[Feedback][Spoiler] Goodbye Phoenix Point

Phoenix Point Game Feedback
1

Yeah, I’m not finishing this game. I was close though, reached the last mission and shot at the Yuggoth, but that was the last straw. I really wanted to love that game and for some time I did, but all the bugs, the bad UI, and the general balance have grinded through my enthousiasm until it was gone. I still have the DLCs to wait, so maybe I’ll come back one day, but right now I’m pissed. This being said, here is a bit of positive and negative feedback, if anyone’s interested. Let’s start with the good.

  • I like the gameplay’s openness. Actions can be used in whichever order, I can aim at parts to disable abilities, etc… I found the tactical part of the game much deeper than in Xcom.
  • Nice to see the Geoscape so full of stuff to do, even though it lacks a bit of variety in my opinion.
  • Lots of tech to unlock, that’s really cool, even if a lot of them are disappointing (more on that below)
  • I can manage several squads at the same time, I like that.

Now the bad.

  • This game is full of bugs. And some can be very annoying, like the one with the armo piercing rifle not reloading.
  • Return fire: come on. Seriously? If it’s so punishing that I’d rather not shoot at an enemy, it’s bad.
  • Sirens: I know they have been nerfed, but still, I find their range too long and they don’t even need line of sight to control you (or was it a bug?). Plus it does not make sense that they are the most dangerous enemy in the game but appear in early-mid. I think they should be nerfed again. Or at least, be in a more limited number.
  • Vehicles are underwhelming: they can’t reload, can’t be repaired (or do they need a Tech guy for that? Still, if you don’t have one, you’re fucked). And they take a lot of space in a plane. Sure they do a decent amount of damage, but not enough to be interesting, in my opinion.
  • Tech are half of the time not very interesting. A small bonus percentage in damage, cool… You’d think, for all the trouble it is to capture a Siren, you’d get a better reward than that. Like, I don’t know, some resistance to mind control?
  • The end game is a DRAG. I was spammed with Haven Defense missions. In the end I stopped caring and let them all die.
  • Last mission, after a very long and frustrating battle, I get to the Yuggoth, only to discover that I don’t have enough ammo to kill him. This is not fun. Telling a player, after HOURS of game, that they have to start all over again. That is just bad. The whole mission was not fun and I am not doing it again.
  • Bomb abdomen chiron… this is another rage inducing thing. Can damage you but you can’t see it. I even met them on some maps that did not provide any cover against it.
  • Lairs are too hard and it makes no sense that they are way harder than Citadels. If the best strategy is to let them turn into Citadels, then something is wrong.
  • I find the game generally too hard and punishing. I don’t know how to play it without save-scumming. The level design seems to be one of the main reasons for this, I think, because there are mission where I kick the Pandoran’s asses without a sweat, and others where I get murdered, but the enemies are the same and my squad too. My guess is that some setup are more favorable than others.
  • Overwatch behind low cover is useless and in a lot of cases, it did not trigger when I though it would
  • Please, give me a warning if my grenade is going to blow up in a tree instead of on an enemy…

I could go on, there’s more, but these are the worst offenders in my opinion. Sorry for the wall of text, I guess I needed to vent a bit. I’ll still follow what’s going on with this game, hoping it will get better. But for now, I’m done with it.

19 Likes
2

Only Lairs and Citadels, for Citadels, go at map border. In all other maps there’s a cover design, sometimes full of traps.

I wanted open a thread on tools against RF, common who didn’t screwed up because of RF? :slight_smile:

Here a first draft:

  • Longer range, even this has traps with crabs having a rather long range. A bit basic, and not always possible.
  • Owerwatch, not perfect and there’s a part of anticipation that can go wrong, plus it can go weird if the crab can move and totally ignore your cover. Still if not, at least you’ll get shoot at with a cover stopping some bullets. if you try shoot from this cover, the RF will be against a soldier with no cover. Morever if the soldier has RF you get two shoot at alien against only one shoot from enemy.
  • Control/shoot/uncontrol, but for sure now it cost an AP it’s more for some special cases.
  • Destroy weapon, well if you fail the destruction you’ll cry. In fact it’s easier for a sniper, but then the range disable RF, it is more a strategic approach, disarm two crabs more than kill only one.
  • Blocked los from enemy to you, the good point of RF is there isn’t a side step, so sometime you can shoot at, and RF won’t be possible.
  • Sonic grenade, it’s not cheap but it’s a way.
  • Invisibility (Vanish), that’s a way.
  • Stealth not detected, harder or less use case but no will cost.
  • Electric Reinforcement, I know it looks basic, but to open a chain of attacks against RF aliens, why not?
  • Stun, typically with the cannon, but I’m not sure when stun fail, perhaps sometimes because of shield when they become stronger.
  • Alien with overwatch, then no RF until the overwatch is applied. Use cases without breaking the overwatch are rare, the lotery win is get the overwatch then the RF, ok I don’t know if it’s possible to endure both, anyway an overwatch shoot will be as much nasty than a RF.
  • Kill, there’s often a part of risk here, but you can have some soldiers that can one shot kill such RF crabs. If you have ways to lower HP before it can work.
  • Panic, well I don’t remind if it blocks a RF, worth a check. The point is often panic is more an opportunity to manage another target before.
  • Cover without side step. Cover with side step are the worse but low cover with stand up aren’t much better. There’s a few high cover not requiring side step, it’s a bit less worse in term of global damages alas it tends end with heads damages and will lost.

No, they are fun and versatile generating many combats cases/contexts. And no they aren’t that hard, including a pack of Sirens.

I think there’s a warning, but it is a bit nasty. If you move a bit the target point it switches from no damages to some damages, the no damages clue an obstacle in that path. I got recently trapped, I was wondering why not damages but a precise target point… A tree and no damages.

6 Likes
3

Regarding the grenade thing, I’ve done damage with the preview showing none (just highlighting). So I’m not sure how to read it.

Sirens: Agree to disagree, I guess? :wink:

RF: Sure, there are ways to counter it, I still think it’s too punishing. I don’t mind taking some damage, but I’ve had full health soldiers killed by this. At least if the game let me go back to cover before, that would be fine. Right now, I don’t think this mechanic is fair.

But thank you for reading my message and taking the time to reply :slight_smile:

2 Likes
4

Ok there could be many bugs here, the tree isn’t a cover and the grenade has a small luck to get through it unlike a roof. At some point the chance is so small that no damages are shown or small but high enough so damages are shown. It’s just guess.

They was perhaps trying setup a grenade aiming system, currently still half baked and very hard to understand. They improved a lot grenades precisions to make it clearer. But it looks still half baked.

For me there’s two points, estimation of damages, estimation of trajectory chance. With aiming there’s colors and stripes to give a global clue on it, plus the aiming circles give a more intuitive clue on chance to hit. With grenades all the problems apply but the curve trajectory make it even more complicated. Just say no to player when there’s only a chance to totally fail isn’t the solution.

Sirens: Yeah I totally disagree.

Fair: XCOM1&2 are overall a lot less fair.

5

Agree with almost everything on the list: also let all the havens die out in the last third :slight_smile: Was not worth bothering with them as you can get to the final mission withouth them at that point

Also gave up on the last mission. It is quite a drag.

Read somewhere that grenades should get a one turn timer for both sides - that might resovle the issue with bombards and bad aim/luck of own soldiers

4 Likes
6

Sometimes you think there is no line of sight, but there is a small hole in the wall that you can’t see and the Siren mind-controls you through that hole.

1 Like
7

Mmm quoted the case for one of my priest, but sometimes I wonder, but yes in general if no bug the los is required for control, los and range.

1 Like
8

Happened to me just today

1 Like
9

I agree with some of this. RF is killer until you systematically counter it. As I progressed, much less of an issue. Same with Sirens. You reach a point where you can almost always disable their heads before they can mind control (or do it before the mind controlled soldier does any damage). Obviously, there are exceptions. I have been mind controlled a couple times with seemingly no LOS.
As for the Yuggoth mission, I just found it time consuming. I actually liked it. I didn’t have an issue running out of ammunition and part of the reason is that I bring plenty of snipers (2 or 3) and a couple technicians to the end game missions. This allows me to use inventory slots for ammunition / grenades instead of medkits. Also, sniper magazines are large, especially Synedrion Pythagoras. I think all the other sniper rifles hold 10 rounds, still quite alot.
I am done for awhile until DLC comes out. Like you, I would like to see many bug fixes, a somewhat better tech tree and changes to the cover system. In addition, I would like some reward beyond a bonus in faction relations, for lair missions. I am hopeful that with upcoming DLC there will be fixes to all of this.

2 Likes
10

I’d be curious to know why you feel that way, cause I feel the opposite. To me, it basically boils down to very bad things happening to you and you have no way to counter them.

XCom sure can be unfair, but not as much. Yes, sometimes that 90% shot fails and it’s frustrating, though if you think of it, that’s not “unfair”, you were warned, there was a 10% chance of failing. And these situations do not happen that much, in my experience. And PP also has these easy shots that are missed but the way they display the chances to hit is less intuitive.

A big issue with PP, I think, is the lack of visibility over what is happening.

  • Due to the fact that bullets are simulated, you can’t predict how much damage you will do or take. That’s why Return fire is so frustrating I think, cause you can get a full health soldier get one shot just like that.
  • Same with bombard Chirons. They can hit you so hard you will lose perfectly healthy people, or their gun will break, and sometimes this happens on a turn where you don’t know they exist and/or there’s no cover (like in Lairs).

Another example of unfairness: civilians in attacked Havens. Depending on the starting set up, the can start very close to Pandorans. I have seen some of them being killed on the first turn, and there would have been no way for me to save them. So I get -2 WP for what? Just because? I totally get the penalty, this is to avoid me just saving one civilian every time, but there would have been less punishing ways to do this I think. Like, if the resources reward depended on how many civilians I saved, this would be a more serious incentive to save them all and much less frustrating.

  • Speaking of Will, this is another thing where I feel the game takes control away from you: Panic. If I get one soldier killed (or one too many civilian), some of my guys can go Panic. Ok. But there’s a fair chance they will end their turn out of cover. Meaning they can be easily killed. Meaning more of my guys can Panic, and so on… During this whole downward process, I have no control over what can happen. At least I did not. Sometimes you don’t have a Synedrion decoy, or you can’t kill all the Pandorans that could your panicking soldier. In XCom at least they take cover and hunker down (ok, sometimes they shoot at you, but in my experience, that not that often).

On top of that, I think the game is much more punishing than XCOM or even Darkest Dungeon, which has the reputation of being unfair. In XCom you can anticipate much more whether you’ll be hit or not, and you get a chance to have your soldiers bleed out, to give you time to save them. In DD, you have a lots of warnings before a soldier dies, usually allowing for saving them. And even when they do die, you have plenty of new recruits to make up for it, and it’s not that long to make them level-up, where I feel it’s the exact opposite in PP.

So yeah (sorry for another wall of text), maybe this is just a matter of showing what happens to the player. Or maybe that game is not for me in the end. Maybe the intention is to make a “realistic” simulation of what war is: gritty, unfair, frustrating. Maybe if I had more patience, if I accepted more good soldiers dying and losing missions, I could enjoy the game. I did feel frustrated in XCOM, but not remotely as much as in Phoenix Point.

3 Likes
11

So XCOM1&2 are a lot less fair:

  • Pods, it’s a mechanism with no fairness, it’s just surprise.
  • Ambush failing and you got a heavy backslash all of a sudden, without mention when two pods are involved. Nothing fair.
  • Time out, forced rush is no fairness.
  • Hacking gambling, it’s deliberate temptation thrill, even a 90% chance hack can fail and result in many enemies reinforcement.
  • Random hit is less fair than balistic system.
  • Civilians are very spread everywhere, there’s often many you have no chance to save without insane risks. They run everywhere including to aliens los. At reverse in PP they are packed and hide. But what make it really more fair is the consequences on such RNG element, important in XCOM, only some global skill points in PP which is a lot more fair for a so RNG element.
  • Panic is very RNG including running to enemies which is a lot more unfair than PP panic which is always a safer retreat and go in cover or hide if possible.
  • More

At reverse in PP:

  • Enemies sounds shown, very very fair approach, in XCOM it’s just a vague hint.
  • Enemies sounds heard, warn you on what’s in the map, it’s more minimal with XCOM.
  • Enemies aren’t hidden during a turn if out of los, very fair.

That said, it’s a matter of definition of what means fair in the context.

EDIT:
Return Fire and Chirons bombard are unfair for you because you haven’t learned yet. For know all crabs with AR have RF, if you don’t know that already well… Learn how manage it, nothing less.

Bombard Chiron, certainly the most complex enemies yo manage if you can’t kill them fast. But learn how manage them, only Lairs are a problem with them because of lack of cover.

Panic, manage better your soldiers will. Learn play better against enemies that can low down will. For example Sentinel can look unfair when you haven’t learned yet they have a big range and when alerted it matter.

12

Well you still have a lot to learn in PP when you already learned a lot in XCOM and DD, that’s why you feel it more unfair. Learn play PP to realize it is a lot more fair than both. The auto scaling that can go wild is another aspect.

13

That’s not what I call fairness. If they are out of line of sight, fair would be for them to be hidden (or located if within hearing range).

2 Likes
14

The hacking gamble is fair. You know the risk. And failure at 90% always happen even in PP. The balistic system is way better but you have % chance to hit it is just hidden. Without a sniper riffle you often have 5-10% to miss or hit heavy armor part. Some times an arthron will hit you five times behind high cover at 20-25 meters. And other times two of them will hit you once at 10-15 meters even without any cover.

Because of the size of the maps, I see half of the ennemy first turn. So if I don’t hide first turn, 2-3 ennemies will see me and start attacking. As soon as you engage combat you will be heard. It is better than having an alien died at the foot of another one that won’t see anything. But because of the size of the map (without 75-100% stealth) you have 80% of the map alerted and rushind at you the nest turn. 2-3 turns later either you have kill 75% of the ennemies or you have lost 1-2 soldiers. Because of the size of the map, in 90% of the mission I fight next to my starting possition. This turn the game into a tower defense.

The civilian are hidden But that does not help much. Sometimes they are hidden in a building with nearly no wall at the opposite side of the map with 90% of the ennemies in visibility range. Sometimes they are in the first level of the building close to my position. The building have so many windows that the only part of the map you can’t see them is at the base of the building (where I start). As soon as one civilian is hit everybody is aware of their position. Any aliens will rush and you will lose 4-6 will in one turn.

Both games are fair and unfair depending on situation. I prefer the game mechanism of PP. But the number of ennemies and the size of the map make them unfair most of the time. With maps 1-2 times bigger PP would be a lot better than XCOM.

I also think that “Scavenging Site” should have less ennemies middle and late game. With so much ennemies you lose most of the crates in 1-2 turns. You have no mission to train average level soldiers. Sending a squad of soldier between 3-5 is a extremely risky. If Ambush and Scavenging Site would not increase in difficulty that much you could have missions to train soldiers instead of save scuming or abusing training centers.

7 Likes
15

I explain why, you move two cases, an enemy is in los and seen in this turn, you move one more case, it isn’t anymore in los. It’s still shown until end of turn.

Just show/hide/show/more a same enemy in the turn is no way linked to fairness to enemies, it changes nothing, but to player so he doesn’t need memorize every single enemy briefly seen in a turn. For enemies it changes nothing, it’s not pvp.

EDIT:
Or there’s rules and that’s it, then everything is fair, it’s the rules. But nope game fairness isn’t this.

16

I disagree, because of gambling nature of hacking.

You hack you get a giant robot, you lost you get one more enemy death team against you.

In fact hacking 90% is either pointless, if you can manage fine the penalty you don’t need the robot. Either a last chance gamble, that is you screwed up before. It’s nothing like a 90% shoot.

17

In this whole section I didn’t quote fully I don’t see any link with fairness.

Sure but in XCOM1&2 it’s a lot worse with civilians.

I don’t see a clear link with fairness.

Yeah scavenging missions design is nothing fair past first parts of the game. At least we agree on one point, not bad.

18

Disagree with larger maps, I prefer more level of depth such as tunnels or higher buildings. Larger maps may cause of boredom in battle and lame loading :sweat_smile:…unless player has tons variety of thing they can do in a battle.

19

There’s larger maps and larger maps, but I wonder if they didn’t reduced in size since release. Could be a psychological effect, but I have the feeling there’s now many tiny maps. One large building, and not much more, I don’t remind that when now it seems more common.

EDIT: Gee forgot target the point. Too large maps can go in wrong way, no more tiny maps looks good.

20

Small maps asure that as soon as you engage the ennemies they will all run at you. And you have limited time to kill them all. That add a kind of timer. It is hard to move without being seen with so many ennemies on too small maps. You can get cornered quickly. Some deployement zone feel like death trap. And often it seems unfair.

I like to be able to move more before having to engage. I like to be able to ambuch and kill some before most of them strat rushing at me. Killing all of them 2-3 at a time is not better. But it should be possible to soften them slighly by picking isolated ennemies before engaging the main force.

With bigger map the civilians will be harder to find. Now either they are visible or they are in black spot. It seems the ennemies tend to search where they see nothink if they don’t have target in sight. With too small map most of the building where civilian can hide are at one turn to an ennemy.

In Lair, reinforcement arrives too quicly. 1-2 turns to the center of the map is not enough.

Because of that the pace of the game is quick as soon as you engage. Damage over time is often useless with to quick pace. (size of the map is not as important as obstacles and maze like structures)

In conclusion: movement and hearing range are to important for the size of the map. With better maps the game would be a lot more tactical. I think the maps are the main weakness of the game. Some balance issues would be reduced by better maps.

But I agree too big map is not better. You may have to find the last ennemy and search for a long time. If the map has lot of empty space, the snipers will becomes even more powerfull. You need obstacle to reduce line of sight.

  • Less opportunity for snipers.
  • more opportunity to hide.
  • You can temporise more. Arthron will need to move more to get light of sight if you hide well enough.

If you increase the size of the map by 1.5 times it should not be too big or too small. Now the performance of the game might suffer. Destructible environment cost a lot of ressource.

1 Like