I’ll be brief. But sorry for my English.
I (or like almost everyone here) am a big fan of the original X-com. When the Demo was released, the whole thing was promising…
But…
Maps are way 2 small. And laggy…
Mobs are stupid and absolutely suicidal. All combats come to either to kill everything in one turn or to just sit and wait and they’ll come to you themselves to be slaughtered.
Even on the hardest difficulty you are absurdly rich. On hardest, at least in early, you are supposed to conserve every mag, Med or grenade; use all the independent junk you can get; every combat should be a challenge. Thus, see 4.
Supply boxes are useless in combat, since you never go in combat unprepared and they’ll get scavenged after the combat.
No need to heal (using Meds) is a bullsht. Insta limb regen after a combat is a bullsht.
Classes:
Sniper: with Heavy’s ulti is a bullsh*t. Scylla 2k HP? No problem. Literary everything dies in one turn.
In late game all u need is like 6 lvl7 snipers.
Assault: with max WP can run to the opposite side of map and back in one turn (map size…) having
5-7 assault buddies with Rally, and can massacre almost everything using Iconoclasts.
Heavy: useless class after u get one lvl 7 sniper.
Infiltrator? Berserker? Do we even need them?
Engi: well, remote turrets are pretty much OP.
Tech tree is a bullsh*t.
Spawnery mission, that can be done in 1 or 2 turns is a… you already know.
Crabster’s bases missions insta ending after killing spawnery, senti or Scylla is a…
Vehicles are mostly useless as they take 3 soldiers space.
Losing morale after civilian is dead is a…
Missions with 2 or 3 bio-mortars spawned is a…
Insta production, item teleportation…
Stealth system… must be reworked.
And so on…
Sigh…
Seems to be a candidate for most buggy game after Aliens: Colonial Marines by SEGA. Really hope they are eliminating one by one, I plan to buy full game + DLC once it goes Steam
This game isn’t even close to that level of bad game state. Heck, there’s anything Bethesda have released in the last 15 years, a couple of Civilization games, multiple Bioware and Ubisoft major titles and a army of indie games between the state of Phoenix Point and Colonial Marines.
Phoenix Point actually released in a pretty good state beside some balancing issues that can occur if you try to play through just focusing on one approach.
The OP of this thread kind of misses the point on a few things, other parts raised are just personal taste and have absolutely nothing to do with balance or stability of the game yet are presented as absolute fact of “What we expected” and they even contradict themselves a few times such as saying the heavy/sniper dual class is stupidly powerful but then says heavy is a useless class compared to a level 7 sniper (Which if anything points to limited exposure to later game situations).
Plenty of insanely popular and well selling games have released in much worse states than Phoenix Point has, it’s just easier for people to be more critical of something when it doesn’t have the blind hype train riding behind it as in over hyped instances any negative commentary runs the risk of going against the hype herd.
You also see it working in reverse, if something looks like it is being negatively talked about even if it’s just by the same 4 or 5 people over and over and those that are enjoying it are too busy enjoying it to comment all that much, then people will be more critical/negative toward even minor things because that’s the established direction to take toward the subject matter that they’ve picked up on.
(And as things like Reddit encourage by default, it’s not about if what you say is accurate, it’s about if what you say is popular that decides somethings worth)
Please change the Headline. This game is perhaps not what YOU expected. I like 90% of the Game. Its mechanics, the fractions and the “harder” Missions.
I Think some Bugs must get out of the game (altough I dont have “hanging problems”) and perhaps some Balance things, but the rest is polishing.
So if you dont like the game ok… but please dont tell it is not what WE expected. Thank you.
Bugs can be tolerated as long as they get fixed. I did not say a single word about bugs. We all understand that, because the game was released only recently.
Talking about personal taste… You have all the right to tell me that, but please understand me too.
With time, every good old gamer becomes more and more demanding. And when they get yet another game, which is ultimately “the same” as games before, of course they get disappointed. It’s a problem of modern game industry. All you need is to take a successful game, make a copy, slightly change it, add a couple of fresh ideas (yes, there are some fresh ideas in PP), but again, as I said, ultimately, it’s all the same.
Well, it just works way, it’s the same as in politics. If you like something, the probability that you leave positive comment is incomparably lower, than when you criticize something and you leave a negative one.
It’s just people is way too lazy. Another thing, the purpose of leaving critic comments (at least from fans) is to make it better. I wont’t bother writing a single word about something I dont care about.
Well, it’s all just a matter of exp. For me, it’s way too easy, thus boring.
Most of games are trivial. More than that, most best games were made before 2000s. When money mattered less.
Ok, just for you I changed the title.
I mostly like PP too, but… It’s just way too unrefined as it is now. After finishing maybe all (4?) endings, I can’t make myself start another round. And that’s exactly what makes me feel sad.
I’ll be glad to try it like in a year, hoping much will be done.
Exactly. I hope they will change the game or at least that modders will make something like Long War mod. I would gladly join to the team working on logic, stat values and mechanics.
This game is by no means in a pretty good state. I had to download a mod that allows me to use the command console because I can’t finish any mission that requires me to evacuate soldiers. So every ambush mission and some of the story missions are unplayable. I had 4 missions spawn on top of each other or spawn on an exploration site that I could not start.
The last campaign I played even though I saved multiple times each level I still lost all my save data. I can’t play this game, period. So great, defend the developers and say other games are worse. But this is the thing, ea launched battlefield 5 in an unplayable state, they got fined and their stock took a massive hit. Same with Bethesda.
Hell even fortnite had some issues after a glitchy patch, but at least they compensated the players for it.
As a gamer I’d rather wait a month for a proper release then get a game with unplayable bugs. But if they do push out a game that’s crippled with bugs then I want compensation. We have to be vocal about this and not compare bad launches to other bad launches and say it’s really not that bad comparatively. Otherwise the industry will continue to do this.
Over PP BB phases many things have been quite developed. I ve had an eye from day one. But many bugs of those days linger in a way. And its not even the number of bugs. AI is not bad as in Marines etc. Its not a stupid game, its that bugs are not gfx glitches or sometimes annoyance, they prevent gaming in many ways and are left for 2020.
Other games failure is poor excuse. And I wish it the best, even I was a bit HC to team alongside development, since similar situation were not handled at best in past.
While its been Kickstarted, it has been promoted as AA+ title.
I don’t remember any single turn based game unplayable at Easy difficulty nor with so many UI bugs and problems, and from far.
XCOM1&2, Divinity Original Sin 1&2, Phantom Doctrine (this case is pathetic, with clean design corrupted by players whining, but that’s another problem), Blackguards 1&2, BattleTech, Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark, Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus, Pathway, Invisible Inc, Templar Battleforce, Super Dungeon Tactics, Vigilantes, Steam Marines, Age of Wonders III, Ultimate Space Commando, The Storm Guard Darkness is Coming, I can continue the list.
For me PP is clearly a project unmastered that failed match ambition with imposed budget and time. I’m even worry they did a fool’s bargain with Epic, and they did if the deal was only prepaid amount of sells.
EDIT: Even Wasteland 2 that undoubtedly had problems in various quests of last part (Hollywood) was a lot less dirty than PP at release. Director’s Cut edition improved a lot the game, but it doesn’t change that Vanilla release wasn’t full of UI problems and just unplayable at Easy difficulty.
EDIT: Sigh wrong thread, I don’t share at all opinions of OP, a lot of complain on details that don’t matter, I’d suggest OP to start make games if he is that good at design. The too easy game comment is just teen bragging, facepalm.
One very stupid thing in the game is that every marker on the map can extend range of your aircraft. Basically that means that you can refuel it on destroyed enemy lair or on the place where scavenging site was or on destroyed haven. I think that is one of the things developers didn’t have time to finish.
How much positive complexity would be added to the game if you could refuel your craft only in friendly haven. But on the other hand by this you could be unable to reach some parts of the world if connecting haven is destroyed or becomes unfriendly.
The way it is now implemented is basically same as that you can fly freely from A to B without limitations, so I am not clear why they bothered to make it like this in the first place.
This game had much new things and ideas, but implementation was obviously rushed.
That is why one of the Backers Builds had Emergency Refuel action which had a cost to fuel Manticore in place where your flight range was overextended. I wish they will return to that with friendly havens as free refueling stations.
While I do not agree with all of OP points and there is a lot of potential to this game, there is no excuse for a buggy and unpolished game. I feel more like a beta tester than someone who bought the game.
This is actually a recent change more for release.
Before refuelling was only possible at certain locations, and your actionable range was dictated by your network of refuelling spots.
I suspect they changed it because it led to a lot of PITA micromanagement and drew too much away from being able to react to Pandoran attacks later on in the game, it worked fine for early game but later on when you might have 3 or 4 transports, having to move each from one refuelling point to another until they finally get to where you wanted would get very annoying very quickly.
Edit: Not to mention it would potentially become impossible to play later game if 2 factions have declared war on you meaning they will no longer provide fuel for your transport, cutting off your refuelling points to just 1 factions havens and any neutral havens.