I understand it’s not super-realistic make them without helmets in battle, but still… come on, I wish there were such option. Some people including me put so much efforts in customization and all I see is metal costumes in battle.
In addition also say I’m a bit disappointed with this part of game (customization).
I want more voices (would be cool with different languages, so I can make all soldiers speak different language and it gonna be way simplier to differ all of them not even looking)
More unique head skins, right now it’s only 12 variants and most of it looks for me too similar.
Soldiers also looks like robots without personalities. I don’t feel empathy for them when somebody killed.
Good that you feel only a bit disappointed. This is not game about Barbie and Ken where you dress them and give them some fancy colors.
Like really guys (not only you AnotherWorld) this is strategy game, not an RPG where you develop different characters. Customization is fine option, but you really shouldn’t care about your soldiers in this game. I lost yesterday few of them on some hard missions and it shouldn’t be too hard loss in such game like Phoenix Point. That is why I don’t customize them.
While it’s not want you want, one does get to see their mugshots on the roster pane. I hazard to guess that having customized heads visible on the map would create processing overheard.
But I do want to see my customized soldiers, colors at least,
for example, blue for Snipers, red for Assault, green for Heavy,
it’s easier to evaluate the whole picture at a glance
I disagree entirely. One of the beauties of the XCOM genre of games IMO is the fact that you can get attached to the random mix of colours and pixels that make up your Squad. It means that your decisions are not made in that soulless wargaming vacuum where the lives of your soldiers don’t matter.
I know of (virtually) no officer in any war in history who didn’t care about casualties and the wellbeing of his troops. So the fact that you start to care about which Squaddie lives or dies makes your decisions as Commander a little more realistic.
That said: I only half agree with @AnotherWorld. I always thought it was ridiculous that Squaddies in XCOM went into battle without wearing helmets. It would be even more ridiculous in PP, where headshots really do have meaning, even if they aren’t as deadly as they should be (I’m on record elsewhere calling for headshots to have a much greater effect and for helmets to consequently have much greater armour strength). BUT, I do miss not defaulting to helmetless Squaddies in the info panel - if I had it my way, the toggle would be to put the Squaddie’s helmet ON in the info panel, not to take it off.
Maybe my sentence was overgeneralized. It is not about you should not have any attachment. But come on. This is not an RPG game with handful of unique characters with their personalities which progress through many levels and have different story choices. You can imagine it and play some roles on your own, but game shouldn’t provide that. This is not part of strategy games.
That’s not what the OP was asking for. He simply wants to see the faces of his Squaddies, and I get that.
Given how targetable the head is in PP, I disagree that they should be depicted helmetless on the battlefield, though @AnotherWorld, if you want to see your soldiers’ faces in combat, feel free to take their helmets off and suffer the consequences.
But I absolutely agree that you shouldn’t have to press a separate toggle button to see them in the info screen. Part of the pleasure for me - and many others - in the XCOM style of game is customising our favourite Squaddies and bonding with them as you watch them progress through the game: and that adds to both the impact and the realism of your combat choices at the tactical level. It’s much harder to simply sacrifice a soldier for some short-term tactical advantage if you care about him or her on some level - and that’s exactly how it should be.
But it should be - and to a certain extent it is in the modern XCOM genre.
Personally, one of the things I find most unrealistic about the strategy/tactics genre is that fact that you don’t care whether your men live or die. It goes utterly against everything I know about the way (most) Commanders feel about their men. In that respect, I always felt that the Firaxis style of XCOM did a very good job of elevating your tactical choices from the sterile environment of impersonality to a point where you did care whether your troops lived or died, and for me that was a very good thing.
Totally agree with you, if a game is too “sterile” it really puts me off and I rarely go back to it. I’ve yet to name any troops in PP unlike xcom and I don’t know why.
I do - and here I agree with @AnotherWorld’s initial OP.
The implementation of the Squad Portraits in the info screen are not as well realised or individual as those in XCOM. I suspect it’s a resource thing - Firaxis has hods of money to throw at GFX artists to make the whole thing look & feel beautiful. So you don’t get the same sense of individuality from your PP Squaddies as you do with FiraXCOM Squaddies.
Add to that the decision to present the first-look of your Squaddies in the info screen with helmets on, and that adds to the depersonalisation effect. It’s just not as easy to identify with someone in a zoot-suit staring at you through bug-eyes, as it is to bond with an individual human face that looks discernably different to all the other human faces around it.
One can, as long as they aren’t bitten by the current bug where units lose their colors when moved from aircraft. The custom colors of the unit’s uniform is displayed on the battlefield.
It should not. Because players mostly don’t want to play honest man or iron man mode. They attach to the characters, and don’t want them dead to the point that either they load game a lot or they scream for skills that let them do impossible things and always let resque their beloved soldiers even in the worst conditions. Then we get what we see in XCOM and PP in terms of skills.
FiraXCOMs did set a high bar of presentation which will be difficult to match. I must say, that I found it difficult in my time with PP to get attached or even differentiate my troops. Cosmetic helmet toggle is a popular and common feature, though personally I rarely use it.
As to cosmetics, perhaps a modding support might alleviate the problem - my favourite FiraXCOM2 cosmetic come from fans, not the main game.
It is also something that could be expanded on as game gets developed if the art team with will themselves with a bit of time to spare.
Something like that. When you play chess do you care about your figures?
Well even if they will make elements to make units more human and impress the player with some depth and care, they definitely should not allow themselves to follow players moods and create safe environments for units.
Yet in the original xcom ( which I still play) first thing I did was rename the troops. Now with the advances in processing power and skill of artists which PP has I don’t have that compulsion. I backed PP and desperately want to like it in the same way. For me it just doesn’t have that X factor at the moment. Perhaps I’m expecting too much of an rpg feel from a strategy game? But as it was advertised as a successor to the original…
