Whatever flaws PP has with its basic game-play are absolutely nothing compared to nu-xcom. It had been a few years since I had played XCOM-2 when I started that thread, but after starting up a new firaxcom-2 campaign wow Wow WOW is it so bad.
Admittedly nu-xcom is miles ahead of PP in cut scenes, voice-overs, and other presentation aspects, but I think those are the only advantages whatsoever nu-xcom has, and PP is very very obviously better in its basic gameplay. While I do think my original criticisms still stand, they only do so in my subjective vacuum.
I do think something does need to be done about the super-soldier issue, but I think multiplayer/ VS mode/ regular challenges take a backseat to any game-play balance issues. Those modes will reveal any glaring issues while stressing PPâs greatly improved game-play all while offering great marketing opportunities.
I would hold up with any comparisons between XCom 2 and PP. First is a high budget finished game, second - an indie title (which should be finished but it is not).
There are many things in Firaxisâ XCom which Iâm not happy with, too (i.e. I donât like the tone of the game; itâs too bright and garish; too puzzly with its abilities approach as a main gameâs feature), but I never would admit itâs inferior to PP in ANY way. At least not before PP is finished and properly balanced.
Both XCom games offer complete experiences and are finished products while PP may have big potential but still is a mess feeling like a bunch of loose ideas brought together in a one long demo⌠Many of these ideas could make PP far better game, but it needs further (re)balancing and/or redesigning the game to make it happen.
Not sure what are your apologies for. Thereâs no shame to have some expectations built over time which product doesnât respond to, especially few months after its release.
Perfect, flawless game does not exist and latest Firaxis games are very far from being perfect. But Phoenix Point in my opinion is at least as far from being perfect as XCOM is. Budget or studio capabilities have nothing to do with it as problems I talked about canât be solved simply by pumping more money or increasing studios processing power.
I am going through âThe World of (Terryfing) Silenceâ mod for OpenXCom right now and I find the 25 years old gameplay far superior to what was delivered by both, Firaxis and Snapshot, developers. Is it perfect? Of course it is not.
Thatâs the thing though. Firaxis Xcom is awful, but it sold very well because it hid everything behind a bunch of cut-scenes and polish. I agree PP needs to learn more from classic xcom, but you wonât convince publishers to sell old xcom. That was the big problem that killed classic xcom in the first place. Firaxis Xcom convinced publishers you could sell the nostalgia as long as it was polished, but the game was crap.
Iâm dissapointed that PP looks and acts more like nu-xcom, but I can clearly see that it is miles better in gameplay and Iâm happy with that for that now. PP is very rough on the edges, but I hope that it can sell the classic x-com gameplay with modern improvements despite having some polish flaws.
I just didnât appreciate how well it was doing until revisiting firaxcom.
In my firaxcom game I was 5x1 away from an enemy and still had a 40% high cover accuracy malus. Like wtf. The tall cover visually had no effect. I was 5 squares away. If I had moved one square more in the correct direction there wouldnât have been -40% accuracy, but there it was. PP would have penalized me for the 5 square distance sure, but the cover would have been pointless.
I do feel very frustrated about the super-soldiers in PP. Not so much because I want the game to go in a different direction (less skills, more grunts like in original X-Com), but because of the absurd levels to which this is taken in PP. Itâs not that the game becomes a super-hero power fantasy like nuXcom, or even that it becomes less tactical - it ceases being a game.
When by pressing dash you can teleport anywhere on the map, kill everything, or most things in one turn it has the same feel to it as activating no-clip and godmode in an FPS. So when I came across this, my first reaction was this is a bug, an exploit, a serious balance issue that has to be fixed - no one would want something like this in their game no matter what market they were aiming at.
However, after all these months it hasnât been acknowledged as a problem by the devs. I hope itâs because they havenât realized just how bad it is and they think that itâs just âhardcoreâ players complaining about difficulty, or wanting a return to the original X-Com.
As to that⌠Over the past week I played a little OpenXCom, both UFO and TFTD. Itâs a great game but itâs a case of being much more than the sum of its parts. There are many issues with each individual mechanic and game system we forgive because of how good it is overall.
That is it.
PP has incredibly unique ideas, such as realistic cover, body parts or damage channels, which are unfortunately poorly explained. The absurd thing is that PP switches off these special features on their own from the appearance of supersoldiers or even the superskills alone! If you can see, reach and kill everything on the map in 1 turn, all these great ideas will become superfluous. Thatâs not all, you can also play God and just make yourself invulnerable! Iâd love to be wrong, but itâs probably a design decision.
I donât know if youâve heard of the âRewardâ system, but here is a link to it:
Powerful abilities that can be chained together to give a power fantasy ride - yes, that seems to be by design. I might not particularly like it (or like all of it), but I can live with it. But there is a world of difference between that and what is going on in PP at the moment.
Sekiro (which I mention just because Iâm playing it at the moment) also has very powerful abilities that can be chained together for devastating effect, but being able to do them doesnât turn it into a cleaning simulator.
Putting it in PPâs context, a situation where your Serker gets a nice buff to damage that enables him to one-hit kill a nasty baddy because he just got hit (Bloodlust) and a buddy has identified a weak spot on the enemy (Mark of Death), is a power fantasy trip, which some players may like more than others (and some not at all).
However, this - the video your shared here on Canny Rebalance Speed Stat | Voters | Phoenix Point, is something else entirely (yes, this is the game on release, but the thing shown there is still very much possible to do, and a countless more others following the same principles of increasing damage, reducing AP cost, increasing mobility/accuracy and recouping APs): https://youtu.be/-b6JnJP3fwM?t=371
Thatâs the thing though. Firaxis Xcom is awful, but it sold very well because it hid everything behind a bunch of cut-scenes and polish. I agree PP needs to learn more from classic xcom, but you wonât convince publishers to sell old xcom. That was the big problem that killed classic xcom in the first place. Firaxis Xcom convinced publishers you could sell the nostalgia as long as it was polished, but the game was crap.
No, it sold very well because it was an excellent game, and in addition to having great presentation it also managed to make turn based tactics more accessible to a wider audience.
Just because you didnât like it doesnât mean everyone else was somehow fooled by cutscenes or graphics.
I wouldnât overuse word âExcellentâ. But it was good and interesting. The best of a given time in category of turn based games. That was its advantage.
Well⌠xcom from firaxis was a great game. PP is a great game even if as all indie games, it get better a few months after release. All budget games are plagued with bugs and imbalances at releaseâŚ
What PP will probably never get is a group of incredible modders able to build something like Long War. Probably one of my favorite gameâŚ
There is no need to apologize. Your points were spot on. There is no doubt that this game is miles ahead of Firaxcom. That doesnât change the fact that it could even be so much more have hit our expectations better
Turn based strategy was D-E-A-D for decades.
Thanks to Firaxis it came back alive and kicking.
And it was because of its new intake on tactical map, inventory, movement and cover that fitted and worked in a new day and age where majority of gamers didnt want tedious inventory or base management.
It was also the reason for Julian Gollop to decide: Hey I think the world is ready for my project.
Thanks to firaxis we have many new TBS games last few years, and every review on youtube compares them to firaxcom, and that is not without reason: The games was solid. TBS 2.0
Only if you played it on easy mode, you wouldnt experience gameplay mechanics and only see cut scenes.
Can you tell me which mechanics PP is miles ahead of firaxcom?
Base management?
The tech tree?
Long term strategy on the worldmap?
The inventory system?
Are we talking about real ballistics in a turn based world?
Far in the distance this could be a nice feature, but it would only truly make sense if the world was real time too, not turn based.
Thats why it worked in XCom apocalypse and not in PP.
Right now it fails badly because:
Units in high cover do not HUG THE WALL (cover is pointless)
Sniper rookies make headshots with 100% accuracy
Are we talking about body parts damage?
I find it laughable that human units get 2 headshots and still run around with blood gushing around.
Hitting body parts does not have that much effect, and it gives unrealistic tactics like shooting on the weapons?
Or are we talking about skills?
How enemies you shoot in the back of the head, instead of dropping dead on the floor, turn around and shoot you 100% hit.
How you can chain willpower skills for insane mapclearing comboâs?
How the AI progressively adapts their strategy?
Well turned out that was just a mathematical code that calculates how many flawless missions youâve done and increases difficulty based on that.
This game started with grand ideas, but nothing is grand in its realisation. They were short on time and money, I understand that. I hope I can play a good game in 2022. But at this point, hearing someone say the game is miles ahead of other TBS games I donât understand.
Firaxcom is a dice roll. PP is a simulation. Henceforth PP is fundamentally miles ahead. All the rest is details and if you read my post I agree they are far from perfect.
Wait ⌠are we talking about the same game ? Did you land in the wrong forums ?
Entirely dependent on distance to target and absence of cover. In PP accuracy is determined by effective range of the weapon and can be altered by buffs/debuffs. It is a design choice not to have accuracy as a primary attribute (and there are many good reasons for it).
Yes, they get wounded in the head and the bleeding is prominently visually represented so that the player can see that the character is bleeding.
It certainly has. Disable the head and the character loses a ton of WPs. Disable one arm and the character canât use two handed items. Disable both arms and the character canât use any items. Same with legs (reduces mobility), torso (Max HPs/strength for paralysis threshold) and the various Panda body parts.
It seems to me like what you want is disabled head = instant death. I, for one, donât and see no good reason for it.
Yes, that is one criticism I can fully agree with.
Thatâs not the way DDA works - it also adjusts difficulty downwards. That said, I too was very very disappointed with the lack of proper Pandoran evolution, but hopefully there are massive changes coming in that area with the Pandoran research.
You call this hugging the wall?
And therefore makes real time targeting pointless because he leaves himself completely open for attacks!!! nothing realistic about this scenario.
If you want to make 1 thing realistic, you have to make all things realistics.
Because turn-based is not a realistic simulation - real time simultaneous movement is.
Soldiers not taking cover behind walls is not a realistic simulation.
Gettings shot in the head then lose some willpower points is not a realistic simulation.
So you have a realistic ballistic simulation in a unrealistic (boardgame mechanical) environment.
Itâs like putting a beautiful pair of tits on a monkey.
You my friend are just staring blindly at those tits.
You are responding to everything I said in previous post, though I asked a serious question.
That was my bad because i was randomly ranting broken things in this game.
Actually my main question was: in what aspect is PP so many miles ahead of other turn based games?
