Behemoths Are Coming

Phoenix Point Game Feedback
21

Was there any braimstorming how to do aerial combat to begin with? The pandorans are travelling somehow. They don’t teleport like player equipment, do they?

“The skies darken with alien vessels”

Doesn’t it suggest that there would be like pandoran version of airplane on the actual geoscape = Behemoth?

All new interception mode

Reading this and what was said before, I’m assuiming this won’t be like actual interception UI thing, only you click some buttons to intercept. And it spawns behemoth mission or sth? Like you kill a thing on battlefield not in some air combat.

I think this is most probable what will happen. Because core design of the game is “can’t lose on geoscape level” So how can you design a minigame there even without losing. So there won’t be any minigame only a new mission you can do and rest is festering talk.

Yeah. There was actual economy in UFO not like in PP. In Phoenix Point we have to imagine ourselves the economy.

1 Like
22

The original lore was that they can’t fly - the mist spreads from the oceans into the land and with it - pandorans. Skies are still under human control, and that’s how they use to move safely between havens, located on elevated ground, defending from hordes of monsters attacking from below.

From what Was hinted Behemoth was supposed to be original “terror” mission. A massive hulking create creeping toward settlements and raising havens to the ground when reaching them. Phoenix Point was to land on those creates and plant explosives to get rid of it.

All that was scrapped, so who knows how Behemoths were adapted, and what flying pandorans mean for Phoenix Point.

23

I’m not sure for that. Do they actually ask what people want right now? You go on a welcoming page of PP and you get sth like this:

" “Without a doubt, one of the best strategy games…"

But they actually do this as an RPG game with strategic elements.
And make DLCs in a way like: new enemy to bash, new map type lore, new faction texts, like some new quests in a RPG game.

I would want to see actual poll about if people want this RPG more than strategy in PP. Is there any actual research and feedback behind this? Or they just do what “they” want to make, and your “compromise” is a bunch of festering talk not skies.

Most critique about this game isn’t about more graphics. Yeah they’re people who would want the underwater missions and whatever wonders they promised. But people who threw the game out after release aren’t going to come back because there is an actual Behemoths in the game. They’ll come back if there is an actual strategy not an RPG.

You just need to see steam chart to see how this approach of their works. Is RPG direction actually working? Actual players feedback is saying sth completely opposite.

If they don’t change direction here this game will be dead in a year, meaning development process, because it won’t pay for itself. There is no such demand for RPG with some strategic elements. Strategy gamers won’t play it, they go for more strategic oriented games. And RPG players will go for more RPG oriented games. So what would PP actually become? A festering promise to be like old UFO, never delivered.

And if someting isn’t working you can remodel your games. Stellaris of Paradox is good example. They acutally reworked whole game, which was very mediocre at best in 2016. Now is one of most played Paradox titles, growing players every year.

This RPG style approach will end up with nobody playing this no matter how much DLC’s and underwatter maps they do.

This game had so much free publicity from old UFO. And wasting it for trying to do an RPG game.

How about just doing what is said on PP starting page:

" “Without a doubt, one of the best strategy games…"

Put in on your walls in your headquarters. Put in on your devs foreheads. And bash it everytime with medkits untill they get it.

3 Likes
24

I agree that this game is far from perfect, even from what was advertised, or even more from my expectations. But still it is better for me than recent XCOM games and other similar productions.

And believe me that they are trying to do what they can, but they have budged limits for people, and they need to meet the deadlines. We had discussions with few members of development team and they usually agreed that some parts could be better, but now it is to late to redesign them. There is too many interconnecting elements to take care of, and the way engine is written makes it hard to make it better in short time. That is also why game won’t have mod support.

Btw for those who wanted to have more distinguished difficulty levels, with this DLC you will see the biggest difference. :smiley: Unless they will change it before release of course.

25

But in what aspects? RPG - maybe. Strategy? For sure no.

We had discussions with few members of development team and they usually agreed that some parts could be better, but now it is to late to redesign them. There is too many interconnecting elements to take care of, and the way engine is written makes it hard to make it better in short time. That is also why game won’t have mod support.

Ok what interconnecting elements you’re talking about? I’ve hard time to believe nothing can be done.

That is also why game won’t have mod support.

Dev can create mod. Like I can have 40 people from reddit rethinking all strategy part and writing it all down in word or sth for them if I know those limitations. They will just do setting in-game. Strategy - rebalance version. Most of it is changing variables seldom introducing new with loops and conditions. I don’t need them to create new behemots.

1 Like
26

XCOM genre. I don’t compare to any RPG, or even any particular standard strategy game. But in XCOM genre it is currently the best.

If I had less to do in real life I would probably give you examples, but I don’t have time to imagine now things and write why they can’t be introduced. :wink:

27

Yes, for me it is. FiraXCom basically has no strategic level at all, it is nothing but a linear sequence of mostly randomly generated events with a little influence from the player, especially the second part, in the first there were at least approaches to different strategies. On the tactical level, PP is just as far ahead for me with a finer granular movement system, ballistic bullets, free aiming and thus a more realistic cover system and a lot more.

But I think these are personal views, what applies to me does not apply to others or even everyone. :wink:

2 Likes
28

I agree with this and also love these in PP. But I disagree with stratigic part. The PP has huge problems with on-battle skill system and how it ties to geoscape. Stratigic part on geoscape is very underdeveloped and you can beat it very easily if this is your goal. If you have RPG oriented play then it doesn’t matter but for strategy players it actually does.

And like I said before, the game should aspire to have both group of players. Not one group at the cost of the other.

29

And this can be easily done by difficulty levels or in-game mode or outside game mod. Each way works for this specific purpose and at the same time you make both groups happy and playing the game.

Seriously making game that can’t be influenced by players is probably the worst decicion you can make nowdays.

30

We know that, they know that, but they won’t swap engine right now, because of not being able to mod indie game is passe.

From what they told us they will try to incorporate most important mods which bring quality of life improvements into the game before its development will end.

31

But what about balancing skills / globe event part? Is there a way to bring those mods / modes to the game?

I had some coding and modding experience and I know what potential limitation could look like in such a system. But these limitations are mostly like roadblocks. You just find ways to go around them to achieve your goals. Most of the time you can think something out. And if someting is not doable for that reason, you just find something else that is doable and does its job.

I like that you have feedback group but it looks like it functions solely as potential ideas to developers, only for achieving some predefined vision of the game. So it ends up in a situation where there is no way to make a mode where mechanics are rebalanced and reshuffled because someone is thinking it doesn’t fit this vision.

What is needed is group of players / balance testers who would know these limitations and search for ideas that work in that limited system but at the same time they could create game balanced differently. Otherwise the whole point of doing feedback is losing its appeal because nobody knows what is doable and what isn’t. And nobody is really trying to implement those ideas that are aimed at strategy because its not a core vision. But we don’t want to change core game particularly. We just want additional expierence with mostly given mechanics that are rebalanced for people who would want more strategy from Phoenix Point. Is this really unachievable in current system?

Like put one guy from team who works with that group and we can create that.

32

If you look how you can jump in modding the game for yourself then I think here is currently the best place to go:

Sheppy, the author of this modding manager, is currently not very active, but on his github site are good tutorials and examples how to mod the game.

33

Yeah I’ll look into that. But it’s more of a time optimalization thing. I can spend time looking into PP code alone and spend time understanding it and then make some rebalance mod within limits of what is available with some 40 other people who want to participate. But then game patch will go out and it will be destroyed and unplayable to poeple. Waste of time if you want to make sth big as we’re talking here. Especially if game is not made for modding.

And you would not be able to do that effectively alone because you can’t really do two things at once. Both would be mediocre. Either you do the codding alone or you focus on balancing. Besides it is much better to do coding stuff by someone who knows the code alredy. They can do changes pretty quickly and know what will be available long-term and know what can’t be changed for some other reasons.

And mainly allow people who want to actually make game more strategic focus on this alone. It needs to be a team effort if you want to do sth that actually is successful. I don’t see why dev wouldn’t be interested in that. Its good for sales long-term.

And even if it would need to be done in a way where some new mechanic would need implementation, it could be later be used in some DLC or core game experience as well. So either dev would see future implementation and it would be done, or we would search sth that would actually find future implementation. So it would be actual team effort. Sometimes you don’t need to discover a new wheel. You just find new purpose for existing one. This alone will make a difference.

If you familiar with LW mod for XCOM, they did it and then game basically made DLC WofC that invalidated the mod. It was such a mess. They put like a year to made this thing.

I see it rather as a brainstrorming / balance testing team. It receives a list what is changable and what limitations there are. We put time to see what can be done within these tools to improve the “more balanced mode”. We sent proposals of new ideas and the check if it’s realistic to implement. We balance test it. We basically put the puzzles apart and make them togheter anew with dev support. We make this as a additional settting in a game with it’s own difficulty levels build-in or downloadable to be installed as a mod for a game.

Yeah I get there will be massive limitations and probably this isn’t doable. But it would be cool if it would be doable. The game and devs could profit from it massively. The question is, is it worth the time?

34

I really hope we don’t get another resource to collect. that was done again and again. add some enemies and done, here’s the DLC. i Hope they listen to people suggestions and fix several things that prevent the game to grow up. Like the pace, like the resources and many more in many posts. balanciing, vehicles, AI of defenders,base defense. I really hoped they changed the pace of kill a nest another pops, i hope they would add srtategic mission where you can get a pause or something. I hoped for weapon mods etc.
Anyway i don’t believe after this time they will go developing more that is needed. Maybe for PP2 if ever is one.
I never searched the numbers if the game was a economical success or not.

35

I have a question: If I would want send some written down ideas about a mode who should I contact from Snap Shot? I have in mind, as I said before, a campaign and game rework that would be based only on currently implemented mechanisms in the game (similarly like LW was for XCOM). So it would not be: we create this and that. Only rather we move this piece in this place and we connect to that other piece that is already here. So no new graphics and animations is needed. We would only use what the game already has but completely reworked from beginning to the end. Using existing pieces in the game, but creating different puzzle. Some pieces that we’d think detrimental, we would eliminate completely. Changing basically how the whole campaign is played.

As I said it would be playable from start menu as a different mode with its own difficulty settings or downloable as a mod.

I would write it all down, at least basic main concepts, and how it would work. I would explain why creating it would help to grow the game and increase sales long-term. I would also present ways that can be done with support from Snapshot and if that’s not possible then we would try do it without. I would describe all mechanic that would be changed and how.

As I said I have some coding / modding expierience , but I’m not really convinced coding it only on my own with other players help is good idea. As I said it’s wasting time going through code and learning how whole PP code works, where there are actual people who know it. And PP doesn’t have good modding support. Making it togheter would more time / cost effective. And I fear something like: doing it and then some patch destroying it in 6 months when we’ll have actual people playing it.

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36

Ambitious goals and you have my respect for that. :+1:

I don’t know who to send your ideas and at the moment, as far as I know, the whole SG team is busy with the upcoming DLC(s).

And in my opinion that is the problem with your idea, the game is far from “finished”, it is basically still in the middle of further development. The developers also view many things critically, some things will certainly be changed and adapted, there are still many things that they want to implement and also improve.

From my point of view, it doesn’t make sense at the moment to add another mode that is different from the main game and that has to be adapted with every further development.

There are still 3 DLCs to come …

37

the game is far from “finished”

The game will never be finished from my standpoint. If they stop working on it, it will be probably very bad sign. This is the best time for this. Not in 2 years where nobody would remember what was coded to begin with.

And remember I think about reworking whole pace using existing mechanics and for it working side by side with basic game. So DLCs add another pieces for me to make new puzzle. At least it’s how I see it.

I would just want send sth in a month after festering skies. If they read it and find that SnapShot can’t help in any way possible, then I will consider my next moves. Mybe I start doing it on my own. But for now I need to learn the game more, and will be writing my ideas down as I play it for the next month.

Is Kevin Hill good person to contact?

38

There is an agenda, a roadmap, just follow the link in the OP. Festering Skys next month, Corrupted Horizon late Summer and the final DLC in winter.

So I have to disagree, I think this is not the best time for this because their goals are pretty ambitious and they will simply not have the resources for what you want to have.

Just my opinion, no offense :slight_smile:

And no, I have no idea who is a good person to contact for your idea, as I already said above :wink:

39

I know the agenda. It’s just that it doesn’t in any way change my goals and plans. How DLCs look like won’t change anything. I know already that I have some different vision for this game. So whatever they do this “mode/mod” would be played completely differently. So DLC’s would be another pieces to this new whole puzzle of Phoenix Point. After DLC’s comming up I can update ideas based on what they present. I’ve read and played enough to know how they’re thinking about the game. So I know what to expect.

Like I said I’m planning to gather some people and do some massive brainstorming. I love creative process and throwing ideas so I’m having fun thinking it through. If in a month I won’t be happy with my ideas I won’t probably send it even, although I have a framework already. If someone would give me info where to send this, I would be grateful.

In the meantime I still will be spaming feedback group as I play. But those are rather offhand ideas. So whatever I send this is not connected to my overhaul idea.

40

And I know limitations, not doable :slight_smile: But again I’ve some coding expierience so I can totally understand how those limitations look like. I’m not sitting here thinking completely different mechanics that would be created from scratch. I’m thinking about what is created alredy and how to make from those pieces alone and only those this whole new puzzle. It’s more realistic and doable.