Thx, I’m not Used to forums. But this title is worth the time and effort to express our opinion.
Agree, I’ve spent more time since I got to know about the game than the rest of my life (high expectations).
But GL crabman are really flimsy, they are decimated by pretty much anything besides assault rifle. Body shots on tritons make sense only for those who have Pain Chameleon and not all of them have it. When they do, it’s no brained but funnily enough it’s harder to hit their torso compared to their head. It boils down to targeting one specific body part for each specific enemy - you figure that out from first dozen hours of play, this only reinforces meta game, like in XCom you take specific weapons because you know you will be fighting Lost. There is very little emergent gameplay to get out of this. Like right now all emergent gameplay comes from situations which you don’t know how to deal with and some sort of “general strategy” just doesn’t exist. So after you’ve mastered a new meta, there is no point in playing anymore as there is nothing that game can throw at you to make it a challenge, besides 40+ grunts and then it’s a challenge to wait till they finish their turn.
Like first battle with mercenaries of 3 snipers and 3 assaults was a bit of disaster, but after restart I came out with no injuries and most of the loot. Because all what was needed is a proper full cover. This doesn’t feel like a deep gameplay.
So it’s kinda like Zombies then, in order to take 'em out you need to aim for the head, and by ‘the head’ I mean pretty much any part of the body apart from the head. 
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Yeah that’s what don’t seem right, especially when Your soldiers (typical humans) doesn’t die after loosing head.
Free aim is great idea as well as damage placement but what’s the point of shooting in the head if aiming arm or leg is doing much more work? For example crabmen on agile legs has no armor on them, so on medium range with assault rifles, full series hitting leg is insta kill most of the time. Don’t mention sniper rifles, you can one shot crabmen on any range by hitting arm or leg but not head. Even if you disable head, by accident of course, enemies still can aim and shoot, see and hear.
If we take first battle with human enemies, we face four guys with full Pretorian set (I think) and Anu shotgun, crushing his head with that amount of armor in early game is not so easy, but still we need to aim into one of arms to win fastest way. After losing arm enemies will run away, after losing head they will hunt You down.
Quick reply to whole thread. Because it is not a simulation, but just a game. I would also prefer more deadly enemy shots, maybe sometimes one-shot kills, but then game would need to drastically change. For that I think is too late. Whole recruitment system would need to changed.
Beside that most players prefer to have role-playing style where you care about your characters, you customize them, and even full burst of machine gun in their face is not enough to take your guys down. Many would complain after being accustomed by FiraXCOM games that their soldiers die too often.
Phoenix Point aims for something between old X-COM and new XCOM.
EDIT:
It is better to use name Disciples. Anu is the dead god which they worship, and who used virus in first place
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I think we need to be careful using terms like ‘Many’ and ‘Most’ when referring to other players of a game. Unless you know the exact player demographic of who is playing a given game these are often value judgements that are expanded with the assumption (perhaps subconsciously) that others will have the same preference for what we prefer as individuals.
(I’m not aiming that just specifically at yourself btw Yokes, I still think your own view is valid, and in general that you bring a lot to debate - it’s just that I’ve seen a few times lately that people are using ‘most’ in a forum post when the reality is that we don’t have any definite way of know what viewpoints are held by others, even canvasing views from within the forum, we’re a small subset of the whole playerbase, and we’re not necessarily the typical playerbase that might purchase the game upon release)
My personal view is that PP is aiming a lot closer to new Xcom rather than old a it stands presently. That will maybe please one group of players, but might not please a different group. How many sit within each of those camps, we don’t really know.
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This is not my preference. But Firaxis probably did research and their sales number says something about the player preferences vs old games or things like Xenonauts. And I think that Snapshot know those values that is why they aim to streamline the game as much as possible while trying to retain at least some of the old mechanics. Kevin Hill or Julian Gollop explained this in one of the interviews. I personally don’t know the numbers. 
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I my knowledge based on opinion from few people I personally know and who was playing and enjoying Firaxis Xcom2, first it was about graphic, that game look really good and that what hooked them first. They was complaining about missing all the time or not being able to aim specific body parts (they was fans of old JA and Fallout) yet they all bought game and all DLCs, play and enjoy it mostly because of how good it looks. Unfortunately like for now none of them are going to get PP. I was convincing them about potential and game play and yet nothing. I am here just because I saw a potential and possibilities in development. I was thinking game gonna bring good old cruel mechanics and deep game play to modern tech game. I was not focused on look but if devs want to go after fans of modern Xcom, they need to put much more effort on how the game looks. I am focusing my attention on mechanics, on how much fun and challenging it will be, how much I can customize and develop my soldiers and equipment, how much tactical possibilities will I have. And killing something by snip shot arm or leg but not head is just annoying and illogical for me. There is no need for overhaul changes, what I am looking forward is tactical combat deep. Just few tweaks to insta kill on headshot, just to make things feel right.
I guess, an alternative, is to go down the route of giving everything an armoured head, that way at least there’s an in-game reason why everything can’t just be head shotted.
I fail to see how in the current system changing disabling head into instant kill would give the game tactical depth. The way the mechanics work, it would give game even less depth. See how Valkyrie Chronicles Games grants critical hits when hitting heads, making aiming at anything else pointless.
I imagine heads will still make for desirable targets due to being less armoured. Making head a smaller, less armoured kill-switch would only make things work.
You injure head - it applies bleed effect and perception malus. People who survived Pandora virus as just that tough - they take bullets to a head, and get concussion.
Desire of making the game more “realistic” should mean that any bullet that hits an enemy should pretty much kill them.
But if it’s something you want, hopefully it will be moddable, once promised modding support will happen.
In current state You can kill enemies by shooting arm or leg. You can blow off somebodies arms so he cant use weapons, all nice and fun, yet you cant kill by shooting off somebodies head.
Amount of armor on a head part is in most cases same as on arms or legs.
I have seen arguments like “it would be to ease to lost soldiers”, we are not loosing soldiers so easy because they are stronger and better equipped then enemies. Our snipers have armor range from 16 on legs and head to 18 on arms and torso, others even more.
Following Your logic, in current state aiming at anything other then arm is pointless.
I haven’t played the beta, just watched some videos, so my knowledge is limited:
Are you saying that if you disable someones limb they die instantly? From what I have seen the only way to kill an enemy is to deplet their healthpool - by shooting them anywhere on the body. Disabling individual body parts (be it head, legs, torso, hands) adds a malus and applies a bleed effect which hastens the depletion of HP.
I haven’t seen anyone loose a body part in PP so perhaps there is something I am missing. Disabling limbs doesn’t blow them off - just damages making them impossible to use. Technitian class is able to patch those up - they don’t regrow the limbs on the battlefield. Disabling head is more akin to getting a nasty would or a concussion.
If what you want to say, is that disabling limbs and destroying weapons seems to powerful - then I mightagree, from what I have seen it seems that way - in many cases it seems like the easiest way of disabling the enemy. But more mutations, enemy variety, healing mist might counteract those strategies.
Of course they not die instantly (only those with lower HP will).
Crabman a base enemies You encounter, diffrent mutations of them, for example is one shot enemie on almost any situation if You target upper limbs. Sniper will just one shot kill him if targeting arm or non-armored leg. Others soldiers will just blow off his armed limb and 1. he will die if amount of damage was high enough or 2. he will flee the combat if not bleed out to death.
Tritons or whatever the name is. Snipers, assaults and pistoleiros of Pandoran arsenal. much more HP tan Crabmen, can regenerate lost HP, drain HP from targets, camouflage and spread mist. Shot that arm with hand on a trigger and problem solved, or just spam grenades, like for now best option for any encounter is grenade. Not to much damage, yet they disabled limbs and destroy equipment. For now there not much more to do, any encounter can be solved with proper amount of grenades. Or mortar on Scarab.
So few things - from what I heard granades damage to weapons is currently bugged. They are also pin point accurate, which I don’t think is supposed to stay like that. Possibly, they are simply too cheap, and need to be a more resource consuming item.
I see an ability to easily destroy weapons to be the biggest offender: after all, tritons have four arms, so damaging one or arms won’t disable them.
There is also possibility that new mutations will make enemies other body part dangerous as well.
Still, the problem seems that there is an easy way of disabling enemies in one hit. Adding just another flavour of disabling enemies in one hit (headshots) still doesn’t seem to add anything worthwhile to the table.
Making head a kill point, if enemies were designed to effectively defend it, might work well, but that would mean drastic changes to enemy and combat design.
its not about adding another kill point. Headshot mechanic would bring something deadly both ways, our soldiers are better armored and equipped then enemies, when You face mercenaries that have same level of equipment as our team Its like bullet sponge. Grenades, grenades and grenades, very hard other way.
Heaving headshot on table would just bring more pressure on us to overcome enemies tactical, yes we can kill them with one shot, but they can as well.
For now on overwhelming amounts of enemies like 40 of them on a small map aren’t a problem. There is to much meta and our soldiers are way to tough.
Headshots would make gameplay more diverse because current situation is following - you either can kill an enemy with a single sniper shot or you can’t, regardless where you hit him. Like yes you can disarm him but that is relevant only in case when he is, or will soon, be in position to shoot you. When you shoot triton, he never die in single shot so there is no point to shoot him anywhere besides torso, at least on first shot. With headshots we have an opportunity to take a risk and get reward, like not hitting head will result in not killing enemy and not disabling his weapon but hitting his head could deal 2-3x damage and if base damage was from sniper rifle, that would most likely kill him. With other weapons it could be just like a nice extra bonus that you haven’t planned for or only hopped for.
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now apply it to our soldiers… fun! 
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When headshots just don’t really work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn_XhiDI43U -)
Ye, I agree that disabled headshots looks as foolish as FXcom’s 1-meter misses.
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