Difficulty level

Phoenix Point
1

The difference between Veteran LvL and Legend is hardly noticeable. Please delete one of them. No difference.

1 Like
2

With Veteran one starts with 5 soldiers and one can recruit units from havens with armor and weapons. On Legend one starts with 4 soldiers and all recruits come naked. Also, with the latter the HPC will end the game sooner.

5 Likes
3

There are quite a few, actually :slightly_smiling_face:

You can also try the following experiment: start a game on Veteran and just press the fast forward button on the Geoscape, don’t do anything else.

Then see how fast Pandorans evolve and how much time it takes to lose the game.

Then repeat with Legend.

(I haven’t tried this Veteran, btw, so if you don’t see any difference please tell).

4 Likes
4

You are right, HPC is the important factor, unfortunately, not the opponents are getting better but the conditions are getting tougher. Anyway, I feel no difference between the two options. Doesn’t matter if I start with 4 or 6 (naked) soldiers. For a veteran this is no issue. Shortening HPC is “cheap”. Sry.

5

It’s both. Speed of evolution dictates when more advanced enemy types appear. Again, I haven’t checked normal, but on Rookie the most advanced enemies type didn’t appear until many months after I generally finish the game on Legend.

Not only that, but enemies deploy and reinforce on each map according to a “budget”, where each enemy is worth a certain amount of points: the higher the difficulty level, the higher the budget, so more advanced enemies and more of them appear on higher difficulties.

Finally, probably the biggest difference is the amount of SPs per mission, 10 on Veteran 5 on Legend, and what it means in terms of character development: Character Development - wiki.phoenixpoint.com

For me the difference between Veteran and Legend is most appreciable in the stats of the operatives, both as they start out and how fast how good they can get.

I don’t think that the different difficulty levels are calibrated perfectly, but my impression is that Rookie is properly easy now and that Legend offers some degree of challenge (and where it fails at that it’s not because of difficulty but other stuff - balanacing, certain game mechanics, AI)

3 Likes
6

Thanks for the detailed explanation. As player and streamer you play the game in the current state.Thanks for the very good description and explanation. What I personally wish is that the Pandoras scale better with my LvL. Nothing unfamiliar, I think. I only wanted to point out that the two LvLs only differ in details, no significant difference in the game itself. If HPC makes the difference then it is too little to distinguish both LvLs from the beginning. There are better tools available than just regulating via HPC.

7

Differences are as explained

  • Slower player progression, be it less points per mission, less resources to start with (as well as items and soldiers), how equipped soldiers you get by fraction recruitment

  • More enemies in missions, more higher level enemies, faster pandoran evolution

And this is basically it, between all levels. There is no better AI, stronger friendly units etc.

So game gets tougher, just not the way “usual level differences” in most of games are. But taking the campaign to the full shows how harder it is. As example, on legend level simple start missions like Anu worms infestation hold a mini boss and simple Get rid of rebel soldiers mission now holds a priest. Simple Synderion rebel soldiers now have an infiltrator.

1 Like
8

On paper all looks very good. In reality, when it comes to implementation and balancing, things look a bit different. Let me make it clear, I’m not asking for nerf or weakening or a change just a clarification. At first glance I still don’t see any big differences for me to be able to say, hey this is really legendary! I have to pay attention to every action. It’s just my personal opinion, I love the game and it has constantly improved and will continue to do so, thanks for your help. I don’t play the game 24 hours a day but I look up every update to see what changes and updates work or not. Thanks again for your explanation. I will probably have to play more in Legend and Veteran to see the changes in the game. As I said, is objective opinion of me. Everybody stay healthy! Greetings to the developers!

1 Like
9

IMO:
The difference in difficulty depends very much on how you play the game. If you use all the possibilities the game has than the difference is not that much as maybe expected. For instance, if you max out to get as much resources as you can get by trading and raiding then this will counter the rarity of resources on higher difficulties. You only have to trade or raid just i bit more and have almost the same result as in lower difficulties. Similar for maximizing all the things when it comes to skill out your soldiers. Sure, you get a lower amount of SP per mission, but on the other side you also have to do more missions in the same time frame. That should be not enough to equalize it, but still your soldiers levels faster in higher difficulties because you have more heaven defenses and more Pandoran bases to destroy, also more to raiding to get the spare resources that you need more and so on.

If someone don’t max out the given possibilities or is not that familiar with all these things then the difference between Veteran and Legend could be pretty high.

In my opinion the game is still not really balanced and for me personally this ends in an also not really big difficulty difference between Veteran and Legendary. The most remarkable things are mostly simple only annoying. The time to get to the goal shrinks, the recruits coming naked, the activities of the Pandorans increases what result in more heaven defences and base destroying that are not really exciting for me when I have to do plenty of them.
But the enemies itself are not getting harder. Sure the harder ones come earlier, but at the end they are all in all not really that much tougher. Their amount per mission also not increases that much, only a bit, but for me not enough. On Legendary they should swarm me especially in crucial missions, but as it is it stays almost the same: disable the initial thread as fast as possible and then its more or less time for free to play. For me it is not as challenging as it should be on higher difficulties.

TL/DR:
I still played it on Veteran even after many campaigns because I don’t like the way the devs go to make it more difficult by mostly, in my eyes, annoying things (shorten the time frame and resources, not fully equipped recruits, more frequently attacks and so on … see above).

BUT, I had much fun to play it this way, for me it is all in all one of the best games this year. And I will go definitely through the next couple of campaigns after the steam release (actually I don’t play it, I will wait for a more stable version).

4 Likes
10

100% agreement an every one point. Have the same feeling but we both love the game and hope for further progress. Thank you for the very good description. Nothing is better than a healthy community. Cheers.

2 Likes
11

I would like more to see different enemy AI spawned over difficulties, as well as more striking number difference among levels then having those “annoying factors” (example: Palace last mission is way too difficult for a rookie level)

2 Likes
12

Unfortunately I mistaken Veteran for Hero. I apologize. However, the cause is identical. :grinning:

1 Like