So I have been playing backer build 5 and I am generally having fun although progress has been dead slow due to the adressed frequency of haven attacks. I managed to get myself a new jericho technician and a synedrion sniper, I like the fact that all three factions have “special” soldiers unique to them, Anu has the priest, berserker and mutant dog handler, new jericho has the technician, and synedrion has that infiltrator with a sword. I don’t know if there are more but these are the ones i know about.
However, I feel like phoenix point is lacking in that departement and i get that they are meant to be a “jack of all trades” compared to other factions who specialize in something but I feel like them having something a bit unique could make them more interesting. I was randomly brainstorming what could be added that would bring something good to the table, the idea i came up with actually adresses another problem i have with the game and that is how crippling it is if a soldier has a damaged arm or things like that.
So the idea i have is essentially a support/medic class. His whole job would be to keep everyone alive, get rid of debuffs while buffing his allies. He would have limited offensive means beyond melee attacks, his main goal would be to control the flow of the fight with various abilities. He could be built in 2 directions either as a fairly mobile lightly armored individual that runs across the field to heal soldiers in need or as a walking talking tank with even more armor than the heavy and a riot shield (seriously crabs use it why cant we) he could still heal but dont expect him to run all the way to his patient and still be able to heal straight away.
In terms of abilities and items he would have a sort of “injector” on his hand that he uses to heal allies nearby with multiple charges before having to reload. At first it would just heal health but with upgrades it could heal crippled limbs (tritons can have a passive heal that fixes broken limbs, dont see why we cant develop something similar.) And considering how a soldier can be rendered useless if he gets one of his arms broken.
He can use his riot shield to provide cover for his allies and block entrances, of course he should have a charge ability where he just runs with his shield up and whacking whats in his way.
Other abilities could be things like the goo chiron, where the guy puts down some ooze the can block enemies paths, forcing them to go around.
The last ability i would definitely love for him to have is the ability to save dead soldiers. I understand that you shouldnt get a chance to save your soldiers if they were run over by a crab queen or a car, but if they get gunned down they might just be bleeding out giving your guy a chance to save your soldier. (Considering how crippling the loss of a single soldier can be i’m surprised at the few tools we have access to to keep them alive).
I know it is impossible for this to get added to the game before launch but I would definitely like to see phoenix point faction getting some more uniqueness to it and just have a soldier that focuses on helping by other means than just blasting your opponents.
I’m not sure… I’m not sure what perspective about whole game developers had and how Phoenix Project should behave between all of 3 factions. I wouldn’t propose any new class for sure. But maybe your idea could be ok. Or maybe not. Hard to say.
I see your class as something similar to dual class soldier - technician/heavy. If this fits PP scheme then why not, but I can’t judge it with my knowledge.
The inspiration came from the medics in starcraft. They have no offensive capabilities only disruption, yet are necessary to keep the back bone of any offensive straight. Plus they are heavily armored with shields to protect themselves.
I was thinking more along the lines of a combat medic rather than some who just stays at the back and heals everyone. Someone who can get in there and actually help in other ways.
I feel like the philosophy of a medic really fits into Synedrion, repairing what was good from the old ways but adjusting with tech sort of attitude. The thing is you can equip any unit with any item, so maybe make armor for the medic that disabled one had so they could run the injector arm? That way you could put a pistol in their hands but they couldn’t use any 2 handed weapons at all. I did like the bleed out mechanic in Firaxis-XCOM and feel like you could stabilize soldiers, but not have them enter a state where they could fight again that mission. Maybe not even be able to move on their own.
At first, you might think this would remove the tension of losing a soldier in combat, but how many players are going to reload if they lose a soldier to a lucky headshot, I know a lot of folks will if they aren’t running iron man. Also if a trained medic is the only one who can stop a bleed out that creates more compelling reasons why some players might want to align with Synedrion.
Another thing you could add to this system is to allow Anu priests to have a tech that would allow them to extract the brain and brain stem of bleeding out players to bring back and mutate into new home-brewed soldier mutants. I feel like this would be a sort of holy level tech for Anu which would only be given to trusted allies that would create a divergent path for players who decide to align with Anu.
To address the initial ‘complaint’ of this thread, as I understand it, the philosophy of the PP Devs is NOT to restrict you with overly specialised Classes. Instead, they give you 3 or 4 basic character types which you can mix and match how you like by choosing skills on their progression tree - then it’s up to you to decide what specialties they should take.
So if you wanted a Medic, you’d buff a Technician with all the abilities that tend towards healing people, fixing broken body parts etc.
At the moment it doesn’t feel that way because in the BBs we’re glorified lab rats with so much XP that we don’t have to choose our specialties - we can simply have it all. I hope (and believe) that on December 3rd, we will all come down with a bump, as we realise that we’re not going to get 50XP per Mission, and progressing our Squaddies is going to be a long, slow slog, where every choice we make is going to be a hard one.
So how you specialise your Peeps is going to be entirely down to you, rather than some artificial classification that forces you down a particular path.
Instead, they give you 3 or 4 basic character types which you can mix and match how you like by choosing skills on their progression tree - then it’s up to you to decide what specialties they should take.
This would be the case if the game didn’t sort of dictate what kind of soldier you want to make of one giving its random abilities.
Yes you can choose a technician as second class, but I doubt you will when the game gives that soldier 2 heavy weapon perks.
As far as we have one with close range weapons, one sniper, one heavy and one support/medic, I’m happy. They just need good weapon and armor progression for them. Oh, and one mechanical (tank or whatever). Too much choice just makes game more difficult to balance.
That is something i really don’t like about phoenix point is you have things like snipers having heavy weapons bonus traits. Kind of goes full against what a sniper is meant to do. In xcom 2 war of the chosen i feel like they did it right. You had basic class abilities, you could spend some points to unlock abilities from both trees and each soldier once they reached a certain rank had the possibility to get a random ability from another class but it tended to always be benificial to him.
I also agree with gronky that having no weapon or armor progression at all makes the game a bit “stale”, in xcom i always looked forward to getting equipement upgrades to increases my soldiers chances of survival. Sure it didnt level the palying field as the aliens always had numbers one their side with better weapons and abilities but the combination of the equipement and the abilities of my different soldiers complimenting each other gave me a fighting chance.
This is do give player choice of development for a soldier. If one class is not enough then player can multiclass to some other class and perks indicate which class it can be.
It wasn’t right just like limiting some weapons to specific classes.
It shouldn’t be like that classes compliment each other. It should be like the enemy is forcing you to use different classes. But it is you who decide which classes you want to use and it doesn’t have to be all available classes.
I think here it should work like:
and I think it is better option than simple progression of +20 damage to each weapon type and +30 to each armor type.
I like the random perks for different classes. It feels more organic that way, a sniper who picks up heavy perks is doing it because their character fancies picking up those perks, it might not lead to an ideal build, but in life not every soldier would be ideal, and I like that the game simulate that. In Xcom you basically end up with every soldier being a carbon copy of the previous one once you suss out the best perks to take, in PP it’ll be more situational, hopefully in response to the pandorian’s activities, but at the very least in relation to other skills that are available to that solider.
Medic on the other hand I think should be its own role. Learning how to shoot a shotgun instead of an assault rifle is hardly specialised, whereas being able to perform field surgery very much is.
Hopefully systems won’t be too convoluted or casual players will not buy/play this game. I think there is a beauty in simplicity and it allows many more players to enjoy the game. Saying that game should be very extensible (by mods) to allow community to make it as complex as possible. But this complexity from the very start may not be desired. But, maybe it is for the best as otherwise this would be another xcom…
XCOMs class design is fine for the type of the game it is. It fits with the overall design of the game: taking away customization option, in favour of heavily controlled scenarios. I like how classes complement each other in XCOMs, but the downside is, that there is little decisionmaking when preparing for a mission - equipement and functionality units have is pretty much pre-determened by their class.
That said, so far I am not seeing PP system as an improvement. Seems like they aim for something in the middle between classless and class based XCOMs, and I really don’t know what to make of it just yet.
The pitch of PP was to bring systemic depth that series originally had back. I would prefer for PP to be a game which I can play through more then once.
I hope it too. We will see what developers cooked out there. I’m afraid it can be quite shallow and easy, which will be countered by vast amounts of enemies.