X4 : next release ?

[Vandragorax]

Since we are in casual discussion, I was wondering if you (Egosoft) have ever considered to do a fully open development system like Amplitude Studio (endless games, last one being endless space 2) ?

Idea being every design/mechanics choices is detailed and given publically and the community do vote, give ideas of improvment and for the part who have access to alphas give feedback (I guess the last part is similar to DevNet, so already have. Difference being almost everything is public).

It worked for them, and Sega accepted to edit them despite having this unusual organization..

They did got a few months of early-access on Steam with limited access to the contents but was in the last stage of development. Ideas is not crowfunding or years of Early access.

I've also followed Amplitude Studio's games, and they are mostly very good, although I do feel that Endless Space is very 'sparse' in terms of actual gameplay. It certainly feels like a mish-mash of features that people voted for and were stuck together without really any idea of how they should fit in with the other gameplay mechanics.

Not to mention that their turnaround time for patches and updates was excruciatingly slow for even the smallest of features.

There are negatives to this method that obviously CBJ and the team have considered and wouldn't work for them, in the same vein that 'early access' wouldn't help them much either (too much resource needed to essentially project manage the feedback and corralling users into accepting the direction the devs sometimes need to go in).

[Slashman]

I've also followed Amplitude Studio's games, and they are mostly very good, although I do feel that Endless Space is very 'sparse' in terms of actual gameplay. It certainly feels like a mish-mash of features that people voted for and were stuck together without really any idea of how they should fit in with the other gameplay mechanics.

Not to mention that their turnaround time for patches and updates was excruciatingly slow for even the smallest of features.

There are negatives to this method that obviously CBJ and the team have considered and wouldn't work for them, in the same vein that 'early access' wouldn't help them much either (too much resource needed to essentially project manage the feedback and corralling users into accepting the direction the devs sometimes need to go in).

I haven't found that Amplitude's turn around time for patches is that bad honestly. Endless Space 1 was their first game and as such may well have been short on gameplay, but Endless Legend was pretty brilliant.

I think patching for Endless LEgend was slow because they built the game in such a way that everything they touched affected everything else when it came to the AI. They had to do a lot of work to make the AI playable because they used a system of weighted voting based on artificial "departments" for every AI faction. This turned out to be extremely problematic and took a long time to correct to the point where the AI was decent.

Endless Space 2 has been a completely different beast with not only frequent patches but the modding system being used to test balance changes etc for the main game. They are currently hard at work on an expansion so it may seem like a lull but I suspect there will be an announcement for the new content soon.

[Alan Phipps]

Back onto X4 topic please.

[Slashman]

Apologies for the side track.

In terms of an open development system for Egosoft, it may or may not be right for them. It certainly takes some initial work to setup because traditionally, this is not how games have usually been developed.

The tricky bit is knowing when to draw the line in terms of accepting user input versus having to say no to a particular feature or mechanic because of resource or time limitations. Or simply because it doesn't balance out with the rest of the game from a dev perspective..