Inside Egosoft Podcast -- #05 Stories and Missions -- now available

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Mistle
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Re: Inside Egosoft Podcast -- Episode #01 Multiverse Team Seasons -- now available

Post by Mistle » Thu, 27. May 21, 14:59

Thanks for explaining and yes I agree in 100% that exist many more urgent problems.

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Re: Inside Egosoft Podcast -- Episode #01 Multiverse Team Seasons -- now available

Post by KingLetho » Fri, 28. May 21, 13:24

Feedback on the pod cast:
It was basically the first podcast I ever listend to until the end...^^
Sound quality was very good, moderation as well - especially in a way that the questions and their answers build a good narrative -, and it was very in-depth which was great.
I expected it to be more advertise-y and I'm happy that it was not but more about actual game dev.
I'd also like to hear more from other team members, and what their day-to-day tasks look like.


Thoughts on the new ventures:
I think that it combines the best out of both worlds. You can interact with other people in a way - if you want to - yet you aren't limited in your progress normal games do. I can still rule the universe:)
What I'm not sure about is the competitiveness that was mentioned. I mean, yes, I get sth. even if lose but obviously I'd hate to miss out on cool stuff. But X is (was?) game I can play in my own pace.
It might be an approach that certain stuff becomes unlocked/available if I'm able to perform a certain task - but not if I can do it better/worse than other people, who, potentially, run a muuuch larger empire than I do.
I like the idea of having more events, it's certainly what keeps the game interesting to me. But again, maybe more "reach goal x within the month" and not "be better than Y which can only be if you play >x hours per month".

.. I wonder if EgoCredits will have their return. If they can be acquired through regular play it might be interesting, especially as a way to exchange them for paint jobs, unique ship blue prints and what not.
But if you have to pay real money for it... It needs to be done with care, it's a cauldron than can easily blow up.

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Re: Inside Egosoft Podcast -- Episode #01 Multiverse Team Seasons -- now available

Post by gamingwithdaopa » Tue, 1. Jun 21, 02:03

I wish X4 was a MMO with players actions being the content driver, that being said, this Team Seasons is a interesting first step to something like that ..


Only thing that bugs me is the "Start" from a save, instead of a new start for this season stuff..


If I am not mistaken, you can not Reload from this new Online Team Season mode, which makes the game a lot harder, but if people are starting from a already established place, it kinda messes up things.. from my POV.

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Re: Inside Egosoft Podcast -- Episode #01 Multiverse Team Seasons -- now available

Post by paraskous » Tue, 1. Jun 21, 13:04

I'm not so hot on OP venture ships lolstomping through my hard-earned stations. I rather opt out of that.

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Re: Inside Egosoft Podcast -- Episode #01 Multiverse Team Seasons -- now available

Post by Shehriazad » Tue, 1. Jun 21, 20:39

paraskous wrote:
Tue, 1. Jun 21, 13:04
I'm not so hot on OP venture ships lolstomping through my hard-earned stations. I rather opt out of that.
"OP Venture Ships"...they're still controlled by X4 AI...and it's not like you'll suddenly have a coordinated FLEET of Destroyers trying to nuke you. And then there is the fact that the stuff is actually opt-in, anyway

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Re: Inside Egosoft Podcast -- Episode #01 Multiverse Team Seasons -- now available

Post by Falcrack » Wed, 2. Jun 21, 20:52

Shehriazad wrote:
Tue, 1. Jun 21, 20:39
paraskous wrote:
Tue, 1. Jun 21, 13:04
I'm not so hot on OP venture ships lolstomping through my hard-earned stations. I rather opt out of that.
"OP Venture Ships"...they're still controlled by X4 AI...and it's not like you'll suddenly have a coordinated FLEET of Destroyers trying to nuke you. And then there is the fact that the stuff is actually opt-in, anyway
No matter how OP the venture ship you see in your game universe, it's gonna suffer in the hands of the AI against a player. Or suicide itself against some defense station.

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Re: Inside Egosoft Podcast -- Episode #01 Multiverse Team Seasons -- now available

Post by Tamina » Wed, 2. Jun 21, 21:45

Listen to the podcast again. No fleet will stomp through your universe.

Code: Select all

Und wenn ein Forenbösewicht, was Ungezogenes spricht, dann hol' ich meinen Kaktus und der sticht sticht sticht.
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Re: Inside Egosoft Podcast -- Episode #01 Multiverse Team Seasons -- now available

Post by Raevyan » Thu, 3. Jun 21, 00:44

Tamina wrote:
Wed, 2. Jun 21, 21:45
Listen to the podcast again. No fleet will stomp through your universe.
Mostly because the AI is just too bad.

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Re: Inside Egosoft Podcast -- Episode #01 Multiverse Team Seasons -- now available

Post by Tamina » Thu, 3. Jun 21, 01:32

rene6740 wrote:
Thu, 3. Jun 21, 00:44
Tamina wrote:
Wed, 2. Jun 21, 21:45
Listen to the podcast again. No fleet will stomp through your universe.
Mostly because the AI is just too bad.
Mostly because that is not intended to happen.

Code: Select all

Und wenn ein Forenbösewicht, was Ungezogenes spricht, dann hol' ich meinen Kaktus und der sticht sticht sticht.
  /l、 
゙(゚、 。 7 
 l、゙ ~ヽ   / 
 じしf_, )ノ 

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Re: Inside Egosoft Podcast -- Episode #01 Multiverse Team Seasons -- now available

Post by adeine » Thu, 3. Jun 21, 05:27

If I understand the feature correctly I don't think it's particularly well thought out as the game stands.

So the idea is you fork one of your saves to be the multiplayer one, which is then played in ironman mode - given how wonky large parts of the game still are, I really don't think this is going to work out well for people. Can't count the number of times I've had to reload old saves because things broke in interesting and not really recoverable ways. Just read through reports of people losing their long running games because they didn't cycle through save slots. Which having different save slots mitigates, but it seems like that will be a no go for the online component?

We're told this is not a problem because you can still play your offline saves, you just can't interact with the online save for each 'season' once you've forked it. When you think about it though it's really the worst of both worlds. The benefit of playing the online component it sounds like is player asset invasions, extra quests and economy sinks with periodic rewards of unique in-game assets (special ships, etc.).

If you treat your online save as disposable, these rewards are useless for your single player saves. Yet the single player saves are the ones you'd want to invest a lot of time in because they don't run the risk of spontaneously breaking (by virtue of having save slots) - which leaves the online save feeling like a tacked on chore for little reward instead of the main way of playing the game.

I assume this is done so people can't reload saves or 'game the system' to cheat quest points (?) in the online save. But you still allow people to fork one of their offline saves, which completely unbalances the playing field to begin with - when you have someone loading in their thousand hour game with dozens of wharves/shipyards pumping compared to someone starting a new save for the season the existence of save scumming/reload cheating or heck, even using multiple saves for online play seems like a silly concern in terms of balancing.

Some off-the-cuff ideas:

- What if you have to start a new game for each online season
Ok, hear me out. Not only does this solve the balancing of players and teams, but it also allows Egosoft to write better and more diverse, interesting scenarios/setups (e.g. you could have different starting points of the universe, which could narratively tell a story - imagine for example a season where the universe has been overrun by the Xenon and players start in a tiny corner of the universe, working together to liberate sectors? Maybe even as a result of the outcome of last season? Possibilities are endless). It also means rewards can be more meaningfully tailored to the theme of the online event. In this way the 'online save' would truly be a new way of playing the game, feeling like a distinct experience rather than a crippled offshoot of your single player game you don't really want to sink time into.

- But doesn't that render player's long-term offline saves redundant? What if we want to reward people's offline grind for online play as well?
Well,I'd say no it doesn't, because it's an altogether different experience (short term narrative save vs long-form empire building one). But here's a thought: What if you could send ventures not only as part of the online save for points/quest progression, but you could also hook into this system to cross-pollinate between your offline saves and online save. Unlike a full fork of an offline save with infrastructure, this gives a controllable advantage/interconnectivity. You can limit how often and how many/what kind of ships can be 'sent on a permanent venture' to the online save, where they can then be used as players see fit (or sent on an actual online based venture/quest). More importantly, this would give you a flavour-fitting way to 'cash out' your online season rewards, by sending them as a venture to your offline saves, giving you the ships/items to use in your more permanent offline games as you see fit.

This approach could also solve the issue of mods/ventures, as you could have the vanilla online game and run mods in offline games. If there's an incompatibility between mods and your online save, the 'offline venture' to transfer ships between the two will fail/break the game at this point, so you're never in danger of actually sending it to anyone else. After all, you'd only be able to send an online venture from the vanilla online save slot, so whatever you transfer from other saves will need to work properly in a vanilla game.

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Re: Inside Egosoft Podcast -- Episode #01 Multiverse Team Seasons -- now available

Post by Gregory » Fri, 4. Jun 21, 08:15

Inside Egosoft Podcast #02 – Custom Game Start

The next episode of our Inside Egosoft podcast is now available. This time around, we will be filling you in on what we're doing with the upcoming "Custom Game Start" feature in X4: Foundations.

▪️ Spotify
▪️ Pocket Casts
▪️ Google Podcasts
▪️ Apple Podcasts (not refreshing properly currently, problem on Apple's side)
▪️ Breaker
▪️ RadioPublic
▪️ Anchor

The new Custom Game Start feature will enable players of X4: Foundations to change or adapt certain starting conditions for the game. Some limits are in place to help maintain a bit of game balance, particularly for those who want to play Multiverse Team Seasons. To give you some examples, in a Custom Game Start it will be possible to influence things such as your available starting capital, sectors already explored, and your relations with other factions.

In order to be able to make these changes, X4 players will, in future, accumulate budgets in specific Custom Game Start categories (including money, knowledge and relations) by making progress in various aspects of the game. For example: if a player has reached a certain relation level with a faction in their X4 game, this counts towards their relations budget and therefore allows the player to change their starting level of relations with one or more factions in a new Custom Game Start.

In Episode #02 of the Inside Egosoft podcast, Greg talks to Owen (https://www.twitch.tv/xenon_slayer), who will be giving more practical examples and explanations of the new feature.

Enjoy this new episode, and don't forget to subscribe to Inside Egosoft in your favourite podcast app. If you don't want to use an audio app, you can of course listen to the podcast in your browser (e.g. via Anchor) or find it on our YouTube channel.

Thanks for tuning in!
All our channels in one convenient list :arrow: https://linktr.ee/egosoft

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chew-ie
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Re: Inside Egosoft Podcast -- Episode #01 Multiverse Team Seasons -- now available

Post by chew-ie » Fri, 4. Jun 21, 09:00

Excellent! The podcasts are really an awesome way to sum up topics.

Also always nice to hear Owen :)

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Re: Inside Egosoft Podcast -- Episode #01 Multiverse Team Seasons -- now available

Post by Karvat » Fri, 4. Jun 21, 09:07

The new custom gamestart mentioned in the second podcast seems very interesting, this old thread viewtopic.php?f=146&t=434684&p=5021153#p5021153 has tons of suggestions to make it perfect.


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Re: Inside Egosoft Podcast -- Episode #01 Multiverse Team Seasons -- now available

Post by CBJ » Fri, 4. Jun 21, 13:05

Just to be clear, no, it's a gamestart editor, not a galaxy editor. It lets you chose how you, the player, start out, not how the other factions start.

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Re: Inside Egosoft Podcast -- Episode #01 Multiverse Team Seasons -- now available

Post by Falcrack » Fri, 4. Jun 21, 17:19

CBJ wrote:
Fri, 4. Jun 21, 13:05
Just to be clear, no, it's a gamestart editor, not a galaxy editor. It lets you chose how you, the player, start out, not how the other factions start.
A galaxy editor would be super cool though! Please consider that for the future.

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Re: Inside Egosoft Podcast -- Episode #01 Multiverse Team Seasons -- now available

Post by Raevyan » Fri, 4. Jun 21, 17:37

So the „budget“ takes all my previous saves into account? Also why does the custom gamestart would give you a modified tag? Balancing for multiverse? One could just have used an older save and have more resources available than the custom gamestart could give you... limiting the capabilities of the custom start just because of balancing the multiverse is a pretty bad argument, when you can use an existing unmodified savegame. This would only make sense, if you‘d have to start a new save to participate in the multiverse...

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Re: Inside Egosoft Podcast -- Episode #01 Multiverse Team Seasons -- now available

Post by Falcrack » Fri, 4. Jun 21, 17:47

Since steam achievements do not care whether you are using an unmodified game or not, could you exploit this to cheat yourself trillions in funds and ships and stations in one game, get whatever achievements are associated with those, then unlock those sorts of things in your unmodified custom game start?

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Re: Inside Egosoft Podcast -- Episode #01 Multiverse Team Seasons -- now available

Post by chew-ie » Fri, 4. Jun 21, 18:37

Falcrack wrote:
Fri, 4. Jun 21, 17:47
Since steam achievements do not care whether you are using an unmodified game or not, could you exploit this to cheat yourself trillions in funds and ships and stations in one game, get whatever achievements are associated with those, then unlock those sorts of things in your unmodified custom game start?
Sure, Egosoft overengineers a lot of gameplay mechanics, but in case of the game start editor they provide a input field where the player can enter the desired credit balance he wants to start with.

/s
rene6740 wrote:
Fri, 4. Jun 21, 17:37
Also why does the custom gamestart would give you a modified tag?
They never said that - please listen again to the podcast. Owen talked about X:³ Farnhalms Legacy and how the editor THERE marks the savegame in THAT OTHER GAME. He also makes a loose comparions, no "it will exactly work like that".
rene6740 wrote:
Fri, 4. Jun 21, 17:37
So the „budget“ takes all my previous saves into account?
Think about a similar mechanic like when you enable the "hidden gamestarts" (e.g. the Teladi one). You reach certain milestones while playing the game and qualify for additional stuff.

If you never played Pillars of Enternity 2 - check this examples:
https://pillarsofeternity2.wiki.fextral ... +Game+Plus

There you also unlock things by playing the game - and on a new game+ you can opt to pick some of the advantages.
rene6740 wrote:
Fri, 4. Jun 21, 17:37
limiting the capabilities of the custom start just because of balancing the multiverse is a pretty bad argument
This is no "let me do what I want"-editor, this is just a moderated new game+ mode to let you choose various advantages when starting over. Just to be clear - there were wishes for something like that in the community. And while Egosoft certainly has no chance to bring every and all suggestions / wishes into the game this one made it. (so let's celebrate :) )

In case of X4 this tool also helps to kickstart a new savegame to be fit for ventures. Whatever that means - it isn't released yet and no one besides the devs know to what extend one can affect the PvP gameplay with own assets. But I really doubt that a player with Billions of credits can just roflstomp all other players. I guess there will be limits on how many stuff you can pump into the async multiplayer part.

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:idea: Pick your poison seed [for custom gamestarts]

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Re: Inside Egosoft Podcast -- Episode #01 Multiverse Team Seasons -- now available

Post by Ormac » Sat, 5. Jun 21, 03:46

chew-ie wrote:
Fri, 4. Jun 21, 18:37
rene6740 wrote:
Fri, 4. Jun 21, 17:37
Also why does the custom gamestart would give you a modified tag?
They never said that - please listen again to the podcast. Owen talked about X:³ Farnhalms Legacy and how the editor THERE marks the savegame in THAT OTHER GAME. He also makes a loose comparions, no "it will exactly work like that".
rene6740 wrote:
Fri, 4. Jun 21, 17:37
So the „budget“ takes all my previous saves into account?
Think about a similar mechanic like when you enable the "hidden gamestarts" (e.g. the Teladi one). You reach certain milestones while playing the game and qualify for additional stuff.
9:15 Owen finishes up the X3FL Comparision (which following the X2-X3 Script Editor does ***modified*** game.)
Greg(ory) Then follows with the clarifying question about the savegame unmodified/modified border.
9:50 Owen Responds

there's two other short questions/ responses

14:40 Greg brings them back to the Custom Game Start
16:50 Greg gives Owen the opportunity to share any last things
17:00 Owen reasoning for custom gamestarts that are unmodified.

Yeah it could be that all custom gamestarts are unmodified, but at the moment it might also be possible that some custom game starts might be considered ***modified***

Second time round I think that's my summary of podcast #02.

The beta is going to test Veture and Custom Gamestart interaction.

Personally I'm going to find it easier doing a new unmodified existing gamestart if I involve myself with ventures.

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