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

[Eyestabber]

Budget nu-xcom clone with bundled chink spyware. Am I wrong?

 

[ArchAngel]

Budget nu-xcom clone with bundled chink spyware. Am I wrong?

You are wrong. It is a mix between Xcom and nuXcom. But it is budget and unfinished. Also you can get it on Game Pass so you can only get MS spyware.

 

[ArchAngel]

Finally some real balance changes:
https://www.reddit.com/r/PhoenixPoint/comments/epj50d/patch_notes_16012020_dunwich_v1054973_egs/

Spoiler

Patch Notes 16/01/2020 "Dunwich" (v1.0.54973 EGS)

Today, our latest patch, “Dunwich,” (revision 1.0.54973 EGS) releases on the Epic Games Store. This addresses the following issues.

Ability Changes

• Rage Burst - Reduced to 5 bursts maximum with 50% accuracy penalty - We want to reduce the effectiveness of the ability while retaining its usefulness against big targets
  
  
• Mind Control - Cost increased by 1 AP - Mind Control without any AP cost requirement was making the ability too versatile and, in some cases, too powerful when used by Pandorans.
  
  
• Mind Crush - Cost increased by 1 AP - The ability was too strong against groups of enemies, allowing for chain use (as long as enemies die in the process). We are keeping its power effect, but limiting the number of its uses per turn.
  
  
• Master Marksman - Accuracy bonus is reduced from 50% to 30%. The ability is too versatile (useful with highly inaccurate weapons) so it needed a bit of tweaking downwards.
  
  
• Quick Aim - No longer gives bonus accuracy. The ability is mainly used for its cost reduction component and the added accuracy bonus made it too good.
  
  
• Dash - Now costs 1 AP but the range of the ability is increased from 50% to 75% of movement range. Dash is one of the most abused abilities in the game because of its versatility. We do not want to reduce the fun factor of the ability or reduce its power but we want to limit the situations in which it is used. Before the change with 4 dashes a character’s movement range was 100% + 4 x 50% = 300%; after the change 0% + 4 x 75% = 300%. Mobility wise the ability is the same but provides less versatility when it comes to shooting and can effectively be used about 2 times per turn.
  
  
• Induce Panic - Cost increased from 2 WP to 3 WP and 1 AP. The ability cost was way too low for its effect and the fact that it had no AP requirement made it spammable.
  
  
• Bloodlust - Bonus speed and damage is capped at 50% bonus. The previous bonus of 100% was too strong and was leading to undesired exploits.
  

Weapons

• Grenade Launcher - Accuracy increased. This change will reduce the frustration of players not hitting anything they want to.
  
  
• PRCR Sniper - Damage reduced from 130 to 120. Statistics show that piercing weapons are overused because their power level was not on par with other weapons of the same tech level.
  
  
• PRCR Assault Rifle - Damage increased from 30 to 40, burst reduced from 5 to 4, pierce value reduced from 20 to 10 and ammo capacity reduced from 40 to 32. Statistics show that piercing weapons are overused compared to other equivalent tech.
  

Pandorans

• Mortar Chiron - Reduced explosive power from 60 to 50. Damage was reduced because on some maps players weren’t able to find cover fast enough.
  
  
• Spawnery - Hit points are nearly doubled. It was too easily destroyed on Lair missions
  

Misc

• Mutog Recruitment - Cost of recruitment has been increased significantly. The previous cost was unintentionally low.
  
  
• Human Enemies - Generally have more stat points, because they were too easily mind controlled or killed with one shot.
  
  
• Medical Bay - Heals not only soldiers but Mutogs too for 4 hit points per hour. Before mutation lab construction there was no chance for the player to heal Mutogs.
  
  
• Environmental Destruction - Floors and roofs can be partially destroyed by grenades now.
  

Major Fixes

• Fixed a hang when a Mindfragger tries to mind control a decoy.
  
  
• Fixed a hang when using the flamethrower near the edge of Alien Lair maps.
  
  
• Fixed a hang when a Scylla used the Sonic Blast ability right after using the Mist Launcher.
  
  
• Fixed a hang when breaking an Arthron's gun arm while the enemy was stepping out of cover.
  
  
• Fixed an issue where the player's units could be deployed between impassable cover on some Disciples of Anu maps.
  
  
• Fixed an issue where units would fall through stairs and die.
  
  
• Fixed an issue where the player's soldiers could deploy in the walls of a Phoenix Base mission.
  
  
• Fixed an issue where vehicles couldn't reach the evacuation zone on some maps.
  
  
• Fixed an issue where the environment was blocking the passage to the Spawnery in Alien Lairs.
  

Other Fixes

• Fixed an issue where vehicles had no collision with some unbreakable pillars.
  
  
• Fixed an issue where enemy vehicles could be deployed on the roofs of buildings.
  
  
• Fixed an issue where enemy Pandorans could not move from their initial deployment in Alien Lairs.
  

“Dunwich” will deploy a few days later on the UWP (Windows Store / Windows Game Pass) due to certification requirements.

Snapshot Games is committed to making Phoenix Point a fun and enjoyable experience for everyone, so please keep giving us your feedback. We will be rolling out a new feedback platform soon, more to come on that in another update. For now, please do continue to report bugs in-game via the F12 tool, or on our forums.

If an issue you have reported hasn’t been addressed in this patch, don’t worry. Fixes and balance changes take time and have to be performed incrementally to avoid causing additional issues with balance and stability further down the line.

 

[Shog-goth]

Fixes and balance changes take time and have to be performed incrementally to avoid causing additional issues with balance and stability further down the line.

Strange, I thought this was done during the beta...but...sorry, I forgot 1.0 is just BB6 aka still pre-alpha. I'm embarassed for them.

Snapshot Games is committed to making Phoenix Point a fun and enjoyable experience for everyone

LOL

 

[orcinator]

Statistics show that piercing weapons are overused because their power level was not on par with other weapons of the same tech level.

Whoa nigga, you didn't think you were gonna get upgrades in this game, were you?

 

[ArchAngel]

Statistics show that piercing weapons are overused because their power level was not on par with other weapons of the same tech level.

Whoa nigga, you didn't think you were gonna get upgrades in this game, were you?

The weapon is still an upgrade now but not as much as before. Vs armor it still does a bit more damage than earlier NJ rifle.

 

[orcinator]

Statistics show that piercing weapons are overused because their power level was not on par with other weapons of the same tech level.

Whoa nigga, you didn't think you were gonna get upgrades in this game, were you?

The weapon is still an upgrade now but not as much as before. Vs armor it still does a bit more damage than earlier NJ rifle.

The sniper is still kinda better (don't know why the assault rifle was nerfed, I never used it due to the low damage and certainly won't use it now that it does as much damage as a single sniper round) but I take issue with them saying it's somehow bad that people picked the upgraded weapon over the other stuff (which, looking at the same tier consists of the special anti-panda rifle you get from a quest chain that has more total damage but unclear mechanics or the neural stun rifle).

 

[Child of Malkav]

Everyone bitched that this or that is too OP pls nerf, gaem 2 ez etc. I knew that they're gonna nerf the player abilities but not touch the Pandorans HP and armor values. Armor shouldn't go past 15 and only Scylla may have have 40+ armor as she should be a boss fight.

 

[ArchAngel]

Everyone bitched that this or that is too OP pls nerf, gaem 2 ez etc. I knew that they're gonna nerf the player abilities but not touch the Pandorans HP and armor values. Armor shouldn't go past 15 and only Scylla may have have 40+ armor as she should be a boss fight.

Ah another whiner. L2P fool

 

[ArchAngel]

What is so confusing?! It was too easy and it is still too easy. There are still at least 4 broken combos that make the game too easy.

 

[Child of Malkav]

I don't have a problem with nerfing things (though it shouldn't get there if they had a clear vision) but instead with leaving the enemies untouched. If you nerf abilities/skills/whatever on player side you do the same on enemy side. Pandorans getting more HP and absolutely retarded levels of armor values very early with no clear or slower progression is, in my opinion, what pushed people to cheese through the game. If an enemy has 30 armor, bam, all of a sudden your AR is nothing short of useless, it will do literally 0 damage. The best tactic is to just rush NJ rep so you can get access to piercing weapons. Which is a shame. Maybe I liked Synedrion tech better. Maybe I wanted to use a Deimos AR. Oh what's that? 30 armor? Oh, I do 0 damage? Nope, not with my SR 13 Raven I don't, or with a shotgun. About shotguns, it's hilarious, everyone cried because certain skills OP (even though XCOM 2 had pretty much the exact same type of skills with same functionality, for example Rage Burst which was just Reaper's Annihilation skill, but with arbitrary limitations) but no one figured out that shotguns are the highest damage dealing weapon in the game. The cheese was made around them. The cannon in the beginning does 170-180, whereas the mercy does 200 or more and from there it goes up with the Iconoclast and Harrower all the way to 400 damage. Nothing does that much damage. Add to that Reckless and/or CQS and get lucky to have them on an Infiltrator, which btw, is very rare. But hey, let's nerf abilities, that will solve problems. Dash is now 1 AP. Fantastic design. Wasn't dash supposed to be a free move in case you misclicked? Welp, not anymore because players were creative enough to use it to formulate tactics (*gasps and murmurs are heard in the room*) around it. Ok, and even if they nerf certain guns, people will still develop cheese tactics with other weapons. All because of the fucking armor. If they kept the values down to a reasonable amount, maybe 10 or 20, all of sudden you can use most weapons, they become viable options. You might say: why don't you use berserker skills or grenades or whatever else that removes armor? I might say: why? If there are weapons that do that job better. Or maybe I don't like the berserker class. Or grenades. Whatever. But if they start nerfing weapons on the other hand they have to lower the HP/armor on enemies so we go back to what I said. Or not and they keep nerfing both weapons and skills and we'll end up doing 1 damage and the enemies become the most bullet spongy NPCs ever to pollute our desktop screens.
Anyway, fixing this stuff requires that on the developer's side, you know, them actually knowing what they're doing, hence the vision I mentioned earlier or apparently, lack thereof.

 

[ArchAngel]

So you really want to use your Assault Rifles and cannot because of armor and now you are ranting like a mad man. Got it. Still all I can add is L2P.
Play the game to win or go play Candy Crush if you just want "to play".

 

[underground nymph]

Just saw some gameplay recently and I must say it looks decent. I feared they gave up that darky atmosphere which I liked a lot during the kickstarter, but no, it’s all there. Hopefully in a year we’ll get some really nice game. This Epic affair doesn’t look that bad after all given they will continue the development until the Steam release.

 

[not an artichoke]

Malk - Paragraphs, man. Please.

I was enjoying this game until I tried to attack my first lair. Game bugged out and the only way to recover was to alt+tab out and force close it. Same every time I attack it. I guess I could go back and just ignore that lair but it's killing my will to play. C'est la vie. Hopefully they'll fix it.

 

[ArchAngel]

Malk - Paragraphs, man. Please.

I was enjoying this game until I tried to attack my first lair. Game bugged out and the only way to recover was to alt+tab out and force close it. Same every time I attack it. I guess I could go back and just ignore that lair but it's killing my will to play. C'est la vie. Hopefully they'll fix it.

Game currently has a nasty bug where it can hang during alien actions if certain things happen. Some reported killing aliens with overwatch or return fire caused it, I had it happen yesterday when they killed their own unit with AoE during their turn and then their turn never ended and I had to alt+f4 and restart the mission.

 

[not an artichoke]

It's not the alien turn bug. As soon as I load into the battle and start to pan around, the screen freezes. I can move the cursor and click UI items and move soldiers - which respond with sound, but I can't see anything happening.

 

[ArchAngel]

Try to repair your installation, sounds like it cannot load some assets properly.
I didn't have anything similar yet in 200+ hours of playing the game.

 

[Raghar]

Wasn't dash supposed to be a free move in case you misclicked? Welp, not anymore because players were creative enough to use it to formulate tactics (*gasps and murmurs are heard in the room*) around it.

Dash was for hidding when you found 12 enemies when you spend all 4 action points. Now soldiers is boned.

 

[luj1]

Literally who da FOOK cares about balance. This game went through drastic (negative) changes in art direction, gameplay, UI, it's not the same game anymore.

 

[ArchAngel]

Seems with DLC1 devs are also planning a big patch that will rebalance many things and fix many problems with the current game. Now we just need to find out when that is out.

EDIT:
Example:

Rossen Cholakov

With the free update to DLC 1, we are tripling the time window to react to impending base attacks. With DLC 2, the procurement of special defenders for Phoenix-controlled sites will be introduced in the game.

it is all here: https://phoenixpoint.canny.io/feedback

 

[Matalarata]

Minchia, che culo!

 

[Jimmious]

I'm telling ya when this comes to Steam we'll get a great game

 

[ArchAngel]

I'm telling ya when this comes to Steam we'll get a great game

Lets hope so.

 

[Wyatt_Derp]

I'm telling ya when this comes to Steam we'll get a great game

And by the time it gets to GOG it will be perfect! Man, 2035 can't come soon enough.

 

[Infinitron]

A Phoenix Point Tutorial, aimed for beginners to the game or genre. In this video - controlling the camera.