My long feedback is getting out of control

Phoenix Point Game Feedback
123

There is a lot of great ideas here, but from my experience as a not so good player, a lot of focus is only on half of my problem with the game. Combat wise, everything pushes to an alpha strike. Hit points are low, weapons and skills are all very high damage. Armor just delays the quick death a turn, since it’s a consumable steel cage around a weak shelled egg. The entire combat side seems focused on high loss, quick brutal combat.

However, the entire rest of the game mechanics seem to say, everything is rare, don’t lose anything, soldiers can’t be lost, gear is super expensive. For me it seems like the game is fighting with itself, with me in the middle getting hosed. If combat is quick death and brutal, fine, make me able to replace combat losses easily.

TLDR: Combat says quick death, lots of losses. Rest of game says no losses, that’s bad. That leaves me save scumming with no other options.

Edit add: The initial NJ mission is a great example. That could be the very first mission that happens in a game, if NJ is first contacted. In it are enemy with return fire, high armor, and good weapons. That screams gonna lose a soldier. The rest of the game screams, no you can’t replace that soldier, they are rare. Heck, I might not even have the research to even recruit a new soldier at that point at all, much less afford one if I could.

4 Likes
124

Early on the game tends to push the novice player into thinking they must alpha-strike. Don’t take the bait. Sometimes the best offense is defense. Find cover and make them come to you. That’s when they are most vulnerable. Don’t be afraid to take a few hits, as this will stall the ramping up of stronger enemies.

125

Most combat missions prevent that entirely. Haven defense, nest, and scavenge I can’t sit and wait, the enemy will entirely ignore me. The geoscape side punishes me if I dont do scavenge, because there is no way to increase my resources besides food, which other than luck of a haven trading, I can’t influence in any way. I have no long term control, and it seems like two developers made the game and mashed it together. One made combat and went with brutal, high loss, intense action, the other made the Geoscape and went with post apocalypse, super rare everything, and very few if no way for the player to modify it.

1 Like
126

Yep, that’s pretty much it. I believe this is what is commonly referred to as the ‘uneven’ difficulty of PP (IRRC it appeared on quite a few professional reviews of the game on release, and the difficulty was even more uneven back then) . And the first NJ mission is a great example of that, BTW.

Now, I actually like the quickness & brutality of the combat, and there are ways to raise the survivability of the troops quite a lot (bear in mind that each point invested in strength gives 10HPs, so with max strength a soldier has 300 HP, clad him/her in heavy armor - that gives margin for a lot of punishment).

Also, the game can quickly go from “I have no resources” to “I have so many I don’t know what do with them”. (For example, if you invest in food production facilities early on and then get the Anu tech that raises it by 50%)

As to combat, though quick & brutal, it’s quite predictable - meaning you can accurately predict the results of your actions. I have played +1500 hours of XCom EW, and I still dread the moment the Thin Men appear, because then much is in the hands of RNG. PP, by contrast, has a much smoother start once you know the mechanics.

And that’s the other thing, the game makes very little effort to explain itself…

Lastly, IMO, getting the balance right gets really complicated because there are exploits in the game that experienced players know how to use to get over the rough bits, while the players who don’t, or refuse to use them have a much harder time even on the easiest difficulty setting…

So when I (and many others) call for getting rid of stuff like first-turn strikes, or double electric reinforcement, the point is get rid of the exploits so that you can actually properly evaluate the difficulty of the game at different settings, and then balance it in accordance to the players’ expectations.

127

I agree about the combat pace, I love the quick and brutal combat side. Quick and intense for me is a lot more fun. Personally my issues are having no control or ways to help myself on the Geoscape side. I can’t increase recruiting numbers, because it’s locked to having a found Haven, and luck if they have a recruit. As a player I can’t do anything to affect that. Resources I am locked to having a Haven offering trade for food, if any are, and if they have some left. As a player I again have no means to affect that.

128

I forgot to comment on the balance I do agree on the exploit removal part, no issues here at all. I can’t even imagine how hard balancing a game must be. Just trying to think of all the variables gives me a headache. I have immense respect for everyone who does this.

129

I understand your likness of it, but in my opinion it doesn’t fit the theme of the game. It should be suspense, unknown of what pandoran thing is hiding over there in the darkness… Slow scouting, and removing threats. Of course there could be mission which end in few turns, but I think they should not represent more than 25 maybe 30% of fights.

Hah I wish it would work all the time… Imagine that I need a lot of materials now, and almost every haven has food and factory in it. That prevents trading food for materials. :smiley: There is option o raid for material, but I don’t want to spoil my reputation with factions.

That is right, but heavy armors are expensive, and you still need time to progress to those 30 str points and necessary skills (even when abandoning speed and willpower). Nevertheless (as it is possible to do that) I again think game should not produce soldiers which are hard as rock. This:

Should be good description. Armor should give good protection for at least few turns (then crumble from hits) but you still could counter enemy and survive.

1 Like
130

Haven defense is the real source of tech, materials and food. The main goal in haven defense is not protecting facilities or civilians (this only gives a minor bump in shared skill points). Knowing the goal of the enemy, is the key to taking then out. You now know their goal, so move your troops to take out the enemy. Saving the facilities or civilians is a secondary goal, not the primary one.

131

These objectives are the main source for the base experience for your soldiers in heaven defenses (and for that also the shared skill points that you mentioned because these are 1% of the Exp). In the early game, when you have no level 7 soldiers, then you gain a remarkable poor amount of Exp when you can’t protect these objectives.

But all in all you are right, these objectives didn’t count for the amount of resources you gain for a successful defense. For that you only have to complete the main goal and that is simply kill all enemies.

132

Shouldn’t the game really dial down on what it wants to be first, though? Sure, you want it to be as approachable as possible, but one can’t design Dirt Rally and Need for Speed at the same time. My biggest problem with PP, isn’t that it isn’t what I want it to be, but that I am not sure it knows what it wants to be. It seems to be very complex and very streamlined at the same time - in some aspects it goes for over-the-top simulation, and in the other for abstract gamey rules. And they just don’t play nice together at the moment.

7 Likes
133

From what I see Snapshot Games plan to address few core issues. I wonder how it will play out. All of them are in my feedback, maybe except redesigning Lairs. :smiley:

134

I see it that way too … PP can stretch “something”, but if it is to serve all types of players, it will be lame everywhere.

IMO: The first half of the game, as well as the complexity and presentation, should not appeal to most “click around” kids. The Superheroes skills make the wonderful game mechanics from the first part almost superfluous in the second half, which will disappoint the veterans. Maybe the “click around” kids might like the second part, but they won’t get there until then.

So that I am not misunderstood now:
The first part of the game can be frustrating. Both the player and the opponent have unfair strike methods, with the difference that the unfair panda methods can appear in the first part of the game. I just want to say that with “click around kids” I do not mean players who have difficulty with the first part. Rather, I mean players who simply want to feel overwhelming power on their side and want to see quick successes without familiarizing themselves with the game. ( I like to exaggerate just to make it clear and do not mean pejoratively.)

135

Haven defense is a mid to late game mechanic for getting resources though. Early game the most common mission by far is scavenge, which most combat advice says don’t even do. A lot of the proposed changes look to change a lot of this, but current state that’s just another example of combat and Geoscape having opposite design goals.

136

Absolutely, that’s why I say it can go either way - you can be swimming in resources, or struggling for them. A few lucky explorations can yield a lot of stuff, or they may not.

TBH, I never had too much trouble with resources because I got them one way, or another (trading, haven defense, scavenging, explorations, gifts from factions…) However,

  • I can see that it can be a problem, particularly when you have to replace expensive soldiers on lower difficulty levels…

  • As I said earlier, I would prefer diplomacy/base/resource management to be integrated in a more cohesive system.

137

I think that was questionable advice even before the Leviathan patch - the argument being that doing these scavenging missions well would make the (much maligned) DDA adjust the difficulty upwards.

However, scavenging missions in the early game are a good way of getting resources and combat experience, and after Leviathan DDA has been significantly toned down.

138

Haven defense starts pre-midgame. Granted it ramps up rapidly as one researches midgame. I only do low level scavenge missions, mainly for EXP. One gets more resources exploring early game, plus the odd mission encountered. The odds of an ambush is just another EXP exploit for the sane gamer.

139

Actually, the advice is to stop doing these missions after the Early game, once the DDA has ramped the Pandas up.

Early game, the Scavenging missions work well, both as a Resource and XP gatherer.

Mid-Late Game, they are so packed full of 1-shot Crabbies that destroy all the crates before you get to them, that they become a counter-productive resource drain - it usually costs more to moutn a mid-late game Scavenge than it brings back, so Scavenging becomes pointless except as an XP gainer.

But Snapshot are reconfiguring all of this in their next patch, so let’s see how that works, eh?

140

Which is why I constantly advocate reflecting this in the Difficulty settings &/or Second Wave Options.

I don’t know the games you cite, but based on the titles, it would be perfectly possible for this game to be Need for Speed in Superman Mode, where Squad Skills are unlimited and the DDA is toned right down; but Dirt Rally in Tactical Mode, where Squad Skills are limited and the DDA reacts to your every victory. Then everyone gets the game they want.

You’re kinda right though. Snapshot don’t really know what they want PP to be - or rather, I think JG wants to rebottle the lightning of X-Com/Laser Squad, but make it more streamlined and relevant to the modern gaming market; and I’m not sure if those two aims are actually compatible.

1 Like
141

It’s more that I can’t picture the slow discovery, suspense combat as any good in PP. Take the scouting and lurking in the darkness. So you make the maps bigger and lower detection, particularly in low light environments. That means that now you have to move slowly and create sources of light as you go. All the time. It’s not really a choice, because not moving slowly, scouting ahead and creating sources of light in low light environments means you will get massacred. It becomes a pattern, a routine, a protocol - something you do without even thinking.

Right now I like the quick & brutal combat in PP because, minus the balancing issues and exploits, it’s very good. You are not locked into playing in any particular way, there is no winning pattern (again, first-turn strike issues aside), and it’s mostly ‘fair’ (meaning when I lose, I did something wrong and could have won if I did it differently… Well, uneven difficulty issues also aside… ).

Can the discovery/suspense combat be made right in a turn based game? I think yes, but it needs to really focus on it, have some systems in place to ensure that the players have interesting and valid choices to make.

142

Just for the record, in my current campaign I have had 3 haven defenses within the first 2 weeks of game time. So far there have been 5 scavenging sites revealed. Of which I have only done 1.