About the Combat

[ioci]

The combat in CS is great. Though some features I found them debatable.

1. Weapon Swapping
Swapping weapon during the combat doesn't seem to be restricted enough.
I mean, chars can instantly swap weapon at any time during the combat. Maybe it needs a little AP cost for swapping(at least for those 2h weapons), and when one's turn was ended, its reaction attack better not to involve weapon swapping by default.

2. Engaged
Engaged chars seems to be able to shoot at just any one without suffering THC penalty nor opponents' reaction attack. This doesn't feels right.

3. Invisible
By using invisible gadget and do shooting, a char could suffer reaction attack from opponent.
This is strange, because when this char was not invisible and do shooting in its turn, nobody would reaction attack it. Why suddenly the opponents get super anti-stealth overwatch ability? I think a more logical result would be: a higher chance of been "detected" by some nearby opponents if the invisible char shoot or throw, if the said opponents passed a reaction+perception check.

4. Knockdown
When a char got knockdown, it still blocks the line of shot.
I think better to count it as a low cover instead.

5. Stray Bullets Ricochet
When a bullet misses its target or been ricocheted by energy field, it never hits anyone else.

6. Combat Log - LP Report
It would be very helpful if there was a filter that allows player to track only the LP gain. Also, it would be nice if the LP report for each foe killed was more organized, for example in current version, it displays something like: Jed earns x pts of A, Faythe earns y pts of B, Jed earns z pts of C, I wish its order could be changed into: Jed earns x pts of A, Jed earns z pts of C, then Faythe earns y pts of B, then the next char.

7. Combat Log - Char Name
It would be more readable if the chars' name in the log got a underline or extra bold or "<name>" or gray/darkened color.

[Elhoim]

1- That probably won't change, as the game is balanced around this now.

2- Characters engaged in close combat can only react to enemies that are next to them, plus lose half the cover bonus. Not sure if something extra is really needed, as it can make melee more powerful.

3- Yeah, we need to take another look at it, plus give better feedback.

4- Easier said than done, changing the collision capsule of characters "on the fly" is extremely tricky and can create lots of bugs. BTW, I do agree it would be better, but it's opening a can of worms that we don't have currently time to handle programming-wise.

5- That's also something that would require extensive re-work, so not likely.

6/7- Yeah, we need to improve the textbox.

Thanks for your feedback! =)

[Mechalibur]

Ricochet bullets annoy me in other games they're implemented in. It's kind of weird when a high evasion target gets hit because a stray bullet missed a different character.

The invisibility one is kind of tough because there needs to be some kind of downside to using it. I agree that the current implementation doesn't feel great, though.

[Robineus]

Originally posted by Mechalibur:

Ricochet bullets annoy me in other games they're implemented in. It's kind of weird when a high evasion target gets hit because a stray bullet missed a different character.

The invisibility one is kind of tough because there needs to be some kind of downside to using it. I agree that the current implementation doesn't feel great, though.

Do people normally dodge bullets even ricochets anywhere?

[Sardonac]

Originally posted by Elhoim:

1- That probably won't change, as the game is balanced around this now.

2- Characters engaged in close combat can only react to enemies that are next to them, plus lose half the cover bonus. Not sure if something extra is really needed, as it can make melee more powerful.

3- Yeah, we need to take another look at it, plus give better feedback.

4- Easier said than done, changing the collision capsule of characters "on the fly" is extremely tricky and can create lots of bugs. BTW, I do agree it would be better, but it's opening a can of worms that we don't have currently time to handle programming-wise.

5- That's also something that would require extensive re-work, so not likely.

6/7- Yeah, we need to improve the textbox.

Thanks for your feedback! =)

Elhoim - just a simple suggestion for the textbox for general readability: Add a linebreak/space between entries. The entries themselves are generally readable, the problem is they're stacked one after enough and it becomes hard to review. I would just suggest adding a linebreak after any discrete source - e.g. you kill a character and you get 5-6 lines about who got xp for it, followed immediately by a line break before the next entry.

[ioci]

Originally posted by Elhoim:

2- Characters engaged in close combat can only react to enemies that are next to them, plus lose half the cover bonus. Not sure if something extra is really needed, as it can make melee more powerful.

Yeah indeed it could overpower the melee. But how many melee combatants do we have in each encounter? For the player side there might be at most 6, but most of the time this number would be capped at 4 only; as for the AI side, so far I don't think I've met more than 3 melee combatants in a single encounter.

Besides, I think the actual issue here about potentially oping the melee is, how "engaged" was given to the chars. In the game, once a char was standing next to its opponent, they both became "engaged" which allows 1 char engaging 3 opponents at once automatically. But what if "engaged" effect was applied differently and has different degrades?


How about, say, when a char reaches right next to 3 opponents, only give all 4 of them a basic version of "engaged" called "close quarter" that only increases their melee Reaction value by 20 against any active actions they made(no stand up animation ATM).

Then, if an "close quarter" char was hit by a melee attack reaction by another "close quarter" char, give them both an advanced version of "engaged" called "fray fighting" that do 1."can only react to enemies that are next to them", 2."plus lose half the cover bonus"(now play the stand up animation), 3. plus receive a great ranged THC penalty at anyone except for the enemies next to them who happen to have "fray fighting". 4. "close quarter" lasts forever unless someone run away, but "fray fighting" only lasts for 2 turns or to be removed along with "close quarter".

By doing this, melee fighters with both decent Accuracy and Reaction will become more capable of stopping high Accuracy opponent shooter from delivering killing spread forcing the said shooter to focus on this melee guy, but if the shooter has good Evasion, then this shooter will still be capable of continuing its job without even losing any ability. This seems to create a further layer of depth for both tactical planning in combat and character building out of combat, without making melee op. Comments a high evasion Scav shooter: "that was an easy fight, that nobody from the Pit came at me waving his sledge hammer like a clown, but I managed to focus on taking down that rifle kid first without any problem, so I deserve his rifle". A low evasion Scav sniper replies:"lucky you, I was about to take down him myself, but that crazy woman with them, she jumped at me out of nowhere and try to shiv me every time I was tried to shoot, so I have to deal with her for the rest of the fight until you guys came to help, yeah, thanks, go take that rifle."

[stadtpark-hartmut]

Totally unrelated, but here are two tiny things I like fixed:

During the first of Earls Missions, when escorting Chance to the Granger deal: there is space on my screen, yet I have to scroll to see the two other options I have for answering. When I started playing this game I didn't even notice that I could avoid the fight, and always ended up doing it (- which is a long time ago, but the situation is still the same.)

btw.: I like the idea that one of your first missions is to help an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pull of a stunt, and you can change sides to behaving more morally within the same interaction, without having to kill some guys for a shady deal gone wrong.


Next thing is:
When picking up the implant from the corpse in Armory L2 (the room with the token dispenser and the item for Zeke): there is only like two pixels that actually work - I always have to click five or six times until I actually get it picked up / interacted with. Could you please change that, so it works the first time I click on it? (Maybe drag the corpse a little if his "box" interferes / misaligns with something else?)

(Not that I'm asking to change the mouse-coursor when hovering over anything interactable, but that would also alleviate situations like this.)

[wizard1200]

Originally posted by Elhoim:

6/7- Yeah, we need to improve the textbox.

Finally!

[Vince]

It's not that we didn't want to do it before or thought it was perfect, but everything takes time and the content comes first. Then the systems, then expanded content, etc.

[Vince]

Originally posted by ioci:

1. Weapon Swapping
Swapping weapon during the combat doesn't seem to be restricted enough.
I mean, chars can instantly swap weapon at any time during the combat. Maybe it needs a little AP cost for swapping(at least for those 2h weapons), and when one's turn was ended, its reaction attack better not to involve weapon swapping by default.

We discussed it early in development and decided that the AP cost won't offer any benefits but make it a bit more difficult using different weapons.

[Giacomavelli]

Re: text box, I have been meaning for a long time to ask you to make it expandable (up to double the height, or whatever) if the player wishes. Can be a lot of action quickly scrolling out of view and it can be a bit fiddly to go back and see it.

[Mechalibur]

Originally posted by Robineus:

Originally posted by Mechalibur:

Ricochet bullets annoy me in other games they're implemented in. It's kind of weird when a high evasion target gets hit because a stray bullet missed a different character.

The invisibility one is kind of tough because there needs to be some kind of downside to using it. I agree that the current implementation doesn't feel great, though.

Do people normally dodge bullets even ricochets anywhere?

Do people normally survive getting shot in the head? It's a game, so some concessions from reality are needed.

[Robineus]

Originally posted by Mechalibur:

Originally posted by Robineus:

Do people normally dodge bullets even ricochets anywhere?

Do people normally survive getting shot in the head? It's a game, so some concessions from reality are needed.

Well yeah they do if their helmet is good enough, just saying you'd be unlikely to dodge a ricochet even if you 'could' dodge bullets because you would have no way of seeing it coming.

[Lemiarty]

Originally posted by Elhoim:

1- That probably won't change, as the game is balanced around this now.

2- Characters engaged in close combat can only react to enemies that are next to them, plus lose half the cover bonus. Not sure if something extra is really needed, as it can make melee more powerful.

3- Yeah, we need to take another look at it, plus give better feedback.

4- Easier said than done, changing the collision capsule of characters "on the fly" is extremely tricky and can create lots of bugs. BTW, I do agree it would be better, but it's opening a can of worms that we don't have currently time to handle programming-wise.

5- That's also something that would require extensive re-work, so not likely.

6/7- Yeah, we need to improve the textbox.

Thanks for your feedback! =)

Personally, I appreciate developer responses as it is far too common for these types of posts to just get ignored...however...
<begin tirade>
I always see player comments like "It would be so easy to do" or "it's a simple thing" and so on. My typical response: Are you a developer? If yes, are you familiar with the tools the team is using? If also yes, are you then familiar with how the code is written? If yes, then you must be on the dev team, if no, then you have no idea what you're talking about. Something seemingly simple could be extremely complicated and difficult due to earlier design decisions.

I've also come to the conclusion that players are never happy. No matter if the top 3 most requested items are accomplished, it's always too little too late and whine/cry. I'm not saying player feedback isn't important, it is. Player attitude is not.

I've been a developer since the 80s and even worked on an MMO for a few years. That job was terrible and players (i.e. customers) were never happy, no matter what. Every developer knows that nothing is ever perfect and there's always room for improvement, we don't really need to be reminded on a daily basis unless there are specifics that we can address!
<end tirade>

#4 Cans of worms that players/users never want to acknowledge exist in every software project.
#5 I found odd myself since the animation will often appears to deflect the projectile through another character, but stable beats perfect any day of the week.

There are some things that I've found frustrating, but I have not taken the time to document anything. I have started over multiple times and I think my latest build suits my play style so far, at least I made it all the way to the habitat while still remaining solo.

So far (20+ hours), I find this game very addicting and consuming thoughts while not in front of my computer. I can't wait to see the finished game and whatever improvements & enhancements are forthcoming. Keep up the excellent work.

[Elhoim]

Originally posted by Lemiarty:

#5 I found odd myself since the animation will often appears to deflect the projectile through another character, but stable beats perfect any day of the week.

Yes, also something I forgot to mention is that it was a design decision to make the attacks "ruleset" based instead of messing with physics. So when you attack and see the roll chance that's the chance to hit. Same for hitting other characters, which can also be exploited to get hits that don't roll chances.

BTW, not saying it can't be an interesting design, and Phoenix Point was designed around "physical projectiles", but we preferred to keep it focused on mathematical chances to hit, which suits the character skill based approach we have and makes it a bit less prone to bugs.

Originally posted by Lemiarty:

So far (20+ hours), I find this game very addicting and consuming thoughts while not in front of my computer. I can't wait to see the finished game and whatever improvements & enhancements are forthcoming. Keep up the excellent work.

Thank you very much!

[Robineus]

Now here's a change I'd like to see in the combat, the fallen in battle perks would be better I feel if they not only took away things but added others, yes you have less HP as the result of your battle scarring but also gain things like damage resistance or more evasion and so on as a result of being a veteran,