I am a 48 years old veteran player who have been playing these types of games since Rebelstar and Laser Squad on ZX Spectrum in the 80s, I played the original UFO Enemy Unknown in 1995 and the sequel Terror From the Deep, Jagged Alliance 2, Silent Storm, Xenonauts, XCOM 1, 2 and Chimera Squad, finishing most of them on the highest difficulty level and in ironman mode where applicable. For a year now I’ve been playing Phoenix Point where I’ve gone over 1000 hours of gameplay and finished the campaign three times in Legendary.
First of all, we have to congratulate the programmers because the game has gotten better and better with the successive DLCs and Patches that were made throughout this year and for listening to feedback from players giving them answers.
This game has the potential to be a reference in the genre, however it still has in my opinion two serious flaws that prevent that from happening.
1 – The lack of immersion of the player and connection to the soldiers during the campaign.
2 – The ease that is found in the late game with our team too powerful in the face of threats, leaving the game to be challenging.
The problem with immersion is that there is no connection to our units, in legendary there are no unique soldiers (except for Citizen Ellen that is won with the Synedrion), there are no NPCs to interact with in Phoenix Point (only with factions). With the mutations, augmentations, and wearing the uniforms of other factions, our team is too uncharacterized and we hardly associate it with the videos that appear in the game and report Phoenix Point operations at key moments in the campaign.
As for the final overpower that happens after discovering the Ancient Weapons with Cross Classes and soldiers full of attributes, I think it’s necessary to give a big buff to Pandoras in late game if you continue to have challenges. The ideal would be to eliminate cross classes but since this is one of the main features of the game, I know it’s impossible. But balancing the crossover of the various classes as suggested by the testers and it’s on the Wiki should be a priority.
In the last DLC the Mutoid was added, which is a nice unit, however it has two severe problems. It does not create any empathy with the player and given the ease with which it is obtained, it is seen as “a lot of resources” and not as a soldier, if we lose it, it easily replaces another equal. Causes an overpower in early/mid game… the Mutoid should be seen as a middle game unit without being able to reach the final limits in HP, WP and AP of the human soldiers (I suggest taking 5 in each category) and it should be necessary more mutagens to if you manage to make the upgrades (or be harvested less mutagens from the prisoners due to the ease and enormous amount that can be obtained in the attacks on Phoenix Point bases).
The game also has a severe exploit in the economy due to the equipment teleport system. This allows the human to channel their resources into developing bases or whatever instead of producing equipment. Just equip a single team and run that same set of equipment by several teams, a player can make “house rules” to prevent this exploit (as was my case), however the game itself should prevent this from happening at all.
A agree with the first part. Strongly disagree with the second.
You probably should understand that not everyone has 40 years of experience playing these games, nor everyone invests thousands of hours crafting perfect strategies for PhoenixPoint.
It is perfectly right to ask for additional difficulty options though. But after seeing dozens of suggestions posted by you to increase the overall difficulty. I dont think I agree in any of your reasons and suggestions to increased difficulty in the general game.
Still some of the changes you suggest, which are basically plot holes, in the logic of the campaign. Could be addressed, just not at the cost of an increased difficulty for the sake of it.
I more or less agree and I am a little older and have 1500+ hrs play time in PP. For me I worry about the game becoming too fan boy centric with the fun element drained out for casual players. Snapshot needs the casual players as they are the new people to the game and bring the money to reinvest and keep the game developing.
I would recommend that Snapshot do two things:
A game set-up screen with far more granular options so people can customise their game for enjoyment or challenge
Allow for modding
With these two options available players like Lobo can have a more challenging game and modders can fill the gaps that seasoned players are looking for without Snapshot spending huge amounts of time and money tweaking the game for some at the expense of others. It would also make DLC more valueable as the modders would use various mechanics in DLC to make their mod. My point isn’t the options that could be altered, but rather that this would go a long way to answering the wants of conflicting player expectations on how the game plays by providing favoured options.
I dropped this suggestion on phoenixpoint.canny.io feedback as “Providing fun options”. I hope Snapshot continue to develop PP and they attract new players for the sake of us all.
I agree with you on this. Strategy games require crazy balance applied, or multitude of options to place there for players so everyone can be satisfied. I am from the hardcore part at least in case of Phoenix Point, and this game feels wrong to me on many levels. BUT
Probably will be done by modders.
Not gonna happen unfortunately. Game wasn’t designed for it.
There are no plans for such thing. SG will probably fix some stuff after last DLC. Maybe will introduce some changes asked by many people. And that will be it. Maybe they will come back again to fix some more bugs. But development of this game is at the end. Game is not user friendly to put more content to it, so why punish devs by asking them to do it? They are already on some new projects (yes, couple of them). If Phoenix Point 2 will be between them is hard to say. I suppose not. Or at least not more than pre-prototype/ concept phase. They will probably create some document for a sequel and will go back to it after two or three years.