Been watching quite a few let's plays of XCOM 2, and one thing I absolutely love (among many things) is the hacking system.

Its very RNG which can svck, but I like that in addition to the main hack you are attempting, you can choose one of two side objectives to attempt to hack which wield various rewards, from permanent decreases in your enemies work towards an objective (which, upon success, leads to game over), to permanent gains in your hacking characters ability to hack, to battle gains such as damaging your enemies will power for the remainder of that particular battle. Theres also a suspense associated with the RNG, potentially due to the way it's displayed, nice UI.

Now watching this has reminded me of a few other hacking systems. Since Fallout is the main game I have been playing (and watching let's plays of), I thought it was worth seeing what people thought of the hacking mini-game used in Fallout. Do you enjoy it? Do you believe others do it better? Do you think it needs changing? Hence the poll...

I've heard a lot of criticism towards Fallouts hacking, personally I enjoy it since it requires you to use your brain (somewhat anyway), but do believe it should be done in real time, and maybe have a countdown timer. That being said I feel it does fall short of a few other games, namely the three mentioned in the title.

I like that Mass Effect has about three or four different mini-games, changing up the scenario, and that it ties the mini-games to certain actions (unless I'm remembering it incorrectly), where opening doors has a mini-game different to hacking a bank terminal. I also like that they tend to be associated with a countdown timer, which I think Fallout's mini-game desperately needs.

I also like Deus Ex: Human Revolution's mini-game, gives you a serious opportunity cost to consider, and all of it has to be done with a short time period as someone is chasing you down (again really making it feel like a proper hacking game). Do you attempt to hack an extra node to earn extra bonuses and risk the anti-hacker catching you, or do you beeline straight for the objective. I also love that real items outside the game world can be earned and give you shortcuts, like nuking the cost required to hack a particular node (each node has a value associated with it that defines how long it will take to hack, nuke's allow you to instantly hacking).

Anyways, hopefully worth a small discussion, and seeing what others think.

votes

No, I don't enjoy the minigame. It's repetitive, intrusive and boring filler gameplay.

Yes, other games do hacking better (each one that has no minigame - Fallout, Fallout 2, Wasteland, Wasteland 2, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, etc).

Dump the minigames entirely.

I take it you prefer the skill checks? Only think I disliked about Wasteland 2 (only one from that list that I played) was the critical failures when you have very high chances of success, felt too susceptible to the RNG fails at times.

But its a simple solution which works well.

Yeah, I take skillchecks over minigames anytime. It just is a better and more accuracte use of the character system and it doesn't cram the gameplay with repetitive busywork just to appear like a simulation. I would've tweaked a bit the WL2 check system (hidden the success/failure percentages and lowered the critical failure chances a bit) since despite the RNG it felt like a threshold system, but it worked well enough.

I'm planning on building a brand new unnecessarily high power PC just so I can run XCom 2 maxed and modded.


All praise be to RNGeezus.


That is to say, I too prefer skill checks. Hidden or visible % risks I guess I'd prefer hidden or expressed in words rather than numbers.

MrSmileySmile I wouldn't spend so much. I've been watching a bunch of let's plays and a lot of people are saying that it can be unoptimized, meaning that even with a high powered graphics card you are still going to suffer from weird frame rate drops and screen tearing.

Someone has your exact same setup (CPU and GPU) based on what you've said in another thread and it's working just fine for them?:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6Y6a50saNs

Burn the Witch!!!


How'd he do that? I'll have to redownload it, hopefully I can still get the preorder Deluxe version

no, really the mini game is good, why? bc make me feel im doing something, can be improve? hell yeah, i hope Fo5 they remake it.

Skill check is better? no, why? bc this is a first person style game, having a skill check fill super non immersive.