Why was my post criticising the game and asking for patch removed?

Phoenix Point
21

Not a list with all issues, but sticky and leads you to the tool that handles players feedback better than a forum can, also with responses from snapshot:

Maybe the title is not clear enough, but I don’t think it is too absurd to overlook it.

…

The last post in this sticky thread does what you describe and even a bit more because canny is able to give you some hints when you start to post a new issue:
https://forums.snapshotgames.com/t/our-new-player-feedback-tool-is-live/8939/5

Quote

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In my opinion, their way with canny is more than many other and even bigger game studios offer for player feedback.

And it is also not that hard for anyone to read these sticky posts here in the forum at the first place before they start to rampage. But also only my opinion …

3 Likes
22

Hi. I have made a fair few comments which I phrased in an educated manner and were critical of the game. I never got anything deleted , you appear to write in a polite if very blunt manner. I can imagine it irritating for you.

I don’t want sound like a suck up but I think that at this present moment in time conversely exactly when we are all desperate to have some audio visual entertainment we should leave game studios to do what the rest of us are are doing, which is waiting this out.

The development studio is presumably based in Europe so some kind of lockdown procedure is in place and I am sure that they will get back to development as soon as they can.

I am in Italy and am now on my 8th week of lockdown which will continue until, at least the beginning of May, so I appreciate your frustration.

I’ve been playing a lot of video games, for obvious reasons,recently, and I have not seen one patch from any title in over a month. However there are lots of good games on the radar which might keep you going for a fix until the development restarts on PP. One personal choice for a 4X would be Corruption 2027 a much smaller in scale but mechanically, technically and… Cheap tactics Xcom like based purely on the combat.

3 Likes
23

:+1:
And if you have played “Mutant Year Zero”, the predecessor from the same game studio, the tactical mechanic and graphic is almost the same (not to say pure copypaste) but without the really good and tense storyline.
I personally have it on my list and when I have enough of “betatesting” PP i will purchase this little gem.

Edit & PS, only for clarification:
I read the original message from the OP before it was deleted and I also found it too aggressive, offensive, a bit too personal against the developers and almost without any new or factual criticism that isn’t already addressed (see my links above). So I can understand that the moderators deleted it, even if he is quite right with some of his points (lairs and acid).

1 Like
24

If your product is sub par at least have a courtesy and admit “we failed on so many different levels but we will try to improve”. Instead we get all the excuses and more DLCs.

You guys have to remember one thing you paid AAA price for this game. There is not a single other industry where this sort of behaviour would fly.

I personally would not pay for kickstarter again. Because developer can deliver poor quality and then block you. You paid in advance sucker.

I bet most of you guys are employed, can you imagine you tell your employer “I tried my best”?

[EDIT: Removed the part of your post that was inappropriate. Next time it will be the entire post. UV]

2 Likes
25

Seriously, whats wrong with you? Everyone here is trying to be nice and coming up with reasonable arguments, but you choose to ignore everything and keep writing the same crap in different colors. In the opening you write that “someone” is not able to handle criticism, i think this someone is you. You are flat out ignoring it.

You have made up your opinion, informed everyone about it and are not willing to change it, so just get out of here and play another game. Heck in the time you wasted with all these posts you could have probably worked the money 3 times back by now, that you claimed to have wasted on this product.

5 Likes
26

I can certainly respect that, but as a customer/refunder, I won’t re-buy the game until I see if they “succeed”.

27

I have to mention that all you time and effort that you spent reading and denigrating of this game is all recorded in your profile summary. For someone with such a strong opinion on what everyone thinks I’m surprised how little time that you have recorded.

I believe that despite the game flaws, most people appreciate the originality of this take on the genre. It has balancing issues and bugs, but it is a crowd funded project. If you were to compare with xcom2 from Firaxis (substantially larger developer) it still has bugs that were never fixed and with earlier DLC regularly didn’t work at all. They had teams all over the world developing it - just read the credits.

I’m frustrated that PP is not as finished as it should be - but this small development team is trying to fix the issues just like Firaxis was. Many aspects of PP are beautiful and very intelligent. Give snapshot time, not derision.

1 Like
28

I can tell something like that. I just won’t get annual bonus. :wink:

btw They say “I tried my best, and I will improve, have faith in me. And remember you don’t have to pay me more for me to get better.” :wink:

29

no because that should be straight up considered fraud if i payed full price for a product just to have to pay extra for it to be fixed. Like you wouldnt buy a new car to see that half the advertised features were either broken or not even build. Then you go to the shop and they tell you: “oh we know that. you payed for all this, but the thing is you have to pay an additional fee.”
The difference is in case of the car you can return it and get your money back, which is for some reason not possible here. Because by the time you realise how much is broken or not included at all the stupidly short timeframe of 2 h is long over.

1 Like
30

This comparison reminds me of another and bigger game studio than snapshot that released a second part of a very good XCom-like game with announcements of how much better it should be than its predecessor. Well, I had to wait for a AAA full price DLC until this successor really became what I expected.
:stuck_out_tongue:

31

Lol. Car vs game comparison? Give me a break. First of all if I could buy a car for 40 dollars I would not complain it might not function in some degree. Anyone who want to put a cash for a car, first thing which is doing is to check what he is buying. Don’t you think that? Guarantee or at least take the car to good diagnostic station. Read reviews and opinions about car model and manufacturer…

Now take this game. There are no reviews? There is no info it is almost brand new development studio? There wasn’t information this is Kickstarter project? So small studio doing game for crowdfunded money… One could think: “There must be no risk at all. I will put my money out and will marvel this absolutely gorgeous game without any consideration… Oh I made mistake. Shirt! This game is not like full priced Porsche!” :smiley: Sorry couldn’t resist.

1 Like
32

Speaking of cars, public funding, small studios, etc. Project CARS was such a product and it delivered on what was promised, basically out of the box. So it’s possible one could expect the same of similarly public funded/small studio video games. Of course, caveat emptor always applies.

33

Of course a game and a car arent the same thing and this “comparisson” was done to point out, that in no other industry would this kind of practice even nearly be deemed “acceptable”. However, unfortunatly in the gaming industry you seem to have no right to return a product that is sub par and/or plainly broken.

And seriously you list “reviews” as source of information? have you even read a single review on phoenix point? They all praise the game in the highest tones with scores of 80-90 % and claiming the enemy evolution system (which isnt even included 5 month after release) was just brilliant. Which means they got an entirely different product to test or the reviews were just straight up bought.

Being a kickstarter project has nothing to do with that either. As there are numerous games from small studios out there that are just plain brilliant. They had a lot of time going through various backer builds and should have had gotten enough feedback from those backers to get at least the basic balancing somewhat right. But failed even at that.

2 Likes
34

Would be great!
But Metacritic is at 74

However it still can reach 90 with right development

35

I believe that the PC Gamer review gave it a favorable score. However, they also talked about the extreme ramping up of DDA causing them to give up.

36

I do agree with X-Nevan. The game was released in unacceptable condition, and many of the issues were not addressed properly to this day. While DLC are bringing new interesting things to the game, they do not fix any problems that already exist, and come with new ones. And saying that animators and artists are mainly working on them is a bad statement. As for now, those people are adding to the problems that this game has, and will need addressing in due time.

I have back this project with access to the bata, and I have to say that I was very disappointed by this game launch. Yet, another game that was not in any state to release properly, but was pushed out anyway in accordance with the principle: release now, fix later. Which is the industry’s motto now.

I gave this game a few shots, but I have not progressed far. There is always some discouraging blocker for me. The game is very not intuitive too. Tech progression is something that is not explained well. Not to mention difficulty spikes that the developer did not manage to address properly all this time.

One other thing I would like to mention here and ask about is Pandora Evolution System. One of two selling points of this game, alongside shooting mechanic. I was not aware that this feature of the game is not implemented. I was not playing much, because defects and shortcomings of this game do not convince me to continue playing, I did not follow the forum too closely too. But this information is quite interesting. Here one the funding captain site Page Redirection we can read:

The Pandoravirus can mutate living forms, and it can incorporate DNA from multiple species and clone them rapidly. You will face an alien threat that mutates and evolves new forms in response to your tactics. Our procedural generation system for the aliens can generate a huge variety of challenges and surprises for you on the battlefield.

So this is not true? as for now at least? Really, one of the biggest feature of the game and it turns out that it does not found the way to the released product. Really, this is beyond me. If @UnstableVoltage or anyone else from snapshot games could explain it to me I would be really grateful.

Now I would say something about “real people with lives and families” who are behind the development. @UnstableVoltage I have to tell you that your customers are real people with lives and families too. Why we should be compassion and show understanding when you don’t care too much about the state of your product that you have released and for which many “real people with lives and families” have paid well in advance on the base of your assurances. I do not deny the involvement and dedication of many people in Snapshot Games. The storys you have made prior fo release were great. But what means involvement, dedication and hard work when the execution is poor and the released product wanting? So, maybe some of your customers are unpleasant here and there because they think they have a reason? Ask yourself this question: Have you delivered the expectations that you have ignited? Another thing are excuses. How many times the crowdfunded project builds on such a narrative: Pre-release independent studio is an advantage because they can make the game just like they want. Post-release is an excuse for a poor product because they do not have resources and money of the big studios supported financially by publishers.

And to the customers like me here. Keep being forgiving, quality of the games will certainly improve when we all will look through our fingers on bad releases and we will try to find excuses for them.

37

It is not about reverting from criticizing, but how it is being done. I also was disappointed with the release. Frankly I’m still kind of. But

  • canny feedback tool,
  • Question & Answer session,
  • now creation of Community Council and
  • progression in next released patches
    shows promise that game will evolve and will be fixed with time.

Well Q&A session wasn’t really promising but when you scroll through canny you can find really interesting ideas how to fix things.

About evolution of aliens. When you will look at their stats they have evolution level. Unfortunately this kicks in too early in campaign and there is hardly seen “progression” of this evolution. Maybe it is lack of diversified mutations or maybe not much varied alien types so it hardly can be seen as evolution. Next thing is that aliens don’t have enough diversified ways to counter player tactics. Again canny brings hope as developers are during review of the issues or even in progress of implementing changes.

38

Those canny feedback tool and Community Council things look to me rather like a lack of direction and creativity from the developer side, not something promising. Many things that this supposed to help fix, shouldn’t be messed up in the released game in the first place.

I have seen such moves before. Once I even was a part of it. It never worked out, and left many people disappointed by things that were popular on the lists but never were addressed in any way.

39

We can’t win.

We do them = “Lack of direction”
We don’t do them = “Devs won’t listen to us / don’t care”

We do have plans and direction, but that’s no reason not to get feedback as we go.

40

Wining would be indeed hard in a situation when you have raised 150% of the money on the fig alone, and there where other sources + money from Epic too. Delaying the release a bit, and despite all this, launching a game in a such poor state. Thinking that after release, community feedback will suddenly straight everything up, is naive, especially that many propositions there are quite obvious, and I bet that many were discussed during the development proces, but for one of the order reason, they were not implemented into the game. like fractions defenders in assault missions, something that should be in the game from the beginning, but was not.

I would not say that you are not listen to us. You activity here, on Sunday, is an example. The problem is what you have done, and what you are doing.

Could I ask you again for the explanation of the evolution system? Something I asked in my first post on this topic. I’m confused by it right now.