What Happened to X-Online?

[SilverCommand]

on a quick prenote, i would really like a multplayer on x3 just for kicks.


back around the x2 era there was an announcement and a websight about x-online, the x-universe with everybody playing, with crazynes and hillarity for all.

needless to say there were some issues with a change in gameplay, you know, space, resoures for a community, buisness going crazy, and some devices being bad for use in multyplay, i sight the SETA drive for the only example.

the thing ive always been wanting is to be an actual crew on a ship, running to places to man turrets and stuff. i would like that, you could also have boarding.

also the distruction of empire stations, what moderator powers would there be, penalties.

eve online is really the only mmo space ship game, and really its a pain in the ass to play, a stockbroker more than a fighter.

so ya, its gonna be hard to do, but i would still like to see it done.

postnote, the SETA drive might still be usible if you just make it accererate speed instead of time in a multyplay. you could make it a bit fun, make it make a singularity infront of the ship, make it so it blocks missles and using it as a ramming weapon, make it use energy cells.

[Rilder]

Not another one....

http://forum.egosoft.com/search/44_43.h ... efault.css

OR

http://forum.egosoft.com/search.php

[Carlo the Curious]

If you mean X-Online Assault, that was a browser-based game.

With L3 access you can read the forum at the bottom of the Forum Index page.

[silentWitness]

XOU's been around since XT... if not before!!! I hope they take their time because I won't pay for the MMO and so I'll be without a game to play!

No more X... because they'll be too busy to make the offline versions...

[Fresshness]

XOU's been around since XT... if not before!!! I hope they take their time because I won't pay for the MMO and so I'll be without a game to play!

No more X... because they'll be too busy to make the offline versions...

I agree... no online only versions (while, let's say 4-8 multiplayer LAN option is highly desirable indeed, however NO SETA IN MP PLEASE )

[ninjitsumonk]

*sigh*
then you will be very upset indeed.
We all know it is egosoft's long term goal to make X go to an MMO, and we also know that LAN would cost the same to make as an MMO yet would return no profitsssss....

[Predator02]

MMO's are expensive to maintain mind you.

They should rather allow home hosting. we get more servers, mods and no jerks unless you really want them.

But I've thought over it, not sure how an X game would run online. If you died, how would you respawn? What of your fleet? What of the ship you were in? What happens when you get stranded in a space suit with no money? Mount a saddle on an old fighter drone? (though that would be absolutely hilarious)

[Cycrow]

But I've thought over it, not sure how an X game would run online. If you died, how would you respawn? What of your fleet? What of the ship you were in? What happens when you get stranded in a space suit with no money? Mount a saddle on an old fighter drone? (though that would be absolutely hilarious)

and u've missed the biggest one, what happens to all your ships and station once you log out.

but anyways, with MMO, there is constant money comming in to cover the costs of the servers, which reduces the maintance costs.

for a lan game, or running your own servers, will bring in no extra incomming, which means theres no extra income to actually develop it in the first place

[Predator02]

No offense to you, but that might be a little shortsighted. Money comes in from initial purchase and with the modding community and online play? Longer marketability. One of the primary reasons X3 is still around and kicking is the great modding community. MMO's have no modding communities, it's considered hacking.

[CBJ]

As has been explained many times, it has nothing to do with being shortsighted. Multi-player will be hugely expensive to develop. That means it has to generate a lot of additional income over and above the sales of a single-player game. That money also has to be spent up-front, long before any income is generated from sales, so until someone comes along who is prepared to put up that money it simply isn't possible to do the work. And finally, how exactly would "online play" generate any money if it were a LAN game?

[ninjitsumonk]

It wouldn't, heck it may even reduce you're income. Having a LAN game means that people would want to play LAN, but may not want to pay X amount for the game, and would hence bring more hackers(unless you released another no-CD patch again) but even with that said, people would quite likely buy one copy, download the patch, hand the game to their mate, carry on etc etc and hence would actually stop people buying the game(one per 4-8 people).
Feel free to remove any of the above, just stating facts .

[anima36]

x online cud work, ive spent a lot of time thinking certain bits through,

you need to be able to trade with an 'NPC'. my idea was that there cud be one of these stations in each sector, possibly reprsenting the demand of people living on the planets of that sector. this wud mean if you cud control a sector and build just your factories there, you cud make a good profit. however for one person to control a sector wouldbe nearly impossible so you would eed large groups of people to defend it, aswell as possilbly retaining computer controlled ships to help defend. in this way empires cud grow up, if you held a sector for a while you cud build up a big fund and spend this on a new destroyer to ake over the sector next to and increase your income. a few of these NPC stations cud buy a lot of stuff and so there wud be a lot of empires trying to take the sector over and great rewards for anyone who succeded. with this system there would be no need for any npc stations or ships other than 1 per sector, i think the ships and stations shud b delivered to a sector you chose from 'nowhere' to save shipyards becoming horribly overcrowded, equipment cud be bought from the NPC stations, possibly with no discrimination otherwise some equipment might be hard to get if the stations that sell it are in controlled space. this system would force people to work together which i think is a good thing, if you didn't want to you cud just play single player games.

if you die i think you shud be able to chose to jump straight back into one of your ships or if you only had the ship you were in have to pay a large fine to be restored with a new ship, maybe 50% of your credits or something.

[rolfness]

WoW in space... yuck ...

[Nanook]

In the final analysis, the only real difference between a future X-Online and the current EVE Online would be the different perspectives when flying a ship. First person flight vs 3rd person control. All the other aspects would have to be virtually the same, regarding economy, player-owned stations, fleets, etc. Sure, some of the mechanics may be a bit different, but if you think it through logically, that's the only conclusion you can come to. So if you want an online space game, go play EVE.

[NewtSoup]

@ Nanook, by that same argument then ALL mmo's are much the same. Which they are, same as all RTS are essentially the same

In general -

An X online Universe would pretty much have to be wow in space. I'm not saying you'd have to level up (although we do do that in the single player game with each race for perks and for rights to certain missions). More that the game engine would have to be totally rebuilt to a (realtime) turn based game with special abilities. The reason for this is latency. Think of all the MMO's and all the FPS games. MMO's may have several thousand people online at any one time, FPS only allow a handful to each game. This is because of the latency problems that happen when you have shots that have to be aimed by the player (with or without help) and take into account their speed and trajectory to determine a hit.

So, I believe XOU would most likely use a "chance to hit" system and the player choosing what kind of attack to use. You still get to fly of course because that's relatively slow compared to the shot speeds needed.

What about stations and trading as Cycrow asks? well, off the top of my head, they could vanish or they could stay. Vanishing sounds incredibly unrealistic and impractical (imagine if someoen is trading with your station while you log out - what happens then?) so scratch that one. So stations stay. But you're not online to defend them so should they be destructable or indestructable? If they're destuctable then it could lead to a spate of arguments over stations being "vanished" unfairly because they were not able to be there to look after them. If they're indestructable then a station loaded with credits and self sufficient could simply stay there until the end of time even if the player cancels their account. You could auto destruct stations when a player cancels, but then some players often take a break from an MMO for personal reasons and come back and they'd obviously want their stuff back when they came back and not have to start again.

The same goes for fleets If players own fleets then the player that owns the biggest fleet first can essentially rule the universe and stop all other players from getting to a similar position. How do you park maybe 100 odd ships when a player goes offline? Again ships are expensive to replace if destroyed while the player is not able to direct them so they have to be stood down somehow in the interests of "fewer headaches" for the game staff.

Oh I mentioned stations earlier didn't I? so Lets look at mines - currently in X-Universe it's one mine per asteroid. There are a finite number of mineable asteroids and main asteroids don't respawn when destroyed. So as it stands, whoever gets the most mines down first (as these are the baseline resources) rules the universe (financially). So the resouce and resource spawning system has to be totally overhauled and a reasonable claiming system brought in. One way is the way they did it in SWG - mines were movable, and resources shifted randomly every 2 to 3 weeks. Unrealistic but it keeps everything turning over and helps stop monopolies on resources. Of course people who played SWG will remember the harvester farms that plagued the servers where resource traders just maintained harvesters permanently in the same places and sold whatever they happend to have a lot of at whatever price they could get.

Now there's PVP. Some will want it, some will definately not. Choose one or the other and you're cutting out player base. Most likely a "flagging" system would be used with perhaps one or two hardcore servers. This of course brings back the question - should fleets and ships be destroyable by players. Its going to be mighty difficult looking after a lot of ships.

So onto property ownership - Perhaps a player should be limited to one ship at a time (own many only have 1 active so, no universe traders). So typically a mid range player might own an M3/M4 and a TS and later a TL for planting mines and stations. Perhaps there should be a limit on the number of ships you can own also, along with stations. Perhaps you could earn the right to place stations with each faction. so each time a selection of stations becomes available you gain permission to put one station down in the sectors belonging to that faction. (this would mean something like 25 stations MAX).

So, I think I had better get to the point or I will just go on like this all evening. My point(s) is(are)

Yes XOU could work.
It will take an incredible ammount of work to pull off (and money).
It WONT be the same game but it should be the same univese in look and feel.
A few paragraphs in a forum can barely cover a thousandth of the issues that need to be addressed. I've pointed out a few and not even provided any solutions because the solutions are all interconnected.

However, yes I would pay to play XOU if it were there. There won't be a modding community for it (outside UI maybe) but that's what the monthly fee is for - continued updates and maintenance and to put food in the mouths of the developers who work their butts off to keep us happy.

[Predator02]

As has been explained many times, it has nothing to do with being shortsighted. Multi-player will be hugely expensive to develop. That means it has to generate a lot of additional income over and above the sales of a single-player game. That money also has to be spent up-front, long before any income is generated from sales, so until someone comes along who is prepared to put up that money it simply isn't possible to do the work. And finally, how exactly would "online play" generate any money if it were a LAN game?

You're also assuming it's going to be cost effective in that there are enough players paying to keep it running. How many failed MMO's are there compared to Successful ones? At least with LAN the community lives on and the company doesn't have to take a leap of faith in purchasing or renting servers for a game that may fail.

[Nanook]

As has been explained many times, it has nothing to do with being shortsighted. Multi-player will be hugely expensive to develop. That means it has to generate a lot of additional income over and above the sales of a single-player game. That money also has to be spent up-front, long before any income is generated from sales, so until someone comes along who is prepared to put up that money it simply isn't possible to do the work. And finally, how exactly would "online play" generate any money if it were a LAN game?

You're also assuming it's going to be cost effective in that there are enough players paying to keep it running. How many failed MMO's are there compared to Successful ones? At least with LAN the community lives on and the company doesn't have to take a leap of faith in purchasing or renting servers for a game that may fail.

Except as has been pointed out, Egosoft gets no additional income from a LAN-based game, yet they would put in probably twice as much time and money. So how is that to their benefit, and why would they even consider such a thing?

[Predator02]

The same reason you make games pretty and put in bump mapping. You don't have to and it costs money, but it'll catch eyes.

[Nanook]

The same reason you make games pretty and put in bump mapping. You don't have to and it costs money, but it'll catch eyes.

Not mine. I much prefer an indepth single player game I can play whenever, to something simpler and multiplayer. All that time spent adding LAN capability would be better spent adding more features and gameplay to the single player game, IMO.

[Predator02]

So then our compromise would be a better X game with neither lan nor mmo since it wouldn't be cost effective or a safe investment either way.