Trust, and faith in the developer.

[Musicker]

I've been playing the X games for something like 15 years now. I absolutely love what they have created, and have almost 7600 hours in X3:TC alone on Steam. However, I first bought the game long before I ever got it on Steam, and played it for countless hours back when it first came out as well, so I'm figuring something like 10,000 hours. I also have over 2100 hours in Albion Prelude. I don't even want to think about how many hours I have in X3:Reunion.. the first game I ever played by Egosoft. I just know it was a constant in my life for years. (My Steam name is Musicker, by the way, if anyone wants to verify these numbers)

Rebirth was a disappointment that I was never able to really get into even though I tried very hard.. but I have absolute faith that Bernd and crew will pull off another masterpiece with X4. They know what we, as X series fans have always loved about the games, and I trust that they will strive to bring back that magic.

Oh, one other tidbit here.. yea, they have kept up support of the games like... indefinitely. Pretty sure we just got another update of X3:TC and X3:AP recently.. many years after the games were finished. What other game developer does that? It's been over 10 years since X3:TC was finished, and we just this year got another patch to improve the game.

I'm not trying to kiss anyone's ass here folks, I'm just stating facts. And the facts I'm looking at, show that Egosoft cares about its games, and its players more than any other company, ever in the gaming environment all over the world.

So.. I have trust at this point. X4 may have bugs when they release it. It most likely will, because no testing will ever encompass all the different configurations and hardware and software situations we have out here in the real world. But they will release it when they think it is sufficiently stable on most platforms, and then they'll make changes based on feedback, as they always have.

Thank you, Egosoft, for listening to all of our various opinions, positive or negative, and staying true to your creations, to the point of updating them even 10 or more years after they were released.

I'm an Egosoft Fan, and I'm proud of it.

[thrangar]

I think most if not all agree that ES will take care of their game, what most are worried(?) is that this is a new beginning to old series and with what happened with RB and with ES rarely (if ever) changing a game play aspect once they introduce it, most want this to have the aspects that they enjoy and not the one that kill the game for them.


I think highways fall into that category. JD is another, station walking and so on.

If it can be modded then we will have the game we(each of us) wants eventually

So while we(think) we have a say now that's why we are so outspoken now

[LittleBird]

I'm not trying to kiss anyone's ass here folks, I'm just stating facts. And the facts I'm looking at, show that Egosoft cares about its games, and its players more than any other company, ever in the gaming environment all over the world.

Nah. You are exaggerating heavily and you miss a crucial point: The release versions were almost all catastrophic. The dev has the responsibility to give you the game you payed for. Many updates are mandatory and you expect them.
But yes after fixing Egosoft adds new stuff. Well parts of it are community work.

Honestly I think Egosoft did not enough in the past. OK there were restrictions of the old engine which was bloated with features it was never designed for.
Now with the new engine I expect and hope for major improvements. Judging by some objectively poor design decisions for X-Rebirth I have my doubt about it. But hope still lives.

[Fleabum]

I think most if not all agree that ES will take care of their game, what most are worried(?) is that this is a new beginning to old series and with what happened with RB and with ES rarely (if ever) changing a game play aspect once they introduce it, most want this to have the aspects that they enjoy and not the one that kill the game for them.

I think highways fall into that category. JD is another, station walking and so on.

If it can be modded then we will have the game we(each of us) wants eventually

So while we(think) we have a say now that's why we are so outspoken now

This is it, right there. There were a lot of X3 players who disliked Rebirth, and continued to play X3 (for 1000's of hours) even after Rebirth was released. If these are the players Egosoft are trying to win back then they need to look at what made the X series such a success and why Rebirth was disliked. As this is the next iteration of the X series then X series brand should be used as a baseline, they need to listen and dump or at least scale back the Rebirth features the X3 die hards didn't like.

Or at least make the engine moddable enough so all the stuff can be removed.

Regards
Flea

[spacecoyote99]

This is it, right there. There were a lot of X3 players who disliked Rebirth, and continued to play X3 (for 1000's of hours) even after Rebirth was released. If these are the players Egosoft are trying to win back then they need to look at what made the X series such a success and why Rebirth was disliked.

With all due respect, I think it's a mistake to try to win back the "hard core" old timers. It will not work unless maybe they would copy X3 and add modern graphics. Any aspect they'd leave out will result in endless complaints.

With X4 they are (seemingly) fixing the 2 major complaints that everyone, old and new, had: the UI being awful and being stuck in the Skunk. But I still see a lot of old timers bringing up relatively small, easily modded features (e.g. jump drives) as deal breakers and I really don't get it.

(Not that it should matter but for the record I'm an old timer myself, started with BTF back in 99)

As for the OP's topic: I'd also like to thank Ego for their hard (and sometimes thankless) work that brought me hundreds of hours of entertainment.

[Fleabum]

With X4 they are (seemingly) fixing the 2 major complaints that everyone, old and new, had: the UI being awful and being stuck in the Skunk. But I still see a lot of old timers bringing up relatively small, easily modded features (e.g. jump drives) as deal breakers and I really don't get it.

I would agree with you 100% if this were XR2, but its not. This is X4, so the problem of a single ship was never mentioned in X3, and the X3 UI was passable for the information it needed to display.

You need to turn what you wrote on its head, as this is X4, you need to look at what features X3 players dislike in XR and remove them.

What do you think they would be?

But I glad you agree that modding in JD's is important.

Regards
Flea

[StoneLegionYT]

*Checks to see if someone mentions rebirth and see it's another spam thread*

[ajime]

*Checks to see if someone mentions rebirth and see it's another spam thread*

2nd post

[LittleBird]

With X4 they are (seemingly) fixing the 2 major complaints that everyone, old and new, had: the UI being awful and being stuck in the Skunk. But I still see a lot of old timers bringing up relatively small, easily modded features (e.g. jump drives) as deal breakers and I really don't get it.

I would agree with you 100% if this were XR2, but its not. This is X4, so the problem of a single ship was never mentioned in X3, and the X3 UI was passable for the information it needed to display.

You do the same. X4 is not X3.5.
And the UI in the entire X-Series is awfull. The list only stile is outdated. It is based on keyboard than mouse and requires way too much inputs for easy tasks.

[GCU Grey Area]

And the UI in the entire X-Series is awfull. The list only stile is outdated. It is based on keyboard than mouse and requires way too much inputs for easy tasks.

Don't care if you consider it "outdated", find a predominantly keyboard-based UI easier & quicker to use than constantly having to switch to mouse. Use a joystick with my left hand & have never had any issues operating a keyboard with my right. Same cannot be said for mouse. In order to use a mouse effectively I have to let go of the joystick, look away from the screen & grab the mouse, therby losing control over my ship for several seconds. Rattling off a sequence of hotkeys is far more convenient.

[Spero]

*Checks to see if someone mentions rebirth and see it's another spam thread*

Well, people are genuinely worried that it's going to be more XR than X3. Not like insulting it as "spam" is going to change that fact.

This is it, right there. There were a lot of X3 players who disliked Rebirth, and continued to play X3 (for 1000's of hours) even after Rebirth was released.

Yep, I'm one. I think XR would've been a lot more beloved if it didn't call itself an "X" game. It wasn't even really that bad of a title, it's just the same problem that C&C ran into when they tried to change a known brand into something else.

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

Yeah, and then there is a whole bunch of other people who are genuinely happy that it is going to be more like Rebirth than X3.

[Axeface]

Yeah, and then there is a whole bunch of other people who are genuinely happy that it is going to be more like Rebirth than X3.

I think you could probably count those people on one hand.

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

Yeah, like the 50,000 plus people who bought the Home of Light DLC for Rebirth. Funnily enough I don't have that many fingers on one hand.


[Edit] these are the Steam only figures.

[Fleabum]

Yeah, like the 50,000 plus people who bought the Home of Light DLC for Rebirth. Funnily enough I don't have that many fingers on one hand.


[Edit] these are the Steam only figures.

Lets have a look at some Steamstats....

Name - Score Rank - Sales
X-Rebirth - 4%, 218,204
X3:TC - 62%, 575,864

Then go look at how many people still play the X3 games vs Rebirth (and bear in mind most people play X3 modded and offline). Then look at Twitch for example, more people stream the X3 series than they do Rebirth. Think that shows us all we need to know.

X3 still has 1000's hours a week spent on it. This was released 13 years ago for the base X3 and 6 years for X3:AP. Does Rebirth still have this amount of hours after only 4 years?

So just because a few people advocate on the forums that Rebirth is such an Awesome game, its so popular, all the statistics generally prove otherwise. Unless you can back up your point of view with some hard facts maybe that shows the data I found to be incorrect?

Regards
Flea

[LittleBird]

Yeah, and then there is a whole bunch of other people who are genuinely happy that it is going to be more like Rebirth than X3.

I think you could probably count those people on one hand.

X-Rebirth is not nearly that popular as X3:TC etc. are. That is unquestionable.
But I think this is not the point.

I hate a lot what X-Rebirth has to offer but Egosoft did some major changes with it. I am talking about the new size of sectors and stations. About the reworked economy and trading system. About the stunning and interesting look of the sectors.
Honestly I expect more X-Rebirth than X3. The good stuff of X-Rebirth of course. And there is some.

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

@Fleabum
I have never stated that X3 is an unpopular game. I have played various versions of it for 1000's of hours. I no longer play X3 or X Rebirth. However there is much in Rebirth that I regard as major improvements over X3.

From what I have seen of X4, Egosoft are continuing in their fine tradition of building on the best of their previous games.

I personally want Egosoft to continue to innovate and produce high quality space based games.

[Skeeter]

I really disliked the larger areas and would prefer the smaller x2 ones back with gates. Rebirth navigation and big areas are just a mistake I feel as yes there big but there empty too so what's the point. Imo that was the biggest mistake they did with rebirth.

[Vandragorax]

I think this thread (along with the hundreds of others that have devolved into "X3 vs XR" battles) quite adequately proves that if there is ONE thing Egosoft include, it absolutely MUST be modding lol

I have to say that I don't really understand why some people seem to literally just want a remastered version of X3. That is a different release guys, this is going to be X4. It will contain elements from X3 and Rebirth as well as totally NEW stuff, it will be modern looking and modern feeling so that it stands up with today's games in 2018 and doesn't feel like a 10 year old game as soon as it's released.

A game franchise cannot survive if it doesn't evolve as time goes by. If you are so adamant that X3 is the best in the franchise, then keep playing X3. But there are plenty of us who can't go back and play those things with awful UIs, keyboard-driven menus, bad looking graphics, dumb AI... and all the other faults (some of which have been improved in Rebirth, despite all the naysaying) and would rather a NEW game in the series tackles some of the issues and at least tries to introduce new and exciting and modern ideas and gameplay.

I'm with the OP that I have faith that Egosoft will deliver a fantastic game as they always strive to do, and fully support it in the years to come. I also strongly support Egosoft's track record regarding ZERO micro-transactions, and reasonably priced DLC which adds lots of new content. From the videos I've seen so far from Ego, I'm excited for sure! The ship docking looks fantastic, the strategic UI looks fantastic, station building looks fantastic. Definitely a lot of steps in the right direction, in my view.

[Spero]

I have to say that I don't really understand why some people seem to literally just want a remastered version of X3.

Nobody "literally wants a remastered X3". They just don't want a U-turn on the mechanics that made the X series a solid franchise, which is what XR was.