I added a few quick thoughts to the article since most of our European friends are probably asleep.

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Quoting: LeerdeckSorry but.. What a communication cluster fuck. Makes me want to stay away from the forum for a long time...

Hah, that's just the way the internet is :D . People get worked up over everything. Not to mention that Paradox fans are incredibly passionate and often spend hundreds of hours and dollars in the lifetime of a series. The important bit is that they're still working on the game regardless and we'll see a lot more patches and content, free or paid in the coming months. The next of their weekly developer diaries ought to be interesting, at least.

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Quoting: Leerdeck7,99€? For a cosmetic dlc? I know that the artists put work into this and I don't expect such things for free.. But I must say I will wait for a reduced price. 8€ for offered content is too much in my opinion.

Yeah, it could be a bit lower, I agree. And it'll cost them some goodwill. But it's a lot of work put in when you consider that it's like an extra 6th of the game art content-wise when you factor in all the different ship types, modules and so forth they added. The devs have more nuanced explanation in this thread. Thankfully the nature of the modular DLC model means that you can pick and choose what you feel is worth it and vote with your wallet.

Quoting: Mountain ManThere's some nuance here.

Indeed there is - and if you can't see how me calling something that expands available content an "expansion" and not even following it up with the word "pack" is a distinction nor how the terminology used in marketing for games is wholly artificial - I'm afraid we'll have to agree to disagree and leave it at that.

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@Mountain Man - It's definitely an expansion in the sense of more stuff for a base product; anything else is just a distinction made for marketing purposes. Don't get me started on how meaningless terms like "Free DLC" are because technically all patches are exclusively downloadable these days and often bring in free content in the case of PDS :P

I've also added mention of the small patch that came along the DLC since I forgot to mention it as well as mention of an example of what's coming in a future update.

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Quoting: dmantioneAMD have stopped updating their Catalyst driver (just a few months ago), because they have a new driver, indeed AMD GPU PRO, which doesn't work with Feral games either, and forces them to make disclaimers for SteamOS, because of course, Valve uses the best driver for SteamOS.

[...]

Supporting Catalyst or GPU PRO is probably one and the same thing, because it is the same OpenGL implementation. If Feral would support GPU PRO and not Catalyst, they would have a point regarding "abandoned". But since they don't, they fail to run on one of the major OpenGL implementations in the industry, and that is a quality issue.

I have a card that runs RadeonSI. All their games work for me. I have seen on the GOL IRC people claim that their games also work with R600g and AMDGPU. Life is Strange, their latest port, works with Mesa > 11.2 as per the store page. AMD contributes [directly to Mesa](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/mesa-patches-greatly-improve-bioshock-infinite-performance-for-the-radeonsi-amd-driver.7768) and their strategy going forward for Linux depends on the open stack and contributions in the kernel.

Feral supports what they can and have responded to users here, on Reddit and wherever else about their issues with Mesa so, once again, what else do you want? That is the official support from both them and AMD. I can run everything from Life is Strange, to XCOM 2 to GRID and they have worked to make sure each of those games work well with Mesa. AMDGPU-PRO is very much a work in progress, and still isn't ready for mass adoption: so much so that the recent 4.7 kernel has added support for a lot more cards but many more are still missing. Once AMDGPU-PRO is mature, I'm sure you can expect them to dedicate resources to ensure compatability.

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Quoting: dmantione

QuoteThis is good news, as I’ve been pretty happy with Feral’s porting work

You are? Performance issues and AMD incompatibilities are the rule rather than these exception with these guys.

I certainly am. They've been great about supporting AMD through Mesa and have even been active in helping Mesa devs deal with bugs and incompatabilities. All their latest ports have worked just great for me. What else else do you want? AMD has abandoned Catalyst/Crimson in favor of Mesa/AMDGPU and their own added AMDGPUPRO drivers.

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Actually it's apparently more than 23% for radeonsi. This is pretty exciting, I can't wait until it's merged into the master branch. I won't bother to test the patch just yet since they're still reviewing code + discussing some implementation details apparently.

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@Beamboom
Like I've said, it's fair enough to want to wait. I often do the same for games that are clearly released in a poor state or where they announce big expansions right away. I get it. It's just annoying to see people be dismissive in general about games just because there's DLC out or planned. Whether or not something is to be recommended or fun shouldn't depend on what's on the horizon! ;)

Ultimately, I'll admit it's a pet peeve of mine. As a gamer I think we complain too much about silly things sometimes. I'd rather we focus our animosity on developers who don't deliver on ports or are terrible at communication.

All that said, in this case, in particular, I'm not sure this is stuff that should have been included in the base game. It feels like an afterthought and doesn't really mesh well with the main theme of the game. And content-wise, it's all small potatoes compared to the beefy EW expansion. But that's my opinion as someone who has been playing the game on and off since launch. Since there's no more announced content AFAIK, you should be able to get your 'complete' experience now. It's my personal hope that they'll announce a proper expansion pack at some point though. Seems like an obvious choice given the game's success.

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@Swiftpaaw
You continue to miss the point entirely: there is no necessarily complete experience and that's the case with most video games these days as developers will continue to add stuff until it is no longer profitable to do so. Waiting is your prerogative but implying that something is half-baked or incomplete without actually experiencing things is disingenuous. Your so-called "complete experience" is not necessarily radically different nor does it necessarily follow a master plan by the developer in terms of vision and design.

Quoting: BeamboomI assume the features in EW was designed and implemented all along the development process of the main game, with the intention of being included in a DLC, but developed along the way and could - if they so chose - have been included on release day.

It could very well be that some or all of the ideas in EW were discussed during the original development process. Any project with a target date and limited budget will often see ideas scrapped because they can't be implemented at all or don't work well; sometimes we see hints of this in the form of unused assets and remnants in code. But your certainty that it was cut or that it was wholly conceived beforehand because of DLC purposes is a far bolder claim than mine. I can't defend Firaxis or any other developer on the basis of mere speculation of their intent but my post set out to address two things that were being complained about generally: 1) The nature of expanded content, paid or free, in modern games and 2) Whether or not XCOM 1 & 2 felt like coherent, fun experiences without any extra content.

I can definitely see where you're coming from but I hope that you can also see how and why others would disagree when you simplify a game to some arbitrary standard of completeness. It's why I asked the questions later on in my earlier post about when a game is complete. It's my belief when you're talking whether or not a game is good you should judge it by how it is at the moment, not at how it might be a year or two later and with the benefit of hindsight. By general opinion of people who have played the game, XCOM 2 is not just a working game but it's a complete game that's mighty fun to play.

It may sound academic but it's not really. Liam hated the previous DLC and didn't feel it added anything good to the game (and I felt the preceding anarchy's children was useless as well) but you can't fault the original game for that. Criticism of any product must be in its due context at its current time. Which is why game reviews are seldom updated after they're initially published.

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