KickStarter Phoenix Point - the new game from X-COM creator Julian Gollop

[Mustawd]

eww

 

[Galdred]

this game will have terrible AI and a difficulty level artificially pumped which will evolve into a bore-fest.

also shooting at the head of a squad member to kill a mind fragger seems legit as hell and gives us a glimpse into the design acumen of these developers.

Actually, it could be interesting if done right:
OVerkill damage could be applied to the poor target of the mindsucker, which would promote bringing low powered weapons. Ciritical hits would always kill the sucker without hurting the target.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

OVerkill damage could be applied to the poor target of the mindsucker, which would promote bringing low powered weapons.

That was already in in backer build 3.

 

[Infinitron]

Now on YouTube:

 

[Israfael]

I just realised you can see enemies' health, I wonder if it's possible to disable it. An important component of the atmosphere, in my opinion, also, adds to uncertainty. Currently the game looks and plays like a boardgame with little to no chance of random stuff happening

 

[ERYFKRAD]

important component of the atmosphere, in my opinion, also, adds to uncertainty.

Alright, but you gotta have some sort of data to work with here. Being unable to completely assess the health of your targets is a real bitch in a tactical game

 

[Swigen]

Early access... anybody playing this? Is the line of sight and bullet physics horse shit? There are a lot of parts in nu-XCOM where you’re clearly behind a structure or your gun is not aiming through a window properly yet you can still hit your enemy. I was wondering, where this game’s bullets each have their own physics, are there a lot of bullshit situations where bullets get snagged on odd or invisible edges?

 

[Zanzoken]

Damn this is some serious decline.

First, even if dude didn't come out and say he's already beaten the level a dozen times, it's not hard to tell. He plays with about the same level of enthusiasm as a dental hygienist cleaning teeth.

Second, X-Com is supposed to be hard. The mission required almost no tactics at all -- just meatshield and bomb spam all the way to victory. Whenever it seemed like the human soldiers might be in danger, there was always a quick and easy fix available to remedy the situation. Even when one soldier was flanked and exposed it didn't result in a kill. Overall the fighting was so one-sided I actually felt bad for the fucking aliens.

Third, and this one is really important -- X-Com is supposed to be SCARY. I can live with the crab guys being just base level mooks, but when that big ass alien queen showed up I was like -- fuck yeah these GI Bros about to get wrecked. And yet the queen basically does nothing except stand there and get shot and exploded to death while she sprays "mist" everywhere. When she finally manages to lumber into melee range of the assault trooper, instead of it being a pants-shitting-oh-fuck-i-gotta-get-outta-here moment, dude's like "hmm, let me pause and carefully aim at the left quadrant of her right front claw since that's where the armor is lowest". Thematically it's the exact opposite of what that moment should feel like.

The game looks like it has potential but if this is the level of presentation they're putting out at E3 then they're doing it no favors.

 

[CyberWhale]

Shooting off the face hugger from someone's head should come with a drawback - your character should lose the HP as usual (the bullet goes through the enemy like a knife through butter) and maybe even have a higher chance to suffer from critical shot/bleeding effect.

 

[Drakron]

X-Com is not really meant to be scary, its meant to have a constant ramp-up in difficulty from the start so players dont just get comfortable because they can deal with a Sectoid group. What makes it "scary" is that its scaling up is not determinated by the player and occurs regardless of the player success or failure to keep up and also players have to understand there are unwinnable (or very costly) battles and should refrain from engaging the Aliens in those situations, sometimes there is not much of a choice but at one point players are expected to be on pair with the Aliens and capable of bringing the fight to then.

The objective is not beating a bear with a paper fan with your hands tied behind your back, its not a question of games being "accessible" but rather winnable, Souls games in tactical games would be stupid because the skill involve is understanding how the system works and that includes NOT engaging the enemy if it means a wipe.

 

[Thal]

What makes it "scary" is that its scaling up is not determinated by the player and occurs regardless of the player success or failure to keep up.

If I recall correctly, this actually is how the scaling is determined. If you lose battles, it takes longer for tougher enemies like Ethereals to appear. On the other hand, if you win all battles you have to face them sooner. It's quite an interesting way to punish loading.
Now youse have to load

 

[luinthoron]

What makes it "scary" is that its scaling up is not determinated by the player and occurs regardless of the player success or failure to keep up.

If I recall correctly, this actually is how the scaling is determined. If you lose battles, it takes longer for tougher enemies like Ethereals to appear. On the other hand, if you win all battles you have to face them sooner. It's quite an interesting way to punish loading.

Which, if you think about it, is pretty much what PP is doing as well with its mutations. If you lose, you'll get more of the same. If you win, new mutations will appear to adapt to this. It remains to be seen how well this will work, though.

 

[Endemic]

If I recall correctly, this actually is how the scaling is determined. If you lose battles, it takes longer for tougher enemies like Ethereals to appear.

No, the probability of alien species occurring is fixed in og X-COM, according to datamining of the Geoscape.exe file. https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Alien_Appearance_Ratios ; https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Alien_Appearance_Ratios_(TFTD)

 

[Mazisky]

I am still worried about the environments, the game may be boring with all those industrial style playgrounds.

Expecially after Xcom2+Wotc huge amount of different maps.

 

[Trash Player]

I am still worried about the environments, the game may be boring with all those industrial style playgrounds.

Expecially after Xcom2+Wotc huge amount of different maps.

Good point. So many copycats failed to grasp this, map design is one critical part that make sense the whole system, e.g. cover, move-and-shoot dynamics, etc.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[thesheeep]

I am still worried about the environments, the game may be boring with all those industrial style playgrounds.

Expecially after Xcom2+Wotc huge amount of different maps.

Good point. So many copycats failed to grasp this, map design is one critical part that make sense the whole system, e.g. cover, move-and-shoot dynamics, etc.

Well, the point was more about the lack of variety, I think.
You can have a "biome" like industrial that fulfills all the mechanical requirements, but if all levels are industrial, it will become stale at some point.

What would be great (and also one thing important to note from the original X-COM games), would be if different styles of levels really were mechanically different to an extent instead of just being repaints.
There were industrial style levels with loads of covers, but also large open spaces with barely any cover at all - makes a huge difference in how you approach things.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

https://forums.snapshotgames.com/t/so-what-exactly-is-going-on/3721/2?u=kings_rook

UnstableVoltageModerator
11h
We have another backer update coming to the website very soon. Just a few small teasers in this one, as it’s all hands on deck at the moment. With the addition of a new head of marketing, we’ve wanted to take stock of all the things we haven’t shown yet. It’s important to both hold some things back so as not to reveal everything in the game before it’s been released, but also so we have some exclusive reveals we can give to press outlets for extra publicity before launch.

We will be producing more of these updates (and extra video content) hopefully every couple of weeks between now and release.

The person originally responsible for maintaining the roadmap Trello board is no longer with Snapshot. Our new head of marketing will be taking over this responsibility - but he’s only a few weeks into the job and has a mountain of other stuff he’s working on too - but it’s definitely on his to-do list.

We’re still very responsive to answering questions both here, on our Discord server, Facebook, Twitter and email - though as we get a lot of toxicity from people over the Epic deal, we’ve tried to give some people time to cool down a little before resuming frequent posting.

 

[Shog-goth]

UnstableVoltageModerator
11h
We have another backer update coming to the website very soon. Just a few small teasers in this one, as it’s all hands on deck at the moment. With the addition of a new head of marketing, we’ve wanted to take stock of all the things we haven’t shown yet. It’s important to both hold some things back so as not to reveal everything in the game before it’s been released, but also so we have some exclusive reveals we can give to press outlets for extra publicity before launch.

We will be producing more of these updates (and extra video content) hopefully every couple of weeks between now and release.

The person originally responsible for maintaining the roadmap Trello board is no longer with Snapshot. Our new head of marketing will be taking over this responsibility - but he’s only a few weeks into the job and has a mountain of other stuff he’s working on too - but it’s definitely on his to-do list.

We’re still very responsive to answering questions both here, on our Discord server, Facebook, Twitter and email - though as we get a lot of toxicity from people over the Epic deal, we’ve tried to give some people time to cool down a little before resuming frequent posting.

Smoke and mirrors. Sure as hell we'll have a surprise at launch: a very bad one, like a half-baked childish looking game with just a fraction of the features promised during crowdfunding.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

https://phoenixpoint.info/blog/2019/6/28/e3-and-beyond

E3 and Beyond

...
Beyond
With release getting closer, our development team is busy putting together all of the game elements, systems, models, and other assets that they’ve been working on passionately for almost 3 years. The time has come to finally put all of those pieces together, and we can’t wait for you to see what’s coming up.

We’re in the process of assembly, testing, balancing, polishing and refining, while artists continue to work on new cosmetic variations for soldier customization.

We will be showing plenty more between now and release, but for the moment we will leave you with a few small teasers.

Destruction
We’re in the process of applying the new destruction physics for the terrain, which gives more mass to each object and more realistic structural dependence. This means you can bring down entire sections of a building if the damage occurs in the correct place.

You can watch a short work-in-progress demonstration below.


Lots of Variety
Cosmetic variations for soldiers are being worked on by our artists, providing a vast array of features for your squad. This goes hand in hand with the modular armor system allowing for many different custom combinations.

Modular Armor System

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Modular Armor System

Factions
Work on the Synedrion and Disciples of Anu classes are close to complete - we’ll be showing more of those in the weeks to come.

For now, here’s a quick look at the Synedrion Infiltrator.

Synedrion Infiltrator

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Synedrion Infiltrator

In addition to this, we are putting in the Synedrion environments, along with other Haven variations, finalizing tech trees, and all of the different weapons and equipment, fleshing out the strategic layer, and making improvements to the UI.

We’ve come a long way, but we’ve still got a lot to do prior to release. The passionate team here is doing its best to make Phoenix Point a fantastic, memorable game that we know you’re going to love.

Thanks, as always, for your support.

 

[ArchAngel]

Music in that video is either from UFO or they made a track very similar to it. I hope we get that in full game as well

In that modular armor GIF I see a version with no shoulder pads! :D

 

[Mazisky]

Music in that video is either from UFO or they made a track very similar to it. I hope we get that in full game as well

In that modular armor GIF I see a version with no shoulder pads! :D

Yes, it is very similar to the one you get in Ufo Defense during tactical missions. The bass beat is the same.

But it is not a surprise since the composer is the same too!

 

[ArchAngel]

Since E3 all news has been good news.
I am even a bit optimitic that we might get something fun at release.
Too bad I will have to fuck around with pirating the game I bought.

 

[DeepOcean]

Since E3 all news has been good news.
I am even a bit optimitic that we might get something fun at release.
Too bad I will have to fuck around with pirating the game I bought.

Unfortunately, on this case, piracy is very right.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Release dates:

Sept 3rd 2019on Epic and the XBox Gamepass, Sept 3rd 2020 on Steam/GoG