On full seriousness, unless the current system will completely flop, I don’t imagine such drastic redesign happening. Unless it will flop and game will get redesign for the second launch in time for steam release.
DLC are more likely to expand the existing game, rather then changing fundamentals.
It sounds like something which commited and competent modders might be able to achieve, assuming PP will get a robust modding support. Just speculating, never modded anything, so my knowledge on what is possible and what is not is very limited.
I agree. And yet I would still advocate for making this system work, rather than placing new systems on top of existing ones.
Dash seems like a skill asking to be heavily tweaked or completely replaced. It is a translation of xcoms “run&gun” and it doesn’t seem to work well in this setting.
For those of you, with access to beta, it is a chance to find those skills and combination, and hopefully, snapshot will find way to address those issues: either by altering/removing skills, helping enemies punish their overuse, rebalance them when needed.
BB5’s dash (move for 2AP) is less powerful than BB4 exertion (+2AP), so I find it strange that dash annoys you when apparently exertion was fine. I’d clean the map in one or two turns in BB4 by “exertion” everybody taking the blue zones in my path.
“BB5’s dash (move for 2AP)” I mean ability “Dash” which is moving anywhere at 50% of your maximum run distance for just 3 points of willpower and no AP cost.
I’ve used exertion sporadically when I needed an extra shot or need to run a bit further. It was abusable too but not in the same way, +2AP are still need to be “managed” as different weapons take different amount of AP to fire. With “Dash” there is nothing to manage as you just teleport to where you want to be. The other difference is that we have many other things besides Dash now. In a way, Exertion is more OP as you can do more actions just with it specifically, but there where less of other things you could combine it with. As far as I remember, we couldn’t run as far as we can now and there where more of larger maps.
That’s why I’m asking if we can have less of this type of abilities instead of more. Like it would be fine if Dash allows you to run further but then it would use all your AP, so you could use it to retreat from a bad situation - like a panic run.
Combination of abilities does add variety as to what each individual soldier can do, but it doesn’t add a “strategic” variety, it actually removes it because it give you magic tricks you can execute and then you need only “magicians”. Like why do I need to care if I should cover flanks or position sniper strategically if I can always teleport him 20 meters away and do a full power shot, then teleport back.
Well, I was just saying that with exertion you could mix running and shooting, where dash is only running (even if you needed only 3 tiles). But true that if you add “quick aim” in the mix it becomes kind of equivalent.
With “dash” and “quick aim” you can do only 4 shots with an assault. That is until you reach level 7 and can add AP for kills if I’m not mistaken. Haven’t made it to level 7 yet, I’m too good at averaging XP on my soldiers (+ campaign stopping bugs that forced me to restart).
With exertion you had this from level 2, with other troops going for willpower boosts your assault could run&gun lots of stuff.
Correct. To be clear, not defending exertion, I would rather not see either of these abilities at all.
Imagine replacing something like “Rage Burst”, with ability to take any amount of quick shots at a single target. Technically it’s the same thing, but now it sort of bends time because you magically can repeat the same action many many times, while “Rage Burst” makes sense for weapons with full auto ability.
Like ability that you’ve mentioned earlier, where you could spend some AP and WP for more precise shot, makes a lot of sense as if someone would take more time and concentration to aim. Instead we have a quick aim, which takes less AP and gives precision bonus on top, how would you even do that? Sounds like some sort of cyber implant. These abilities are magic and as magic they are so powerful that at first it’s just foolish to not use them and later you will just be loosing as game balance will expect you to use them.
At lvl 6 assaults get the skill to give 1AP to all your squad, and at lvl 6 aswell heavies get the +1 WIP to all your squad per kill. Not exactly the same as rapid clearance (lvl 7), but you can do much more than 4 shots if you got these abilities and juggle them correctly.
Maybe some of the perks need to come with a downside to them.
I’ve wondered with quick aim whether it’s been implemented incorrectly in any case, but it would certainly make sense to have a shot that takes reduced action points leading to less accuracy rather than more.
How about if Dash when used led to a automatic end turn for the soldier after they’d dashed? You could still then use it to retreat or find cover, but you couldn’t use it magic yourself around the map. As an alternative, how about if it led to a energy reduction for the solider following the end of the mission? You could still use it in a pinch if need be, but if you overuse it then that solider is then going to have to spend a lot of time recovering before they’re fit to go on another mission.
Mirroring what others have said, not a fan of ‘spell’ like behaviours for units in instances like Phoenix Point.
I am all for individual playable units and particular playable classes having certain additional functionality, equipment or specialisations not available to other units, but things that essentially re-imagine the traditional rules of the game world for a particular action really don’t feel like they belong.
Such things are more XCOM than X-COM, and we have enough XCOM recycling flying around in games at the moment that something that focuses more on bringing the more blunt limitations of humans would make a nice change over the ‘larger than life’ fantasy play where people eventually develop the ability to mess around with what is essentially reality bending feats.
There was quite the appeal in games like X-COM that stemmed from commanding a group made up of fragile and scared shiteless meat bags where only 1 out of 8 people typically lived long enough to ascend to the highest peaks possible which essentially meant they were one of the few of your guys that wouldn’t immediately soil themselves, panic and shoot their buddies toe off at the first sign of enemy fire.
Battle strength came from their tools and their gradual growth in using those tools with at least some minor proficiently compared to a rookie who pretty much fought the battle by just ducking behind one of their team and shooting friendlies and enemy alike preying that in the process some other poor sod would get gunned down by enemy fire instead of them.
Not through surviving long enough to develop the knack for using your brain power to move through space without technically moving or other such ‘skills’.
The thing is, if I want to play a game build around small squads of super heroes defeating enemies with their super abilities, I would just play Xcom2. Which has more content, more mission types, more enemies and gazillion of mods. Having few features different is not a large enough differentiator if basis of tactical gameplay is essentially the same. I had impression that PP would be a very different game, as it was in early builds, closer to old X-Com but modernized and streamlined.
I’m no big fan of the perks, i would more likely see soldiers getting better like in the old ufo/x-com.
They could make the standard abilities more common and higher levels and the perks cost more. That would make some really strong perks something special again if you need to invest more level upgrades into it.
Dash is so copy&paste from new x-com, extertion was still something different, yep it was very very strong but you still got more options to play.
I would wish to have some more special perks for the classes.
You could make dash/extetion to something that gives you a small boost to movement, accuracy and damage.
You could also make some very strong perks with the downsides someone else mentioned before like after rage burst to only be able to move in the next turn or complete skip next turn.
There are so much ways to make them something special.
I know how it sounds but if you take a look at Xenonauts 2 for example, you can have a large TU pool and still highlight on the ground the areas where you would still have time to do an action like shooting, which was an issue before and you had to “reserve” TU for shots like in old X-Com. Or something like JA2 1.13 that has a shortcut for every action you can take and you don’t really have to count how many TUs you still have, for a simple reason that taking a slightly better aim, take much less TU than to walk somewhere. On top of that, you still get an idea as to how far you can walk/run/crawl and still shoot, just from experience as what you do in a single turn is rarely important, it’s more about how all pieces are placed on map. It’s not a rare case to spend several turn suppressing an enemy by 2 guys with pistols while someone with a shotgun is going around for a flank. What I’m saying is that this whole meta of “I have to know if I can shoot this guy from this square this turn” just dissolves into nothing as it’s not important.
Some of the things in PP are a bit weird, like we have a directional overwatch but omni vision. I understand that it would probably take more animations to make because of the cover system, would heavily influence AI and require some extra click for character facing specific direction, but it’s a type of simplification I can live with. The approach where we are kind of expected to go for mass limb chops or an “alpha-strike”, is a bit more unnerving and doesn’t look like streamlining but rather “Firaxing”. After all, PP was advertised as a “Spiritual successor of X-Com” not as a “We are going to target that same audience that XCom created”
I’m glad that so many ppl think the same. But where have you all been before? I am sure that earlier (around BB2-3) discussion was similar but opinions quite different: at least 50% of backers taking part in discussion wanted to have perks like in XCom (as I remember).
I’m still glad but I don’t know if it isn’t too late to change something so important like soldier progressing because tactical part of gameplay is simply built around it. @BoredEngineer, I don’t like the omni vision as well, I think more limited vision was supposed to be implemented but I doubt it will ever be…
There were more discussions about perks long ago. If I remember right the new x-com tried to be modern so they went with the classes/perks system. It’s ok and fits in these games but I don’t want to feel playing new x-com when playing phoenix point, please Julian make it unique!
I learned about the game 3 months ago … while looking to XCOM like in Google. In the end I also found out about “Invisible Inc.” which is a brutally difficult game on expert but also has those satisfying moments when you find a solution to get to the objective in the next room although you were targeted by 4 guards (epic).
