I spent so many hours with XCOM EW and I used to love that game, but these days I deeply resent it. It was certainly the first game that created the "losing is fun" trend which people now try to force down your throat.
And it wasn't even the devs fault, but the whole community around that game, the insufferable amount of elitism around playing Impossible/Ironman, like people literaly believe that this was the "only" way to play.
It was never about skill, for which at least you could make this argument in favor of some PvP games, no it was all to justify their addiction to gambling, and not exciting or intresting gambling either, but literal dice rolls where a 5% or a 1% could ruin a campaign.
Why would you ever accept this is a good thing if not because you are addicted to gambling.
And this inevitably lead to so many games trying to copy this masochistic formula, mainly Darkest Dungeon(another love hate). Maybe losing is fun sometimes, but wasting 50-100h of progress isn't fun, its self-harm. But people wont admit that because then you are not a real Gamer.
Your points are all valid too, things like the random soldier class eventualy got fixed with mods, realy the Long war mod is such a much better experience because they straight up fixed so much bullshit.
I spent so many hours with XCOM EW and I used to love that game, but these days I deeply resent it. It was certainly the first game that created the "losing is fun" trend which people now try to force down your throat.
And it wasn't even the devs fault, but the whole community around that game, the insufferable amount of elitism around playing Impossible/Ironman, like people literaly believe that this was the "only" way to play.
It was never about skill, for which at least you could make this argument in favor of some PvP games, no it was all to justify their addiction to gambling, and not exciting or intresting gambling either, but literal dice rolls where a 5% or a 1% could ruin a campaign. Why would you ever accept this is a good thing if not because you are addicted to gambling.
And this inevitably lead to so many games trying to copy this masochistic formula, mainly Darkest Dungeon(another love hate). Maybe losing is fun sometimes, but wasting 50-100h of progress isn't fun, its self-harm. But people wont admit that because then you are not a real Gamer.
Just look at this interview with the lead dev where he basicaly explains people shouldn't play classic/ironman straight away.
Your points are all valid too, things like the random soldier class eventualy got fixed with mods, realy the Long war mod is such a much better experience because they straight up fixed so much bullshit.
If you haven't played LW I realy recommend it.
Thanks for the suggestion! I might check it out.