New patch, or this is why we can't have nice things

This nerf completely sucks.

I had never used combos of abilities to get ahead. Now I will have to.

usually you are facing overwhelming odds on a map late game. There is no way your 7 troops will clear up enough to stop them being killed the following turn. In line with the abilities nerf they need to reduce the number of enemies on a map. Its stupid.

I won’t be playing this pile of crap until its re-balanced again! What a dissapointment.

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Against an unarmored target yes they are better, but by then the AP weapon has already killed the target.

It’d be interesting to see a dmg chart regardless.

They’re neck in neck until 20 armor, at 21 or better the laser needs an assist from some third party skill to keep up, at 30 they’re useless at any range without an assist while the AP is still dealing 40-80 damage.

Yes you could. Even with 12 WP, because you gain WP on kill.

Most of the nerfs are warranted, except the Assault Rifle IMHO.

It doesn’t make a good tactical game if you put too much power into abilities. It takes away from tactics into decision making prior to the battles (which perks to choose).

4 Likes

First of all, I wanted to commend UV and devs who not only shared changes in the patch, but also reasoning behind it and goal they want to achieve with the change. I appreciate that.

As to OP post - the unfortunate side of having balance problems that some players will hate nerfs. Buff all you want, but nerf an ability even by a slight amount and there will be backlash claiming that things were made useless. It can be especially frustrating when chance comes to a game in progress, making previous decision making and character building unappealing.

[shrug] tough time ahead.

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It’s over 9000.

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Read the patch notes…I’ll wait for a couple more patches before playing again. Small stat changes can’t fix the issues.

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The problem with bringing out the nerf bat is when do you stop swing it? I didn’t like the return fire nerf, I could arrange my units so multiple units could return fire, including turrets. Also snipers were awesome with RF, They hit what they aim at, hit hard and with all the perception skills and boosts from armor they could do it from a good distance. Now RF is a crummy skill, hardly worth taking.

Then the Dash nerf, 2 shotgun shots make the skill great, now the skill seems meh. Far less desirable to me, so now I would go infiltrator instead, 100% damage on most shots is better than a one shot dash…but guess what the nerf bat will be swinging at next? Infiltrator no doubt until that is meh.

Before long someone will complain that sniper with adrenaline rush is too OP and out comes the bat again, until the next thing seems too good.

Soon all the skills will me meh, and of course now the enemies will have to be reduced, hit points lowered, armor reduced, machine gun arms nefted etc…I think it will become a bore.

Have to agree here, even 3 tiles away from a scylla had my heavy miss with a hel cannon on 4 out of 6 shots (that showed it in the 100% outer targeting circle)the one time i actually needed this ability to land. Course this was a week or so back.

The dash nerf is pretty hard hitting on assaults. Sure they can no longer clear the maps where arthrons spawn in in a 20 pack, and are conveniently close enough to eachother to be taken down in pairs by a pair of min/maxed shotgun assaults… But honestly how frequent are these battles? If the battles are common like that seems the AI unit selection is a it off… If these battles are infrequent, well why bother fixing a rare battle scenario?

I’d really have rather see the pandoran side (especially the AI unit selection side… no more 20 arthron teams, no more 17 infiltrator teams) balanced, as well as the scaling fixed (at least for lower difficulty levels) before they go “fixing” the tools that let us handle these situations the game throws at us.

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On paper the patch sounds to have gone completely the wrong way. Has anyone had the heart or patience to play the game to find out? I’m feeling a little burned out.

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I have no problem with nerfing OP combos, but if they were going to do that they needed to totally re balance the game at the same time. That OP cheese is just symptom of the problem of how poorly balanced the game currently is.

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So they brought out a patch for a game that was already ridiculously hard (in the late game), and made it even harder by nerfing all the abilities that made it bearable, whilst not nerfing any of the Pandoran difficulty spikes.

Good work devs.

Doubling the health of the spawnery and nerfing dash makes Lair missions now all but impossible.

I’m out.

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Yes, this is how it reads, if true will have killed off the game for most people apart from sadists, which has me thinking there is more to this picture. I’m going to have to buck up the will to start a new game.

1 Like

Actually, I don’t think so. I’ve tried Clearance/Adrenaline combo after this patch for the first time and had no problem dashing to a group of armored 340 HP Arthrons with one soldier and clearing them all in one turn (3 Arthrons and a Mindfragger). At the end of the turn my soldier was standing with 4 AP and almost all WP regained.

Oh, come on! Spawnery now needs 3 shotgun shots instead of 2!

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When there is a desired balance achieved. No doubt when designing skills devs had in mind how they expect those to contribute to gameplay. Ideally there would be many valid ways to build your units, and they all would be reasonably effective or useful in different situations.

1 Like

I think they have nerfed the Pandoran difficulty, they just didn’t tell anybody - not even UV.

Haven’t had time to try the new patches yet, but since I deliberately avoid playing without any of the cheeses (and am doing perfectly fine thanks), I doubt it will affect my playthrough that much.

That said, @UnstableVoltage, I do think the devs need to pay some attention to some of the reaction this is getting:

Does this sound like a bunch of players eager to see how the patches have improved the game? I think not. It sounds like a bunch of dispirited people who are slowly losing the will to live.

I’m not one of them - I’m still greatly enjoying this game - but then I’ve never encountered the difficulty spike, I suspect because I play this very differently to most people (if a Mission inflicts 50% casualties on me, I accept the 50% casualties - I don’t hit Restart and try again). For me this is a war of attrition, where managing casualties & resources with my ever dwindling pool of people is part of the challenge - and as I say, I don’t use Sniper RB, 100% Stealth, Infinte Jumps or chaining Dash combos on principle.

But even I am currently having to psyche myself up for yet another grind through a Lair Mission. I’ve yet to figure out how to beat it without using OP combos.

UV, I appreciate that you clearly weren’t told about the adjustment to the Difficulty Algorithm, but a friendly word to the wise: releasing only partial information which looks like PP has only nerfed the players’ crutches without addressing the underlying issues of why they are using those crutches in the first place is clearly not endearing PP to its core audience.

Just sayin’ :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

2 Likes

I can only speak for myself. But I’m a XCOM junkie. Been obsessed with all XCOM-y games ever since Terror From the Deep back in the 90s. Trust me I’m used to difficult games. And I went into Phoenix Point completely obsessed with it. Was all I played for weeks for many hours daily. Went to bed not being able to sleep as too busy thinking of strategies within strategies.

But the thing for me was firstly the save game corruptions (which have now been fixed) which was draining as it forced you to go through an entire mission without saving and trying not to lose anyone. The severe difficult spikes which hit more and more over time. And then thirdly you have the Pandoran Lair’s. I’d spend nearly an entire day on getting through one. That is ridiculous. It should not take an entire day to beat one mission. No other XCOM game had anything on that scale difficulty wise. You should not have to save scum to beat a game.

This game is too hard. The devs are complete masochists who only listen to the 1% hardcore gamers, and so only nerfed players when they should have been nerfing only the Pandoran’s, and I’m just over it. I’d sooner go back and play Firaxis’s XCOM’s or Microprose awesome original games over getting completely stuck in PP.

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Hello, icemann!
Do you have a video of such a mission? I love Lair missions and lately I had been doing them in 5 about turns (with myself limiting Dash to 1 per turn, Rally to 1 per turn per team). Maybe I could somehow help you with advise on team composition or tactical approach?

No I’ve not played the game for a month roughly. I was doing streams when I started playing, but after a while just did them for the special missions only.

The problem with never nerfing anything is, you’ll end up with a non challenging dead game nobody is interested in. Not even you after cake walking for the umtheen time.

It was the first balance patch. Claiming they can’t stop just because you lost some crutches is quite bold.

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