X-Online - where, when, if?

[nasahole]

I'm with X since btf. The only game that I know be slow and not boring but hypnotic.

So what is the story with X-Online? Anyone knows?
I do understand that developers were fighting for every breath of air since the beginning. But is it still something to hope for?

[lordphelan]

personally i hope it does not happen...... there is no way i (or a lot of my friends who play) can afford a pay as you play type system such as evercrack or WOW. Not to mention people who live in rural areas...here in Australia there are still places on dial up..... walk 2 km from my house and there is only dial up.....at 33K...not 56.

i would prefer something like... you play offline but upload stats/univers etc every little while. Servers assimilate and update clients...... but then we get back to $$ for this to happen..... simply can't pay.



Personally i like the game just as it is, some network support sounds good but who can organise a group to play egularly to sustain an empire??

I may be about to be flamed out of existace for suggesting that but meh...it's my opinion.

[Belfrahn]

Hopefully:

When? Never.
Where? Nowhere.
If? No, thanks.

[nasahole]

Flamed? No. As a matter of fact sound like my kind of place.

Monthly fees I too dislike, but if it's not an arm and a leg I'd prefer paying than deal with ads, crappy bandwidth and (sometimes major) security issues.

As for dial-up, well designed MMO updates every 3-6 seconds and doesn't use more that 28.8k.

However, the problem here is that MMO is a whole different animal. And would EGOSOFT want to go into this considering that X has a loyal yet small group of followers? Admit it, this game isn't for everyone. 9 out of 11 people that I showed it to found it "boring beyond the frontier".

Also technical side of it doesn't look to good. X-BTF and X-Tension had a great engine that was well written and not resource hungry even by 1998 standarts. X2 was already needed a pretty strong system to run. And X3 ... well, I don't find it's graphical chachkas worth getting another system and doubling frame rate with an update (!) speaks for major lack in development time and resources.

However I do think that there is a need for space MMO and the only group that has the right idea of what it should look like is EGOSOFT. I have seen many attempts by several companies and they all turned into shootem-to-level-up.

And finally, the only other game (well, games) that match (and copy) X in complexety and freedom is GTA3 and up. Rockstar will never make an MMO. Will EGOSOFT?

p.s. Whouldn't it be great if Rockstar and Egosoft collaborated?

[Deleted User]

regosoft or egostar sorry just had too

[nasahole]

regosoft or egostar sorry just had too

Hehe, I remember a big scare, when Egosoft and THQ parted ways a rumor started that MicroSoft bought the distribution rights and X2 will be made for X-Box only.

Try that for a size.

[WorldsWorstOne]

regosoft or egostar sorry just had too

Hehe, I remember a big scare, when Egosoft and THQ parted ways a rumor started that MicroSoft bought the distribution rights and X2 will be made for X-Box only.

Try that for a size.

Wasn't that first posted on April 1st?

[esd]

Also technical side of it doesn't look to good. X-BTF and X-Tension had a great engine that was well written and not resource hungry even by 1998 standarts. X2 was already needed a pretty strong system to run. And X3 ... well, I don't find it's graphical chachkas worth getting another system and doubling frame rate with an update (!) speaks for major lack in development time and resources.

Heh, the X-Games have always been ahead of the technology, engine-wise. I had to upgrade to play XTension...

[Jingleheimer]

Please, no MMO. Besides my refusal to pay to play a game I've already paid for, I have seen a definite lack of luster between MMO games and SP games. Compare evercrack with the Elder Scrolls games. Oblivion blows those games out of the water. Why? Simple. Bethesda poured their resources into the gameplay and graphics, while MMO developers took significant resources away from those aspects to fund the networking development. Therefore, less gameplay features and less graphics. The same would happen to the X series if Ego was to go the way of MMO. In addition to this, another thing that turns me off to MMO's is the deterioration of civility within these games as more and more PK idiots are playing the game. Anyway, imho

[esd]

GTA discussion split and moved to Off Topic. Thread can be found over here, so it can be discussed without dragging this thread OT.

[pjknibbs]

Compare evercrack with the Elder Scrolls games. Oblivion blows those games out of the water. Why? Simple. Bethesda poured their resources into the gameplay and graphics

Were you playing the same Oblivion that I was? The gameplay in that game was APPALLING. The whole point of single player games is to make it so that the player's actions can actually affect the gameworld in some way--I can't think of a single thing I did in Oblivion that made any fundamental difference to the way people treated me. Apart from levelling up, of course, which miraculously made all the nasties in the game stronger along with me...

[gooer]

this game can't be made into an MMO.. i don't think i could stand not having seta anymore.. and it's a bit easier to be the top dog and rule the universe when it's a single player game.. and who wants to move their computer to the bathroom along with a mini fridge and a microwave anyway? I for one have a life... while most of it may be work, i still have one. Maybe they could work some multiplayer aspects into the game.. like maybe you could travel to some alternate universe (which would connect to your friend's computer ...... omg... brain storm happening... What about a peer-based MMO? Everyone has their own randomly generated universe and when they fly to bordering sectors, they connect to a friend's computer over the internet (pre-configured) and join their universe.. Since ship automation can be handled by the hosting computer of that particular universe, bandwidth should only be used to send commands to ships and of course, the piloting of the player's ship. If a host shuts down, just simply have all the items in that universe transport back to your own.. This way, you could configure several sectors with jump gates capable of connecting to dozens of other people.. could make for some interesting dog fights.. and if someone's not online, have some nasty guards placed outside the gate.. and if you still manage to get through, you die.. and if someone does something jackassish while you are in their universe and they disconnect ... say when you bring over a huge fleet of M1's to destroy them, you can simply undo the trust relationship of that gate and remove them from your universe. maybe there should be a limit on ships you could send over.. like only being able to send over up to 300million worth of ships and equipment.. or maybe make that amount configurable, too.. I'd leave my x3 running full time.. it'd give me a reason to use the 3mbit upload speed i have at home.. it might be a pain to configure it, but anyone who can figure out how to even play this game shouldn't have any problems.. sorry for my ramblings everyone....

[WingC3]

I too am rather opposed to an MMO X game. What I would very much prefer is a Freelancer style of multiplayer for X. Hence there would be a strong single player component, but also in multiplayer people could create their own servers with their own instances of the universe that other people could build their empires in and interact with one another. That also gives groups of like-minded players the opportunity to have modded universes as they see fit.

Anyone with me?

[jackleonfraust]

sounds good though, nice idea to have a few sectors randomly generated with one jumpgate that can be turned off.... offline you have your own sectors and an inactive gate, online the gate activates and conects to one in a server universe (a few sectors with numerouse inactive gates).

be even better to interact with the universe generation by creating a race from selecting variables and designing your own.

would take alot of work, though.

[WingC3]

I really like your idea of inactive/active gates. It would be neat if the user interface for connecting to multiplayer were in-game. That to get online, you would go to your "multiplayer gate" and connect it to a server of your choice. Then, whatever you take through goes into the online world with you. The possibility of cheating is pretty high though I suppose if you allow players to bring offline things into the online world. Freelancer prevented that by keeping everything server-side.

[Sesk]

People could setup some private servers, like Freelancer or some NFS games, so no fees, only some kind player willing fully using thier internet to host a server, but no SETA would suck, so minimizing the universe would be a must, also there would be the problem of people in Cap ships, the ''elders'' of the server, blwoing up some newbs in Busters, that would kinda suck, also the save function, when, and most of all, lag, ive been a mod on some private servers (GM on VoVEmu), and saves cause alot of lag, so there should be a timed save system, which would be kinda complicated, and also internet lag, it would reduce the number of (OK if not good) servers out there, because as i'Ve read on these forums, not alot of people run on T3 or some other fast connection, and even, the population cap would be around 100 (from my experiences), which is barely enought to handle 10% (2%? 1%?) of this community, so it would kinda suck, but i'm sure that if the universe is srinked enought, a good T3 quad cpu Raptor dedicated server could run a 1k pop cap server... maybe more, but at a price: gameplay.
Point of this game is to be big, many stuff todo, etc... therefore to give a high replayability, but reducting the universe to 15sectors, thats like 1-2 sectors per race ( Ar, Sp, Pr, Tel, Bo, Xe, Pi,Ya,Unk[opt]) would really suck, imagine a Kha-ak start, befriending the Sp or some other race, and only having 3 (really max) to chop up sh** and trade would really suck.
Also you would have to forget UTs, because cmon we can't call this a universe, maybe macrosectorinfrastructure if you must, but anyway this is just my opinion, i might be wrong of the specs needed to run a X3 server with a pop cap of XX people.

Sry for typos, im sure there are some

[gooer]

that's the beauty of peer hosting.. you can disconnect people who cheat and keep them out.. or, if you're on a host that is cheating, simply leave and remove the gate to their universe... And a lot of games out there have servers for handling multiplayer stuff that doesn't cost per month.. like the ranking system for battlefield 2142, or the server browser for call of duty... they don't cost that much to run to have a "connecting" type server... something like that could run on an old pIII with the amount of connecting going on and the relatively small number of players... maybe they could make a version of the game that you can't enable scripting on. That'll help prevent cheating.. then here comes good ol' punkbuster...

[WingC3]

There would be no need to reduce the size of the universe at all, simply replace the seta with a "cruise engine" alla freelancer to reduce traveling time without warping time for everyone else. And yeah server populations would have to be kept somewhat small, but with anyone being able to run their own...just have lots of servers Cheating and Noob blasting are definitely issues, although a noob would have to be attacking an M2 to get killed since there's no way an M2 would be able to chase down a buster. A veteran in an M3 killing a newbie in a buster...maybe...but the game is pretty well balanced for that too...the M4 can still outrun any M3 so the M4 would have to actually engage the M3 or M2 to be at extreme risk of dying.

[gooer]

with the sizes of the universe, with many players (generally staying in their own), i doubt more than 5 or 6 people would be on a server at a time.. there might have to be some limit that you can set depending on your upload speed.. I have 3mbit up and down at home thanks to internet over my power lines.. they are changing the service to either 5 or 10 mbits up and down. With my current speed, I can host a 20 player call of duty 2 server on my wife's p4 2.0 and still have everyone with ~80ms or less ping times (except the noobs who don't pay attention to ping time)... i waltz in with my 0 ping and waste them all though. .. and as for the UT's, once it enters someone else's sector, it doesn't communicate over the internet except for commands.. the remote computer controls the movement and everything, only reporting back information as it's requested and also money information.. as for losing seta, why not take vega strike's idea of having speed governers on ships that you can turn on or off, and faster engines.. every single engine in the game is capable of more than a mere 200kph.. make a few less sectors, but make them massive with more trading opportunities in each. You might be staying in 1 sector more often, but flight time might not be so bad if you have to go from one to another if your ship is going 5000kph... (i can see all of the crashes into roids now). Make jump drives more common and cheaply operated.. there's always a solution..

[gooer]

by the way, when i began talking about making some multiplayer aspects, I was figuring maybe 10-20 people get together on a forum and get each other's no-ip.com address and they all start a game together... while bumping into someone else might be rare, it would be a spectacular battle.. but massive players sounds good, too if managing it were possible.. oh, and who says an gigantic ship couldn't catch a smaller one? The gigantic ship could have quite afew m5's on board..