1.11 Perks are unusable, what have you done?

Phoenix Point Hints and Tips
1

Reckless: from +30 DMG -20 accuracy to +10 DMG -10 accuracy? Useless for 25 SP costs .
DMG purk for all classes have been so heavily reduced that we no longer need it. Save the 25 SP points for speed or WP. that’'s a pity. If purks no longer make a difference, please leave them out. I can do without them, but the fun is gone. Shame.

Purks used to be a strength of the game. Now almost all of them are useless. Why and who forced you to make all the good stuff useless? Have you ever played your game up to date? Can a Dev answer or do I have to argue with all the CC members about what is good for the game or not?

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It was me. I bribe them with Saudi oil, but probably not enough, as they didn’t nerfed it enough. :frowning: But I won’t argue about it. It was a move in right direction even if with small step.

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I think we had a very similar conversation on another thread about the way the developers have chosen to address issues being ham fisted.

This seems like another player basically saying the same thing - there are other options here but it seems like the solution has been to address the cheese players, rather than address why people are playing using cheese.

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It’s also damn easy to fix by making the abilities scale with game difficulty. So in Omega’s example at standard difficulty have +30DMG -20Accuracy. Then reduce the returns on the ability depending on the game difficulty selected.

And please don’t use the term “Cheese players”. Everyone that buys a game has a right to play it with their own expectations. Many also get better with practice, which is why games come with difficulty settings.

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devs try to not do that. Learning how skills work based on the difficulty would be annoying.

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I think I see what you’re saying, but I’d think that would create though is more specific cheese plays (and yes I’m going to keep using the term) at specific difficulties as balancing all aspects would be a nightmare.

Cheese certainly exists on a scale, once a player is aware of how the game works they’ll tend to the point on it they find fun, but usually the game is designed to be played at the lower end of it - which is why nerfs happen at one end of the scale. When designing a game there’s normally a thought on ‘how you would like it to look, feel, and play’, cheesing it is often throwing it all back in the creators face by exploiting loopholes, ultimately robbing yourself of the experience - sometimes the creators earn it, but not always.

I’m not going to say I’ve never used cheese tactics - but as I get older I get a growing dislike to scenarios that feel like they NEED cheese tactics.

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On the whole I think the perks are better balanced in 1.11 than they have been before, but there are still a few really clunky ones. I’ve no idea what the point is of Cautious, and Reckless seems very overpriced for what it does.

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Phoenix Point doesn’t really have difficulty settings that alter the core gameplay. You fight the same AI and against the same enemies with the same hit points and the same armour on the same maps on all difficulty settings. Rookie or Legend, the same.

On Legend, you might get some more enemies on some maps—especially story maps. Or pretty much only story missions.

The main thing the difficulty settings change in Phoenix Point determines how quickly the Pandorans evolve (fast on Rookie and stupid-fast on Legend), how many skill points your soldiers earn per mission (12 on Rookie and 5 on Legend), the starting stats for your soldiers, the number of soldiers you start with, the cost to recruit new soldiers (double the food cost and no gear for any soldiers on Legend), and the amount of resources you start with at the beginning of the game (fair in Rookie and totally gimped on Legend).

All that stuff impacts the early game. So, in other words, the difficulty setting determine how long it will take you to get out of the early game and get your bases and squads up and running.

As soon as you’re in the mid-game, well, there is pretty much no difference between difficulty settings. All enemies eventually evolve to their ultimate forms; it just takes twice as long for that to happen on Rookie.

But once the Pandorans are fully evoked and the player has squads of dual-classed, level-seven soldiers, it’s the exact same game on any difficulty setting. Rookie or Legend, pretty much the exact same difficulty from the mid-game through to the final mission.

And any of these “Legend only” players exploiting the Raid mechanic is not only cheesing the game but completely breaking the difficulty settings. In the current version of the game, Raiding havens is like typing in a cheat code to get free resources with the key differences being that typing in a cheat code would take less time, whereas playing the raid also gets you a ton of dropped loot like weapons, ammo, and med kits—in addition to the thousands of resources hauled in with each raid.

“Legend only” players. LOL

In fact, until that exploit is patched out, the difficulty settings you choose at the beginning of a new campaign are merely flavour-text.

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9

In my opinion difficulty also affects

  • how many enemies you will encounter on the mission. There may be not enough difference to spot that, but I think aliens have higher deployment pool to fill. Thus missions can be little more difficult (not that it makes real difference with power the player has on his disposal)
  • on higher difficulties you need to hurry more, as HPC is going down faster
  • Behemoth is also harder to stop which also works against HPC
  • Higher difficulties have higher frequency of mission generation, thus putting some pressure on the player
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10

I think the whole diplomacy game needs a refresh, however I doubt that will happen, so I agree with you. The Raid mechanic is an exploit.

I play without doing this except to gain aircraft. It’s the bottleneck in the game. Without Aircraft you’re screwed over fast.

Apart from that little raiding I’ve tried and succeeded in being Allied to all factions at the same time and the experience was a very long, very dull game. The amount of rinse and repeat going that route is mind numbing. I wouldn’t recommend it. Plus there’s no additional reward either in-game or as a Steam reward.

I think all of the players that have followed the development of PP are hoping for some major fixes to the base game and all I’m seeing are DLC announcements. Fingers crossed the devs are reading and learning :slight_smile:

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Not sure I follow your meaning. Why would it be annoying?
Surely the point of difficulty settings is to scale with a players ability to beat the game, through experience of previous play throughs. The maps change, but only by a little. The enemies move more rapidly through their tech tree. Resources are less frequently available. So having the perks abilities adjust to scale with the difficulty seems justified.

I also think Gorffo is right about the difficulty settings impacting the game start rather then end game. So changing the perks to scale would effect through the game, as you only really have 2 squads guaranteed to be fully cross classed and at L7 with all stats to max.

It would allow for a player to find a setting they are happy to play at, either cheesey or not, and push the player to up their tactical skills so they don’t rely on a set play style and soldier build.

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because when playing next campaign you will need to remember each time what parameters your skills have. When you know these parameters you act flawlessly and based on the behaviours you already have. Need to rethink many times if this skill on my current difficulty will work like I remember or maybe differently would be annoying.

It is wise to balance things with number of enemies, maybe with some additional abilities they have, with size of maps, with time counters. But it is not advised to change skills that are on player disposal. And maybe you can do that but only by putting some limits when they can be used… not how they work.

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Ah. I’m starting to see the point you are making. I don’t agree with you completely but that’s ok. Discussion is good.

I disagree on increasing the numbers and map sizes, not only because I believe that players are able to adjust their play style and learn that the ability isn’t quite as good as an easier difficulty, but also because adding more enemies and parcels on a map increases the amount of CPU/GPU power required to play the game. That has the potential of stopping a number of PP owners playing the game.

It would be better to make the game a challenge through adjustment and scaling, rather than adding more numbers to the map. Of course you could also take numbers away too, like removing 1 soldier space from each aircraft, though I doubt that would be welcomed.

Your last point about the limitations in using the skill rather than adjusting it could be done with a cooldown mechanic. There is already a limitation of most activated skills with the Will Points mechanic, so adding the cooldown may work. However as the point initially made is about some abilities not being useful I still suggest a scaling on the abilities a soldier has based on game difficulty. That way any player will be able to choose the difficulty they wish, be it for fun or as a challenge.

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Still not sure about that. Not all skills are scaling well.

Dash gives 2 AP move. On higher difficulty it should give 1 AP and on lower 3 AP? How to balance something like that? Grant 1.8 AP, 2 AP, 2.2 AP? That would make UI inconsistent with ranges of 1, 2, 3 and 4 AP movement. Other example would be Rapid Clearance or Adrenaline Rush… how to change them to scale with difficulty? It would require rethinking whole balance on each difficulty. I may be wrong but it may be too big task for a indie studio.

When you have skills which give accuracy or damage bonus and these have values like 50%, 30% then some small adjustments are possible, but are they really miningful? Would people really adjust easily to the bosuses like 45% of something or 55%? Those are hard to calculate quickly in mind. Or if they are not small adjustments - how to balance something like that?

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Skills are very hard to balance if you’re trying to do them all the same for all difficulties. Probably impossible. Easiest way to do that would be allowing to change numbers manually to your own liking. This game lacks customizable options like second waves or similar features in other games. Because some people want this and other something else. Doing all the same for all is just bad approach and reduces replayability.

And you should look for skills AP diversity as a replayability option and not as a way to increase difficulty alone. Like what the heck does it matter if I dash with 2 or 3 WP or AP if I have endless teleportation and combining planes mechanics right now. If I have 8 soldiers with teleporting equipment it doesn’t matter how much dash cost, does it? Yeah I know I don’t need to do that. And you don’t need to use dash at all if you want.

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I don’t know. I didn’t thought about things like that. :wink: I would change skills to be less magic. Would need to see that first. Then I would probably work on the balance. :wink:

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Some poeple want magic and some don’t. Do this separately as a different mode in the game. Currently they trying to do some middle ground. This is just making more poeple unhappy.