playing x-com for so long is reminding me of massive chalice, that game was a blast. there's two things i hope the x-com people pulled into their later games from massive chalice.
first, massive chalice had a system for determining if your movement placed you in line of sight and attack range of enemies in your vision, and gods i wish that enemy unknown had something like that. the way the game calculates vision range is extremely opaque at times, i'd love something that more clearly communicates what's in your vision/attack range before having to commit to movement. it's also clearly something the aliens have knowledge of, because they absolutely respect the sight lines drawn by my snipers and heavy gunners, so it's annoying that's information the computer gets to have but i don't.
the second thing is that it'd be cool if one of the soldier upgrade paths had to do with equipment modifications. relic weapons from massive chalice were fun (broken, but fun) and it's a shame there's not a system for that here. i can easily imagine a sniper having their special gun they take diligent care of, or a rocketeer who creates custom explosives, and so on. i like the upgrade paths present in long war, though i wish that officers had enough to make them independent from psions/mechs/gene mods