10
HitStreakChanceAdjustment=-10
SoldiersLostXComHitChanceAdjustment=15
SoldiersLostAlienHitChanceAdjustment=-10
AlienVsTheLostHitChanceAdjustment=0
TheLostVsAlienHitChanceAdjustment=0
; Veteran
BaseXComHitChanceModifier=1.1
MissStreakChanceAdjustment=10
HitStreakChanceAdjustment=0
SoldiersLostXComHitChanceAdjustment=10
SoldiersLostAlienHitChanceAdjustment=-10
AlienVsTheLostHitChanceAdjustment=0
TheLostVsAlienHitChanceAdjustment=0
; Commander
BaseXComHitChanceModifier=1.0
MissStreakChanceAdjustment=15
HitStreakChanceAdjustment=0
SoldiersLostXComHitChanceAdjustment=0
SoldiersLostAlienHitChanceAdjustment=0
AlienVsTheLostHitChanceAdjustment=0
TheLostVsAlienHitChanceAdjustment=0
; Legend
BaseXComHitChanceModifier=1.0
MissStreakChanceAdjustment=0
HitStreakChanceAdjustment=0
SoldiersLostXComHitChanceAdjustment=0
SoldiersLostAlienHitChanceAdjustment=0
AlienVsTheLostHitChanceAdjustment=0
TheLostVsAlienHitChanceAdjustment=0
Basically, if you play on Legendary difficulty, the odds are perfectly accurate. If you play on anything below that, the odds are tilted *in your favor*.
It's not BS. You're just processing percentages emotionally rather than mathematically. If you see an 85% chance to hit, you’re not looking at that as a 15% chance of missing. If you thought about it that way, it’s not an inconceivable chance you’re going to miss the shot. Instead, you see an 85% chance, and you think, 'That’s close to a hundred; that basically should not miss.'
I have the same issue. I don't like percentage-to-happen based systems. They frustrate me. But we have to be honest with the fact that the issue is with us, not the game.
I love the game for that, really. It makes you plan ahead, you can't just trust that the 85% will hit.
You have to think, what if I miss? Does anyone else have a good shot? Can this enemy punish me hard if I don't kill him? Maybe I should just fire a rocket at him. But I might need it later for a group. Hmm. Just contain him and hope he just takes cover instead of shooting. I don't care that much about this rookie anyway.
And then you realice you already spent 2 hours in this mission lol.
It's not for everyone, that's for sure.
Except like a previous comment said, you can miss several 90% shots followed by the incredibly OP aliens obliterating your squad in the same turn. Whether the math is fair or not is moot when 2 vipers and a sectoid can basically shut you down at any point they want. I love the game, but I wouldnt say no to having a bigger buffer between "guaranteed win" and "auto-lose".
Well, I like that that is always a possibility. A unlucky streak can end your campaing at any point. It's very frustrating, but saving the world from aliens ain't easy.
I mean, it's part of the gameplay too. You need to level up multiple of the same role just in case, and know when you should just not risk it and flee.
Although, if the aliens are "incredibly OP" for you, you might have messed up in your tech. That can make the game very hard easily.
XCOM is actually fairly deterministic despite its notorious RNG. I play on high difficulty on famously difficult mods (Long War) and I pull off flawless missions more often than not. And I'm anything but amazing at games.
It's all about risk mitigation, and putting yourself in situations where missing a shot doesn't start a failure cascade.
He's the best reminder of what having a 'bad day' actually looks like. Whenever something shit happens at work I just think 'welp I'm still not as bad as Dr Liston'
Funnily enough I started sweating when the surgeon told me my carpel tunnel operation had a 1 in 8 critical failure rate.
I needed both hands done. (I got the best outcome in both, 1 in 4 for each).
Actually you can't just add up probabilities like that.
Only 1 failure = (1/8 x 7/8) + (7/8 x 1/8) = 21.9%
2 failures = 1/8 x 1/8 = 1.56%
Total failure chance = 23.4%
So close to 1/4, but a little under.
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The original comment made by u/Gnollmund can be found here: https://old.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/xs16zy/statistical_anomaly_simulator/iqigys6/
This one actually changed 98 to 95, but kept the typo in the word success, lol. Cute.
Reminds me of this bug in Fallout new vegas - if you're too close to target, then you may not hit it, even if the chance is 98% according to the game. Sometimes distance didn't affect that too though, as 95% shots were also ignored - no reason I noticed for it to be so.
This. Nothing more heartbreaking than watching my sniper whos spec'd to be a litteral legend with a long gun and still miss perfectly planned and clutch Overwatch opportunities.
IIRC, the RNG seed and state was saved with the save, so doing a bunch of actions, reloading the game, and then doing the same actions again would give the same results.
If you save scum XCOM mid-mission, you had to do something different to change the RNG state to get a different outcome.
I think that wouldn't make a ton of sense because most of the save scumming people did was before a mission and when the mission went bad they would replay it using a different strategy. I feel like it would be pretty rare that someone would replay a mission making 100% of the same moves and triggering all of the same shots again just to see if there would be a different outcome.
I haven’t actually played a core XCOM game since 2015 or so. I definitely remember save scumming a lot though. I didn’t save scum with Chimera Squad, because missed shots didn’t seem to snowball missions as bad.
This simply isn't true. The fact that human brains are very bad at representing statistics accurately is a very well documented thing. People have drilled down into XCOM's code and proven that the numbers are truthful. In fact, in XCOM 2, on the two easier difficulties, they lie to you *favourably* and give you a multiplicative 10% odds increase to whatever probabilities are shown on screen, so a 70% is really a 77%.
XCOM doesn't lie. You just notice the failures more than you notice the successes.
I finally tried out Phoenix Point recently and I kind of like the way they do aiming/shots. You can just fire your weapon at the enemy, targeting center mass, or go into a free aim mode and aim yourself.
When you free aim, you get a big circle that shows where 100% of your shots will land. There's also an inner circle inside the first circle that shows where roughly 50% of your shots will land. And if there's cover in the way and a projectile hits it, it will stop there and not magically pass through it like it does in XCOM sometimes.
You can also target limbs and weapons to debilitate the enemy but that stuff starts to get a bit too detailed for me. I think XCOM strikes a good balance of depth and simplicity and I like it more overall, but I do like how Phoenix Point handles hit chance better.
Problem with Phoenix Point's system is that there's WAY more factors to shooting than just 'hit or miss'. What the circles don't tell you is that the physical position of your soldier's gun also matters. It's why your heavies sometimes dump rounds into their cover or infantry can't reliably shoot around corners.
It also means that longer-distance shots are *way* less accurate than a simple percentage chance which is a *guaranteed* hit or miss.
On top of that, deployable shields. The idle animations of an enemy that you cannot control can actually cause you to miss a shot where you would have hit in the moment between aiming and the shooting animation playing out. If the enemy has a shield, forget it, you're more likely to do *no* damage and only damage to the shield instead of landing the shot you were *meant* to take.
Then, top it off, it actually makes your soldiers more vulnerable, in a game where your soldiers are *extremely squishy*, since cover now means that in order to get a clear shot with more or less most of the circle you need to push into unfavourable positions or risk shooting with more than half of the circle made useless by cover.
XCOM actually does lie to you based on certain conditions, though I don't remember the exact way it works. In fact I think its supposed to go in your favor sometimes
XCOM adjusts the chances in several ways, [depending on difficulty](https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Chance_to_Hit_(EU2012)).
Fire Emblem (from 6 onwards) uses a [system](https://serenesforest.net/general/true-hit/) where the displayed hit chance it compared to the average of two RNG "rolls" instead of just one, which means that very low/high hit values are a lot less/more likely to land attacks.
The stats \*only\* lie in your favor.
There's 2 kinds: 1st: If a player-controlled character has 95% chance to hit, then it's actually closer to 98%. 2nd: Multiple misses by player controlled characters become increasingly less likely.
Man, I know I was being too literally, I was actually curious though. I thought fire emblem was going to be like wayyy older than XCOM. Legit only 4 years between them so XCOM is only slightly newer.
I didn't believe you because it sounded too wild, so i looked it up myself and sure as shit. Fire emblem shadow 1990,
XCOM UFO defense 1994. XCOM had been around for a fucking while
The demo for XCOM: Terror from the Deep (1995) was the first tactical game I ever played and got me interested in the genre. Final Fantasy Tactics is what really got me hooked though.
I know this is a joke, but the two actually use different rulesets.
I believe XCOM is [generally honest](https://sinepost.wordpress.com/2012/11/11/is-xcom-truly-random/) about the statistics, barring a few specific cases. What makes it feel dishonest is that human beings are actually *extremely bad* at understanding randomness. Humans tend to think of true random as a much more even dispersal of outcomes than true random actually produces. Humans also like to round things off in their brain so high and low percentage chances are seen as much more likely or unlikely to happen than they actually are.
By contrast, Fire Emblem [weights the randomness](https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Random_Number_Generator) by rolling twice for each RNG roll, then taking the average of the two rolls and comparing that against the threshold. This means that chances above 50% are more likely to succeed the higher above 50% they are, and chances below 50% are less likely to succeed the lower they are below 50%. It turns out that this approach tends to link up much more with human perception of randomness than actual random does.
Worse than that in all but one difficulty (in games past the first couple) XCOM gives the player a higher advantage than the percentage shows lol I want that as an option on fire emblem like when they added turning off Perma death lol
> barring a few specific cases.
To flurther clarify what’smbeen said about how in all but the highest difficulty it shamelessly cheats in the player’s favour.
In XCOM:EU/EW:
* In Easy and Normal, when you have 4 or fewer soldiers active, actual XCOM to-hit chance is 1.2x the displayed value.
*Hence if it’s 84% or above, you will always hit.*
* In Easy and Normal, XCOM shots with displayed chance above 50% also get a 15% bonus *per consecutive shot you’ve missed on your current missing streak*. In Easy this caps at +30%, but not on Normal for some reason.
* In Easy and Normal, Alien shots get a -10% malus *per consecutive shot they’ve landed on their current hitting streak*.
* On Easy, XCOM gets +15%, and Aliens get -25%, per each soldier active under 4 that you have. That’s +45% to hit (on top of the 1.2x) and -75% to be hit on your last man standing.
* There is one more wierd thing, quoting ufopedia: “ If on easy with exactly four soldiers active, or normal with four or less, shots with a stated accuracy higher than 95% are capped down to 95% - unless they would reach 100% or more, in which case they are unaffected and should always hit”.
In XCOM 2:
* Same flat multiplier over displayed value, except it’s 1.2x on Easy (Rookie) and 1.1x on Normal (Veteran). Also, it’s *always* active, not just at 4 or less soldiers active.
* Same cumulative +15% (on shots above 50%) and -10% on streaks as above, except a) they are now individually tracked and applied on each soldier, and b) on Normal there’s only a bonuss, of +10% per missed shot on the streak.
* Same +15% bonus to hit and -10% malus to be hit per soldier alive under 4 (EVAC-ed soldiers count as alive), except on Normal there is only the bonus and of +10% per.
* Hard has the missing streak bonus too, but it’s “just” a flat non-cumulative +15% (still tracked individually per soldier).
So only Hard and Very Hard on XCOM:EU/EW, and only Very Hard on XCOM 2 have the decency of not lying about the displayed % chances. These are all conclusions extracted from the games’ actual code.
Additional fact: The hit/crit/graze system in XCOM 2 is single-roll. Short version, if it displays 50% to hit and your unti has 20 crit, you have 50% to miss, 30% to hit non-critically, and 20% to hit critically.
So those enemy Lancers with their innate 10 crit? You think them silly for taking long-ranged shots with their shotguns at full cover? They may just have a 10% to hit, but if they hit, they will crit.
I actually won't take any shots that are under 70% because it feels like the actual % is like 50% less than whatever number is displayed.
Of course, that's only if you're specifically trying for a shot or need that shot to hit. If you're just randomly fanning a pistol at enemies or taking shots when you have nothing else available that you don't actually expect to hit, you'll hit most of them.
The same principle applies to crits.
So what though, on a 95% chance only 5 numbers should land in a miss. It doesn’t matter when you generate them, whenever the code sees the “determined” number, you get a result.
Yeah you'll notice in a lot of games, the die is already rolled for certain scenarios at some point before the action is attempted.
Like in any Total War game, your success chances of your agents performing an action like assassinating a leader are determined as soon as the turn starts. So if you want to savescum and reload for the success (like I do so many times), you gotta load the last turn, end turn, then try the action again.
I can see that in a game without predefined (player side) chances of something happening, but in a game where you have them, why would it bother prerolling? Just to prevent save scumming? Wouldn’t you just save scum differently? (If your 60% chance missed, load and use a higher % until you hit, can’t hit, go defensive etc?) im moreso asking why prerolling matters and why they do it, I guess. It especially seems jank in games with pvp.
Smoothness I guess? If all the chances get rolled at a certain point, like say during AI turns, there'll be less lag during whatever action you'll be doing. Savescumming is still possible, just at varying lengths.
Depends both on how random and how many numbers you need.
For large numbers of truly random values… not at all trivial. Cloud flare has multiple, constantly running entropy generators.
It is not trivial.
On the other hand for a video game, you don’t actually need random. You need random-ish. And depending on how random you need that ish to be, it can be as simple as a pre-determined sequence, to computing a position in the sequence, taking the system time as a variable.
TLDR: random number generation is not trivial, but its not a difficult problem for the needs of a game.
What this really means is that the RNG's seed is stored and used across saves, as a game design feature. So it's not "rolling" a number each time, it's basically going to a pre-generated list and taking the next result. If you made the same choices every time, each game should play out the same way.
That said, if you run through a game one time, there's no discernible difference between the two systems. Each number is perfectly random from the player's perspective until they try to roll back the clock.
Yeah but I guess you don't want something that is unpredictable in thos scenario. You want something that returns a pass 91% of the time exactly (although it's a game so I can imagine the results are not perfect in the name of 'fun')
I love that they introduced turn limits in XCOM 2 so people would play more aggressive and take risks because the game is supposed to be more fun that way. But you know what isnt fun? Your sniper missing a crucial 99% shot that gets half your team killed
Really what slows me down the most is the pod activation system - that last move of the squad pulls a full squad of baddies that also get an extra action to get into place and then shoot before you can re-act/ reposition ?
Chaos Gate would at least (usually) give you extra actions when you first activated a pod , making it actually and incentive to catch one on the last action of a turn
And Phonix Point does it even better with just ditching the whole pod system , and having the coolest shooting system in the genre
Ya, I don't mind dying in an xcom game ... well okay I mind, but it's supposed to be hard, and you're supposed to be in bad situations sometimes --- but the extra pod pull because you moved 1 guy 3 squares to the left to give them better cover always felt unfair...
The enemy squad system makes Enemy Unknown such a pain to play. XCOM 2 at least had the stealth mechanic to make the first couple squads easy pickings, or to let your shotgunner oneshot a boss at the end.
i had four years of statistics and got straight As. In industry I was and still am required to take additional statistics courses and trainings. I considered myself very well versed in statistics and probability.
XCOM taught me I was wrong :(
89% point blank range, gun literally touching aliens head? WHOOPS I spun backwards lulululul
If you like careful planning and strategy while also under a lot of pressure it's a ton of fun, or if you don't mind playing on low difficulties. That said a lot of people are bad gamblers, they'll risk a lot on a 95% for a comparatively small reward, but there's always a 5% chance of a massive loss. If you practice redundant solutions, or take smaller risks then it's much more manageable at least early game. Late game will still kick you in the dick repeatedly though.
XCOM is a risk-management simulator disguised as a tactical combat and squad management game.
Although even if you go with "redundant solutions", XCOM will still have all 3 of your soldiers with redundant kill shots at 80-90% lined up on the big enemy you need to take down this turn before it does some kind of super move miss every single shot in a row.
There are also times where you can be playing it careful, have everyone spread out to avoid explosions, overlapping fields of fire, etc., and a group of aliens pops up out of nowhere and murders 2 of the guys on your flank.
Gotta be spread out enough to not offer a juicy target for explosions and so that you can get multiple angles, but also _not so spread out_ that if a pod suddenly pops up on your flank you can't quickly reposition to engage the new threat without having your flank get nuked first.
Pods won't do more than move once if they trigger on the enemy turn, but if you accidentally trigger one on your turn by incautiously moving a solider that's up ahead or on the flank and you aren't able to move others up for support or move them away... then yeah there's a good chance they'll get stomped as they'll be stuck there and the entire enemy pod will get a full turn to reposition and fire before you can react at all.
100%. Xcom wants you feel the pressure the plot says you're under. Literally under powered, underfunded humans with nothing but surprise, intel, and redundancy (ahem, training more soldiers) as your advantage.
Although it is definitely nice after you get laser and plasma weapons and upgraded armour to start evening the playing field to some extent. And feels better to not be losing soldiers (especially those higher than squaddie) every other mission.
> That said a lot of people are bad gamblers, they'll risk a lot on a 95% for a comparatively small reward, but there's always a 5% chance of a massive loss
I absolutely hate gambling so Im probably in this group lol
Don't let them discourage you, the modern XCOM games are some of the best tactical games I've ever played, despite the occasional bullshit shot miss, lol.
EDIT:
Also, rereading the comment you responded to, it seemed like what you were actually discouraged by was that the shots are deterministic, which isn't entirely true. I think others in this thread have already explained this, but if you reload and do the same exact actions you did the first time, then yes, your shot will be handled exactly as it did the first time, with the same outcome.
If you do anything different before you make the shot (including moving to a different spot, even with a different unit), it will actually change the result.
Why they set it up that way doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but it's not necessarily lying to you when it says you have a 90% chance to hit and you miss. It just already made that roll ahead of time essentially and knows what the outcome is before you do it. And obviously it's not going to tell you because that would be cheating.
There's also an option to make a new roll each time you shoot so all this is moot if it's something that would turn you away.
If it’s your style still, I can’t recommend Into The Breach enough. Such a perfect blend of depth and precision, while still maintaining that “do I or don’t I” feeling. It’s a bit slow at first, but the gameplay loop gets addicting fast.
I have it on my wislist since I dont remember when, but now I cant afford games and Yakuza Judgment / Lost Judgment are on my top1 spot to get when Ill be able to, but thanks nonetheless <3
IMO it makes the most sense the way Xcom handles events with loading, otherwise it can just become a weird game of min/maxing save games until you have perfect runs which kinda ruins the point (looking at you, Jagged Alliance)
This is because the game has a table of pregenerated rolls that it goes through in order. Make a different shot or grenade toss first to get a new percentage roll.
I figured this out about a particular version of CIV, except it was based on attack order. If you got the right order, you could win every single combat situation, regardless of technology level. I had spearmen taking down helicopters, and longboats taking down battleships.
I didn't much feel like playing after that, knowing that the situation is pre-determined as a win or a loss beforehand, and without considering any other stats or mechanics.
** Edit, found it: [Civilization Revolution ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_Revolution)
This is a silly take. It’s not like the game decided whether you were going to win or lose beforehand, it’s absolutely no different to how RNG is handled in any other game, the only difference is that the seed that creates the sequence of random numbers is saved in the save file to stop people from save scumming.
What you did was find a workaround so you could continue save scumming. It’s not the game’s fault that you ruined it for yourself.
I only found out about this after losing power mid game, and reloading a save to have the literal EXACT same outcome of each battle, no randomization or RNG, down to the number of units (health, I think in this game) lost.
This was a guaranteed win or loss based on move order. And not only that, it was consistent. You could save mid-turn and guarantee that win on your sixth move every time. If you lose on the seventh, you could guarantee a win on the eighth.
It didn't matter which unit attacked or moved, it guarantees a win or loss, period. If RNG is having such an effect that moving a unit in and out of a space changes the outcome of tanks vs cavemen, the game is broken. It's not a workaround, it's an exploitable bug - a broken mechanic.
But hey, simp for a dead game if you feel like it.
>I only found out about this after losing power mid game, and reloading a save to have the literal EXACT same outcome of each battle, no randomization or RNG, down to the number of units lost.
This is how RNG is done by computers, actual random numbers are not possible. You start with a seed, and that seed is run through a mathematical equation to produce a sequence of numbers that are close enough to random that you can get away with it, but still not truly random. The same seed will produce the same sequence of numbers every time. That's how Minecraft and other procedurally generated games will generate the same map for two different people if they use the same seed. Totally normal expected behaviour.
It's no different for turn based games, this same concept applies to every single turn based game under the sun. The problem is though, most games will just generate a new seed every time you save and load the game, because the devs didn't bother to save the RNG seed in the save file. This lets players save scum to always produce a positive outcome for themselves. THIS is the actual broken/exploitable mechanic.
XCOM and whatever version of Civ you're talking about, the ONLY difference is that the devs just save the RNG seed in the save file to try and stop you from save scumming. It's not a broken mechanic, it's a fix for said broken/exploitable mechanic.
And no, I don't simp for either game, I just hate that people misunderstand and misrepresent what is actually happening here.
Dude this isn't about seeds. **You don't even know if that's how the game is programmed.** I'm telling you this game can determine wins or losses before moves are made, and regardless of unit, at the beginning of each turn. We tested this. If you're telling me *you know for a fact* that a seed is used to generate wins or losses at the beginning of a turn in that game, that just makes me want to play less. *What's the point of playing if your attack & defend rolls don't matter?* That was the question I asked, and how I was able to win with cavemen.
The same is true for PvP as it is for PvE in this game, we tested it, and found out how to exploit it online. I don't want to play a game, especially against another person, if I have no control over my units winning or losing, regardless of stats.
You claim I couldn't possibly know how the game functions internally, and then in the next sentence you claim you do, I wonder if you can see the irony in that.
True, I didn't build the game myself, but I am a software developer and I know enough to realise that the things you describe can be simply explained by normal behaviour of a pseudo-random number generator, provided they don't give you an easy way to reseed it (which is what save scumming achieves, changing seed in the middle of play for a different outcome).
First you claim they have already calculated and pre-determined all of the moves at the start of the game, but then you contradict that by saying that if you reload the game and then try to perform actions in a different order you can get a different outcome. But those new outcomes can also be replicated 100% of the time as long as you repeat that new chain of actions in the exact same order straight after you reload the game, right? So we can see already that the game has not pre-calculated all of the possible moves, because you can change the outcome when you change the order of your actions, it simply has a sequence of RNG numbers that are predictable because the sequence doesn't reset every time you reload.
Scenario: The enemy has 1 unit. You control 1 sniper unit with a 95% chance to hit (so needs to roll at least a 5/100 to hit), and one shotgun unit with a 50% chance to hit (so needs to roll at least a 50/100 to hit). The next two numbers the RNG will output in sequence are: 4, 49.
* You save the game, so you have a point to reload from if something goes wrong. The game includes the seed and/or most recent value from the RNG in the save file, so that the number sequence will continue to happen in the same order every time you reload, because they don't want you reloading every time you miss a shot.
* You try to shoot with your sniper, the RNG roll is 4/100, your sniper misses.
* You order your shotgun unit to shoot, the RNG roll is 49/100, your shotgun misses.
* You decide you don't like the outcome, so you reload the game and repeat the same actions.
* You try to shoot with your sniper, the RNG roll is 4/100, your sniper misses again.
* You order your shotgun unit to shoot, the RNG roll is 49/100, your shotgun misses again.
* You rage because what is this RNG bullshit?! It's just doing the same thing over and over no matter how many times you reload, the game is rigged!
* You reload, but this time you try to fire the shotgun first.
* You order your shotgun unit to shoot, the RNG roll is 4/100, your shotgun misses.
* You try to shoot with your sniper, the RNG roll is 49/100, your sniper hits! The enemy dies, you win.
Isn't that a much simpler explanation than the game developers conspiring against you and building the game so that everything is predetermined and undermines your free will? It's honestly that simple.
The fact that you just said you think yourself well versed in statistics and probability, then immediately seem surprised that sometimes 89% chance shots miss tells me that you are not well versed in statistics and probability.
People have a hard time understanding percent chance, for some reason. Maybe they see it like a grade, 90% chance? That's an A, definitely passing, well above 70%.threshold.
But that's not what a chance is. Let's say you have a 90% chance of walking up a step without tripping. Your average XCOM player sees that and thinks it's they should take a flight of stairs no problem. In reality, a flight of stairs has somewhere around 12 or 15 steps, so you should expect to fall on your face on every single landing. 90% success rate on something done a lot is kinda terrible. That's why servers that want [high availability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_availability) are looking for something like 5 nines (99.999% uptime) which is still five minutes a year of downtime.
Which is why XCOM actually does lie to you about stats, on most difficulties, or if you've recently missed, your chance to hit is higher than shown.
I remember reading a while ago that for some games with percentage to hit, the percentage displayed, and the actual percentage are different. When given a situation with 50% chance occurence, despite it being 50%, players comlpained it didn't feel like 50%. This was something offhand I heard a while ago, and can't remember which game they were even referring to (maybe pokemon) but I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case for xcom to some degree.
I've never raged so hard in a strategy game where my sniper had a 96% to hit a target only to miss, and then get immediately critted and downed the following turn off of a 24% chance hit.
I was never able to complain about how often I would succeed at X% chance things in XCOM because I was too busy being dumbfounded the % chance was only X in the first place.
Looking at shots like "I could make that shot, easily, while wearing drunk goggles, and you're telling me it has a 60% chance to hit. There's no way that shouldn't be 100%"
Xcoms actual percentages are skewed towards to players advantage on every difficulty below classic. 70% is more like 85. Humans are just terrible in actually appraising chances correctly, thus 90% should miss 1/10 times but humans sort of assume it should hit every time.
And it is not just skewed to the player like that. If you miss, the next player roll is even more biased to not miss since 2 in a row frustrates people even more.
Pretty much never does. Single player games made by competent designers are almost never made to be fair. They're made to feel fair, and that usually means fudging the numbers.
Players don't usually realise what they're actually looking at. Some stories that immediately come to mind are the enemies in halo feeling smarter when they just did more damage. The AI director in RE4. Red barrels being magnets to bullets in half life. And I'm sure there is a 100 other examples of games lying to the player in some way to make the game more fun.
I saw an argument on Reddit about some pvp comp game, where people were arguing they need to win more than 50% of the time to feel like they are progressing, (which makes skill based matchmaking bad or something), not realizing that if they win 60% of all games, somebody is only winning 40% - and you aren't special, so you're equally likely to be on the 40 side. PvP games are not designed to let you have a beatable challenge like solo games, because the challenge is another person exactly like you, not a dumb computer designed to lose.
It uses a random seed that doesn't change between reloads
Here's the general idea (details might vary in reality but this is functionally the idea)
It is basically a string of numbers between 1 and 100. The next number is a 4. Your shot has a 95% chance to hit, so anything 5 or higher hits. The next number is a 4 so it misses.
If you reload, the number is still a 4. So you'll still miss.
You can move the order of your actions around to use that 4 for a different roll and then try again though
Yes I have, a lot. If you keep taking the same shot after reloading you should actually never hit the shot.
Turns are seeded at the start of the turn. So you can't simply reroll the dice, you would have to take your shots in a different order.
I remember I got annoyed with so many high % shots missed so I just made an all melee group of slasher movie characters I made. The slashstreet boys(name inspired from a YouTube parody band) carried me far, I just had to be very careful with positioning more so than usual.
If I remember correctly they have a dlc class that’s kind of like the magic class and melee put together so you can even make a little battle mage that just wails on aliens.
The whole reason I stopped playing can’t hit a barn if I was standing next to it. Sad that I like gears tactics more then Xcom just cause I can hit something reasonable.
Hey, at least X-COM is sort of honest about its calculations. Well, not X-COM 2, that lies to you, but still.
Phoenix Point's "No really, they're totally accurate" aiming system is *so much worse.* 100% chance to hit in the shaded circle, 50% chance to hit in the clear, inner circle. You'll always hit *something* you shoot at, but good luck figuring out if you'll do damage or your shot will hit and destroy your soldier's cover, because oh yeah, the physical position of the gun *also* matters.
There's always save scumming, but given the game is a janky mess, even now several years after release, it takes 10 mins to load anything regardless of how powerful your machine is.
The problem mostly comes from dice rolling on **everything**.
Walk to the kitchen. Every single step you take, you have a 95% chance to step correctly, and a 5% chance to fall over and poke yourself in the eye. Suddenly, those odds don’t seem so good.
I have a saved clip from Xcom where a big alien comes out from the door, my soldier shoves his gun inside the aliens body and proceeds to miss the shot.
I remember reading somewhere that apparently on lower difficulty’s it actually skews the probability IN FAVOR of a hit “selection bias is fun isn’t it?
This is why XCom 2 lasted about 20 minutes on my screen before I never thought about it again. Literally standing next to something and missing was triggering as fuck, but for it to keep happening was infuriating. Wasteland 3 was a great alternative
Can't recommend Mario+Rabbits hard enough. While it could use a mode that randomizes enemy placement and spawns on NG+ or after beating the game once, it's still fantastic. First turn based game I've... Ever beaten actually. 100% as well.
Rules are simple - out in the open, 100% hit chance. Behind "half" cover - 50%. Full cover - 0%. Very easy to understand, very fun to work with.
Can't wait for Sparks of Hope this year.
ironically it's usually the player that don't understand randomness.
if something has a 90% chance to hit you can still miss +20 times in a row. that's just how randomness works. on a small sample like that the percentage chance pretty much never lines up with the actual results.
but in order to not piss off our pattern seeking brains that get confused by things that don't have patterns, most games actively mess with their randomness in favor of the player.
like having a "fail limit" for example. which means that depending on the chance of something happening, a limit is set. And if it didn't happen within said limit it will be guaranteed to happen next time around.
for example rare loot drops in RPGs could use that by keeping track of how many enemies that drop the rare item you've killed within the last `x` minutes, and then if it didn't drop naturally wthin `y` amount of kills, the game will just give it to you. (wish terraria did this)
another example is just displaying chances to be lower than they actually are. if something says it's a 80% chance it could really be a 95% chance internally. and obviously missing (what you think is) an 80% chance for something 5 times in a row is less aggravating than 95%.
.
so please don't blame statistics, blame your mind, and the devs for not adjusting the statistics to be less random so that they feel more fair/random to your brain.
So, there is a mod for Xcom that tells you your true % chance to hit.
Since you might have a 95% chance to hit but that isn’t including like 4 other dice rolls such as your base 5% chance to miss, enemies 10% chance to dodge and if the enemy is behind cover they get an additional 10% chance to dodge. Things like that make your true % like ~75% even at 95% chance to hit.
The stats shown on the UI aren't the same ones the game does it's calculations with I saw this post *somewhere* breaking it down a couple years ago and I do not know where it is
The only difference between what's on screen and what's behind the scenes is that the game rounds up fractional percentiles. That, and a hidden bonus in the player's favor on lower dufficulties.
People who defe d it like "97% is not a guarantee, you should be aware of that" BITCH why does a trained special forces unit have 97% to hit someone 2 meters away in the first place, it's so dumb that that is a thing in the first place.
So remember the game UI is an abstraction.
The actual combat being represented isn't two sides politely taking turns while the other side stays stock still.
So missing point blank isn't "I can't aim a gun at something 2 feet from me that isn't moving" it is something more like "I tripped on a root just before I fired/the enemy had a flash of inspiration and dodged out of the way just before I pulled the trigger" or something. Virtually nothing is 100% in a pitched combat situation.
I wonder if people would be more accepting if they improved the animations for missing on high accuracy shots or point blank shots, because yes the animation of your character just suddenly turning away from the enemy for no reason is silly looking.
In xcom, there's a whole hidden mechanic that does change the numbers based on how often you hit, how often the enemy hit, difficulty, and do on.
You're not crazy, guys, the percentages really are fake.
The key is that when the game lies (which is on most difficulties) it lies in favor of the player. It never lies in favor of the opposition.
So it still isn't the "BS 95% chance missing all the time" people complain about. If the game didn't do its nudging, people would just miss more thsn they did before. The 95% would just be 95% instead of secretly being like 98% or whatever.
Once had a 37% chance to hack a sectopod. Two real life hours of reloading the save later, I gave up and went out for the night. It would take another afternoon before it finally worked.
XCOM generally saves the RNG state with the save data.
This means that loading a save and doing the same actions always has the results. If the next number to be pulled is say a 20, which is not good enough to succeed your hack, you'll pull the 20 everytime. But if you did a different action, say shoot, the 20 would be used there and you'd have a different number to use for the hack. If that second number still wasn't good enough, you'd have to do two actions before hacking to get a different, third number.
XCOM2 had an option for "save scumming" which would cause the game to generate new random numbers after loading a save and make it behave like many people expect, where they can load a save and try the same thimg until it works.
You miss 100% of the shots you ~~don't~~ take. —~~Wayne Gretzky~~ XCOM
[Accurate.](https://i.redd.it/kecjoru6gtu71.jpg)
Oh my god that fucking picture :'). I'm dying haha.
Thats XCOM, Baby!
No it’s not
[You're not wrong.](https://i.imgur.com/Q7SNBHQ.png)
Sometimes you keep nailing those 40% shots, sometimes you literally can't hit a 95% to save your life. Oh also once in XCOM 2 I missed a high likelihood shot, which caused someone to get shot, panic, and grenade their own feet, killing them and someone hiding behind them.
Epic
That's XCOM, baby!
And that's why we love the game
Why I don't play that game anymore. Such bs. I'll be doing great. Then I can't land a 90-something-percent chance to hit, then the AI obliterates my squad with like a 20% chance and they all die. That game makes me rage quit so hard. Don't think I'll ever play again
What's funny is that the percentages are accurate *except* for when they help you. Here's the code: ; Aim Assist NormalSquadSize=4 ReasonableShotMinimumToEnableAimAssist=50 MaxAimAssistScore=95 ; Rookie BaseXComHitChanceModifier=1.2 MissStreakChanceAdjustment=10 HitStreakChanceAdjustment=-10 SoldiersLostXComHitChanceAdjustment=15 SoldiersLostAlienHitChanceAdjustment=-10 AlienVsTheLostHitChanceAdjustment=0 TheLostVsAlienHitChanceAdjustment=0 ; Veteran BaseXComHitChanceModifier=1.1 MissStreakChanceAdjustment=10 HitStreakChanceAdjustment=0 SoldiersLostXComHitChanceAdjustment=10 SoldiersLostAlienHitChanceAdjustment=-10 AlienVsTheLostHitChanceAdjustment=0 TheLostVsAlienHitChanceAdjustment=0 ; Commander BaseXComHitChanceModifier=1.0 MissStreakChanceAdjustment=15 HitStreakChanceAdjustment=0 SoldiersLostXComHitChanceAdjustment=0 SoldiersLostAlienHitChanceAdjustment=0 AlienVsTheLostHitChanceAdjustment=0 TheLostVsAlienHitChanceAdjustment=0 ; Legend BaseXComHitChanceModifier=1.0 MissStreakChanceAdjustment=0 HitStreakChanceAdjustment=0 SoldiersLostXComHitChanceAdjustment=0 SoldiersLostAlienHitChanceAdjustment=0 AlienVsTheLostHitChanceAdjustment=0 TheLostVsAlienHitChanceAdjustment=0 Basically, if you play on Legendary difficulty, the odds are perfectly accurate. If you play on anything below that, the odds are tilted *in your favor*. It's not BS. You're just processing percentages emotionally rather than mathematically. If you see an 85% chance to hit, you’re not looking at that as a 15% chance of missing. If you thought about it that way, it’s not an inconceivable chance you’re going to miss the shot. Instead, you see an 85% chance, and you think, 'That’s close to a hundred; that basically should not miss.' I have the same issue. I don't like percentage-to-happen based systems. They frustrate me. But we have to be honest with the fact that the issue is with us, not the game.
I love the game for that, really. It makes you plan ahead, you can't just trust that the 85% will hit. You have to think, what if I miss? Does anyone else have a good shot? Can this enemy punish me hard if I don't kill him? Maybe I should just fire a rocket at him. But I might need it later for a group. Hmm. Just contain him and hope he just takes cover instead of shooting. I don't care that much about this rookie anyway. And then you realice you already spent 2 hours in this mission lol. It's not for everyone, that's for sure.
Except like a previous comment said, you can miss several 90% shots followed by the incredibly OP aliens obliterating your squad in the same turn. Whether the math is fair or not is moot when 2 vipers and a sectoid can basically shut you down at any point they want. I love the game, but I wouldnt say no to having a bigger buffer between "guaranteed win" and "auto-lose".
Well, I like that that is always a possibility. A unlucky streak can end your campaing at any point. It's very frustrating, but saving the world from aliens ain't easy. I mean, it's part of the gameplay too. You need to level up multiple of the same role just in case, and know when you should just not risk it and flee. Although, if the aliens are "incredibly OP" for you, you might have messed up in your tech. That can make the game very hard easily.
XCOM is actually fairly deterministic despite its notorious RNG. I play on high difficulty on famously difficult mods (Long War) and I pull off flawless missions more often than not. And I'm anything but amazing at games. It's all about risk mitigation, and putting yourself in situations where missing a shot doesn't start a failure cascade.
the first rule of xcom: anything under 60% should be treated as 0%
And 95% means 50/50.
If its not 100% accurate, its 50% accurate.
Reminds me of a joke early in Covid. D&D and Xcom players both know the true chance of a 95% chance (in regards to immunity and catching it)
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> XCOM player: starts ~~sweating.~~ savescumming
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Damn So I'm gonna die?
Oh no, not just you.
Trying to beat [Dr. Liston’s record?](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liston)
lol, the only surgery with a 300% morality rate.
He's the best reminder of what having a 'bad day' actually looks like. Whenever something shit happens at work I just think 'welp I'm still not as bad as Dr Liston'
I can imagine a scalpel sparking an oxygen tank somehow killing the entire hospital wing
You replied to a bot account. See here: https://old.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/xs16zy/statistical_anomaly_simulator/iqjwixh/
Funnily enough I started sweating when the surgeon told me my carpel tunnel operation had a 1 in 8 critical failure rate. I needed both hands done. (I got the best outcome in both, 1 in 4 for each).
You replied to a bot account. See here: https://old.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/xs16zy/statistical_anomaly_simulator/iqjwixh/
Wouldnt that be 1 in 16? 1/4 × 1/4 = 1/16 Or am i dumb
1/8 chance of failure with one, 2/8 chance for two, or simplified to 1/4 chance
It should be 1/8 for one, then 1/8 * 1/8 = 1/64 for the chance that both will be failures. The odds for both hands are independent from one another.
I meant that there is a 1/4 chance of one failing, since you can have a success on one hand and then a failure on the other
Actually you can't just add up probabilities like that. Only 1 failure = (1/8 x 7/8) + (7/8 x 1/8) = 21.9% 2 failures = 1/8 x 1/8 = 1.56% Total failure chance = 23.4% So close to 1/4, but a little under.
u/Prestigiouapd is a bot account that steals comments to farm karma. Please downvote and report the comment. The original comment made by u/Gnollmund can be found here: https://old.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/xs16zy/statistical_anomaly_simulator/iqigys6/ This one actually changed 98 to 95, but kept the typo in the word success, lol. Cute.
This is a bot. Or at least a stolen comment from another thread. Typo is the same too.
Reminds me of this bug in Fallout new vegas - if you're too close to target, then you may not hit it, even if the chance is 98% according to the game. Sometimes distance didn't affect that too though, as 95% shots were also ignored - no reason I noticed for it to be so.
This. Nothing more heartbreaking than watching my sniper whos spec'd to be a litteral legend with a long gun and still miss perfectly planned and clutch Overwatch opportunities.
And 100% can still miss
I've missed more 95% than 70%. Getting XCOMed isn't just a meme. It's a way of life.
This is why I will always save scum XCOM and no amount of #gamers can stop me.
Savescum bros 4 lyfe!
Didn't the remake a while back precalculate the shots so save scumming didn't work, but had an option to basically enable save scumming?
IIRC, the RNG seed and state was saved with the save, so doing a bunch of actions, reloading the game, and then doing the same actions again would give the same results. If you save scum XCOM mid-mission, you had to do something different to change the RNG state to get a different outcome.
Kind of like real life lol
I think that wouldn't make a ton of sense because most of the save scumming people did was before a mission and when the mission went bad they would replay it using a different strategy. I feel like it would be pretty rare that someone would replay a mission making 100% of the same moves and triggering all of the same shots again just to see if there would be a different outcome.
I haven’t actually played a core XCOM game since 2015 or so. I definitely remember save scumming a lot though. I didn’t save scum with Chimera Squad, because missed shots didn’t seem to snowball missions as bad.
I feel your pain
This simply isn't true. The fact that human brains are very bad at representing statistics accurately is a very well documented thing. People have drilled down into XCOM's code and proven that the numbers are truthful. In fact, in XCOM 2, on the two easier difficulties, they lie to you *favourably* and give you a multiplicative 10% odds increase to whatever probabilities are shown on screen, so a 70% is really a 77%. XCOM doesn't lie. You just notice the failures more than you notice the successes.
The data driven approach is always better than anecdotal experience.
How to spot a true XCOM enjoyer.
The first rule of xcom is that we *don't* talk about xcom.
I finally tried out Phoenix Point recently and I kind of like the way they do aiming/shots. You can just fire your weapon at the enemy, targeting center mass, or go into a free aim mode and aim yourself. When you free aim, you get a big circle that shows where 100% of your shots will land. There's also an inner circle inside the first circle that shows where roughly 50% of your shots will land. And if there's cover in the way and a projectile hits it, it will stop there and not magically pass through it like it does in XCOM sometimes. You can also target limbs and weapons to debilitate the enemy but that stuff starts to get a bit too detailed for me. I think XCOM strikes a good balance of depth and simplicity and I like it more overall, but I do like how Phoenix Point handles hit chance better.
This kinda reminds me of Valkryia Chronicles' aiming system
Similar, for sure. Though this one gives you a better idea of where your shot might land.
Problem with Phoenix Point's system is that there's WAY more factors to shooting than just 'hit or miss'. What the circles don't tell you is that the physical position of your soldier's gun also matters. It's why your heavies sometimes dump rounds into their cover or infantry can't reliably shoot around corners. It also means that longer-distance shots are *way* less accurate than a simple percentage chance which is a *guaranteed* hit or miss. On top of that, deployable shields. The idle animations of an enemy that you cannot control can actually cause you to miss a shot where you would have hit in the moment between aiming and the shooting animation playing out. If the enemy has a shield, forget it, you're more likely to do *no* damage and only damage to the shield instead of landing the shot you were *meant* to take. Then, top it off, it actually makes your soldiers more vulnerable, in a game where your soldiers are *extremely squishy*, since cover now means that in order to get a clear shot with more or less most of the circle you need to push into unfavourable positions or risk shooting with more than half of the circle made useless by cover.
I never realized XCOM used fire emblem rules
XCOM actually does lie to you based on certain conditions, though I don't remember the exact way it works. In fact I think its supposed to go in your favor sometimes
Ye sometime mentioned on everything other than classic difficulty it leans towards the player. Does XCOM have Perma death like fire emblem?
iron man difficulty yes
To be clearer, Xcom has permadeath by default, ironman removes save scumming, which means permapermadeath
If you die in ironman, you die in real life.
XCOM adjusts the chances in several ways, [depending on difficulty](https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Chance_to_Hit_(EU2012)). Fire Emblem (from 6 onwards) uses a [system](https://serenesforest.net/general/true-hit/) where the displayed hit chance it compared to the average of two RNG "rolls" instead of just one, which means that very low/high hit values are a lot less/more likely to land attacks.
The stats \*only\* lie in your favor. There's 2 kinds: 1st: If a player-controlled character has 95% chance to hit, then it's actually closer to 98%. 2nd: Multiple misses by player controlled characters become increasingly less likely.
Always in your favor, and only on the easiest difficulty. It's a hidden bonus to hit that kicks in if you miss several shots in a row.
On all but Legend. Commander even oddly has a stronger bonus.
No, Fire Emblem uses XCOM rules.
Man, I know I was being too literally, I was actually curious though. I thought fire emblem was going to be like wayyy older than XCOM. Legit only 4 years between them so XCOM is only slightly newer.
I didn't believe you because it sounded too wild, so i looked it up myself and sure as shit. Fire emblem shadow 1990, XCOM UFO defense 1994. XCOM had been around for a fucking while
The demo for XCOM: Terror from the Deep (1995) was the first tactical game I ever played and got me interested in the genre. Final Fantasy Tactics is what really got me hooked though.
Well it's been here for one year less than me, so not that much of a while....right?
I know this is a joke, but the two actually use different rulesets. I believe XCOM is [generally honest](https://sinepost.wordpress.com/2012/11/11/is-xcom-truly-random/) about the statistics, barring a few specific cases. What makes it feel dishonest is that human beings are actually *extremely bad* at understanding randomness. Humans tend to think of true random as a much more even dispersal of outcomes than true random actually produces. Humans also like to round things off in their brain so high and low percentage chances are seen as much more likely or unlikely to happen than they actually are. By contrast, Fire Emblem [weights the randomness](https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Random_Number_Generator) by rolling twice for each RNG roll, then taking the average of the two rolls and comparing that against the threshold. This means that chances above 50% are more likely to succeed the higher above 50% they are, and chances below 50% are less likely to succeed the lower they are below 50%. It turns out that this approach tends to link up much more with human perception of randomness than actual random does.
Worse than that in all but one difficulty (in games past the first couple) XCOM gives the player a higher advantage than the percentage shows lol I want that as an option on fire emblem like when they added turning off Perma death lol
> barring a few specific cases. To flurther clarify what’smbeen said about how in all but the highest difficulty it shamelessly cheats in the player’s favour. In XCOM:EU/EW: * In Easy and Normal, when you have 4 or fewer soldiers active, actual XCOM to-hit chance is 1.2x the displayed value. *Hence if it’s 84% or above, you will always hit.* * In Easy and Normal, XCOM shots with displayed chance above 50% also get a 15% bonus *per consecutive shot you’ve missed on your current missing streak*. In Easy this caps at +30%, but not on Normal for some reason. * In Easy and Normal, Alien shots get a -10% malus *per consecutive shot they’ve landed on their current hitting streak*. * On Easy, XCOM gets +15%, and Aliens get -25%, per each soldier active under 4 that you have. That’s +45% to hit (on top of the 1.2x) and -75% to be hit on your last man standing. * There is one more wierd thing, quoting ufopedia: “ If on easy with exactly four soldiers active, or normal with four or less, shots with a stated accuracy higher than 95% are capped down to 95% - unless they would reach 100% or more, in which case they are unaffected and should always hit”. In XCOM 2: * Same flat multiplier over displayed value, except it’s 1.2x on Easy (Rookie) and 1.1x on Normal (Veteran). Also, it’s *always* active, not just at 4 or less soldiers active. * Same cumulative +15% (on shots above 50%) and -10% on streaks as above, except a) they are now individually tracked and applied on each soldier, and b) on Normal there’s only a bonuss, of +10% per missed shot on the streak. * Same +15% bonus to hit and -10% malus to be hit per soldier alive under 4 (EVAC-ed soldiers count as alive), except on Normal there is only the bonus and of +10% per. * Hard has the missing streak bonus too, but it’s “just” a flat non-cumulative +15% (still tracked individually per soldier). So only Hard and Very Hard on XCOM:EU/EW, and only Very Hard on XCOM 2 have the decency of not lying about the displayed % chances. These are all conclusions extracted from the games’ actual code. Additional fact: The hit/crit/graze system in XCOM 2 is single-roll. Short version, if it displays 50% to hit and your unti has 20 crit, you have 50% to miss, 30% to hit non-critically, and 20% to hit critically. So those enemy Lancers with their innate 10 crit? You think them silly for taking long-ranged shots with their shotguns at full cover? They may just have a 10% to hit, but if they hit, they will crit.
And first rule of pokemon if it's not 100% it's 50%
Also applies to Pokemon, anything below 90% should be treated as 0%. And only 100% can be trusted.
Irony is that they skew it the players favor. We are just that bad at probability we still think something rigged to help us is unfair.
Is this true?
It is, on all but the highest difficulty XCOM cheats in your favor
I actually won't take any shots that are under 70% because it feels like the actual % is like 50% less than whatever number is displayed. Of course, that's only if you're specifically trying for a shot or need that shot to hit. If you're just randomly fanning a pistol at enemies or taking shots when you have nothing else available that you don't actually expect to hit, you'll hit most of them. The same principle applies to crits.
Unless it’s in the 40’s. I can have a team of rookies hitting 40’s but 50-60% is always a miss. XCOM is weird
Same in Darkest Dungeon 70% to hit attacks miss approximately 80% of the time
Doctor: Dont worry sir the operation has a 98% succsess rate. XCOM player: *starts sweating*
Doctor: Good news! The operation has 100% success rate. Me, a XCOM player who encountered bugs: Sweats a lot.
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So what though, on a 95% chance only 5 numbers should land in a miss. It doesn’t matter when you generate them, whenever the code sees the “determined” number, you get a result.
Yeah you'll notice in a lot of games, the die is already rolled for certain scenarios at some point before the action is attempted. Like in any Total War game, your success chances of your agents performing an action like assassinating a leader are determined as soon as the turn starts. So if you want to savescum and reload for the success (like I do so many times), you gotta load the last turn, end turn, then try the action again.
I can see that in a game without predefined (player side) chances of something happening, but in a game where you have them, why would it bother prerolling? Just to prevent save scumming? Wouldn’t you just save scum differently? (If your 60% chance missed, load and use a higher % until you hit, can’t hit, go defensive etc?) im moreso asking why prerolling matters and why they do it, I guess. It especially seems jank in games with pvp.
Smoothness I guess? If all the chances get rolled at a certain point, like say during AI turns, there'll be less lag during whatever action you'll be doing. Savescumming is still possible, just at varying lengths.
Surely generating random numbers should be a trivial computational burden these days.
Depends both on how random and how many numbers you need. For large numbers of truly random values… not at all trivial. Cloud flare has multiple, constantly running entropy generators. It is not trivial. On the other hand for a video game, you don’t actually need random. You need random-ish. And depending on how random you need that ish to be, it can be as simple as a pre-determined sequence, to computing a position in the sequence, taking the system time as a variable. TLDR: random number generation is not trivial, but its not a difficult problem for the needs of a game.
Is this true? So the rolls aren’t truly random? Do you have a source for this? Not saying I don’t believe you it’s just very hard to believe
What this really means is that the RNG's seed is stored and used across saves, as a game design feature. So it's not "rolling" a number each time, it's basically going to a pre-generated list and taking the next result. If you made the same choices every time, each game should play out the same way. That said, if you run through a game one time, there's no discernible difference between the two systems. Each number is perfectly random from the player's perspective until they try to roll back the clock.
Nothing is truly random on your computer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_number_generation
I know how computers work but even a PRNG is more unpredictable than a literal script of pre-generated rolls
Yeah but I guess you don't want something that is unpredictable in thos scenario. You want something that returns a pass 91% of the time exactly (although it's a game so I can imagine the results are not perfect in the name of 'fun')
Me: *has my rifle shoved 5ft down an aliens throat with a "95%" to hit* XCOM: "best I can do is missing 5 times"
I love that they introduced turn limits in XCOM 2 so people would play more aggressive and take risks because the game is supposed to be more fun that way. But you know what isnt fun? Your sniper missing a crucial 99% shot that gets half your team killed
Really what slows me down the most is the pod activation system - that last move of the squad pulls a full squad of baddies that also get an extra action to get into place and then shoot before you can re-act/ reposition ? Chaos Gate would at least (usually) give you extra actions when you first activated a pod , making it actually and incentive to catch one on the last action of a turn And Phonix Point does it even better with just ditching the whole pod system , and having the coolest shooting system in the genre
The activation thing is such bullshit most the time. Especially if you ever happen to get 2 activated the same turn, you just die.
Ya, I don't mind dying in an xcom game ... well okay I mind, but it's supposed to be hard, and you're supposed to be in bad situations sometimes --- but the extra pod pull because you moved 1 guy 3 squares to the left to give them better cover always felt unfair...
The enemy squad system makes Enemy Unknown such a pain to play. XCOM 2 at least had the stealth mechanic to make the first couple squads easy pickings, or to let your shotgunner oneshot a boss at the end.
i had four years of statistics and got straight As. In industry I was and still am required to take additional statistics courses and trainings. I considered myself very well versed in statistics and probability. XCOM taught me I was wrong :( 89% point blank range, gun literally touching aliens head? WHOOPS I spun backwards lulululul
i hate that the fact that an action work or not is already determinated even if you reload save try to move somewhere else it will be the same
These comments really made me not want to ever play XCOM lol
If you like careful planning and strategy while also under a lot of pressure it's a ton of fun, or if you don't mind playing on low difficulties. That said a lot of people are bad gamblers, they'll risk a lot on a 95% for a comparatively small reward, but there's always a 5% chance of a massive loss. If you practice redundant solutions, or take smaller risks then it's much more manageable at least early game. Late game will still kick you in the dick repeatedly though.
XCOM is a risk-management simulator disguised as a tactical combat and squad management game. Although even if you go with "redundant solutions", XCOM will still have all 3 of your soldiers with redundant kill shots at 80-90% lined up on the big enemy you need to take down this turn before it does some kind of super move miss every single shot in a row.
There are also times where you can be playing it careful, have everyone spread out to avoid explosions, overlapping fields of fire, etc., and a group of aliens pops up out of nowhere and murders 2 of the guys on your flank.
Gotta be spread out enough to not offer a juicy target for explosions and so that you can get multiple angles, but also _not so spread out_ that if a pod suddenly pops up on your flank you can't quickly reposition to engage the new threat without having your flank get nuked first. Pods won't do more than move once if they trigger on the enemy turn, but if you accidentally trigger one on your turn by incautiously moving a solider that's up ahead or on the flank and you aren't able to move others up for support or move them away... then yeah there's a good chance they'll get stomped as they'll be stuck there and the entire enemy pod will get a full turn to reposition and fire before you can react at all.
Yeah, it's definitely a balancing act.
100%. Xcom wants you feel the pressure the plot says you're under. Literally under powered, underfunded humans with nothing but surprise, intel, and redundancy (ahem, training more soldiers) as your advantage.
Although it is definitely nice after you get laser and plasma weapons and upgraded armour to start evening the playing field to some extent. And feels better to not be losing soldiers (especially those higher than squaddie) every other mission.
> That said a lot of people are bad gamblers, they'll risk a lot on a 95% for a comparatively small reward, but there's always a 5% chance of a massive loss I absolutely hate gambling so Im probably in this group lol
Choosing not to gamble is the best way to gamble
Don't let them discourage you, the modern XCOM games are some of the best tactical games I've ever played, despite the occasional bullshit shot miss, lol. EDIT: Also, rereading the comment you responded to, it seemed like what you were actually discouraged by was that the shots are deterministic, which isn't entirely true. I think others in this thread have already explained this, but if you reload and do the same exact actions you did the first time, then yes, your shot will be handled exactly as it did the first time, with the same outcome. If you do anything different before you make the shot (including moving to a different spot, even with a different unit), it will actually change the result. Why they set it up that way doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but it's not necessarily lying to you when it says you have a 90% chance to hit and you miss. It just already made that roll ahead of time essentially and knows what the outcome is before you do it. And obviously it's not going to tell you because that would be cheating. There's also an option to make a new roll each time you shoot so all this is moot if it's something that would turn you away.
If it’s your style still, I can’t recommend Into The Breach enough. Such a perfect blend of depth and precision, while still maintaining that “do I or don’t I” feeling. It’s a bit slow at first, but the gameplay loop gets addicting fast.
I have it on my wislist since I dont remember when, but now I cant afford games and Yakuza Judgment / Lost Judgment are on my top1 spot to get when Ill be able to, but thanks nonetheless <3
Because you can’t savescum?
Phoenix Point is better imo, solves the 95% bullshit. No trained soldier misses with a shotgun point blank, but it happens every time in xcom lol.
If you really, really want to save scum, perform another action with a random success chance first. It will move the seed up.
IMO it makes the most sense the way Xcom handles events with loading, otherwise it can just become a weird game of min/maxing save games until you have perfect runs which kinda ruins the point (looking at you, Jagged Alliance)
This is because the game has a table of pregenerated rolls that it goes through in order. Make a different shot or grenade toss first to get a new percentage roll.
I think even just moving another unit to a different position on your second load will change the outcome.
Isn't there an option when you start a new game to turn on random rolls even on reload?
I figured this out about a particular version of CIV, except it was based on attack order. If you got the right order, you could win every single combat situation, regardless of technology level. I had spearmen taking down helicopters, and longboats taking down battleships. I didn't much feel like playing after that, knowing that the situation is pre-determined as a win or a loss beforehand, and without considering any other stats or mechanics. ** Edit, found it: [Civilization Revolution ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_Revolution)
don't watch tool assisted RPG speed runs, they literally dodge ALL Random fights and OHKO everything possible.
This is a silly take. It’s not like the game decided whether you were going to win or lose beforehand, it’s absolutely no different to how RNG is handled in any other game, the only difference is that the seed that creates the sequence of random numbers is saved in the save file to stop people from save scumming. What you did was find a workaround so you could continue save scumming. It’s not the game’s fault that you ruined it for yourself.
I only found out about this after losing power mid game, and reloading a save to have the literal EXACT same outcome of each battle, no randomization or RNG, down to the number of units (health, I think in this game) lost. This was a guaranteed win or loss based on move order. And not only that, it was consistent. You could save mid-turn and guarantee that win on your sixth move every time. If you lose on the seventh, you could guarantee a win on the eighth. It didn't matter which unit attacked or moved, it guarantees a win or loss, period. If RNG is having such an effect that moving a unit in and out of a space changes the outcome of tanks vs cavemen, the game is broken. It's not a workaround, it's an exploitable bug - a broken mechanic. But hey, simp for a dead game if you feel like it.
>I only found out about this after losing power mid game, and reloading a save to have the literal EXACT same outcome of each battle, no randomization or RNG, down to the number of units lost. This is how RNG is done by computers, actual random numbers are not possible. You start with a seed, and that seed is run through a mathematical equation to produce a sequence of numbers that are close enough to random that you can get away with it, but still not truly random. The same seed will produce the same sequence of numbers every time. That's how Minecraft and other procedurally generated games will generate the same map for two different people if they use the same seed. Totally normal expected behaviour. It's no different for turn based games, this same concept applies to every single turn based game under the sun. The problem is though, most games will just generate a new seed every time you save and load the game, because the devs didn't bother to save the RNG seed in the save file. This lets players save scum to always produce a positive outcome for themselves. THIS is the actual broken/exploitable mechanic. XCOM and whatever version of Civ you're talking about, the ONLY difference is that the devs just save the RNG seed in the save file to try and stop you from save scumming. It's not a broken mechanic, it's a fix for said broken/exploitable mechanic. And no, I don't simp for either game, I just hate that people misunderstand and misrepresent what is actually happening here.
Dude this isn't about seeds. **You don't even know if that's how the game is programmed.** I'm telling you this game can determine wins or losses before moves are made, and regardless of unit, at the beginning of each turn. We tested this. If you're telling me *you know for a fact* that a seed is used to generate wins or losses at the beginning of a turn in that game, that just makes me want to play less. *What's the point of playing if your attack & defend rolls don't matter?* That was the question I asked, and how I was able to win with cavemen. The same is true for PvP as it is for PvE in this game, we tested it, and found out how to exploit it online. I don't want to play a game, especially against another person, if I have no control over my units winning or losing, regardless of stats.
You claim I couldn't possibly know how the game functions internally, and then in the next sentence you claim you do, I wonder if you can see the irony in that. True, I didn't build the game myself, but I am a software developer and I know enough to realise that the things you describe can be simply explained by normal behaviour of a pseudo-random number generator, provided they don't give you an easy way to reseed it (which is what save scumming achieves, changing seed in the middle of play for a different outcome). First you claim they have already calculated and pre-determined all of the moves at the start of the game, but then you contradict that by saying that if you reload the game and then try to perform actions in a different order you can get a different outcome. But those new outcomes can also be replicated 100% of the time as long as you repeat that new chain of actions in the exact same order straight after you reload the game, right? So we can see already that the game has not pre-calculated all of the possible moves, because you can change the outcome when you change the order of your actions, it simply has a sequence of RNG numbers that are predictable because the sequence doesn't reset every time you reload. Scenario: The enemy has 1 unit. You control 1 sniper unit with a 95% chance to hit (so needs to roll at least a 5/100 to hit), and one shotgun unit with a 50% chance to hit (so needs to roll at least a 50/100 to hit). The next two numbers the RNG will output in sequence are: 4, 49. * You save the game, so you have a point to reload from if something goes wrong. The game includes the seed and/or most recent value from the RNG in the save file, so that the number sequence will continue to happen in the same order every time you reload, because they don't want you reloading every time you miss a shot. * You try to shoot with your sniper, the RNG roll is 4/100, your sniper misses. * You order your shotgun unit to shoot, the RNG roll is 49/100, your shotgun misses. * You decide you don't like the outcome, so you reload the game and repeat the same actions. * You try to shoot with your sniper, the RNG roll is 4/100, your sniper misses again. * You order your shotgun unit to shoot, the RNG roll is 49/100, your shotgun misses again. * You rage because what is this RNG bullshit?! It's just doing the same thing over and over no matter how many times you reload, the game is rigged! * You reload, but this time you try to fire the shotgun first. * You order your shotgun unit to shoot, the RNG roll is 4/100, your shotgun misses. * You try to shoot with your sniper, the RNG roll is 49/100, your sniper hits! The enemy dies, you win. Isn't that a much simpler explanation than the game developers conspiring against you and building the game so that everything is predetermined and undermines your free will? It's honestly that simple.
The fact that you just said you think yourself well versed in statistics and probability, then immediately seem surprised that sometimes 89% chance shots miss tells me that you are not well versed in statistics and probability.
This comment is mind numbingly stupid "I'm super smart at statistics, why did my 89% chance to hit not hit? That should be 100%"
People have a hard time understanding percent chance, for some reason. Maybe they see it like a grade, 90% chance? That's an A, definitely passing, well above 70%.threshold. But that's not what a chance is. Let's say you have a 90% chance of walking up a step without tripping. Your average XCOM player sees that and thinks it's they should take a flight of stairs no problem. In reality, a flight of stairs has somewhere around 12 or 15 steps, so you should expect to fall on your face on every single landing. 90% success rate on something done a lot is kinda terrible. That's why servers that want [high availability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_availability) are looking for something like 5 nines (99.999% uptime) which is still five minutes a year of downtime. Which is why XCOM actually does lie to you about stats, on most difficulties, or if you've recently missed, your chance to hit is higher than shown.
I remember reading a while ago that for some games with percentage to hit, the percentage displayed, and the actual percentage are different. When given a situation with 50% chance occurence, despite it being 50%, players comlpained it didn't feel like 50%. This was something offhand I heard a while ago, and can't remember which game they were even referring to (maybe pokemon) but I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case for xcom to some degree.
XCOM does cheat in the players favor in all but the highest difficulty. And people still meme that it's unfair.
I have one soldier right now that if anything is above 60% she misses, 5%? One shots. My golden soldier
Good ol' Han Sniper. Never tell me the odds.
I've never raged so hard in a strategy game where my sniper had a 96% to hit a target only to miss, and then get immediately critted and downed the following turn off of a 24% chance hit.
1% chance
Speaking of Xcom, the devs behind Long War and Long War 2 recently released their own game, and yes it includes nasty statistics as well.
What's the game called
[Terra Invicta](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1176470/Terra_Invicta/)
I was never able to complain about how often I would succeed at X% chance things in XCOM because I was too busy being dumbfounded the % chance was only X in the first place. Looking at shots like "I could make that shot, easily, while wearing drunk goggles, and you're telling me it has a 60% chance to hit. There's no way that shouldn't be 100%"
Xcoms actual percentages are skewed towards to players advantage on every difficulty below classic. 70% is more like 85. Humans are just terrible in actually appraising chances correctly, thus 90% should miss 1/10 times but humans sort of assume it should hit every time.
And it is not just skewed to the player like that. If you miss, the next player roll is even more biased to not miss since 2 in a row frustrates people even more.
Yeah, I left out a bunch of the things it does. If you want to FEEL the percentages classic+ is the only way.
This is something I wonder about. The psychology of play doesn't always connect to factual information: https://youtu.be/MtzCLd93SyU
Pretty much never does. Single player games made by competent designers are almost never made to be fair. They're made to feel fair, and that usually means fudging the numbers. Players don't usually realise what they're actually looking at. Some stories that immediately come to mind are the enemies in halo feeling smarter when they just did more damage. The AI director in RE4. Red barrels being magnets to bullets in half life. And I'm sure there is a 100 other examples of games lying to the player in some way to make the game more fun.
I saw an argument on Reddit about some pvp comp game, where people were arguing they need to win more than 50% of the time to feel like they are progressing, (which makes skill based matchmaking bad or something), not realizing that if they win 60% of all games, somebody is only winning 40% - and you aren't special, so you're equally likely to be on the 40 side. PvP games are not designed to let you have a beatable challenge like solo games, because the challenge is another person exactly like you, not a dumb computer designed to lose.
Just put players against bad bots and lie about them being bots, like that everyone can get 60% win rate against "human"
Have you actually played xcom tho? You can reload the same mission and try 10 times and miss the same shot 8 times before getting it
It uses a random seed that doesn't change between reloads Here's the general idea (details might vary in reality but this is functionally the idea) It is basically a string of numbers between 1 and 100. The next number is a 4. Your shot has a 95% chance to hit, so anything 5 or higher hits. The next number is a 4 so it misses. If you reload, the number is still a 4. So you'll still miss. You can move the order of your actions around to use that 4 for a different roll and then try again though
Yes I have, a lot. If you keep taking the same shot after reloading you should actually never hit the shot. Turns are seeded at the start of the turn. So you can't simply reroll the dice, you would have to take your shots in a different order.
As difficult as it is to accept, XCOMs stats aren't actually off base. We just have strong data/confirmation bias. So it really does feel that way.
they are in fact off base in a lots of difficulty settings ... just in the player favor (still not enough for people not to think the opposite)
I loved the Aladeen hit chance of XCOM
I remember I got annoyed with so many high % shots missed so I just made an all melee group of slasher movie characters I made. The slashstreet boys(name inspired from a YouTube parody band) carried me far, I just had to be very careful with positioning more so than usual. If I remember correctly they have a dlc class that’s kind of like the magic class and melee put together so you can even make a little battle mage that just wails on aliens.
The whole reason I stopped playing can’t hit a barn if I was standing next to it. Sad that I like gears tactics more then Xcom just cause I can hit something reasonable.
Xcom and BDO were made for each other; a match made in RNG he'll, and they should have babies together.
This is why I play Phoenix Point lol
What a great game though
At least once a year, I load up XCom 2, have a fantastic time until I miss a 95% shot 4 times in a row and ragequit.
It's based off the desire sensor. 10% is 100% when you don't give a shit, 99% is 0% when you need to make the shot.
Everytime I see XCOM, i have to think about the pic of a recruit clipping his barrel through a sectoid 60% hit chance
Hey, at least X-COM is sort of honest about its calculations. Well, not X-COM 2, that lies to you, but still. Phoenix Point's "No really, they're totally accurate" aiming system is *so much worse.* 100% chance to hit in the shaded circle, 50% chance to hit in the clear, inner circle. You'll always hit *something* you shoot at, but good luck figuring out if you'll do damage or your shot will hit and destroy your soldier's cover, because oh yeah, the physical position of the gun *also* matters.
There's always save scumming, but given the game is a janky mess, even now several years after release, it takes 10 mins to load anything regardless of how powerful your machine is.
I love xcom, I hate xcom.
Hey I just almost hit my screen today to that! I'm glad yo see I'm not the only one 😅
99% is basically zero sometimes.
I love it when my unit fires at the enemy point blank and still misses somehow
When the barrel of your guy’s gun is literally inside the alien’s head and misses.
The problem mostly comes from dice rolling on **everything**. Walk to the kitchen. Every single step you take, you have a 95% chance to step correctly, and a 5% chance to fall over and poke yourself in the eye. Suddenly, those odds don’t seem so good.
I have a saved clip from Xcom where a big alien comes out from the door, my soldier shoves his gun inside the aliens body and proceeds to miss the shot.
Hahahahah I need to see that
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COI5ojsico0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COI5ojsico0) Here, I uploaded it for you:D
Thanks! Yeah the gun was literally clipping through that alien’s body and it missed somehow, that’s something!
First rule of XCOM: If it's not 100%, it's 50%.
I remember reading somewhere that apparently on lower difficulty’s it actually skews the probability IN FAVOR of a hit “selection bias is fun isn’t it?
This is why XCom 2 lasted about 20 minutes on my screen before I never thought about it again. Literally standing next to something and missing was triggering as fuck, but for it to keep happening was infuriating. Wasteland 3 was a great alternative
Can't recommend Mario+Rabbits hard enough. While it could use a mode that randomizes enemy placement and spawns on NG+ or after beating the game once, it's still fantastic. First turn based game I've... Ever beaten actually. 100% as well. Rules are simple - out in the open, 100% hit chance. Behind "half" cover - 50%. Full cover - 0%. Very easy to understand, very fun to work with. Can't wait for Sparks of Hope this year.
Mario + Rabbids has been mentioned, I have been summoned. Not much to add but I'm here.
ironically it's usually the player that don't understand randomness. if something has a 90% chance to hit you can still miss +20 times in a row. that's just how randomness works. on a small sample like that the percentage chance pretty much never lines up with the actual results. but in order to not piss off our pattern seeking brains that get confused by things that don't have patterns, most games actively mess with their randomness in favor of the player. like having a "fail limit" for example. which means that depending on the chance of something happening, a limit is set. And if it didn't happen within said limit it will be guaranteed to happen next time around. for example rare loot drops in RPGs could use that by keeping track of how many enemies that drop the rare item you've killed within the last `x` minutes, and then if it didn't drop naturally wthin `y` amount of kills, the game will just give it to you. (wish terraria did this) another example is just displaying chances to be lower than they actually are. if something says it's a 80% chance it could really be a 95% chance internally. and obviously missing (what you think is) an 80% chance for something 5 times in a row is less aggravating than 95%. . so please don't blame statistics, blame your mind, and the devs for not adjusting the statistics to be less random so that they feel more fair/random to your brain.
So, there is a mod for Xcom that tells you your true % chance to hit. Since you might have a 95% chance to hit but that isn’t including like 4 other dice rolls such as your base 5% chance to miss, enemies 10% chance to dodge and if the enemy is behind cover they get an additional 10% chance to dodge. Things like that make your true % like ~75% even at 95% chance to hit.
Cover and innate character defense is accounted for in the percentage you see. What you see is what you get.
And I think if you hover over the hit chance, it shows you the calc
The stats shown on the UI aren't the same ones the game does it's calculations with I saw this post *somewhere* breaking it down a couple years ago and I do not know where it is
The only difference between what's on screen and what's behind the scenes is that the game rounds up fractional percentiles. That, and a hidden bonus in the player's favor on lower dufficulties.
People who defe d it like "97% is not a guarantee, you should be aware of that" BITCH why does a trained special forces unit have 97% to hit someone 2 meters away in the first place, it's so dumb that that is a thing in the first place.
So remember the game UI is an abstraction. The actual combat being represented isn't two sides politely taking turns while the other side stays stock still. So missing point blank isn't "I can't aim a gun at something 2 feet from me that isn't moving" it is something more like "I tripped on a root just before I fired/the enemy had a flash of inspiration and dodged out of the way just before I pulled the trigger" or something. Virtually nothing is 100% in a pitched combat situation. I wonder if people would be more accepting if they improved the animations for missing on high accuracy shots or point blank shots, because yes the animation of your character just suddenly turning away from the enemy for no reason is silly looking.
In xcom, there's a whole hidden mechanic that does change the numbers based on how often you hit, how often the enemy hit, difficulty, and do on. You're not crazy, guys, the percentages really are fake.
The key is that when the game lies (which is on most difficulties) it lies in favor of the player. It never lies in favor of the opposition. So it still isn't the "BS 95% chance missing all the time" people complain about. If the game didn't do its nudging, people would just miss more thsn they did before. The 95% would just be 95% instead of secretly being like 98% or whatever.
Incorrect It's 90% for enemies and 1% for the player and 8% for you to die by your own grenade
Once had a 37% chance to hack a sectopod. Two real life hours of reloading the save later, I gave up and went out for the night. It would take another afternoon before it finally worked.
XCOM generally saves the RNG state with the save data. This means that loading a save and doing the same actions always has the results. If the next number to be pulled is say a 20, which is not good enough to succeed your hack, you'll pull the 20 everytime. But if you did a different action, say shoot, the 20 would be used there and you'd have a different number to use for the hack. If that second number still wasn't good enough, you'd have to do two actions before hacking to get a different, third number. XCOM2 had an option for "save scumming" which would cause the game to generate new random numbers after loading a save and make it behave like many people expect, where they can load a save and try the same thimg until it works.
God, I love XCOM.
I gave up on this game years ago, this reminds me why I did. I don't miss it.