5. Better Class Balancing
One of the major changes in Firaxis XCOM was locking soldiers into 4 distinct classes, instead of the more flexible role players of Julian Gollops X-COM. While it allowed for all sorts of new abilities that gave the game a new tactical dimension, it also introduced more than a few problems. Ive already gone on about the class system, so now its time for the other major ones: the game giving you too many of one class and pointless class restrictions. When you start a new game of XCOM, you get a bunch of classless rookies who then get assigned a class when they get promoted to squaddie. In an ideal world, there would be an equal number of squaddies assigned to Sniper, Heavy, Assault, and Support roles (and Firaxis even said there should be, during the pre-release junkets), but that doesnt happen often. Its fairly easy to get several rookies in a row promoted to the same class; if your need for a certain class is severe, you might resort to accepting reward soldiers from abduction missions, even if it means losing nations due to their panic levels (Ill get deeper into the flaws of the panic system later). While you can purchase an upgrade that automatically levels up rookies to squaddies to fix this problem, the cost makes it something youll probably wind up living without for a good chunk of the campaign. Ive seen a lot of pointless restrictions for the sake of balance in my years of gaming, but XCOM takes it to a whole new level with the Sniper and Heavy classes. I can see where Firaxis was coming from with this both of these classes have the ability to become game breakers, especially in the later stages of the campaign. But things like having to wait a turn before firing missiles or sniper rifles after moving make no sense when there are clear limitations imposed on those abilities by the game itself. Missiles are powerful, but when you factor in their destruction of alien alloys (if you kill enemies with them), the potential for destroying useful tech if used inside a UFO, limited ammo (three rockets per soldier per mission
max), and the Heavy soldiers limited movement radius, theres enough incentive to
not use missiles in the game itself. Not only that, but when the game decides to give enemies like Chrysallids (big spiderlike aliens that like to implant eggs in people to turn them into Chrysallids and have a huge movement radius) an extra free move, this restriction seems even more ridiculous. Likewise, the Sniper suffers from a number of limitations that make the sniper rifle restriction worthless: poor aim at the lowest ranks, a clear line of sight is needed for Squad Sight (which allows a sniper to target enemies seen by other squad members) to work, and snipers cant really take advantage of Squad Sight without a decent elevation advantage (either from getting on top of buildings, cars, or other structures, or by using Archangel armor to fly). For the most part, they make a valuable component of the squad and make it a liability, especially when you factor in the poor skill tree design that makes Squad Sight the only real option. A better skill tree and giving the player a bit more credit would go a long way to solving these artificial balance problems, while a better class RNG could help avoid swamping players with squaddies of the same class.