is it allowed to make mods for the game?
@UnstableVoltage It might be worth posting that as a sticky. Just some kind of short ‘update coming’ type notice.
EDIT - Oh you have since I started reading 
It seems I play XCOM differently from everyone else. My main experience is with the original and Xenonauts, but I can’t really think of much different I do from those in terms of Phoenix Point. I never found it so hard as people suggest. The only reason I didn’t play on Legendary was I like a slow escalation and reveal of new alien types.
I have tried to make some use of the dynamic cover, the same way I do in Xenonauts or UFOD, but it is somewhat difficult with the buggy LoS/OW, and the inability to control your posture. Xenonauts lets you ignore cover items that are proximate to you when shooting, in a simulation of body posture.
Absolutely. There’s also a lot of indirect buying. If your game is selling the correct political message for example, everyone will sing its praises even if it’s boring as a paint drying simulator.
Yes, but we are still developing modding tools for it.
Yeah, without naming names I’m always a bit wary of the opinions of certain reviewers, or rather let’s say, I know the reviewers that I’ll tend to trust.
Credit where it’s due. But to be honest, my main concern was less the bugs, and more the bad ideas and direction. I guess you’ve seen the clips of various game-breaking builds? This one is my favourite:
It should’ve been obvious from the drawing board that such a combination of weapons and traits is possible, and nothing in the game can stand up to that kind of DPS.
Other design choices, like having no progression for weapons and armour through research (all gear being more or less equal), and focusing completely on faction specific gear, are weird after such a long development cycle.
I have the concern the game is going to get worse with development, which I think might be a driving motivation for the fear and backlash.