Planet Xploration?

[spankahontis]

What you are asking for takes a lot of resources to make. I would rather they spend these resources on improving the core game play. No Mans sky spent years to make what is essentially a system that generates planets and some life form on it. 'It took them YEARS'. You don't really thing that planetary landings are simple to implement?

Additionally, Just like No mans Sky and Elite dangerous, there is NOTHING to do once you land. It's just boooring!!! The only game that may solve this is StarCitizen. But even then it doesn't look like there will be that much to do on the planets, and these guys have devolved tech to populate full scale planets with 100% buildings that you can actually enter.

So no. Please don't waste time on something that is useless. If anything, I would rather we didn't have any First Person walking rather then getting the pointless mechanic in XR.

I don't find that really as a viable excuse not to try, Hello Games are a small company, they concentrated mainly on the procedural generation aspect of their game, they did a good job, their biggest flaw was they didn't plan ahead of what they were going to put into their Procedurally Generated Universe.
While the X Universe has plenty of stuff to do, but just not the procedural generated worlds.

But what is stopping them from making an editing tool to generate a planet.
You misunderstand me, i'm not asking for Egosoft to go nuts like No Man's Sky. But the Worlds that will be in the current X-Universe games, to say they can't do that? Egosoft are a larger company, surely they can organise resources to slowly build such a feature and add the X-Gameplay mechanics.
Like you said, "They took years to make NMS" so a small group of Egosoft to do something hell of allot smaller.

[The Q]

I don't find that really as a viable excuse not to try, Hello Games are a small company, they concentrated mainly on the procedural generation aspect of their game, they did a good job, their biggest flaw was they didn't plan ahead of what they were going to put into their Procedurally Generated Universe.
While the X Universe has plenty of stuff to do, but just not the procedural generated worlds.

But what is stopping them from making an editing tool to generate a planet.
You misunderstand me, i'm not asking for Egosoft to go nuts like No Man's Sky. But the Worlds that will be in the current X-Universe games, to say they can't do that? Egosoft are a larger company, surely they can organise resources to slowly build such a feature and add the X-Gameplay mechanics.
Like you said, "They took years to make NMS" so a small group of Egosoft to do something hell of allot smaller.

I think you're overestimating the company size of Egosoft. Egosoft has about 20 employees, Hello Games has 16. The difference isn't that great. Also Egosoft is already working on different projects (XR/XR VR and X4) at the same time. There's only so much workforce you have and splitting up the team even more may not be possible without risking progress in other areas.

What I wonder though, and that's really my main point, why should Egosoft spend time on a new feature which is similar enough to one that wasn't properly implemented yet? Walking on stations, which was implemented in X Rebirth not how many hoped it would, will see an adjusted comeback in X4. With the stated plan of only implementing interiors "that are relevant to gameplay...[they] actually have". To me it would then make a lot more sense to wait how this implementation is seen by fans, before yet opening up another room full of possibilities for interiors/exterior modelling and gameplay actions. In that regard I also have a problem with the suggestion of making a smaller version of NoMan's Sky, as one of the main points of critiscm about the planets in NoMan's Sky and the station interiors in X Rebirth was that there was simply not enough to do in there.

[Rei Ayanami]

While planet exploration certainly would be a feature i'd love to see, i think there are some things i can think of why it would be, compared to NMS and Elite, far more difficult to implement:

1) CPU-power
When you play NMS or Elite your pc does not have to simulate the entire rest of the universe while you're hopping around on some planet or even when flying through space.
In both Elite and NMS when you travel from system to system with your jumpdrive the entire sector you're leaving gets wiped from your computers memory and only the system you're in gets loaded as a small level. When you land on a planet, almost everything in space vanishes and only your planet is kept as a new "sublevel". These two games essentially only show and simulate a small bubble around the player, they don't have a need to calculate thousands of stations and ships if they aren't in the same "level" as you.
X games on the other hand do have to calculate everything that's going on even if you are on the other side of the universe. While that is already quite taxing on the CPU while in space, imagine having to do that while also rendering nice-looking planet environments and calculating possibly thousands of on-surface vehicles per planet.

2) Ai
Fighting on the ground or with atmosphere-only vehicles would require Adding at least 2 new Ai systems : one for ground combat, one for atmospheric flight.
Ais for all ships in the universe can be very CPU-intensive, so i refer to my point 1), however i also like to add that the space flight AI in X games already isn't that smart (my guess is because there are so many Ai they have to share CPU ressources). Imagine how ships like to bump into eachother in space, now imagine the X ai flying moves in a gravity-affected combat aircraft over a fatal planet surface.... i'd rather have them improve the space flight Ai before them adding two new types of Ai for completely different environments.

3) Planet creation
While in Elite you can on "planets" as far as i know you can't really land on all planets, but rather "only" on non-atmospheric objects, and not all of them, proably because generating and loading believable planets with vegetation, animals, etc is far more difficult. Many planets in the X-universe however have life and atmosphere. Lets say Egosoft copied Elite and implemented planetary landings for non-atmospheric planets, what would be the in-game logical reason why you would be able to land on some planets but only those without plants, cities or any form of life?
Ok, lets take NMSs planetary generation then, it can generate planets with plant life and animals, so we can land anywhere. OK, it can't generate cities properly, but lets say that's not important for now.
While i absolutely enjoy playing NMS even to this day, i must say that after a while many planets feel very generic and same-y. Procedually generated content is bound to feel generic after a while, even while watching Star Citizens city generation technology you can see that many buildings and objects are repeated in a pattern. Genericness and repeteition is the biggest flaw with current planetary procedural generation and i have yet to see a game with procedurally generated planets that truly makes every planet feel unique and believable.
The only alternative would be creating the planets by hand, that that'd be a stupidly huge amount of work, especially if you want to uniquely model every planet in the X universe.

Again, i'd too love to have planetary exploration, but until the flaws of the current-gen planetary generation algorithms (genericness, believability of plant/animal life and cities, on-planet entity Ai and CPU-consumption) are improved and Egosoft somehow gets additional teams so they don't lose ressources intended for developing the space-part of the game i see little benefit in adding them to the X-series.

[schedarx]

I'm glad you won't be doing second Star Citizen. I don't want to land on planets. I just need planets to have some meaning economy wise. It's good that you are focusing on economy.

[theeclownbroze]

Planets are only as interesting as what you can do on them.

[Kevin2202]

Has anyone ever asked yourselves: what would I do if planets were explorable?

I'm a long time Elite player and while the concept of landing on planet is cool, but there's literally nothing to do but rove around nothing but rocks. Elite, no matter how hard the game tries, the game just feels empty everywhere. Bernd pointed out something similar - a good reasoning when he explains about the genre's market in the early days, during his presentation at XCON, which was about how FPS games had all these level designs but space games were just empty space and shooting other ships. So I am glad the direction X4 is taking, which is about making space feel populated and not empty.

And do you have any idea the resources it would take for the development team to have every planets to be explorable and populated with things to do?
Even Star Citizen, with all their funding and dedicated development studios, are still struggling to pull it off. And just then they announced they are going to shrink the world a bit too. It takes tremendous amount of time even for them and their development tools to make things easier in that aspect.

What's on planets that the space stations don't already have?

Are you expecting to see population centers and stores you can trade your goods at? As far as I'm concerned it's the age of space and all the things that players can do in the game are focused in space, so having planets to be explorable would be pointless imo.

I'd just like to explore star systems, trade, and fight. If I see another clunky FPS design in a space game, I'm going to be really annoyed.

[immortalfrieza]

What I don't get is why having planets is such a problem. It's not like they have to have every single sector have to have a planet with procedurally generated stuff like No Man's Sky, they could just as well have say 10 to 20 individually crafted planets dispersed throughout the X universe and go with that. The problem with No Man's Sky (a game I DO like BTW) was that it's impossible to make each planet interesting in it's own right because procedural generation is going to result in a tons of planets that are all copy pasted versions of each other, all essentially identical and only superficially different. They don't even have to put landable planets in this or the next game, they can just have a small team working on it and put the landable planets into a game whenever they've built up enough unique stuff on enough planets, at most having to translate it into a new engine.

It's not as difficult to make such a feature as people are making it out to be.

[Beermachine]

This thread reminds me of all the ones asking for explorable stations in X3's heyday.

Egosoft caved into the pressure, and what was the result in X:R?

Repetitive stations, dreadful NPC animations, boring exploration, granny heads, etc. Probably thousands of developer man-hours to implement and attempt to fix these issues, to then incorporate a way for station NPC exploration to be completely avoided via a menu....

All those hours could have been spent making the space part, of a space game, much better.

Call me crazy, but when I play a space 4x game, I want the space 4x part to be exceptional, rather than mediocre because a company has tried to satisfy far too many different game genres that they end up satisfying none of them.

When I get the itch for some planet exploration, there are many specialist games that do that FAR better than Egosoft could ever do, because it's their core gameplay mechanic.

[immortalfrieza]

This thread reminds me of all the ones asking for explorable stations in X3's heyday.

Egosoft caved into the pressure, and what was the result in X:R?

Repetitive stations, dreadful NPC animations, boring exploration, granny heads, etc. Probably thousands of developer man-hours to implement and attempt to fix these issues, to then incorporate a way for station NPC exploration to be completely avoided via a menu....

All those hours could have been spent making the space part, of a space game, much better.

Call me crazy, but when I play a space 4x game, I want the space 4x part to be exceptional, rather than mediocre because a company has tried to satisfy far too many different game genres that they end up satisfying none of them.

When I get the itch for some planet exploration, there are many specialist games that do that FAR better than Egosoft could ever do, because it's their core gameplay mechanic.

Egosoft, or any developer for that matter is perfectly capable of having multiple sides to a game and having them all work really well, it's just a matter of time and effort being put into the process of making it. Dismissing a feature as bad under the logic that the time and effort spent on it could be or could have been better used to make another feature better is nothing more than a excuse to get rid of a feature you personally don't like, and a poor one at that.

Any given feature in any game can be done well if the developers CARE to, and without reducing another feature in the process.

[Beermachine]

This thread reminds me of all the ones asking for explorable stations in X3's heyday.

Egosoft caved into the pressure, and what was the result in X:R?

Repetitive stations, dreadful NPC animations, boring exploration, granny heads, etc. Probably thousands of developer man-hours to implement and attempt to fix these issues, to then incorporate a way for station NPC exploration to be completely avoided via a menu....

All those hours could have been spent making the space part, of a space game, much better.

Call me crazy, but when I play a space 4x game, I want the space 4x part to be exceptional, rather than mediocre because a company has tried to satisfy far too many different game genres that they end up satisfying none of them.

When I get the itch for some planet exploration, there are many specialist games that do that FAR better than Egosoft could ever do, because it's their core gameplay mechanic.

Egosoft, or any developer for that matter is perfectly capable of having multiple sides to a game and having them all work really well, it's just a matter of time and effort being put into the process of making it. Dismissing a feature as bad under the logic that the time and effort spent on it could be or could have been better used to make another feature better is nothing more than a excuse to get rid of a feature you personally don't like, and a poor one at that.

Any given feature in any game can be done well if the developers CARE to, and without reducing another feature in the process.

In an ideal world where financial resources are unlimited this is true, unfortunately that world doesn't exist. Compromises have to be made, player demographics and market, gameplay focus, genre choices, complications to game design due to wildly different feature requirements between different genres, the list is almost endless.

Even Star Citizen, with its $160M+ and 400+ team is having difficulty implementing all the features it's promised (which are getting cut more and more) to an acceptable standard to satisfy all the demands of it's fans, mainly due to trying to be the "one game to rule them all". It's almost a textbook example of feature creep.

Edit - As for the personal comment, I have nothing against station exploration at all. I very much enjoyed it in the Mass Effect series, KOTOR and many other games. They had enjoyable FPS, memorable storylines / side quests / NPC's, interactions, good animations, diversity, etc. It's just that there was no way given Egosoft's budget and gameplay focus that they could get anywhere near those kinds of production values.

[26072013]

Dismissing a feature as bad under the logic that the time and effort spent on it could be or could have been better used to make another feature better is nothing more than a excuse to get rid of a feature you personally don't like, and a poor one at that.

That's obviously not true.

Money and time are limited. Developers can use their time to focus on the core features of their game and refine them to be as good as possible, OR they can spend their resources on adding dozens of different features and dilute their game to a disconnected mess of mechanics.

You simply can't have all the things, and you have to decide what's worth to have and what not. The station interiors in X:R were an awful idea, because they did cost several months or years of developer time and they made the game actively worse in every aspect.

And the thing is: We haven't seen interesting planets in a game yet. We also haven't seen a game where planets made actual sense for the game design and enriched the experience. And the reason for that is, that it's fricking hard to make it work.

It's hard to procedurally generate interesting planets of realistic sizes with different biomes.
It's hard to fill those planets with varied content like cities, road networks and other structures. It's so hard that it hasn't been done yet.
It's currently impossible to simulate economies and societies on a planetary scale in a meaningful way.
And how to balance all that while still keeping it believable in terms of population, resources, economy, etc.?

And all this can't be done in a few months of developer time; each of these points would potentially take years to get it right. Perhaps 'Star Citizen' with its currently >170 million dollars and hundreds of devs will create interesting planets for the first time, although I wouldn't bet 5 cents on it.

But for Egosoft with their limited resources it would be a huge mistake to even try to add planets, because instead of a better core experience we would get the next version of (Elite D.-like) huge barren rocks with no meaning for the core gameplay at all.

No, it would be awful. I hope X4 fully concentrates on space.

[Slashman]

This sounds like yet another "add multiplayer" thread.

Planets are not necessary in X games. Hell it took so many iterations to even get planets to be interesting in the Evochron series and I still am not inlove with them there either.

Right now we are finally getting a proper X game sequel with a lot of potential for new avenues to explore. That in itself is HUGE. I do not see the need to try to add planetary landings at this point.

Now economically to have planets perform an abstract function or present a resource is something Egosoft COULD look at. But this is definitely not a necessary feature.

I feel like Egosoft has finally gotten things together with X4. We don't need pointless detours right now. Lets leave that for expansions down the road.

[LTerSlash]

NO. There is no need to planets.

[monster.zero]

Don't care about landing on planets...I just want to ORBIT them.

Proper orbital mechanics would be number one on my list.

Visit a moon and see what's in orbit on the far side.

[spankahontis]

Dismissing a feature as bad under the logic that the time and effort spent on it could be or could have been better used to make another feature better is nothing more than a excuse to get rid of a feature you personally don't like, and a poor one at that.

That's obviously not true.

Money and time are limited. Developers can use their time to focus on the core features of their game and refine them to be as good as possible, OR they can spend their resources on adding dozens of different features and dilute their game to a disconnected mess of mechanics.

You simply can't have all the things, and you have to decide what's worth to have and what not. The station interiors in X:R were an awful idea, because they did cost several months or years of developer time and they made the game actively worse in every aspect.

And the thing is: We haven't seen interesting planets in a game yet. We also haven't seen a game where planets made actual sense for the game design and enriched the experience. And the reason for that is, that it's fricking hard to make it work.

It's hard to procedurally generate interesting planets of realistic sizes with different biomes.
It's hard to fill those planets with varied content like cities, road networks and other structures. It's so hard that it hasn't been done yet.
It's currently impossible to simulate economies and societies on a planetary scale in a meaningful way.
And how to balance all that while still keeping it believable in terms of population, resources, economy, etc.?

And all this can't be done in a few months of developer time; each of these points would potentially take years to get it right. Perhaps 'Star Citizen' with its currently >170 million dollars and hundreds of devs will create interesting planets for the first time, although I wouldn't bet 5 cents on it.

But for Egosoft with their limited resources it would be a huge mistake to even try to add planets, because instead of a better core experience we would get the next version of (Elite D.-like) huge barren rocks with no meaning for the core gameplay at all.

No, it would be awful. I hope X4 fully concentrates on space.

Again that's a matter of opinion.
Had it been done right, station walking would have been more interesting if more features were added to it that gave you a reason to explore the stations (Which Rebirth failed in).

To not exploit Planets for their material wealth goes against everything X as a game represents.
Building an economic empire yet people don't want to colonise planets/moons and asteroids.
Complete lunacy!

I'm confident that Egosoft will eventually introduce this into future X Titles, it's just not high on their priorities at the moment.
All we know is other space sims take planetary exploration seriously to implement it to their games.
If Egosoft shied away from this because it was "Too hard" then it would be embarrassing for them that they couldn't do what other companies, some with smaller teams than them could.

Simply need to draw the plans on what they want to do and what they can do?
Not go overboard with ambition and deliver something that's simple but fun that they can expand on.

[siboda]

No planet exploration please. Can we focus on a solid X4 that is worthy of the name X? If I want to explore a planet more closely, I play Empyrion. What X is good at is space combat, fleet management and empire building. I think we should let Egosoft get back on track with what worked really well from X3 (from their streams that seems to be the case).

Maybe someday we can have an X:Jack of All Trades game, but X4:Foundations is not that game.

[Seanchaidh]

Yeah, planet exploration is a huge project that I don't see being anywhere near satisfying enough to justify.

If you want planet exploration, go full sim and make X with the Orbiter 2010 flight model.

[Berhg]

Could there be any possibility of planet activity?

Be careful what you ask for.

[PleXD]

I would say no to Planet exploration but I do think that some interaction with planets should be in place and it does not require much additional features.

Like have a (or Multiple) planet linked station(s) where they offer certain goods that the planet produce and request certain goods that the planet needs.

Each planet has 3 components Population, what resources it produces/needs and GDP.

If you provide the required resources the planet population grows at a faster rate. If you buy planet resources the GDP goes up.

Higher GDP means the more ships that can be purchased to defend.
Higher population means more resources it has to sell and requires.

You can destroy the planet linked station and depending on how high the population and GDP depends on how fast they can rebuild the planet linked station.

You can lower the planet population and GDP by buying planet bombarding weapons.

However this would ensure that if you do wipe out a faction they will eventually start rebuilding.

[Kinscar]

I agree with the general sentiment in this thread, the game should focus on space. Making ship and station interiors is already a massive undertaking.