I hit level 30 over the weekend and the game took an odd turn for me.

Each sub-zone has one group mission, and on the penultimate one I was teamed up with 2 folks who were level 30 and had a high gear score (or it appeared high).  Yes, this game has a gear score, easy to identify with other players.  They were both near 150, which is the average item level across all pieces.  I was having a tough slog through the zone, taking quite a few hits to take an enemy down.  15K per headshot, which I thought was pretty decent – at least in the solo play.  These 2 guys didn’t even both hiding, they just ran through the entire zone, a clip dropping an entire room.  My first thought was that they had hacked the game.

And then I hit level 30.  I crafted some level 89 gear and went to do the last mission.  In it, I got a new sniper (marksman) rifle and was now doing almost 60K per headshot.  My mine skill was clearing out any solo mission in a single hit.  In the space of 30 minutes, I had quadrupled in power.  The sad part is the difference in power between me at 29 and 30 was about the same as the difference between me at 30 and those 2 guys at 150+ gear score.

Now, I’m all used to power curves.  Diablo 3 has one of the worst I’ve ever seen.  Most MMOs have bad ones as well, though dying while leveling is a rare enough occurrence these days.  The Division just takes it to a level I’m not used to.  It feels like I’m using cheat codes.

But, this is only related to the “normal” level gameplay.  I haven’t done any Dark Zone content, nor any challenging/hard missions.  I’m fairly confident a level of challenge exists within that space.  Perhaps this is like SWTOR, where once you hit level cap, they provide you with a set of epic gear to take on the “now relevant” content.  It does make all the solo-content essentially irrelevant to complete (aside from credits I guess).

So now, I’m looking for some builds and better understanding of stats in the end game.  From what I can see so far, having scavenging up to 99% has a dramatic effect on drops, though getting it to 100% causes a bug to make it worthless.  Crit chance has no impact on head shots.  Weapon Damage has diminishing returns, Skill Power affects pretty much anything you do, and there’s a bear minimum level of hit points you need to survive a sniper shot.  In a game where defence means little (from what numbers I’ve seen), optimizing offence seems to be relegated to a very small set of stats.  Curious as to the long tail in this game.

I’ll give it another week or so, to see where things fall into place.  Afterwards I think I’ll give Dark Souls 3 a try.  We’re a month in, someone is bound to have a 50% off sale right?

So I’ve been playing this one off-and-on for a bit now.  I’m not terribly far through, level 21 of 30.  I guess that’s about 70% of the map, based on what I’m able to see.  I’ve absolutely zero experience in the DarkZone (DZ) since that opens up in a level.  It’s a weird game.

The most obvious of all elements is that it’s mostly single player.  Aside from the shared hubs and the missions (that you can solo if you want), I never see anyone else in the game.  It’s quite jarring to be playing alone, having no help, then getting into a mission and having someone heal you.  I quite like the group aspect, I just wish there was more of it.  Maybe that comes later?

The RPG aspect is cool enough.  Gear drops with a multitude of stats, though only 3 really count (DPS, health and skills) in large portions.  Items have talents, there are mods for gear and skills, and there’s a fair amount of customization through talents.  I’m not certain the balance is appropriate mind you.  An even spread of stats doesn’t give much benefit compared to a high investment in DPS.  Even if you were to stack everything into health, you’d still get mowed down.  I do like that you can re-roll stats on gear (a tech room upgrade).  It allows me to keep the same stat balance, while getting general secondary stat boosts.

Guns.  There are many guns.  Machine guns, assault rifles, marksman rifles, uzis… you name it.  There’s a generic DPS stat on them, though it still requires you to pay attention to the other stats – namely rate of fire.  I have one rifle that allows me to unload an entire clip while aiming.  It does half the damage per shot of my other rifle, but shoots about 4x as fast.  Had I only looked at the damage stat, I would have been mighty peeved (I was on an earlier comparison). Mods on guns help tweak a few settings, thought it’s the talents that have most merit.  Kills that refresh skill cooldowns, or health on kill, or group stuns… all of it matters.  It’s different to have a game provide you with so much choice while leveling, but it’s refreshing.

The actual missions are all very similar.  Free some hostages, take down a bad guy, break up a deal, power up some towers.  All of them (minus investigation ones) require you to mow down a bunch of cookie cutter bad guys.  The controls are responsive, and the enemy AI isn’t dumb as dirt, so there’s some fun when they throw everything your way.

Group missions are different.  They usually cover big expanses of land, which only a few narrow hallways.  This allows for fairly large firefights.  The flamethrower and machine gun enemies are a right pain.  Solid team work, with a couple folk set to heal makes a big difference.  Bosses aren’t bullet sponges, and flanking is certainly required to make work.  Tight controls and the ability to perform quick headshots help a ton.

Overall it’s a good game.  I’m not terribly sold on the longevity, as I expect perhaps another 4-5 hours to complete the main portion of the quests.  The exploration part doesn’t hit any particular nerve and the grind for more stats died in my MMO raiding days.  Plus, it’s sunny and warm outside, after an un-ending winter.

I finished XCOM2 recently and wanted to put out some parting thoughts.  First and foremost, people should play this game.  It’s a significant improvement on the first one.  I do suggest people take a look at the mods on the steam workshop, some of them add some nice quality of life changes.  Either faster turns, overwatch for everyone (or evac), and some tweaks in the various gameplay elements.  If you do use mods, be warned that you have to keep using them on the saved game files.

Classes

Where the first game had a defense-first attitude, you could run most of the game with 4 snipers, a runner and a heavy weapons specialist.  For the first 3/4 of XCOM2, you’re on offense, and at a disadvantage too.  Your weapons are pretty weak, even with the magnetic ones.  It’ll take about 100 days of research to get beam weapons, which is a very long time.  So until that point, you need classes that can move.

The Ranger is a solid bet, with either a focus on melee attacks that make them invulnerable, or a stealth mode for those tricky missions.  They have a good critical chance and weapon damage as well, making for a pretty solid class.

The Sharpshooter is the sniper, hanging back and dealing massive damage.  I never bothered with the gunslinger tree since pistol damage is too low.  When you get Killzone (reaction shot for everyone who moves in front of you) and then Serial (keep shooting if you’re killing), you’re a frigging machine.  The downside is that this class required the magazine expansion weapon mod and either the spider or wraith armor to move quickly.  They are the main damage dealers in the last 25% of the game.

Grenadiers focus on heavy weapons and both skill trees have fun items.  Either more bullets or more bang, and I had 2 different build in my squad.  They are often the first to shoot, since they shred armor, destroy cover and boost aim chance for the rest of the team.  Essential for those buggers who love to hide.

Specialists focus on mechs and healing.  If you’re playing Ironman, you need the healing type, otherwise it’s a pretty useless class.  The odds of hacking are not high enough to be worth trying.  After completing the game, I had hacked (and taken over) 8 enemies, out of 414 kills.  They have really bad aim too.

PsiOps is stupid powerful but a very late game addition.  Insanity, Void Rift, Null Lance, and Domination change the game.  Void Rift is like a grenade with twice the range and damage.  They clear entire rooms.

Upgrades

Focus on beam weapons above all.  They change the game completely.  Your sniper can now 1 shot a Codex, which is the real end goal.  Once you’re there, I suggest 4 Spider/Wraith armor for easier movement, then 2 EXO suits for the free rockets.

Ammo upgrades are also really good.  Dragon bullets cause enemies to burn, and AP bullets ignore 5 armor (which I think covers everyone).  A sniper with AP can kill any mech in 1 hit.  With the proper world bonus, you can build ammo with no build time, so I save-scummed until I got what I wanted.

Avenger Building

Build 3 power rooms, 2 of which on the alien coils.  Keep at least one of the middle rooms for a Workshop.  Putting an engineer in this room gives 2 gremlins, which act as engineers.  An upgrade gives you 4, so try to keep it close to a power relay for a nice boost.  You’ll need 2 resistance comms to move forward in the game, both upgraded.  A Psi Lab when you have the materials too, as a PsiOps is super powerful.

I suggest ignoring a Laboratory or a Defense Matrix.  The Advanced War Center should be used for Ironman only, or you need to get a Steam Mod to make it worthwhile for regular games (for the rank bonuses).

The real big goal is getting the 2nd power relay up and running.  The game gets really hard until you do.

Avatar Progress

For a while, I was at 10/12 on the progress bar.  I was pretty sure things were going to go sideways for me.  But I got lucky and wiped out a bunch of bases in a row and dropped from 10 to 2 in a month.  Just remember that you can’t ignore any missions and if you’re given the option of missions, take the one that stops the double progress.  You can live with enemies with more armor, or poison or what have you.  You can’t live with a 12/12 progress bar.

Tactics

There are really 2 kinds of missions, timed missions and combat missions.  For the former, you want to get your snipers to high ground as soon as possible and rush the rest of the team until you find an enemy.  Moving as far as possible on the first turn, you want to save the Overwatch for later on.  Once you’re discovered, then grenades and cover make the difference.

For the 2nd half of the game, there’s a larger focus on combat missions without timers.  The last one is like 2 of these missions put together.  When there isn’t a timer, odds are you’re going to have a pretty tight group of enemies, so you want to avoid moving too far out.  Guns should be reloaded wherever possible (unless you have free reload weapon mods) and the team should never be too spread apart.  There’s nothing worse than charging forward and finding a group of mutons, sectoids, MECs, and a gatekeeper all cause you didn’t want to take cover.

Last Mission

Without spoiling it, the last mission’s objectives will end the mission when they are completed, regardless of what’s left on the map.  In the final room, once you trigger the main event, the portals will continue to spawn until you clear the objectives.  I think I ended up with 50 kills on that one level.

The game also sets up either a sequel or a DLC with a new big bad guy.  Curious as to how that rolls out.

Highly recommend this game.  I’ll be coming back to it in the future I’m sure.

More Pew Pew

I was able to finish up research on all the plasma weapons, though it took a bit to get the supplies (cash) to build them.  I’ll take the sniper rifle as an example.  The first gun was a 4-6 damage weapon, the Plasma is 6-10.  Combined with a particular set of perks, the largest normal hit I’ve had was 17, which is enough to take out nearly every enemy in a single shot.  So where my group of rookies would have had issues taking out 3 enemies, I can now take on 6 without too much worry.  Heck, I cleared a recent map in 4 turns, 1 of which was spent actually finding the enemy.  It’s a massive change in strategy.

Shadow Hunter

Well, more specifically the Ranger.  I have one that’s set up to be a melee fighter who seems to be all but unkillable.  She has great mobility, awesome damage potential, and one particular skill that makes her immune to damage if she lands a killing blow for 1 attack. That last item means she can chain kill an entire group, solo.

The downside is that I didn’t know what skills were in the class while levelling.  I opted for a team-based approach, where she would be slightly ahead of the team, acting as a scout.  There’s nothing wrong with that playstyle mind you, as it allows me to be pretty aggressive.

That said, I’m going to train another one and focus on the shadow line of skills.  The majority of missions are time-based and being able to move in the shadows to complete objectives would be a massive boost to productivity.  I’ll try a single one out and if that work, I think I’ll train 2-3 more to make a B squad.  With smart stealth movement, I should be able to complete the VIP missions, and X4 missions in a couple turns.  The abduction and relay missions would be ambush bonanzas.

Long Game

The Avatar project is at 9/12 now.  I had been blocked from progress due to the lack of comm relays, and I was blocked on that due to lack of power, and I was blocked on that with a lack of rooms to build in.  I had seen the limitation early enough but it’s 10 days to dig out the room, and another 10-15 to build what I need, with all engineers on hand.  That took a while.  Now I’m at 11 relays available, enough to start exploring more missions to bring that Avatar project score down.

And I think that’s one of the quirks of XCOM, in that it has a lot of stretches of preparation and then major plateaus of progress.  Going from regular weapons to Gauss weapons was weeks of research but made a massive difference in my ability to take down Advent forces.  Plasma weapons took even longer and that has allowed me to safely run through 2/3^rd of the enemies.  I still don’t have a Psionic combatant ready for battle as he’s still training.  I’d be curious to see him in action, given the planned skillset I want for him (and past experience in XCOM1).

And the progress itself is limited.  I only have so many researchers and engineers to do work.  I only have so many supplies and intel to trade, only so many cores, crystals and alloys to build with.  Even with a ton of stuff unlocked, I can’t build it all, I don’t have the resources.  The good news is that I don’t feel punished with that limit.  Each decision is simply a step to the next plateau and there are very few decisions that I would call “bad” or wasteful.  Sure, you can have bad timing like I did with the comms relays, but a bad call in the long-game is quite hard to do.  And that’s a rare achievement for a game today.