Graaf wrote:spankahontis wrote:Creative Assembly taught me what happens when you cut content and slowly reintroduce it and expect us to be grateful. ..... I don't want Egosoft to follow their model, I welcome their bold approach.
But isn't this exactly what Egosoft is doing now too? You're about to buy a new game for the ability to pilot more ships and have the Paranids return. And in the future we get the Boron DLC.
Honestly, I don't see the difference.
The difference from Creative Assembly is they were caught repackaging Content that was already in the Game on release date, they sold it back as DLC to make Pre-Order Sales, they still did this with Warhammer with the Chaos Faction Dlc, selling new unique Faction playthroughs as dlc.
And Shogun 2 (Which they were honest about that time) That they were cutting sizeable content from the game to try and streamline it, it worked for Feudal Japan, I enjoyed it then came the DLC Gravy Train which was a taste of things to come with Rome 2.
Previous CA Games were full of features and Rome 2 was stripped bare of features that made it great; the new features they did add, naming Armies, New intelligent Ai (Boy did that go down in flames) They took features out and what they put in was a crap horrible substitute for what TW Fans lost.
Where as Proper Traits and Ancillaries (Like in Rome 1 and Med II: Kingdoms), Building Tech Trees, Unique Units, Unique Factions, Animated Assassination Events etc. were taken out and it caused outrage.
I'm keeping my Eye on Thrones of Britannia, but I fear it's just the same old clone with a ridiculous amount of DLC, plus the unit cards and animations look ugly.
Funny you should mention Maxis and Sim City, I too loved that franchise and I share your loss for such a legendary title.
But that's what happens when you sell your soul to Electronic Arts, they eviscerate a games company, relocate their staff and sell off Assets, they're the Bain Capital Ltd. of Games companies and SEGA are probably going to do the same with CA when something similar comes along and they start issuing stricter targets and forcing market research down their throats to "add this and that feature cause Market Research says this is popular with fans" Just not CA Fans.
Luckily Deep Silver/Koch Media don't seem to crack the whip.
Egosoft aren't dumbing down or boneing their Game to a Husk, for what they've cut out, they've added new features to compensate, not 100% effective but you can see that Egosoft care where as CA simply don't listen to Feedback or we would have that Creative Assembly title we were promised back since Shogun 2.
The difference is in terms of what's being reintroduced to X Games and what's being added as new content.. There is full NPC Models now (Which X3 doesn't have), it's going to take a while to make enough to not be bogged with clones, sadly Rebirth failed in this regard, I wont lie; but I can see clear as day what they're doing and it's not reselling as it was never part of previous X Games in the first place.
To add further there is Ships with hundreds of Attachable Objects and all the coding, pathfinding needed to make them work (Which X3 doesn't have) That takes time to implement, again not an old feature being reintroduced.
Then there is the Stations with Hundreds of attachable Objects that you can walk inside of (Which X3 doesn't have) This is time consuming so can understand why we don't see Split, Boron, Paranid Style Modules, the number of Human/Terran Modules in Rebirth ALONE is staggering; when they reintroduce these and can walk around (Or maybe even swin inside) a Boron Facility and walk around a Paranid Facility then we will see how full of content X4 is to Rebirth and far beyond X3 and what it's Engine could accomplish.
Anyway you want to see it, Egosoft are making a ton of new models that will greatly outnumber what's seen in X3 and X4 will be no different.
Sure we can debate that features from X3 were taken out, sure there was, most we're reintroduced , those that didn't, probably not enough time? Or perhaps they didn't go well with the new Engine and were intentionally left out.
Many see a feature that isn't part of X Games anymore and the first reaction is "The Games dumbing down" This was made apparent when people were comparing Oblivion to Skyrim, Oblivion to Morrowind etc.
See the greater picture, the greater Context.
X4 is reinventing itself while keeping a sizeable number of features from previous X Games in. Losing Jumpdrives (For now?) doesn't bother me.
I'm interested to see how tactical chokepoints are going to work in X4, i'll make my views known if I don't like them or not after a few hundred hours of gameplay.
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