I REALLY don't like them. I feel like it takes away from the strategy to have to rush to an objective.

I am yet to come even close to failing them, and am essentially in the endgame now. They have made for a more varied pacing in battles then Xcom:EU, getting me out of my lazy comfort zone that's so easy to get into in EU. They are essentially a better more fleshed out system/version to Meld introduced in the EW expansion. So: Yay!

I actually feel the opposite...I think it forces the player to use strategy in order to reach the objective in time instead of just turtling and creeping forward a little every turn.

Only played 2 missions but they feel similar to enemy within so far just a bit less forgiving. Its like blooddborne to darksouls forces a faster paced more quick thinking playstyle.

Sadly, I'm leaning towards not liking them. I suppose it's not inherently bad, but it certainly cramps my style.

I haven't played it but even just watching it from videos I can tell I won't like it. I never like time limits and that's doubly so for a game like XCOM, where I want to move meticulously and carefully at every turn. Forcing you to rush in and complete your objective is too stressful for me, I don't think I'll ever play XCOM 2 because of this.

@probablytuna: There are already mods on the workshop that eliminate or extend the timers...and it really isn't a big deal. I have never felt like I had to rush to get to an objective.

For anyone who does elect to use a timer mod, though...you may want to consider also raising the difficulty. Being able to turtle indefinitely will make many of the encounters in XCOM 2 trivially easy.

I feel like they are a necessary way of disguising the fact that the AI isn't all that smart. You could tear apart EU/EW by overwatch creeping across a whole map, and the only missions which provided much challenge (bomb defusal, that one DLC mission where you had to plant a beacon) were also the only ones with a turn timer.

It forces you to play differently, to move outside of your comfort zone, and often to make mistakes. As I'm finding the late game fairly easy even on Commander difficulty, the turn timers are the only thing keeping from going on full autopilot.

If you can mod them out, I can't imagine them being too problematic.

I think they're great. They make a turn based game feel frantic in a way I really haven't run into before.

I'm fine with them. It forces me to adapt my playstyle from before in EU. Before I basically used the sensor grenades and used my snipers to pick off squads one at a time. Now I'm more heavily reliant on my Rangers to flank enemy positions and keep my party pushing forward. Plus it's not every mission that has a timer.

They keep you moving. Maybe it's not as good of a motivation as collecting MELD in Enemy Within; but, it stops you from turtling in overwatch.

I liked them so far. Pretty early, but having to rush to an objective when I was taking too much time earlier felt really tense, and I had to take more risks/stretch my team out more than I would have otherwise. Led to some really close, tense scrapes that wouldn't have occurred otherwise.

Absolutely true. Turns out it's not what I want from a turn based strategy game.

I was concerned when I initially heard about them, but now that I've seen them in practice, I think they're a really good addition.

My opinion easily could've differed if I felt like the timers were too aggressive, but in general they really aren't really all that strict. The time limits are just enough to keep you moving forward but not so strict that you feel actually rushed. The VIP missions are the only ones where I've occasionally been at risk of running out of time, and that makes sense considering that they do require the most caution of any mission type.

agreed. Most of the time I'd end up finishing the mission under the timer anyway. Though once I didn't pay enough attention to the timer on a destroy the object mission, had to have some dudes sprint out of cover and grenade launch the thing to destroy it just in time. Felt so risky and so cool at the same time.

I love them. After playing so much EU and Long War, I've grown utterly sick of the optimal strategy that mainly consisted of crawling around the map on overwatch at a snail's pace for an hour every mission. It's slow, boring and absolutely the best way to play the game if you want to have a chance of surviving the higher difficulty levels. I can see why the timers would frustrate those who enjoy that style of play, or people who are not experienced enough with XCOM to reach the point where they discover the necessity of it, but they are now essential for me.

I've actually reached a strange point where I actively dislike the missions in XCOM 2 without a time limit, because it returns to being a sluggish bug-hunt. Without the timers, I probably wouldn't be playing XCOM 2, as weird as it feels to say it as such an avid fan of the series.

I need a 'they're not great but not terrible' option. I actually like that they have made me change up my XCOM play style. Remember how you should basically NEVER dash in XCOM: EU? Well now you need to work out how to do so safely.

However, they suck on some maps when Aliens are laying into something you need to protect on the other side of the map from Turn 1 and you can't get over there in time.

i'm having a really good time with them! i think they also add to the atmosphere- you're supposed to be fighting a guerilla war of sorts, and i think adding that extra tension makes it feel as though YOU'RE OUTTA GOD DAMNED TIME, MOVE MOVE MOVE!

i've had a couple of close calls- but realising the specialist class can remotely activate/hack many objectives has made it more manageable.

I tend to be quite aggressive anyway, so they haven't been a problem for me so far.

Don't have any problem with them at all. In Xcom EU you could just turtle using overwatch, basically removing all need for tactical thought and urgency. This fixed that problem, and it seems that some people aren't able to handle it. I have yet to fail a mission in 10 hours of play time on veteran, and I don't really consider myself to be a great player or huge Xcom fan. I think most people who are having trouble with are frustrated because the game is terrible with explaining its rules. The tutorial is basically non-existent, so if you haven't played previous Xcom games or similar strategy games you will get destroyed in a manner that seems "unfair". I think that the many of the people who are using cheat engine esque mods to remove it probably just don't fully know all of the mechanics and are blaming rng for their failures.

They force me to play in ways other than just a slow, incremental, overwatch, leapfrogging train strategy. So I like them.

As others have said, the overwatch creep strategy was very easy to execute and wasn't a very fun way to play, but it was definitely the most effective. Playing on Commander generally gives me 8 turns to get what I need to get done, done. It makes things very fast paced and frantic, and I've definitely failed a few missions because of it. I definitely see how people would completely dislike it, though.

I don't like them because of the way that the enemies are still clumped into pods that magically activate as soon as you spot them, unless you are in concealment. I don't think that the forced speed interacts particularly well with (a) the need to make sure that you squad is actually ready for a pod of enemies to magically activate at any point and (b) the fact that the levels are procedurally generated so the devs can't make sure that the levels are constructed in a sensible way. Like the game is encouraging you to dash and then all of a sudden you dashed one move too far and activated a pod. Now you have no more moves remaining so your guy is helpless as the rest of your team struggles to catch up.

I don't hate them either, I just wish that they were a little more forgiving, either in terms of giving you just a couple extra turns per run or in terms of somewhat reduced penalties for missing the timer (or perhaps tiered penalties where missing the timer by 1 turn is less harsh than missing it by 5 turns). Hard fail states / losing your entire squad because of some made up timer is BS. The missions where there are reinforcements if you don't act quickly enough strike the right balance, imo.

The meld stashes in EW were also better because it was more "here's a reward for doing it quickly" than "here's a massive penalty for not running through recklessly."

Maybe I'm just unlucky, but it seems like 90% of my missions are timer-based. I wouldn't dislike them if they weren't making my missions start to feel samey.

So I played for about 25 hours and never once lost a mission due to the timer. Then I ran into a level from hell with some new enemies that I accidentally triggered while rushing through. Some real shit went down and I nearly wiped, but somehow I was able to get out of it and save 4 of my 6 guys. That required a bit of a more methodical approach to that section though so the timer became an issue. So at the end of the level my entire squad is literally sprinting to the evac zone. The last turn (as the timer is about to hit 0) came up and on it literally all 4 of my guys maxed out their dash 1-2 spaces outside of the evac zone. So my 6 top guys were all gone in a flash. Now I could just save scum it, but I was kind of looking for a reason to restart anyway to fix some of the mistakes I made with the base building stuff, so that's what I'm doing. But it still feels way too harsh.

You can masterfully make your way out of a hot zone and achieve the main objective against all odds but then still lose your entire team, thereby effectively ruining your entire game because you were one move too slow.

It makes me feel like this game could benefit from a Darkest Dungeon style mechanic, where if you run out of time you may still be able to escape... but one of your soldiers must sacrifice themselves to give everyone else time to get out! I've not experienced it myself but I've heard a few horror stories of evac points placed way, way too far out to get to them in time thanks to the procedural level generation, and that could help make it less game-ending when your best squad is caught out like that.

Hated em' at the start. Fine with them now. I was just kind of instinctively falling back on the EU strategies and it was killing me. Once I broke free of that the timers weren't so bad.

I like having them. It gives me a sense of urgency and forces me out of my comfort zone which consist of single move into overwatches. I haven't lost a single mission because time ran out, but I have left a mission with one turn left. My only problem with turn timers is that it does devalue using overwatch a lot. I have to make sure that every action each of my soldiers take either does damage to an enemy, strip cover, benefits another team member, or otherwise forwards progress towards objective completion. As a result, overwatch is the very last option I consider and is considered heavily before doing so. This consideration even applies to specialists, whose abilities include multiple overwatch enhancements. Despite this, I think turn timers benefit the game as a whole and forces players into participating in the very thing that makes XCOM, well, XCOM: risk/reward. There isn't much risk in overwatch leap-frogging, but there is considerable risk in taking offensive actions, or even moving while a pod is engaged (like engaging another pod). Some of the harder missions don't have timers, and it is a godsend that they don't.

That would be much better. Especially when you're a few tiles too short. It's very annoying having the game say 'oh, you're standing right outside the evac zone? Too bad, not close enough, you're all dead now lol'. Having some forgiveness would certainly make it nicer, even if there are some harsh penalties for being slightly late.

They're okay, I still feel it's possible to rely on the old strategy of overwatch-creeping across the map (so far, at least) You need to take *slightly* bigger risks, but the dumb AI will run directly into your overwatch fire. The biggest difference between Veteran and Commander difficulties seems to be how often the aliens can survive through that first round to launch any sort of counter-attack.

The problem is that the timers need to be generous because the cost of failure is so damn brutal. There would be more room for difficulty tuning if, instead of an instant failure, not meeting a time limit resulted in enemy reinforcements showing up every couple of turns.

This all kind of stems from deeper design quirks, though. I'm enjoying XCOM2 a lot, but I'm a bit disappointed that "try to only ever pop one pod at a time" is still the name of the game.

They don't bother me as much as I expected them to. I've not yet failed a mission due to running out of turns. Especially with many missions starting in concealment, i can be more aggressive with my first couple moves. I played years of EU and EW by overwatching every turn. It's good to be pushed outside of my comfort level. I'm not very far into the game yet, but the turn timer hasn't cost me any lives or failed me any missions, so it's fine so far...

I think this is a salient point. It would certainly be better if the timers weren't just another arbitrary hurdle but rather an incentive. Risk and reward. As it stands, in a game already dominated by a lot of dice rolls, it is an added layer of control peeled away from the player. Obviously some people will like that, and some won't, but from a design perspective it just appears to be a lazy way of counteracting lacking AI.

I think they are fantastic, even though I lost 6 soldiers because of them. They force you to play tactically. And they made me realize how valuable Phantom and Conceal are. If things start to look bad, get your Ranger to complete the objective solo.

Also, in one mission where I had to extract a VIP, I was overwhelmed with enemies. The door to the VIP was completely covered by them. It ended up in me using explosives to blow a hole in the room, get the VIP from the other side, double down to the extraction zone while being covered by my sniper with Kill Zone. It was the single most satisfying thing I've done in XCOM 2 so far. He has extra ammo and took out 4 guys that were chasing my squad and significantly damaged another. Who ended up on Overwatch, which allowed my running Gunslinger to Lightning Hands him and quickly dash into the extraction zone on the last remaining turn.

It was greaaaaaaaaaaat. In another mission, one was killed and 5 were captured because of the timer though. But that's XCOM. I like it.

Yeah, the missions in which you have to evac a VIP and then your whole squad are pretty bad. You have to rush to the exit, ignore any tactic zigzagging and covering forcing you to make mistakes.

I like them in theory, but the game being so luck dependent makes them feel unfair at times. It's impossible to know which balance of sprint blindly to objective / use caution you should be using if you can't predict whether it will take 1 action or 3 actions to kill something between you and the objective.

I had a VIP kidnap mission where I had cleared out the immediate area and had 3 turns left to get to extraction zone, the route is clear and it's comfortably reachable in that time so I move cautiously in case the building across the street has enemies inside. Turns out it did so it was the 'right' move, but it's ok I still have enough time to get to extraction. Then at the last second the game air drops a reinforcement of stun troops directly on the extraction zone (and on my flank, as I'm defending against the building opposite). My soldiers can't hit a barn door so they simply run behind me and zap my two 'best' soldiers who are subsequently captured when the timer runs out. The dude carrying the VIP got out by just running straight through them and luckily being missed. In hindsight I probably should have used my psychic tactical powers to know the game was going to pull this and planned accordingly.

That strikes me as a) a bullshit move, and b) pretty extreme early game punishment for missing the extraction timer by like 1 turn.

I don't mind them. The sense of urgency lets me get into it more because it makes battles more tense. I lost one of my best soldiers last night because I had to rush to the objective on the last turn, though. There's positives and negatives to it.

I don't like them, and I really like that. So I guess a net positive; I went for the top option. They force me out of my comfort zone, which is kinda what I want from XCOM.

I will say though that I think Invisible Inc maybe handles that better - with no strict limit but things just getting harder every turn you stick around.

@y2ken: Yeah, I do like the way Invisible Inc handles it better. The gradual escalation of enemy countermeasures because they suspect something is amiss was mechanically and thematically solid, while the hard turn limit in XCOM 2 of "accomplish mission and evac in exactly this many turns" is overly punitive.

I don't hate them to the point I won't play the game but they are a bit of a bummer for me. I tend to go slow and methodical to minimize damage to my team. I get why they did it, but I don't like that I have to rush into battle just to have a chance to finish a mission, especially with the ammount of enemys they throw at you at any point. I wish they were optional or, at the very least, only would start once the concealment is broken.

I really liked overwatch creeping (and my particular way of doing it was slower than most other people's who I've seen play the game) so if I get this thing I will probably mod them out immediately.

I hadn't really made that connection, but...yeah. You couldn't do the exact same but doing something similar could be really awesome. For example when reinforcements turn up it always seems to be low level mobs (so far,I'm not that far in I guess). It would be kind of awesome if reinforcements actually increased in difficulty, and it would fit really well with the narrative: You're a plucky resistance movement nipping at some of the easier targets around the edges which are less guarded, but the aliens can respond quickly and reinforce with tougher forces.

You could have a countdown to reinforcements timer (on some missions) that would start when you broke concealment, maybe. That way there'd still be an incentive to move quickly, one that would have an interesting total effect, even, if the way enemies are placed is similar to the first game - by being too slow you risk having tougher enemies at the start of future missions. But at the same time, people who wanted to be a little more careful would only risk making things a bit harder for themselves, rather than full on mission loss. It would be tough to balance, but I think that would be really interesting.

It would also lead to an interesting choice of "am I going to stealth my way to the objective, and then try and punch out to the evac zone/risk getting surrounded (which I think you could spec for with some defensive skills, smoke grenades and such) or am I going to sweep everyone moving toward the objective, but risk having some tough reinforcements drop in before I can evac.

I dunno, I don't mind the timers, personally. I haven't found them to be too tough when it's just a hacking type objective, especially with the specialists ability to hack from distance, and it's generally a case of pushing through one or two pods in the first few turns to turn the timer off before slowing down a little to regroup before evac. I'm less keen on missions where there's a timer to evac, but I suspect that the way to deal with it is to vary your tactics and roster eg I was playing with a sniper specced to mostly stay behind and pick off targets from a roof. I suspect that a gunslinger would be a much better bet in that situation. With that said, I wasn't keen on how much it slowed me down to capture the VIP, so the reward better be good or I'll be shooting them from now on.

I think you hit the nail on the head for me. I burned out on long war because most maps seemed to take at least an hour and some could take up to 3 hours. It made it so the effective way to play was not an enjoyable way to play. The theme of Xcom2 seems to be 'smash and grab' and I love that. Most maps only seem to have 3-5 pods so I can use explosives freely, actually enage in melee range, and can't use the old standard of overwatch camping out of tough engagements. I am still relatively early in but I really hope the game doesn't pull an EU/Long war and ramp up the late game difficulty by just throwing a shit ton of enemies at you.

I like them, they encourage less turtling which was too OP in the first game. Really, it's a problem with many of these kinds of games, including the 90s original - sitting around a lot and waiting for the enemies to come to you is a powerful strategy if you have the patience. Then again I'm kinda nervous about playing on Ironman in the future, I suspect many unfortunate soldiers will die because I'll be rushing things too recklessly.

People noting that the turn limit keeps you from repeating what was the most effective strategy in the previous game ad nauseam, I get that. But it seems like an incredibly shoddy way to fix that problem as it doesn't actually create other equally effective forms of play, but rather simply place an arbitrary restriction over the existing one. That never feels good to me.

Also needing to mod out a working as intended mechanic is a really dumb solution that pretty much admits the existing game to be inadequate for anyone that needs to do so in order to enjoy the game.

I think they're a great addition. Like others have said, they do a good job fisting you over if you overly rely on the creep forward/overwatch cheese strategy from XCom 1. But they've more than made up for it with the amount of additional viable builds on soldiers. So far, I've only gotten into serious trouble once do to a timer as I used the skull jack during an 11-turn capture a VIP mission not realizing it would trigger a multi-round boss battle.

I always tended to play pretty fast and loose, so the timers don't really affect my normal tactics. I'm probably in the minority though.

The developers needed a way to force people to keep moving and adapt to the situation. The timers are a quick and simple way to accomplish that. It's really just a natural result of the developers noticing that the timer missions in Enemy Unknown were way more interesting than the rest.

I thought I'd hate them, but overall I think they introduce a new layer of strategy in those missions that forces you to go on the offensive. Having to rush forward does put your soldiers in more danger though and the timers maybe could be a little more lenient in general.

Love 'em! As an evolution from the meld timer in EW I think they're superior. I think it's changed the pace of the game for the better. Concealment seems to balance it out well - if it is a concealment start. The missions without turn timers end up being a nice change of pace too. Overall I think it's well done.