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

[Jaedar]

Should I play/finish Vanilla first or just go straight for the TFTV? Are the stories different?

Might as well go for TFTV first.

 

[gurugeorge]

ArchAngel Are you one of the TFTV devs? Is there any chance of making all keys bindable? I remember now that PP has this goofy thing where some functions seem to be hardcoded and can't be rebound.

Hardcoded keybinds give me a pain in the butt especially when they mean I can't carry over muscle memory from one game to another.

 

[ArchAngel]

ArchAngel Are you one of the TFTV devs? Is there any chance of making all keys bindable? I remember now that PP has this goofy thing where some functions seem to be hardcoded and can't be rebound.

Hardcoded keybinds give me a pain in the butt especially when they mean I can't carry over muscle memory from one game to another.

Nah, I was just doing testing for earlier versions and have access to dev chat. But when my back started killing me and I had to switch from PC to console I stopped being part of the project.
But I can try to forward this to the devs. Do you know which keys were not rebindable?

 

[gurugeorge]

ArchAngel Are you one of the TFTV devs? Is there any chance of making all keys bindable? I remember now that PP has this goofy thing where some functions seem to be hardcoded and can't be rebound.

Hardcoded keybinds give me a pain in the butt especially when they mean I can't carry over muscle memory from one game to another.

Nah, I was just doing testing for earlier versions and have access to dev chat. But when my back started killing me and I had to switch from PC to console I stopped being part of the project.
But I can try to forward this to the devs. Do you know which keys were not rebindable?

The unbindables are:-

show game menu [esc, which I suppose is ok, it's in every game]
change overwatch cone size
quick move to location
change camera location
perform action
zoom out
move floor level focus

The one I really care about is "move floor level focus" which is fixed to the mousewheel and has only the one bind, so it's not possible to assign T & G for up/down a level.

Furthermore I can't assign the assignables "zoom in/zoom out" to mousewheel fwd/back

I don't think these quibbles are all that outrageous, as I could do these keybind changes in 2012 in XCOM EU (which is why they're in muscle memory now)

 

[Cohesion]

You can rebind everything (and more) in AutoHotKey (it is free).

 

[gurugeorge]

You can rebind everything (and more) in AutoHotKey (it is free).

I know, and I might do that. PP is on the back burner atm (I installed it a wee while ago and then got distracted by Long War Rebalance ), so I'm wondering if making the game actually functional in this regard is a possibility.

 

[TC Jr]

Love the gameplay, kicks the arse out of nu-com and even Gears Tactics. I think I've been filtered though, as soon as I got multiple ships, multiple bases.. it just became a headache. My biggest issue is dealing with equipment.
Is this an issue for anyone else? I just feel after the hobo phase, it becomes a job lol. FWIW, I wasn't struggling on the gameplay, just felt beyond tedious and I've dropped it for now.
I do think it's the best of nu-com style games though, free-aim kicks arse, even though it has its issues (enemy still animating).

 

[ArchAngel]

Love the gameplay, kicks the arse out of nu-com and even Gears Tactics. I think I've been filtered though, as soon as I got multiple ships, multiple bases.. it just became a headache. My biggest issue is dealing with equipment.
Is this an issue for anyone else? I just feel after the hobo phase, it becomes a job lol. FWIW, I wasn't struggling on the gameplay, just felt beyond tedious and I've dropped it for now.
I do think it's the best of nu-com style games though, free-aim kicks arse, even though it has its issues (enemy still animating).

It has way less equipment managment that original Xcom and similar games so I do not understand the problem..

 

[Grunker]

Love the gameplay, kicks the arse out of nu-com and even Gears Tactics. I think I've been filtered though, as soon as I got multiple ships, multiple bases.. it just became a headache. My biggest issue is dealing with equipment.
Is this an issue for anyone else? I just feel after the hobo phase, it becomes a job lol. FWIW, I wasn't struggling on the gameplay, just felt beyond tedious and I've dropped it for now.
I do think it's the best of nu-com style games though, free-aim kicks arse, even though it has its issues (enemy still animating).

Yep, the game is ruined by annoying micromanagement. It gets even worse in the dlcs. The problem isn’t so much the micromanagement in itself, just that it’s more tedious than fun. It’s a shame, because the combat is fantastic

 

[ArchAngel]

Love the gameplay, kicks the arse out of nu-com and even Gears Tactics. I think I've been filtered though, as soon as I got multiple ships, multiple bases.. it just became a headache. My biggest issue is dealing with equipment.
Is this an issue for anyone else? I just feel after the hobo phase, it becomes a job lol. FWIW, I wasn't struggling on the gameplay, just felt beyond tedious and I've dropped it for now.
I do think it's the best of nu-com style games though, free-aim kicks arse, even though it has its issues (enemy still animating).

Yep, the game is ruined by annoying micromanagement. It gets even worse in the dlcs. The problem isn’t so much the micromanagement in itself, just that it’s more tedious than fun. It’s a shame, because the combat is fantastic

If that is too much management you should stick to auto battlers and similar games.

 

[TC Jr]

Love the gameplay, kicks the arse out of nu-com and even Gears Tactics. I think I've been filtered though, as soon as I got multiple ships, multiple bases.. it just became a headache. My biggest issue is dealing with equipment.
Is this an issue for anyone else? I just feel after the hobo phase, it becomes a job lol. FWIW, I wasn't struggling on the gameplay, just felt beyond tedious and I've dropped it for now.
I do think it's the best of nu-com style games though, free-aim kicks arse, even though it has its issues (enemy still animating).

It has way less equipment managment that original Xcom and similar games so I do not understand the problem..

Problem's on my end, I never properly played the original XCom so that side of things is "my fault".

Love the gameplay, kicks the arse out of nu-com and even Gears Tactics. I think I've been filtered though, as soon as I got multiple ships, multiple bases.. it just became a headache. My biggest issue is dealing with equipment.
Is this an issue for anyone else? I just feel after the hobo phase, it becomes a job lol. FWIW, I wasn't struggling on the gameplay, just felt beyond tedious and I've dropped it for now.
I do think it's the best of nu-com style games though, free-aim kicks arse, even though it has its issues (enemy still animating).

Yep, the game is ruined by annoying micromanagement. It gets even worse in the dlcs. The problem isn’t so much the micromanagement in itself, just that it’s more tedious than fun. It’s a shame, because the combat is fantastic

Lol yeah, sums it up. The tedium just stacks up where it almost feels like a punishment even though that's a major gameplay component. As I said to ArchAngel, this seems like a me issue though, I'm so used to nu-com's barebones "strategy".

I'll start a new game and try appreciate it for what it is, as opposed to what I thought it would be.

EDIT: I played with all DLC's enabled, so that probably didn't help. I'll disable them for my next run.

 

[Parabalus]

Love the gameplay, kicks the arse out of nu-com and even Gears Tactics. I think I've been filtered though, as soon as I got multiple ships, multiple bases.. it just became a headache. My biggest issue is dealing with equipment.
Is this an issue for anyone else? I just feel after the hobo phase, it becomes a job lol. FWIW, I wasn't struggling on the gameplay, just felt beyond tedious and I've dropped it for now.
I do think it's the best of nu-com style games though, free-aim kicks arse, even though it has its issues (enemy still animating).

Yep, the game is ruined by annoying micromanagement. It gets even worse in the dlcs. The problem isn’t so much the micromanagement in itself, just that it’s more tedious than fun. It’s a shame, because the combat is fantastic

If that is too much management you should stick to auto battlers and similar games.

Teleporting equipment is the problem, should be removed.

 

[Jaedar]

Teleporting equipment is the problem, should be removed.

Yeah, this is where all the excess equipment management comes from. Remove it, make all equipment cost 50% less to manufacture, ship.

 

[Shaki]

Teleporting equipment is the problem, should be removed.

Yeah, this is where all the excess equipment management comes from. Remove it, make all equipment cost 50% less to manufacture, ship.

No one is forcing you to do this tho? I mean, I just never did this shit when playing the game, as it seemed stupid and annoying af. Constantly switching gear between people, is a very obvious example of players themselves choosing to optimize the fun out of the game. Jus't don't be autistic and it's a non-issue.

 

[Zombra]

Guys, you don't understand. If you don't spend a huge percentage of your time in tedious warehouse simulation, you never get that thrilling moment of gameplay tension when you forget to pack enough ammo for one of your guys and then combat starts and you have to figure out what to do about it.*

*actual Codex argument for really, truly dull game design

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Guys, you don't understand. If you don't spend a huge percentage of your time in tedious warehouse simulation, you never get that thrilling moment of gameplay tension when you forget to pack enough ammo for one of your guys and then combat starts and you have to figure out what to do about it.*

*actual Codex argument for really, truly dull game design

Problem with Phoenix Point on such scenario is that you can't use most common firearms of most common enemies against them.

 

[ArchAngel]

Teleporting equipment is the problem, should be removed.

Yeah, this is where all the excess equipment management comes from. Remove it, make all equipment cost 50% less to manufacture, ship.

You guys are mad, that would make equipment management 2x worse, not better. I would love it as it would be even more complex and more similar to original Xcom but that opposite of what people want lol

 

[ArchAngel]

Guys, you don't understand. If you don't spend a huge percentage of your time in tedious warehouse simulation, you never get that thrilling moment of gameplay tension when you forget to pack enough ammo for one of your guys and then combat starts and you have to figure out what to do about it.*

*actual Codex argument for really, truly dull game design

Running out of special ammo mid mission does make for thrilling gameplay, there is no way you can hide that. It is only not cool for people that just want an I win button in their games.

 

[Jaedar]

Teleporting equipment is the problem, should be removed.

Yeah, this is where all the excess equipment management comes from. Remove it, make all equipment cost 50% less to manufacture, ship.

No one is forcing you to do this tho? I mean, I just never did this shit when playing the game, as it seemed stupid and annoying af. Constantly switching gear between people, is a very obvious example of players themselves choosing to optimize the fun out of the game. Jus't don't be autistic and it's a non-issue.

Except some of the weapons are very expensive to make, and also really strong, and the game can be pretty difficult and require multiple squads, so you are HEAVILY incentivized to do it. "lul just accept 30% reduced combat efficiency to skip 30 seconds of tedium" is not a good argument.
If you played on easy, or are just godlike enough that nightmare is too easy, then good for you, but it sure as hell bothers me when I'm feeling the pressure of the difficulty and there's an obvious and very strong but tedious solution.

 

[ArchAngel]

Teleporting equipment is the problem, should be removed.

Yeah, this is where all the excess equipment management comes from. Remove it, make all equipment cost 50% less to manufacture, ship.

No one is forcing you to do this tho? I mean, I just never did this shit when playing the game, as it seemed stupid and annoying af. Constantly switching gear between people, is a very obvious example of players themselves choosing to optimize the fun out of the game. Jus't don't be autistic and it's a non-issue.

Except some of the weapons are very expensive to make, and also really strong, and the game can be pretty difficult and require multiple squads, so you are HEAVILY incentivized to do it. "lul just accept 30% reduced combat efficiency to skip 30 seconds of tedium" is not a good argument.
If you played on easy, or are just godlike enough that nightmare is too easy, then good for you, but it sure as hell bothers me when I'm feeling the pressure of the difficulty and there's an obvious and very strong but tedious solution.

Still sounds like a you problem. I never needed to that and I played on hardest ironman. Sure I could have maybe avoided a few deaths here and there but where is fun in that. At least here you got an option to do that or not.
If you forbade it you would have to implement localized inventory systems and all the management around that.

 

[Parabalus]

Teleporting equipment is the problem, should be removed.

Yeah, this is where all the excess equipment management comes from. Remove it, make all equipment cost 50% less to manufacture, ship.

No one is forcing you to do this tho? I mean, I just never did this shit when playing the game, as it seemed stupid and annoying af. Constantly switching gear between people, is a very obvious example of players themselves choosing to optimize the fun out of the game. Jus't don't be autistic and it's a non-issue.

Except some of the weapons are very expensive to make, and also really strong, and the game can be pretty difficult and require multiple squads, so you are HEAVILY incentivized to do it. "lul just accept 30% reduced combat efficiency to skip 30 seconds of tedium" is not a good argument.
If you played on easy, or are just godlike enough that nightmare is too easy, then good for you, but it sure as hell bothers me when I'm feeling the pressure of the difficulty and there's an obvious and very strong but tedious solution.

Still sounds like a you problem. I never needed to that and I played on hardest ironman. Sure I could have maybe avoided a few deaths here and there but where is fun in that. At least here you got an option to do that or not.
If you forbade it you would have to implement localized inventory systems and all the management around that.

Teleporting equipment is the worst micromanagement in the game, if you don't use it there is not much to complain about.

Making transfers possible only between soldiers at the same location is the easy solution.

 

[ArchAngel]

Teleporting equipment is the problem, should be removed.

Yeah, this is where all the excess equipment management comes from. Remove it, make all equipment cost 50% less to manufacture, ship.

No one is forcing you to do this tho? I mean, I just never did this shit when playing the game, as it seemed stupid and annoying af. Constantly switching gear between people, is a very obvious example of players themselves choosing to optimize the fun out of the game. Jus't don't be autistic and it's a non-issue.

Except some of the weapons are very expensive to make, and also really strong, and the game can be pretty difficult and require multiple squads, so you are HEAVILY incentivized to do it. "lul just accept 30% reduced combat efficiency to skip 30 seconds of tedium" is not a good argument.
If you played on easy, or are just godlike enough that nightmare is too easy, then good for you, but it sure as hell bothers me when I'm feeling the pressure of the difficulty and there's an obvious and very strong but tedious solution.

Still sounds like a you problem. I never needed to that and I played on hardest ironman. Sure I could have maybe avoided a few deaths here and there but where is fun in that. At least here you got an option to do that or not.
If you forbade it you would have to implement localized inventory systems and all the management around that.

Teleporting equipment is the worst micromanagement in the game, if you don't use it there is not much to complain about.

Making transfers possible only between soldiers at the same location is the easy solution.

I use it to produce new shit at some base (or I get new stuff from a mission) and give it to anyone else anywhere. I do not strip items from one team and give to another. Also that is punished heavily by ambush missions, especially if you play TftV megamod.

Having it be limited to one location is not easy solution, that is terrible solution. You need localized inventories (bases and all ships) and way to transfer stuff between those inventories. Also price of many things would need to be halved or more because now you need to have a lot more since transporting them is no longer possible which again changes balance a lot early game when you do not have many bases or ships. There is no simple solution.

Real simple solution is that you guys do not do that as it is not needed. Just make armor and weapons for everyone that you plan to use.

 

[Shaki]

Teleporting equipment is the problem, should be removed.

Yeah, this is where all the excess equipment management comes from. Remove it, make all equipment cost 50% less to manufacture, ship.

No one is forcing you to do this tho? I mean, I just never did this shit when playing the game, as it seemed stupid and annoying af. Constantly switching gear between people, is a very obvious example of players themselves choosing to optimize the fun out of the game. Jus't don't be autistic and it's a non-issue.

Except some of the weapons are very expensive to make, and also really strong, and the game can be pretty difficult and require multiple squads, so you are HEAVILY incentivized to do it. "lul just accept 30% reduced combat efficiency to skip 30 seconds of tedium" is not a good argument.
If you played on easy, or are just godlike enough that nightmare is too easy, then good for you, but it sure as hell bothers me when I'm feeling the pressure of the difficulty and there's an obvious and very strong but tedious solution.

If the game is too hard for you without abusing teleporting equipment, then just switch the difficulty to lower, rotfl. Same outcome without the all the tedious clicking before each mission. You can improve your combat efficiency by like 500% with one click if you care about it so much.

Game's difficulty and economy is obviously tuned with the assumption that you will have to craft separate gear for every character - the ability to freely change items regardless of where your characters are exist simply to not make people butthurt about having to fly their characters back to base every time they craft a new weapon, to pick it up. Devs simply didn't predict that some people will be autistic enough to just craft few sets of gear then manually switch them between all their teams every mission, since it's a ridiculously retarded way to ruin the game for yourself.

You can abuse the system to decrease your need for gear/resources 2-3x, and completely invalidate the game's economy, to be able to technically play at higher difficulty while having an experience closer to lower, at the cost of hours spend on mindless clicking, but if you choose to do that, you have no one to blame but yourself. Bitching that devs should forbid you from doing it because you can't stop yourself, is like saying that government should ban fastfood because you can't stop being a fatass.

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

Guys, you don't understand. If you don't spend a huge percentage of your time in tedious warehouse simulation, you never get that thrilling moment of gameplay tension when you forget to pack enough ammo for one of your guys and then combat starts and you have to figure out what to do about it.*

*actual Codex argument for really, truly dull game design

This is more broadly true for Codexian arguments in general. I frequently find that people on here will argue that truly atrocious design decisions are actually good because they are done for "lore reasons", or for "realism", or because they "were fun in some other context", without realising how bad they make certain games overall.

Game's difficulty and economy is obviously tuned with the assumption that you will have to craft separate gear for every character - the ability to freely change items regardless of where your characters are exist simply to not make people butthurt about having to fly their characters back to base every time they craft a new weapon, to pick it up. Devs simply didn't predict that some people will be autistic enough to just craft few sets of gear then manually switch them between all their teams every mission, since it's a ridiculously retarded way to ruin the game for yourself.

You can abuse the system to decrease your need for gear/resources 2-3x, and completely invalidate the game's economy, to be able to technically play at higher difficulty while having an experience closer to lower, at the cost of hours spend on mindless clicking, but if you choose to do that, you have no one to blame but yourself. Bitching that devs should forbid you from doing it because you can't stop yourself, is like saying that government should ban fastfood because you can't stop being a fatass.

So you're (correctly) pointing out that the game has a fundamental design problem and is very easily abusable by it's design, but are then complaining when people criticise it for being abusable and tedious? The correct response is to blame the game for being badly designed.

This is part of the reason why nuXCOM gives you unlimited copies of each weapon when you build it. This introduces it's own problems, but at least solves a lot of the tedium of bad design.

To me, this smacks of being designed "to stop casuals getting unlimited plasma guns", without actually being thought out. The mere fact that it was "more hardcore" was enough to justify it. Who cares if it makes the game more tedious?

Again, OG Xcom fixed this by limiting cargo space on each skyranger. So you could take a small stock to supply your fighters in the field with multiple loadouts, but would have to return to base to make big changes. This encouraged actually building up collections of items, rather than freely being able to exchange things, in a non-tedious way.

Phoenix Point seems like a "hardcore" Xcom clone made by someone who was frustrated by the oversimplification of many of nuXCOMs systems, but who fundamentally didn't understand WHY the original Xcom was good. So we get a hodge-podge of gameplay ideas that end up encouraging really tedious, degenerate micromanagement gameplay.

This is absolutely an issue with the game, and blaming people for "playing it the tedious way" is asinine. If a game provides an optimal strategy that provides SIGNIFICANT advantages (by your own description it basically trivialises the entire economy), and then makes that strategy tedious and boring, players have every right to complain when they have to go out of their way to be bored if they want to be efficient. That's textbook bad game design.

Any game designed around efficiency being annoying and requiring the player to fight against the game's systems in order to be effective is badly designed by definition.

If Phoenix Point wants to maintain the "everybody gets one copy of everything" gameplay design, AND wants to keep equipment teleporting in (which seems contradictory, IMO), they could very easily resolve the tedium with some proper design. Each character should remember the last item they had in each slot, and then they should add an "auto-loadout" button on the squad selection screen, which will automatically strip weapons and armour from undrafted soldiers to equip the current squad, based on what they used last. Easy peasy. Problem solved instantly. But of course they won't do this because then it will very obviously expose how broken the game's economy is, because it's badly designed, so this would require more work on the gameplay side to create an actually compelling economy that's based on strategy rather than tedium.

Phoenix Point defenders baffle me. You can't simply hand-waive away all the game's flaws by blaming players when the game encourages them to do something boring.

I have said it before in this thread and I will say it again: Don't waste your time on Phoenix Point. If you want a compelling XCOM game that isn't oversimplified garbage, try OpenXCom Extended. The original game is almost perfect with a small handful of (built-in) gameplay tweaks.

 

[Jaedar]

This is part of the reason why nuXCOM gives you unlimited copies of each weapon when you build it. This introduces it's own problems, but at least solves a lot of the tedium of bad design.

Only nuxcom2 does that.

Again, OG Xcom fixed this by limiting cargo space on each skyranger. So you could take a small stock to supply your fighters in the field with multiple loadouts, but would have to return to base to make big changes. This encouraged actually building up collections of items, rather than freely being able to exchange things, in a non-tedious way.

Kinda yeah, but x-com also forces your skyranger to return to base after every mission. And only upon returning does it try to refill all the gear that was used or lost.

Don't waste your time on Phoenix Point. If you want a compelling XCOM game that isn't oversimplified garbage, try OpenXCom Extended. The original game is almost perfect with a small handful of (built-in) gameplay tweaks.

I think this game has merit, especially with the tftv mod remaster, but I also second openxcom extended recommendation. There's also dozens of total conversions to freshen up the gameplay experience.