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It's been proven that the hit rates shown in XCOM are basically bullshit. There's a bunch of hidden modifiers which determine the true hit probability.
And all of those favors the player
you get secret bonus to hit if you miss unless you are on the highest difficulty (and even then there's a bug that makes aliens cap out at 95% shot chance so they can miss a 100% shot against you).
But you can still miss a 100% shot
The hit percentages in XCOM are a complete lie. I remember one time my sniper up on a rooftop missed a ~95% chance shot on a mook, who then turned around and crit the same sniper with a pistol aimed through two box trucks and cover. I think that's when I quit.
That's XCOM baby!
Yes, they are. But posting this without context is misleading completely in the wrong direction.
I remember reading an article about how they tuned all of that way into the players favor because the subjective impression of the mathematical probability was far too negative and punishing.
I understand that it's just bad luck, but I was still so fucking pissed off every time someone missed while litterally standing infront of someone and dying because of that.
That's probably why in phoenix point they made it trajectory based, to feel more realistic
That's XCOM baby!
BG3 is three 90% misses in a row with advantage -__-
Wait what?
Many misses in Balder's Gate, as well.
What is XCOM?
It's an alien invasion defence game where RNG hates you.
Xenonaughts is also quite good! Very punishing, if your into that sort of thing.
The "modern" XCOM games cheaped out on their game mechanic budget.
The game Phoenix Point made by a much smaller studio with fewer resources came up with a vastly superior way to tackle hit probability. In that game you can free aim using a reticle made of two concentric circles. The outer circle represents where your shot(s) have a 100% chance falling inside of. The inner circle represents where 50% of your shots have a chance of being inside. The more accurate weapons have smaller circles. Then when you shoot the game simulates the path of your shots and any character or environmental object that gets in the way will be taken into account. If you fire a burst or shoot a shotgun, you're not bound to only 100% hitting or 100% missing. You can have a partial number of rounds or pellets hit the target, while others might miss, be blocked, or even hit another enemy or ally if they were sharing that cone of probability.
This makes the whole thing feel far more real than the shitty dice roll system XCOM relies on that just feels cheap and simplistic in comparison especially for a game of that price. Too bad that overall Phoenix Point had difficulty curve issues and the story was not every interesting to me at least.
If they ever make a new XCOM game I really hope they make that mechanic more like Phoenix Point's. And also lose the arbitrary turn limits that they've introduced in XCOM2 because they force a reckless game style that I absolutely hate in those types of games.
I really like Phoenix Point, but I don't start a game on a low enough level to be successful, and then quit part way through in frustration and play something else.
I need to accept that it's hard, I'm learning, and play on the easiest setting.
xcom percentages are also not how probability works. When you need 95%+ just to have an effective 50/50 outcome, something is royally fucked.
IIRC it's a variation of the "double random number" system that Fire Emblem uses:
https://serenesforest.net/general/true-hit/
https://fireemblemwiki.org/wiki/True_hit
tl;dr humans are bad at percentages, so the displayed percentage is actually not the true accuracy, but a skewed number that "feels" more accurate
It's definitely not accurate, though. Sure, any one roll can screw you over if it's not 100%, but xcom is literally known for having shitty actual percentages over many rolls even while it's showing 90%+.
I'm pretty sure that's by design. By spoofing the real accuracy, you get more dramatic moments which is good for engagement.
It's the same as GMs in tabletop games that fudge rice rolls sometimes.
I don't remember why it worked, but I remember that it didn't like it when you only took high accuracy shots, and if you missed a lot first, your 90%s usually hit.
The fairest Gollop accuracy is in the GBA game though.
this post was submitted on 23 May 2026
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