Phoenix Point, the next game from X-COM creator Julian Gollop, now on Fig

[melkathi]

I have 24 hours played and very few bugs. I had the game freeze once when I had loaded an older save and upon entering a mission, it tried to load a later save instead of the mission ??????

 

[pmp10]

10 hours ago, Wormerine said:

[...] so I will wait for the game to be more complete and functioning. 

But is it really likely to happen at all?
After years of development they clearly couldn't even polish the idea of managing lines of fire.
And that was supposed to be their flag-ship feature improving over XCOM.

[Wormerine]

6 hours ago, pmp10 said:
After years of development they clearly couldn't even polish the idea of managing lines of fire.
And that was supposed to be their flag-ship feature improving over XCOM.

I don’t believe they can. Cover and line of sight would require ground up redesign with assets created with gameplay in mind, rather then creating assets and then trying to implement it into gameplay. Synedrion maps are horrific. 

that’s my main reason for postponing playthrough. If I thought in the end it could be the game it would keep playing, I would stick around and provide feedback. But I believe I will give it only one full playthrough, so I prefer for it to be as complete and patched as possible. Maybe it will turn around, most likely it will not. 

[melkathi]

Mind sharing your line of sight, cover and door complaints with us?

 

[Wormerine]

Sure. When it comes to cover, I find it frustrating how inconsistent it is, regarding what you can do, and see from it, or even what is treated as cover. Plenty of assets, which I would expect crouch behind, aren't crouchable, some cover you can crouch behind, but it will cover your sight-line, from some full cover you can't step sideways. You will be able to side step from one side of the door, but not from the other. 

Sometimes I will be told I will have LoS of the enemy from certain position, but then the character will crouch, and he doesn't have a sight line. 

And unfortunately, you have to rely on UI, as unless you move to the position and free aim, you don't really know if you get a good shot. It happened to me that I got line of sight indicator, and moved to cover, then activated Quick Aim, only to find out, that all I can see if a rock in front of me, because LoS lied to me (it didn't take crouch into account?) and couldn't preview line of sight, because without spending will manual aim view was unavailable. There isn't even a way to tilt a camera to previewiew it manual, and even so, it would be incredibly tedious to do.

It seems like I have to learn individual interaction with each individual asset, but even so, I found some assets behave differently. For example, there is white, thin, two full cover piece on Synedrion's map, that provied two cover spots, but then on another map, it seemed to not generate alligned with the grid, giving one full cover, without an ability to step sideways - and it wasn't a clearly visible change - and not intentional either, I don't think. 

I learned to simply not rely on being able to shoot from cover, and use flexible AP system to shoot before hunkering down, but that's not always possible, especially when trying to overwatch. But that's bypassing game's pretty major problems - if cover system wasn't implimented what so ever, and player had a manual control over stance (ala. 96UFO) it would make sense. But PP clearly wants to ape 2012XCOM, but didn't deisgn assets to provide clear and undestandable information. There is stuff I can accept as semi-intentional - like trees and rocks, providing good defensive position, but horrible offensive position due to being tall, and treated as half-cover - but so many assets behave differently dending on which side of it you are, or how it spawned on the map.

Overall, I find the process of playing PP similar to early 3D platformers, where most of the difficulty was revolving around fighting the camera, not the actual game.

Then, Synedrion maps, in general, with curvey design, in a grid based game, making it full of useless small obstacles, and windows which you can see through, but characters can't. Doors are just incredibly fiddely - sometimes if you move to a cover to the side of the doors, the door will open, but sometimes you have to move in front of them. Why they didn't just steal XCOM's way of doing doors is beyond me. Also sometimes closed door wouldn't be visible when free-aiming, making me shoot them, instead of the enemy I was aiming at. 

[ComradeYellow]

Yeah I don't put much stock into crowd-funded projects anymore, especially now since the quality of games in general has gone up a bit since 2011-12 when the KS craze "kicked" off.

[melkathi]

Yeah, the LOS preview is quite wonky. Sometimes it previews LOS, you walk there and there isn't, and when you zoom in and hunt manually for a target you can see the tip of the elbow of an enemy. I'd needs a check on LOS quality there - if less than X% are visible from the location, the line should show up in a different colour or not at all.

For some of the issues I would like to believe that a number of assets are missing flags. Some items are missing the flag that they are crouchable, others that they block line of sight.

[melkathi]

Screenshots of rather problematic LOS (for people not playing but interested in what is being criticized).

 

 

[melkathi]

Today's Hotfix:

 

We have just deployed a hotfix patch for Phoenix Point taking it to version 1.0.54580

Patch Notes:

• Fixed a crash that occurs when launching the game with certain locales.
• Fixed an issue with invalid targeting when behind cover.
• Fixed various sound issues.

The main purpose of this hotfix was to resolve the crash at launch issue.

We have a larger patch on the way later this week to address some of the other issues. We will continue to identify and work through the reported issues and release patches as soon as they’ve been resolved.

We ask if anyone encounters bugs in-game to please report them with the F12 tool - as this sends important game-state data directly to our QA team and allows us to more easily identify the issues.

 

It was rolled back and then applied again with this note:

 

The patch was temporarily rolled back and has now been reissued. This should have resolved the missing save game issue.

Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience and minor heart-attacks all around.

[melkathi]

Tonight I quit the game not to go to bed, as I did the other nights, but because I felt there was no point playing.

I wrote some feedback on the snapshot forum and will copy paste it here:

 

The name "Phoenix Point" creates expectations of the game. A world devastated by a deadly virus, overrun by lovecraftian, mutated monsters, the name suggests an initiative that aims to see humanity rise like the phoenix from the ashes. And it suggests that the game will be about this attempt.
You are put in charge of the Phoenix Project and start discovering it's history.
But you don't actually get to be the Phoenix Project. You read well written exposition about it, but the actual gameplay isn't about it:
You recruit soldiers from the three major factions, who have split the world between them. Neutral havens are extremely rare. In the backer builds this was different and it created a different feel. In the launch game you are thrust into a world of three huge nations. So you get your personnel from them.
You also get your tech from them. You have a research lab, but all you independently research is journal entries with Phoenix Point exposition. To get tech and affect your gameplay you either reverse engineer faction equipment or are granted knowledge by them.
And then they start hostilities and instead of aliens humans fight each other. And they are committed. They wipe out each other's havens at a crazy pace.

In the end the three factions dominate everything about the game: story, gameplay, aesthetic. And all that ties in with the game's name are a few cutscenes.

They could have called it The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. It would have been more fitting: Synedrion, New Jericho and Disciples of Anu. Though I am probably being a bit unfair to New Jericho here.

I tried to warm to the research system where you don't get to research but the npcs do.
I tried to overlook how the map was swamped with havens of the three factions, greatly  limiting exploration.
But now that I am staring at a geosphere where those three factions are killing each other, and what I thought the game would be about - defending humanity from an "alien" threat - is sidelined so the factions can do their thing, I am feeling that maybe I should just let them play their game. After all, the Phoenix Project and I, the player, are just along for the ride and not important to the game.

[melkathi]

So I quit and am uninstalling the game.

 

Here is the second feedback post I made on the Snapshot forum. And it is something I can't skip around, an ethical block I have I can't break for a silly game:

 

I started the game with a bit of trepidation but also looking forward to the tension between factions. I expected hostilities would translate into raids, stealing resources, sabotaging structures, destroying aircraft.
Then Synedrion went to war against New Jericho.
A Synedrion death squad attacked a New Jericho haven in North America and murdered all 7500 inhabitants. With infiltrators and snipers, the haven inhabitants hadn’t even noticed they were under attack until people started dropping dead left and right. They panicked and tried to run, tried to hide. But Synedrion infiltrators appeared out of nowhere and shot them as they ran. The civilians were herded into the power station, locked in and the generators rigged to explode. Boom. 7500 humans killed.
New Jericho of course retaliated. Synedrion families were hiding in basements, but the New Jericho soldiers just hosed every hole they could see with flame throwers.
By the time Phoenix Project strike teams returned from defending havens from Pandoran attacks in Europe and clearing out a lair in southern Asia, over 30.000 people had been slaughtered across America and Australia. And the death squads were already attacking other havens.
And the leaders send me messages as if we were allies? Where is the option to arrest them and put them on trial for war crimes? Or send in a strike team and execute them? They order the systematic slaughter of children.
I don’t want to play with these factions. I just want to shoot their leaders.

Edited December 11, 2019 by melkathi

[ShadySands]

I just installed it but will likely wait a long time before playing it

[Wormerine]

I, for one, am somewhat happy that such direct interactions between factions exist at all. Still they seem to be in an awkward spot, where they are not abstracted enough to be a sidecontent, but aren't nuanced and fleshed out enough, to be insteresting or not weird - by that meaning the previous post about genocide, and system doesn't support anything beyond removing the haven entirely. 

My hope is that Gollop's early references to PP being Paradox-like strategy game, is that with DLCs they plan to work on, and expand the base game as well. However, considering that previously fix bugs reappeared for 1.0 release, because of lack of time to refix them, doesn't inspire confidence in Snapshot team gaving enough man power to support and expand the game. Still, as a backer, there is nothing for me, but wait and hope for the best. The air-combat DLC is something that could tie to faction map movement. We will see. 

I have been thinking about the game, ever since I stopped playing, and I think my singular biggest design complain is lack of system interaction - any good systemic game needs systems to interact with each other, creating predictable but interesing results and allowing for player expression. That is part of UFO that Firaxis remake ditched almost entirely, in favour of more gamey/controlled experience.

What most disappointed me with PP, is that in spite of core complicated mechanics (inventory system, ballistic system) I can't say I have seen the game provide more depth then FiraXCOM. Ballistic system alone, is something the entire game should be built around, and I don't think that is the case. Sure, bullets are traced, but I didn't see much when it comes to interesting decisions to make or interactions. There are nice things about this system, like individual bullets being accounted for, but other then that, the game seems to be designed with the same depth of interaction as FiraXCOM. The individual part system didn't impress me either, and I found FiraXCOMs (or at least LongWar) implimentation of skills like suppression, flashbangs etc. to be a more effective decisionmaking process, then what body part to shoot. 

What I have been also missing, is a choice of items that would allow us to expand our strategies. Where are shields or deployable covers? Smoke granades? Items to allow traversal, beyond jetpack (you could have stuff like grappling hook, to allow characters to create their own climbing spots, as building are limited when it comes to enterances)? Breaching charges, mines. With flexible inventory system, there is so much once could do, to take full advantage of game's systems. 

[melkathi]

I am a bit miffed with the free aim problems, because we kept telling them about them in the backer builds.