XCOM 2 is so popular it has beaten the all time peak player count of a number of games

Congratulations to the publisher, dev and Feral especially. XCOM 2 is indeed very successful as it has outdone the predecessor by astonishing 500%.

One has to point out that it made it to the top three most played games (on Steam) at the moment, which is very hard to achieve for an non-Valve title.

Very nice & well deserved! I practically do not dare to play for more than a mission at a time anymore, otherwise I lose all sense of time and miss out on eating, bathroom breaks and any time-sensitive tasks.

Well TBF, it's a really good game so deserves to be one of the most played. Performance is hideous though, which seems to be the running theme with Unreal 4. I just have everything on minimum and can still enjoy the game a lot, I don't know if it's a huge deal better than the old one though and seems more like a gradual improvement.

One thing I call total BS on about this game is that lots of hysteric gamers have been crying about timed missions. They clearly haven't played it, like only half are timed and there were timed ones in the last game too which seem to have been forgotten for some reason. It's so annoying when this sort of youtube-fueled bandwagon starts because there's too many "youtube celebrities" with not enough talking points to go round, so "react" to bullshit like that because carefully choreographed outrage to an already hysteric audience sells nowadays. I like the timed missions, but then again, I'm rational.

There are a lot of timed missions, more than in the previous game (though I believe the expansion added more of them), but it adds to the sense of desperation -- if you don't hack this terminal before they lock it down/extract the VIP before the enemy jets arrive/kill the aliens before they repair their freight train, you fail, and it will have serious consequences for the resistance. Like the original UFO: Enemy Unknown, overall victory isn't assured, nor is it easy to accomplish; and to me, that's a lot more fun and interesting.

ALT+F4 during the first campaign.... well at least I finish the tutorial and I think thats it for me :D
Lets say that I totally fail to understand the concepts of turn base strategy games

Well TBF, it's a really good game so deserves to be one of the most played. Performance is hideous though, which seems to be the running theme with Unreal 4. I just have everything on minimum and can still enjoy the game a lot, I don't know if it's a huge deal better than the old one though and seems more like a gradual improvement.

It's actually a heavily modified Unreal 3.

it adds to the sense of desperation

Exactly, which is kind of what the whole game is about. Also, I find it adds to the difficulty in the sense of forcing the player to make mistakes, instead of using artificial ways like making you miss at point-blank range.

It's actually a heavily modified Unreal 3.

He must have meant unreal 3. there's hardly any u4 titles out yet?

I feel so left out. My potato laptop can't handle XCOM 2 :(

I feel so left out. My potato laptop can't handle XCOM 2 :(

It might be time for you to buy a rutabaga, cuz XCOM2 is GRAND AWESOME GOOD FUN!

...shame I screwed up my first game by thinking I could ignore the Avatar Project to build more cool stuff. By the time I got around to taking it on, it was just three bars away from completion. I might've kicked some ass during the Blacksite missions, but there was no way I could fly around the world to keep up.

Decided to purchase this as the game looks awesome and linux support out of the gate is a bonus! Can't wait to play!

It's actually a heavily modified Unreal 3.

He must have meant unreal 3. there's hardly any u4 titles out yet?

No, I did actually mean Unreal 4. Just assumed it was considering how badly it runs and the fact that we're in 2016 :P. Anyway, I hope it gets patched up, would like to play it on max settings some day, considering my rig meets the recommended requirements.

There's ARK: Survival Evolved and that runs pretty badly. Look forward to Street Fighter V (also Unreal 4) :D.

The timed missions in XCOM EU/EW were okay, but I had the most fun with the non-timed missions so I'm not sure how much I'll like XCOM 2. Until the game is patched though, and until the price for the full game is reasonable, I will be playing a copy for free or will be playing something else.

Honestly, the timed missions aren't all that terrible. At least from my experiences, it's usually just a single objective that's timed, rather than the mission as a whole. Like you have to stop a broadcast from going through by destroying a communications relay, and clear out all hostiles in the area once that's done. When you complete the former, the timer is lifted, so you can take as long as you want to with the latter.

There are missions where the game demands you to fulfill all objectives within a certain amount of time, but they're not that common, and usually give you a generous amount of turns to complete it.

Surprised so many are playing it if performance is so horrible still. I'd prefer if players didn't play it to put pressure on them to get it into release-condition. Have there been any patches yet to fix it?

I am sorry but I am playing it on Linux and the performance is indeed horrible, but I already poured 40 hours into it and I don't regret it. It's an amazing game, and they deserve success and profit.

I feel so left out. My potato laptop can't handle XCOM 2 :(

It might be time for you to buy a rutabaga, cuz XCOM2 is GRAND AWESOME GOOD FUN!

...shame I screwed up my first game by thinking I could ignore the Avatar Project to build more cool stuff. By the time I got around to taking it on, it was just three bars away from completion. I might've kicked some ass during the Blacksite missions, but there was no way I could fly around the world to keep up.

You know that when the bars fill there's still multiple weeks delay before you lose, and if you complete any one of the blacksite missions it drops back to bars again, right?

You know that when the bars fill there's still multiple weeks delay before you lose, and if you complete any one of the blacksite missions it drops back to bars again, right?

I knew completing a blacksite mission would drop the bar back a notch, but I didn't know it gave you a buffer once it filled up.

Oh well. I've already deleted my old saves, and I'm kicking so much as s in my new game, I don't even care all that much. :D

The timed missions in XCOM EU/EW were okay, but I had the most fun with the non-timed missions so I'm not sure how much I'll like XCOM 2. Until the game is patched though, and until the price for the full game is reasonable, I will be playing a copy for free or will be playing something else.

I must confess that I was a bit worried at first, since I think the first 2 (3?) missions were timed. While I don't mind timed missions, I certainly wouldn't want a TBS game were *all* the missions were on a clock, then I might as well play RTS for a similar "stress-factor".

Fortunately, that was not the case and 18 hours in I think it's a pretty good mix of "run-for-the-goal" missions and "sneak & flank" missions.

Btw. going off topic for a moment. The release of "Firewatch" is imminent and the game is pre-loading on Linux. Based on the first reviews I've seen it's supposed to be pretty great. (if you're looking for a more "reasonably priced" game that is)


Last edited by Feist on 8 February 2016 at 8:40 pm UTC

performance is pretty good with the beta branch, which sadly isnt made to public yet. though loading times are bigger with that.
i can enjoy everything on high, with the exception of Ambient Occlusion at Tiled.
seems to run 40-70fps most of the time, with times where it goes down to 35 area and rare cases where it drops to 25.
thats with AMD FX-8320@4,4ghz, GTX 970 at 1080p

7 hours into the game and only completed 3 missions (without counting the tutorial one) .. i want to make it perfect so i have to start all over many times :D played first mission after tutorial like 12 time i think :)


anyway im sure feral will push the beta branch to public soon.

This make my game works flawless now!

Fix stuttering

1. Go to your configuration file folder.
2. Make a backup of XcomEngine.ini
3. Open XcomEngine.ini
4. Search for the following and change their setting accordingly, if any of the settings already are as in this guide, just go to the next one on the list.
Find bUseTextureStreaming and make sure it says “bUseTextureStreaming=True”.
Find bUseBackgroundLevelStreaming and change it to “bUseBackgroundLevelStreaming=True”
Find “MipFadeInSpeed0” and change it to “MipFadeInSpeed0=0”
Find "MipFadeOutSpeed0" and change it to "MipFadeOutSpeed0=0"
Find "MipFadeInSpeed1" and change it to "MipFadeInSpeed1=0"
Find "MipFadeOutSpeed1" and change it to "MipFadeOutSpeed1=0”
Find “PhysXGpuHeapSize” and change it to “PhysXGpuHeapSize=64”.
Find “PhysXMeshCacheSize” and change it to "PhysXMeshCacheSize=16".
Find "bInitializeShadersOnDemand" and change it to "bInitializeShadersOnDemand=True"
Find “DisableATITextureFilterOptimizationChecks” and set it to "DisableATITextureFilterOptimizationChecks=False"
Find "UseMinimalNVIDIADriverShaderOptimization" and set it to "UseMinimalNVIDIADriverShaderOptimization=False"
Find "PoolSize" and set it to "PoolSize=X" (X depends on the amount of VRAM you have, 512MB, set it to 128, 1GB set it to 256, 2GB set it to 512, 3GB and higher set it to 768.)
Find "bAllowMultiThreadedShaderCompile" and change it to "bAllowMultiThreadedShaderCompile=True"
Find "ThreadedShaderCompileThreshold" and change it to "ThreadedShaderCompileThreshold=Y" (Where Y is the amount of PHYSICAL CPU-cores your CPU have. If you do not know how many PHYSICAL CPU cores your CPU has, then you can download and run CPU-Z[www.cpuid.com] to find out.)
Find “OnlyStreamInTextures” and change it to “OnlyStreamInTextures=True”


Regards.