Trust, and faith in the developer.

[Beermachine]

For me personally, Egosoft burnt their trust with XR, not because of it's disasterous launch, but because of the fundemental design decisions and move away from the grand strategy open world freeform experience of X3 to a more steamlined approach, and somewhat misleading PR prior to launch.

Now, if X4 is an immersive, action packed, masterfully written epic narrative adventure (like the Mass Effect series, Dragon age 1, Witcher 1-3, etc) then I would love it.

Conversely, if X4 was an openworld sandbox strategic game with no / poor storyline (like X3, Mount & Blade, Civilisation 4-5, etc), but with the experience of progressing from a single entity to intergalactic empire with fun, challenging and varied gameplay mechanics throughout that journey (and hopefully also for the "end game"), then I would also love it.

The main difference between the two is one I'd love for 60 hours or so, and the other for 500+.

The problem comes when a game tries to do both (as in my opinion XR tried), given the time needed to fully develop the gameplay to a satisfactory level, as well as the many contradictary gameplay design decisions between these two very different styles of games. Games with this approach tend to end up with a nightmare mishmash of mechanics which don't fit the gameplay experience (for example mini games in a strategy game). The end result is an unsatisfactory gameplay experience for either player demographic.

As for X4, until I see actual full gameplay loops from independent sources, rather than PR controlled segments, I'll reserve judgement as to which player demographic it's gameplay is designed primarily towards, or whether they succeed with a much more difficult hybrid approach like XR.

As for a remastered X3, while I would be somewhat disappointed with no new gameplay mechanics, it would still be a definite purchase. The sole reason being that modders spend inordinate amounts of time modding games that they fudementally enjoy and suit the gameplay focus of the core design. Hence strategy sandbox games gets mods focused on expanding that aspect (factional wars, pirates guild,more open world aspects, etc), and storyline immersion driven games gets ones primarily for that (expanded quests, immersion overhauls, etc).

Given the great wealth of mods for X3, it's obvious that it's core gameplay design appealed to a wide variety of modders who wanted to make unique and varied gameplay experiences. The key difference from X3 being multicore support, x64 and no GOD engine to work around, allowing far more scope for modding possibilities.

As Scoob pointed out though, if X4 dispite having multicore support and x64, can't be pushed anywhere near as far as X3 mod wise without collapsing into suboptimal FPS figures, then it's fundementally a large step backwards and puts much more emphasis on Egosoft's core gameplay design decisions.

[GrieferBastard]

I think we're all very hopeful that X4 will take what we loved from X3 and add in the best parts of X:R and deliver something absolutely better.

However X:R was a jarringly bad experience for some of us. We tried to voice our concerns up front but were told no it'll be fine you'll love it - however it wasn't and we didn't. The highway experience was bad, the experience was not enjoyable and the new things added were in no way comparable to what was lost.

So saying "yeah, we're not going to put in the stuff you've said you wanted from X3 and we may be keeping the stuff you hated from X:R but we're fixing it so you'll love it" isn't going to go over well.

[SteveMill]

As the saying goes:

Trust is hard won and easily lost.

I’m a fan of the X series and space games in general but XR burned up my trust with both the state of release and game design decisions.

Unless X4 is released mostly feature complete and geme breaking bug free it’s going to be one of those games to buy 18 months later in a Steam Sale.

Companies in general need to stop treating its customers as paying alpha testers.

[Scoob]

Scoob, you make some v interesting points & I hope (like you) they'll be addressed in the next stream/podcast

V interesting points IMO. The first thing that leaps out at me is your 'bottleneck' problem: does this still occur lategame with vanilla play/minimal mods installed (note NOT disabled: mod artefacts can still disrupt 'vanilla' play )

Second, is your hardware possibly 'necked at data I/O thruput (ie from storage to RAM, since it's not suffering from G/CPU issues)? I know this is likely to be a trivial question for an experienced game machine designer, but just in case..

Third, has the multithreading issue hinted at in the XR pathing video linked above been addressed? (I don't expect you to answer this as it's something only a DEV is likely to know). Specifically, will the game be able to utilise >4 cores (given appropriate m/t driver support, natch; multichannel audio drivers seem to me to be specifically lacking in this respect ATM..)

Hi, sorry, a little late replying!

I did some quite extensive playthroughs with a vanilla game - a nice fresh, clean install - yet the problems were still there in a mature game. Running mods - assuming they don't have game-breaking issues - just accelerates the decline.

I've done a lot of testing re: my own systems potential limitations, I run the game from a RAID0 SSD Array - which is pretty fast - but even using a Ram Disk sees the exact same issues. So, they are not CPU, GPU nor drive limited, it's purely the engine that seems to choke, leaving all system resources under utilised.

The game does appear to thread well in that the CPU load is spread relatively evenly over all cores/threads - there's no single thread coming anywhere near to maxing out. So it's not a case of "Only 30% CPU load" when one thread is totally pegged out at 100% with others barely idling.

I'm aware that multi-threading isn't some holy grail of game development, there will always be some tasks that rely on the results of others so no amount of cores is going to help there. I mean, there comes a point where trying to spread a single process (let's say it's some sort of pathing algorithm as an example) over multiple threads to get it done quicker is at best diminishing returns and at worst can slow things down.

My hope is that the devs recognise this - they must have examined how modders are pushing their game engine - and will code to make the Engine much more robust going forward.

In the old X3 and prior Engine, the game LOVED it when technology advancing gave us vastly more single-threaded performance. I hope the new Engine can do the same as more and more cores become the norm. Going from an old AMD x2 to a Q6600 quad core back in the day made a massive difference to the game at the time. Not due to the extra Cores, but the IPC and clock speed of the CPU.

Anyway, I'm hoping the devs can release some more information soon, be it an update, live stream or just a chit chat.

Scoob.

[ajime]

inb4 new engine bug was just realized

[zurakx]

I'm one of those people that bought rebirth and really regretted it. The money was not even an issue I make plenty. I was more upset that i was a sale and therefor a check mark in the "people like this game" category. Of course I did not try to do a refund through steam. They offered a product and I bought it, end of story. But in fairness to them i remember them saying ahead of time that rebirth was not x4. I was warned.

Of course, this time we are getting "x4" and i hope that it lives up to the namesake. I expect that I will get a lot of things I liked about x3, as well as a few things here and there that I dont like, most of which can hopefully be fixed with mods. I am not expecting that I'll be disappointed with x4.

But when it comes to faith I dont really have it right now. Rebirth damaged that and its going to take a good product (IMO) to get it back.

The only way I could see myself preordering (which i said id never do again ) is if it came with early access AND through live streams ect I was 99 percent sure that I would like the game.

No ill will towards egosoft on my part though as they are their own company. I just hope that they really have decided to revisit those roots this time around

[Nikola515]

Trust is earned and not just given in my opinion

Thanks to XR lots of old fans lost fate in Ego or even future of X4.... All this could have been avoided if Egosoft didn't tie XR to X universe (they should called it something else). All though XR (now) is ok game on its own it is horrible X game.

[Snafu_X3]

Tks for the detailed reply Scoob, altho I think you may have missed one of my points: 'necked data flow from <storage> (whether SSD, RAM or cache) to CPU

No matter; I hope everything turns out well in the end

[Erqco]

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.

A "remastered X3" would be an instant buy on my part. After XR I'm very cautious about any "innovation" on the part of Egosoft.

Plus one, I will instant buy both, TC and AP remastered.

[spankahontis]

I wouldn't say I have faith - if all we had was the vague promise of "a real X4" I would be quite worried.

But consider how much we have seen working in-engine on one of the streams:

• Flying (almost) every ship and switching between them
• Piloting capital ships
• Teleportation
• Freeform placement & construction of stations
• Multiple weapon slots on fighters
• Graphical ship equipment editor
• The new map, in all its glory
• Travel engines
• TOAs/superhighways (whatever they are in X4)
• Real carriers, carrying ships, not just drones

Yes, any or all of this could be gone at release, but considering they've programmed the basics of it and shown it running to us, I think it's much less likely.

All this is very encouraging to me, because it's a clear departure from XR where so many things were fixed. Player ship fixed, ship loadout fixed, station locations and build orders fixed. Command and control for your ships much reduced. Being able to choose so much more in X4 will make you feel much more like a real part of the universe, which alongside empire-building is a main draw of X for me.

Personally X4 seems to be what Egosoft wanted Rebirth to be, but couldn't afford to add features to it any further and had to disable unfinished scripts for the time being and released it in the state it was during 1.0.

Obvious they were rushed to release something either by money constraints or by their Publisher.
And what we got was a train wreck. After 4.0 and 2 Dlc Later however?
It was a great game that stood out in it's own right, clocked 2700+ Hours so far on it.
Seeing the positive reviews that came too late showed that in it's state at 4.0+ Rebirth would have been much more warmly received.

[Morkonan]

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

^--- This.

I didn't buy Rebirth. I knew I wouldn't like it because it wasn't "X4." (To sum) But, did I break "faith" with the people that built one of my favorite games, ever? No. Why? There was absolutely no reason to.

Egosoft has demonstrated that it cares about their community of players. They do this constantly. It may have also been a factor in some of what we saw in Rebirth - They saw support for certain design elements in feedback, but they may have listened to intently to vocal fans and strayed.

From what I understand, Rebirth still has fans. Some are here, in this forum, obviously. So, it wasn't a broken game, Egosoft didn't abandon it, Egosoft continues to pump out patches for things as they can and they're being exceedingly open about the development of X4.

What's not to like?

[dreamer2008]

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.

I love the X3 games as well, still play them now with Litcube's, IEX or Mayhem. But how Egosoft acted with X Rebirth was not okay at all, let's be honest. First they made the game in secret without caring about player feedback, and secondly, way worse in my eyes, was the complete denial when it was clear they f**** up with X Rebirth. I still remember in interviews at that time not admitting anything about their mistakes and that was just wrong. And even after that they kept the high price, and even released paid DLC's. If they still have this attitude now, I'll keep my hopes in check for X4, we will see what we get at release.

[spankahontis]

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.

Speak for yourself, I clocked nearly 3000 Hours in Rebirth, allot more than I did in the X Trilogy combined.
Not everyone thinks Rebirth was a bad game, X3 certainly wan't a 10 out of 10, it had it's problems as did Rebirth, but I enjoyed both titles and clocked many hours on both.

[nemesis1982]

I love the X3 games as well, still play them now with Litcube's, IEX or Mayhem. But how Egosoft acted with X Rebirth was not okay at all, let's be honest. First they made the game in secret without caring about player feedback, and secondly, way worse in my eyes, was the complete denial when it was clear they f**** up with X Rebirth. I still remember in interviews at that time not admitting anything about their mistakes and that was just wrong. And even after that they kept the high price, and even released paid DLC's. If they still have this attitude now, I'll keep my hopes in check for X4, we will see what we get at release.

Egosoft does not have a good history when it comes to communication. However what you fail to release is that they do not ow you anything. They create a product and you buy it. After they sold the product they worked tirelessly to get the issues resolved and did so for many of them. They provided one of the DLC's free of charge and the other was 10 bucks.

They make mistakes however saying they do not own up to them is going a bit to far. What I do agree on is that especially Bernd had a though time admitting they fouled up quite a few things. However is that really that bad?

Also the end result isn't that bad and there are many who enjoy it, including me.

[Fame]

As far as trust in ES ... i still have it.
There support on all of there games is something not very comom these days and they have been doing this for a very long time
Despite the fact i still don´t like Rebirth... can´t help it and yes i tried several times.
Currently waiting for Foundation but this time ... sorry no pre-order. WIll wait and see when its done.

Fame

[Uncle Benis]

I clocked nearly 3000 Hours in Rebirth

My sincere condolences.

As for trusting egosoft to make X4 a good game, after playing XR its a definitive no from me. XR is just so chock-full of just downright terrible design decisions that should never have left the brainstorming session they were proposed at. Instead of acknowledging the unhappy accident that is XR and agreeing to never speak of it again, egosoft doubles down on objectively terrible, excruciatingly unfun, 90% downtime gameplay, insisting they didnt do nothing wrong.

Someone, or some group of people inside the decision making part of the dev team suffers from a severe case of misunderstood genius complex, and has to understand that hardcore players hate XR not because they "dont get it", but precisely and explicitely because they DO get it, and its awful.

And like the others in the thread, I will INSTANTLY shell out, day one, for a remaster of X3 on an updated engine, but Im VERY certain I wont be bying X4 from what we know about it so far.

[Chips]

Someone, or some group of people inside the decision making part of the dev team suffers from a severe case of misunderstood genius complex, and has to understand that hardcore players hate XR not because they "dont get it", but precisely and explicitely because they DO get it, and its awful.

I disagree. I sometimes feel a bit guilty, I played since X2, X3 in all flavours... and I remember commenting in feedback that I would probably not buy another X game in its current incarnation; to me the universe was getting stale, the game play was getting stale, it never evolved. I found X3 tedious compared to X2, at least the Khaak kept me on my toes as they could appear anywhere and demolish my investments. In X3 games my stations were safe - rarely a risk appeared. But everything remained the same. The gameplay was... stale.

So I was bored of it. I'd gone from thousands of hours playing X2 to a few dozen playing the last X3 iteration.

So I was someone who was asking for a change. Obviously many were upset to extraordinary degrees that the game wasn't what they wanted (which was X2 version 6).

So they tried something to freshen up the Franchise, and it went down like a lead balloon. I didn't enjoy it either, but some things I think were just poorly executed. E.g. in Freelancer, tradelanes were awesome. In X... not so much

I won't castigate them for trying something new, giving it a go. Wasn't for all, obviously, but... I also won't mock, or castigate those who actually enjoyed playing it either. To do so is not an admirable trait. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions.

And like the others in the thread, I will INSTANTLY shell out, day one, for a remaster of X3 on an updated engine, but Im VERY certain I wont be bying X4 from what we know about it so far.

You'd accept the same game repackaged with a bit of bling as a new title? That's your choice. Not everyone would share the sentiment.

I'll buy X4 anyway - been around long enough I'm willing to take a risk vs supporting Egosoft to continue. I also know it'll be hell for the first month on the forums - it always is (hence why I wrote a step by step guide to starting playing X3R due to the volume of malaise at launch - it is still there in my sig as a walkthrough, with responses in that thread indicating just how annoyed people were before then!)

Perhaps you'll wait to read reviews and see game footage to make a decision. But the bottom line is Egosoft have to develop what they believe is best, in their vision or desire. Their vision may not align with what you want - and that may be something they weigh up and incorporate into their decisions. But they develop games, we buy them if we like the sound of them. It isn't a "you tell us what to make". If they listened to that we'd be walking on planets for starters and have MP over everything else! True, they may just be led by money and make what's asked for by "hardcore fans" (instead of everyone), but maybe they've grown tired of that and want to try something different

[T-1000]

I would like to add my 5 cents.

When X Rebirth was released and I bought it I seen unfinished game (and this bad practice happen alot in other games rushed releases). So shelved it for a year until it was polished to playable state. Of course there was a lot of swearing while trying to play it initially but in the end I still finished campaign storyline. Even when today there are still lots of annoying shortcuts in game design decisions the game is not that bad when comparing its state to release date.

My advice to Egosoft about X4 - please do not rush release. Let people know about it with free beta demo version so with the help of community feedback the game can be polished. The best QA is community. Especially when there are no hundreds internal game testers around.

Cheers!

[JSalzbrunn]

Back to topic.
For me its just simple: Thousands of hours playtime in every x game - that makes it paying just cents for one hour of game fun. I didn`t experience this with any game i own beside X-Games...
And i also have a lot of faith in Egosoft. They are working on a game till they killed the last bug and make it fully enjoyable.
It was this way in the past and i see no reason they will change that policy in future.
They can have my money for my X4 copy in advance. I just trust them.

[Falcrack]

I have to say I am really looking forward to X4. I played a ton of X3TC and AP, with and without mods.

I got Rebirth but just could not get into it. I kept wanting to like it, but each time I started, I could never get enthusiastic about continuing to play. It was a bunch of little design decisions that turned me off, such as:

-having to fly within a few feet of station to unlock discounts
-having to play conversation minigames to unlock trade offers and hire crew
-horridly ugly NPCs with rude and childish dialogue
-highway bumper car minigames
-limited to one ship (an ugly one at that)
-a general confusion over how to figure out how to do basic stuff, coming from X3 (UI issues)
-walking around stations was not what I wanted in X games, I wanted to fly in space, and build and control a space empire
-Difficulty controlling a fleet of ships

Maybe if I played it more, I would have figured out how to overcome some of my initial bad impressions. I probably would have found several improvements from X3 along the way. I never did get to the point where I was building factories, multiple trade ships, and running a huge corporate empire, and one of these days before X4 releases, I may start it up again and force myself to play to that point until I find the fun.

So why am I optimistic about X4? Because of what I have seen so far from the developers, they have listened to the complaints and feedback, and are making a game to address those issues. With these issues addressed, I can sense a really good game potential using the Rebirth engine. With the ability to fly every ship, with a better map based UI to be able to easily control my fleet, with the custom station construction, I am more hopeful that this new game will be the type of game I was hoping Rebirth would be.