Fine, don't settle for anything less, that's entirely your prerogative.  Understand that other people disagree with your assessment and can enjoy the NG for what it does give.  Personally I don't think 'we' had better in the past, so I'm happier with what we have now.

Meh...  Rotate the camera 180 and then aim it.  Works fine.  Use the scroll button on your mouse to move up or down, works fine.  Yes, trying to throw with the angle behind your soldier gets really wonky, yes they should hopefully address that.  However, rotate the camera and I've rarely had any issues with the targeting.  I am a mouse user and once I realized how to rotate the camera and change the height I was on all of those issues went away.  

Right, they'd have to entirely change the balance, so yes, the alternative in a vacuum is worse, what you are advocating is essentially an entirely different system which works much better with TUs.  They didn't use TUs, I'm glad they didn't use TUs.  The cover and one shot per turn (without perks) essentially means that swarm tactics will almost always prevail.  Considering you're limited to a max of 6 soldiers while the Aliens can have as many as 20 active on a map means you will run into far more no win situations if you get rushed.  The AI is actually pretty solid (other than the overwatch lock bug, but my guess is most people use this without even realizing just how badly it gimps the AI).  Try getting into a fight with 4 mobs on a small map where your cover is destructable.  You really want to play mission after mission like that?

That said, it would be better if the aliens actually could call for reinforcements a bit, or if their group sizes were just a bit bigger.  Fortunately I believe that can be done via modding.

D&D has it's own set of rules for combat, but I'm not sure how well they would translate to a futuristic game where one shot kills are to be expected.  Low level D&D it might work, since there is a bit of an element of one shotting there.  D&D also caters much more to a melee based approach, or at least where the melee based approach is as important as the ranged component.  It's a good system though.

We could probably go back and forth on this forever.  I do not see how your suggestions are an improvement, in fact, I think they would make combat more tedious and even more reliant on luck than it already is.  Right now the aliens and your units are on par as far how cover works, and how much damage they can do to each other with individual weapons.  It sounds as though you are suggesting the aliens should be nerfed and the players buffed, with the main change being simply facing more aliens at once.  That really doesn't make any sense to me from a 'reality' point of view, nor does it sound like much fun.

I'll tell you right now what would make the aliens far more dangerous, even given their current activating mechanic.  If they fix the overwatch lock bug (assuming it's a bug), you'll face either more shots, or more aliens on overwatch instead of aliens who simply are skipping their turn doing nothing while you easily march up behind them and shoot them in the head from point blank.  Just doing that shifts the balance a bit back towards the aliens, especially thin men with their tohit bonus from the LPR.

No, that's not the bug.  The bug is that he doesn't overwatch or shoot, he may hunker down (it's unclear), but since you can often flank them anyway using overwatch lock it hardly matters if they HD or not.  Honestly it may not be a bug if they are indeed hunkering down, but it's an ineffective strategy to HD if you are going to be flanked anyway.

The AI is fairly effective once engaged at range, it becomes slightly less effective once you begin to out maneuver it.  Of course the results should go in favor of whichever side can out flank the other, but the AI has a glitch which can make it almost trivial to flank them.  On the other hand, once you have some skills on your troops many engagements are fairly trivial until you wind up missing that 90% shot

Picked it up this weekend and only played a few hours in.  Loving it so much.  Great tactics game.  Really enjoying it.

The DLC is expected to be...

Underwhelming.

But who knows really.

It's mods which will add to longevity eventually, assuming they get their mod support straightened out.  In fact, after finishing the game on vanilla C/I, I went with a simple mod which opened up the 2nd wave options, and am enjoying just trying out various combinations of those in a marathon game.

For those that prefer the older version of XCOM, be sure to check out UFO:Alien Invasion

http://ufoai.org/wiki/News

It's been a long time in development by that community, and it's free to download (on purpose)

As for the new game, I'm glad it did so well in that when they produce XCOM-2 we're likely to get
the additional funding to develop a more realized game.

I like the concept, but I dislike how the War-Room portion of the game works.  It seems too linear.  I like to take my time and build up my forces, but if you try to do that in this game you end up losing countries you can't gain back.  if you could get them back, I'd be all for it.

-Huzzah!

Probably not, unless you enjoy turn based games.

You can have as many soldiers as you want (there's no wage bill, just a hiring cost) but you can take a maximum of six on a mission.

Shallow game compared to original. I miss being able to build choke points for base defense (base defense totally missing here), I miss being able to to allocate roles for my soldiers (and training them for those unique roles as the game progresses), i.e snipers, heavies, grenadiers, scouts (instead you get that randomised BS), I miss having my 14 men teams, i miss being able to pick up any weapon or even the clip from a heavy plasma from the ground during the middle of a mission and use it (the clip) to try and KO the aliens (example of so much freedom here), i miss having to actually think about ones base locations (as location greatly impacted funding and played a significant role), I miss being able to build more then one base, I miss the TU's... etc etc etc.

I believe it when I see it.

Only for last mission.