Please for the love of all that is holy, fix your difficulty scaling. This is nearly unplayable

Phoenix Point Game Feedback
21

Legend is not easier, but playing it I probably do expect difficulty to ramp up, while playing easy I would be surprised at the sudden increase in missions and enemy strength.

I still need to build all the equipment to outfit a 2nd squad. That takes a long time. The one advantage Legend seems to have is I can recruit that 2nd team earlier than someone can on the easiest mode and let them sit and train while I build their equipment. That does seem a bit odd in the difficulty challenge. By the time I get to use them they will be level 3-4. But then, on easy mode, that player gets to use the recruit right awayā€¦

So I suppose it all balances outā€¦sort ofā€¦

22

I decided to a try a game on Rookie difficulty. It has ended up being harder than Veteran. Lmao.

This is because literally all but one story or faction mission has spawned in Asia and Africa. And my Phoenix Point base spawned in southern South America. So I have been struggling to get squads out to these missions that are literally as far away as they possibly can be. I wanted to align with Jericho, but their mission is in South Africa. Ridiculous. By the time my crew gets to these missions, I have attacks on my Phoenix bases, am running low on resources, or some other thing that requires my different squadā€™s immediate attention.

And if I do complete a mission, I have to send that squad all the way back to South America to heal and restā€¦ rinse repeat. Worse, all 5 of my currently-found Phoenix bases are in South America tooā€¦ thatā€™s pointless. So as a result, I cannot set up forward operations for healing squads in, say, Asia.

The highest faction friendship I have is 26%. So I am painfully low on tech, with only Phoenix tech available. Additionally, there are literally TWO Synedrion havens and ONE Disciples of Anu haven in total across North America, South America, and Antarctica. None of these three havens have anything that is worth raiding. And since I want to align with Jericho, I havenā€™t wanted to steal anything from any of the 25-ish Jericho havens located on these continents.

To make matters worse, 4 pandoran bases appeared in one day in South America. 3 lairs and 1 citadel. I sent my A-team to raid the lair with the longest operating range. It is a nearly unbeatable mission. This particular mission and map setup in a lair has SO MANY ENEMIES that I run out of ammo before being able to reach the spawnery. And I end up dying trying to bash my way to the spawnery. There are about 15 leveled up arthrons, 10 tritons, 2 explosive worm chirons, 6 sirens, 2 terror sentinels, and a dozen eggs. The way the map is set up allows the sirens to easily phsyic screech my team sending them into a panic. So half my squad is panicking or mind controlled each turn.

I tried re-doing the mission a couple times to see if it was possible to win, even with a ton of casualties. The best attempts involved me sitting my entire team in the spawn, and waiting for enemies to come at us 1 by 1. But with these approaches, even though I decimated most of the enemies, I ran out of ammo, even with concerted efforts to be as efficient as possible, such as using rapid clearance and bash to kill all 10 fire worms lobbed at me each turn.

The farthest I got involved me killing everything but the spawnery and 6 arthrons that were hiding near it. And I tried to rush them, out of ammo, to bash them. But their return fire, shields, and/or grenade launchers, took half of my guyā€™s health and inflicted bleed each turn.

And given all this, I learned a ton of nuances from my first playthrough. I was a far better Phoenix Point player going into this playthrough. And I went down in difficulty. But it is even harder this timeā€¦ Wow. Granted, I blame most of the difficulty on all of the critical missions being as far as possible away from my bases.

Damnā€¦ ā€œRookieā€ difficulty.

2 Likes
23

I took a break for a while, the game needs to be tuned. There is no reason a decent geared and experienced squad needs to take jet packs to complete one mission then rage burst to complete another or whatever the flavor of the month is. The cookie cutter builds kinda take the fun out of the options they give you. I enjoy a squad of different classes, that can do some damage at least.

24

Lairs are Unfair! The infinite spawning of enemies is overkill to the max. Yeah, Iā€™ve seen the ā€œcheeseā€ tactics used to overcome this. But, depending on the RNG and enemies placed at the start, even some of those donā€™t come close to a manageable attack.

Nests are a Pest! Again with the infinite spawning of enemies, blind allies, being attacked from all sides as the enemy encircles you.

Ambushes are Burning Bushes! At least let the player know where the evac point is on the first turn. One only has a 25% chance to pick the correct border of the map where it may appear. Canā€™t survive sitting in the middle waiting to know where to evac. Pick the wrong border and try to survive another 3-4 turns to get there.

Late game, not being able to find bases where the Pandorans are launching attacks on your base. Faction war took out most of the havens, so haven defense arenā€™t often enough to reveal their bases. The map has been scanned so many times that itā€™s all green, so itā€™s difficult to pick areas to re-scan.

The difficulty spikes because you play not to get your soldiers killed. Sacrificing units so the spike will reduce is not my gaming style.

1 Like
25

Wow, Iā€™ve gotta say this just sounds unbelievable! I could maybe believe 3 bases on the same continent but 5!! Huhā€¦ Especially on South America of all continents, 2nd smallest in terms of land mass. I would believe Asia for a potential to have 5 basesā€¦ If true it just sounds like youā€™re on the recieving end of one of the worst RNGesus kicks in the dick in history right there! Thatā€™s roughā€¦

In my experience, you can kinda do a rough estimate on where the evac point will be based on enemy spawning point locations and look at where the road borders the edge of the map (for me so far the evac point is about 80% of the time on the road going off the edgeā€¦ with 1 or 2 exceptions. Once you give your best guess just hard push to that edge and you should be in the clear. Also, Imo I have my ā€œscouting the mapā€ team utilizing a vehicle (Armadillo) So far itā€™s my best use case for vehicles as you can simply just drive on out of the ambush and it almost doesnā€™t matter where the evac is at. Plus as long as you eliminate a few of the starting enemies your Armadillo will be able to tank for the 3 turns you need to wait out the evac Easy!!

26

Well, one is in southern Mexico and another in Panama. But yes, 3 in the real South America, and two might as well be. Really bad RNG luck. I think that means there are only three others out there anywhere elseā€¦

27

I had 4 bases in Asia. 3 were very close to each other (2 in China, 1 in Russia, 1 in Sri Lanka).

28

Weird, I hope you started in south America, or perhaps North America.

29

Started in the southern half of South America. Made expanding hard due to extreme distances needed to heal and rest troops after battles outside of North America, once I spread into Russia. With my northern most base in Central America, this problem isnā€™t alleviated any.

30

First base in Russia close to Alaska at East, roughly at Magadan.
South Korea
China, Roughly Lianyungang
India, roughly Bardhaman
Turkey, roughly Osmaniye
Russia, roughly Bropawop
Alaska

And then:
South Africa, Roughly Pretoria
Argentina, Roughly Caramones

Lol, no base lost yet, but frankly I try a bit keep last two until end only for the fun.

31

Yup, and this is why an Ironman mode just doesnā€™t fit the game, imho :frowning:

32

Agreed with the OP 100%

The game is broken. Always has been.

33

Nah. ā€œBrokenā€ is too harsh word.

34

Broken is the correct word.

The game had a potential, but it was ruined right from the start.

It still feels like playing a BETA version.

Itā€™s a harsh reality that what it is. Three years onward - nothingā€™s changed for the better.

35

read patch notes and DLC information. If you call it ā€œnothing has changed for the betterā€ then I suppose you havenā€™t updated the game client for those 3 years.

Btw. Iā€™m probably looking as some defender of the game, while Iā€™m also thinking that it lacks in many aspects. But your statement that ā€œnothing has changed for the goodā€ is super ignorant and it is just unfair for all the development that was put in this game. If you will ever consider being part of the game development community you will understand what stands behind making the game and what difficulties lay on the way. Then you will probably understand what choices have to be done and that no change is really easy to implement in such complex sandbox game.