It does look as if this concern is being addressed. I agree that this particular case is a particular problem that needs attention. Hopefully it gets addressed soon, and in a good way.
Ironically random mutations is how evolution works. The player can never appreciate them though because really there’s only two enemy types: trash mobs, and and the occasional bullet sponge scylla.
There is high doubt about that. But modders can do wonders - we just need to wait for it to happen.
I agree, Yokes. But I’m worried that Snapshot is delaying official mod support to their detriment. Good modders have already come and gone, realitymachinma among them, in no small part because of the lack of mod support. Mods allow games to be many things to many people, and add to replay value by allowing repeat players to vary the mechanics to their interest.
So yea, awesome in many ways, but a shadow of the game it was supposed to be.
Here I think @Ementrude hits the nail on the head. PP is basically an X-Com: Apocalypse for the modern era - and like that game, it is far too ambitious for its resources.
With luck, and a lot of hard work, it will ultimately get there - but it’s a long way off at the moment, and all we can do is tell JG & the devs what is and isn’t working for us and why. Whether they bother to listen is a different matter, but the way they have changed Lairs and are tinkering with a Panda Skills System in response to our comments on Evolution and the DDA gives me hope.
TBH, for me the litmus test will be if they finally grasp the nettle and do something for Tactically-minded players after getting our feedback via the Community Council. It’s clear that the devs don’t see the whole alpha-strike open skills sandbox as a problem atmo, but I also get the impression that they haven’t truly grasped just how brutally open they’ve actually made it. Now we should always remember that most games suffer commercially if they increase the difficulty in response to calls from the hardcore - and let’s face it, we are the hardcore (or at least most of us are) - but I’ll know that they’re really listening if they give us a Second Wave of options, or some sort of Tactical Difficulty Mode that allows us to play the game we’re yearning for while leaving the Terminators to the Munchkins.
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I think the essential problem is that the complaints about the OP combos are perceived by the devs as a call from the more vocal ‘hardcore’ players to increase difficulty, or make the game more like the original X-Com. They see it as players who want a different game, who are not willing to accept that Phoenix Point is also aiming at casual players who want to feel like Arnie in Terminator, not the cops at the police station.
TBH, in part it’s a fair assessment, as many players calling for something to be done do want a different game and feel that the vision of the game as a spiritual successor to X-Com has been betrayed.
There is a also a huge elephant in the room as it is hard to understand how the devs thought that they could please both the casual players and X-Com fans when the base mechanics of the game are actually more complex than X-Com and the Terminator skills appear half way through the game. So as a casual player who wants to have a power trip you have to play through the ‘nightmare’ of the early mid game, where crabs shoot back, Sirens MC your soldiers, Chirons lob mortars, Tritons are sneaky stealthy, etc., and as a ‘hardcore’ player (though more than hardcore, I would even say ‘conventional’ player - someone who expects tactics in a tactical turn based game) halfway through the game you are rewarded with a different gaming experience.
However, in part it’s not just ‘hardcore’ players calling for a different game and the devs are being too defensive about what really amounts to a huge balance issue for whatever game Phoenix Point is meant to be and whoever it aims to please.
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I don’t buy this. This isn’t early 00’s where graphics were the only selling point of games. Git gud is now a valid retort to any difficulty complaints. I still remember the rumors in 2009/2010 of a game out there in Japan. It’s hard as hell, and if you die you lose everything unless you get back to where you were without dying. The developers weren’t even sure they’d localize to the US since it was such a niche presentation, but I sure as hell wanted that. The endless discussions on the fourms I visited talking about the situation, and sharing their frustrations with each other ensured that I wanted in on it. Fighting those first few skele’s in Demon Souls 10 times was an experience on par with that first sectoid encounter in ufo:defense. 10 years later From Software now has what? 6 games that I think have all shipped over a million units? “Souls-like” is now a category in and of itself with all the imitators and innovators on that formula.
All of that because the devs went with a challenging game with loss. While the games have run out of some steam in recent years they sold all those units on largely the same game mechanics too.
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It just so happens that a few days ago I switched from Phoenix Point to Sekiro, because it suddenly came to me why was I playing a game with one hand tied to a foot to create some sort of challenge when I could be just playing a challenging game?
Why was it considered a good idea to make this power trip part of the game I do not know. I assume that there was some marketing research behind this decision, I’m just not sure if it was duly considered that the power trip was being grafted on top of a complex tactics game. Or maybe that was the idea, to create a Souls-like, get gud experience, with powerful skills but always a greater challenge?
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But the game is somehow hardcore right now. Oh, have you lost a squad before you’ve trained replacement? Restart the whole game and git gud, or save scum. Game isn’t a cakewalk even on easiest difficulty because geoscape strategical part (recruitment, training, ODI, DDA, mission spawns) is so punishing. For early to mid-game (unless you powergame and know exactly what to do) it is almost roguelike experience. If you don’t use Terminator setups it also gets pretty hardcore. For last month or so we’ve had a pandora weapons (acid) that could one shot a whole squad without any means of active defense (just prevention and damage control) against it. We still don’t have active defense (like immunity armour, cure acid status) AFAIK, yet acid potency seems to be reduced greatly. If I think about the game mechanics in general, they all seem to be hardcore player oriented. The only thing that isn’t is skill system where game suffers from powercreep. It leads to huge imbalance as pandorians are supposed to provide at least some challenge so their stats are adjusted to match powercreep.
Hey dawg, I heard you like powercreep, so we powercreeped the powercreep so you can powercreep their powercreep.
Well, I’ve feared for a while that the balance problem wasn’t an accident.
It doesn’t matter now, but I would call myself a conventional player.
PP “should” be for everyone, but doesn’t make anyone really happy. In the beginning we already have tactical mode and if the early game has survived, the players will be “rewarded” with Superman mode. Who (like Arnie) wants to shoot everything in a one man show, can’t do it at the beginning. Anyone who enjoys the tactical eary game will be drawn in at the beginning to be bitterly disappointed later. And who wants to be damned “rewarded” with supertoys and ultra arcade ???
One thing about hardcore gamers:
Nowadays, games build their audience (also) via streamers. I would like to name 3. And these are “real” hardcore players !!
- ChristopherOdd (470k): showed a “relaxed” passage on Legend. In the last video he addressed the “unpolished” in PP and of course the “balance” problems.
- Marbozir" (100k): He only started with PP and even stopped shortly before midgame.
Both had countless campaigns with Firaxis XCOM 1 & 2 and therefore an extremely high number of views.
Why don’t they jump on PP? Now there can be many reasons. My fear is: They are “hardcore” players and they don’t get anything “challenging”. And from mid-game nothing even “surprising” from PP and for your audience.
What confuses me the most is that the YouTuber
- “Retcon Raider” (17k) even started his channel “because of” PP and added much less video from mid-game and is currently paused. That with “currently” can be easily explained with the appearance of the XCOM spin off and Gears Tactics. I watched a couple of his videos. PP doesn’t really “tactically” challenge him and doesn’t surprise him either. Who knows: maybe he is disappointed with the forced transition to “Superman Mode” like I am.
In summary: the real hardcore players, and these are also YouTube streamers, are currently not generating “followers” with PP.
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Tell that to the people who hurl abuse at you on these forums for daring to suggest that running into the middle of a room full of machine-gun toting Nasties and getting gunned down by Return Fire possibly might not be a fault of the game… 
TBH, the Souls genre of games is aimed at a completely different audience to your basic XCOM player; and whether it likes it or not, PP is always going to be compared to X- and XCOM first and foremost.
The circle they have yet to square is that the original X-Com audience who their crowdfunding appealed to has a completely different set of expectations to the new XCOM audience who their current design seems to be (kind of) aimed at.
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I think a big issue might be Julian’s abusive relationship with dynamic difficulty. He’s tried it in every game after laser squad (I think?), and it’s always caused problems, but things have changed since the 90’s in that people are much more connected. Dynamic difficulty in some sense creates a different game for each individual, but if everyone is playing a different game it ruins the common experience. A save scummer is going to be playing a completely different game than someone who has somehow found the perseverance to pay the death tax. Someone who finds out that you can technician armor your whole squad for invulnerability every turn is playing a different game than someone who only uses dash and quick aim in an emergency.
When all these different people get on their favorite forum and post about it they end up confused as hell. “What are you talking about 20 arthrons and 3 chirons?” says the guy who pays the death tax. “What do you mean skills are OP?” says the guy who only uses them in emergencies. etc. etc. With no common reference point discussion dies out because it all becomes a schizophrenic mess.
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Because there is nothing wrong in dying while shooting from full cover, right? Git gud and count squares. That is an issue with a praised free-aim. You can free-aim as much as you can, but everything is ballistic until you shot. Ballistics turns into boardgame and for some reason you die to a return fire from a guy without initial LoS to you. 
This is as stupid as Phantom Doctrine side-step mechanic. This leads to count-squares metagame that has absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Well, my point was that whether they square that circle or not, whether Phoenix Point is identified as a savory blend of UFO Defence and Firaxis XCom, or an uneasy (and incestuous) marriage of convenience, the balance issues arising from the skills sandbox have to be fixed and hiding heads in the sand with a “there is no issue, making the player feel powerful as a reward was part of the plan” is not really a solution.
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But there are games that found a way to make an interesting dynamic difficulty. Lets take Rimworld for example, Dwarf Fortress clone. They have implemented “story-tellers” with various, dynamic difficulty curves to provide tension when needed and to relieve after difficulty spike (or not, depending on storyteller). It gives the calm before storm experience, but may and most probably will turn into calm after you survive the storm. PP devs miss the opportunity to give players a way to train new soldiers, to spawn easier missions so you don’t have to powercreep with main terminator squad all the time. Game could signal the difficulty spikes and exceptionally tough missions (scout reports). Now? If you survived the storm the next mission will rain with bazooka armadillos. Why? Because game expects you to suffer. If you don’t suffer it means game is too easy for you. Suprisingly, this isn’t something hardcore gamers asked for and actually want.
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I think you bring up a good point with Rim World, but I also think that maybe what makes those story tellers work is what made old X-com work? More units, smaller death tax wrt to re-equipping and re-skilling, and progression is mainly tied to accumulating strong equipment. Also there’s no odd spikes in character power brought on by skills. I haven’t played Rim world since around release/ beta though so forgive me if I’m misrepresenting it.
WRT to latter part of your post: I made another thread asking about the Geoscape vision. I think it covers alot of those complaints so maybe you could throw some of your opinions in there?
That’s not what I said. What I said was: If you run into the middle of a room full of machine-gun toting Nasties and shoot at one of them, you should expect to get riddled full of holes. Because running into the middle of a room full of machine-gun toting Nasties is stupid!
But the kind of player who does that screamed so loudly about Return Fire that they nerfed it into a useless mess that doesn’t remotely represent the kind of covering fire it was supposed to simulate.
Now, I’m with you on the ‘stepping out of cover’ thing. I’ve supported the Canny request to let Squaddies step back behind cover before RF is triggered.
But the only FULL cover you should expect from Phoenix Point is a position where the Nasties can’t see you. One of the beauties of the game imho is the fact that it much better simulates the actual reality of firing from cover in modern warfare than most games. Watch an old clip from Vietnam - or more recently from the Iraq/Afghan/Syrian conflicts - and you’ll see people crouching behind full cover sticking their auto-rifle round the corner or over the parapet without even looking and firing blind. That’s because they know that if they pop their head out to aim, they’ll get it blown off by RF! PP used to simulate that brilliantly - and it still does if you use Pantolomin’s excellent ‘RF a la carte’, but gung-ho players who didn’t want to take the time and patience to figure out how to neutralise RF screamed so loudly that Snapshot XCOMMed it and now it’s not only useless, it’s stupid
The last person who should be able to RF at you is the guy you’re shooting at, because he should be cowering under a hail of bullets; and RF at it stands in the game actually promotes the gung-ho Teminator strategy of running up to your opponent, standing out in the open and one-shotting him, then moving on to the next target, still out in the open, because there’s now no mechanic that punishes you for doing something so tactically ridiculous.
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If I was @UnstableVoltage, that statement would be ringing alarm bells right now.
Have you noticed how many long-term loyal supporters of this game have stopped playing it recently?
I haven’t played it since Lockdown. Now that’s partly because I don’t have the time - though I can always make time for the games I really want to play; but mainly because I’ve been waiting for Derleth to come out, and then for the inevitable bugs to get hotfixed and the hotfix bugs to get even hotter fixed (which I also think is indicative). I don’t have time to invest weeks in a game only for the campaign to get Crimson Batted at the last minute.
To the best of my knowledge, Walan and Wormerine are waiting for tactical fixes before they start playing again, Spite&Malice has given up, Zzz has disappeared from these forums, I don’t know if Yokes is playing atmo, @mcarver2000 how about you - I seem to remember you saying you were going to take a break for a while? And now Voland.
Seems to me that when even the most hardened gaming rats start abandoning the ship, it’s time to start worrying.
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Id’ be interested in seeing a Tales of Valkyria style return fire mechanic to replace overwatch and return fire. I.e. every tile moved in close proximity to the enemy results in chip damage shots based off of the particular weapon. For example moving 6 tiles in front of an assault rifle character results in 3x 30dmg shots being fired at the moving character. One 30dmg shot per 2 tiles. Has the added benefit of scaling well which the current system doesn’t. A single overwatch command results in a single 6x30dmg burst which dosen’t amount to much if there’s 5 Arthrons moving around.
In PP we have only boardgame substitute that has nothing to do with a reality of firing. Enemies are aware of everything without peeking out. Not to mention I can stand in wide open 11 squares from enemy and I am perfectly safe. I would be dead if I try to shoot the very same enemy form 10 squares range while being fully covered by a huge wall. If enemy is aware it should peak. If he peaks I want to be able to shot his head. That’s what balistic and free aim should provide. Now? It is square counting. And completly useless cover system (one way only). And vauge LoS breaking that doesn’t make any sense, because there was no LoS prior to shooting. Cover? Nope. Smoke grenade? Nope. Shooting the peaker? Nope. Reaction shots in 1994 had much more sense than this, and this is supposed to be improved modern approach.
Edit: AFAIK Zzz was temp-banned/suspended for a few weeks and didn’t return to the forum.
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@NoStas has also been disabled.
But in his last post he said something confusing.
Edit: Maybe I’m going to be turned off now ?!