My Backers Build 4 feedback

Phoenix Point Game Feedback
1

First of all - I’m really, REALLY impressed by all changes that happened… (will post them in separate thread soon)

You had to have many of those things prepared earlier but kept them away from previous Backers Builds. Ok lets get to those feedback point:

  • I’m not sure if I like new system of refueling. It definitely make traveling easy, but I suppose I would like see automatic refueling only in friendly havens (even without building there any refueling station). Otherwise I would leave the emergency refueling in other places even for the cost of 10 materials - always something to keep in mind and reason to keep good relations with havens. :wink:
  • Event system is quite interesting feature :slight_smile: If it will be also randomized (I mean not the event placement, but also event outcomes - so if you find the same event second time it will give you something slightly different) then that would lead to incredible strategy layer replayability.
  • I like that weapons and armors vary between factions, with all 3 factions and our Project in place, it will give quite many items to choose from
  • I begin to love lack of restrictions on class equipment - that you can put your assault in heavy armor with attached missile launcher and sniper rifle in hands, it has some downsides, but you can do it! Earlier only heavy could use missile launcher due to some algorithm restriction, if only proficiency skill were more clear and connected with ‘class filter’ in inventory that would be great
  • Perk system may be really good if those perks will give something substantial. Right now big part of them don’t give anything interesting (like proficiency in silenced weapons when there aren’t any silenced weapons available)
  • Inventory changes are really welcome addition, now it is not frustrating to select equipment for any soldier, or to exchange items between them during the mission
  • I love visual effect of fire, and addition of fire mechanic is also welcome
  • Those anu havens are fantastic
  • Change of overwatch is great, it removes most of the frustration related to that ability
  • Change of return fire also is welcomed update, now they don’t spam you with bullets throuth the whole map
  • I like how crabmen were changed, they are easier to kill as such basic creature should be, but they also pose higher threat than before, it feels like encountering first enemies in original XCOM
  • Addition of all those phisical and psychical conditions is great, it assures that your soldiers won’t be safe to every form of attack available in the game, unless you will give us armors and equipment which will protect at the same time vs acid, bleed, fire, goo, panic, poison, stun or virus
  • I like sound indicators showing where is the enemy
  • I really like Siren and Chiron aliens, they bring interesting variety to crabmen + mind fragger combo, Fireworm is also nice addition, but well I don’t let them too close (did it once for test purpose and that was enough) :wink: but please don’t reveal more aliens before release
  • I don’t like those game crashes after explosions, some condition related to environment destruction must make game unstable
  • You should make something with those attack animations. Sometimes it is nice to see some burst or swing from different angle than isometric view, but here it is overwhelming and boring at some point
  • Restore soldier’s “spot enemy&stop” feature during movement - it is frustrating that they run, even have pop up info that they spotted enemy, but they run further… that was one of key features of previous builds that made it so different than FiraXCOMs.
  • Also restore environment durability from BB3 (but new physics system should stay, just need some polishing), because right now cover disappears like in some fairy tale.
  • New mission objectives are fine, but Civilians AI need some work, also spread of resources crates should be reworked (but you probably know that, and there are just not all systems in place yet which will make those missions more ‘reasonable’)
  • You really need to explain perception system, or say if it is really in place or we just see some skills and armor properties which are not doing anything right now
2 Likes
2

Yeah, at this point almost everything is concealment rather than cover. It can be fun to abuse (shooting through it to hit an enemy behind it), but it does get a bit silly.

3
  • Radar station - they need to have range shown on geoscape, because we don’t know where to build next ones. I’m not sure how much they will overlap now.

EDIT: What more… when we hover above build radar station icon at the bottom of the screen, that range should appear before confirmation if we want to build it.

4

I have been wondering this myself.

5

As far as I’ve determined the stop and notice on enemy spotted is still in effect. I think it only works for enemies that noone in the squad has spotted yet, though. Also seems to apply to civilians on occasion.

6

It is working randomly, not always on first time spotted enemy either

7

Some additional points:

  • make alien kill from bleeding or falling grant willpower to soldier which have caused those effect, aliens for some reason can gain willpower after their poison finish civilian
  • Bash ability is fantastic addition when there is no ammo left
  • Above point in previous post about civilian AI transforms into… Fix those damn civilians AI for next build, because they are extremely frustrating - they run toward aliens even seeing them! They were advancing in enemy direction faster than my soldiers. They should run away from nearest alien which they see or know about. If they don’t see any alien they can sit in current spot - just like that! It would save many of them. From what I have observed I often have 2 or 3 civilians alive at the end of the mission, because at least 3 of them run to hug crabmen and to get killed. Otherwise I would be able to save at least 5 out of 8. btw it would be great to be able to heal them.
  • After few battles in Anu haven I think it is not only fantastic, but I really love it, definitely more than NJ haven where you need long range weapons
  • skill description during training should inform if it will use Willpoints and how many if so. It would help players decide if they want to train it right now if they didn’t invest in Willpower anything yet.
  • every alien, or actually every unit, should have some attack even if with minimal damage and their main attack is support or crowd control ability - maybe eggs and sentinels doen’t need that, but for example goo chiron is harmless enemy if there is no other alien around. Maybe his stomp ability should deal some small damage to adjacent units and maybe have armor shred property.
1 Like
8

I hope the automatic refuelling is in this build for speeding the exploration and help to showcase the new features, like the events system.

The idea of limited fuel and having two ranges for your aircradt opens the game for a lot of possibilities, like:

  1. As you said, limited fuel and fuel stations could be a reason to maintain good relation to havens (with paid or free refuels).

  2. This can lead to the players establishing flight routes and developing other PP bases to mitigate the limited aircraft ranges or long multi stops flight routes.

  3. Running out of fuel, could have the player requesting an emergency refuel that would cost resources and take some time to happen, risking the squad being attacked in a base defense style mission while they wait for the fuel.

1 Like
9

This is one of those things, it’s currently just a placeholder, a better system will be put in place in final game :slight_smile:

Yeah, it took me some time to understand that we didn’t had any silenced weapons. It will be an interesting system, though, going undetected through the aliens to give them atomic wedgies and then running away.

Much much better than NJ or Scavenging Sites. Close quarter combat is always much more exciting, since you can use all your weapons without fear of missing, but the same can be said to the aliens.

We discussed this previously, I always considered the new overwatch to be one of the smartest additions to the game.

I saw one alien bullet destroying a whole concrete column. That’s the same as saying that single bullet would be able to destroy an entire building if it were the central column.

1 Like
10

Phrase “better” is not quite specified. :smiley:

Btw, another point.

  • I know that developers work on some better character screen during mission. My suggestion is that it can be complementary to inventory screen and be on the right side of that screen. Please include information about status of each body part and equipment held by that soldier. I would like to see at glance if any part of armor is shred, or how much each body part is damaged or if on any body part or character is applied any effect such as poison, acid, fire or bleed (there can be bleeding without body parts disabled) or if it is disabled. Same goes with held weapon i want to know at glance if its armor was shred or how much it was damaged. And don’t forget to show us soldier attributes here. :smiley:
11

Personally, I’m not impressed with the new build:

*Geoscape is still ugly grey (as opposed to the more colorful version they’d shown in the Development FAQ)

*Environment changed for the worst, now everything and its third uncle instantly vanishes upon contact with any weapon (not as good as previous version AT ALL)

*Recruit features are broken, except for the instantly triggering event, I’m not able to go recruit the vehicle that I’d seen earlier (in spite of clearly having enough resources)

*Enemy Action and AI seems kinda cheesy, artificial difficulty, they vanish off screen, then reappear like Mary Poppins with a Submachine Gun, to snipe your people cross-map, then run away again lol…

*Goal was to protect some random crates, I guess Item Boxes are gone(?), warned that AI can destroy those boxes, AI immediately spawns next to boxes, decides to instantly kill several of them before I can even cross map

*The biggest, most unforgivable sin though, is the performance. It went from 30-35 FPS on the heavy hitting Haven Map, to about 15 FPS (…I’m running an i7-4790k and a GTX 1080, with 24 GB of RAM, not exactly a light rig)

In general, dissatisfied, there were improvements to some things, but others (AI scripting, physics, physics deformation, performance) were utterly destroyed, and I’m concerned that this may be indicative of the final product

I’d rather have BB3 than BB4

1 Like
12

I suppose this is not final version. :slight_smile: At least I hope so. It can be some layer which could ease you filter information, but we really need some more colorful layer too.

Keep in mind this is temporaty for testing purposes. Alien bases have more durable objects. But yeah, kind of annoying.

Do you have 4 empty spaces on Manticore? Except resources you need space in cargohold.

True. But rather than weapons I really prefer to defend resources. Kind of lesser pain while evaluating this. And maybe they will change logic on those maps. This is still work in progress alpha version without balancing. :wink:

Game is not optimized. I have half of your rig in performance power and BB4 runs quite smoothly for me except moments when explosive hit many objects or when mortar Chiron is calculating his actions. :wink:

BB4 is way better than BB3, just in bugs count. I havent found them too many yet. :wink:

13

*Geoscape
They stated that they had changed it due to things apparently being harder to see on the colorful and pretty map (illogical, could change the color and size of icons slightly to account for this)

*Environmental Changes
You have to remember, that this isn’t just a placeholder version, they had a fully working system prior to this that was functional, in the prior working build, and that we should be proceeding linearly (a previously working system should not become invalidated by new additions when not intended)

*Vehicle
Yes, I have all four spots open on the bottom, dropped off a guy in the base after another one got trolled by the AI (dead), couldn’t recruit it as it would tell me that I didn’t have enough resources to recruit a new person, but I most definitely did

*Crate Changes
The prior system really encouraged you to go out and explore, to take item caches on most maps as otherwise you’d lose the opportunity to gather the items, as well as losing out on ammo. Again, this might be an ‘alpha’ but the previous system worked a lot better in my view, I put about 5-6 hours into BB3, had a GREAT time, BB4 on the other hand…

*Game Performance
Yeah, but thing is that my computer can run pretty much any game in 4k without much trouble, I’m able to play MHW in 4k with all settings maxed at 30 FPS (including the new textures) => most tend to struggle to get the game to run past 30 FPS on 1080p with many settings set to potato quality. I can play Ark Survival Evolved without issue as well, 4k with extremely high graphical settings, 45+ FPS, but can’t get Phoenix Point to run properly…
-This wasn’t a particularly difficult map either, unlike say the Havens that in BB3 would cause a dip in performance, this was simply a regular map that used to run 60 FPS @4k quality

Of course there were some nice things added, but the negatives outweigh the positives in my case. With BB3 there was no doubt in my mind that I would love the final product, with BB4 there is significant concern regarding the future of the game.

I want nothing more than this game to be a success, I didn’t refund nor desire one when I learned about the Epic Games change (which I was not particularly enthused about), and that was unilaterally due to my (great) experiences in BB3. If BB4 had been out then, I might have immediately sought out a refund.

14

The environment changes were intentionally made very flimsy so they could have us test out the destruction physics system that got implemented into this build. I’ve seen snapshot devs mention on discord that evironmental damage scaling is something that will be in for the final game.

As for your crate complaint, the ammo crates are now on the haven defense missions. The scavenge missions have resources which I understand may not feel very valuable atm as we don’t have much use for food & tech now. Really just supplies, when the final game hits this will change I imagine. As tech and food will be much more valuable.

15
  • Another point of feedback. Don’t you think this is stupid that Terror Siren (or how you call it) apply panic not only to enemy but also allies? :slight_smile: I had 5 turns in a row where that one siren caused panic to my 4 soldiers (whole squad), 2 crabmen and another siren. :slight_smile: Everybody was randomly running around couple of turns. :smiley: As it was maybe funny it wasn’t really scary or didn’t pose any threat in such situation, as screaming siren also seems to end it’s turn after scream. Or at least make sirens immune to the psychic scream. :slight_smile:
16

Along with goo chiron stands terror siren. For some reason she doesn’t have any damaging attack. She only screams reducing Will Points and inflicts virus (which also damage Will Points and can turn soldier into zombie), but if soldier has enough WP (and this we can be really sure with well trained soldiers and WP granted form kills, objective zones and crates, also with Rally Troops skill) “zombiefication” won’t occur unless we let siren scream constantly reducing WP from that soldier. So… she is definitely more dangerous than Goo Chiron, but still not so much as crabman with machine gun or even with pincer at close range.

17

In BB3’s scavenging missions, all loot was automatically collected upon defeating all enemies, so I just ignored the crates and went straight for the aliens. It was faster and more rewarding. The new system is not perfect, but it does force me to make some decisions: which crates are impossible to reach, which ones I can recover? Do I go for the lone crab munching the precious loot, or concentrate on its four friends who are attacking me?

As it was said before, the physics were reduced to almost everything being paper thin. It’s not cool seeing a concrete column being destroyed by a bullet, but I try ti make it fun by piercing walls to get the covering aliens.

Now that is odd. My system is way worse than yours, and I can run the game just fine. Not great, not chugging, but fine.

18

But he is playing at 4K resolution. 4 times more pixels to render. :wink: And maybe engine wasn’t optimized for such resolution. In Full HD it works fine. :slight_smile:

19

Another thing.

  • When you introduce explosive weapon scatter (inaccuracy) like in Scarab, please give us some indicator how far those missiles can go off of the target spot. This can be even single elipse showing maximum of that spread range (not counting blast radius).
20

So Backers Build 4 would be great experience for me if these 3 things were eliminated:

  • broken base defence missions (enemies in walls)
  • fragile cover (tactic using that cover - which is one of the main features of the game - doesn’t make sense, especially when you have 13 Crabmen with machine guns - then your soldiers are sitting ducks and only heavy armor can save your soldiers for some time)
  • game hanging after explosions (some Unity reporting tool appears)

All other bugs and problems are minor and doesn’t affect gameplay much (taking into account that it is pre-alpha).