Thoughts about the game

Phoenix Point Game Feedback
1

Here are my thoughts about the game

I came back to the game after months as I was very disappointed from the original release.Here are some thoughts I have.

Pace of the game is completely broken. It starts well and after a while you get everyone attacking each other and you must spend the majority of the time to haven defending. After the middle most of the players just give up and let the havens get lost.

The pandaren mutations are in very high speed. In less than a month they have created and producing heavy units. The advancements should be on strategy level and not on shooter speed.

Having pandaren- 3 factions-the pure and the archeological sites are way to much.combined with the extreme speed that everything escalates into the game. After a couple of weeks the rookie units are plain useless.The upgraded pandaren units as well the elite units and the bombardment units Imagine if you send a rookie squad to battle after 3-4 weeks. It is nearly impossible. That alone makes rookies useless and with the new training system you cannot effectively replace units . because you don’t produce anything you need a ship to go around just to trade resources. The pace and the amount of time to escalate this to be checked.

Units

Siren : even with the nerf the unit is overpowered . It needs a shorter range on MC and LOS maybe a limit to MC one per unit.

Chiron : Those units are a complete joke a constant barrage of either gloo or acid of bombs or worms. Plus stun if you go too close. A suggestion would be the unit to have a cooldown. When I get 2 of them in a mission I just reload. No point of wasting my time.

Scylla: the endgame unit . Has a lot of hp and way more abilities with no cool down. Every turn you get mindflayers as well bombs and smoke and walking. How turns has this unit have?

Pure units: all units has an excessive armor resulting in assault units to be useless at a very high degree. Maybe the assault weapons needs a boost.

Vehicles : are still useless . you cannot go through enemies and once they do their low damage you cannot reload them. You should be able to disassemble them to get some resources. I understand they are overpowered if they had more firepower or step enemies but they just too useless at this stage.

Maps

Citadel map : the only walls that do not break down with heavy weapons. Very small for maneuver as well to hide. Constant enemies and the boss makes them annoying as hell. Needs some revisiting.

Lair : the mob to kill is always at the far end of the map with the constant enemies coming and the extraction of the units which make no sense as you have to walk all the way back needs some revisiting.

Archeological maps : units are WAY overpowered and they just one shot you.

Haven’s the added ( always ) 3 units was a good update. The AI of those units needs a lot of work. The havens should develop over time and add more defenders as well walls and automated defenses. It just doesn’t make any sense

Gameplay

I don’t see the point of every map to have contact flow of enemies. I mean you go into a mission kill the enemies and can complete the mission. It should be fixed. I am aware that the size of the maps will not get bigger but contact enemies is not the solution.

Having to fight all of the factions and pandaren and future dlc’s were more enemies will be added there is not enough time to create the amount of units needed. You just have to spend your time defending havens as it is the only way to get resources.

Factions attacking each other until the end also makes no sense there should be a way to at least make them attack each other less or maybe a new series of missions were they can go to neutral. Again once they start losing haven after haven they should focus on upgrading their defences or attacking pandarren.

Finding other Synedrion on my missions and attacking with me was a good add. Maybe more? Combined missions?

Resources are too many : 5 I believe and you can produce…one. It would make sense to add a way to make some of them .

Viral-acid and gloo have no effective counter ability. Either you will use an armor later in the game that has 0 armor and protects only for one of them. Maybe add a skill upgrade tree to armors . For example an armor to be able to be upgraded with some defenses for those attacks.

The Ai cheats a lot . you can see units moving half the map coming next to you hit you twice and go hide afterwards…It is so obvious and defo needs fixing.

A more upgraded tree for armor and weapons should be added. For example you have a sniper weapon that does viral and one that has shred and one that does good damage. How about adding some upgrade options to combine weapons as time goes on to be able to cope with the middle-end game.

Conclusion

I think too much are added and not enough ways to cope with them. The different damages as well the pace the resources and the factions needs more improvement .Did I mention that this is on rookie level?

Keep up the good work.

2 Likes
2

I consider this a cheat, since our priest can mind control 1 unit and cannot control another, unless he releases first unit. Same limits should apply.

Agreed, maybe single unit mutations instead of “all units upgrade”, as you note, they simply become powerful too fast, overcoming basic new units of both you and heaven factions.

Use explosives first, or piercing weapons later.

I dislike they have option to attack immediately, and especially later on they can be quite powerful enemies, ruling out any real strategy.

Agreed, there is too much rush and each DLC adds its own pile, instead of making some sense of the story and rewards.

Goo has special legs that ignore it. Need bionic tech.

Agreed.

Agreed, fear is new DLCs will keep the same strategy, instead of improving core mechanics. On higher level all the mentioned problems remain, just the speed of Panda evolution, their in mission numbers and number of nest attacks increases, making it even more crazy :slight_smile:

3

Priest can cast MC once per turn but he can keep MCing enemies from previous turns, so in fact he can MC as many enemies as his WP will allow. AFAIK this is the same way that Sirens MC.

The big difference in AI MC vs player MC is that player can use the MCed enemy immediately, while the AI has to wait one turn.

Overall, I think Sirens are very manageable - there are many ways of ending their MC without killing them, and no further nerfs are needed.

1 Like
4

  • There is no direct counter against acid, it is only weakened somewhat by Advanced Nanotechnology, as are virus, poison and fire damage.

  • Virus can be completely “healed” later in the game with the Virophage Kit, this needs the Pandoran Virus Infection research, what can be started after the vivisection of a “Captured Pandoran with viral ability or weapon”.

  • Additionally to the mentioned augmented legs (one bionic and one mutation) there is also the “Goo Repeller Module - Mark C” module for leg armours. To get these modules one soldier has to get goo’ed once to research Pandoran Goo and afterwards the Goo Repeller research.
    Just to make this complete, with a Jump Jet a soldier can jump out of the Goo and explosives makes it go away (though it is obviously pretty dangerous to free a soldier from Goo this way).

1 Like
5

Voland i agree they are manageable on their own . think a mission with 2-3 of them and a chiron and several other mobs. Is it manageable then? Imagine 2 of them coming out of a think air ( as usually) each MC 2 of your units and you are left with 2 soldiers. What do you do? In my case just reload.
I am merely pointing out a scenario where the player experience is not good.

6

Yes some abilities have in later game countermeasures indeed. You arre going to have a full inventory just to fight any possible scenario on each soldier. I don’t have that kind of resources in general. I am near the last mission. have a few bases to activate and basic gear no extras on soldiers.
I am just pointing out that a combination of aids is a good idea as the same for weapons and armor . The armor that counters specifric things is basically useless as in has 0 stats everywhere else.

1 Like
7

The Virophage Kit completely replaces the normal medkit, it heals more HP and additionally Virus. No extra inventory needed, except you already don’t have equipped a medkit on any soldier.

Which armour has 0 stats everywhere else?
If you mean the Goo repeller leg modules, these can be equipped additionally to any leg armour except mutated legs:

grafik
grafik1090Ă—586 154 KB

1 Like
8

I have been playing the game on Legend long enough to be able to say that IME all situations that the game throws at me are manageable provided I have a reasonable (and I mean reasonable, not OP) team for the encounter.

They don’t come out of thin air. Either they are on the map and then you can find them first, or one of them per turn may come as reinforcements, in which case except in final mission, they will only have 1AP to move a little and won’t MC anybody. If a Siren does MC somebody you have a full turn to break the MC, which you can do by

  1. Killing it
  2. Destroying its head
  3. Depleting its WP
  4. Dazing it
  5. MCing it

And I don’t know if I’m forgetting something.

Often I bait the Sirens into MCing someone just so that they come closer and are easier to deal with.

I will say though that going on a mission past the very early game with just 4 soldiers is a terrible idea, unless you know exactly what you are doing.

BTW, though it’s true that using a team of rookies against later enemies is a good of losing a team of rookies, you are not supposed to do that, and the game gives you many different options so that you don’t have to:

  • You can train operatives at base all the way to LVL7 (they will not have enough SP for everything, but they will have enough to be good enough at one or two things)
  • You can acquire higher level recruits from havens
  • You can spend common pool SP to improve your operatives
  • There are certain weapons/bionics/mutations that can make even a Rookie a valuable team member (for example, Destiny III for Heavy, Frenzy or Tranquility heads for Priests, Disruption head etc.)
  • You can boost your teams with vehicles (which are very good if you know how to use them; a vehicle is never as good as 3 well equipped high level operatives, but a vehicle and 2 level 3-4 operatives can manage almost any mission except of High or Extreme difficulty)
3 Likes
9
  1. Paralysing it (AFAIK, never tested)

Edit:
@VOLAND, you cannot compare 1:1 what we know and do with what other are able to do with their level of knowledge of the game.
IMHO, on Rookie and Veteran the game is still pretty unforgiven at a certain point, as the OP has described. It ramps up stupidly insane and I believe many player running in several problems at this point.

2 Likes
10

Yes, I think I did this once actually.

You are right, of course. :slightly_smiling_face:

3 Likes
11

Voland clearly your strategy level is higher than mine. I play on rookie and like a lot of people have issues.
Stating those issues can help the developers understand that not all people want to play at high level or cannot. Maybe i am getting old who knows:)
Having said that the forums here and steam are full of people saying more or less similar things.
Now i didn’t know you can add the goo armor to the existing one. A good tip!
If i ever have extra resources i will build it. Having defense after defense on havens and still at low resources. I have tried to build a lot of food production to exchange resources…
These are a few of my personal thoughts i have with the game . Considering that it is already too much and thinking of future DLC’s i am sure i am not that wrong. Thats why i suggested a few things in the post above
A successful game always has a good player exp and not feeling like a chore.
I am aware that the development of the game is done and no major changes could happen but honestly some ideas might worth looking into.
Who wouldn’t like to see for example joined missions with a faction? etc-etc

3 Likes
12

They are not that tough since head needs to be disabled, only troublesome situations are when 2 or 3 sirens are encountered in short time, on a distance and they can find good cover - since their MC ability needs no LOS. Any enemy unit can spot your unit - they manage to control whole team in matter of turn or two.

That is why I am for more fairer approach of limiting MC to one unit - even for a priest (as it was in Xcom 1994).
https://feedback.phoenixpoint.info/feedback/p/siren-still-mind-controlling-few-units

1 Like
13

This is also a trap that many beginners fall into. Have you worked out how much resources you could trade instead of building these food production facilities? Somebody did that once and it turned out that you only amortized the costs after around 5 weeks and only then make a profit. They are only useful when you already have enough resources and no more fun to also trade for food.

Just a question because I read this so often but it still never happens to me after roughly 1700h of playing the game.
Is this proven or confirmed in any way?

2 Likes
14

Agreed. Its worth might be in covering food costs of soldiers, thus not being in fear of running no food, being able to trade all one gains, not far then that.

Happens to me in all missions where there is good cover (e.g. Synderion maps with syrens). Syren hides behind in building and MCs.

1 Like
15

I would like to see a sreenshot of this.
You know that glass isn’t blocking LOS?

16

This was happening at some point, I can confirm, but not in the latest builds. Also, I haven’t seen since at least a few months ago the same Siren initiating mind control of 2 units on the same turn.

2 Likes
17

This might have gotten fixed with the last patch. There were walls that allowed LoS in the Syn maps.

2 Likes
18

Happened to me yesterday . i don’t have a screenshot. I just reloaded .

1 Like
19

That’s true, and you absolutely should do that. I’m in no position to judge if Rookie is easy enough or not: of course it’s very easy for me, but I have been playing this game for more than a year now (around 700 hours, maybe).

I certainly want Rookie to be as easy as it has to be.

Yeah, as @MadSkunky said that doesn’t work at all… :slightly_smiling_face:

http://wiki.phoenixpoint.com/Geoscape#Where_do_resources_come_from.3F

The key is really to have as many teams as fast as possible doing as many things as possible. You get tons of resources just from random exploration.

2 Likes
20

I am aware of that. you know the resources are not a match to the speed level of the game. I have now run out of exploration points-maybe 1-4 left on the map) . My resources are low to say at least. I have 3 teams (2 good one rook-ish) and trying to create my 4th one. And yes it took me that long due to resource option… Whats the point of creating the 4th team now? I know right.
I have mainly snipers and heavy soldiers - heavy with upgraded weapon and snipers with the good snipe you get from a faction. I have allied with all of them at this stage and just trying to delay going ont hat boring last mission because i want to enable all bases on the map. Again i know it is pointless but at a strategy game you should have time yes?
Overall the difficulty was a bit down since the initial game which is good. I had to reload only 7 -10 times if i remember well.
Maybe in the future we could see more levels ont he soldiers even though no more abilities but at least more HP per level?
At least i learned a trick for the game with that armor which is good.
Now just hope the devs listen and add more mission types etc. It feels like you are against the world against the aliens :slight_smile:

1 Like