Been a long standing player of the x-com franchise, until the newest iterations (namely x-com/x-com 2).
Still and yet, I see no viable multiplayer to be spoken off, far from me the idea to suggest its implementation to Pheonix Point, I come here to reach out to anyone feeling like I do.
Let me first state that I did my homework, close to nobody looks forward multiplayer in x-com, at least not what got presented to the player so far, this is why I bring this topic up.
TLDR: This project was intended to create a true multiplayer experience with Geoscape implementation+tactical combat, human vs alien, and it made it there (aside from quite a few balance issues, the core game design was there). This project got cancelled because it was breaking ToS (using the same assets as the original game and more).
My question is as follow: Who didn’t want to fight their friends or climb a ladder system through full playthrough (adapted to be 1h00-2h00 long games [think of Civilization])?
I’m pretty sure at least 70-80% of the community would be on track for such game, sadly it doesn’t exist, you might say: “Design challenges!” well I say: “How do you think ufo tts worked?”.
In any case, I wanted to reach out to anyone developing Pheonix Point, should they read the forums. Maybe one future game could hold such promise and feature for players like myself. As a game dev I understand the challenge for such task (which sadly can’t be achieved on my few hours of free time), I imagine a much younger fella to be able to however.
How many tactical engagements do you foresee in a 1h-2h game? You’d have to severely gut either the tactical layer or the strategic one to achieve a game of that length.
I’ve mentioned this in other threads, but I do think a multiplayer element could be fun in PP–given the amount of customization you can have, it would be quite engaging to see which combinations of weapons, armors, and classes are most effective, and pitting them against those other people are using. But like you said, it would be a huge challenge from a development perspective–they’d have to bugtest the multiplayer games, ensure everyone’s internet connection can handle it, and so on. As I also often say, maybe if the game does super well they’ll have enough money to add in multiplayer later.
MP could be limited to battle scenarios, just like BBs demonstrate.
It should give limited “CREDITS” to both sides to balance squad elements and weapons, as it was in LASER SQUAD. Individual scenarios can easily be played 2 plus players in turn based strategies. Loved to laser squad vs humans!
While I have nothing against the multiplayer but I’d rather prefer an XCom game to be a single player game first and foremost. Multiplayer could always be added later or even modded in.
That’s pretty much what FiraXcom multiplayer offers and it’s less than popular (just look at the “played a multiplayer game” achievement to get an idea). I certainly can’t blame Snapshot for not wanting to allocate dev time to this feature.
Even I do own FXcom never played one. Will try and let you know.
What was in LS were 5-7 various scenarios, and each could be played 2 player with fixed
soliders/enemies-aliens in just one, but credits for weapons/armor were the limit to balance the MP game.
Taking beast single player squads would ruin it. What is even stranger is that turn based strategy games since Battle Island by Blue Byte always had an multiplayer.
