Yeah, the big weakness of PP at the moment is its strategic layer. The tactical layer is pretty good, but to have a good strategic layer, you need a well-functioning economy (ie the way players gain and spend resources). And PPâs economic system has two big problems:
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Almost everything in the game can be bought with resources. Tech/food/materials can be used to buy extra Phoenix Bases, extra soldiers, equipment, extra manufacturing capacity (via fab plants), more research (via Research Labs), soldier health (via medkits), soldier experience (via Training Facilities), etc etc etc. EVERYTHING comes down to resources. And this is bad, because:
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The best way to gain resources is to identify the âfarmableâ activities that let your soldiers accumulate resources (trading, haven raiding, etc) and do them over and over again. These âfarmâ activities arenât very interesting, and get even less interesting by the 10th or 15th time youâre doing them.
Or to put it more simply:
- the best way to get stronger is to farm resources;
- farming resources is boring.
Itâs the combination of 1) and 2) thatâs really deadly. If the best way to get stronger was to farm resources, but farming resources was fun and challenging, thereâd be no problem. If farming resources was boring, but you didnât need to do it, then thereâd be no problem. But as it is, farming is necessary AND boring. Bad combination.
Back when I was playing the game and posting regularly on these forums and on the PP sub, I kept on going on about this â made forum posts, put up feedback tickets, etc. Since then there have been a ton of fixes and balance changes, but theyâre all minor tweaks. I know it makes sense to focus on bugfixes and low-hanging fruit, but the longer the devs ignore the big problems with the game, the harder itâs going to be to do anything about it.
And then LotA came out, and it basically completely ignored these problems and (if anything) made them worse, by adding on a second economic system without fixing the problems of the first one.
So itâs not surprising that the hardcore Youtubers have stopped playing PP. Itâs basically a âsolvedâ game at this point â once youâve figured out how to play the strategic layer, you can easily get a 100% win rate on the highest difficulty. Compare that to something like Slay the Spire, where you can play it for hundreds of hours and still have more to learn.
At this point Iâve kind of given up, to be honest. Iâll try Festering Skies when it comes out, since I paid for it and Iâve put enough hours into the game that Iâd like to see what its final version looks like, but it doesnât feel as though the devs intend to make any significant changes any more. Looking at the Canny site, the closest I can see to anything that addresses any serious problems with the game is an âin progressâ note on a ticket saying âAttacking Faction Havens Should Have Worse Consequencesâ, but that feedbackâs nearly a year old! And even then, youâre treating the symptoms, not the root cause, which is that success in PP, at the moment, basically comes down to farming.
So yes, I think the gameâs going to continue to decline. Itâs a bit sad, since I really like a lot of its aspects and I think it had the potential to be something special.