XCOM 2 gets its long-awaited performance patch

XCOM 2 should now run better on your PC, thanks to its first major patch.

"The XCOM team has been working hard to improve performance, balance, and stability issues reported by our fans," explains the official blog post. "We will continue to improve the XCOM 2 experience with additional updates and patches over the coming months".

Firaxis have also added the option to activate a new 'Zip Mode', which speeds up animations and ensures a "faster-paced experience". This remains optional and can be found under the gameplay menu.

Alongside the performance improvements, you'll also find a number of balance changes here. One that immediately jumps out is the nerf to Mimic Beacons, which had become a vital (and often overpowered) tool in most campaigns. Following this patch, the beacons - which take on the form of XCOM soldiers who draw fire away from your squad - can no longer take cover and will always be hit by enemy fire. That'll hurt, I'm sure, but it does feel like a necessary downgrade.

If you're using any XCOM 2 mods (and you probably should be), you'll need to launch the game, close it, and then launch it once again to ensure that the patch actually begins downloading. It's also quite likely that some of those mods won't like the new patch and might not work until a later update. PC gaming, folks! It's one hell of a life.

6 XCOM 2 mods that make the game better (and 2 which might)

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Anyway, here's the full list of patch notes for you to have a butchers at:

Performance

• Added Zip Mode gameplay option. While Zip Mode is enabled animation (like step outs & gremlin movements) speeds are significantly increased. Normal movement animations are moderately increased.
• Fixed an issue where shadow rendering during glam cam shot transitions was slowing down performance.
• Support for nVidia SLI and AMD Crossfire.
• Removed MSAA options from default presets and adjusted autodetect to target 40FPS instead of 30FPS.
• Reworked Light Clipping Manager.
• Particle Vertex Buffer Reallocation.
• Optimisation to shadows in the Avenger.
• Enable triple buffering to fix VSync performance.
• Shadowed light fade out within Avenger; Disabled Post & Pre Mission cinematic lights not being used.
• Disabled shadow casting from character lights w/in Avenger.
• Reduced High Shadow Resolution - Reduce shadow resolution when set to HIGH to 1536, instead of 2048.
• Reduces the impact count of the Avatar Rifle.
• Removed a hitch that occurs when the camera enables/disables building visualiser.
• Deferred profile saves to next tick. This prevents multiple calls within the same frame from creating multiple requests to save the profile.
• After changing graphics settings, based on the selected preset, extra crew will be capped.
• Character head mesh optimised.

Gameplay

• Added a new recommended Steam Controller configuration with support for additional actions.
• Fixed an issue where VIP units would take damage when their origin location was damaged.
• Fixed an issue where Promotion Earned text appeared before action is seen on screen.
• Fixed an issue that was preventing civilians from pathing to ladder tiles.
• Fixed an issue where Character Pool choices like Class, Attitude, and props did not save.
• Fixed an issue where weapons did not keep names and customisations upon tier bump.
• Fixed an issue causing some scan timers to go into negative time.
• Engineering items that are full squad upgrades are now designated in the UI.
• Wet Work is no longer retroactive.
• Fixed an issue where strategy project timers reset if players started building a radio relay immediately after making contact with a region.
• Fixed an issue with POIs not spawning when first visiting the Geoscape if Beginner VO is turned off.
• Minimised action camera obstructions.
• Minimised camera look-at hopping during AI abilities.
• Fixed an issue where Psi abilities did not trigger death cams.
• Kill Zone now respects concealment status.
• Fixed an issue where the Ever Vigilant AWC perk did not work for Sharpshooters.
• Buildings don't cut down when tabbing through units.
• Fixed an exploit that skips the AI turn by spamming the END/BACKSPACE button while the Player's last action is being visualised.
• Rapid Fire and Chain Shot visualisation optimised to get the second shot to fire faster.
• Fixed an issue where shot GHUD wings would close following a number of actions.
• Fixed an issue where crit chance would be negatively affected by shots with a success chance greater than 100.
• Graze is no longer a chance for 100% shots. Targets being shot by a concealed attacker cannot dodge.
• Optimised Return Fire hits causing long delays.
• Optimised AI reveals causing long hangs.
• Optimised Wait actions causing long timeouts.
• Optimised falling unit visualisation to timeout faster.
• Updated the Geoscape save description to use the localised HQ time, instead of previously used GMT game time.
• Fixed an issue with an invalid spawn point on a specific Retaliation mission plot.
• Destroyed cover does not take reduce % to-hit on enemies.

Systems

• New option to only use Character Pool creations until the pool is exhausted.
• Bulletproofing bad saves from causing main menu crashes.
• Fixed an issue causing hitches in strategy.
• CookerSync and FxdBuildTool changes to get CrashDumpPerssion tool to distribute - opt to send in crash dumps to Firaxis.
• Destroy soldier pawns created during after action walkup sequence.
• Fix for out of bounds world data access in destructibleActor.
• Fixed an issue where players gets stuck in an infinite turn loop.
• Fixed an issue where armor customisations did not save.

Graphics

• Unit Highlighting Flash when targeting units.

Writing

• Removed "Stasis Lance" from subtitles.

Multiplayer

• MULTIPLAYER: Fixes slow communications with internet players resulting in delays between actions, turns, and end-of-game screen. Added camera rotation to MP.