Developer Proposed Game Mechanic Updates

Phoenix Point
21

You make very valid points @Fritzworth, but the game as it is currently designed has several confliciting issues:

  1. The Dynamic Difficulty Algorithm did not take into account the way that players (especially newbies) tend to play these games, so very quickly ramped any level of Difficulty chosen up to insane levels if you Saved & Restarted (S&R) all the time.

  2. The open skills sandbox approach, whilst really interesting, means that players can very quickly get extremely OP characters, who then feed off one another in a series of ever more intricate combos, that literally enbles some players to take down the Biggest Nasty in the Room - or even a whole mapful of Nasties - in just 1 turn.

  3. To counter this, the Nasties get bigger, stronger and more numerous as the DDA reacts to the alpha-strike nature of the game.

  4. To counter this, the players have to resort to ever-more-powerful alpha-strike skill combos.

It’s a vicious circle that can only be solved by rebalancing everything and reducing BOTH the power of Squad Skills AND the number and power-output of the Nasties on each mission.

The BIGGEST problem with this game, is that a lot of cool stuff was thrown into it without any consideration of how they would feed off one another - and this makes for some wildly unbalanced scenarios on both sides.

So a handful of us have been arguing from the very beginning that if you choose Easy as your Difficulty setting, it should remain EASY throughout your whole playthrough. Similarly, by that same caveat, if you choose Heroic or Legendary, then the DDA etc should limit the way you can stack your skills and force you to play like a Hero or a Legend to survive.

And if you just want an XCOM-like experience, which tracks your level of ability and keeps just one step ahead of you, then you choose Veteran and the DDA should take into account the fact that you are likely to S&R when you make mistakes.

So those of us who are arguing for nerfing Skills or adding a note of caution about making X OP, are doing so because the track record of this game so far demonstrates that not enough consideration is given to how things balance with one another. We aren’t JUST calling for players to be restricted - we always caveat this with the need to nerf the Nasties as well.

9 Likes
22

A very fair point but - and this is a particular bugbear of mine - I was flabbergasted when this game launched at the amount of posts that said something like: “I’m brand new to this game, and I’m playing my first runthrough on Heroic Difficulty and it’s too hard! Fix it!”

As I say, I’m all for Easy being EASY, and Veteran being manageable. But if you choose to play on Heroic or Legendary, then you should expect to have to act like a Hero or a Legend to survive.

11 Likes
23

I haven’t played for a month or so, so may be out of date - but I did play a solid couple of weeks after the launch.
My main observation doesn’t seem to be covered here; There was just never any sense of suspense.

XCom (right back to the first one), always felt like you were exploring, and around any corner could be death. Phoenix point just never managed to create that atmosphere and sense of the unknown. (with the exception of some of the cave-system lair missions)

I’m not sure what the answer is beyond ‘be more XCom…’, but I suspect the main problem is that you just know too much about the map and enemy disposition from the outset in Phoenix Point.

Pretty much my only ‘holy crap’ moment was the first time a Chiron appeared.

3 Likes
24

The way it works makes “easy” in fact harder than hero/legendary. You have to provide steady blood sacrifices to DDA God to keep rains of frogs and locusts at bay. And recruits are expensive on “easy”/vet.

Of course the said new players will get brutalised by DDA because they’re not aware of the bloodthirsty deity watching them play and every restart/reload is a further stone on the road to DDA hell.

Yes, I do understand its been neutered a bit but thumbing your nose at heroic players at launch is disingenuous when “easy” or vet could be in fact harder.

2 Likes
25

Yea, I’ve already covered that in a Canny request that got merged to this: https://phoenixpoint.canny.io/feedback/p/fog-of-war

1 Like
26

I hear that - though I’ve never tried it on ‘Easy’, and from what I’m reading on these forums the last patch went some (but not all) the way towards fixing it.

I have no objection to ‘Easy’ players complaining that the game’s too hard - in fact I have argued from Day 1 that Easy should be EASY - and more recently I’ve come to the conclusion that the DDA should simply be switched off on Easy Mode. That’s what this post is partly about: Customisation of game - Menu options | Voters | Phoenix Point

That doesn’t alter my point though. In the first week that this game was released, I remember engaging with a poster who was having a real problem with the old-style RF, cover not acting like XCOM and a handful of other unexpected mechanics that the game had thrown at him. He was very vociferously (and rudely) demanding that the whole game be nerfed so that it didn’t punish him for doing stupid things like running into the middle of a room containing AR-toting Assaults and shooting at the first one he saw.

As the conversation continued, I discovered that he was playing on Heroic. When I asked him why on earth he was playing a brand new game he had never tried before on Heroic, he said because he always did 'cos Easy was too easy.

I’m sorry, but Easy might be too easy on XCOM or Xenonauts, or many other games you might mention, but with brand a new game, you do a playthrough on Easy to get the hang of the mechanics, and then you upgrade to Heroic, or Legendary, or whatever level best suits you. Personally, I start on Veteran until I’ve got the hang of the game, and then I either change the Difficulty in the Options Menu (which I have asked PP to enable on many occasions), or stop and start a new campaign. Frankly, I’m so bad at many of these games that I often dial it down a bit.

In my book, Heroic Difficulty should mean that if you play the game optimally, you won’t get slaughtered. Legendary requires you to play the game perfectly to survive. So if you choose to play as a Hero, you should expect to have to act like a Hero, not a tactical rookie - and if you make a mistake, you should expect to be punished for it.

It’s hardly ‘disingenuous’ when absolutely no-one knew that this was the case after Launch. If I knew that they’d F!*&£d up Easy so spectacularly, you could accuse me of being a liar, but I think it’s a bit much to do so when no-one at the time knew what the problem was.

And it still doesn’t invalidate the point that if you start a game on Heroic, you should expect to be treated like a Hero! - and that doesn’t mean throwing laurel wreaths at your feet and telling you how wonderful you are, it means expecting you to be a stone-cold gaming badass who eats Crabbies for breakfast, and knows that the best way to deal with 4 Assaults in a room is to lob a grenade through the door, rather than rushing into the middle of it with all guns blazing.

3 Likes
27

I didn’t understand why you were quote me. :upside_down_face:

28

Especially interesting since by default nothing is quoted… Well obviously not a reply to you.

29

Many turn based games work like puzzles where the expectation is to die a lot and work on your solution by restarts. I can’t think of another example which punishes this playstyle so hard. Regular human sacrifice is a fairly unique approach to gameplay mechanics.

I actually did start on heroic, did just fine and eventually drove the DDA into righteous rage. Then I restarted in Vet armed with knowledge how the scaling works and actually had relatively harder time due to the need to buy guns for the cannon fodder. I knew how to keep difficulty from spiking but I was struggling with resources the whole time.

Veteran was ridiculous turkey shoot in the beginning against naked :crab: but scaled quickly to heroic levels due to :panda_face: being massacred. Throw DDA bone or two regularly after you run into serious opposition and you won’t be overrun regularly…

2nd commandment of the DDA, thou shalt not do resource gathering missions or thou shalt anger the DDA!

2 Likes
30

In the game I miss the logical balance therefore I quit. There are a lot of good ideas but they are just “having around” without any connection. A main storyline is really important. That could be an anchor point, to inspire the players to play. Two important part is missing: the personal line and the fluid game mechanic.

There are some brilliant parts you achieved! But the community of Xcom has a really high anticipation.

Firaxis has done nothing. They just used the old recipe.

31

In fairness to the devs, I don’t think this was intentional - they just completely misunderstood the mindset of most modern gamers.

In the old world of the original X-COM, you expected your men to die. Read the posts from old X-COM players here and they’re full of: “Your troops were just cannon fodder… It wasn’t worth naming them… The cost of recruits was so low, it didn’t matter if you lost them…” There is almost a … callousness … towards human life and the cost of beating the aliens that is entirely missing in the later X-com clones.

Fast forward 30+ years, and players now expect to learn on the run with very little cost to themselves. The overwhelming feedback I’m seeing from the younger generation of players is that they don’t want to lose anyone. Their posts read: “I always restart if I lose a man… I don’t like taking casualties… I restart if i don’t get a perfect score…”

Those two philosophies collided in PP. Julian Gollop designed a game that embraced the old philosophy of ‘no pain, no gain’, whilst trying to cater to the new market of alpha-striking superheroes. But alpha-striking superheroes create an inverse difficulty curve - it is a well-known complaint of veteran FiraXCOM players that the endgame is significantly easier than the beginning.

So the devs sought to solve this with ‘Pandoran evoloution’ aka the DDA. But they failed to take into account the fact that the new generation of players like things to be perfect and will Save & Restart until they are. The DDA never anticipated this, so it fritzed and created the ‘difficulty spike’, exacerbated by the fact that what was intended to make things easier for rookie players - providing new recruits with full kit & armour - actually made things significantly harder when the DDA turned resource-gathering into a murderous slog.

It was a perfect storm of unintended consequences, which the devs are still scrambling to fix today. By all accounts, they have gone some way towards that with the Leviathan Patch (I don’t know, I’ve been playing original PP up to this point, and I’m now taking a break from it and going back to Madden until they implement their next big set of fixes - I play so slowly, I don’t want my next campaign to be nixed by a massive new patch in the middle of it).

So to portray them as acolytes of ‘the bloodthirsty DDA God’ hell-bent on spoiling your fun is unfair on their intentions. They never intended to make this game impossible - I think they wanted to keep it interesting throughout the full length of its run. But by failing to anticipate how people play in this brave new world of gaming - and by failing to deal with the massive imbalance that alpha-striking superheroes creates - they have created a rod for their own backs that people are understandably beating them with.

5 Likes
32

I’m not browsing regular on forum, and wait playing again till this game is proper.

Anyways, this is a very good step. I like many changes. More strategy less chore and repetition.

Scouting and base changes are especially good.

What i am missing is complete overhaul of soldier skills. When that happens I can play again. There should be more visible improvement than just skills that do +1 this or -1 that. For example a barrage with heavy machine gun that changes your targeting circle into a wide arc which he mows from left to right. Not giving a mathematical stat increase, but viable situational tactical choices.

Some examples of wtf:
Rookie snipers always do headshot with too small circle of hit.
Rookie heavies feel like the soldier you typically have at end of game.
The exchange of headshots without casualties each turn is excessive.
Medikits feels like healing potions.
Units behind cover dont hug the wall

33

These are all much needed changes and additions to the game!!!

34

Still the character build and game progress feels like start out smooth and chill and then it turns into pure mayhem, but at certain situation I need those bunch of steroid guy squad to beat the game. Maybe DDA need a bit more adjustment which mean anything that tied up with it. I’m sorry couldn’t gives specific detail, my English suck :drooling_face:. Thanks, keep it up devs and stay safe everyone.

1 Like
35

Please post in the game that you have made updates. Getting surprised during missions or working on base matters is a problem. A simple pop-up describing the changes, when you are on the main menu page would help a lot.
Bracnidia

1 Like
36

So patch notes in main game menu. :slight_smile:

3 Likes
37

They should do that really. No issue for those of us that skulk these digital hallways but we aren’t a huge number and your average player probably won’t go out of their way to find the notes.

38

Or even:

3 Likes
39

But not everyone has a voice such as Logan :smiley:

40

Hi I bought this game last week and having been playing it a lot while self-isolating. I think this game is already very good and it’s great to see the developers involving fans in future development. I will post some thoughts on the linked subforums but I’m posting on here for things that don’t fit in the other threads.
I’ve played the original XCom games (UFO defence & Apocalypse) and the Firaxis reboots so I’m familiar with this genre of game even though I’ve only played Phoenix Point for a few days.
These are suggestions for things I would like to see changed, please consider them as constructive criticism from a well meaning fan.

  1. The aircraft movement mechanics feel contrived and I really feel that I have to suspend my disbelief with the aircraft skipping across points of interest with no restrictions on distance providing it can move to another location to reset it’s distance jump. It’s also very difficult to travel to Antarctica using these mechanics. I think the original XCom with its fuel mechanics for aircraft was the best approach. With the Festring Skies DLC in the pipeline, please consider a return to something like the original XCom. Perhaps the different aircraft can have hybrid engines - electric, which is recharged at bases and supportive havens, and fuel, which is a tradable resource from havens, and allows aircraft to travel further - the fuel capacity of aircraft can be improved with research. I know this is a big change but as there is DLC for aircraft upcoming, please consider it.
  2. Please can we have research and upgrades for combat vehicles so that they continue to be worthwhile inclusions for the later game - they take up 3 deployment slots , don’t gain experience, and have no upgrade possibilities, which means they are vastly inferior to 3 soldiers in the later half of the game.
  3. Please significantly increase deployment squad sizes, I always hated this with the Firaxis reboots and the original games were much more generous in this regard. If I’ve acquired the resources for multiple transports, soldiers and vehicles, then I should be able to deploy all of them to an area without dealing with an artificial limit. Soldiers are very expensive to buy in this game and so are vehicles, which already places limits on how many people you can deploy, additionally missions are time sensitive - if I can deploy 2-3 transports of troops and vehicles to an extreme level incursion, then I should be allowed to do so. Missions are often time sensitive so if a player chooses to be strong in one geographic area, they’ll be neglecting other areas, but at least give a player a reward for choosing to be strong in one area.
  4. Something to control the soldier spamming to missions could be the stamina mechanic - as the doom clock ticks up, soldiers take increased stamina damage from missions and stamina recovery becomes less effective, which would force the player to cycle squads but still have the option to send multiple transports to more difficult missions.
  5. The medical bays can be simply disregarded via med kits, which are cheap to purchase and allow soldiers to avoid being wounded between missions - I’d like to see more soldiers available for missions but much less effective med kits - they should be used to stabilise badly injured/dying soldiers but they shouldn’t be able to restore them to full fighting health that never need to spend a day in the medical bay. Wounded soldiers should be a big factor for causing squad rotations between missions - I’d like to see easier access to soldiers but stamina and wounded status forcing the player to rotate squads between recovery and active.
  6. More time sensitive missions please - I’d like to see scavenging missions requiring a rapid response or you miss the window of opportunity to get the resources, as it is, you can leave these missions indefinitely.

This was a much longer post than I initially thought, but I’ll leave it there for now and post later on the other threads with thoughts that are specific to those areas. Thanks Snapshot for making a great game and for actively involving fans.

2 Likes