Gamepad Control Suggestions & More

Phoenix Point Game Feedback
1

I’ve enjoyed playing the game so far - ~80 hours logged according to Steam - but I have some suggestions for improvement:

Gamepad controls should be more intuitive. I can’t really even navigate parts of the UI with just a controller - e.g. Video Settings. It could all use some polish:

  • NOTE: I use an Xbox Series controller.
  • Having to switch between left joystick, right joystick, and D-Pad for menu/UI elements doesn’t feel right sometimes.
  • Sometimes - I’ve noticed prior to starting a mission for instance - the soldier preparation screen will make your left joystick “stuck in place”. The only way to free it is to swing the right joystick around for a bit. Otherwise you won’t be able to do anything, other than navigate back using B.
  • When you go to the highest vertical/level - using right joystick - during a mission, the camera will tug towards your soldiers. This makes it so you can’t pan around the whole map.
  • Hover-over for tool-tips doesn’t work.
  • When I’m looking at a haven - because it has a recruit available - I have to press down on the left joystick even though the Recruit Soldier button is to the right of the information icon.
  • Scrolling through lists - e.g. equipment list in the Manufacturing tab of the Phoenix Point base - seems broken. When you reach the bottom of the list it goes back to the middle instead of either stopping or wrapping back to the top.
  • Sometimes - during missions - the game won’t let me move my cursor to the edge of the map.
  • Can’t hit the Repair Facility button on the Vehicle Bay “square” in the base.
  • “Drag here to manufacture” and “Drag here to scrap” are not available in the Personnel tab when using a controller and selecting an item.
  • The “You don’t have enough Living Quarters space in your bases to recruit this soldier.” message does not appear because you need to hover over for it to appear.

Certain things are not conveyed well:

  • It took quite a while for me to understand the “shot accuracy” UI. The shade of white on red is sometimes not a great indicator of damage/accuracy - especially when you consider the wide range of color correctness across user screens.
  • The rest of the magazine/clip is used when reloading.
  • How does stealth work? When does stealth break? Is it when I get too close to an enemy? Or is it when I attack? Can I gain stealth back? If so, how? A tutorial of some sort would be useful.
  • It wasn’t until ~40 hours into the game that I realized I can intercept enemy air craft. As far as I can remember, the game never mentioned this to me.
  • Mission Difficulty seems to be hit-or-miss sometimes in terms of actual difficulty.
  • Reaching white highlighted areas in missions grants will power to the squad. As far as I can remember, the game never mentioned this to me.
  • Is there a way to rotate the camera using the controller right joystick that isn’t just 90 degrees left/right?
  • You need - for example - heavy body armor to equip a mounted weapon. I don’t remember this ever being explained. I had to figure it out through complete trial-and-error.
  • Other various UI elements.

Minor bug: When reloading a save, some abilities get marked as “cannot be used again this turn”.

The video settings configuration seems to sync with Steam Cloud. Although this may seem convenient, it causes issues when using separate devices - e.g. Steam Deck. Different devices have different input (smaller vs. larger screen) and capabilities (e.g. CPU, GPU, memory, etc.), but the most recently-used device dictates what settings are used.

Feature request: There should be a confirmation prior to ending the turn. It’s quite easy to accidentally end your turn without meaning to do so.

Feature request: It would be nice to have a flag/option to reset the cursor to the current soldier’s position when switching between soldier’s during missions.

Overall, I’m really enjoying the game :slight_smile:

2

If I good understand you play on PC, just using console controller. I can’t say too much about controls in such approach, but I can comment other things.

Yep, this isn’t explained really well in the game. But it’s not a big issue because, when enemies will see you for the first time, then you can forget about going stealth again. :smiley: Matter of fact you would need to use really specific soldier build and avoid some actions to be able to stay hidden, you need:

  • stealthy armor
  • head augmentation which makes all weapons silent
  • avoid going through doors and windows

Otherwise enemy will know where you are each time you open fire or open the door or just move around in clumsy and noicy armor. Of course they also can see you if they have line of sight to you (you don’t stand behind high wall or rock which doesn’t have any holes) and they are close enough (when you hover cursor over an enemy, there is circle indicating on what range that enemy will see your currently selected soldier). There is also automatic reveal range no matter the stealth (can’t remember now if it is 4 or 5 or 8 tiles).

And these:

You have all this information in tutorials and tooltips of the game. If you have tutorial and tooltips switched off (for example by playing Legendary difficulty) and unselected that option in settings, then you don’t have notifications of any sort which will guide with this. There is also Phoenixpedia which I think also mentions all these things.

This bug is quite mayor, but I suppose you haven’t noticed more effects of loading a save game during mission. :wink:

You mean that camera doesn’t center on your soldier when you switch soldiers?

3

Yes, I’m playing on my PC with a controller.

You mean that camera doesn’t center on your soldier when you switch soldiers?

It behaves like this:

  1. I have a soldier selected. I move the cursor to somewhere else on the field - to inspect the area or find a spot to move the soldier to.
  2. I press right-bumper or left-bumper to switch to another soldier.
  3. The camera does center on the soldier. But the moment I tap the left-joystick, the camera rushes over to where the cursor originally was - somewhere else away from my soldiers.

It’s a bit jarring for the camera to move in such a way - and also seem self-defeating in purpose. I think it should either focus on the soldier (and stay there until I move it) or it should just stay where it is - not both.