'Seeking Dr. Symes' objective is pointless

Phoenix Point Game Feedback
1

In these missions, you need to kill all enemies, and recover an objective from a central point on the map.

At first I though that just because there was this additional objective, you would be able to approach the mission in different ways, e.g. stealthing in, then stealthing out again. I also thought that as long as one soldier escapes with the objective, that would be a success.

Of course, I didn’t read the second objective, which is ‘Secure the area’, meaning ‘kill everything’.

Logically, this means that there is absolutely no point in having the objective to recover the macguffin. You just walk a guy up to it under absolutely no pressure, when all enemies are down.

There are other missions where similarly, you have to walk everyone to the evac point, or walk one guy to a spot. I haven’t tried doing an evac on other missions where there is an objective to recover (while enemies still stand), but presumably it would have worked, as I don’t recall seeing two objectives like this together.

This one just struck me as daft. The only scenario it would make challenging would be if you had only one guy left who was bleeding/poisoned, with no medkits, and it was a race to the spot. Narratively though, this would jar - how does he go on to live on the strategic map if he’s about to die on the tactical map? After all, we aren’t allowed supplies in our aircraft, are we?

Which reminds me of how your soldiers are supposed to escape lairs when the spawnery is killed. What, narratively, is supposed to happen here? Shouldn’t part of the mission be getting them out again? As it is, the whole thing just turns into a game of British Bulldog.

Narrative and lore is such a huge part of Phoenix Point, but it seems like they have been automagically suspended at points, in the name of hasty attempts at balancing.

I understand that PP isn’t X-Com, I get that. This sort of board game/card game/arcade game type magic stuff just seems at odds with what I expected.

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To make missions types more different to each other this mission type clearly need some tuning so it works without to kill all enemies but reach a point.

I disagree for Lairs, add an exit would lowdown its specificity, bad idea.

All of that isn’t lore or story, again a story doesn’t need that all steps are told, yeah they kill the target, no need see the ship take them and leave. There’s no magic, it’s just story without every single little steps. And no PP isn’t a board game/card game/arcade game, sigh seriously you are destroying yourself your arguing with such low quality comment.

3

I think because I called you out about a statement of fact regarding JA2, you’re over-compensating.

4

I agree with you, ZeeraCamay. This mission needs some tweaking. I’d like to add that the sheer number of enemies you face there is so huge, it’s a chore to play.

Following your approach of lairs and nests, It could be nice having to strike and evac, but with a more progressive arriving of pandoran reinforcement. The first part would be stealthy, reaching the objective, and the second part would be fast and explosive, racing for the exit vs the pandorans.
For now, the number of pandorans on the map is too high from the start, and the reinforcements pletoric. It forces players to cheese the whole thing or die trying by the rules. And yes, it makes no sense logically, or your whole team should perish in the process, as in a suicidal mission.

This situation extends to the majority of missions. You are almost always required to kill all enemies, as fast as possible, to succeed. There is little subtility in the approach, partly due to the random placing of enemies on the map and the limited stealth system.
The game could be better with more structure in the missions. By that i mean preparation (briefing, map with objectives and dangers, etc), approach (infiltration, vehicle drop in, obstacles, etc), evolution of the situation (Alert, progressive reinforcements, several objectives of different nature, etc) and different outcomes (partial success, acceptable losses for compromise, etc).

1 Like
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I don’t see what you mean, I see you spam your complains, it forced spam partially my answers.

I don’t “hate” you and didn’t choose any target, it’s only posts. I definitely disagree on the Internet tendency that a story needs tell every little bits, it’s totally wrong, any great novel will do many jump in space and time and will skip many details.

6

According to the lore a lair is abandoned once a Spawnery is destroyed, so it’s not too much of a stretch imagining the enemies retreat when the Spawnery is downed (or if you prefer they just start to wander around aimlessly since the controlling intelligence got wiped).

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Good point, the weakness is it’s not enough highlighted in the game, but it makes sense there’s attacks only when there’s a nest close enough.

EDIT: Well and what lack of explanation is other missions when there’s no nest around, they shouldn’t attack then.