I know exactly what it does. And my point is: simulations doesn’t fit well to realtime(ish) nature of shooting in a first place. This is just… stupid. Why do we have free-aim and animations if actual enemy pose, position and reaction is simulated? I don’t mind simulations, but I do hate the fact, that response to my non-simulated action is a simulation.
This is your interpretation of what it is, and I am pretty sure it has nothing to do with evasion or %. Standard aim follows center of mass, free-aim is not. It doesn’t make standard aim “unavoidable attack mode”. It is just technical aspect of free-aim not being able to track target (because there is no real target).
This game is full of hidden simulations and indirect percentages. Why would be so important to make ballistic animated evade, especially the one that is not evade per se, but idle animation? It would as much simulated evade like anything else, just more visually appealing. I don’t mind simulations, as long as the cognition as the whole is consistent.
And for me, evasive enemies could have such simulated evade, whatever would it be. Change the way of how bullets hit evasive enemy, miss if in outer reticle overlays model and 50% hit if inner reticle overlays model. Or something else. It would be still fine for me, and would not feel worse than learning idle/flinching animations to “counter evade”.
I don’t know, people here complain change is making game easier/dumber, so it does make it more difficult apparently. For me, change makes game less annoying. I’ve had situation where I was few tiles away, was about to finish off NJ guy with a headshot. He was standing sideway to me… and flinched backwards after first shot. That was illogical and unexpected. Was that game telling me I couldn’t be 100% sure to kill? Because for me it was bullshit, considering he survived what he shouldn’t, turned around and RF me.
Just because something has a goal or purpose, doesn’t mean it is perfect and flawless. Read above how refreshing it was for me. It has flaws, a lot. Overwatch triggered by movement animation is why you can’t overwatch closed doors. You overwatch closed doors, enemy stands behind doors, doors open, enemy shoots you, you do nothing because enemy stands still. Refreshing.
Did they? Or maybe they fixed one of the game flaws to not piss off more people?
Sure, just like I would like an option to turn off super abilities and so on. I don’t mind Second Wave and I am all in. Just expressing my appreciation of this change and explaining why I think it is a good direction and what else I would like see to be changed/removed as well. For me this is not a downgrade, it is an upgrade.
You don’t like blue, and everything’s gotta be red. Got it. I think blue blends better with all the other colors they chose… but yeah… no I get it… blue just sucks, period. Why? Just because. You’ve made your point. They agree with you. You win.
Now, while we’re at it. Let’s get them to just remove Free-Aim entirely and bring percentages back into the game so we can get some better static gameplay yes? Fuck 3d animations. Just make it 2D too. OH, and while we’re at it. Let’s stop simulating sound with red blips, that’s dumb. No one can see what they hear… a game shouldn’t show me an interpretation of what I’m hearing. That’s stupid and flawed. Let’s make it possible to see all enemies all the time, because this is a tactics game, not an RTS. (There’s a lot of sarcasm in here since it may not be obvious)
I could say a lot more, but I would no longer be able to be polite.
Funny. Though honestly, should I ever expect anything I say to ever change your mind, though? Because that was me giving up trying to win an argument with you.
… I’ll hold my ground though, because of how the initial decision enabled more possibilities, and you’ll hold yours because of personal taste it completely sounds like – the metaphor reflects that, and simplifies 50 paragraphs of … this.
So I did try to end it with direct and obvious mockery as I grow tired of this, and these arguments. I’ll give it to you that I’m just frustrated and finding it difficult to argue that the removal of this feature is more flawed than the inclusion of it. Here we go again though, I guess…
As a part of the mockery, which wasn’t entirely just for shits, you can see the mentioning of “bringing back percentages” because it’d fix some of these types of decisions they’re making that limit possibilities, by adding something to replace what was lost. It’s a part of the mockery because I was under the impression that these types of decisions were made to combat and improve upon percentages to begin with, while simultaneously giving players more control over the results of their actions (shooting at targets, specifically). Despite that, people (maybe different people even!) still make nearly the same complaint. Ok, and I don’t find it surprising that people in general will complain about anything and everything, and that everyone wants something different (look at me, after all). What’s irritating here is how they’re randomly changing the game with seemingly no direction in mind. Removing “flaws” and adding in “flaws” at the same time with each stroke of the brush.
It also just sounds like to me that people want 100% accuracy all of the time. Saying things similar to “I don’t have to start the game with 100% accuracy, but I do want to be able to achieve perfection in my shots through some means and I don’t want the game to prevent me from being able to achieve that.” I argue, that exists! The —tactic— to overcoming loss in accuracy was to move to a better position to counter the evasion animation – the difficulty was that it wasn’t always possible to get to that ideal position, so you may sometimes be better off falling back or hiding instead of taking a shot, using other types of weapons, etc. (and that’s only if we’re not abusing all the super-soldier bullshit this game has, that renders nearly every decision pointless other than “slaughter everything right away with this one soldier”) – the only “flaw” as I see it, was that they never made it clear why it was the way it was. People can adjust, and they should, if it’s a mechanic of the game that provides difficulty (Once again, for the umpteenth time… this is regardless if all the bullshit in the game trivializes things to a point where these types of differences are meaningless. The solution is to fix those problems, so that these “problems” become more realized as features rather than oddities, or “flaws” as you put it)
So. We have a game where animation is no longer a thing that determines whether you can hit stuff or not. This removes enemy evasion against direct-fire as a defense mechanic. How does that actually change the game (even if just slightly, because most animations didn’t really affect the game that much)? The things that I see:
(keep in mind, these are minuscule differences overall at best in this game’s current state)
Positive:
This improves the utility of direct-damage attacks and all direct-fire weapons. (has been the most superior tactic to begin with and throughout)
This strengthens the player and weakens the enemies on the player’s turn. (something that’s already incredibly true)
Negative:
This weakens the need or utility of all damage over time weapons. (weakest tactic and nearly pointless to begin with)
This weakens and lessens the need for use of area effect damage attacks. (incredibly powerful tactic to begin with, so not much was actually lost – but I’d say relatively speaking, it’s still a loss)
This lessens the need for players to use or rely on defensive tactics or abilities. (nearly pointless to begin with - especially if using the strongest “tactics”)
Got anything else? Because I see at least 3 bad (really 2 imo) for 2 good (really 0 imo), and it doesn’t seem worth it. This is becoming less of a tactics game and more of a shooter game, with enemies who don’t move. So what are the ideas for improving the losses incurred from this change? This is more “Flawed” than what existed, in an already incredibly flawed game. I see this as more than just an opinion that I hold.
Do we buff damage over time? To what? Anything less than an instant kill is pointless with how powerful direct-fire weapons already are.
Do we nerf the damage to direct fire weapons ? (How do you honestly think that’s going to fly?) … but… If direct fire became less powerful and we relied more on defenses, DOTs and debuffs, the dominant strategy would evolve to kiting and abusing the AI and that’s something I’d be okay with! … just don’t overkill the nerfs.
Do we nerf or change classes and their skills to make them less impactful? That would be MY favorite solution! I think that would open the door for a lot more things needing to be used, and for players to be more careful. Would also need to consider costs of everything though, and the game needs other sweeping balance changes in that regard.
Do we buff enemies health, or armor ? This tends to become a problem in these games (and is often found as a part of the “Legendary” difficulty settings) because it enforces a single strategy to win, similar to (but not the same as) the problems with super-soldiers.
What about if evasion was left in?
Do we add more debilitation to enemies? More debuffs than just War Cry/Daze or Paralyze/Virus? Both fire and poison could be used for debuffing too, and I do think this would be an excellent and rather easy improvement. What if Dazing froze the animation, ah? What if Dazing was easier, and what if Dazing actually wore off at the end of the turn? Something like that, just spitballing for examples as I know this creates a ton of other issues as well.
Do we add more defense to —us— in some regards? We’re already pretty tanky. Along with certain debuffs, it’s easy to create scenarios where enemies can’t even do anything meaningful to us. If anything we could probably use more weaknesses here I’d think.
Here’s some other ideas
Do we add mission timers, so players are rushed and need to make critical but suboptimal decisions frequently ? Firaxis was onto something there. Seemed to be really tight on Legendary though with high enemy evasion, hp, and armor, really enforcing a single type of strategy again. A “stamina” solution was added in Phoenix Point, but I can’t say that it actually makes a meaningful difference in the game at all. Whether we lose 3, or 10… does anyone care? Should anyone? It’s too easy to get ahead in too many ways, and this doesn’t matter currently. (but seems worth consideration when taking into account balance on all levels)
Do we create more enemies with different strengths and weaknesses? Perhaps a solution in this one. Though, what could the weaknesses be if we’ve removed evasion from the game? Artificial percentage-based evasion? I liked the suggestions that said “explosives do less damage to this target” “this target is nearly immune to gunfire and requires fire/poison/acid to kill”… but other problems crop in the terms of “fire is restricted to NJ, poison is restricted to SYN, acid is restricted ANU and all come at different stages of the game” so that’d also need to be changed. Still, there’s a lot of room for improvement in this area.
While I’m sure there’s plenty of more possible ideas to suggest and consider, I think the only real solution is to try to add as much as you can while considering the interactions between the features, to provide a large variety in choices and decisions, and to restrict and constrain people in a way to make things feel tight and desperate so as to not always be able to use the same basic strategy repeatedly (even that Mario Kingdom Battle game did this last part! - but Phoenix Point is severely struggling to squash overpowered strategies, and is seemingly built to rely on them - I’m supposing the “fun” comes from realizing how to add numbers together, and watching things die?) This game needs a lot of things to change however in order to accomplish something close to all of that, and I’m also not too sure how many people actually want to see a balanced game full of difficult decisions similar to a rogue-like. A game where you can lose the battle, but still have an opportunity to win the war. – I thought that’s what these Xcom games were supposed to be… whereas right now it kind of more looks like “How do I lose a battle? What war?”
But I liked the animated evasion in this game as an added solution to creating variety in tactics. It created a lot of unique possibilities (that wasn’t fully explored, unfortunately, before now being abandoned). Flying enemies difficult to hit with single shots and Free-Aim, and more susceptible to burst and standard aim as a non-existent example. As for examples that DID exist:
The Siren blocked its head if I remember correctly. The part that you’d WANT to get rid of because it MIND CONTROLS you! I DO remember missing some shots because of this, panicking and a bit frustrated, and getting desperate. Not to the point of wanting to see it changed however. Instead I changed my strategy against them. Landing every shot in a burst would fail under Free-Aim at some angles, making single shots better for attacking it. The tail was a more vulnerable location, and would restrict its movement, giving me an opportunity to escape its mind control, or close in for a kill on the next turn in case it did get one off. Etc etc
The Chiron and its tiny head with no armor was always the most vulnerable point. The animation made it difficult to hit with much other than a sniper rifle again (most noticeable in the first Anu mission, where you’re limited in offensive capabilities), but so tiny that it was often a miss anyway (and snipers pierce armor fairly well too, so). Making the more ideal strategy to dealing with them being some way to remove their armor and rip them apart (pretty sure that’s why the cannon was given to the heavy right away). But the head acted as an animated chance for a “critical hit” essentially, if a bullet managed to hit it.
The Triton would swing back and forth frequently, sometimes evading the attack on the single point you were aiming at if you didn’t time it properly. A weasel of an enemy in every regard, that’s what made them stand out imo. It would also move a bit I think if it got hit and wasn’t in a swinging animation, which depending on your attack angle and distance, could really mess up the shot to the point of missing most bullets completely. So how did I adjust? Target them from specific angles, target specific locations (non-ideal as far as limb destruction goes), get closer, or with grenades because they weren’t that tough but were great at evading gunfire a lot of the time (especially overwatch, with how they hug the ground like Sirens do - they really challenge your ability to form effective overwatch cones, and not rely on overwatch )
The Mindfragger, similar to the Triton would swing around. Free Aim at its head and you might just miss. Here was an example of just using regular aim was almost always better. Not a particularly interesting example.
I think soldiers also flinch a bit and you could sometimes miss them too. Same kind of deal with the tritons though for countering.
That’s all that did exist for the most part. Like we both are aware, not the most interesting of mechanics. Though I do think the Siren/Chiron was perfect, animation-wise. The Chiron just needed more of a reason to want to target that head I think. In effect, it forced you to get a certain angle on targets for optimal accuracy, similar to flanking in Xcom, but in a different context and application. Flanking also exists in this game, but mostly as a tactic to get behind a unit’s deployed shield.
That’s how I believe Animation Evasion and Flanking in Phoenix Point amounted to a variety of methods of ideally attacking an enemy, compared to Xcom and it’s flat percentage-based hit chances (or others in the genre) often forcing the same angles and strategies (destroy cover), or even the removal of this feature which does away with some of that entirely. This is why I think the animation was a superior mechanic to percentage-based evasion, and infinitely better than nothing.
This tiny little feature helped to separate and make this game stand out from all the others in the genre. It’s a shame it’s gone, and I hope we can mod it back in rather easily, as I haven’t even looked towards that as a solution yet. Though it scares me to think this is how they’re going to “balance” their game, because it’s making it more like everything else instead of the very reason as to why I would choose Phoenix Point over War of the Chosen. At least that game’s got a good selection of mods
Now. Ideally they’d stop making hard-changes and give more options to us the players, all of us, not just select groups. But even better would be if they’d just make modding the game easier, so these types of arguments wouldn’t have to exist to begin with. It’d be a quick “I think you’d like this mod” and “Thanks” a lot of the time, instead of… this.
Fine. That’s a very good point. I’ll edit my continued irritation with things into something more like this. Though it takes a lot of effort and time to write something like this, and I’m not entirely convinced it’s anything but wasted. Why do the most frequent and all-pleasing suggestions go ignored for so long? The ability to choose options of how the game functions - modding capabilities. Everything’s really all over the place and it’s hard to not be routinely frustrated and perplexed by what changes and what gets added. I have very low expectations for Festering Skies, and I imagine I won’t be disappointed. Though it would be an absolute delight to be surprised. The only reason I cling so hard to this game from what I can tell is for what it does to separate itself from the rest. The things for which I spent my money on, only to watch them slowly be pulled away, one by one. It’s irritating. (Not that money is the issue. It’s the investment. The idea, and the time spent in and towards this.)
An open debate is not necessarily changing another person’s mind or view of something. While it’s good to have different opinions and goals, it’s not necessarily right or wrong and no one needs to change their mind. Though it’s good to share all sides of the “debate”. It’s good for the community and good for the devs to see.
Personally, I have a strong belief that the ballistic system is a single best and most interesting feature of Phoenix Point. That, however, does raise a set of questions like: should enemies move during your turn?
I won’t deny that it feels weird to hunt for those couple frames when fishman pops his face out of cover. It’s a turn base game - can I, or can’t I hit the target from this position? I won’t argue that PP might have been better if it found a different visual style, perhaps with more static animations to provide more aiming consistency (the only game with somewhat similar system is Valkyrie Chronicles and there enemies stand still when being aimed at, and even what taking action during your turn they tend to be very economical with their movement).
Still, using reactions to create specific evade/block characterising was IMO a good idea. That helps to protect valuable targets from easy shots, and is consistent with core systems - if you understand how ballistic works, impact of enemy animations are clear and predictable. It is far better then applying % chance to miss for “evasive” characters - as that would nullify, rather the utilise the core shooting mechanic.
For now, it feels to me like shaving of an interesting quirk that this game had. I will see if it does any meaningful damage (or the opposite) after the Festering Skies drops.
Why should all opponents be able to move? Not all of them have a 7 sense. Snipers don’t move, e.g. melee fighters can move while shooting.
Every game has its strength and weakness. Balistic does not belong to the weaknesses in my opinion.
Can I just ask you, just for convenience, to make a bit shorter answers? It is very hard to answer all of it in one go, and it makes, with quotes, response even longer if someone (like me) would like to answer all of it. I’ll keep it short.
You hold your ground because you like it and you made a whole story around it like idle animation was some kind of compensation for lack of evade (you keep calling it “evasion animation” and “enemy evasion” all the time). You don’t even know if devs would use idle animation to actualy implement kind of evasive manouvers. I hold mine, because this is just but an idle animation you can exploit as much as you like (shot legs, apparently just upper body is doing “idle evasion”).
I avoid using metaphores because I could use one the same as you made yours. “I don’t like salad made of pickles and chocolate” - like it would prove that mixing pickles and chocolate somehow relates to this discussion and is at least as bad.
Long text about how stoping idle animation is stripping the game from never existent evade animation. It was never “enemy evasion” and never impactful to the point of now forcing devs to change the game balance. Sure, it makes standard aim obsolete, but that is it.
So… previously it was a shooter game with enemies that moved, and it was somehow more tactical and less shootery, contrary to a shooter game with enemies that stand still, what makes game more shootery and less tactical? I think we have played different tactical and different shooter games, because the very core of Phoenix Point, with First-Person Free Aim and all that animations, is turn-based FPS.
Free-Aim: “Am I a joke to you?!”.
Well, I tried to answer all of it, but your whole point of it is built upon the idea that idle animation is evasion animation. Well, for me it is not, not now and never was. You can, and like you: will, learn how to counter it and make obsolete. It doesn’t make game any harder, or easier. For me it is just annoying, and brings to tactical game non-predictable element of randomness. While I don’t mind randomness I do mind predictability of actions and reactions.
Without Free Aim, your unit will automatically target the centre of mass of the enemy unit - but this doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have the optimum chance of hitting the target. A fine solution. Please keep it that way.
For your discussion the explanation why they decide to go with this animations while shooting at a target:
It is not clearly called ‘evasion’ but the text describes pretty good why they have done it, mainly:
… but the fact that enemies do still move and flinch is taken as “you’re firing at a moving target”.
And now one of the secondary reasons why they do it exactly how it was is now obsolete thanks to the last change:
This was also done mechanically to give the “snap shot” (as in, the shot without manual aiming) more utility.
You can read the whole text, the second half is mostly about the difference between the two shooting modes and why motion even by firing and flinching when hits were landed was important for the devs to have a viable choice. While this real ‘choice’ has seldom been taken by the majority of players, it’s still a big step back for me to just take it away.
I’m not sure I’d say I “love” the game. I have appreciated what it’s affording in comparison to its competition. I hold some vain hope for this game (mostly modding at this point) to get something special out of this. I would never recommend Phoenix Point in its current state though.
This is more of a reflection of my stubbornness. If I love anything, it’s probably arguing.
Yeah. I already did. I seem to have to keep repeating myself though. Trying different methods each time.
It’s possible it was a bug (don’t think so though)… they do seem to miss a lot of things when making the game (DESCRIPTIONS ARE WRONG!), but as many programmers may say of bugs, “It’s a feature!”. It effectively replicated an evasion mechanic. Just because you don’t like it, doesn’t mean it didn’t create or serve a purpose. Intentional or otherwise.
Also, I’m pretty sure Snapshot somewhere once said that the Standard aim was designed specifically to target center of mass on enemies in order to be more reliable at hitting them when they move. That’s not verbatim, and I’m not exactly sure of what they said, where, or when. It’s no where detailed inside the game as far as I’m aware, so it’s not clear to me and I can’t be certain. But I’ve held the impression all this time that this was intentional. (As is the removal) Edit: Oh shoot! Should’ve read Madskunky first. How did you know where to find that?!
I attempted to establish answers to these statements/questions (and others, but I’m not going to do all of it) through the following (in short):
… and as I’ve said a few times now: Just because this rarely made a difference, didn’t make it a pointless thing. I tried to also establish how it could improve the game if better realized and utilized as a feature.
So, the non-designed “enemy evasion” that doesn’t exist and is most definitely a bug, went and made another designed mechanic reliable and useful. And that with the removal of the non-existent feature and definitely a bug, it is now useless? Huh… it’s almost as if we’re getting closer to coming to an agreement.
It’s funny you say that, because it was predictable once you learned the mechanic. More predictable than the scattering of the bullets on our aim.
Your arguments so far don’t hold up though, in my opinion. I personally do like what it added and I’ve given all the reasons why. It was minuscule and mostly negligible at best, but it still gave something to the game. Something that made it different. You have made it quite clear that you don’t like different. That’s common in humanity, and it’s something I routinely try to challenge in both myself and sometimes others. It’s how I got from initially hating this mechanic myself, to actually liking it. It took a while, but I reasoned that just because it was different, didn’t make it bad. I overcame it, and grew to appreciate it.
Surprises aren’t inherently bad, but sometimes they can be awful. This mechanic was quite obviously an awful surprise. It was however, manageable, and did add something to the game. Perhaps a better explanation/demonstration could’ve gone a long way, or perhaps it wouldn’t have made a difference. They did however remove it to appease the crowd that didn’t like it. Why? I don’t know. What about the crowd that does like it? (I’m repeating myself again)
I remembered UV wrote about it but wasn’t sure when and where, start a search with “slow motion shooting” and the second hit with UV as author was it
And of course a bit of luck with my first try.
Jesus… Rainer… I must say that I would not want to argue with you, as there is too much text too read. You explain your point in all the details, which I like. And I think you are right. You describe all the things that I saw in these ‘animations during shots’.
Still some players don’t like it. Evasion implemented in this way frustrates them. Lets just hope that devs will give us an option to turn it ‘on’ back again and leave default ‘off’ option for more casual players.
I still want to know the reason behind this choice. This animation movement was something SG stand being strongly for more then 1 years. As this is their vision, they wanted to have this and this is a characteristic detail of PP. A player should respect this as this is not a bug and there is a solid reason being it. You like or not, this is the game.
But then suddenly, when people start to complane about how easy the game is, we lost this characteristic and absolutely fine feature.
So the question is why? What did SG expect with this? More sells? Less refund? Massive positive at steam rating? Was it worth for losing a part of soul?
And if sg will continue to lose what already have, it’s just makes us to lose hope for a better tbs…
SG should release that strategy games cannot be super causal like mobile games. Strategy needs brain and effort. If a player does not want one of them, then you should not want to add that player to your target audience.
Nowadays, the claims for games that implement something other than standard XCOM elements are very high. Look at this forum, which element has not been criticised so far? Developers have a hard time with it.
If you think you need to change that kind of thing, you do this earlier… the game is released nearly 1.5 years ago… and you do a game and if it does not about balance/bug, you stand behind it. So if you don’t wanna die at Dark Souls, you just don’t play more. This was a unique part of this game and they just cut it after 1.5 years of development… and there is easily 100 problems about balance/game play and bugs, and they choose to do this rather then those…
I cannot think a logical explanation for this step… just can’t…
Unfortunately, no one other than the designers and the devs have a clue as to what the vision of the game is. Everyone else has their view on what the game should be, and very few of those views dovetail.
Lets hope that devs will hear the Council in next 2 weeks.
)
You explain your point in all the details, which I like. And I think you are right. You describe all the things that I saw in these ‘animations during shots’.