Phoenix Point declining player-base

Phoenix Point Game Feedback
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And still I find the statement pointless and harmful. And completely disagree, you are implying that if you can beat the game on Legenday everybody can. And I certainly is not the case for me, which would not consider myself a casual player.

And again there are many players with different perspectives on the game, maybe you should try to not force your personal experience with the game as the only valid one.

What an astounding claim are you making here. You certainly must know what is in the mindset of the devs, and must be assuming that all the design decisions of the game which were obviouly made to create a game where tactics and realism where the focus of a gamepay with more complex management and without the focus on cinematics of games like XCOM where all circled with a big CASUAL word on the dev notebook.

And this is remarcably false.

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Wishes are all well and good don’t forget the casual players. They finance the game. Just as a hint.

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The game’s expectations have therefore increased. This is a title made by a 30-person independent team, and it’ll be inevitably compared to 2K’s recent XCOM games. Kaye has dedicated his time to ensuring the money keeps coming in so that Snapshot can reach the necessary quality bar, and his love of strategy games has helped him in his testing.

Yeah you can always say they have never defined any neccessary quality bar. But do you think they met expectations? For sure no. I’m not saying the people got scammed for real. But this is expectation - delivery thing. If poeple think you didn’t delivered what was promised they are right because customers are always right.

And don’t tell me that XCOM had bigger budget. Phoenix Point is not in current playerbase state because of money. They just made wrong choices on game vision and that’s why they have this dead horse running.

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There is not a single promise on that full article, much less a broken one.

"napshot can reach the necessary quality bar

And you are still making vague subjective claims that mean kind of nothing and then conclude: “Therefore the game is a SCAM”. I feel bad about the game therefore I have been robbed is not how these things work.

Certainly not all the customers are always right. Not when they shout they have been robbed without any good reason.

But you did.

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Yet, this is not a court case. I have fallen into a trap set by the name of Julian Gallop. They have never said it will be next-gen XCOM, yet they never said it wont be either. In the very same time promoting the game in the genre as one created by JG.

Did they deliver features they have promissed? Mostly, yes. Is that a game I was expecting and backing? I could argue on that.

I am not angry, just… dissapointed.

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Im not saying is a court case. Im saying that claiming the game is a scam funded under broken promises and that you have been robbed you should have at least a reason.

That is the risk of kickstarting a project. And being dissapointed or not satisfied is reasonable. Going to the forums to accuse the devs of pulling a scam without real reasons is not.

Real people worked hard to make PP, and they put a lot into this. Like the end result or not a minimum of respect is in order.

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And I am - a big RPG fan here, and I can confidently say that Phoenix Point is no RPG. Neither is FiraXCOM. Development of soldiers is presend in UFOs as well, and in many (if not most) strategy games (solaris, civilization, starcraft, Sins of solar empire, just to name a few). You might not like current itiration on the idea, and poor balance of unit skills might undermine tactical depth of the game, but it doesn’t magically move it into another genre.

And so did FiraXCOM, but they had luxury of walking back on those decisions and spending months/years trying something else. First gameplay trailer revealed to the public on E3 was a result of years of development and several failed itirations. The touble with crowdfunding games is that you don’t have luxury to scrap the project and start again. PP clearly didn’t end up quite as everyone hoped (devs included, considering quite a few things that didn’t turn out as promised, or were scrapped before release entirely).

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But not in law terms. Rather as: devs didn’t intend to do a game at old Galoop level, but were marketing it to hype it as much as possible above level they intended to create. Or maybe they didn’t have enough expierience in this 30-people team. Whatever reasons it didn’t go as planned. And that’s their fault. I will not clap because they tried to sell a game and make money. They got this mess on themselves promising too much and trying to deliver all of it without proper team.

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Because you say so?

No, if something the design of the game clearly tells that the deves did their best, despite not succeding as much as they wanted to. And honestly I think they delivered quite a lot with the resources they had.

Arguing based on your feelings and pretend to know the mindset of others is more than dishonest if you ask me.

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Maybe. Don’t know what people they got in this 30people team which created this. But it doesn’t matter. It is not good enough and if they think it is then they just fool themselves. Sometimes honesty is better that throwing pleasing statements. At least you know where you stand and what you need to do to be the best. But whatever. Maybe creating game for 500 people was their goal. You never know.

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It is not good enough for you, ok. What then? How does your attitude help?

Dial back a bit and think. Giving the chance to small teams so they can pull out their vision is what kickstart is about. It is not so every dissapointed player can casually disrespect the people that works on the game.

Honesly I does matter, and many of us are here because despite all flaws, having PP is better than not having it. Having the chance of low budget daring projects and games instead of living in a place where only big companies with actual monetization scam schemes are the only game in town is why kickstart is a success. Despite many games failing, and some even dissapearing without release.

And ok, the game is not good enough for you. Im sorry for you. It is for me, but even if it was not, I would not think apropiate to leave my feelings get the best of me, and abandom reason. I probably I would still be happy about SG having being able to pull such an ambitious game and hope for their ability to do better in the future, because strategy gaming is better with them here.

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It doesn’t matter if it’s good enough, it’s all they have to offer at this moment. :rofl: And what, you think devs who work on the game write marketing blurbs on store pages? You imagine devs sitting there looking at Phoenix Point and seeing nothing that could or should be better? They did the project, something turned out well others don’t. I would love to hear/read Snapshot’s “post mortem” on the game. But there is no need for Snapshot to do sepukku for us.

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Not only for me. Look at those steam charts and players engagement across platforms. Clearly that’s not me doing all this.

But I agree with the rest what you said.

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Subjective unsupported claims are nothing but claims. The only thing those charts tell me is that in steam PP managed to retain a fairly good percentage of players despite never having a lot of users. Which is also ok by my books, and olnly tells me users did not drop massively the game.

I have no idea on how many players are on epic or GOG for PP, but the game was profitable and that is good for me too, as I hope the devs can go on to further make the game better and have also success with their next projects. And that is pretty much my only concern about PP now.

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Its good game, just could be great. But it lost a lot of time in development (release date was pushed at least 3 months), Epic deal exclusivity - instead one immidiate push to all platforms and then DLCs. And I consider it
Untitled

Since some basic bugs have not been fixed, even I admit lot of things have changed with nicely named updates.

Generally, a lot of time was “lost” as compared to publishing STABLE product and then developing real DLCs, and players tend to go and hunt for fresh games nowdays.

Only the most loyal remain :slight_smile:

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Few things:

  • Phoenix Point is really good game. I suppose we all see its potential. It can be even better with some small adjustments. Devs already know that. But I suppose they don’t want to deviate from development plan. Some of them are probably involved in delivering next content which was promised, some try to improve what can be improved, and at the same time don’t screw development of new content. Rest probably is involved in next project, which surely should be now in desing phase, if they want to have incomes from it, before running out of the funds. But I suppose we can agree that some parts of Phoenix Point will become desired design in the genre. That it is possible to create complex mechanics without making them complicated for the player. Another reason for me to judge that the game is for casuals. :slight_smile: There are really nice calculations happening under the hood and player mostly can’t see them while getting some good features in the game. I won’t try to list them just the same as I won’t list things that are lacking proper design. It is just worth noting that there are things to inspire other games in the genre.

  • Devs surely also know what could be done better even if it wasn’t brought by any feedback source (community council, forum, one of the social media, canny, reddit…). It is their first so huge project and they definitely learned from it. I for example try to create small game right now, and I see how much work it is, and I even know what could be done better, but I don’t want to extend development process for too long. Thus I suspect they understand our concerns, and even have some comments, but I doubt that they will share them publicly - just to avoid damage fallout from individuals who can’t appreciate their work.

  • About what was “promised” and what was delivered… Promised is strong word, but yep, first trailers, all early interviews, all development blogs or even first playable builds were creating different vision of the game than we currently can see. There is discrepancy and denying it is just admitting that one wasn’t involved in these early advertisements. Surely we can’t disrespect devs, because they already have created firm and playable game which competes with the AAA titles in the genre. Still there is disappointment which we can feel. I just hope that they will improve upon that and even if their next project isn’t Phoenix Point 2, then after some years they will come back to the genre and this universe to deliver a lot better game without all constraints they had until now.

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You are right, but you know what, I dont care at all about the epic deal. I think modern players are sometimes instant gratification junkies.

I am kind of sure, giving the interviews of the devs, that PP could not exist without the epic deal. 700k $ (the money raised by the kickstarter) is not enough to pay a team of 30 skilled people (the current size of SG) for a year, I think all people here should be aware of that. Is simple math. And yet they are called scammers and prople here demands a 10M$ quality product…

Would we have PP without epic? maybe, but a much worse PP. So Im glad they did it, even if I had to wait a year to buy it on steam. (Waiting for a cheaper more polished product in the platform I use was a no brainer for me).

And yes I understand the Backers not liking the deal at all. But its SG decission, and is their duty to make everything in their hand to release the game. So I actually think it was their duty as devs, ans their duty with their Backers to accept the deal. But of course explaining that to people is imposible, bacause the “I want the game now and I want it on my favourite platform” is the only argument in town.

Also:

Till now I have not seen a single example of anything advertised, or promised which was not delivered. Expectations based on feelings are not objective, and mean nothing.

Other than that, I think is completely unfair to say PP is in beta. I mean if PP is in beta, Civilization VI is in alfa, 5 years after release… And yes Im aware that many things may have been broken at launch. But my first experience with PP was the steam year one edition. And my experience was that of a game complete and polished as hell. I had one save file refusing to load (In a map I was savescumming), some trapped worms issues, and a hoplite spawn inside a wall… In 130 hours of gameplay.

So claiming the game is in beta now… come on, you know you actually dont mean it. What all those dramatic exagerations are good for?

“I have beeen scammed”, “the game is in beta”, “legend is so easy any user can beat it regardless of how they play”, “there is only casual and hardcorer”, “the game is a dead horse running”, “the game was funded on broken promises”, “if I can beat the game anybody can”, “We are screaming but they did not hear us”, “CC members are for pain and suffering”, “PP wanted casuals so badly but failed them”…

Those are all actual claims made in this post in one day by the way…

Where all this screaming and dishonesty comes from? And it is a real question. Are we uncapable of nuance or is everyone just trying to shout as loud as posible so their opinions are the only ones listened to? When reason was replaced by subjective feelings, the more extreme the better?

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So you want us to search what was undelivered? Do we really want to put Snapshot in this situation? :slight_smile:

@drages was “a little bit” dramatic over there, but since he worked on mods for OpenXCOM and on Long War for FiraXCOMs, then I think he probably know what can be done, and how things can be altered. Well he hasn’t got what he wanted in the Community Council, so he again was dissapointed.

And yep, people try to point out flaws, and Snapshot reactions are quite silent about all those issues. Of course in Council we have some responces and we have some answers why things stand as they stand, but we cant post them here. I suppose we would be better if someone from Snapshot would answer that “they will consider something, but nothing can be promised”. :slight_smile:

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I mean I tried to find a simple example of any claim of SG that was not actually delivered in the game and there is just one. The floating base.

Out of the almost one hundreds features promissed in the Kickstart, 99 are actually in the game.

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Have another one:

  • Dinamic alien evolution in responce to our actions.

I wonder if we want to go this route.