A Simple Solution to the Dash Debate

I agree… Also if you get to the resource you should be able to claim it even if it cost you one turn or WP or whatever they want to take for it, because I have had a mission were you get over run and need to back out if you don’t want to lose you best men and I had already pushed them back to get to all the crates. So I would have like to still have gotten them for the effort, in a real event you would not just leave it there if you got to it. In the early builds this is what happened, you would click on the crate wait a turn and it went to your stock. That’s cool…:slight_smile:

Another option would just be a “superhero mode” checkbox in the difficulty settings.
It would intentionally unbalance certain abilities regardless of difficulty.

that way people who want to play easy/normal to get used to the game but don’t want super powers won’t have to deal with it in the late game once they’ve gotten the hang of things.

as for the objectives that you can’t reach in time… maybe just give them slightly more health/armor, or have them start closer to you?
the scout idea also sounds cool.

I’m sure it’s been suggested elsewhere, but if you don’t like it, don’t use it or restrict your use of it? Same with all the other repeatable ‘perks’.

I don’t know what sort of stats the game is keeping (I hope lots), but it would be interesting to see who was using it for building kill streaks and how some of these other perks were being used.

It’s not like the mechanics are intended to be a mapping of real combat in the way that the Jagged Alliance games tried to, or to provide the TU micromanagement of the original XCom games.

restricting your own use of it works, but it’s a last resort and not something you should have to settle for in a quality game.
and no, the mechanics aren’t supposed to be perfectly realistic, but they are supposed to be more realistic than fireaxcom, and more importantly, very challenging.

I also hope they keep lots of stats though.

I understand your point, I’d rather they made the Pandorans a bit
smarter, had them make use of cover, flank and all that good stuff, but
at the moment the combat mechanic seems to rely too much on their
numbers against my squads ‘perks’. At the moment, it always seems that
one is shot and the others just all head toward the squad.

I’d have to say though that it’s not the most pressing thing on my list
of changes/fixes to the game balance.

Perhaps an option on gameplay for those who want it. Are they doing
mods? I’ve not looked, but it seems like something the modders might fix…

This makes no sense. This is a game. Game should have clear rules. If some rules let you win without even letting opponent move it means that the game is broken. This is not a game then, but some strange twist of ‘heads and tails’ where you have only tails.

And now you propose that we should play the game forgetting about those rules and to not use them. If game allows for them, then why should I not use them? This makes no sense.

I may also try to not use any gun and use only hands with my soldier but limiting my soldiers in this way would be also stupid. GAME should have clear rules and give equal opportunities for a win to each side involved in play (also alien AI). Otherwise it is boring, and it stops beeing a GAME. That was from me.

Here you have link and my comment similiar to my comment in previous sentences.

Key components of games are goals, rules, challenge, and interaction. Games generally involve mental or physical stimulation, and often both.

Now you tell me to take some rules away to still have a challenge. But I want and need both of these things. I want rules to create challenge for me and I don’t want to avoid some of them, because then I will know that I don’t play by the rules or in some way I cheat, even if in the favor of the enemy.

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I’ve thought about this a lot and I thought to make dash more realistic and feel less like you’re teleporting they may consider just making it a bonus to speed. My two cents on the subject.

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If the game was chess and you had a board setup where the human player had been given 8 queen pieces, you wouldn’t say to players who are winning every game that the should stop moving all their queens as queens if they don’t like the fact that they’re finding it too easy to win.

I agree with Yokes above, the game should give the possibility that the human player can lose or win dependent upon its core rule sets, not require the player to hobble their own play in order to make things even.

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[REPEATED FROM ANOTHER THREAD]

Despite leading the charge in these discussions, I do sometimes wonder if the Devs are monitoring these debates with a wry smile on their lips, thinking: “You wait until the [X MONSTER] appears - THEN you’ll be thanking us for Multi-Dash!” We should always remember that we are Level 7 Squaddies going up against the equivalent of Sectoids at the moment.

It’s like the Sectopod in XCOM2. When that thing turns up, you know you’ve got a fight on your hands - unless of course you have a Hacked-Up Specialist supported by Squaddies toting Redscreen Rounds and lobbing EMP grenades, when you suddenly have a 100% chance of taking control of the damn thing.

Now, if all you were fighting at that point was Sectoids, you’d think it was stupidly OP. But you’re not. When you’re surrounded by Mutons and Avatars, and that weird alien in a diving suit that regenerates when you kill it, you’re eternally grateful that you have the ability to turn the Biggest Nasty on the map over to your side and help level the playing field.

So when we’re facing Mega-Chirons that can one-shot you with one lob, backed up by Super-Medusas and Baby-Queens with 200-point Armour, maybe we’ll be grateful that we can Dash more than halfway across the map and still fire twice, then go into Overwatch.

Let’s hope so , eh :wink:

Believe me mate, as someone who simply can’t cope with the early stages of XCOM/LW2 unless I take it down to Normal Difficulty, I am in no position to diss anyone’s playing ability.

But as the game progresses, I like the ability to be able to ramp up the Difficulty in line with the abilities of my Squad. I want to feel like I could lose any one at any time if I make a stupid mistake, and that’s what’s sorely missing in these Backer Builds - but we should always remember that these are just tests and we’re simply suped-up lab-rats running around a maze (see my post above).

I like the idea iterated in a You Tube video by Julian’s business partner that the evolution mechanic in this game will act like a dynamic Difficulty setting - adjusting the level of the game in line with the player’s progress. But I’d still advocate allowing players full choice in the Options to reset the Difficulty how they like.

There’s nothing more frustrating than discovering you’ve misjudged the Difficulty of a game and having no option but to restart - except maybe having a game that’s going well fatally crash on you when you’re on a roll (which is why I no longer play on Ironman in the XCOMs).

Getting the balance of these types of games just right is really difficult - too hard and players rage quit in frustration, too easy and they stop playing cos they’re bored - which is why allowing them to adjust the Difficulty to their preferred level or style of play is in my opinion the best possible solution.

I’d even go so far as to suggest changing the Level descriptions to avoid pejorative connotations:

FORTNITE - For players who like playing Fortnite and other such games.
PHOENIX - Standard setting for most new players.
XCOM - For those who like playing X-COM-style games.
MASOCHIST - For those who revel in pain.

That way, you can appeal to the large Epic contingent who grew up on Fortnite, and no-one has to feel that their masculinity is somehow impugned if they choose to play on ‘Easy’.

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I do consider possibility that there will be enemies that will counter/punish overuse of DASH. However, your example amplifies dangers of such powers. By the time you encounter sectopods in either of XCOMs your soldiers are so powerful that they don’t stand a chance to survive first turn, or get disabled and dealt in the following turn - either by buffed hacker or psi. I mean two heavies with shred and chain shot will rip through anything. It took special enemies like alien rulers and chosen to create thrust for alien rulers, and they can feel cheap… because XCOMs arsenal is cheap.

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Irrelevant. In XCOM there are different enemies and different ways of dealing with them. You have weapon tiers, hacking etc. Phoenix Point is different and should stay that way.

Not really. I will be pissed that devs created such enemies - not grateful that they made Dash as super-human ability.

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Love your descriptions here…:slight_smile: hehehehe… Yes that sound good to me also, sometimes I just feel like a turkey shoot to let off steam and other times I like to push myself and see what happens. I am playing the XCOM2 War of the Chosen again today to fill in time waiting for this one, and I forgot how much I really loved it! Enjoying myself again.:slight_smile:

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Given that XCOM is the spiritual successor to X-COM, which is the granddaddy of all these games, I would say ‘get ready for disappointment.’

It is the nature of this style of game that as you progress you encounter more and more powerful enemies, which require an imaginative use of the abilities & equipment you have researched to overcome them. In fact I would go so far as to cite that as their main attraction.

Given what we have seen so far (Chirons, Medusas, Tritons, various types of Sentinels etc), I would be flabbergasted if PP did not have all kinds of difficult and exotic enemies lined up in the wings just waiting to be unleashed upon us - and I for one am very much looking forward to encountering them.

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Further to that, what I really hope is happening back at PPHQ right now, is that JG & his Devs are assessing all our feedback and data; but they’re not saying: “How do we nerf Dash etc to make it less OP?”

Instead, they’re saying: “How can we evolve the Pandorans to deal with the way our players are using Dash etc?”

One of the great appeals of this game is the idea that the aliens will evolve in response to our strategies. So if we place an over-reliance on Dash, JG & the D’s will figure out a way to turn that against us in-game and give it to the Pandorans as an evolution mechanic. I’m fervently hoping that is the case - because if it is, this game won’t just be good, it will be awesome (and believe me, I hate using that word lightly).

That doesn’t stop me from expecting a whole host of imaginative Nasties that we haven’t yet seen to turn up in the final game - but instead of suggesting ways of nerfing Dash, perhaps we should be suggesting imaginative ways for the Pandorans to counter it, which the Devs can consider.

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Or another thing would be to balance the game before it comes out. That could work too.

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If we’ve learned anything from the previous Backer Builds, it’s that Snapshot only shows us a tiny snippet of what they’ve got in store, and they make us deliberately OP so that they can road-test the higher-level abilities.

Shouldn’t stop us from pointing out when something is imbalanced or OP and making suggestions - that, after all, is what we signed up for - but if the Dec 3 release is anything like as unbalanced and overpowered as BB5, I for one will be incredibly surprised.

But to repeat myself, it has occurred to me that instead of saying: ‘this is OP in this lab-rat setting, here’s how to nerf it,’ we should be saying: “This is how we can exploit this ability at high levels, here’s a way the Pandorans could evolve to counter it.”

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Backseat design is generally a silly idea - I doubt Mr Gollop is desperately sorting through players suggestions hoping to find the solution to the problem. Players suggestions how to fix dash might indicate what they dislike about it, but I trust team at Snapshot more, when it comes to finding solution that would actually work. And as you mentioned we don’t have access to the full game, meaning your perception of balance in incomplete.

Whenever, Snapshot will end up nerfing the skill, or punishing its overuse via enemies is, to be honest, irrelevant. Still, when it comes to nerfing, now is the time, as players tend to respond badly to it. Better to over nerf, and buff later, then the other way around.

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“Please give all aliens invisibility from the start (vanishing for 1 turn after lethal attack) and most of them should have Paralyze property with strength of 15 points with cost of 1 AP (usable only once per turn to not overpower it). But yes keep 30+ of them on the map.”

Good idea?

Nah, too OP :wink:

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