I'm little sick of AI cheats

Phoenix Point Game Feedback
61

Maybe for the majority of XCom and also PP players, but certainly not for me and probably some others. I simply can’t play XCom any more, even when I played it extensively in the past before PP. For me it is just bad mechanics, too much RNG that get cheated in the favour to the player and only some nice features, the story and characters are left over, not longer enough for me.

A matter of taste, but of course, the majority could “move” PP in a similar direction. I hope not, or if so, then only differentiated according to the level of difficulty.

3 Likes
62

I agree mostly with you. But, I did not get that absurd OP mechanics feeling in late game. because I mostly did not research or use speciffic OP combinations. If you dont use this, the game feels very good in the end game.

The problem is, that is difficult to remove OP combinations of abilities without harming the people that does not use these combinations. As it happened with RageBurst, that I ended never using too. Because it felt ridiculosuly underwheelming. Even if you can still exploit it with sneak attack and make it an insanely powerfull tool. If you dont, it feels pretty useless now, which also feels bad.

Same happens with MoD, as discussed before. As it is, you can exploit it a lot. but just nerfing the ability, would make its regular use feel pointless.

As pointed out also before. RageBurst should remove stealth, and not take advantage of MoD. But also should be more useful on its own. Sneak attacks should be less powerful (+50% instead of +100%) and some other minor tweaks. Includding making MC more useful. Reducing the health points of Umbra, making explosive artillery less powerful in some way, improving stealth mechanics to show the players when they are being revealed, and making stealth triton snipers less of a pain, for example reducing their accuracy as an additional effect on disabling their head, and adding an scanner-like tool to counter their stealth. On top of some upgrade path for vehicles and muttons, and improve speciffic missions like base-defense. Another one is adding some way to replace lost high tier soldiers.

1 Like
63

Well, I used one Sniper with Squadview plus one Reaper as spotter and was able to do almost any mission with these 2 as a pair without getting spotted or harmed in any way … on Lagendary.

2 Likes
64

With this I agree. I love XCOM2, mostly because of mods though. PP needs more balance (explained my suggestions above), but I agree and think said balance should not be solved the same way as in XCOM.

I the end I still think PP is an overal better game than XCOM due to the balistics, enemy design and story, except for the moding and customization which XCOM does objectively better. And I think I will play PP over XCOM in the future, but both games stand on their own.

Regardless, I think it needs still some work, and hope it happens.

2 Likes
65

To me at least, most of the problem is:

Sirens can move, MC, move to good cover making them tough to knock MC down, then MC new target (same siren) next turn, and so on. To me, at least MC as many units as they can make them “the half way toughest enemy”, especially when more then one, or coupled with some Chirons

Either reducing their ability to MC many targets or to move so much when MCing I see as solution.

For both sides quite good rate of MC success make it overpowered ability. If shooting can fail, why should not such complex operation as taking over someones mind?

I am here for one turn wait, same as enemy

66

Rage Burst is now: high risk high reaward skill.
The problem is when you try to use it the way it was before. It’s a short range skill. Very effective against human size very close and against large size (e.g. scylla) from a medium distance. It just has to be prepared and I like that. Also, I don’t see a single thread on steam about Rage Burst, which probably has new players unless you start a new one there now :wink:

Edit:
The only problem is: if you really want to use the heavy effectively, then you don’t move and shoot one bomb after the other all over the map. That way you won’t get into Rage Burst range, but everyone will be long dead or crippled anyway.

67

I can agree with you, but I think it should be useful to shoot at multiple targets, and is only useful to shoot point blank range at a building like creature. It is so situational that is not interesting or useful to use.

Also the aim cones do not work very well, and the damage estimation also does not work.

The fact that you pretty much fire to the air when in front of your enemies feels stupid. I m not saying it should be as powerful as before, or that it should be used by snipers. But it should be an useful ability, not just an OP ability in a specific situation against a specific type of enemy and useless the rest of the time.

With this I cant disagree more, it is already borderline useless as it is. If you add that restriction, make your soldiers have as many WP as the enemies. Make MC as cheap to use for you as for the enemies have it as well. And make the LoS rule consistent. (Granting that there may be a bug with this now).

1 Like
68

There are many ways to skin a cat :slight_smile: Surely, this is one way to solve it. I am more traditionalist, either “Psychic warfare” should be expanded to more options, or as you say, made more consistent for both sides. Hereby, easier way to kill the controller - siren, is essential. I mostly complain as you can see on ability to control and hide to well and-or ability to control multiply units, which I feel is too much.

69

Indeed there are two ways to solve this problem. However I would argue, that if you give PP soldiers as many WP as the enemy, and made the cost and use of the ability consistent on both sides. MC would be no threat against you, and you would unbalance all other abilities. And still MC may not be that fun to use unless additional changes done.

Because of this, in this specific instance im advocating for a fun to use ability on your side, treat in the enemies side, at the expense of different rules for each. Just improving your ability to use it.

Only the fact that MC an human is cheaper than MC a pandoran, and that even the more mindless of them has more WP than your maxed priest feels more wrong to me than the one turn difference. But I can live with both for balance sake, if just LoS worked for you with MC in the same way as any other psychyc ability does and if the priest had higher max WP at the cost of lower max strenght.

Regardless, instead of making killing the controller easier, incapacitating the controlled could be an option too. Simply increasing the AP of MC for the siren, so it was not that easier to MC and run into cover would be nice too.

1 Like
70

I’m not sure if it’s a new difficulty it needs, I agree 100% on the pace, I disagree on the tuning of enemies; they are manageable as they are and that without going into OP stuff. Just nerfing them would make the game too easy. I would welcome more enemies with more non lethal abilities and reactive mutations instead of high HP/armor/damage.

Regarding different difficulties, for one reason or another, the devs (so far) opted to have the same enemies on all difficulty levels. Perhaps the easiest solution would be to have enemies with different stats, e.g. have less WP on lower difficulty levels.

However, and as someone who is continuously beating the drum “make the game really easy on easier difficulty levels”, I have to say that I don’t know what the solution is, given the spectacular differences in skill level. I mean, not to offend anyone, but there are players who expect that they don’t have to read anything or, look at any numbers; to sort of play it by feel and for the game to adjust itself to whatever it is they are doing.

I strongly disagree though with changing skills or enemies to make the former “more useful” and the latter “more manageable” for less experienced players. This is something that makes the game more meaningful, learning how to best the enemies and how to use the tools you are given effectively.

3 Likes
71

On tunnning the enemies, that is a point that is very subtle.

I like moslty the enemies too. But some of them feel a bit odd. I did propose only a couple of changes and I think that instead of disregarding the point as no change is needed at all. It should be looked case by case.

For example the umbra, what if instead of reducing its health, overwatch time to fire is reduced so ovelapping cones of fire is made a realiable way of counter them, and Ow is made more reliable in the process? The point is that enemies should have a way to counter them, saying that the claim that they should not have every strenght posible is unreasonable would not fly with me. Im not propossing changes to make the game simply easier for easy sake, but to make it more interesting by making tactical game more meaningful.

For the triton, I think reducing the accuracy on disabling their head, and providing some scanner-like tools does only provide you with some smart tactics to counter them, as they feel unbalanced precisely because currently the game does not have any tool to deal efectively with them.

For explosive artillery, I dont really know what the solution would be. I feel that there is a problem with them. And certainly some places like the final mission feel cheap because of it.

With the Siren, I will grant you that i dont see nerfing them as useful. It is just that it would feel more fair, if the MC ability was more useful to you.

Regarding the abilities, again I think it is a case by case thing. I dont think you would disagree to remove the most OP combinations, like saying RageBurst should remove setealth and ignore MoD. Or saying sneak is currently just too powerful.

The case of rage burst as an ability, is pretty much the only ability that feels bad for me together with MC. Mine is only an opinion, but I dont think making both of these more useful, after removing the OP combinations, would make the game too easy, but instead, more tactical.

With your point of more non lethal abilities, I kind of agree, but there is a delicate balance here, as we already know how disrupting panic loops can be.

What I do not accept is just pointing that there is no need to balance any enemy or any ability, or any ability combination, as meaning they are now as perfect as they can be, and no change is needed at all by definition. Which is disregarding the point entirely without considering what each proposed change is trying to accomplish. Skills that are not useful enough need to be chaged to be more useful. You can disagree on if an ability is useful enough or not, and the same for manageable enemies. But saying no ability needs to be more useful by definition and no enemy should be more manageable by definition does not have sense to me and feels like advocating for difficulty for difficulty sake.

3 Likes
72

The tools are already there, it’s called perception and stealth, combine these two and you can outspot almost all Tritons, even without using Infiltrators but these are of course the best to use for that. One dedicated spotter with high perception and maybe also stealth in a team should not be wrong or wasted.

The player can be way more stealthy and deadly as any Triton, so I don’t see that they are unbalanced. They don’t have 75% stealth or even 100%, this counters their high perception pretty nice:
Triton Ghost Alpha, the most stealthy Triton with high perception vs unskilled Infiltrator with Syx armor
60 perception, 49% stealth vs 45 perception, 75% stealth
The Triton spots the Infiltrator at around 15 tiles, the Infiltrator the Triton at around 22.5 tiles.

To the rest I can mostly agree, from your point of view. :wink:

2 Likes
73

Sorry, my statement was made in the context of talking about difficulty, as making the game easier by nerfing enemies or buffing skills.

Of course changes to skills and to enemies could (and in many cases, would) be a good thing: just not for the purposes of adjusting difficulty.

1 Like
74

I dont disagree, but an stealth ghost triton can fire while invisible (even if you can usually locate them after they shoot, the damage is already done). And in my playthrough I did not have infiltrators. And I can assure you that you can be 3 tiles away from an invisible ghost triton, and not see it.
My problem is not with perception mechanics, but more with their ghost ability. And the game of waiting for an invisible attacker to shoot you, locate it, shoot it, have little effect while he makes himself invisible again and repeat is not fun, is annoying.

What I say for the triton, and in general. Is that having a very speciffic way of counter something that requires having a speciffic unit type, built in a certain way, used in a very specific way, goes beyond smart tactics to meta knowledge of the game. (I may be exaggerating a bit, but not much). granted I did not opt for stealth, but I dont think you should require to, to deal with a specific enemy.

In my opinion, there should be a better way to deal with them, available to players beyond restricting the gameplay to do a very speciffic thing to counter each speciffic problem. That is, providing choices.

75

Only possible if it cast Pain Chameleon, which means that you hit it first, and that’s something that you have to take into account when dealing with Tritons with this ability. There are many ways of dealing with them, but to be blunt there you are being punished for dealing with them without thinking through what you are doing. For example, make sure you disable it’s torso with that first attack, or one of its shooting arms. No need for any specific build there.

76

The problem is, in my experience you can almost never disable its torso in a single shot from long range. You can disable one arm, or the head. But that will not help you a lot. And they will go invisible on your turn. So there is no reliable way to deal with them if you are not exposed to them twice. Which is often enough to disable you.

Maybe there are ways to deal with them that Im not ware of. But without an inflitrator, I did not find any.

77

As the player also can with Infiltrators. I see them as the natural counterpart to Tritons. And not using them doesn’t mean that the enemies have more or even unfair possibilities.

Yes, of course, but only when his Pain Chameleon ability has triggered, i.e. you hit him before. Then he is vanished and can only be revealed when direct adjacent to him.

Solution:
Move close or throw a grenade where you think he is. When he gets hit you get a detection marker and can shoot direct on this.

Or abuse the fact that you cannot move to the tile he is by hovering with the mouse over the area, but that would be more of a cheat :wink:

Edit: Got ninjad, extremely :rofl:

78

In my experience you most certainly can. The Pain Chameleon torso has up to 90 HP and up to 30 armor (and that’s the prime variant). Most of the time that’s a single shot from any SR, and always a single shot from Slamstrike, which will usually also daze them.

Removing one of their shooting arms takes them out of the fight for good, except the basic Poacher.

79

Again, I did not use inflitrators. So Im not saying, you cant use the same thing too. Im saying that I couldnt, and you should not need them to fight an enemy effectively.

Also, regular grenades did not disable late game ghost tritons, more reliably than not. they made them invisible and exposed you.

I think the problem is that their low stance and their positioning, made their torso not vulnerable, more than their hit points.

80

For this you don’t need an Infiltrator, moving close is best done with dashing Assault and grenades are the domain of Heavies.

1 Like