buddy i share your feelings but the reality is that there’s a bunch of people that enjoy the kind of game insane and difficult and look at darkest dungeon or souls-like genre that has been created in the last decade wich say that some people out there wanna suffer and badly too. While i don’t like souls like games i wanna enjoy something like darkest dungeon and maybe like the games of old allow the player to choose the difficulty instead of you have to suffer from unfairiness and enjoy it too. This is the difficulty standard of the '90 games, enjoy it or let it go.
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Have you ever tried X-Com Terror from the deep yet? If not, you don’t know punishing…
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I totally agree with you. I think the PP developers should think about what the game is designed for. Losing players just because others don’t want to see it is disappointing. It doesn’t make the game better, it affects the game. The game should rather unite both worlds. Hardcore players and casual players.
I have maintained from the start that the devs have no vision…
Basically, they created a set of mechanics and then cobbled together a world in which to express them… the exact opposite of how a game should be designed.
First you design the world… then you create a set of mechanics to bring the world to life… these folks have done the exact opposite…
As a consequence, imo, they will never fix this mess as each new solution will create more problems…
Vision is what gives a project its integrity…
“First you design the world… then you create a set of mechanics to bring the world to life… these folks have done the exact opposite…”
As a professional game designer myself, I’m telling you: you are wrong here sir! A game is about mechanics, so usually you would start with them and then create a world that enforces them.
You might start at a high level (“this is what I want the general experience to be”) or at a more granular level (“This is the core mechanic of my game”), but the world usually comes after.
I don’t think this game is unbalanced because of a lack of vision, it is mostly design choices that make for a game experience that some of us (myself included) don’t quite enjoy.
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If I have to study 4 years to understand it, keep it, don’t need it. It just has to be fun, and that’s the hard part, bringing everyone together. The decision has to be made. However.
Its not creative writing, but world as game setting is innovative, mechanics is quite similar to many games. I like acid, good, virus … but most of sodlier skills look like copy/paste
Actually, I think he’s wrong for precisely the opposite reason.
It seems very clear to me that Julian Gollop is a) a massive Cthulu fan and b) wanted to bring his vision for X-com: Apocalypse to life in the way that he originally envisoned it, rather than letting it get butchered by a studio.
The result was Phoenix Point: a story which ‘explains’ Call of Cthulu in a science-fictional setting, and which integrates many of the mechanics from Gollop’s earlier games to make that happen.
So I think the world and the mechanics came hand-in-glove - and for my money they work well.
The only problem I have with this game is the awful balance issues caused by OP skills - but we’re slowly chipping away at that… 
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Interesting. My comment was more a general statement about lordfflin1’s general statement, but what you’re saying is interesting. Do you have sources to back that up? On my side I can’t say I saw a lot of connection with Ctulhu, except that they come from the ocean’s depth, but that’s a bit small to make such a direct comparison.
I’m not in Julian Gollop’s mind but I think a good example of a mechanic that probably came first is the fact that you can shoot at any body part on an enemy. That is a completely “world independant” mechanic, in that it would work with pretty much any lore. Yet it is reinforced by Phoenix Point’s universe, by featuring enemies that have - conveniently- body parts assuming very specific functions, which makes them interesting to target.
Anyway, this is just me assuming and talking about game design generalities. I originally created this thread about the game’s balance and it does not seem to have improved a lot since the release, judging by how many people are still complaining about it.
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Oh, I think the balance has improved immensely by comparison to where it was a year (or even 3 months) ago; but it’s still not there yet. The game has a lot of moving parts, and they often seem to compete against each other - by which I mean there is a tension between fast-paced FTS-style combat with OP superpowers and some players’ expectations of a more tactical, strategic-style of game.
As for JG’s vision, I think the fact that every major update except the last one has been named after a Cthulu place or character - and the nature of the Big Baddie at the end - speaks volumes to me. And anyone who played X-Com: Apocalypse or TFTD back in the day can see where the inspiration for a lot of the mechanics comes from.
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Ah right, forgot about the extensions, I still haven’t played them. This being said, I still think it’s a bit thin to talk about PP as a “X-Com meets Ctulhu” game, if that’s what was implied.
But good to know the game is going somewhere. I hope the devs will manage to find that tricky balance - for what it’s worth, I hope they will lean to the more tactical side of it.
But Polaris is part of Lovecraft…
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Not saying it’s ‘X-Com meets Cthulu’; but it becomes very clear in the endgame that it is providing a science-fictional explanation for the origin of the Cthulu mythos.
As for balance, I think many of us would like the balance to shift away from superheroes to a more tactical kind of game. But for obvious commercial reasons, the Powers That Be clearly feel that they have to play to the crowd that made WotC such a smash hit. That creates a clear tension within the game that has yet to be resolved, though every major iteration inches a tiny step closer towards a decent tactical challenge.
I don’t think it will ever get where some of us would like it to be, and I think super-powers are here to stay. But I do think it is heading in a direction where a Lumpkin or similar modder could pick it up and turn it into the game that so many of us are yearning for.
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Ah, I didn’t know that. Thanks MC 
Ah ok, well I think I’m missing some context then. I did not finish the game, gave up at the end of the last mission, and I did not play the DLCs yet, so that’s probably why. Now I have another reason to get back to the game then 
Apologies for the misunderstanding.
For me, WotC was also a significant improvement over the vanilla version. But the reason in my case was absolutely NOT the stronger supersolidiers. The game was better polished, the story “expanded” very well, the boss fights “integrated” excellently, new enemy types, mission types, factions, geomechanics, soldier classes, combat mechanics (extended stealth, zombies killing) and I probably have many more Forget things …
Back to PP: The basic combat mechanics (movement, combat EXP, even cover) make PP better. Free aim and body parts are even trend-setting and excellent.
But the supersoldiers are on the one hand even more powerful in PP (yes, still) (combo of equipment + skills) and on the other hand these overpowering combos just feel wrong in PP. And I’m not talking about the basic decision to have “magic” skills, but about the skills / combos that break everything and everyone apart without “effort”. It is still “felt” quite a lot of players who apply self restrictions in order to be able to enjoy a “fair” challenge (myself included).
Here’s a little thing: Saw that review on PP Facebook.
First of all: I share the 85 rating (in the current state). At Cons, however, the criticism listed the negative super duper skills.
and many patch names are Lovercraftian, too 
Design of Padorans certainly is.
As if after reading your exchange here, JG decided to explain himself: 
Very interesting imo (a couple cringing moments notwithstanding). I didn’t know JG had nothing to do with TFTD, for example.
Also, Behemoth is officially confirmed to be coming in Festering Skies 
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Just saw this interview on the steam boards, I’m hearing it right now 
edit: to anyone that wants to skip the “past games” mandatory part that everyone already knows, PP begins at 17mins.
I tend to agree with you. I hope we are wrong. I have a backer build I enjoy more than the finished game. i hope through the dlc"the Vision" will be introduced or put a top on this game.
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