XCOM 2 New Patch Adds Faster “Zip Mode”, Should Improve Performance

The Firaxis developers have released the first meaty patch for XCOM 2. The patch includes a large amount of changes that should improve performance on a range of PCs, a “Zip Mode” that will significantly speed up animations and remove pauses between them, and a number of fixes and balance changes to the title.

Here’s the full changelog:

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
• Optimization 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 visualizer
• 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 optimized

Balance

• Mimic beacon rebalance: Price increased to 75
• Mimic beacons can no longer take cover, and are guaranteed to be hit by enemy shots
• Wet Work is no longer retroactive
• Graze is no longer a chance for 100% shots. Targets being shot by a concealed attacker cannot dodge

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 where civilians pathed to the base of ladders and blocked XCOM units
• 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 customizations 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
• 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
• Removed start-of-turn hang during certain missions where enemy units had fallen out of the world. Auto-saves (and ironman saves) made in these situations should now be playable
• Minimized action camera obstructions
• Minimized 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 visualized
• Rapid Fire and Chain Shot visualization optimized to get the second shot to fire faster
• Fixed an issue where shot HUD wings would fail to re-open after taking an action that required the wings to close
• Fixed an issue where crit chance would be negatively affected by shots with a success chance greater than 100
• Optimized Return Fire hits causing long delays
• Optimized AI reveals causing long hangs
• Optimized Wait actions causing long timeouts
• Optimized falling unit visualization to timeout faster
• Updated the Geoscape save description to use the localized 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
• Fixed an issue where armor customizations did not save

Graphics

• Unit Highlighting Flash when targeting units

Multiplayer

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

The impressions I’ve read so far seem to confirm the patch does actually improve performance, but many of the problems that were present at launch still haven’t been fixed. That said, this likely won’t be the last patch that focuses on these problems, and hopefully the majority of players who were experiencing major performance issues before its release should have a smoother experience on their hands now. In the meantime, I figure I might as well wait for a price drop.