The “modern” XCOM games cheaped out on their game mechanic budget.
The game Phoenix Point made by a much smaller studio with fewer resources came up with a vastly superior way to tackle hit probability. In that game you can free aim using a reticle made of two concentric circles. The outer circle represents where your shot(s) have a 100% chance falling inside of. The inner circle represents where 50% of your shots have a chance of being inside. The more accurate weapons have smaller circles. Then when you shoot the game simulates the path of your shots and any character or environmental object that gets in the way will be taken into account. If you fire a burst or shoot a shotgun, you’re not bound to only 100% hitting or 100% missing. You can have a partial number of rounds or pellets hit the target, while others might miss, be blocked, or even hit another enemy or ally if they were sharing that cone of probability.
This makes the whole thing feel far more real than the shitty dice roll system XCOM relies on that just feels cheap and simplistic in comparison especially for a game of that price. Too bad that overall Phoenix Point had difficulty curve issues and the story was not every interesting to me at least.
If they ever make a new XCOM game I really hope they make that mechanic more like Phoenix Point’s. And also lose the arbitrary turn limits that they’ve introduced in XCOM2 because they force a reckless game style that I absolutely hate in those types of games.
The “modern” XCOM games cheaped out on their game mechanic budget.
The game Phoenix Point made by a much smaller studio with fewer resources came up with a vastly superior way to tackle hit probability. In that game you can free aim using a reticle made of two concentric circles. The outer circle represents where your shot(s) have a 100% chance falling inside of. The inner circle represents where 50% of your shots have a chance of being inside. The more accurate weapons have smaller circles. Then when you shoot the game simulates the path of your shots and any character or environmental object that gets in the way will be taken into account. If you fire a burst or shoot a shotgun, you’re not bound to only 100% hitting or 100% missing. You can have a partial number of rounds or pellets hit the target, while others might miss, be blocked, or even hit another enemy or ally if they were sharing that cone of probability.
This makes the whole thing feel far more real than the shitty dice roll system XCOM relies on that just feels cheap and simplistic in comparison especially for a game of that price. Too bad that overall Phoenix Point had difficulty curve issues and the story was not every interesting to me at least.
If they ever make a new XCOM game I really hope they make that mechanic more like Phoenix Point’s. And also lose the arbitrary turn limits that they’ve introduced in XCOM2 because they force a reckless game style that I absolutely hate in those types of games.