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

[ArchAngel]

Can we expect more major patches or overhauls after this, ArchAngel?

Nope, only the Phoenix Rising mod team is going to doing that from now on and it is already better (in its very unfinished state) than what devs did with their game

Will there be tiddies?

That would require being able to mod in different models. So far that is not possible. Game has 0 mod support, everything is currently done by injecting stuff into the game.

 

[ArchAngel]

Can we expect more major patches or overhauls after this, ArchAngel?

Nope, only the Phoenix Rising mod team is going to doing that from now on and it is already better (in its very unfinished state) than what devs did with their game

Unfortunate. I have a lot of fun with PP on tactical layer, it's probably the best out of the XCOM clone we have on the tactical combat.

The strategic layer is severely lacking with DLCs being half baked idea, somewhat on a mod level that could be much better if better developed and integrated.

Hopefully the modding team is capable of making a mediocre game great.

What mod team is able to do is mostly based on what kind of ORK magic they are able to do with this 0 mod support game.

 

[PanteraNera]

Yada yada yada ... mod stuff ... to more pressing matters, tell us about the drama ArchAngel

 

[Comte]

Yada yada yada ... mod stuff ... to more pressing matters, tell us about the drama ArchAngel

Its the only reason I keep checking this thread. So spill the beans ArchAngel

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Hype is the first step towards disappointment.

 

[lightbane]

Soo, is the game complete yet?

 

[udm]

I think the community will have a better chance at modding Xenonauts 2. As I remember, Xenonauts 1 had some pretty neat mods that added lots of new content.

 

[Comte]

ArchAngel what the fuck dude dlc is out finish the story

 

[ArchAngel]

ArchAngel what the fuck dude dlc is out finish the story

I will write up something tonight once I am home.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Independent weapons and armor can be now manufactured from the start.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

Very curious about your thoughts on this, ArchAngel

 

[ArchAngel]

Ok lets do this. I will not give out any names, not even their discord names.
As most of you know PP was released in mostly unfinished and very buggy state. They spend first 6 months mostly fixing bugs and finishing unfinished stuff. Then they asked people to join the Community Council, they wanted a balance of experienced players and less so but mostly got experienced ones.
They promised we would be important in giving feedback for upcoming changes and to tell them our opinion about their planned designs. Then they proceeded to not give us anything for a while. All we got was chance to talk with one of their designers that made us feel like they were very serious about making big and good changes (few months later he was told to not engage with us because "he does not have enough time"). They would ask us to give feedback on broken combinations of skills and how certain parts of the game worked well or did not work well and some of us (not me) really put a lot of effort into this. They proceeded to ignore our feedback and them come up with something of their own which was fairly different than what we would propose. Then they would drop it on us few weeks before release, wait for our feedback while telling us it is important and valued only then to again ignore it and usually not do much about any problems we found.
Most of the time it felt like if car producer asked you to give him feedback on their barely working car, you would list problems with engine, tires, doors and bumpers, you then would not hear from them for 2 months and they come back with a same car but they changed mirrors and changed paint on the doors and ask you for new feedback. You tell them they did nothing about all things you told them about and that this new mirror is cracked. They tell you , well now it is few weeks before release so we are not sure we can change much and then go away again and release the car same as when they showed it to you but now that cracked mirror also has a new paint job.
And then repeat this for each DLC they released over the years.. some CC members got really fed up and started being really nasty to them inside CC chat and then quit and continued doing that in general chats including sharing info about upcoming stuff before it was released. Most just stopped existing in CC except formally. At this point maybe 6-7 of us actually did any testing and feedback, but I think at this point at least 5 knew it is pointless.
Oh yea somewhere in the middle of it all they read that we are complaining what is the point of CC if they basically ignore us completely and had a live chat with everyone to talk about future plans, how they value our feedback and how we are going to have these chats regularly. As you can guess that was first and only chat :D
All this continued until release of this last DLC and nothing changed, we again got a near release version, we knew what we would be getting as much as people outside CC. We told them about all the problems and they ignored 90% of feedback and did some paint job and released it.
Funny shit, we found out this last DLC was not even made by them, they outsources it to some Russian team. That probably explains how this DLC broke stuff in base game that was not even remotely connected with DLC content. BTW we reported that while testing, they didn't care.
Probably not fair to shit on the outsourced team since game had wrong class description since release and descriptions for some Mutations as well. They became a joke inside CC, as when we expected they would not change stuff based on our feedback we would compare it to importance of text of those classes.
Probably best thing about their DLC and content was nice looking maps which reached its height with DLC2. After that the guy responsible for that quit LOL. Or was fired, I don't really know. At those times he was only one of the devs that came around and talked with us outside of us doing prison rebellions for some attention. They would come, tell us a nice story how they value our feedback and then disappear to give us a version that could no longer be changed much and cycle would continue.
The most hilarious thing they said was that they read what we write in the Discord group. But over a year later some of the members took our most common discussion about problems and options on how to fix it into a wiki and formatted it nicely and gave them the link. Suddenly they said how they like it and how they didn't know about these problems...................
That made them at least fix some of the balance problems and made them promise they would do more and then for 6 months they did little or nothing.
These are all facts, now for my opinions.
At start both we and devs we talked to were very enthusiastic about future possibility of the game and that disappeared with each DLC released. In my opinion their bosses blocked everything good, they always had excuses for not doing enough or at all that came down to bosses didn't approve it because it is too complicated or not worth the effort. So game kept same problems all the time while they added new DLC that would add more broken, unfinished and bloated content.
My feeling was that same apathetic feeling most in CC felt and expressed also came into these devs. And it was felt in the game, little of the systems of the base game or DLC felt like it was a labor of love. And I mostly blame their management for it. Now is that Julian or someone else I don't know, I don't remember that we ever talked to Julian. I just don't trust this company to produce any masterpiece game ever, nothing they did with this game or DCL felt exceptional. It was all functional, whole game lacked little details that turn the game from functional to good or excellent. These little things that maybe are not worth time invested is what separates games from others in their genre. Some of the still images on loading screens and story boards are really nice and some maps are really good but the rest it between badly designed and functional. I have never before played a game that had potential to be something special but was completely mismanaged and whoever was making design decisions was on drugs or something.
Anyways that is it from me, I told you there is not much spicy drama here.

EDIT: Oh yea, they talked for months how this last DLC5 with be coming with some more bugfixes because game has a big list of bugs that never get fixed and then patch notes were the size of daily patch notes for Pathfinder games :D

 

[Grunker]

Soo, is the game complete yet?

If by complete you mean they made the best tactical squad fundamental mechanics ever and then jam packed it with one shitty, tedious system after the other in unrelated DLC that don't tie into each other or are fun to play then yes, it's complete

 

[lightbane]

Summary: Working for chinks is horrible

Fairly standard and stuff to be expected seeing how the game started and how it ended up being.
Were there any Discord dramas, rampant abuse of powers by the Discord modders, arbitrary bans and so on at least?

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

Thanks for sharing m8. Tbh expected as much, with the previous shennanigans they did. Shame, such wasted potential.

 

[ArchAngel]

Summary: Working for chinks is horrible

Fairly standard and stuff to be expected seeing how the game started and how it ended up being.
Were there any Discord dramas, rampant abuse of powers by the Discord modders, arbitrary bans and so on at least?

Except for one of the CC members that went full rage mode not much. They also said someone was leaking info about the future stuff they told us but we never found out who.

 

[Latelistener]

I'm surprised you had to go through all of that just to realize that something is wrong in there. My man, something was wrong when they took money from Epic. Normally I wouldn't say much on the matter, but the circumstances were different. They basically proceed with shit like "oh you can refund if you don't like something" to the original backers. This is not how business works. I'm not even saying about the design changes to cater the wider audience.

And then we learned that the sum they took from Epic wasn't exactly worth a year of prison. My guess is that the higher ups just took it because they could and they wanted money here and now. There wasn't any deep strategy or planning. They've made that amount in a very short time on Steam AFTER a year of prison on Epic when the hype already died. The game could've been much more successful if not for these stupid decisions, I've said that over and over in this thread.

 

[ArchAngel]

I'm surprised you had to go through all of that just to realize that something is wrong in there. My man, something was wrong when they took money from Epic. Normally I wouldn't say much on the matter, but the circumstances were different. They basically proceed with shit like "oh you can refund if you don't like something" to the original backers. This is not how business works. I'm not even saying about the design changes to cater the wider audience.

And then we learned that the sum they took from Epic wasn't exactly worth a year of prison. My guess is that the higher ups just took it because they could and they wanted money here and now. There wasn't any deep strategy or planning. They've made that amount in a very short time on Steam AFTER a year of prison on Epic when the hype already died. The game could've been much more successful if not for these stupid decisions, I've said that over and over in this thread.

You forgot to mention they sold their studio to a bigger one 6+ months ago.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

I'm surprised you had to go through all of that just to realize that something is wrong in there. My man, something was wrong when they took money from Epic. Normally I wouldn't say much on the matter, but the circumstances were different. They basically proceed with shit like "oh you can refund if you don't like something" to the original backers. This is not how business works. I'm not even saying about the design changes to cater the wider audience.

And then we learned that the sum they took from Epic wasn't exactly worth a year of prison. My guess is that the higher ups just took it because they could and they wanted money here and now. There wasn't any deep strategy or planning. They've made that amount in a very short time on Steam AFTER a year of prison on Epic when the hype already died. The game could've been much more successful if not for these stupid decisions, I've said that over and over in this thread.

You forgot to mention they sold their studio to a bigger one 6+ months ago.

Sold to whom?

 

[Shog-goth]

Sold to whom?

Embracer Group (formerly THQ Nordic).

 

[ArchAngel]

New video explaining some upcoming changes in the mod:

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Soo, is the game complete yet?

If by complete you mean they made the best tactical squad fundamental mechanics ever and then jam packed it with one shitty, tedious system after the other in unrelated DLC that don't tie into each other or are fun to play then yes, it's complete

Oh, so it's like XCOM 2 then.
I have a copy, but I haven't gotten around to installing it yet. Is the strategy layer better, or did they ape XCOM 2 and introduce ADHD shit where you get interrupted every two seconds and have to do every mission or lose an entire region for...reasons.

 

[Grunker]

The fundamental mechanics of Phoenix Point are much, much better than new-XCOM's (and I say that as a new-XCOM-enjoyer), and its strategic systems - especially those from the DLCs - are worse (which should tell you something).

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Well that's disappointing to hear, it's from Gollop too.

 

[ArchAngel]

First part of Phoenix Rising mod, called Better Classes has now reached its 1.0 version. You can download it here: https://github.com/MadSkunky/PhoenixRising/releases/tag/v1.0.0.0
For it to work you need Modnix v3, you can get that here: https://github.com/Sheep-y/Modnix/releases/tag/v3.0.2021.0204

For a list of changes between vanilla and Better Classes you can read here: https://docs.google.com/presentatio...CRQW3GpZA5Up8/edit#slide=id.g104cb6fd693_0_15

I recommend this mod, it makes the game more interesting. At least the tactical parts.

Other improvements are also coming (AI, Geoscape, enemies, base game mechanics and others) but they are not close to 1.0 version.

EDIT:
It is also recommended that this mod is used along with Better Classes: https://www.nexusmods.com/phoenixpoint/mods/40?tab=files
It works well with new Heavy letting him do Return Fire when alllies in range are attacked (most aliens don't attack heavy as he has lots of armor and they give priority to targets that have less armor). Just in Modnix config tab for this mod set "reactionAngle": 360.0.