X4 Foundations Poll #3: What did you NOT like?

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

From the list... nothing.

My primary complaint is the level of software quality which is below par for Egosoft... very disappointed.

[EDIT]Just to clarify, the primary issue is the software bugs regarding stability, performance, and usability. For example: Menus not always showing when they should even on recommended hardware or above.[/EDIT]

[Fame]

I have opted for none, since i still do not own the game.

Major reasons for myself... it has still too much bugs by the looks of it, again this is from what i have read in the past few weeks. Wished that the first task should/could be to iron out bugs first than adding plots/refine ingame balance.

It looks better/sounds better than when it started a few weeks ago but in the grand esqueme its still not worthy for me... for now, sorry.
Personaly i don´t care about nice graphics its nice to have them tough... its the current game mechanics that gives me some thoughts.

Fame

[cpticeman]

Before I get onto the negatives can I just say thank you for listening to the players and for the X universe. X4 is good but has some frustrations!

I don't like the remote trading, I spend most of my time in the map trying to find the pilot that has completed their order (no log goes with this) I can't direct pilots to repeat orders (such as mining) when they video call me and the lack of training/difficulty in increasing pilot skills is just making this frustrating.

The missions - tried the Teladi drop off a cerebus vanguard with a blast mod...!!!??? they don't accept delivery no idea why no further info. Other missions aren't clear what you need to do so I haven't tried so far.

Ships - why can't we swap shields, weapons, deployables etc. between ships?

Can we find a way to store Inventory items, can't sell illegal items and I keep getting scanned, frustrating keep flying away from police especially if doing repair missions!

Venture - Can't see results of missions unclear if I am actually gaining anything unless I look at Inventory (not that I can remember everything!)

Space walking - just soooo frustrating not a good experience at all, X3 did it better, thankfully I can teleport back now which reduces the frustration.

thanks

[FutileSine]

Yeah... having a hard time with this poll, several of these 'features' that I don't like are due to the fact that they're broken or only partially implemented and it shows. It's a little infuriating actually. I'm used to buggy games that need some patches to restore functionality, not patches to attempt to quickly implement incomplete work, and that's really the option I wished this had. "General state of incompleteness". I love remote trading, I don't like how it's currently a nightmare due to a skill system that (mostly) doesn't work, and the sudden removal of right click context options 'because they weren't supposed to be there' - which makes no sense because there's no good replacement for "Import Wares" or "Export Wares" the options made sense, but they provided a workaround to the skill system, so as opposed to fixing the skill implementation to properly gate the context menu, you simply removed it.

It's stuff like that that hurts this game.

There's a research tree that is an interesting idea, and references needed resources, etc. but due to release day just takes 10 minutes / round and requires no base planning.

There's a great boarding system for large ships, but it's a crap shoot trying to send multiple marines over.

There's a fun combat layer, but the enemy AI is so inept and broken, and the weapon damages so unbalanced and untested, that it makes combat frustrating or just pointless.

There's an encyclopedia for lore (as always) which contains a large number of empty entries.

I haven't put up a negative review, but I'm not recommending it to my fellow space sim friends because the game is just 20% baked. Saying "we have so much more planned" is not a great answer when the things that are preventing me from enjoying the game are broken features, not "bugs".

Right now I have to say almost every feature in the poll is a 'NOT like' - not because of the feature itself, but because of the number of them that don't work as intended, or are only borderline functional. A real disappointment for what I know will be a good game in 2 years... which isn't acceptable for a released title (not early access).

My eventual steam review will be 'pick up at a sale in 2021' similar to when I finally told my friends without a sense of embarrassment about X: Rebirth.

[Reimu Hakurei]

I don't like the walking around stations. I don't even want to walk around my ship. IMO it adds nothing to the game.

[RefocusedLight]

Most of the features i actually dislike are not listed.

AI: useless, does something but its the wrong thing (approx at the level of the flasher episode on X-factor). Friendly AI - worse than useless (that feeling when you're an orderly and now have to reverse the consequences of a sunshine bus door accidentally left open 3 hours ago).

Awful lot of generic, flavourless everything - generic ship balancing, generic weapon balancing, generic factions, generic conflict, the whole Elite school of strictly procedural for its own sake genericness except this time encompassing ships too

War on lore - data vault mechanic (and the whole spiral outwards thing) + the spontaneous encyclopedia abortion + faction progression that makes OTAS rank grind and related notifications in x3tc seem atmospheric and awesome + no plot as a pride/selling point. No, Fortnite isn't something to look up to.

Right click context menu getting worse and more useless with updates

Mission surrealism - bring me 8 destroyers for 200K, train 3 marines for 150K, fetch me 2000 anvils 470K. Dali approves, but i otoh have to ignore entire mission types.

No decent personnel hiring, training or management, 5 mins in menus to reassign 1 person. (kind of makes me feel i'm trying to run a network of child pickpockets across 5 supermarkets each in a different area of a large city)

And most of all - THE MMO DESIGN HINTS <<<< HATE!!!!!111!!

[Empyrion]

ok, I'm really enjoying the game, however....

Not interested in Venture (yet) but I do want my squads and wings to work, along with my bots doing what they are told to do. Spending 45 minutes to sort out simple dock and wait + protect ship instructions is plain wrong. Can we either sort out the software or / and sort the UI.

I have to say the UI is almost at university degree level of learning at times and trust me, I am not intellectually challenged in any way. (member of Mensa, just IQ stuff but I am gifted at making connections....) It is spoiling the gameplay to the extent that farming crystals makes more and is easier to do as a solo effort than sorting out the bots. Time sink.....

[Socratatus]

I didn`t dislike any of those options. So I didn`t vote.

It`s the question you don`t ask that makes me wonder, such as, "Do you like Ventures?"

But maybe you don`t want to know because you don`t intend to stop it.

[hobrob]

Biggest problem for me is the fleet mechanics around orders and formations. Formations should be really tight, only breaking for combat, obstacles, docking and travelling through highways and gates, but they're all over the place. I have a squadron of five fighters following a lead corvette and they don't seem to stay in formation for more than 10 seconds. Most of the time the fighters are lagging way behind, sometimes just stopped still, travelling slowly or worse still they've taken it upon themselves to defend a position for no apparent reason and I have to constantly hit the 'recall subordinates' option for the leader, which invariably takes another half an hour for them to reassemble. They also get dragged in to attacking enemies long after the lead has moved on so I have to micromanage the implied orders of each ship, cancelling the attack order for each ship until they clear the area and rejoin the lead. I know you can set their response so they do not respond in kind when attacked, but in most cases you want this to be the case and its only when you have ordered the lead to move on somewhere else that you would expect the followers to do the same.

I also have a fighter escort for all my autotraders and autominers where I would expect the fighter to stay close to the lead ship at all times but all they seem to do is travel ahead to the target destination, leaving the transporter vulnerable. I've lost two big ships due to this mechanic.

Generally I think the order queue is great, it allows for fine control of what your ships do and when but some of it seems really broken - the implied orders added to the queue (e.g. defend position) for no apparent reason, the lack of formation discipline and odd interpretation of escort duty.

[hobrob]

Missile fire probability, apparently it's 100% for all AI controlled craft. I let an AI pilot take over control of my ship during a combat situation and watched while he unloaded every missile in the ships inventory in the space of a couple of minutes, only one of which hit anything. I have a frigate which I tooled up with 108 missiles and left to it's own devices, imagine my horror when he hailed me about an hour later to tell me he was out of projectiles and asking what he should do. 'Fire less missiles' was my desired response but was not available as an option. Where is the missile fire probability setting that was present in X3?

[Xenon472]

the thing I dislike the most isn't in the pool:
I am struggling with the absence of the feeling of progression, it's both too easy to make credits and too shallow the progress curve that when you get your first M ship you don't feel the achievement like you did in X3 or X2
as an example the argon ships have all very similar price range, there isn't the progression like when you go from an m4 to an m3 that is five times more costly than an m4, but also way more durable and powerful
and even less when you go from a fighter to a Corvette (bombers and frigates too in X4) or from a Corvette to a powerful destroyer

as you can see below there isn't enough gap from different ship classes (both between the same size as a heavy fighter is less than twice expensive than the interceptor; and between different classes, as the M ship are barely three times more expensive than the S fighters)
the only almost balanced difference is between the M and L ships (that are 5-10 time more expensive than M ships) but they are still too cheap:

preset: -------- min | mid | high --- (i used for every preset the same weapon laserMK1 because weapons choice depends more on the role of the ship than the class itself)
elite ----------- 320k | 670k | 1060k
nova ----------- 430k | 930k | 1390k
eclipse -------- 530k | 1250k | 1550k

minotaur ---- 1500k | 2070k | 4000k
cerberus ----- 1850k | 2630k | 6230k

behemoth -- 12000k | 14600k | 21100k

another problem that is being discussed already is the capital ship problem, they have too few turrets and are kind of imbalanced, as example the Odysseus has almost twice the turret of the behemoth (4L, 12M vs 2L 8M), while the Odysseus feel ok (not considering that turret doesn't work properly but that's a different problem) the behemoth feel "empty", it's weird to see a big ship with so few turret, it could benefit a lot (both visually and balance wise) from having more M turret.
the same problem of the behemoth affect even more severely XL carriers, they feel weird, they should have twice or more turrets (maybe only M turrets and just one or two L turrets, to be able to defend themselves from fighters and M ships)

I think that it should be added XL battleship with a lot more turret and another L ship (cruiser or whatever) in between the current L ship and the hypothetical XL battleship

and that's what bothers me the most

that being said I think that X4 is going to be a great game and a wonderful "foundation" to build upon, and I think EGO did a great job with it, can't wait to see how it will evolve!

[grobern]

There is nothing in that list that I can select as to what I did NOT like. However, there is this:

- Bugs

X4 Foundations is an awesome game but the bugs are just everywhere. I have not played for two days now because it takes all the fun out. Are the developers also doing the QA? That is not a good idea. You need another pair of eyes and a different mind set to test such complicated software. Also consider using unit tests that can run on their own for a few hours and simulate input, and test the results against what is expected.

The patches are coming thick and fast but I find most of the bugs listed as fixed still remain after the patches. There are most likely more than one different cause that trigger each bug so maybe all it will take is some time to find them all. Each build seem to introduce more and more instability, however.

As of build 1.50 these issues are affecting me:

• Build 1.50 removed the right click option for auto trade. That is fine because it can still be set via behavior, except that it seems not only was the right click menu option removed, the whole auto trade logic got messed up. For my game setting behavior to auto trade made my traders grind to a halt where they were working before 1.50. Now they just sit in one spot, rotating in different directions but never moving.
• AI assigned to escort/defend ships follow the assigned ship almost half a sector behind. I thought this may be because they have slower engines so I assigned a slower engine to the main ship, with the same effect.
• I can no longer repair the pressure leaks on data vaults. My repair laser has no effect. I even tried shooting with the normal laser to damage them first and then repair, but neither laser has any effect on the leaks panels.
• The venture results panel stop responding.
• The encyclopedia is showing unread count even when I triggered each item, tried many times.
• After returning to normal view from external view there seems to be memory corruption. Slowly other ships show they names as my ship that I viewed in external view, eventually filling the screen with the same name all over and then crash.
• When mining crystals and using the magnet 'O' key half the time I see them getting closer if I target one fragment... 400m...300m...200m...100m...55km?!! Other times it work just fine.

In addition there seem to be so many missed opportunities. I go to PHQ and talk to the Boron but nothing happens, not even a hello. I thought we were building a nice relationship and now I am being completely ignored. Not nice. Starting to feel like ejecting it out an airlock. It is being very rude.

[XGamer]

I can no longer repair the pressure leaks on data vaults. My repair laser has no effect

Seems like it has a very limited range, like 30 or so meters. It may look like it's hitting stuff but it doesn't actually do anything.

[Tomonor]

I can no longer repair the pressure leaks on data vaults. My repair laser has no effect

Seems like it has a very limited range, like 30 or so meters. It may look like it's hitting stuff but it doesn't actually do anything.

That's not it, the data vaults do seem to go passive. But seemingly only when they were activated once.

Workaround for it: shoot the pressure leak panels with the ship's lasers and then repair them - they will work then.

[mr.WHO]

I think that basically I don't like following things:
1) Boarding - only because completely idiotic GUi that require me to transfer 50 marines from captured ship ONE BY FRICKIN' ONE!!!!!!! That is huge downgrade even from X-Rebirth. You need to make mass crew/marine transfer GUI. We also need dedicated shuttle/TP class to ferry larger amount of presonel. Even maybe some dedicated dropship/capture ship.


2) Missions - no progression (e.g. better, bigger, garder missions as you progress the reputation and fight rank), missions lack of variety within type (same amount of spawned mines, lasertowers), as well as lack of various types (e.g. no assasinate pirate).

3) Wars - Argon vs. Xenon - mission chains suffer from same issues as point 2 - not only lack variety, but are for most part very strange pack of mission within chain - when I join war I want combat missions, not hunting for 3 star engineers. As for mission variety, why we only have "hunt x2 Xenon P"? why no more similar like "hunt 10x Xenon fighters", "hunt 5x Miners", "hunt destroyer" - you can easily make dozen different variants of the same "hunt mission". Why no "attack Xenon defence platform"? You cound have tons of COMBAT missions, but now we only have "hunt 2x P".

4) Large scale fights - this is mainly because M and L size weapons are very underpowered. Also L size weapons lack variety - why there is no railgun battery? No Torpedo launcher? Why there is no "huge blob" weapon from X-Rebirth (HIVI/MA turret)?


Also some minor things:
- lack of anti-missile flares - just 1 flare per fighter? 10 per Carrier? This is useless.
- most of ships have copy/paste stats - e.g. Dozen Argon freighters which are nearly identical.
- Carriers are useless - they should repair and rearm missiles of docked fighters to be useful.
- no way to rearm/resupply missiles mid-flight - I have to recall my ship to docks to resupply my missiles.
- Xenons lack variety - why there is no new/old Xenon ships? Where is Q, J, LX? Where is Xenon bomber?
- Khaak doesn't have any point other that artifically spawn within your vicinity - either scrap them or make them "real" with economy and more ships like Xenons.

[Doomkoft]

I will try to get back to adding to this review and maybe change it ?!?!? Not sure. I play GTAV and ED Horizons quite a lot. Both are open world games with ability to free-play if you choose or take on missions or join with others. Both GTA5 & ED have interfaces for your mouse/joystick and works very nicely. Not much to getting it going. The X4 game is not so friendly; i tried to use joystick but it keeps me rolling in weird ways that doesnt seem natural or intuitive. (my opinion). But what really got me. I decided to just get outside station and turn on those flying around which must have been space police. Of course i was destroyed. 3 of them attacked and then i saw GAME OVER ! WTF i didn't realize i bought a overpriced arcade video game. You die in GTA 5 or ED you just respawn in closest space station or nearby street corner and go get another car or buy new space ship. NOT GAME OVER ! Are you kidding ?!?!?!?!? I love the graphics in this game but it should never be Game Over ! ! ! ! ! ! ! EVER ! ! ! ! ! This game is FIRED ! So programmers get it together and fix that. I dont like video games. Not spend 2000 hours playing it. I will most likely just let cobwebs fall on this game. If you fix that and make it more like ED Horizons then i will come back and try again.

VERY UNHAPPY Doomkoft

ps Graphics and sound are Fantastic! You've got a good space simulator but not a stupid VIDEO GAME GAME OVER?????

[Paul McParland]

I choose the combat (pretty much all options), missions, and remote trading as needing improvement. I will explain why:

Combat:
Feels weak, this is mostly due to how weak and the limited number of player weapons.
Boost tied to shields. I do not like this feature. Okay in X-Rebirth when it was only the player that had this, but the AI just cannot handle it right. Would be better if boost had it own energy gauge.
Capital ships feel very meh, for the most part I don't mind the design of capital ships (except the paranoid, they look like flying hair dryers) Capital ships shields seem week, not sure why they just feel weak.
Capital ship turrets and main weapons feel extremely week. Xenon capital weapons are good, every other race turrets just feel weak.
Shield cool down before regen feels really long.
Cutting the travel drive warm up in half would be great, currently takes way to long to get started.
Capital ships need flak cannons, the current turret weapons are to weak to be effective on fighters
(Personal hope)
Would love to see some type of combat engines for capital ships

Boarding:
The boarding pods flying all over the place and taking forever to attach to the target.
If using AI controlled ship for launching boarding pods, the ship flying circles around the target for 5 minutes before launching pods
The fact that there is no mass personnel movement, and I have to move each person individually is painful

Missions:
Very limited and repetitive. There is very limited variety and pay does not scale.

remote trading:
Pilot leveling, you have to have a level 3 pilot to do anything and even then AI pilot is dumb as dirt.
The constant micro management. I feel like I spend more time with the map open than I do actually playing the game.
Remote trading tied into the station manager. With the leveling system as is I think it is just creating problems with everything.

Finally I just wish to say I do enjoy the game. I think the station builder that is in place is the best the series has ever had (been playing this series since X2)
Am looking to get back into the game sometime after patch 2.5 or most likely 3.0.

Wall of text sorry

[Ordogg]

Can i add a write in poll?

I didn't like that the game was released in a Early access state when you released it. Must of the stuff is still broke in 2.50. Missing descriptions, random bugs, invincible bases and goes on from there.

It feels as if your trying to remove the complexity of the game, the complexity made it great. If I wanted a casual space game, i'd play a something else.

[SPiDER]

the thing I most disliked and the reason for voting down in steam would be bugs....it still is not debugged or finished asking people what they dont like when it isnt finished is pointless...get rid of all bugs tell us its done then ask what we think...

One of the most annoying things is reporting a bug...and you dont even get an acknowledgement of said bug..or even a nod to say its been added to the list...nothing nada nada...also why isnt "Encounters" on the list that caused the most comments and its not even included......and of course its totally bugged.was there even an apology for releasing version 2.0 in its broken state ..how many players completely gave up after that godforsaken release??? it killed my game

And some of those bugs are still there...ARG military still on holiday in their yards and equipment docks that was uspposedly fixed...not


And for christs sake get rid of the indestructable ***** instalations and Xenon asteroids and despawn the damned Xenon build storage.( after 50 ingame hours if no actiivity Despawn...)

The other Thing I cant get my head around is Xenon are AI so why cant they rebuild from just one Mining ship? they spawn new defense stations why cant they respawn Solar Plants,Wharfs and Yards, why cant e-cell ships convert to mining ships just by collecting some ore or silicon?.....they nearly took over the galaxy once before...branch nine appear to have de-evolved

[boogieman335]

1 Personal mining ; Would be better if the asteroids were placed at edge of sectors instead of center. This makes you go and find them so you actually explore. It makes personal mining more of a treasure hunt. It would also solve the immersion breaking getting stuck in an asteroid while using travel drive. Betty saying autopilot epically failed once is cool, but if it happens all the time because the sector is to thick with asteroids in front of the gates its a game breaker. Also The small miners need a 2nd weapon slot. You can't fight off a group of xenon with a mining laser.
2 The boost cause shield drain. You can't run from a group of attackers. If you have boost it should be tied to weapon drain, your not shooting at them if your trying to run.
3 Base speed of all ships is to slow. I' ve been using a mod I don't especially like some components of but it boost the base speed and gets rid of the boost that only gets me killed in a dogfight any way. I think the travel speed should be the same for all ships. This lets the smaller ships with less mass accelerate faster than big ships so they can still out run them, but it doesn't penalize the player for using a bigger ship to transport freight, by giving the m class freighters an advantage over the long haul.
4 I personaly do not like the highways. I did not like them in rebirth, they were the main reason I still haven't played it very much, and I don't like them now. Fortunately theres a mod for that.
5 I love the scale. Walking out in front of a m class freighter and up that ramp is just so cool. But when you leave the cockpit you can't go any where. The hallways on the stations look like they could have been used in the ships as well and should have been. Give me a Captains quarters or engine room. Maybe a marine barracks. Take it to the next level were ready for it and you made a great start.
6 NPC clothing. The Npc's are a vast improvement in this game but It just really ,really irks me to go in the cockpit and a guy in a 3piece suit is flying my ship or some loser in a hoody. I want to see uniforms. Think Mass Effect or the Honor Harrington books. Some of the pilot ones are pretty cool but hoodies and 3 piece suits just don't work for me.
7 The crafting thing is not very appealing to me.
8 I love the data vaults and the in space suit parts. I would like to see more of this maybe incorporated into mining and for sure more wrecks to explore.
9 Fleet control needs some serious work. In X3 the old Anarkis scripts let you set up a carrier, send it out on patrol, and you did not have to micro manage things so much. Fighters launched, docked and pretty much functioned the way fighters should . The carriers rearmed, repaired and patrolled the way carriers should.
10 The Calisto ships don't really seem to serve a purpose. Their to small for trading . They don't serve the fighter role to well. The Discoverer has Exploration sewed up so what are they for?
They seem to be the volkswagon bug cheap and ugly. So they never get built by the player.
11 The X games have shields but still don't have shield effects. Why not? That was always one of the really cool things in space games watching your weapons impact on some other ships shields.
12 missions were never really that big a draw for me in x games cause I was always more into the empire building aspect of things but I can see how for some people a little linear guidance is a good thing.
13 What you guys have created is a great thing and I'm not talking about just this game. I am talking about all of them. I have put so much time into x games for years. I would have been content if you had just put out something that gave updated cockpits and graphics to Albion Prelude, which I still have a heavily modded version of running on my PC. The community has been blessed with this new version of the x saga and even though as gamers hungry for the next best thing we probably bitch to much and show our impatience to often we are truly thankful for what you have done.