I'm little sick of AI cheats

5% fail chance for each point the target has more WP than the user :stuck_out_tongue:

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Terrible, just terrible idea :joy:

Rn when dealing with a Siren you have the option of reducing her WP below what your operatives have to ensure that she doesn’t MC them; with this it would no longer be a viable strategy.

But furthermore it doesn’t work because you have to pay the WP for the MC, and if you have 0 WP left after paying the cost, the MC fails. I mean, you would have to mess with how the WP cost is paid as well.

First: I see it the same way as @Voland, what would be: the greater advantage lies with the player (MC takeover immediately).
But haven’t you thought about the fact that the player’s greatest “weapon / tool” isn’t the class abilities, but the human mind? You compete against an AI that has to get by with a few implemented rules. Your ability to plan and react is at least twice as effective. Take a look at the Civ series. From a level of difficulty above average, the opponent also receives permanent passive advantages such as more power of the troops.

As I said: apart from the fact that MC is absolutely no cheat, the player can do more with it anyway.

AI is more efficient (2-3 times) than the new Rookie. Experienced Hero / Legend is more efficient than AI, more than 3 times (broken skills).

… without any or low experiences with tactical games in general.
Otherwise I highly doubt that, or you have to define “Rookie” more precisely.

For example, as a “rookie” in this game (my first campaign), I never had the feeling that the AI was more efficient than me, rather the exact opposite.

Still Siren has massive mobility - she shouldn’t have that kind of mobility - she uses her arms to pull herself towards. That slithering tail isn’t helping either. And if there is a second Siren with frenzy then the first one just zooms through the entire map.

Priests on the other hand are super slow. If you boost their WP you are forgoing mobility, you would need again 2 priests in a squad, but I think majority would say - one is more than enough.

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22 to 28, it is high of course but massively?
The “slithering tail” is the part of her main species from which it mutated, the centipede with, well, centi pedes :wink:

What the player also can do.

Priest can be also pretty fast, with the right equipment up to 26 speed (+2 Aksu body armor and +4 agile leg mutation) and with a bit luck even faster up to 29 speed (+2 Quarterback and +1 Thief personal skill, of course very lucky to get both).

Players decision and later on no problem to have both stats full maxed.

There is also the Stim Pack to instil Frenzy from another soldier, of course a second Priest would be more effective. But again, players decision to not take two of them, but not a general “unbalance”.

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I want to state here that Im not saying that the game is broken or that I even agree with the OP. However I do think there are some things the game does poorly, and some abilities that are unbalanced.

The ability of the player to MC inmediatlyand the pandorans not, is a concesion, I get it. Without this advantage the ability would be useless for the player or the player would be defenseless against MC for a simple reason. While the AI can afford to lose units, the player cannot.

The problem with this ability is that the player barely has a chance to use MC at all. As a result, most of the time MC is just not worth to use and the priest class is just not fun.

In my opinion the LoS requeriment should be removed for the player, the same way Pandorans have it, and the initial cost of MC should be reduced, which would still be far more expensive to use for the player than for the Pandorans. And maybe then the priest class would be as usefull as the others.

Totally disagree. First an argument that can be used to justify any unbalance in the game is not an argument. Second, this is a game where you fight thousands of enemies with a buch of soldiers. As with any game, the AI needs to be good, but give the player a chance, this is a game after all. The purpose of the AI is to challenge and entertsin the player, not to make the player lose at all cost. And I dont think you should talk of civ as a good example of AI, unbalancing the game heavily against the player is only a poor excuse for lazy coding in the civ series. And the mayor complain about the game is its poorly made AI. Which is so poorly made that the AI is now after 4 years of patches of a military victory even with no human players.

All in all, I dont think that all the same rules should apply always for players and AI. But the result should feel fair for the player, and it should be fun to play. PP does not succed in this two points is some of its rules.

I totally get that you may disagree, but again thats the reason difficulty levels are for. When hundreds of players are complaining about the game difficulty and fairness, in the normal difficulty level. Just dismissing these comments is not going to work for the devs.

That is exactly why I have taken this example! The (especially) Civ 6 AI is very bad. Even “if” they get advantages (which is NOT the case with PP), the Civ AI has no chance.

I am absolutely against “dismissing” and absolutely for easy difficulty should be super easy, because of me “clicking around” should lead to success. And also absolutely for the fact that certain mutations “Frenzy head” with sirens only appear from “Hero Difficulty”, and only 1 siren for easy levels of difficulty. But: MC has already been nerfed (I think twice). Another MC nerf would mean that you can safely ignore sirens, to be honest, I don’t find the current siren “really” dangerous, rather moderate.

Here I can agree, fully, point.
The problem is that nerfing the Siren in general would make them weaker as they are for all more experienced players. Doing that depending on difficulty → go for it, I’m totally with you.

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Not going into the first part - that the player barely has chance to use MC (not my experience at all; so let’s agree to disagree on that :slightly_smiling_face:), MC is just one of the skills the Priests have and one of the things they can do.

Even without using MC Priests are very fun to play because of viral weapons, the heads (which are all the very useful) and all the other skills, perhaps with exception of mind sense which just doesn’t do it for me. Inspire Panic, Mind Ward (even bugged as it is now and not giving any protection against psychic damage) and Mind Crush are all game-changing abilities in their own right.

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Simple as this, every pandoran except worms, starts the combat invulnerable to MC, to use MC you need to weaken the enemy first, have it very close and in LoS. Which at this point is a better alternative to have the enemy killed.

Even more, once you use MC you deplet all the WP of the priest, and can barely keep control for 1-2 turns. This is simply one of the least effective ways of using WP.

So yes, you may have the chance to MC some units if you work for it. And you will be allways making the game harder for you doing this, because it is almost always a bad decission.

For the Pandorans, on the other hand, is one of their strongest moves, it is cheaper for them, they dont need to weaken the enemy first and they dont need to expose themselves to MC an unit. No matter that, again, they have expendable units, and you dont.

Also again, any low class enemy just needs to rest to make himself invulnerable to a maxed priest MC ability. Your soldiers are always vulnerable.

Regardless. I will give you now an example of a game that cheats all the time in favor of the player. Pretty much with each enemy shot, making sure for example, that the enemy does almost never hit twice in a row the player, or that the player rarely misses twice in a row: XCOM, and XCOM2.

This is my problem, it should be a extremely fun and powerful to use ability, and as it, it is just one barely worth mentioning.

Again, this should not be the case and if this happens that I would call it a bug.
They should have the same cost and they should also need LOS. If not → bug, IMO.

They can also only regain 1/2 of their max WP and have to spend all 4 AP, as the player can, no difference.

Nice example, but I find the behaviour in these games rather bad. It proves pretty much nothing, neither generally good or bad, just different mechanics for different tastes.

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Do you like that?
It’s like adults playing football with children and letting the children “come” to a few goals. As long as the children are small and naive, they are happy to have simple success. But on the way to adults they feel that it is not “really” like that and most of them reject this simulation of success. For some, this development goes quickly for others not … and then there are also these crybabys, everything and wherever they are should be to their advantage.

Im dont know if is a bug or by design. I know it is what it is. And that I would preffer game changing to you not needing LOs, than they needing it.

Except that they all have more WP than you, so recovering half their max WP, is almost always enough to make them higher than yours, and invulnerable to MC. Something you cannot do.

As I say, balance is not my complain here. My complain is that i wanted to have fun using MC, after seeing how powerful the ability was when used against me. And it is just not fun or useful on the hands of the player

I really don’t want to have that, THIS would make the Sirens much more powerful as they currently are. I can only repeat, I never got MC’d from a Siren without LOS (even not in the old versions where this were maybe possible). In my expierience they ALWAYS move in LOS, MC and than back into cover.

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Yes. I do, the game is much less frustrating because of this. And because of things like these, pretty much nobody complains much about the difficulty of XCOM, while forums are flooding with complains about the difficulty of PP.

Is a matter of feeling the game is being fair, rather than actually being. XCOM is not easy, and is punishing enough with those changes in place. They are only there to address the feeling of bad luck on a bad RNG, and atually these changes make the player feel more in control and the game feel less random.

Is not an opinion rather a pretty much obvious thing. Changing the game to make it feel fair for the player even if it is technically cheating, is a requirement on video game design. And Im not saying PP should do the same as XCOM, every game is its own thing, Im saying it should feel fair, and should be fun. And for many is not.

I absolutely love the game, but Im also frustrated by some things in it, like being unable to take advantage of MC and enjoy it. And in other instances I agree that the game feels for me unfair and too punishing.

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So the best solution would be to introduce all the mentioned solutions in favour for the player only on low difficulties, maybe even only on Rookie.

Honestly, it only proofs what I already though about Firaxis XCom’s, they are pretty easy even when played Legendary/Ironman and, IMO, should therefore not be a benchmark for difficulty levels.
After my first play through, I only played them on Legendary and paid attention to all the stupid OP stuff that is also available in PP, just in a different form. Is that a proof of “good” balancing?

That is complicated. And Im afraid is a bit subjective too. To me, MC for the pandorans is good as it is. But it needs to be more useful to the players. Others will take the opposite stance.

Is a rather complex discussion, in the end.

I agree, on that XCOM (much less civilization) should not be the bechmark for difficulty. But is also undeniable that the XCOM aproach did manage a feeling of fairness and fun that PP has not achieved yet. And that most of the bad reception of PP comes as a result of this.

As my opinion, I think PP needs a normal difficulty in between rookie and veteran, and some pace improvements, includding less repetition and some tunning of enemies, to make them more manegeable. A game speed setting the same way civilization has would help the game a lot too, in my opinion.

Well, that wasn’t the case for me … The difference in beating FiraXcom or PP on Legend is for me in mechanics. For example: in FiraXcom it can happen that the opponent hits you critically with a 20% hitch chance. Because the player crouches in a visible cover from where he would like to shoot the next round himself. In PP, I can fire a shot with a good view and completely disappear without being hit. In addition, in FiraXcom accidental activation of the next pod can mean the end for the entire team, while in PP the player has more control here. And then there is this PP boom blast mechanism that allows me to destroy everything from the other side of the map without moving, which is not possible in FiraXcom.

On the whole: As a beginner in FiraXcom, it is much easier, but as more advanced, PP has more tools (in the good sense) and absurd OP mechanics (in the bad sense) to dominate the game.

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