XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Dissecting the Multiplayer
Firaxis unleashes XCOM's online alien battles.
XCOM: Enemy Unknown lead designer Jake Solomon has been keeping a secret.
Game designers are good at secret-keeping, of course, but Solomon has had an ace up his sleeve for a while, and during our visit to Firaxis' Maryland studios last week, he finally got to play that ace. XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Firaxis' highly anticipated strategy game, will ship with online multiplayer. In fact, the game was planned from the beginning to have multiplayer--and we had a chance to play it ourselves during the extensive tour.
Most notably, Enemy Unknown's multiplayer matches are generally quick and dirty, in direct contrast to the extensive single-player strategic marathons. Online matches eliminate the strategic layer completely, pitting two players versus each other in a single combat skirmish that's likely to last around 10 to 15 minutes. The setup is pretty simple: each player is given 10,000 total points to spend prior to the match on various units and inventories, and once the match begins, each player has 90 seconds to take their turn. (That's true of ranked matches, at least; you and a buddy can customize these and other options in unranked play if you want to experiment.)
The point limitation is the game's primary means of balancing, though Firaxis is abundantly aware that once the game is released into the wild, players might find creative ways to steamroll their opponents. There's good news in that regard: the studio can adjust point thresholds on the fly without patching, so if those cyberdiscs you like so much are overpowered (and a few members of the team suspect they might be), numbers can be tweaked without constant patches and hotfixes.
Oh, right: cyberdiscs. You see, you aren't limited to controlling human soldiers; your team can be a mix of human and alien units, each of which has some kind of weakness to exploit. Curious about what some of these units are, and how they behave? Take a look at some of the ways you can exercise your military might:
Soldier
These are the most flexible units in the game, as they come in various classes and can be outfitted in various manners. A soldier in a ghost suit can go invisible for a turn. Some armor types include a grappling hook, allowing the unit to gain a height advantage quickly. Archangel armor allows a soldier to fly for a limited time. Various weapons, armor, and inventory weapons add to the cost of your soldier, so outfitting a single unit as an armored angel of death could use up a sizable portion of your point allotment.
Sectoid
Sectoids are the weakest alien units, and thus come at a low point cost. They may not do a lot of direct damage, but they're capable of mind merge, which allows them to grant bonuses to more-powerful units. They can also lay down suppressive fire, which can potentially damage an enemy unit that dares wander in its path.
Sectoid Commander
As you might suspect, the sectoid commander is a beefed-up version of the sectoid, coming with more hit points than its lowly counterpart, and capable of a more effective version of the mind merge. The commander can also perform mind control, which allows you to take command of an enemy attacker. But the cost is much higher than a normal sectoid, given its powerful psionic abilities.
Click to page 2 to see even more units, and learn more about XCOM: Enemy Unknown.
Kevin VanOrd is a lifelong RPG lover and violin player. When he isn't busy building PCs and composing symphonies, he watches American Dad reruns with his fat cat, Ollie.
Firaxis are all board game nerds, they love wargames and tactical board games like Earth Reborn, Twilight Imperium (Master of Orion 2 anyone?), Warhammer 40k, etc. They made this addon for people like us that love these games against our friends.
I'd really like to know if you can destroy the ground underneath you in multiple floored structures, or the ceiling above you? Also can fire spread like in the original? i hope to see some flame throwers for drawing out enemies running from fire. But somehow I doubt this will happen since everyone will then start burning down entire maps, unless there's a penalty to damaging structures like in XCOM apocalypse which actually fined you for the damage you caused.
After playing co-op games such as Ghost Recon, Left 4 Dead and Men of War, I was really hoping this Xcom game would be co-op as well. The idea of relying on bots to complete a mission is not as fun (IMO) as a real peson to whom you can communicate over Skype and plan your attacks. I'm sure the game will be enjoyable to those who love playing by themselves or against each other.
jamesjgraham Relying on bots? AFAIK the Player controls the whole squad themselves.
jamesjgraham I'm with you.Multiplayer doesn't interest me one bit.It would have been so cool to have been able to play with others on or offline against the aliens in the campaign & surlely wouldnt have been difficult to impliment.How hard could it be to take it in turns with other players on a different joypad? Very disappointed..
SpartanEdge jamesjgraham You can, just reach over and hand your friend the joypad when his charaters turns come up. Solved.
Gwarpup jamesjgraham
Yeah,i know what your saying lol,& thats probably what i'll end up having to do,but it would have been nice if they implemented it to recognise a second pad,ot the option to take turns over 2 joypads or assign squad members to 2 players to save passing the joypad.Also,online Co-Op,where passing the pad isn't an option..
I'm thinking of this MP like Mass Effect 3 MP: totally unnecessary and completely irrelevant to my desire to purchase the game. In fact, maybe even worrisome. And yet hopefully like ME3 multiplayer, it will be a modestly entertaining sideshow and not really screw up the main game.
jimrhurst From my knowledge of Firaxis, they're not the type that screws up a game. The MP shouldn't mess with the SP because like most (all) Firaxis games, the MP plays the same as the SP, only differences here being that there is no Strategic play in MP, and you can use Alien units as well as the Human ones... Actually, the concept of the point system being used in multiplayer reminds me of the system used in the old 'Army Men' games.
jimrhurst The big difference is,the multiplayer in Mass Effect 3 is Co-Op.In this game sadly,it isnt.
jimrhurst If you were a fan of the original back during the 90s. You would know we would have killed to be able to play our units against another live player in multiplayer maps. This is something fans wanted for so many years and with a few mods tried to create it but those mods barely worked and nothing like with this cool point system. This is essentially adding a tactical multiplayer board game to the rest of the game which is so AWESOME for people who play board games. I just hope there's a way to hotseat play it. So we can play on one system.
Gwarpup I was a fan in the 90s and I actually did try one of the mods that let you play as the aliens, which was pretty fun for a novelty. I don't remember it letting you play against one another though. So far the MP for this game looks interesting and like it had very little impact on SP design choices. So I'm cool with it. I'll probably even give it a whirl once or twice, though I'll be surprised if it holds my interest. To each his own.
If the multiplayer included the Strategic game then I would be more interested. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be the case. I will most likely only play the single player game and nothing more.
PLEASE DONT FUCK THIS GAME UP. IM TIRED OF RUNNING THE ORIGINAL XCOM IN DOSBOX. MAKE THIS ONE WORTH THE MONEY PLEASE.
Meh, I could care less about the multi-player and will pretty much never use it. But if they want to add something so basic to the game, so be it.Won't affect my decision to buy it. I don't have to play the MP to get "the best ending", unlike a certain third installment of a trilogy so I am okay with it....
I'm just wondering here... not that there is anything against what they do just wondering.. Why is it tthey put Multiplayer into what has been a Single Player game for as long as i have played em ( i havnt played all of em granted but i played the first 4-5 of em ) people will just complain about how something is OP in MP and then it will get nerfed and screw up your SP cause you cant do that anymore.
Kisalon Point-budget system will prevent that, adjusting costs is enough to maintain balance. No need to buff or nerf.
Ultramarinus That may be but you never know now adays :) The simplest taskes always seem to screw something up if you know what i mean :)
Kisalon I didnt think anyone actually played enforcer or interceptor.
Poidad Yeah well if i liked at least the 2 first in a series then i'll buy and play all in the series just to give it a chance.. granted some of them were crap.
WTF when did Xcom go back to its roots, I thought this was looking to be a massive fail of a weak FPS cash-in like syndicate was so i wrote it off!. But unlike that syndicate train wreak it looks like the devs finally saw sense and listend to the fan base and made the game a lot closer to the originals play style.
It looks like im intrested in this game again after all :)
i juest prey all the research and intercepting and shooting down ufo,s is still intact ANd ofc the creepy music.
AlphaWolF_J there are actually two x-com games in development both published by 2k games. One by 2k marin (FPS) the other by fireaxis (rts)
Ok, my expectations for this game has just dropped down a notch. I am going from "I will probably buy this" to "I'm having serious doubts about this remake".
Game devs today aren't willing to trust what is the best part of a franchise and focus fully on it, instead they like to dilute its gameplay and yearn to attract as many casual players as possible.
Thanks for potentially saving me some cash on this one!
Munstable It's Firaxis, all they make is strategy games, and with all of them, the Multiplayer doesn't detract from the Singleplayer at all, mostly because it's the same game either way, but if Firaxis can't do it, no one can.
Munstable Look All the fans were crying for this option since way back at the beginning we wanted a turn based option to play against other live people cause its the perfect tactical board game to play against your friends using the same engine. That only happened in some crapily done mods, but people played it alot anyway. Board Gamers are XCOM gamers and we all wanted this option. God Bless them for finally listening. So please dont let that stop you from a great game.
I think this will be one of the rare times I pre-order a game on Steam before the reviews come. Looks amazing.
I don't really care about the MP though as it is what it is, but to me x-com is ALL about the SP and to put in a MP makes me think "oh great what time didn't they put into the SP dev to put this in and balance"
Points being simply a cheap and dirty fix to get around having to pay for patching on consoles with whatever becomes OP will get a price increase which I applaud them for realizing this is going to happen and taking steps to be ready to deal with it
I get why people want it but w/e if it works and the SP is great then power to them only time will tell.
To many this may look like a thrown on feature (like many recent games), but XCOM fans have been enjoying multiplayer via mods etc for years, and if you were to look at the XCOM forum you'd see just how often the multiplayer question is asked. I'm still very excited (this has done little for my excitement though)
kingcole225 Don't tell ZOD777. He seems certain no one wants it. Mainly because he doesn't...
So long as they have more than a mockery of multiplayer...I was raised on the dairy in that the games I associate with the best multiplayer have no appreciable difference in multiplayer or single, such as Baldur's Gate games and even coop FPS, so I haven't much tolerance for nerfing, especially for what I consider to be the most enjoyable part of the game.
Probably 75% of the XCOM fanbase doesn't want or care about multiplayer. I don't understand why great single player games get multiplayer thrown in, and why great multiplayer games get a lame single player campaign slapped on. Games should remain true to what they are known best for, and what they excel at. I will be skipping the multiplayer on this one.
ZOD777 So you are going to buy the game and not at least try the multiplayer? Okay...
Atheosis Not interested. I don't buy games like XCOM that are built as single player games for the slapped on multiplayer. It just doesn't intrigue me enough to even want to try it. I would not play Deus Ex multiplayer if it had one, nor would I play Metal Gear multiplayer if it had one, Fallout 3 etc.
ZOD777 No one care what your opinion is.
Kronical42 You do, or you wouldn't bother to reply. Donkey.
ZOD777 Metal Gear does have multiplayer. Or at least it used, they just got rid of Metal Gear Online in MGS4's last patch.
Betrayal. Betrayal. Betrayed me. Nah just messin.
online gaming is looking better each every day man i cant wait for school to be over to jump back in the action
There's multiplayer too? Holy crap I want this game...
This looks great!
i REALLY hope, this one captures even half of the charm the first one had!
This needs to just go ahead and come out so I can play it.
2bitSmOkEy Hey, you type how I think, awesome :)
Man, I've waited so long for this. I played the original for 2 summers straight when I was a kid. Thank you Jake Solomon and Gamespot!
Also, I totally love how Kevin VanOrd calls people out! LOL! Cheers!
Kevin-V
I believe you misprinted the release date in the final paragraph, otherwise an excellent preview.
Yukeshime It is indeed a typo! We are in the process of moving servers, but as soon as my internal tools come back up, I will get it fixed.
Sounds like it will be a good mode.
Wait - Firaxis gets to change point costs easily without patches?
This means that players have to connect to Firaxis's servers for multiplayer, don't they? No dedicated servers allowed?
Gelugon_baat It'll likely work just like ME3 MP with a P2P system working in conjunction with stat-tracking sever, and server-side .bin files that can be edited easily by a balance team. Here's hoping they are better at balance than Bioware...
Atheosis Okay, if it is a soft-updating system, then I am alright with that.
I would be pissed if I have to make some account and shit though.
And I would be pissed if Firaxis insists on using Steam to implement what you said.
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XCOM: Enemy Unknown
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- Publisher(s): 2K Games
- Developer(s): Firaxis Games
- Genre: Strategy
- Release: Oct 9, 2012 (US) »
- ESRB: M
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