Note, however, that many steam players are playing for the first time. And many simply do not have the time for such time-consuming PP playtroughs. Personally, I think that steam players are only just beginning to discover broken things. Of course, that’s just my guess.
Personally, I only recognized the game’s OP fantasy after a little more than 3 months (at that time about 40 hours) and couldn’t really assign it to the game, which is why I reported here in the forum for the first time (for the first time in any games forum) .
Yes, of course, that’s why I wrote “no real evidence”. Still, it is around 2.5 months out and a pretty low amount of people coming at least to the end at all.
Comparing the numbers of all end difficulty (3.8% + 0.6% + 0.3% = 4.7%) shows that:
roughly 6.4% of all that ends the game do it on Legendary (0.3% from 4.7%)
roughly 12.8% on Hero (0.6% from 4.7%)
roughly 80.8% on Rookie or Veteran (3.8% from 4.7%)
roughly 1/4 of all of them did the PP end … just a number without any context for this discussion
For a “second wave”, personally less op fantasy and more “realism” in the tactics and equipment. Equip able vehicles, less restraint on numbers in missions, the idiocy of class accuracy bonuses and negatives…you’re either good or bad with a weapon, NOT dependant on the armour you wear unless your helmet has computer targeting. Heavy armour should give stability to heavy weapons not make them less accurate! I know different game for different folks. Also game balance vs realsim.
My two cents for a Second Wave option would be an option to change the effects of viral damage and mist exposure so that their consequences are a lot more severe. In the Phoenix Point short stories, getting infected with the Pandoravirus generally results in an infectee either dying, or losing their mind and body to the virus then getting slowly turned into a Pandoran. In the Phoenix Point gameplay, viral damage and mist just result in operatives losing Will Points over time until their Will Points go down to zero, then they simply panic, without any other short-term or long-term consequences.
In Backer Builds 3 and 4 there was a PDF manual included, that contained an early description of how viral damage was supposed to work. If I remember this right, viral damage was still meant to inflict Will Point damage, but when an operative’s Will Points got reduced to 0, the operative would become zombified and uncontrollable, then start losing Hit Points each turn until they either died or could be cured somehow.
I wish viral damage and the mist caused effects more like that. The extra difficulty, complexity and even frustration this could cause would be off-putting to a fair amount of players, but if this could get implemented as a Second Wave option, then it would make the Pandoravirus and the mist feel like more scary and authentic in-game threats for those players that want the extra challenge and immersion. I want to fear having my operatives getting infected in missions, and have to protect operatives from the risk of getting infected by researching and using Virophage Kits and such.
