i just run a new playthrough my 4th i think so far. trying the bad guy stuff blowing up factions buildings and gain the favor of New Jericho to improve asap to AP weapons. Nothing here the satellite mission is scripted (i think all of the questlines) so as 5th mission in the game i have 2 chiron bomber and a siren 
with lvl 3 max roster is just a nightmare to shred the siren.
The spike in difficulty is like hitting a brick wall, I have stopped playing until this is patched. I don’t want to use broken skills, class combinations to win.
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actually skill or not it doesn’t matter as far as gearimprovement.Sadly i only research weapon improvement nothing on the armor side. And to be clear arthron improve their machingun with more shred like they need one.
My experience too and for me, this is a big issue with regards to the upcoming Ironman mode. You see, the Firaxcoms have got me addicted to the added tension of not being able to reload. I’m only going to really enjoy this game if I can do a playthrough on IM.
However, in order for IM to work, you have to have steady increase in difficulty and as little randomness or bugs as possible.
On top of that, the game needs to be tense from the start, with constant momentum leading you to either lose the campaign or win. Most battles should mean something and always be a step forward. The reason for that is because IM campaigns often fail and you need to start over so the game needs to engage you immediately. My IM XCom campaigns always feel like they’re on a knife edge, particularly early on, which means treading the same ground still feels exciting.
My experience with Heroic so far was many hours of mostly undemanding and repetitive play. I’m not gonna want to go through 10+ hours of that again and again and again just to get to the ‘important’ part. It’s a shame. I’ve had plenty of free time today but I just couldn’t be bothered to boot the game up.
I am with OP as well.
Sure, with trial and error, you can develop tactics. However, the game doesn’t seem to scale with the story or your progression. I am guessing it scales Pandoran progression(?). I play on Veteran mode, and I think prior to 10%, I always feel like I am ahead of the game, but after 10% there seems to be a wall, where if you are not up to speed, you are going to have a hard time. Especially if you are hiring new recruits and have 2+ ships to manage. If there is an attack, and your closest crew is filled with a mix of fresh recruits, you are going to have a hard time.
At 17% (this is literally just now for me as type this) I entered my first Pandoran Lair (surprisingly the first only to spawn, not even a Nest) and immediately 3 Sirens come at me. I think that was the first time I have ever stopped and quit. This was right at the entrance, and I knew I wasn’t getting out of there if these were going to continue to spawn. I had trouble with 2 Sirens alone in a prior mission.
I think in 1 thread I read, a guy ran on Legendary with Heavy/Sniper all the way and it was easy mode for him. His advice on exploiting the Food for resources was a good tip. Really thinking of giving that a go since I can’t even explore more of the story, or let alone keep up with progression from the Pandorans.
umh after 5th playthrough look like that the ODI not count on the enemy progression. i had to kill my first Scylla at 7% and manage to destroy nests with 3 hatchling sentinel within, weird. Avoid completely rush to story or faction as far as i saw it seems scripted with certain number and type of enemy (sirens and chirons as 5th mission is insane).
I’m on my third run, and I can’t rush the story. I’m on story mission where you find the 3 locations after Symes Retreat(?) or the one after. Since I started at the bottom of South America, I’ve had to make my way up into North America, and Asia. It can’t be Story Progression either. I can only think it scales with Faction Progression or maybe Research? I also have 3 bases on this run
What do you consider as missions?
THIS! It’s still an issue. Project Vulture is scaled to the ODI. The higher the ODI the higher the amount of the spawned enemies. Superbad difficulty scaling. Even on 60% ODI there are four of each of the standard classes plus an Armadillo and at least one or maybe two technicians. The first time I tried it on around 90% ODI an there were at least five of each class, even technicians and four fricking Armadillos. For real?
Interesting that your thread was kind of “erased”. Negative feedback is no longer welcomed?
Why was that thread locked? We deserve to be able to speak of our experiences in the game. Nothing will improve otherwise.
Little reply to my post from yesterday evening. Mama didn’t raise a quitter, so I did exactly what I thought was the issue and stocked up with much much more ammo and tried again. Boss fell. End of the story.
Still the mission isn’t really fun. The thread is called: “Abrupt difficulty spike”. But I got more the feeling of artificial difficulty through out the game. I got actually no problem with the difficulty itself.
In my opinion the most important thing is that enemies shouldn’t be just bullet sponges or can use their abilities endlessly. It would be great if they were limited like the ones of the soldiers too. Maybe let the numbers of enemies stay the same but let them attack more in smaller groups that work actively together. Tacking cover and flanking your soilder. The most anoying thing is the behavior of some enemies like sirens. They’re literally melee enemies but they never meele attack you. They always just come close and use two mind controlls and then go behind cover. That’s super weak tactics. Chirons behave like artillery tanks camping in shooter games. Hey I gona shot you from distance. Oh you saw me, well I will then run away. Insted of running up and stamping you to death. They only come when they have no shots left.
And the goo ones just do nothing then. You can just let them stay there if your task isn’t clear area.
No need to stress. The forums anti spam often freezes posts or users if the posts are long or typed “suspiciously fast”, sometimes just because it’s been auto translated. Fixed now.
There’s plenty of negative feedback here so I’m not sure how anyone thinks we don’t allow it.
Edit: Fixed a phone typo
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Agree. And I’m yet to see any praise for it anywhere by anyone.
I did it using OP builds, so it was a cakewalk. A long and boring cakewalk. It’s like a showcase for the poor balance in PP, because dealing with those crowds using frenzy, deceptors, rapid clearance, dash and quickaim is stupidly easy, or just double casting electric reinforcement every turn, but without OP combos it must be excruciating.
And even besides the balance issues that plague PP, it just doesn’t have anything to recommend it. I can’t imagine anyone ever saying “hey, I wish in x game the last mission was like in Phoenix Point!”
However,
I’m not sure what you mean, as enemies also have WPs and need them to use their abilities.
Sirens are not melee units, they are support, they behave like the player would normally use priests - mostly for frenzy and mind control.
Some Chirons don’t even have a melee attack and they are extremely vulnerable at close range, because their heads don’t have any armor, so their behavior at the moment makes sense.
The game definitely needs more enemy variety, something like a melee focused Chiron, for example.