Phoenix Point is a masterpiece

Fair enough. I long since reached the point where I stop reading at the inevitable mention of JA2. :smirk:

We want different things, is all. Doesn’t make me right, doesn’t make you wrong. Neither of us will get everything that we want, but that won’t stop us trying.

Gotta get back to work.

No it is not. It is a TBT game with some RPG elements.

And it is the wrong approach when games belong to different genres. Divinity (which I dislike for reasons altogether different from the merits or demerits of its class system) is a role playing game. To play a role you need a fleshed out character, and thus character development is everything in an RPG (that, and the story). Take the original Fallout, or Planescape Torment. To say that the combat in these games is unbalanced is an understatement. But how important is it to the enjoyment of either of these games? Not much.

By contrast, I’m now creating my Necromunda gang. There are also character sheets, stats, skills, gear, but they are orders of magnitude less than what is required in an RPG, because there is no need to flesh them out as much (if at all).

This is why it is silly to compare the class system in an RPG to that of a TBT: they serve different purposes.

I don’t like Xenonauts (“the boring game”) for reasons I already explained, and Divinity (“not my cup of tea game”) for reasons I’m not going to go into (too long) - I’m not even sure why you brought this game up (because it has turn based combat and a class system?). I like very much all the original XComs and the Firaxis XComs, as well as Ja1 and 2.

I have never said I like chess more than something else - you decided that I like chess because you think some RNG is always good and I think that it is not necessarily so, and that sometimes it is good to avoid, or to constrain it.

When making a build the most important are the third row skills, because that’s whats unique about each recruit. So, e.g. if you get a melee specialist for a heavy, you can make him a jetpack-basher. Pump up his strength, give him some heavy weapon and don’t waste skill points on rage burst or bigger booms. If it’s a sniper - give him a shotgun, quick aim and pump up his speed. Don’t take marksman because it’s useless for this build. If you assault has no third row damage boosting skills, make him support with Rally the Troops - no sense giving him rapid clearance. If your heavy has reckless, give him bigger booms, some rocket launcher and GL, synderion helmet for accuracy, don’t get rage burst.

See where I’m getting at? 6 skills per class, 3 attributes, and 3 armor and 3 gear slots are plenty to make distinct builds in a TBT. And I didn’t even go into crossing different classes…

Only the ones that haven’t been balanced correctly.

Well, taken literally that is true. But hopefully the balance will be corrected while the freedom to do your own thing will remain…

Quite long discussion. Had to skip some paragraphs to complete reading. :wink:

I wonder what we will hear tomorrow on YouTube. Will devs surprise us with something? Will they explain some design choices? Will they make an impression that Phoenix Point can become masterpiece?

I have list over 100 changes which I would like to see in the game to make it more interesting / less broken. And those are general points like:

  • “make weapons shred armor” which would imply over 30 small changes. :slight_smile: Developers already mentioned they will introduce such change to assault rifles, but I think it is not enough.
  • along with that is “increase armor value on most human armors” which will give some space to breathe for soldiers but when under supression fire (many bullets dinging from armor) that protection would vanish quickly. That would imply how many changes? :slight_smile:
  • and so on…
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It has story, it has quests, there are many characters you can interact with. You can role play your own character according to the psychological review. Other mercenaries interact with each other and react according to their unique profiles. There are quest that can be solved in different ways depending on the skills that your main character or other characters have. So what is missing?

I don’t think you actually played Divinity beyond the tutorial levels as 90% of the game is turn based combat. When you finish tutorials you can respec any build at your main hub as many times as you want. This adds another 5% spent on designing and re-designing your team for each stage of the game. Other 5% is reading text of dialogues.
What “role” are you talking about?

Sorry, but you clearly have no clue about these things. Some mechanics can be common in some genres but they are not bound to it. You can have a paper doll inventory in a shooter and it can play exactly the same role as in rpg. You can have crafting in all kinds of games, you can have resource management in narrative games. You can have skill and abilities in adventure games. The whole idea with placing games into particular genre is just marketing simplification and can be argued endlessly. You can find very different games in the same genre. Just looking at TBTs makes it quite clear, like the difference between X-Com and Tactical Ogre. The other example is - which genre Factorio belong to? :smiley:

This is so contrived I don’t even know where to begin.
Each heavy, regardless of his third row skill can carry a heavy primary weapon, a secondary GL and a rocket launcher. What makes heavy an efficient basher is the weight of the weapon and strength not 20% bonus to melee. That perk is just some nice bonus that won’t have any significant effect on how you use heavy. To optimize heavy’s bash potential you need Reckless skill, which is another 3rd row random skill, good luck finding recruit which will have both. If you do, you get in total 50% bonus that does make a difference as gets bash damage into 300 hp which means that many enemies can be killed in a single turn by jetpaking and bashing while staying in safety. But all this is situational you still will be using your ranged weapons most of the time. Why would I not give him both RB or BB if I can? That’s why you have Phoenix Skill Points for. You are making some weird self imposed limits where none exist in the game. These are not even early level optimizations as your 3rd row specs might not be even available till you get to level 7.

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Yeah, I think you guys have got to the point of debating about how you’re debating there. :wink:

On the topic of referencing other games during a discussion (JA2 or whatever else) I think sometimes people need to do this, not because you necessarily prefer that game, but rather because it gives a point of reference.

‘‘I’d prefer a quirkier form of dialogue, you know like the one in game XYZ’’ carries more information than just ‘‘I’d prefer a quirkier form of dialogue’’. You can still explain that preference in other ways ‘‘I’d prefer a quirkier form of dialogue, perhaps with some call backs and clever use of word play, I’d even enjoy some simile’’ but that’s still less meaningful, and requires more effort when wrtiting than to make a comparison to something else that you’d expect others to be familiar with - I think that’s true of all human communication.

On the subject of personal taste, certainly yes we all have preferences and tastes, which is why the subject of this thread ‘Phoenix Point is a masterpiece’ is always only going to be a subjective statement. It’s no different than if I were to say ‘Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (with Peter Strauss’) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5fM8HbKEfw is a masterpiece. No matter how much anyone else might disagree with me, you can’t take away my personal opinion.

But as I say, that’s all the statement is in each case. I think what can’t be said, in either case, is that ‘Phoenix Point has been universally received as a masterpiece’ or ‘Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (with Peter Strauss)’ was universally received as a Masterpiece… even though it is and you should all watch it. :wink:

And that’s because to be classed as a true masterpiece in the wide sense of the term a game, film, or any other form of media must surpass its niche of individuals that will regard it as a masterpiece because it hits their individual personal tastes, it needs to leave everyone else with that same feeling, in many cases in fact it needs to affect people’s sense of their own personal taste.

(A game that did this for me was Gran Turismo on the original Playstation. I’ve always preferred arcade style racers over sim racers, but GT did things so well, looked so pretty (at the time) and its cars handled so well, that I probably pumped more hours into that than any arcade racers that I owned, for a long while it affected my personal tastes).

I think the problem that Phoenix Point has got in this regard is hit upon by

Phoenix Point for me, has set up a target audience of players who are fans of both the original and the newer forms of X-com. It’s then somewhere along its development path added mechanics that have disappointed, in particular, fans of the original. Whether that’s by intent or not, I don’t know, but certainly what is true is that fans of both series of X-com games have been backing it during its fig campaign, and then during early access, and only one of those sets of fans has received a game that’s anywhere near to what they were hoping for. What Phoenix Point hasn’t done IMHO is affected personal tastes enough in order to covert the player who had been expecting something different.

Even the launch trailer for the game doesn’t IMHO show those ‘modern’ features such as perks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRBlPg8nRuQ which are off putting to fans of the original X-Com.

I think what PP may eventually be able to claim (once patched and bug fixed) is that it’s a fan favourite, a niche title, or a marmite game, but unfortunately I don’t think it’s going to be gaining wide enough support to be be widely acclaimed as a masterpiece.

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It kinda has.

Don’t forget about Valkyria Chronicles. Even Incubation back in 1997 had elements of this, if I recall correctly aimed shot was taken from a first person.

Yeah, you’re right. In fact, I think you could even argue that Laser Squad did it - Albeit from a 2D perspective.

You make very interesting and valid points. However, yes we need a premise to build the strategy and gameplay around honestly isn’t it just a game. Chess is a game, monopoly is a game and xcom 1 /2 are games. From a playing perspective, most of my fun is derived from outwitting the opposition i.e. the AI. So if I find it predictable it becomes boring. We have difficulty scaling to assist in this - ironically this can be manipulated. The AI works, and at times is predictable, hence the scaling. But with such a variety of weapons makes it more interesting. But personally, as I have done for years, I prefer human opponents and began this trend with Rebelstar Raiders. Honestly, I’ve never seen a really decent AI in any strategy game, but still enjoy the challenge of beating the opposition whatever it is.

But I equally like realism in the back story for a bit of submersion. But if it isn’t perfect I won’t get to upset. I perceive with PP the the average player/gamer is struggling to understand all the dynamics of the mechanics let alone care about the back story and thus behavioural patterns of the AI. Not everyone is a smart as you, or necessarily experienced enough to have the emotional makeup to recognise these characteristics in a game that you have pointed out.

The game genre has been ignored over the years, and I am very pleased that more recently it is being supported and developed again (I used to get sick of seeing another RTS game). PP is a crowd funded development which might not have got off the ground. Thankfully it did. The money and risks involved are not guaranteed. I understand why snapshot released with epic games for financial security (they’re a small outfit). That said PP is far from a perfect game and I truely hope the upcoming DLC will enhance it.

Now I am very impressed with many of you comments and ideas. I would go so far as suggesting that that if we had a huge budget and more like minded like you a master piece to improve on anything this game genre has seen before. But realistically Firaxis is the best bet. But it isn’t their style - they want mass market and then you have to dumb it down to a lower common denominator. So here we are - and I despise the pod system in xcom 1/2 and more so the ridiculous story videos aimed at teenagers (nothing against them - I was one once). By the way, your diligence to critiquing the forums is great.

Added afterthought: Currently one of the major strengths of the the game is that there are many styles/methods for playing it. So as a consequence I don’t have to play the same. Experimentation in this game is brilliant. That’s one very good reason to elevate it’s status!

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Ja2 has it in it’s own way of this even without mods. What devs did is gave a small set of voxels for each tile in a game. It’s 3x3x4 if I recall correctly. These voxels are used for collision detection of the projectiles. When you are shooting at something, dispersion of the weapon is used to send a ray towards target and raytrace against the voxels. You just don’t see that but it’s not a pure random hit to chance.

Very well put and with this I can completely agree.

TBH, when I started this thread, which was my first post on the forum, I thought for a long time whether to say “masterpiece”, “great game” or something that would just express my personal appraisal of it.

I decided for masterpiece because I wanted to say that just because the game doesn’t conform to expectations doesn’t mean it’s bad. In fact, it can be great or even a masterpiece - it should be appreciated for what it is, instead of lamenting what it is not.

And it goes without saying that everything I say is my personal opinion.

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Certainly I respect your enthusiasm :slight_smile:

If it were piece of art I would agree with you.

As a paying customer however…

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I’m actually amazed by what Firaxis was able to achieve. As I’ve said before, the game design there has some serious flaws but those flaws don’t come from incompetence, they come from a strict financial and marketing goals. They had to make a lot of compromises and cover up some things with bunch of meta-rules, like pods for example. I still think that it could have been a better game if it didn’t use XCom setting but it probably wouldn’t become as popular and would have to compete with Divinity which was in development roughly at the same time. It exposed a lot of new people to this setting, it brought a lot of other games into light. In 5-10 years, the same people for whom XCom was first TBT might be more open to more complex games. I think games like Silent Storm, JA2, 7.62 will see a comeback as overall market grows. Like it’s crazy how many different roguelikes are now in production.

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When the main character dies, the game continues as if nothing happened. In fact, the main character is entirely optional. So are the interactions with NPCs and the quests. Actually, everything except the TBT is optional. That’s why it’s a TBT game with RPG elements. And a great game, as I have said time and again - certainly a masterpiece, and yet not without its flaws.

OK, I didn’t want to go into Divinity but you leave me no choice :slightly_smiling_face:

I played Beyond Divinity back in the day, and then Divinity Dragon Commander. They were interesting games insofar as they allowed a lot of character customization, but Larian invariably relied on what I found to be a very annoying feature: level gating. This basically means that the player can easily defeat any enemies that are below his/her level, and the same level as the character, and can with patience defeat enemies that are one level above, but can never defeat enemies that are 2 or 3 levels about its level (*I’m speaking from memory, I don’t remember if the gate was 2 or 3 levels above, or even more - but there was one, i.e. Your character did something like 5 damage with each attack to an enemy with 500 hp and which could kill in your in a few hits). This meant that all the customization options and the skills were just flavor: if you character had the required level it could easily defeat an enemy with a bow, a sword or a spell, if not, it didn’t matter what skills your character had or the tactics you employed.

I picked up D:OS and played it with a friend to much fun… Until we simultaneously realized that Larian had followed the exact same formula it used in all its previous games and that the combined tactics we were so proud of didn’t matter at all. Defeating enemies of same level or one level below is trivial, defeating enemies of higher level - either very tedious or impossible.

Yes, most of the game is (turn based) combat, because Divinity, starting with the first game in the series (Divine Divinity) was an action Diablo-like RPG. With D: OS it moved from real time to turn based combat, but it’s basically a Diablo at heart.

How you can compare D: OS or its “game systems” to Firaxis XCom or to PP is beyond me.

Which brings me to the larger point: genres are important, and not just as marketing tools, because similar mechanics, or systems serve different purposes. It doesn’t mean that a rigid classification has to be followed just because, or the sake of keeping good order - rather thinking in genre terms helps us understand what mechanics are most important in a particular game.

Regarding builds in PP

It’s all of that and the melee class skill, that adds 50% to damage. And the 20% is important because the bash can daze - it’s not necessarily about a one-hit kill. The reckless perk is of course nice, but IMO it makes more sense for an artillery build.

These are not self imposed restrictions. If you play on hero, or legendary, build optimization is a must, because recruits have low starting stats. 30 points for a level 7 skill that you are not going to use is a bad investment.

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