Mildly dissapointed with the general direction of the game

Phoenix Point Game Feedback
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I kind of liked what I have felt in old Xcom 1994 by looking at stats (even some were random): it felt like soldier shooting a lot was getting better at aim, throwing a lot earned higher throwing range stat etc. Experience would bring stamina and morale, but not some superpowers.

Surely, add ons like newer weapons and armour should be kept to boost accuraccy and armour or speed, but not to such determinative effect.

Class System is based on experience, but feels like “trickery” especially with high end “superpowers”

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I’m actually still playing daily, reporting bugs and trying out different stuff.

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I am not against skills , and I like multiclass in this game,
just cooldown measures for some of them would help

on the other hand, I liked that 1994 system, gaining experience over practice, accuracy after shooting at enemies, launching grenades more often, returning fire more times…
and the randomness about soldier skills, morale

I will play PP again, after next patch, right now playing other games

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Would skills developed by practice, perks decided by levels be a good compromise? Removes much of the +skill tabulating so you only have to enter the skill screen to select perks. Makes perks more consequential since you can’t select all of them. You can make multi-classing cost 2 perk slots maybe so now you have a reason to single class.

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I can say I play, but it is not on daily basis. Sometimes I have a pause for even a week. Too many things happening around, to focus on gaming right now. But I visit forum regularly.

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When considering changes the devs need to look at how much something is of an issue, how many players want the change and how many don’t, and make a cost/benefit analysis. This means that sweeping changes to core systems, especially those that swing the game in a direction that is perceived as desired by only a segment of players, are very unlikely.

So the key to having something changed is first to make the case that there is an important issue that needs to be addressed until the devs acknowledge it. And the suggestions that are more likely to be successful are those that are the easiest to implement and are unlikely to alienate other players.

For example, there was a lot of complaining about the ineffectiveness of ARs against armor. There were very few (if any) voices denying that there was a problem. There were several suggestions as to how to fix it, some of them very elaborate. Which one was chosen? That’s right, add one point of shred to each round.

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I don’t get how this band of “I wanna play crab terminators!” are influencing decisions so much. I don’t see them anywhere. Not on these forums, not on reddit, not in the reviews. I haven’t been around too long, but I’ve been going through some of the more popular older threads from 2018 and such. Everyone says please stay away from firaxcom, and stick to x-com roots.

As far as I can tell this game is only being made to please the boogyman.

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You also cannot see any of the in-game data/analytics that we collect about the way people play and their play habits, nor the responses we get to the surveys we send out each month.

And here lies the problem. Many people believe that their view reflects the majority, because they can’t see all of the data.

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So publish the data.

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Why? For starters, surveys are confidential. But players have absolutely no need for the data.

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To prove the boogyman actually exists in this case.

I’ll publish some data since you won’t though.

Xcom 2: War of the Chosen
88% critic reviews
7.8 player reviews

Xenonauts
77% critic reviews
7.8 player reviews

Phoenix Point
74 critic reviews
5.8 player reviews

Who are you pleasing? Firaxcom is doing significantly better. Okay maybe there’s something there. Xenonauts has done better though? The X-com reskin? Obviously something has gone wrong here. The mystery crowd of casual players doesn’t seem pleased with PP either.

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What’s the point of proving anything to us? It won’t change anything. If you don’t like it, it won’t make you like it more.

We are customers, not investors. Snapshot doesn’t answer to any of us.

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I know I haven’t played for a while, but since we’re talking about core systems here, I have to think we are each playing different games, because in my experience none of what you say is true:

Nope. If you are careful about your approach, enemies (most particularly Chirons) are not immediately alerted. There is admittedly a bug in the hearing mechanics, which means that Chirons get alerted sooner than they ought to - Voland knows the detail of this better than I. But the Nasties very definitely are not ‘aware of everything’ right from the get-go.

Not in my experience you’re not! If I stand in the open 11 squares from an enemy, I get my head blown off. This also seems to contradict the statement above that the enemy ‘knows everything’.

I refer you to my answer in the previous post above. I’m in absolute agreement that Squaddies should be able to step back into cover before RF triggers. That said, if I’m hiding behind a low wall and fire at an Arthron with a machine-gun, odds are that 50% of its RF will hit the wall - if I’m Sniping at it from a distance from behind the wall, I count myself unlucky if a stray bullet from its spread actually hits me.

The enemy does peek - especially Tritons. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve shot off a Triton’s head - or extraneous limb - as it huddled behind cover. Arthrons are less cautious, but taking out an Arthron’s shield arm is a standard PP Sniper tactic in my book.

So Free Aim does provide exactly the same facility to me as it does to those blasted Triton Snipers (who are not nearly as 100% accurate as some people like to claim).

I’d agree that the LoS calculator can be frustrating at times, because the question it is actually answering is: ‘can I see any tiny fragment of a target from this square?’ So the answer may be ‘yes’, but the answer to ‘Can I see enough of the target to shoot at it from this square?’ may well be ‘no’.

And cover in PP does work, you just have to know how to use it properly. Most specifically, stop expecting it to act like cover in XCOM, and take it on its own merits. And in that respect I do concede that they scored an own-goal by using the same symbols for ‘low cover’ and ‘high cover’ as XCOM’s ‘half cover’ and ‘full’. But High Cover is not - and was never intended to be - completely full cover. If you want full cover, hide one step behind a wall where the Nasty can’t see you and step up to the corner to fire - where I agree the whole ‘stepping out to get RF’ed’ syndrome kicks in. But if you’re crouching behind low cover, you should expect your head or your butt to get shot off by a sniper, and if you’re behind high cover, your limbs are still likely to be fair game. But that’s just as true for the Nasties as it is for you.

Yea, of course we do. And how is that any different to the percentage system of XCOM, or the system used in Jagged Alliance? ALL TBS boardgame-style systems are an abstraction. I just happen to believe that PP’s presents (or used to present) a pretty good abstraction of the way modern warfare works. You don’t. We disagree. Let’s end it there :slightly_smiling_face:

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Because I want the best for Snapshot, and I want the best for their customers. The same as I want the best for you.

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Snapshot we try to help you! It is up to you whether you ignore this.

I have never imposed restrictions on myself in any game except in PP. Strictly speaking, quite a few “have to” do it here, which is far more than those who reported in “this” thread.

This also means that players have to ignore certain features of the game so that it doesn’t appear “broken” to them. Some only send 2-3 soldiers to fight, some prohibit certain combos, some introduce cool-downs for themselves and some completely dispense with level 7 skills. There are many variations of this … In this example, data is manipulated by the players themselves.

In addition: the supersoldiers do not help the beginners in any way! They face difficulties much earlier with the higher complexity (e.g. cover), with certain opponents (bomb-chiron, siren) or with the expensive loss of soldiers. The super soldiers only make it easier for those who had no problems until mid-game.

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116

@walan I suppose that @UnstableVoltage needs clear and straightforward suggestions to improve the game, pointing where we think it fails for us.

And reading these posts and those in Link Rally to Officer Promotion should help if Snapshot team take their time to analyze our comments

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They should try the Supersoldier mechanics themselves and then evaluate whether they enjoy it.

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Ever played the old game again you speak so highly about? you can buy it fore a few dollar on Steam. That game is so broken.

Get your whole squad with rocket launchers. Take a few steps outside the Avenger and start nuking any obstacle you see. The maps is cleared with a few rockets. Then you click end turn 5-10 times without moving any soldiers, mist goes away and you kill all moving aliens. Mission complete.

Remember how hard it was to enter a UFO as a 10 yr old? Moving all your units to the door then save the game before opening it?
People nowadays are too bored to set up all those soldiers in position as you did ‘back in the days’.
As a grown up with >20 yr of gaming experience, you just fire a rocket at the door, click end turn few times, mist goes away, all aliens get spotted and killed. Easy.

The game took me weeks to complete as a child with thousands of reloads. Now I can finish it in a day.
The old game was even more broken in balance than phoenix point, but you had no clue or internet.
I loved the old xcom, best game ever, but no game can compete against exagerating nostalgia.

But I agree that PP should have had more original XCOM mechanics instead of Firaxcom to make this game stand out. I dont like the 4-6 soldiers squad size and how much abilities one soldier has, and they made it even more tedious with willpower and inventory system. But I think consoles are to blame for that.

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120

I’m going to put a few things straight here because I am seeing in this thread and others, a lot of;

“Snapshot doesn’t listen to X”
“Snapshot is ignoring Y”
“Snapshot didn’t bother playing Z”

Like many, these assumptions are incorrect.

We listen to and examine all of the feedback, from a number of sources - including data from surveys which we regularly conduct, along with in-game analytical data to which the public has no access to.

We can’t just go making sweeping changes to major systems without properly considering the impact on the game overall, along with the impact on all of our existing and future customers.

Another assumption by some people is that those who are most active and most vocal on these forums and similar places speak for the majority. While many of the voices can be in unison, that doesn’t mean they’re representative of the majority of players.

A player who is unhappy about something and wishes to see a change is far more likely to be vocal about it than someone who is content. Again, we’re looking at data from a far larger sample size than just the active people on our forums.

We listened to the loudest voices with acid - and you remember how that turned out. We’ve learnt from this - that any changes have to be carefully considered and the repercussions measured. Changes don’t happen in a vacuum - and any changes we make not only affect other in-game systems and balance, but could also affect our future plans for updates and additional content.

Even when we see there is a cause for a change, they can’t happen overnight. Again, going back to the acid situation; taking things in the wrong direction and then having to roll them back is more costly in development time and player satisfaction than taking the extra time to examine all of the data and get things right.

We’re never going to be in a position where we can make a product that will 100% satisfy every individual customer. Different people want different things, and it’s not possible to have all of those different things in the same product, especially when many of them are conflicting.

Undoubtedly, some of the changes that we make (or don’t make) won’t meet with your approval. It’s nothing personal. We give weight to all of the feedback and data we see, but ultimately some people are not going to end up with the flavour of ice cream they were hoping for.

We’re always striving to make the game as good as we possibly can and as enjoyable as we possibly can for as many people as we can. Sometimes this means that certain things won’t be to the liking of a very passionate but less representative percentage of the player-base.

We always try to be as accommodating as we can, but for this we need time to make sure that we get things right.

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