Honest Review from Steam. Developers Please Read!!

[Drakuel]

OP,

A pretty fair review, I dont agree on free DLC,

I feel things that should be in game working or missing completly should be addressed for free, example is manual or a fully executed encyclopedia...

The free patches address most of the issues, but there is missing content I paid for that needs to be provided still.

This is a software company, most software companies charge for updates and support, gaming industry is unique in this way, or would you perfer they go the other route like other software companies.

[palm911]

Yawn...

In my 20 years of being a member of various games forums almost nothing`s changed. Silly arguments still continue even while the game is clearly being patched and fixed on almost a DAILY basis. Nobody wants to wait, everyone wants to complain at the Devs.

Only change is people have weaker backbones and feel `offended` even quicker than ever before.

Indeed thats precisely the point:
People "want" things.
Most what I read here, silly or not, is about features that ES was quite clear "would not be in the game at launch" or QOL issues. People want more races, want more industrial ships (or less industrial, or just different, or more polygons)...
What happened with reading up on the damn thing you are buying these days?!

Well be glad that the developers are not that easily offended... Otherwise I would expect some flying pink dongs with names of certain "reviewers" and "Users" on them.

thanks Ornias, ( my thank comment was meant to you not to dejuan. edited the post too

[AdrianB1]

if you dislike it so much, what are you doing here? you should know how launches has ever been with egosoft, you can decide to support them or not. i can understand people concerns about a developer some people has never heard of, but people who has know how egosoft support their tittle should have some peace of mind. .. just saying

I am not disliking it, I am simply waiting for the game to move from a beta to a delightful product that I will enjoy for a long time. Call it a professional bias, I did UX (not UI, but real UX) for corporate (internal) apps in a huge company for the past 5 years and I know what a beta looks like and what a delightful experience is. I loved X2 and X3 so much, I want to see X4 fixed and improved and this is what I am trying to do here, in any way I can contribute.

Your comparison with the restaurant was so flawed, I had to help you look at it from a different angle. I think you are very good intentions, but blinded by the passion and not able to acknowledge that problems exist, people are not happy and something needs to be done. A healthy dose of common sense and positive criticism can make wonders when you want to improve the situation.

[Ornias]

The free patches address most of the issues, but there is missing content I paid for that needs to be provided still.

Besides player shipyards and the war/shipyard bug messing up the economy, what promised content do you still miss?
And with that I mean what lawyers count as promises, not "suggested content".

Things that are promised to be in, should indeed be in.
But asking for things that are clearly stated to be "Not included", would be quite... entitled...

if you dislike it so much, what are you doing here? you should know how launches has ever been with egosoft, you can decide to support them or not. i can understand people concerns about a developer some people has never heard of, but people who has know how egosoft support their tittle should have some peace of mind. .. just saying

I am not disliking it, I am simply waiting for the game to move from a beta to a delightful product that I will enjoy for a long time. Call it a professional bias, I did UX (not UI, but real UX) for corporate (internal) apps in a huge company for the past 5 years and I know what a beta looks like and what a delightful experience is. I loved X2 and X3 so much, I want to see X4 fixed and improved and this is what I am trying to do here, in any way I can contribute.

Your comparison with the restaurant was so flawed, I had to help you look at it from a different angle. I think you are very good intentions, but blinded by the passion and not able to acknowledge that problems exist, people are not happy and something needs to be done. A healthy dose of common sense and positive criticism can make wonders when you want to improve the situation.

That comparison with a restaurant was shit, I think we all know that a one-time meal is quite difference from a fixing-itself-over-time-meal

And @Palm911, now I get your post... I totally didn't get your reference to the OP

I agree with you @AdrianB1, I also know what a BETA looks and feels like and it's clearly a BETA.
But I actually think that is more of an industry wide issue than one to fight over with ES. The Gaming industry as a whole (with things like early access), is stretching the definition of Alpha and Beta into oblivion to make sales.
Back in the day (not even that long ago), Alpha was a clear definition for a working copy that isn't feature complete and unstable and BETA was a definition for (almost) feature complete and semi-stable (not CTD'ing every 15 minutes).
Today with amateur developers pushing out games while learning about development along the way and companies cashing in with the early access hype (more moneys, more sooner), they all want to call it BETA as soon as possible.

To be completely fair, some parts of the code/game are clearly alpha, like the shipyard part (both player and AI, player not being released and AI not working at all) heck today I roasted a dev for not even having finished his in-code/script TODO tags.
That being said, afaik those are the only parts where ES screwed up so bad I call it "dishonest advertising". You simply can not and should not advertise something and not deliver and if you do, at THE VERY LEAST put a big disclaimer on it "Economy and shipyards are still screwed up, will be fixed asap".
They should fix it asap anyway now that the game is out there and afaik they are.

But lets focus on the content that is their and think WITH the developer instead of against them.
Lets think how we can make this game better, within their design philosophy aka with the look and feel they have in mind, instead of complaining about content we all hope would be in the base game but will be pushed to DLC.

Things like:
- More plotlines
- Tweaking capital ship shields
- Putting in a TP for every faction (or even a luxery liner) or at least limiting some weapon placements on some freighters (to diversify them more)
- Writing good tutorials, (I'm sure you can even write them for the devs as long as you send them a copyright waiver with it.)
- More economy sinks (to be not totally reliant on war)

Point is: There is so much good in this game already, besides the economy/shipyard ****, lets focus on how we can improve what we do have...
Instead of half of this review complaining about things he personally had hoped for that where never promised.

[jasonbarron]

Say what you will about the unpolished rough around the edges qualities of X4, I'm still having way more fun noodling about it's game map trying new things then any other game I can think of for the last few years.

[Drakuel]

The free patches address most of the issues, but there is missing content I paid for that needs to be provided still.

Besides player shipyards and the war/shipyard bug messing up the economy, what promised content do you still miss?
And with that I mean what lawyers count as promises, not "suggested content".

Things that are promised to be in, should indeed be in.
But asking for things that are clearly stated to be "Not included", would be quite... entitled...

if you dislike it so much, what are you doing here? you should know how launches has ever been with egosoft, you can decide to support them or not. i can understand people concerns about a developer some people has never heard of, but people who has know how egosoft support their tittle should have some peace of mind. .. just saying

I am not disliking it, I am simply waiting for the game to move from a beta to a delightful product that I will enjoy for a long time. Call it a professional bias, I did UX (not UI, but real UX) for corporate (internal) apps in a huge company for the past 5 years and I know what a beta looks like and what a delightful experience is. I loved X2 and X3 so much, I want to see X4 fixed and improved and this is what I am trying to do here, in any way I can contribute.

Your comparison with the restaurant was so flawed, I had to help you look at it from a different angle. I think you are very good intentions, but blinded by the passion and not able to acknowledge that problems exist, people are not happy and something needs to be done. A healthy dose of common sense and positive criticism can make wonders when you want to improve the situation.

That comparison with a restaurant was shit, I think we all know that a one-time meal is quite difference from a fixing-itself-over-time-meal

And @Palm911, now I get your post... I totally didn't get your reference to the OP

I agree with you @AdrianB1, I also know what a BETA looks and feels like and it's clearly a BETA.
But I actually think that is more of an industry wide issue than one to fight over with ES. The Gaming industry as a whole (with things like early access), is stretching the definition of Alpha and Beta into oblivion to make sales.
Back in the day (not even that long ago), Alpha was a clear definition for a working copy that isn't feature complete and unstable and BETA was a definition for (almost) feature complete and semi-stable (not CTD'ing every 15 minutes).
Today with amateur developers pushing out games while learning about development along the way and companies cashing in with the early access hype (more moneys, more sooner), they all want to call it BETA as soon as possible.

To be completely fair, some parts of the code/game are clearly alpha, like the shipyard part (both player and AI, player not being released and AI not working at all) heck today I roasted a dev for not even having finished his in-code/script TODO tags.
That being said, afaik those are the only parts where ES screwed up so bad I call it "dishonest advertising". You simply can not and should not advertise something and not deliver and if you do, at THE VERY LEAST put a big disclaimer on it "Economy and shipyards are still screwed up, will be fixed asap".
They should fix it asap anyway now that the game is out there and afaik they are.

But lets focus on the content that is their and think WITH the developer instead of against them.
Lets think how we can make this game better, within their design philosophy aka with the look and feel they have in mind, instead of complaining about content we all hope would be in the base game but will be pushed to DLC.

Things like:
- More plotlines
- Tweaking capital ship shields
- Putting in a TP for every faction (or even a luxery liner) or at least limiting some weapon placements on some freighters (to diversify them more)
- Writing good tutorials, (I'm sure you can even write them for the devs as long as you send them a copyright waiver with it.)
- More economy sinks (to be not totally reliant on war)

Point is: There is so much good in this game already, besides the economy/shipyard ****, lets focus on how we can improve what we do have...
Instead of half of this review complaining about things he personally had hoped for that where never promised.

In my earlier reply i stated a example of said content, a manual and a non empty encyclopedia, pretty basic and industry standard requirments for paid software. However they have released, since this post a manual now, havent checked other missing content yet.

[palm911]

if you dislike it so much, what are you doing here? you should know how launches has ever been with egosoft, you can decide to support them or not. i can understand people concerns about a developer some people has never heard of, but people who has know how egosoft support their tittle should have some peace of mind. .. just saying

I am not disliking it, I am simply waiting for the game to move from a beta to a delightful product that I will enjoy for a long time. Call it a professional bias, I did UX (not UI, but real UX) for corporate (internal) apps in a huge company for the past 5 years and I know what a beta looks like and what a delightful experience is. I loved X2 and X3 so much, I want to see X4 fixed and improved and this is what I am trying to do here, in any way I can contribute.

Your comparison with the restaurant was so flawed, I had to help you look at it from a different angle. I think you are very good intentions, but blinded by the passion and not able to acknowledge that problems exist, people are not happy and something needs to be done. A healthy dose of common sense and positive criticism can make wonders when you want to improve the situation.

hey, i am not blinded, i know there is a list of things that needs fixing, but point is that, industry has changed a lot since those early days, based on what i have seem with the X franchise, this is the most and best stable launch i have witness from egosoft, also i believe some people needs to relax a little, X4 is on good hands, people will get their fixes, and at no cost. some people in this thread acts like egosoft robbed them , which is entirely unfair and untrue, the restaurant analogy i made was to put things in perspective, how much is an OK meal ?, (what you get for what you pay, them you will poop the dollars/euro spent , go to a movies for instance, that is in the world of entertaiment , going to movies is VERY expensive, (if you think of it , as fun per hour) ) so what you are getting by paying for this game?, and considering how much egosoft puts into it, (several years of free fixes,and improvements.) and knowing this is a game like no other then i can say without fear making a mistake , it was a bargain (in my books).

regardless i have been very critic with egosoft in the past, but in this case, i think its worth mentioning that they deserve credit and consideration, they are a small studio, and look to what they have created...~ so again KUDOS to EGOSOFT.

[AdrianB1]

But I actually think that is more of an industry wide issue than one to fight over with ES.

But lets focus on the content that is their and think WITH the developer instead of against them.
Lets think how we can make this game better, within their design philosophy aka with the look and feel they have in mind, instead of complaining about content we all hope would be in the base game but will be pushed to DLC.

I know this is a widespread problem in the industry and I am not mad at Egosoft for it, especially after I read their annual reports: I prefer a living company that can deliver the game later than a company that goes bankrupt and no game.

And yes, I am looking at improving the game as much as possible. I waited so much time for it (skipping R), I can wait for 6 months or one year for the full game at full price (not waiting for any discounts). I did the same for a few other games and it worked very well for me. But I cannot stand by an look at fanboys in denial posting over and over to defend the current state of the product, they are not helping themselves (need to go past denial) or others. I hope the money Egosoft got so far are enough to keep going and I hope that the disappointment over the launch will not alienate too many paying players, shooting themselves in the leg is bad for one's health.

[ezra-r]

In X3 we had
Scouts
interceptors
fighters
heavy fighters
corvettes
bombers
frigates
missile frigates
carriers
destroyers
varieties of trade ship
Small transport carriers
Station Carriers
With 7 different races each with all of the above specific ships

and it was a total stats mess.

A clear example comes to mind. Kestrel, a Teladi M5 with ridicoulosly cheating fast speed (teladi never had fast ships) with even a rear turret iirc and ridiculous cheap price, making any other M5 useless in comparison.

No thanks, I don't want this or anything similar, let'shave fewer ships, with more specific purposes, choices will vary depending on what you want to do with them and you will have reasons to use most of them.

[RWolf]

Starting a conclussion with a semi-offensive statement isn't really the way to go. "Your mom has great bones", suggest she is ugly as ****.

First of all, its obvious that you are way too defensive of this game, resulting in bias, which results in confirmation bias as seen with the above response. His reference to bones was to say that game has the bare bone structure down, meaning its got the right foundation that can be filled in. Often when buying computers, you can go for bare bone systems that come with just a few basic parts, and you the buyer can buy the rest and fill them in yourself. Thus your jump to read that as "offensive" (as the OPs intent) suggest your confirmation bias is not allowing you to read posts objectively.

Even in this state, the amount of content is insanely huge for a niche game.

That's a nonsensical argument. A niche genre does not dictate whether it will have more or less content. They have no relation to one another. Niche genres and wide audience genres both can little to no content or quite a lot of it, other factors and or design decisions will result in the content, not whether or not it is "niche". Generally speaking, the magic quality rule in game dev (planning) involves a triangle of scope, time, and cost. If you want something big with the shortest amount of time (scope and time) then it will be costly, if you skimp out the cost then you lose on quality. If you want something done in a short amount of time but also with a lower amount of cost, then you have to sacrifice the scope of the project. See (https://www.studytonight.com/3d-game-en ... xt-of-game).
Egosoft spent over 7 years on rebirth and around 5 supposedly on X4. This means they probably had to sacrifice time, however if their development cycle for x4 was short instead, then they had to sacrifice scope because they clearly don't have money to sacrifice (money usually translates to bigger development teams).

Niche games of this scale tend to be on the more expensive side...

No they don't. How are you coming to these conclusions? One of the most expensive aspects of game dev involves art assets, and that depends on the scope of the art itself, character animation, rigging, high poly to low poly workflow. Then there is the networking side, online functionality, that also cost a pretty penny. Neither of these have anything to do with any particular genre. In X4 there is no known multiplayer component, and the art assets are actually not done very well at all. It shouldnt cost that much at all to do what they did unless it was done in a very short amount of time. Remember, every station just a quarter of an asset rotated and mirrored against itself, its a lazy form of asset creation that cuts down on both time and cost, but it also shows. The ships in X4 are also just half modeled and mirrored, nor are they really animated with moving parts. Thus the cost is obviously not high because they did very little with that. Textures? The texturing process is incredibly cheap now due to Allegorithmic's substance designer/painter, which can let the artist generate or pick from pre-sets certain materials, which can quickly be applied to everything. This is obviously what they used, and if they chose not to then they are doing something wrong because their texture work is quite minimal.

As for the engine itself and the gameplay/economy, no they already spent 7 years building that up with XR. It would not be expensive for them to move that over to X4 unless they chose to continue starting over from scratch, which no sane studio would do. If any big work was being done, it appears they focused mostly on their map system, which again has nothing to do with any niche genre itself.

"Honest Review from Steam"
This title is perfect, because it perfectly describes the shortsighted attitude of Steam reviews.

Well that's quite the elitist asinine thing to say. Steam is synonymous with "short sighted" behavior in your opinion? Steam has over 125 million active accounts, players, including those who play X games (even before they were on steam), will leave reviews there as its a platform that enables it. To write them off because you have a bias against a platform is childish. If anything, your comment has been shortsighted due to your projection of steam and its users.

This isnt a product for the masses and never will be.

And here is the crux of the problem. Egosoft might disagree with you, rather they clearly want to appeal to the masses. X rebirth was the signal for that shift. Space highways were designed for the immediate gratification crowd, they wanted to let players get into the action faster and not have to wait to get around the universe by traveling the old way. Who do you think that is for? Casual players, those who don't have the patience for X games. The color changes to ship designs almost looking like legos is meant to broaden the appeal. A lot of X fans, especially those who did like X3, see a reduction in difficulty, a loss of features and style that appealed to "the niche", while Egosoft chases a larger target audience.

So if X isnt supposed to be a product for the masses, then you better remind Egosoft of that because their interest and your projection might not be in line.

[DeJuan]

One thing is for sure, we must be absolutely certain: Egosoft always - always - fixes its games. Egosoft is a serious company in the gaming market and one of the best - in my view - in the field of the Space genre.

About 'DLCs': this involves a lot of work. Egosoft is currently focused on fixing any bugs. I will have the huge, the giant pleasure in buying your DLCs because I trust Egosoft's immensity - and I've been following Egosoft for many years!

i subscribe your words there a 1000%.

I also agree that statement however, We need more for the price we paid from the start. We paid an unfair price for the game in its current state compared to what we are use to getting.

[DeJuan]

i stopped reading when he said : universe smaller than xrebirth.. lol NO!

what part of the word "foundations" you guys dont Get? you know what that means?

this game is a "foundation of what is coming" hence the name.. Geez!./

(yes there are bugs, but they are working to fix them, and knowing egosoft past , you can bet they will keep improving and improving on it. )

and now you come along to destroy any sort of conversation.

no i did not, in my opinion the review is not accurate or balanced, i stopped reading the review when he/she said the x4 universe was smaller than rebirth (which is not True)... remember it got a DLC or two (cant recall) that expanded it further, but even with expansion is still smaller than X4.

I meant to say just X3 Terrain Conflict. You completely ignored X3TC and continued to complain without conversating on my whole statement. You only saw what you wanted to see however, I said more before that. Just because you do not agree with something does not mean stop reading altogether. Your mind is closed if you do that and it was a mistake I made. Why are people so polarized in one direction? It is not healthy as a society to be so dismissive. I disagree with what a lot things people say however they also say somethings I do agree with. Take a breath relax and open your mind a little bit more. Thank you for your opinion none the less.

[DeJuan]

Thank you for your post and I really do appreciate that your the second or third person to actually say something related to my review. I originally posted this review on Steam and have 89 hours played at that time. With that said you really can not dismiss my in-game experiences as if I did not play the game enough time to make a clear and reasonable observation. I do wish you people not try and attack me just because they feel different. I made VERY general statements on my review in an effort for someone same as yourself to come along and break things down. I am not going to agree or disagree with your opinion. Can you just give your opinion with trying to attack a person you do not know or have any idea how much time they actually spent in the game? Just a thought and thank you for sharing your thoughts.

[DeJuan]

Yawn...

In my 20 years of being a member of various games forums almost nothing`s changed. Silly arguments still continue even while the game is clearly being patched and fixed on almost a DAILY basis. Nobody wants to wait, everyone wants to complain at the Devs.

Only change is people have weaker backbones and feel `offended` even quicker than ever before.

Indeed thats precisely the point:
People "want" things.
Most what I read here, silly or not, is about features that ES was quite clear "would not be in the game at launch" or QOL issues. People want more races, want more industrial ships (or less industrial, or just different, or more polygons)...
What happened with reading up on the damn thing you are buying these days?!

Well be glad that the developers are not that easily offended... Otherwise I would expect some flying pink dongs with names of certain "reviewers" and "Users" on them.

Agreed. People get way to over the top. I do believe people should read up on the games they buy however, I have logged thousands of hours with EgoSoft games and this is the most incomplete game in my opinion they have launched. I preorder all my EgoSoft games because I do have faith they will make the necessary changes to the broken things in the game like they have done in the past. We must keep speaking up or we may get to the point where they give us just a template and tell us to wait for the updates. Not saying EgoSoft would do that however, speaking up keeps them honest!

[palm911]

and now you come along to destroy any sort of conversation.

no i did not, in my opinion the review is not accurate or balanced, i stopped reading the review when he/she said the x4 universe was smaller than rebirth (which is not True)... remember it got a DLC or two (cant recall) that expanded it further, but even with expansion is still smaller than X4.

I meant to say just X3 Terrain Conflict. You completely ignored X3TC and continued to complain without conversating on my whole statement. You only saw what you wanted to see however, I said more before that. Just because you do not agree with something does not mean stop reading altogether. Your mind is closed if you do that and it was a mistake I made. Why are people so polarized in one direction? It is not healthy as a society to be so dismissive. I disagree with what a lot things people say however they also say somethings I do agree with. Take a breath relax and open your mind a little bit more. Thank you for your opinion none the less.

well , when you see something that is not accurate, and you know its not, then i made the call (probably wrong on my side) as for my eyes it lost lots of objectivity, there is a fact Xrebirth was (spacewise) smaller than this game, discrepancy of opinions are totally ok! there is a reason this is called a discussion board, and my words over this has also been honest. as you can see there are people in both fences, and you can clearly see that, so if someone disagrees does it means we need to open our mind a bit? i appreciate you took the time to respond as well, and based on what i know about egosoft, what i paid is a bargain. could have been better at launch? absolutely.

you said you have preordered all EGOSOFT games, if so, you have to agree that those launches were, on the weak side, many more bugs (x3 reunion,), Rebirth was terrible!! when it launched, if compared to what we see over x4, and also remember , X3 , X3 TC, and X3 AP made the game what it was in the end (X3 AP), that is a lot of development time with those 3 games, so of course X3AP had many more sectors, but they were tiny in comparison to what you can see per sector today.

i have the outmost trust in what egosoft can do, they have proven that all the time, so thats when i say X4 is in very compentent and responsible hands, i cant really say that for some really large studios. but that is conversation for another topic.,

[palm911]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hRC4pBl7qM&t=27s


worth looking, (Bernd about the 1.5 and 2.0 plus things like universe size)

[Ornias]

But I actually think that is more of an industry wide issue than one to fight over with ES.

But lets focus on the content that is their and think WITH the developer instead of against them.
Lets think how we can make this game better, within their design philosophy aka with the look and feel they have in mind, instead of complaining about content we all hope would be in the base game but will be pushed to DLC.

I know this is a widespread problem in the industry and I am not mad at Egosoft for it, especially after I read their annual reports: I prefer a living company that can deliver the game later than a company that goes bankrupt and no game.

And yes, I am looking at improving the game as much as possible. I waited so much time for it (skipping R), I can wait for 6 months or one year for the full game at full price (not waiting for any discounts). I did the same for a few other games and it worked very well for me. But I cannot stand by an look at fanboys in denial posting over and over to defend the current state of the product, they are not helping themselves (need to go past denial) or others. I hope the money Egosoft got so far are enough to keep going and I hope that the disappointment over the launch will not alienate too many paying players, shooting themselves in the leg is bad for one's health.

I would very much like to read the annual report myself too... Are the financials that bad? Cant find it though...
(aka got a link for me?)

Ahh another person skipping the stillbirth, welcome!

The thing is, at one side you have people complaining for problems that are not real problems, because they are related to content that is simply not in the game and wouldnt be in any way (like missing races).
On the other side you have fanboys that take offense in such statements and are too offended to even accept the possibility of truth on some of the other problems in the game.

It's statements like "empty encyclopedia" that trigger fanboys, its simply not true.
I personally like to be realistic, some things suck... but most issues are more QOL or situational than big gamebreaking problems.

[CBJ]

Once gain, stop making it personal. Childish name-calling, labelling people as "fanboy" or "troll" just because you don't share their viewpoint may be acceptable on other forums, but it is not acceptable here.

[Ornias]

Starting a conclussion with a semi-offensive statement isn't really the way to go. "Your mom has great bones", suggest she is ugly as ****.

First of all, its obvious that you are way too defensive of this game, resulting in bias, which results in confirmation bias as seen with the above response. His reference to bones was to say that game has the bare bone structure down, meaning its got the right foundation that can be filled in. Often when buying computers, you can go for bare bone systems that come with just a few basic parts, and you the buyer can buy the rest and fill them in yourself. Thus your jump to read that as "offensive" (as the OPs intent) suggest your confirmation bias is not allowing you to read posts objectively.

Even in this state, the amount of content is insanely huge for a niche game.

That's a nonsensical argument. A niche genre does not dictate whether it will have more or less content. They have no relation to one another. Niche genres and wide audience genres both can little to no content or quite a lot of it, other factors and or design decisions will result in the content, not whether or not it is "niche". Generally speaking, the magic quality rule in game dev (planning) involves a triangle of scope, time, and cost. If you want something big with the shortest amount of time (scope and time) then it will be costly, if you skimp out the cost then you lose on quality. If you want something done in a short amount of time but also with a lower amount of cost, then you have to sacrifice the scope of the project. See (https://www.studytonight.com/3d-game-en ... xt-of-game).
Egosoft spent over 7 years on rebirth and around 5 supposedly on X4. This means they probably had to sacrifice time, however if their development cycle for x4 was short instead, then they had to sacrifice scope because they clearly don't have money to sacrifice (money usually translates to bigger development teams).

Niche games of this scale tend to be on the more expensive side...

No they don't. How are you coming to these conclusions? One of the most expensive aspects of game dev involves art assets, and that depends on the scope of the art itself, character animation, rigging, high poly to low poly workflow. Then there is the networking side, online functionality, that also cost a pretty penny. Neither of these have anything to do with any particular genre. In X4 there is no known multiplayer component, and the art assets are actually not done very well at all. It shouldnt cost that much at all to do what they did unless it was done in a very short amount of time. Remember, every station just a quarter of an asset rotated and mirrored against itself, its a lazy form of asset creation that cuts down on both time and cost, but it also shows. The ships in X4 are also just half modeled and mirrored, nor are they really animated with moving parts. Thus the cost is obviously not high because they did very little with that. Textures? The texturing process is incredibly cheap now due to Allegorithmic's substance designer/painter, which can let the artist generate or pick from pre-sets certain materials, which can quickly be applied to everything. This is obviously what they used, and if they chose not to then they are doing something wrong because their texture work is quite minimal.

As for the engine itself and the gameplay/economy, no they already spent 7 years building that up with XR. It would not be expensive for them to move that over to X4 unless they chose to continue starting over from scratch, which no sane studio would do. If any big work was being done, it appears they focused mostly on their map system, which again has nothing to do with any niche genre itself.

"Honest Review from Steam"
This title is perfect, because it perfectly describes the shortsighted attitude of Steam reviews.

Well that's quite the elitist asinine thing to say. Steam is synonymous with "short sighted" behavior in your opinion? Steam has over 125 million active accounts, players, including those who play X games (even before they were on steam), will leave reviews there as its a platform that enables it. To write them off because you have a bias against a platform is childish. If anything, your comment has been shortsighted due to your projection of steam and its users.

This isnt a product for the masses and never will be.

And here is the crux of the problem. Egosoft might disagree with you, rather they clearly want to appeal to the masses. X rebirth was the signal for that shift. Space highways were designed for the immediate gratification crowd, they wanted to let players get into the action faster and not have to wait to get around the universe by traveling the old way. Who do you think that is for? Casual players, those who don't have the patience for X games. The color changes to ship designs almost looking like legos is meant to broaden the appeal. A lot of X fans, especially those who did like X3, see a reduction in difficulty, a loss of features and style that appealed to "the niche", while Egosoft chases a larger target audience.

So if X isnt supposed to be a product for the masses, then you better remind Egosoft of that because their interest and your projection might not be in line.

Not it was a dark sided joke, not a statement of bias.
I know what bare bones systems are (basically a bad deal a lot of the time, but thats not the scope I think )
I'm not defensive of this game per see, i'm agressive towards fools that think they are entitled to complain about missing content that should not be in the game to begin with and complain about content they simply missed because their playthrough was not long enough. I don't need this game for it and on the other hand I'm also quite agressive towards some fools at EgoSoft for not doing a 48 hour economy testrun before launch if need be.

" suggest your confirmation bias is not allowing you to read posts objectively. "
No it suggests me being annoyed by the short sighted attitude of this review, that even includes complaining about content that is not and would not be in this game.


Niche games generally have less contant because they cant hike the price enough to put a lot of content in. There are exceptions such as X4 but that is not the general rule of thumb.
Niche means a smaller audience, there is a limit in price (you cant endlessly hike it) and a limit in audience thus you have a limit on money which in turn limits the maximum scope (or amount of content).
So yes there is a relation, it being a niche game due to scope (or design choices which I account to scope) limits the maximum revenue and this limits money, a limit on money also limits the amount of time.

Actually that model is flawed, because in bussness you work with manhours, not total development time, when it comes to a costs-time relationship. On top of those you have basic bussiness costs (electricity, basic staffing and buildind(s)), but those are marginal in comparison to man hours. But man hours, don't say a damn about the project development time... you can work 5 years solo or 1 year with 5 people, the difference in costs would just be about 20% because of bussiness costs.

Target audience limits money (niche or wide audience), money sets a limit on manhours which set a limit to scope.
Gone is your triangle, welcome in the world where money is everything

This also brings into account your statement that my statement that "scale with a niche audience is expensive" is false...
Scope leads to more required manhours (including modeling), which leads to more money being required, which lead to a higher selling price due to the audience still being relatively small.


Onto the technical issues then:
The main issues where rewriting the economy to be more dynamic, a new map and new graphics engine.
Thus its completely normal to rewrite a large portion of the economy, that was one of the prime design choices they made. Quite normal with iteratieve development, every iteration you trash a few old systems that are still used and rewrite them. It wasn't "Only the map" stating it that way is unfair and dishonest. It at most shows you didnt actually read up on the game.


It's quite a known thing that steam reviews tend to be short sighted, certainly with niche games. It's almost like a "running gag" in some niche game communities. I'm sorry you didn't get the irony of that running gag when someone actually reposts it to this forum with "Steam review" in the title... Maybe I should have explained the gag, but that would utterly ruin the joke wouldnt it
I've nothing against steam or "All steam users", I do know short sighted steam reviews are a huge issue with niche games. Simply because steam tries to market niche games to a wide audience... I cant blame steam for it though, nor al steam users. I can blame people buying games without properly reading up on them to realise they are niche, thats where that running-gag is comming from.
To give an example: Put a hypothetical "Dwarf Fortress" on steam and see the huge amount of people complaining about graphics. That's where said joke is comming from.


Ahh you are one of the people complaining the graphics should be made to your taste, the highways shouldn't be there because of "your taste" and everything should be "your taste" to begin with. Sorry, I don't agree. I still find X4 a niche game and EgoSoft agreed in multiple statements that it should be more of a niche game than X:R. X:R was meant of the masses, it didnt take off, they went back to the old design idea.

Yes they wanted to put some more speed into it by adding highways and the teleporter. But on the other hand removed the jumpdrive and made SETA late-game only (yeah you can rush it, its a sandbox afterall). To give people the choice of a faster or slower pace isn't making it more or less niche... However: the prices for ship should be made 2x bigger and please remove the cheat crystals.

Ship prices (quite low) and cheat-crystals are what actually makes the game more wide-audience friendly.
Traveling a bit faster (half of the galaxy isnt even highway connected btw), isn't that big of a deal really. I think it adds gameplay, not everyone might like said gameplay (same with scanning stations) but it is there for those that do. It also adds to the look and feel of some sectors.

You complain about elitist attitude, but you are precisely the entitled elitist crowd that want this game to be precisely "your game" because of l33tness. It's said that the previous fanbase want to attack a new itteration, just because it isn't the previous one (not counting X:R). You know, the same happened with X3 at launch, it was "worse" than X2 on all fronts because things where different (and still buggy). It's said because it adds fuel to the actually unfounded complaints such as content that wasn't supposed to be in, not being there.

And I am certainly reminding them I like their design choices of taking elements from both X3:AP and X:R (which I skipped, because shit). And I am certainly reminding them on their huge economy testing ****. I'm quite certain it's still close to unplayable for the "wide audience" you proclaim it to be for and I am still certain about it after 50 hours of gametime (active, not cheesed by running it over night )


To end this charade for now: I think the same thing I find utterly annoying about the OP, also goes up for your post:
Just because it isn't "What you expected it to be" doesn't mean it ever wanted to be what you expected it to be.
"Missing" races, "ugly" ships, "Cheesy" highways and so on, it's all in the eye of the beholder. A got review takes care to avoid personal bias, Luckily i'm in the position of not writing a review but just attacking someone else over theirs.

Sorry I absolutely hate entitlement...
This whole OP was entitlement and your post screams entitlement, it annoys me . Yes it gives me a huge bias, not for or against the game. It gives me a bias against you, like it biases me against almost every narcissist or shouting extremist out there... I hoped to be able to say "Its nothing personal" but maybe it is.
The whole damn act to crosspost a meager (really it isn't even a great review, review quality wise... I rather read like thorough explainations and I missed any mention of the current game breaking economy bug) review and adding "Developers please read" to it like they actually would because your godlyhood shoved it in their faces, shouts entitlement. Just like I ranted on above how the game not being your taste is a form of entitlement, I dont review stardew valley either. Why? Because it isn't my taste.

Am I offended by you? Not in the slightest. But annoyance is also a form of bias, so yes I am biased but it has NOTHING to do with the game.

[Ornias]

Once gain, stop making it personal. Childish name-calling, labelling people as "fanboy" or "troll" just because you don't share their viewpoint may be acceptable on other forums, but it is not acceptable here.

CJ I explained two opposite sides of the argument. That has nothing to do with calling someone anything, at most it explained what a person described as fanboy is or does.
I don't think it's right to force people to "not use a word" regardless of context.

If it was not meant as a direct reply to me, sorry... it looked like it