Absolutely agree with everything you have written! Especially with:
And developing new sets of skills to competently play a game is something I also love. For example: Learning the different sounds (footsteps, screams etc.) of different aliens in the old X-Coms and being able to identify threats based on sounds in night-missions is extremely immersive and satisfying…
I apologize for not having read the entire thread. I’ll just add my two cents here.
UFO: EU allowed you to see the aliens’ stats… if you used the Mind Probe. So it isn’t like you couldn’t get accurate information on them.
Personally, I would go for the research route here. The way it would be implemented is that you could only see stats after the appropriate research has been done, but then you would also need special equipment to be able to see it in the field, along with maybe having to use willpower or it being limited to certain classes. I got the impression that part of the issue with the research route is: why research it if I can see the stats online? But I don’t see why the only point of research would be to get the mutants’ stats. It could also open up additional research or engineering projects as well as giving you text with hints about the mutants’ vulnerabilities and so on. Much like it was in UFO: EU. And, as someone mentioned above, there’s the possibility of randomizing the mutants’ stats a little bit to keep things interesting.
For future playthroughs, you will know a lot more than the first time for sure, but you’ll probably also forget a lot of the mutants’ stats between playthroughs (unless you’re doing a replay immediately after).
The problem with giving three options of on automatically, on only by research, or off totally is that all the other research times would be imbalanced if there is an option to not research or to research because turning it on means you get to research less of everything else if it is balanced for off, or turning it off means you get a lot more research then it is balanced for. Though it could still work with a caveat, that being that you could have the two options of turned on or require research and balance it around not requiring research, that would leave default on unaffected, people who just want it off and so can just opt to skip the research unaffected, and people who want it on but at a price effected by having to choose between researching x’s HP and/or armor or researching things like making the gattling gun weight less allowing the heavy to move further while being able to fire.
That way the game is balance around people who want it either on or off, and only adds difficulty for people who want to make a choice of what to research because they have more limited time.
Man, I’d love to see classic godzilla/king kong movies each having a set of red pips. Would be great comedy kaiju movies.
I think there could be a 4th option.
While HP pips could be hidden, research could be used to gain intel about bodyparts status. 1st time you find an enemy with a set of bodyparts(read: mutations), the body icon of that enemy which can be seen in the HUD and UI could be black, and if you manage to retrieve an enemy’s body after a mission, you could be able to do an autopsy which yields intel about the bodyparts you managed to leave in “good” shape, so nex time you find an enemy with those specific mutations (or maybe even similar ones if you train your soldiers to be able to interpolate data) you will be able to see the general status of those (white=good/intact, yellow=damaged, red=disabled/bleeding). While there will still be obvious visual information you could get just from seeing a bodypart bleeding, this would allow the players to feel a sense of pride and accomplishment when they see that little info in the UI.
Edit: Of course, without showing those HP bars and the whole “x bleeding per turn” and such notifications. just the color coded status icon
There is a problem with enemy HP info being visible after research. How do you research behemoths to get HP info if they get away? At least it was my impression that behemoths will tend to get away. I’ve mentioned in another thread a possible solution which would be to get this info by other means. One would be from research into other mutants (e.g. Queen’s larvae), or perhaps as a reward from certain missions or from other factions and so on.
With that being said, I would definitely not make HP visibility a toggle. Personally, I vote for it being off until the mutant (or a specific body part) has been researched and then maybe visible only with special equipment. So similar to how it was in UFO.
Matter of fact? Yes. Don’t take this to be me bragging, I just never had much of a problem adapting to long war and being able to prioritize targets at a glance without even using the F1 scan menu on each alien individually by just noticing how hit chances change as I cycle through targets. As for shit hitting the fan, this might be a consequence of how I already played at the time I started LW, but outside of the final mission/alien basses I rarely found a situation I was not ready for. And even in such situations, I’ve discovered that the eternal “fall back and regroup” plan where I baited the pods back to a previous room was more than enough to get my men out of trouble. In a lot of talks I’ve had online on the topic people always seemed shocked when I told them that’s an option. Anyway, I don’t want to derail this further.
Hold on who says you have to even select a soldier or even press a button? I mean … you can freely move the camera correct? And you can zoom in and out on your own correct? I was not blind when I saw those features in the demo vids of PP right? So … why click anything? Want to know the damage state of a crab-man? Pan the camera to him and zoom in to see the model closer. That’s what I am arguing for. It’s even simpler than xcom, you don’t even need to click a button to get a stats screen. Yes, this would mean that, at least the first time you play, when you run into a new mutation you will only be able to guess what that fancy new tentacle does. But then again this is a non-issue, as any form of repeated playthroughs, perfect or imperfect information, will feature the problem of previous experience informing the player. In LW, after my 3rd or 4th campaign I was already well aware of what special abilities each alien can spawn with, and at what point in the game they roughly start spawning. A few games later, I could also accurately estimate spawn time based on how well I was performing in the campaign. And a little while longer I could also guess the frequency of special spawned aliens per mission. Had the game featured imperfect information, I would still eventually be able to discern these things, it would just take me longer to do it. The only difference is: imperfect information makes for a more tense first experience with the game because you have to adapt on the fly and try to guess what each new mutation does. To me that seems like a much better first experience. I can see why some might find a worse one and might feel it’s unfair after being spoiled by a lot of modern games that serve you everything on a silver platter.
That’s a really cool idea. I’m not saying information should always be imperfect. No, progress in the game needs to manifest in practical terms, and the quality of the information you get is one of those options. I’m just saying getting perfect information should come at a trade-off and need effort to get. To quote a post I made in the previous forum about limited view arcs, I proposed scanners of different types could substitute the unrealistic 360% view angle, BUT those scanners would start as simplistic, prone to false positives, and get better down the line with research as well as development of new scanning frequencies. At a base level I believe a player has to pay for everything he gets from a game by something. Information is a powerful tool, and perfect information makes for (usually at least) perfect decisions. So if I have to pay with whatever form finances take in this game for having more soldiers and better equipment, pay in time and research staff to discover new tech, pay in inventory space to bring guns and ammo to missions and pay in ammo the cost of defeating my enemies, why then should perfect information be given to me for free. Force me to bring scanners that could start out as very bulky and severely limit a soldier’s ability to fight, force me to pay in personal observational skills and battlefield awareness. Make me work for my reward.
makes the world go round 
… eh yeah I get that. But I figured the devs would at least want to see what ideas and dreams their backers have for the game, so that’s why I try to come up with these things. I hold no illusion that everything I can dream up will be in the game, that would be insane.
a fair point. perhaps an action log that includes transcripts of your soldiers, if of course the devs decide to do a form of audio-feedback? Seems like the simplest solution.
I am tempted to, and to bring back some points from the old forum I made in the limited view cones thread, but atm I’m having IRL issues to deal with as well. I’ll try to keep active on the forums, but a post like that will be a long one. Still … I’ll bite. But it may take a little to get it written due to time constraints.
On a final unrelated note: I noticed a lot of people proposing the middle ground of having a toggle. While that is the best case scenario for players, that is the worst case scenario for a dev. He essentially has to code 2 unique variants of the same game, and create a lot of new feedback systems that people who play with perfect information turned on in their UI will have no use for. It’s ideal but it increases costs immensely AND it undermines the game’s vision as now two competing visions have to be accommodated. While like I said, it would be ideal, it’s not feasible. Whatever choice the devs make, I hope it’s informed by the theme and atmosphere they want their game to have. Gameplay must serve the story and the story must serve the gameplay, otherwise the discordance between them will be jarring. A horror lovecraftian atmosphere, with emphasis on fear, on facing the alien, the unknown, the grotesque and the unnatural, of frailty in the face of cosmic horror (IE exactly what all the briefings and the short stories in the archive create IMO) is far better served in the gameplay by having imperfect and limited information available to the player.
I think this is a cool idea. I would like to see this as an optional setting for a campaign. The optional settings in the first modern Xcom gave it loads of replay value, so I would definitely like to see something similar in Phoenix Point.
If you tried explaining that on the XCOM subreddit, it probably required a lot of patience. This is an interesting and civil subreddit, but it used to suffer from extreme fanboyism, boiling down to “if Beaglerush doesn’t do it, then it’s not a valid tactic”, but this is indeed completely off topic.
My apologies. There have been a lot of ideas floated on this topic and it was probably someone else who mentioned using free aim to inspect the crabs, which would lead to the issues I pointed out. If visual identification can be achieved from the regular tactical view without having to look for the single pixel indicating that the alien has a headache, then I’m all for it 
I’m mostly in favor of a limitation of numerical information. I find it more immersive and there’s also a much more personal reason. I’m a data analyst and looking at numbers to predict outcomes is my job. I like my job, but I don’t want my crab slaying activities to feel too similar to it.
I like the scanner idea but I think it’s pushing it a bit too far. I’d be happy enough to have regular cone vision for my soldiers and the ability to setup a few remote cameras to cover blind spots. Extra research for better sensors may or may not be too much. The funny thing about having limited vision is it makes you realize how powerful a 360 degrees vision upgrade is. Some late game xenonauts armors have 360 degrees vision and it’s not just a gimmick for me, but a major selling point.
Well, you could develop for imperfect info and balance the game around it, but leave a “second wave” option to see enemy HP. Some second wave options in FiraXcom and XCOM 2 completely throw off the balance, and balance in single player games is a relative thing anyway.
XCOM 2 does it the other way around, but it’s less than perfect because once you remove enemy HPs, you’re left with zero visual cues regarding enemy health. With questionable internal consistency (a trooper in riot gear has 4 HP, a butt naked sectoid has a dozen …), it becomes a nightmare, but still made my first playthrough memorable.
I’m also a partisan of imperfect information, but I’d be surprised if we were a majority, so I have to think about the other side of the argument.
I like the idea of never knowing how many hit points they have, even with research. maybe have a short description of some sort that you could pass off as observation from your soldiers, e.g. “Unharmed”, “Wounded”, “Severely wounded”, “near death”. These could be tied to percentage values of the critters total hidden HP, so “near death” on a queen might mean you need to do another 15 damage, while “near death” on a basic crab-dude might mean he is a pistol-shot away from his demise. Keep players guessing by giving difference classes of critters a hit-dice pool, and “rolling” their HP at the start of a battle - with this and the descriptions vs. HP display, players could at most figure out a range of HP for different classes/level of baddies, but would never know specifics of the guys they were fighting. This could also be a feature of harder difficulty levels, and keep HP displays for easier difficulty modes.
Appropriate visual cues or sounds would be enough. There could be different kinds of wounds (dependent on weapon used or nature of particular enemy): besides bleeding it could be i.e. some kinds of bloated, pulsing blisters growing up from wounded places. Such wounds would distort shapes of the mutants, glowing and pulsing on them etc., but above all giving clear visual information where enemy got hit and how badly. Also, it would add to the horror theme for being as repulsive as mutants themselves 
Coming here from this thread by Kurungu. I already posted my thoughts on HP visibility there but I though it might be good to share them here as well. Allow me to quote my post in that thread:
I do understand how some tactical game aficionados always strive for
having as much detailed information about combat situation as possible
to make the best possible decision but in case of XCom games(and I use
this term loosely here), fighting the unknown threat, making the best of
what you know and learning more through research is a crucial part of
what makes those games unique and appealing.
I do think that outside of basic human opponents, well-known human
vehicles and tech(i.e. mutants and experimental tech fall outside of
that category), enemy stats should not be available to players unless
particular enemy is researched. Information starts as “healthy/lightly
wounded/severely wounded/dead” and “unarmoured/lightly armoured/heavily
armoured” for unresearched enemies. Researching a body part provides
detailed info for it while having more than 50% of the enemy body parts
researched provides the detailed info on the enemy total health.
As for new player experience, firstly I do not think the game should
extensively cater for inexperienced and, more to the point, those
unwilling to learn. XCom-like games were always quite hard and quite
complex; those qualities are an integral part of what makes them
appealing, what makes them stand out. So a good tutorial and detailed
“ufopaedia” articles should be much more preferable that an overbundance
of easily available tactical information with no efforts required to
obtain it.
Now, how I think new player experience as well as veteran experience
should be tackled. My solution is to tie the stat information
availability into difficulty settings. While basic selection of
“easy/med/hard etc” difficulty levels should provide a quick way of
selecting a difficulty, all(or at least some) variable difficulty
settings should be available via advanced difficulty options, similar to
how it is done in Long War. Each “base” difficulty setting will have a
pre-set of advanced options with a difficulty score indicating how
selected difficulty mode relates to pre-set modes.
Easy mode will have “research required for detailed enemy stats”
disabled by default while other pre-sets will have it enabled. Players
will be able to either pick a pre-set which will cater for their overall
idea of difficulty or, in case of a experienced player who simply
prefer having the full stat info right off the bat, pick a difficulty
and then tweak it via advanced options. To keep the difficulty score at
the desired level(i.e. custom but still qualifying as “hard” for
instance), other difficulty options could be enabled to compensate for
the additional stat info. This will solve the new player experience
issue for those who will be unable to deal with the lack of start right
away.
Now, to make things interesting for seasoned veterans, who are on
their Nth playthrough and could already memorized all alien start, we
can introduce and additional difficulty option to slightly randomize the
stats for each alien body part at the start of the campaign. I expect
this to be in line with the overall feel of the game as randomized alien
composition from a library of body parts is already being implemented,
this idea only takes this a step further, if not envisages the already
planned but not yet announced feature. Stat variation have to be
limited, of course, to prevent aliens form being impossible to kill
early on. But if implemented as a pick out of 3-4 stat pre-sets for each
alien body part, instead of being fully random, it can go a long way to
make stat research meaningful even when you have several playthroughs
under your belt.
To add to this, I don’t think that there is a need for a particular way of balancing the extra research goal for body part stat info, I simply think body part autopsy itself should provide the data when completed if the research-dependent stat availability is enabled. That way no extra research tree items will be necessary.