So this game is absolutely awful

Phoenix Point Game Feedback
62

Yeah I like the sound of that too. I wishlisted 7.62 after someone mentioned it the other day (was it yourself?) - I’m going to wait for a steamsale though, me being tight and all. :wink:

I didn’t play TFTD, and Apocalypse is so long back that I don’t quite remember how the different units worked any more, but I do remember in Xenonaughts that I had a couple of ‘oh shit’ moments when one of the new enemies types appear and started zombifying my squad, that was a really cool part of the game in terms of how it forced me to adapt my strategy.

63

Pretty much along the lines. Someone mentioned mindfragers in PP - but it’s not the same thing at all, mindfraggers are just annoyance that you need to spend some AP to deal with. The Chryssalid (Rippers in Xeno) are permanently “changing” your soldiers, there is no way back, there is no “bash it till it falls” reversion possible. In OpenXCom TFTD (The World of Terrifying Silence) you have some static enemies that for most of the game can be killed only using explosives and can absolutely wreck your team. So you had to continuously put up smoke and move behind covers to get close enough to throw a bunch of explosives. It wasn’t the most fun missions but the fact that you can get one of those forced you to think more about inventory management in a way of which stuff you have to bring and what is just nice to have.

64

I dont understand these nerfs either.

My Snipers are the last line of defense at a certain point in the game. Nerfing them because they are used too often statistically seems for me exactly the wrong way.
The question is, why no other soldiers/tactics are used in the game?
For me its because I just lose my soldiers all the time if come to near to any kind of foe with any soldier.
So the solution are snipers to stay alive.

Even an Armadillo doesn’t stand more than 2 rounds against the usual Arthon waves. And it have an useless firepower and a costly trade of 3 soldiers(snipers e.g.) less.

All possibility (known to me currently) to get through the armors in the later game (beside the snipres) need a Heavy nearby to hit something and lower the armor. What usually isnt neccessary anymore since the Heavies are donig well damage if pierce the armor. But dying if they miss or 2 other enemies are nearby.

So psychic attacks were an good alternate. But nerfed now.
And the other ways … like sneaking behind and shocking them is very risky… and dont kill them afterwards anyway.

Pushing through with explosives is very costly for your resources after a while.

Assault soldiers are pointless anyway (nerfed or not) since they are always need to be too close to hit and suffer from return fire.

Poison, Virus, Acid… sounds good. But you need to place about 60 loads and survive for 3 rounds after that.

So no matter which faction I focus on, on a certain point they are only snipers left to stand against the waves. Like ~20 Armored-Arthons

And I dont even want to start to analyse the Sirens … just so much:
One Siren in one Round jumping from a roof. Mindcontrol one Soldier and kill two others with melee.
…what shall I say… hmm… it was the second round in the mission… how could I avoid that?

OK… lets be more constructive.

How a about making the soldiers more endurable?
With better armor or more health without losing too much aim. Squishy/No Aim = useless = dead.

How about adding strategic possibilities for distract or defence?
Full cover, Smoke grenades, Flash grenades, Pheromone decoys, head dmg disable aim or recognition, distracting sonic sounds/taunt, cover fire.

Improve stealth soldiers? Choose Mission placement of stealth soldiers?
It would be helpful to see how the chances are to being discovered if in stealth mode.

Pre mission abilities of aircraft.
Area scan, airstrike, covering fire, drop spike mines defense

And so on…Still have any ideas, but I dont know if I have a different vision of the game ? :slight_smile:

P.S.:
Sorry for not being very detailed. As a Gamedeveloper I see several points to talk about. But I prefer to point at some points to look at instead of being detailed.

2 Likes
65

Huu no acid get broke by first patch after release. Now it is good design against soldiers because they will stick to battle up to end, most often. But it became bad broken pointless design to be used as a tool against Alien.

Virus, not bad, but it would need AOE spreading, currently it’s just a possibility against few bigger enemies, and often it’s rare use cases because of armor.

Poison, limited use cases, but can be efficient, most powerful usage is control a crab with poison, secondary usage still useful is poison crossbow and soften a target not yet in front.

If you use assault against everything without RF that’s a huge pool of alien to attack.

Ok it’s not balanced between Shorter range and longer range. It’s possible that the dash nerf just increased the problem.

No you didn’t dig enough, it’s not just about wearing a full heavy armor set, mutations and armors mix are the way to do it, choose soldiers with personal skills favoring aiming is another way instead of switch those all to sniper or heavy.

Ouch you didn’t tried 100% stealth, it needs a cap, 85% looks fine, not sure sniper need any nerf, they give up on other powerful mix:

  • Sniper/Heavy
  • Sniper/Berzerk
  • Or the skip sniper, but lost multiple good sniper skills and get -4 WP penalty.

The huge point is stealth will make give up on sniper armors so aiming accuracy to manage. No way a 100% damage increase break a balance, in fact it’s that basic.

For me it was balanced with any mix of sniper and stealth, and good mixes of sniper without stealth.

Never tried those sonic grenades, did you?

Let see the existing first, it’s not empty, just not common rather often:

  • There’s far cry, not sure add grenade for it would fit. Yeah you can use Heavy class as your flash grenades you can even throw them with a jetpack, but if you ask me, risked tactic.
  • Not move is a powerful tool, lol but really it’s interesting and with some depth.
  • Overwatch is another tool to discourage many aliens.
  • There’s vehicles as moving wall.
  • There’s stealth not Infiltrator but too few game feedback on it to exploit it properly.
  • There’s Electric Reinforcement, but if dev intend nerf stuff, it shouldn’t last long, pick two Technician hide them in a place, chain Electric Reinforcement and Restore Will for both and 40 more armor for all 6 soldiers.
  • There’s paralyze, keys, Tentacle Torsos, Ahtena, even Era. You need not forget that it removes AP it’s not just for capture.
  • The flamethrower, alas fire is too minor, too many aliens ignore a fire barrier (not all) it isn’t enough versatile, you should have more AOE choices as a perpendicular line or an AOE or at least a cone.
  • Panic and enemy morale management, various skills or even skills from mutations around that.
  • Virus to enter in enemy morale management, perhaps a bit more boost is needed, faster for high value but faster decrease perhaps.
  • Break legs, much slower enemy, good trick with Sirens and crabs without long range.
  • Stun/Electricity that can stun, the Cannon, the Hammer (ok rare use cases working), some more.
  • Turrets, yeah it’s also a defensive tool for your soldiers life, example for Bombard Chirons, or even better for Scylla/Chiron with glue having damages or not.
  • Manage los and stay hidden and stop think only in term of cover, it’s not a cover shooter.
  • Retreat with dash, oops not anymore.
  • Forgot, disarm, big powerful defense tool.

You really want compare to XCOM1&2, they won’t match with PP. Anyway let see:

  • Suppression fire could be a nice addition to PP, but I bet most players just ignore it.
  • Never enjoyed smoke grenade of XCOM and flash grenades always looked OP and wouldn’t work in pp with a too flexible inventory. Then there’s Phantom Doctrine smoke, love it.
  • Flash grenade, always felt them OP, can’t work with PP extended inventory management.
  • Portable full cover, it’s not a cover shooter, vehicles can block los. Hey you can even enter hide in vehicles, rare use case that are efficient but it happens.
  • Taunt, yeah, worth consider how adapt it. Woo I forget XCOM had that, it’s more Fantasy combats. It can be well done not some stupid MMO like implementation.
  • For sneaky tools, I’d say caution stealth quicky broke combats and lead to OP tools. I think the game could have something fairly good and not OP with max stealth at 85%.

A player had a great suggestion add elements to manage somehow defense of Havens and bases. To make it interesting and balanced and with some choices it need a lot of design work in my opinion, but the idea looks great.

Yeah we players are master designers, that is until we start really make a game. :slight_smile:

1 Like
66

@Zzzz has already answered you but I feel an itch to add some more:

  • Infiltrator class has Holo Decoy ability which is a nice way to distract several enemies per turn staying relatively safe. Spider drones work as distraction too, though they are costly.
  • War Cry is a wonderful crowd control ability able to nearly stop the advance of a group of 5+ Arthrones. And it can be used from behind a wall.
67

Hey,
thank you very much for that feedback.
I ll keep that in mind.

Anyway, a little addition:

-The Assault Soldier could stay useful for the whole game if he get a little better “hit & run” possibilities.
But for that he would need a little more speed (ok- 75% for sprint is great step ahead) But also it would be necessary to be kind of “Return fire” immune.
It just feels awesome to run into a foe, hit him one or two times with a shotgun, and leave him bleeding out :smiley:

-The whole random-dying-problems could become far more acceptable if I have a possibility to save him. Medic stabilizing etc… Than withdrawing would be a real option instead of reload.

-As a rule of thumb: I would expect that more resources spend for soldier(hire & equipment & time)-the more dangerous/sustainable he is. Thinking of Sniper / Agent / Armadillo e.g.

Anyway, thanks for the thoughts.

68

Oh, and a little disclaimer.
I still didnt managed to finish the game, so I still dont know all end-game equipment available.
Like sonic grande e.g.

I experimented too much on different combinations, so needed to restart to focus on good ones. … Iam on it.

69
  • Shooting the weapon arm is the best way to counter Return Fire, but of course you know that.
  • You can also use Heavy with +50% bash damage and a heavy weapon to break off limbs, but you have to stand on a diagonal field at the same direction where this limb is directed. This way you can also shock your target and it also cancels Return Fire.
70

Yeah even more, decoy can be very strong defense (similar to XCOM2) and I bet there’s more defense tools. I had listed war cry but yeah not it’s full potential.

71

Woo I use bash there and there, but didn’t knew that, no similar tick to disarm with bash? Rare use case but it happens.

72

I had tried it several times in row with Arthrons and it worked each time. Didn’t try it with other enemy types, but remember breaking some Infiltrator arms with a hammer.
I know that you mentioned War Cry, I just couldn’t help myself - this ability is so powerful I am afraid it will be nerfed. By the way the game manual says it does -1 AP to enemies, so it looks like it was buffed pre-release.

73

I am a long time X-Com player. All the way back from the original release to the latest X-Com 2 release.

I have never been a master tactician player. In X-Com I can pretty much play on Veteran level without scum saving. Anything higher than that just never works out long term for me unless I do that. So, I’m an average kind of player and my luck (even in games) tends to not favor me, so I’m a guy who usually has his soldiers miss at 99% chance to hit.

So the new X-Com 2 I play with mods, so I can play at higher level difficulties without scum saving.

I explain that to illustrate I’ve got a good grasp of my skill level and it’s nowhere near the top of the heap.

So that said, I’ve had to restart my PP games around a dozen times so far…I can’t get very far in this game. I started at veteran level, but it quickly scaled up in difficulty so quickly that my soldiers were being party wiped.

I have that problem on the easiest level as well. I can’t play this game without scum saving at all, motley because I can have half a part wiped out from a mission that I was previously having no issues on.

Lairs are a nightmare that can see me spending 6+ hours on over 3 days of real time (because I get about 2 hours of play time a night). The Mortar Chirons often wipe out my party or half of of it on the first or 2nd round before I can do hardly anything.

and I’m sure I’m nowhere near the mid or end point of the game. All 3 of my factions are around 40-50% and I have 4 bases and 2 planes, ODI is like 5%…but the special quest missions have such a high difficulty it’s crazy. I don’t like having to save scum, but I am really exhausted with restarting this game constantly.

I don’t think the balance and scaling is very good.
The nerfs to Dask ruined the Lair mission I was in and it took me 9 hours to play it through with scum saving.

So I may be done with this game. I’d opt for a refund if I could get one, but my only other hope is mods are made so I actually have a chance to play through it to the end. I’m sure I could spend hours researching to find the best combo’s and best tactics…but geeze if I wanted a second job I’d still be raiding in WoW.

Other people have pretty much addressed other points of contention I have with this game and the patch. To me, this game is becoming more of a frustration to play instead of fun to play and I am very disappointed in that. I wanted to like and enjoy this game.

I am really impressed with the people who can play this game (and X-Com games) on Legendary Ironman and do well…wish I could, but it’s just out of my scope. Hopefully some options open up for the rest of us who aren’t in the 1% :slight_smile:

74

I know you knew I had mentioned War cry… Huu?

For crabs, I almost confirm your trick, at least it works sometimes need try more to confirm always

At Legendary, the Heavy in first scavenging tutorial mission, double bash is the best against crabs, but caution to RF, damit when they’ll fix the RF icon not showed sometimes.

75

:smiley: LOL
My Priest (with WP 18) was just taken over by a Siren. Guess the nerf didnt work well :slight_smile:

76

It’s not a WP nerf it’s an AP nerf, 3 move and a control but then the Siren is exposed and you Priest grab it 18 WP that’s a lot, good chance you can panic the Siren and win one turn, your Priest will be more a problem but well it depends of him and context. Pre patch it was 3 moves, control, and retreat hide back or move again and control a second soldier or even 2 soldiers with lower WP than your priest.

77

YAY, my Base is destroyed. Had 16 h to react. My team was even nearby. But came 1 h too late. Base is instantly destroyed. Not repairable.
Not enough resources for garrison my bases anyway.
Now, no save game left to correct action for about 12 h playtime.

OK. I am out for a while. Maybe I give it a another chance after next patch.

Got the strong feeling that the Devs dont play their own game bottom up. Just cheat up to expected status. Then maybe everything works fine

Trying out the Feedback-Tool. Curios if it helps.

78

Try starting a new post-patch campaign on easy difficulty. You can see if they’ve fixed the messed-up difficulty settings (legendary too easy, easy wicked hard). Aside from that, this game definitely requires shrewd tactical play.

79

I have a habit of keeping several “nearly finished” Mutogs in production queue. In case of base attack warning I can quickly finish them and place at whichever base is under attack (to help my soldiers).

80

Ha so there’s a use for Mutogs. :slight_smile: Well that shouldn’t justify how pointless they are in general.

1 Like
81

They were just need money and time. Thats all.
Before cash from EGS they were counting only on 700k dollars for such a large game is obliviously not enough. I cant say how much cost XCOM1/2 but i feel like it would be cost at least few millions.