Something probably not though of yet

[steelfrets]

I recently read a few posts about people anticipating (possibly) XOU over the course of a few years.

What a fantastic idea! I keep telling everyone, if this game was online, it would beat any other game out there!

I think what's just going to have to happen, is, since the Universe would be HUGE, and that doesn't even scratch the surface, that there would have to be some way to distribute sectors to players. I have no idea how that should be done. I mean should a player be given his/her own sector when they got an XOU account? Or should there just be a set number of people per universe? How do you guys think Egosoft would be able to pull this off? I mean these games have to be huge, not just your quick: log in, fight a battle, and that's the game, it needs to follow with X3. What do you guys think?

Also, there's a problem concering SETA, this is something we definately need, how could they incorporate SETA into an online game?

Other ideas:
I think police, military, piracy (not the game stealer pirates), bribery, alliances, and even government should be things all players should be able to take part in, of course some things should require a very high ranking. Would it not be cool for players to take part in the governement of differences (for those that might enjoy this)? Or even being able to call an alliance together between two races and fight another? Maybe too if you started a clan, and that clan reached a certain rank as a group it could form it's own "race" choose a government style, etc, and would be granted more home sector(s) from the server. How cool would it be to have wars between clans, not NPCs, but people, able to form alliances, treaties, make war. What an amazing game this would be, I would pay 100 dollars for a game like this!

I really don't care how big this X Universe would be, it doesn't matter if one person controlled a ton of it, bc even the little guys could ban together against the big one, and if you lose all your spacecraft/stations, so what, you get to start fresh again. Ok well before I clog this post up too much, hope someone out there will read these ideas, and maybe add a few.

(PS, I think "Game Moderators" should be a part of the Argon government, with a few exclusive powers, and a few factories where you can get your start.

[[OL]Technic]

id sugest you have alook at this game.
i played it awhile back (trial version)
i was credited with over 1million in Cr's
by other players who wanted me to aid
them in there efforts.

http://www.jossh.com


anyway i enjoyed it.. stoped playing coz i dont have a credit card
as for the graphics ill give it 5/10 but its not far off X2 graphics.

[Asmayus]

Brilliant Idea, but I don't have broadband, so I won't be playing anything like it if it did come out. And If I did, I wouldn't play because of the monthly $20 fees. I'm fairly set in my view point that no matter how good a game is, it isn't worth paying for it over and over again. Still though, it certainly would be interesting to see the effect on X4.

AND NO, DON'T CANCLE X4 FOR AN ONLINE GAME.

But if it was a pay once & play game.... about $60

[Asmayus]

But if you could log on to the online game and have all the assets you've built up in X3/X4 (if its out then) It would be unreal.

[Szakalot]

Yes its well said, it will be unreal (ergo impossible to include) Imo u havent played any mmo before, if one could take all of his achievements from offline and place them in online universe u will get a situation like this: U just logged ur first time and lets say spawn in argon prime with a disco, two minutes later a fleet of hmmm 500 capital ships jumps in out of nowhere because one player decided to have some fun, even if ur system havent crashed u still will be incinirated. I cant imagine how hardware eating would be such a game since u got no OOS situations, best pc ever as a client wouldn't handle it.
And about SETA hmm... there is no solution for SETA , and u will have to pay monthly not some 100dollars which is imo low for a mmo like this (compare it to WoW u will see how much u will have to spend) .There is also no possibility to give away each player a sector (imagine universe with 10.000 or better 50.000 sectors, if u cant, compare the result to the 130< sectors in X2)
This would be really great but completely impossible to create in i think at least next 5 years. Unless u want to play with lame graphics like Tibia.

[anima36]

well ive had an idea for X online for ages and its pretty simple. it solves several of he problems you have put forward.



each sector has a trading station ( this could represents the link between space and the planet in that sector) that buys a set number of goods per hour (at a price based on demand), and sells an infinite number of a select few goods at a set price. it also sells a selection of stations, ships and weapons, again with infinite supply and a fixed price. in the begginig players would make money by buying and selling from these stations, when people got enough money they could buy a staion and plant it next to a trading staion that demand its output, it is more likely though that several people will band together and buy a station together, this would make it quicker to buy and provide a larger number of pilots and ships to defend it. this would continue for a while untill one person or a group of people had enough fie power to take out an entire sector because if they remove all the ships and stations from a sector then they can set up their own stations there and have a monopoly, they would of course then need to defend this sector from attack. Certain sectors would be more profitable making the fights to control them bigger. people could officailly band together in allainces and alliances or single players could control multiple sectors. if the trading station of a sector gets a steady supply of cheap goods that it needs it will start demanding more, because the planets population will grow, this give a high incentive to keep a sector you control steady with high production. in the end there would would be huge fleets clashing to control sectors.


there would be a lot of human interaction because you could offer your own assasination missions or transport missions.

i think if the ship you are in is destroyed you should just be teleported to your nearest ship or if you have no ships left then you refresh and start from scratch.

with alliances there should be stuff that the alliance owns and its leader controls but is classed as anyone in that alliances ship.

i think this idea would be cool what do you think.

[antman112]

i would not pay more then £100 (one off payment) for X-online

but as it wont be £100 just sit back and wait

[esd]

You missed an option for "no, not interested". I don't care for X going online. For me, this universe is all about me and I don't want anyone else spoiling it for me.

Not to mention, Pay To Play (which would probably be the only way to do it) is evil, and in my opinion is one of the death-knells of online gaming.

Oh... there is the X Online Universe, an MMO by Egosoft that's currently in the pre-pre-pre-pre-(you get the idea)-alpha stage, and has a guessed (by no-one in particular) ETA of between 2010 and 2020.

[Cycrow]

i agree with esd, i wouldn't much like a MMO X game

althou it would be nice to have a lan play for a few people, but thats likly too much work for the little gain it will give

[antman112]

ETA of between 2010 and 2020.

if it takes that long then so be it i can wait at lastest only 14 more years ill be 32 by then

[apricotslice]

You missed an option for "no, not interested".

I'm probably also in that category but for a different reason.

The internet is still too unreliable to play online.

Whats the point in being in X style combat with the net freezing for 10 minutes on you ?

I have cable broardband, but that doesnt guarentee a permanent fast connection, and an X based online game would demand the fastest most reliable speed possible.

The net has a lot of development to go through before it becomes reliable enough to meet that challenge.

[esd]

Added a "No" option due to popular demand

[dourdog]

The internet is still too unreliable to play online.

Whats the point in being in X style combat with the net freezing for 10 minutes on you ?

Well Eve online mannaged it. Its a similer game and looks good as well, although i appreciate the combat ran differently, theres not much reason that the combat would be laggy though. Take a look at battlefield and some of the other FPS games where you have 64 players fighting simutaniously (And in some games over a 100), each sector could be its own map, if you get my meaning.

[steelfrets]

Lots of good ideas, I guess everyone isn't for this. If they never were able to do X Online, I would't mind a fun LAN game, but my friends are all in to the shoot 'em up FPSs, nothing I can do about it... Yea I don't have highspeed yet either, but by the time something like this came out, highspeed will be available to anyone I hear, at a price competing with that of broadband right now. In fact, for almost that price we're bringing in wireless t1, and they take that and spread it through the neighborhood with min. download speeds of 2.3MBS, not so bad .

Seriously though, I would pay monthly for something like this, bc when it comes down to it, AI will never be as good as people running around in their own ships, not crashing into crap all the time, and much less micromanagement. I guess maybe I'll just have to make my own game!

[TehFreak]

AI will always have its place. X3 is a refuge from the 12 year olds on CSS and DoDS for me.

Humanity sucks, praise be to the Xenon.

[Shadowbourne]

Have any of you guys ever played Guild Wars?

It's an Online Multiplayer game. Huge player base, bu the best thing is, once yo've bought the account and client side software, (aroun £20 -£30), you never have to pay another penny. God knows how they do it, but i think what they do is hold tournaments, where super nerds gather to do battle in their own private reality.

Anyhoo, this makes money for them as they sell advertising space, and also collect entry fees, when they don't really have to do much themeselves.

The X games certainly have a big player base, not as nig as GW, but still fairly big. But in GW and other games like it, 1 Player means one char in game. For an X-Online game, 1 player would mean a very large amount of freighters, fighters, capital ships, and stations.

If egosoft could pull it off this would be fantastic, especially if you don't have to subscribe for it.

[Nyax]

I've said it before and i'll say it again. In my opinion an Online version of x would be a far from a success-

1) X is a game with a very niche appeal. It's far from mainstrem. Most gamers find it painfully slow and boring
2) Many of it's fans like it BECAUSE it's single player. They would not play a mulitplayer only version. This reduces an already small potential user base considerably
3) Online only games rely on a large user base. X online would either have to be pitched to the fans in which case it's user base would repesent maybe half the x fanbase. Not nearly enough. Alternately they could radically change and simplify the concept to appeal to a winder audience. This would alienate most of the rest of the existing fanbase.

[TehFreak]

I'm not so sure about that, Nyax. After all, every MMOG is utterly tedious. Take World of Warcraft, for example. I saw one of my friends playing it, he basically sat around in a queue for half an hour to get into a battleground, or whatever it is that they're called. There might well be a market for people paying to sit in space for prolonged periods of time.

[Szakalot]

The biggest problem is imo impossibility of making such a game online. U got various problems : extremely high hardware demand for the server , client also, after some time the universe will become like the labor camps in sibieria where new prisoners are being used up by the older ones (taken food n stuff). A new player will be far to weak to even think of gettin more powerful, expierienced ones will have dozens of capital ships and hundreds of fighters - how r u goin to support it?(i mean technically) And making limits or 'honor points' (see WoW) will strain the game cause the biggest advantage is the freedom. oh and SETA, oh and high risk of no one playing it. And many more. However if they actually make it and solve those and other problems while maintaining X basic features - this would be great

[Freeholder]

I have little interest in multiplayer games. I deal with the general public all day at work. When I'm done work I am sick and tirred of interacting
with anybody who's not my wife or my child.

Adding pay to play to multiplayer changes my interest level to active avoidance.