IMPORTANT! THAT '94 X-Com feel we're hungry for!

Phoenix Point Game Feedback
3

Of course it’s easy to add dynamic shadows and line of sight in 3D:
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/particles-effects/gpu-line-of-sight-field-of-view-visualization-19764 and:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64NndoSyRmk

Believe me there were some players who used saves in original game to “save” :wink: as many soldiers as possible.

There always are, just in the 2012 version it was much more prominent due to the factors I’ve mentioned.

Isn’t that part of lore where secret project is leaked to the public and laughed about in TV similar to today’s media? Almost everybody now want to find something to drag into public space and criticize it in the name of “higher” standards, some-equality, some-phobia etc. etc.often being hypocrite at the same time?

It’s a “Marxist” subversive technique: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gnpCqsXE8g
It’s not a coincidence or an accident unfortunately. It’s not perpetrated by the KGB by the way, but you can learn more about it in the video if you like.

Manually selected starting position probably would lead to 2 or maybe maximum 5 different starting points for each player no matter how many times he would press that “New Game” button.

That’s supposing there is the option to build multiple bases. And the point is to offer choices that can lead to different beginnings/playthroughs, which gives variety and with it, thrill to many players, including me. But we’re different :wink:

Having endless sandbox is nice, but I think that there should be some point in time where the pandoravirus should conquer whole Earth.

I must admit I haven’t played the game yet and don’t know much about the story. the game won’t even run on my system, so posting this won’t benefit me immediately, only some time in the future perhaps :slight_smile: So I can’t really comment on this, except that the original game could add overwhelming amounts of tension with its mechanics that I’ve described without a time limit. And I’d definitely prefer that a game can add suspense without the cheap, lazy trick of a time limit.

Here I suppose we will see single havens fall one by one. Not the whole counties collected in the council.

Again, unfortunately I’m not very familiar with the game and what “havens” are in it. But I did play Xcom 2012 and what killed the fun was knowing that I’d unavoidably take 2 steps back with that “1 step forward” of hopefully succeeding on the selected terror mission. The game would punish me for successfully completing a mission basically and it felt unfair and discouraging. In the original it felt like a massive victory to complete a terror mission and it gave a very much needed morale boost and sense of hope.

for me constructing whole building in few days or even a month is immersion breaking, especially if it will be in underground / cave like base

I’m not sure if building bases would even make sense in this game as I don’t know much about the lore. If there’s any chance that they’d be a good match, I’d vouch for multiple base building :slight_smile:

That was cool in original game.

Hell, yeah!

I hope it won’t be like that. I’m getting too old to wait for 100 shots made by aliens and watch how single bullets fly through the air.

To be honest, it was unrealistic and if I set the projectile speed too slow in the settings, it felt tedious instead of tension-building, so I had to find the speed setting that did the job perfectly :slight_smile:

Would you like to share what you think of the 5 and 4-star bullet points in the post and how they could be implemented in PP?

EDIT: I’ve messed up the quotes and included my answers in them too :confused: I’m not sure how to use them properly, could you give me some hints? EDIT 2: I think I’ve got it now :sunglasses:

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The major problem with save scumming in FiraXcoms isn’t really customization, but a combination of strategic factors :

  • The game does not encourage you to build a broad roster. Your average player will barely have a B-Team. If he loses a guy on the A-Team, it’s recoverable. If he wipes, it’s game over. The introduction of fatigue in Long War may look like a burden to the average player, but it’s a blessing in disguise. Combined with long healing/training/modding times, it forces you to rotate a lot more soldiers (80-100 is pretty normal). In Vanilla, you don’t even have tutorial or advice to recommend you to have a backup plan
  • Losing missions is too punishing, especially in LW2. You lose the mission, you lose contact with the region and have to re-establish it. It makes sense on some crucial ops like Haven assauts/terrors, but if you fail to recover a piece of intel … not really!
  • Small starter teams. Losing a guy in an early team of 4 is 25% of your team, which often means you won’t be able to alphastrike every pod (another weakness in the gameplay, especially on XCOM2), will take more return fire and more losses. If we’re taling about XCOM2, it may even be 50% of your squad if the guy is in bleedout and you call for an evac, forcing you to carry him.
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Thanks for your comment. I don’t consider save scumming (or having mechanics that help alleviate it) a top factor in the success of the original. So this discussion is kind of off topic as far as I’m concerned and I’d have appreciated your comment even more if you also commented on how the highest rated factors could be implemented in PP. Anyway;

The major problem with save scumming in FiraXcoms isn’t really customization

Agreed, I’ve mentioned a number of factors, the most important to me personally being random events on the battlescape during missions (scripted AI spawns multiple times during a mission) that felt forced, unfair, like cheating, and pretty unrealistic too. I’d resort to heavy save scumming during those scripted missions, but not much so during regular, unscripted ones.

You’ve just said the same thing I did from another perspective: the original incentivized the making of mistakes partly through its large rosters, cheap soldier replacements and larger squad size. I understand that the Long War mod aimed to recreate this mechanic from the original and in this way fights save scumming somewhat. But as I’ve mentioned there are many reasons for save scumming in the 2012 version and even more that I haven’t talked about yet.

I haven’t finished the 2012 version yet and my laptop can’t run Xcom 2. I’ve never even tried LW. So I don’t understand a word of what you just wrote :smiley:
What I can say though is that what I’ve played so far in the 2012 version, my number one reason for save scumming has been the aforementioned one by far. The game couldn’t even hook me, partly due to its scripted, “cheating” nature that makes me abuse it back, but it’s been unappealing for many other reasons too. I’m thinking of restarting the game with the LW mod, as it might provide an experience that’s closer to the original.

Ditto. Alphastrike every pod? Is this in Chinese, or Greek? :wink:

Though I don’t know what alpha striking or pods are, I’ve read something related in a comment where someone wrote that you could game the system so that “you could have a 100% per cent chance of destroying a pod in one turn”, whatever that meant. But I immediately saw a pattern of perfectionism and a fear of making mistakes as motivators, and this brings me back to my original point about save scumming.

Which, if a developer wants to eliminate, they’d do well to understand the underlying psychological motivators. The most common ones are:

-A fear of making mistakes or failing. People will beat themselves up internally if they make mistakes or fail. “I can’t believe I can’t even do this.” “I’m useless.” “I’ve messed up AGAIN, can’t I do anything right?” Then we feel insignificant and unworthy. It’s pretty painful how we can treat ourselves and save scumming is a way to avoid this pain.
-A need to feel significant, competent, needed and loved. If a player bases his/her self-esteem on their success in the game, if they can “prove” they are good, important or competent enough, they’ll be emotionally invested in their success, and will be save scumming for this reason too.
-The stronger their current need for certainty and safety are in real life, the more likely they will be save scumming, because it acts as a supplementary sense of security. So if they have just been scrutinized, rejected, judged, or have lost something or someone, they will be more likely to save scum.
-Needs that work against these self-defeating ones are the need for uncertainty, exploration, growth and contribution. When there is a mystery to be solved and you can (grow to) be a hero who makes a major contribution in the process, and you manage to keep your focus on these instead on how you might make a mistake and what you may lose, you’ll likely forget using the save function altogether and become fully immersed in the game. So the devs must put the players at ease by eliminating all factors that could lead to the player feeling that making a mistake is costly and fatal and they must immerse them in their role as a hero in full charge of his/her destiny, encouraging decision-making, freedom, autonomy and responsibility. Treat the player as powerful, autonomous adults and they will embrace their role as such.

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Well it was trying to bring 2012 version more closely to original modifying it heavily - but still it was closer to 2012 version of course. I personally can’t imagine playing those new FiraXCOMs without that mod. :wink: It has eliminated that decision about which Abduction missions you want to run. :slight_smile: But well that was minor change. There were other more important and it increased difficulty of the game. It took me over a year to beat the game, with my little spare time for gaming. So it was literally Long War. :slight_smile:

Pods are groups of enemies. When you encounter one of aliens you activate whole “pod” to which this alien is assigned. Alphastrike them is to kill every alien in that pod in one turn, preferably.

Too many of them. But mostly you are right. That is why I didn’t comment on that. :smiley: Some points are duplicated but it doesn’t change conclusions. :wink:

It is easy to use dynamic shadows, but they don’t give the same effect of light dispersion and fading into darkness. Mostly they work with a clear border of light and shadow. Btw that youtube video is a fake. :wink:

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@OP

That was long :slight_smile:

I (we) feel you. The originals, did hit the mark, either intentionally or by accident. It’s really amazing that after 25 years a game can still tingle your fear sense.
But sadly, time passes by for everyone.

But we both, and i suspect most here, agree that the graphics need to be improved. Especially the lighting, which is almost nonexistent in the current iteration.
The visual&aesthetic impact of the originals was a major part of their success.

Phoenix-Point-216354.jpg1920×1080 392 KB

xcom-enemy-unknown-pc-screenshots-6.jpg1280×720 229 KB

I’ll be blunt. To me, this is not attractive at all.

1 Like
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Yesterday I was tired, so I will add some more comments.

Unfortunately or fortunately world (and starting point) was planned to be randomized and I suppose it won’t change now.

Maybe it is lazy trick, but required. Here you have The Briefings with lore and introduction to story - I must say that they were worth reading.

It would be illogical if there would not be cumulative and deciding moment somewhere in time. :wink:

Bases should be in place already, but you need to find them. :wink:

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So called Save Scumming? Why do some people have such a hang up about this? Everybody plays games in their own way to get their own type of pleasure from them. I’ve played all the Xcom games in both the traditional way and also saving after each turn to save my troops. Why? because I’ve customised them and named them after family, pets, teddy bears​:bear: and other things that mean something to me. I’m a grandfather now (god help me!) and remember sitting with my daughter playing Xcom and her laughing out loud when Commander Stewpidbear​:bear: missed an Alien with his missile launcher, but did hit the building with 3 others hiding in it the squad hadn’t seen. There was much back slapping around the donut bar back at base that night!:sunglasses: This is a game, designed for entertainment, let people be entertained in the way they enjoy without all the derogatory descriptions aimed at them. :wink:

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Wow, quite a long post :smile: Let me try to add something to it.

There won’t be a traditional fog of war in Phoenix Point, but there will be Mist, and that will be like a really f*cked up fog of war: it can block our armies line of sight, instill panic, mutate soldiers, buff enemies, so on.

Eh, the interface was not mysterious, it was awful. I still remember the first time playing OGXCom, and thinking “what the hell is this? How do I… Wait, not like… Hmm, and to shoot, I want to kill that guy!”. No wonder Snapshot made no secrets about taking direct inspiration from FiraXCom’s interface.

The intro feels so out of place from the rest of the game, that we could remove it entirely and not miss a thing. Cool soldiers with shiny armours and huge weapons jumping from their ultra high tech airplanes and spreading chaos and panic amongst the enemy! And then you started the game and there was no ubermensch, just frail panicked soldiers. That was a problem with FiraXCom, where you started with regular guys and ended up with super-soldiers, just a adamantium laced shield away from turning into the Avengers. And I never played WOTC, but from what I read it seems they pushed this idea even further. You didn’t had an army, you had the Avengers plus Justice League fighting aliens.

Back when Blizzard was one of the best developers, and not the money milking cow that it seems to be turning into, their art director, Samwise Didier, said in an interview that they always strived to get a bit cartoonish in their art direction (hence the big hands and exagerated body types in Warcrafts and such), since they learned from the golden age of animation and Looney Tunes that the best bit cartoonish imprints itself in the viewers minds and sticks there. That’s why, he reasoned, characters such as Bugs Bunny would stay successful for so long. But as you said in the beginning, wether you have realistic or cartoonish, the introduction of lightning and what you can and can’t see makes all the difference.

This is the area where where I don’t have any issues: just from reading the Briefings we can sense the huge effort the lore team has been making in building a structured, reasonable, well thought, world building. Things like the centuries in which Phoenix Project has been existing, and all the factors behind the growth of factions and why they came to be, are outstanding.

I have so much inner doubts about this. I can’t stand making mistakes, and I’ll beat myself to death every time I make one. But on the other hand… These games just don’t have anything to it if they don’t allow for mistakes. That’s why I’ll probably start Phoenix Point in Ironman mode :blush:

A funny thing I remember back from my first playthrough of OGXCom was the introduction of Earth as your main character. It really sold the idea this was a huge fight for the fate of everybody and everyone you have ever met, not just a prince looking for his love, or a guy gunning down nazis. This was the battle for the future of us all. And of course, in the end you got such different games that perfectly blended so well. I’ll let Yahtzee sum it up: " I spend my time in the base thinking “Gosh, I’m looking forward to using these plasma rifles I built to shoot all the baddies” and my time in the field thinking “Gosh, I’m looking forward to bringing all these alloys back to base to build more plasma rifles.”"

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It took me over a year to beat the game, with my little spare time for gaming. So it was literally Long War

Maybe I’ll beat all my other games first, to give myself small chunks of achievent :wink:

It is easy to use dynamic shadows, but they don’t give the same effect of light dispersion and fading into darkness.

It’s actually super easy. In the original, and very realistically, you only had this fading into the shadows effect during night missions. As you’ve seen in my Unity store link, you can implement a line of sight system in 3D. Then you need to combine this with very low ambient lighting that keeps everything in almost complete darkness (or just very dark) and add proper lighting that creates the same effect as in the original game. Something like this:


and this:

and this:

You obviously don’t want to reproduce the same thing during day missions. But if you wanted to, you occasionally could by creating a foggy environment, like in this clip: https://youtu.be/k6nzHjXHC_I?t=469

So your job is in fact easier in 3D than in a 2D isometric view and you can also add so much more realism and nuances.

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Maybe it is lazy trick, but required

That’s your opinion and maybe preference. The fact is that in the original it wasn’t required and another fact is that a lot of players have been frustrated by the time constraint. Personally, it murders my enjoyment completely.
On the other hand, towards the very end of the game, when I’ve had all the fun experimenting with what the possibilities in the game are without being forced to do anything in a particular way/in a time limit, I wouldn’t mind a “final countdown” kind of thing. Like we’ve dealt such decisive blows to the aliens that they have brought their “Death Star” next to Earth and we have like 10 minutes to blow it up kind of thing :wink:

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I would love to play sandbox, but time constraint is needed from lore perspective. We can’t prolong fight with the virus without end. Enemy here is not army of aliens counting 1000 units with some additional reinforcements send from other planet. It is mutating living environment consuming all in it’s way, and it can’t be stopped with regular weapons and methods.

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It’s far from a judgement against those people who like to, let’s call it like this, “like to save and reload often”, code named “SC” :wink:

It’s that many people find that it has become a compulsive behavior that they’d rather let go of as they’ve realized it takes away from their immersion and butchers their sense of joy when they have reloaded the same save 10 times in a row because they didn’t get their specific desired outcome. When the game’s mechanics almost force you to SC, it’s worth becoming conscious of and remove the addictive elements that have been pulling our strings, so to speak. At least that’s my point of view :slight_smile:

I wish you a lot of fun playing the game however you want :slight_smile:

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@Attila
I did not have to save and reload often in Ufo Unknown or Terror from the Deep. The game gave you the chance to recover.

This is the main Problem with XCOM from Firaxis. If you mess up a single mission you are most likely doomed and restart the game or reload.

I did not like this one bit. I really hoped that this game will be different but I am not going to find out soon :frowning:

2 Likes
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I think playing any game can be addictive if you have that sort of personality. But one element can’t be blamed for that. One of the easiest solutions. I find, is the game difficulty setting. As I’ve got older and medical problems have effected me I’ve had to start playing games on the ‘easy’ setting. I still thoughly enjoy them, and if I can cope with it will push the setting up. But I do find there is a game snobbery (especially with certain pc gamers) that is toxic to less capable/able gamers. The ‘Save Scumming’ description and debate is a prime example. Let people play their games their way and with their own set achievements. And like you I hope you can play (this game eventually):wink: and enjoy it your way.:+1:

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It would butcher YOUR sense of joy, and mine for that matter, as I find SaveScumming boring to the extreme beyond the first playthrough when you’re testing mechanics, but it’s the most natural thing to do for many other players, and the game certainly doesn’t force you to SC.

I’ve played Firaxcoms extensively, Vanilla and modded to hell and back, Ironman whenever possible and “honestman” (self imposed ironman, with the option of reloading previous saves if the current ones gets corrupted or encounter a game ending bug) the rest of the time, and don’t have to savescum because I normally setup backup plans and a broader roster than what appears necessary.

This forces you to allocate your resources differently and keep some reserves for when shit hits the fan, something the games does NOT teach you, but means you can recover from a loss.

As for most other points, I don’t want PP to be a remake of OGXCom. I have Xenonauts for that :slight_smile:

When you take off the rose tinted glasses, OGXCom had its flaws and tedious elements in the gameplay loop. Even if you discount these, games have evolved since these times and old school devs must account for this evolution beyond doing a remake of their past success with a shinier engine.

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Eh, the interface was not mysterious, it was awful. I still remember the first time playing OGXCom, and thinking “what the hell is this? How do I… Wait, not like… Hmm, and to shoot, I want to kill that guy!”.

I kind of enjoyed the process of discovering which button did what. It was a good thing to me that the interface was so complex because I had no previous experience with complex strategy games and using only the buttons I could understand was more than enough to get me started and hooked on the gameplay and explore all the little nooks and crannies of the UI later.

Scott T Jones, the developer of XcomUtil says something similar: “I never use strategy guides, because discovery is one of the best parts of the game.”
To those of us who loved the sense of discovery it gave us, we loved it. Others could feel their confusion and lack of control about the UI first and foremost, because we’re different :slight_smile:
But today this UI would not be feasible, not without a built-in great tutorial. Those self-sufficient ways of olde seem to be gone.

The intro feels so out of place from the rest of the game, that we could remove it entirely and not miss a thing. Cool soldiers with shiny armours and huge weapons jumping from their ultra high tech airplanes and spreading chaos and panic amongst the enemy! And then you started the game and there was no ubermensch, just frail panicked soldiers.

I’m wondering if you’ve played the original years after it was released? I played it on release and my experience with the intro and the game’s corresponding graphics were as I’ve described in the original post. Moreover, my best soldiers’ stats would eventually overflow and restart from 1 and they could wipe the floor on their own with an entire map of aliens (just before stats overflowing). Notice that their armor in the video is yet to be researched, which implies that they could be veterans. They certainly act more confident than a rookie would :wink: Everything was perfectly in place in that video to me at the time.

Tunes that the best bit cartoonish imprints itself in the viewers minds and sticks there.

This makes great sense with games like Warcraft, WoW and Starcraft that don’t have horror music and sinister lighting. The original I don’t think was meant to look cartoonish (except in the intro maybe, but it looked more manga than traditional cute cartoonish to me). The game seemed hyper realistic to me as I’ve mentioned and a remake might want to look very realistic too to be true to the horror feel of the original.

This is the area where where I don’t have any issues: just from reading the Briefings we can sense the huge effort the lore team has been making in building a structured, reasonable, well thought, world building. Things like the centuries in which Phoenix Project has been existing, and all the factors behind the growth of factions and why they came to be, are outstanding.

I’m very glad to hear that.

was the introduction of Earth as your main character. It really sold the idea this was a huge fight for the fate of everybody and everyone you have ever met,

Yes, and it’s the ultimate example of a cornered beast. If you lose, there’s nowhere to retreat. It’s like the Roman commanders burning their boats on the enemy shores so there was no turning back. An invasion of the Earth is always going to evoke peak emotions! (Until we’re an interplanetary species)

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I would say it is like that because now we have greater pace of life. Everyone expect quick solutions and guidance in more complex world. :wink:

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Yes, and I’d say probably the majority of players save scum, because there is so much uncertainty in the world today and people often grow up in broken families, which contribute to wanting to feel safer even in games. It’s completely natural and I never meant to say it should be “banned” or something :slight_smile: (I know you didn’t mean I meant that, just sayin’) But it irritates many players that they feel compelled to save scum.

and the game certainly doesn’t force you to SC

Maybe you didn’t feel it forced YOU, but I definitely felt it forced me to. The frequent scripted events on the battlescape were not even funny. I expected the combat to go unscripted and even after adapting to the random enemy spawns through positioning and opportunity fire, it still felt unfair, like losses were forced on me (whether due to my lack of skills or not, didn’t matter) and that the game cheated. So did I.

I hope we can try to understand and appreciate each other’s experience of the game without ever falling into dogmatizing.

There’s enough horror survival in OGXcom :smiley:

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And we’ve been spoiled by developers who have been focusing on improving the UI (their next big thing) over the decades, instead of remaining passionate about making legendary games that stand the test of time.

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Maybe. But easy to use UI is integral part of game and essential to have great experience. It is perfect when you don’t even have to think that there is an UI and you still use the program with great proficiency. So in other words devs had to work over the UI as it was part of competition to improve consumer experience. :wink: