EGOSOFT and Deep Silver announce X Rebirth (updated 2011-07-29)

[StarTroll]

The co-pilot flying the drones would be the same as the drones being AI controlled anyway so im not sure what benefit it would be. I expect the drones will be AI based drones. This is my point about something has changed in the politics side of things in the universe. for all we know the ATF may be there own seperate branch now and be out to stop the increasing use of Ai. something like that lol

I doubt it would be an AI as you suggest it to be like Xenon were once as Terraformers. I think it would be more along the lines of a VI if you were to translate it to ME. Not a sentient software but a simple programmed drone.

[Mightysword]

Ok Chris, I think it comes down to something as simple as the game being "too much of an afford to you". And I don't think you even playing the right game.

So in general, you just want everything in the game to be free and accessible. If you buy a fighter in 2 hours, you also want to buy a capital ship in 2 hours. If flying a M2 net you 20mil a pop, you also want the fighter to net you 20mil a pop. You want to just do one mission, and get the reward for every missions after that without doing them (because you already know how those mission are). You want everything in the game to suit your taste without spending the afford of putting in the input ...etc... You know ... I think there is only one way for you to enjoy the game ... use the cheat script, that's your easy mode right there. It's SP, it's entirely your right to use it if you enjoy that. Other than that, I think you should be looking at some arcade fly (like Freespace or Sylpheed) or shooter game, since I think any sim, even a half-sim will require too much afford for you. As other had said, X is not just a simple shoot them up game, it's a Flying Simulation and an Empire "building" simulation, most of us would frown on the idea that an "Empire" can be built over night.

Other than that, everything you said so far are pretty much your own conjecture and I can say they all fail comparing to the game reality. I rest my case.

[Chris0132]

It is a SP game, so you play it the way you like.

But i have to say that a sandbox game is not about managing an empire, it is about building it. There are a lot of ways to make your way in TC (not to mention the different starts), from a "crappy" fighter or freighter, and that is the real sandbox - not the part where "i have more cash than i need".

I strongly disagree about the alleged grinding. In TC you can easily get 50 millions in less than 3 days (plus max reputation with *everyone*), and that is without using one of the money exploits. That is very fast compared to earlier games, not to mention MMOs.

'Less grindy than an MMO' is not really an achievement. And 3 days? As in more than 60 hours? As in longer than you play most games over their entire lifetime? That's pretty poor.

I didn't play X or X2, so I can't speak for what they were like, but if they were actually more grindy than X3, I'm kinda glad I didn't, I don't imagine I'd find it very enjoyable.

Chris thats how you feel about it, I personally enjoy the start of new games quite a bit more than the later stages, I love being outgunned and underpowered and having to rely on MY skills rather than some form of I Win button.

That's kind of exactly what basing everything on how many credits worth of ship you're flying does though, it gives you an I Win button. Which is a lot of the reason why I don't want the game to just give you a ship class that does everything and have no reason to use anything else, and to do that you kinda have to make capships beatable by things besides other capships, and you're also going to have to make it so that you don't need to grind for days to get the stuff you want.

Basing the game less on how long you've been playing it and more on how good you are at doing whatever it is you do is sort of the whole point.

[Chris0132]

Ok Chris, I think it comes down to something as simple as the game being "too much of an afford to you". And I don't think you even playing the right game.

So in general, you just want everything in the game to be free and accessible. If you buy a fighter in 2 hours, you also want to buy a capital ship in 2 hours. If flying a M2 net you 20mil a pop, you also want the fighter to net you 20mil a pop. You want to just do one mission, and get the reward for every missions after that without doing them (because you already know how those mission are). You want everything in the game to suit your taste without spending the afford of putting in the input ...etc... You know ... I think there is only one way for you to enjoy the game ... use the cheat script, that's your easy mode right there. It's SP, it's entirely your right to use it if you enjoy that. Other than that, I think you should be looking at some arcade fly (like Freespace or Sylpheed) or shooter game, since I think any sim, even a half-sim will require too much afford for you. As other had said, X is not just a simple shoot them up game, it's a Flying Simulation and an Empire "building" simulation, most of us would frown on the idea that an "Empire" can be built over night.

Other than that, everything you said so far are pretty much your own conjecture and I can say they all fail comparing to the game reality. I rest my case.

No, I want to do stuff and get rewarded for it, at what I would consider a reasonable rate.

Doing petty missions for petty cash for days on end is not what I would consider a reasonable rate.

Therefore, I would like the option to speed things up a bit, and also for the game to account for this increased ease of monetary gain by also throwing in more things to spend it on, more long term goals, so that the game escalates at an interesting pace, but keeps doing so for quite a while.

X3 escalates too slowly, and relies on this very slow escalation to draw out what gameplay it offers into a decent length. It has fairly limited gameplay, you do the same thing an awful lot, but you have to do it a lot because there's no other way to progress.

I want X:R to escalate more quickly, but peak at a higher point. Give me money and stuff and freedom of choice faster, but also give me higher goals, like say 'take over the entire galaxy' or something as an actual goal, or 'singlehandedly wipe out the xenon' or other such large scale objectives.

As an analogy, X3 is an FPS game which has five guns and twenty levels, and the enemies range from guys with pistols to guys with machine guns. Its a long game with lots of things happening in it, but most of it is shooting the same guys with the same guns, it's the same stuff happening, this corresponds to X3's reliance on you doing the same defence missions or the same trade runs or whatnot for most of the early game.

I want X:R to have maybe twenty five levels, but fifteen guns, and have the enemies range from guys with pistols to twenty-storey death robots with laser beam eyes.

You get guns faster, but you also scale up through more enemies, so the game is no less difficult, you just get more variety and progression in it, you spend less time doing the same thing (shooting the same enemies with the same guns) and more time doing new things. In X:R this could take the form of mixing more fluidly between the different ways of playing the game because the player ship can be easily equipped for any task, it could take the form of a much better macromangement system which allows you to easily manage a very large empire, with equally large threats to oppose it if you choose to take the empire path.

If you like to trade it could manifest as more and more lucrative trading opportunities, with new challenges beyond 'find the most expensive thing selling for the cheapest price', such as doing things quickly, in a specific ship class, in a dangerous area, that sort of thing. And traders could perhaps have to compete with economic foes, fostering growth in a sector by supplying it well, dealing with rival companies trading in areas making them harder to expand into, establishing monopolies on certain goods, that sort of thing.

If you like to explore, there should be more challenges there, like exploring particularly hazardous areas, areas far from civilised space, using things like cloaking devices and solving puzzles of sorts relating to strange stellar phenomena in some sectors, and discovering unique benefits which you use later on, like maybe prototype ships, alien ships, unique technologies, valuable minerals you can sell the information about to other companies, or maybe capitalise on yourself.

But I think they key thing is that all of these should be introduced steadily and at a faster pace than in X3, X3 suffers because it offers little in the way of variety in the beginning, and once you know how to play it, you peak pretty early. I want a more interesting game, not an easier game.

[Geek]

'Less grindy than an MMO' is not really an achievement. And 3 days? As in more than 60 hours? As in longer than you play most games over their entire lifetime? That's pretty poor.

This clearly shows you do not like or understand sandbox games. 3 game days is NOTHING. It is your choice, but do not expect everyone else to share your view, especially when true sandox games are so rare compared to casual ones. You have plenty of those, leave us the rest untouched.

[Chris0132]

I was under the impression a sandbox game is supposed to give you options, 'you must play this game for sixty hours to unlock options' seems decidedly un-sandboxy to me.

[Bill67]

There are plenty of games that I would consider 'sandbox' that have a story progression as well.

For some the story removes the illusion of pure grinding and gives you the means to get riches/property without slaggin thru the same type of mission everytime.

Others dont give you the goodies you need until you've reached certain plot points in the story.

But neither prevent you from running off and doing your own thing at the get go. For me the perfect example is GTAIV.

Of course some of the map is unlocked, but at the very beginning you could drive off and do what you want. But did you have contacts for better weapons or access to full map? No you had to progress the story to unlock it. But at any point you could run off and do your own thing for as long as you wanted.

But once the cheat codes came out you could basically unlock most of the game without doing the story.

For me if some areas in XR turn out to be anarchist and you need better gear to survive long in then I rather do the story to get to that point than to do mindless jobs to beef up my ship as well.

Also <X3TC , you could start as you wanted but some character starts didnt occur until you played certain amount and unlocked those achievements.

I dont think its fair to say just because a game has a story progression mean that its not a sanbox game.

[Chris0132]

If it has reasonable story progression that's fine, it doesn't take you sixty hours to get to the second island in GTA, and unlocking the second island is really only giving you a new area to play in, in the good GTA games the mechanics are mostly available from the start, you have a lot of choice at the start, maybe you don't have access to rocket launchers and tanks, but you can drive a load of cars, shoot a load of guys, use a bunch of guns, and explore a chunk of city, the game is mostly there, you just don't have all the environment unlocked. The X equivalent would be if you couldn't go outside of paranid or argon space until you did a few plot missions, but you could still buy everything up to a light frigate class as long as you had the (fairly easy to acquire) money. You wouldn't have all the ships or all the guns or all the sectors, but you'd have an effective microcosm of the game.

In X3, that isn't so much the case, it takes what I would consider an excruciatingly long time to progress from simple one or two ship operations, and longer still to get into station building, fleet management, interacting on any real scale with the economy, flying the different ship classes, fighting the different ship classes, being able to fight as an army rather than just as a pilot if you so desire, and let's not even get started on things like the PHQ which comes so late in the game as to be more or less entirely worthless.

Which is why I'm emphasising more stuff more quickly. Give the player more choices right off the bat, allowing them to fly around doing lots of different stuff if they want to, rather than forcing them to do one or two things for ages until they can afford a little freedom. There's nothing stopping you from continuing to do one thing if you enjoy that, but I see no value in forcing the player to do that.

It's a little like having a game which you're supposed to replay a lot, except it has an unskippable tutorial segment that takes forever to complete (looking at you, black and white). Most good sandboxy games give you some option to skip the tutorial if you've already done it, and I don't know about you, but I generally dislike having to do story missions to unlock sandbox elements in games like GTA, if I've already played the game before. It's fine for the first playthrough, in fact it's generally a good thing as it introduces the mechanics to you in a good way, but if you know what you're doing, you shouldn't have to put up with it. That's why things like new game plus exist, and why I really like games with features like that.

[LTerSlash]

Theres one BIG thing that Egosoft need to improve with X:R, and thats is pay attention to users feedback.

We can make a list? sure and it will be a LONG one, but let me point put some examples, like the ridiculus trading missions timing... "get me 8000 meat in 11 minutes" "bring me 4000 space weed in 7 minutes" what is that? this is something that X3:TC is carring over since release... why this still remains unchanged?
Some wrong model/name ship combination, and this one is big, there are a lot of ship with a incorrect name or model out there... Perseus and Susanowas are one... some perseus versions are using the Susanowa model and vice versa.
And really ANNOYING missile kill bug, someone has ever able to complete a assassination mission that the target was an M8????

etc... we all known that, you cant tell me that devs dont known about those issues? X3:TC is a old game, why all these issues are still around?

Allowing moding is NOT a fix, one thing is using mods to add features, or modified existing ones to do some other thing, or a ship/weapon rebalance. You cant launch a game with moding enabled and hope users start launching mods to fix stuff that shouldt be wrong in the first place.

[Gazz]

Allowing moding is NOT a fix, one thing is using mods to add features, or modified existing ones to do some other thing, or a ship/weapon rebalance. You cant launch a game with moding enabled and hope users start launching mods to fix stuff that shouldt be wrong in the first place.

And really ANNOYING missile kill bug, someone has ever able to complete a assassination mission that the target was an M8????

Yes and no.
"Assassination missions where the target is an M8" are a very tiny part of the entire game.

In some cases, it's just not economical to fix bugs that have no major impact on the game but cost a lot of manpower. Egosoft is not two teenagers living in a garage. =P

And if S&M has fixed an issue like that, you are free to use it - or not. Your call.

[LTerSlash]

in a DiD game is not a small issue those M8 in a assassination mission, you could easily get a tomy in your face if you are not carefull, is a big risk for nothing as you probably never going to get the kill.

And its not only that, leaving assassination mission aside, there should be a reputation hit/gain when a ship is destroyed, and that is not happening if the target is killed by its own missile because you destroyed it as it was launched. Missiles should have a minimum safe range to arm itselft, like the missiles in real life.

I can understand a slow time to fix things, nobody is gona ask for all minor bugs to be fixed in a month, but at this point of time, all those issues should have been fixed long ago, its their responsability to fix them, sooner or later, as is mine to pay every cent for the game.

Again, mods are not a option for their last released game, i can understand not longer adressing bugs for X2, or X3, but not in X3:TC, not before X:R is released. You cant tell a user to go a look for a 3rd party fix for your program, is a disrespect.

Some of these issues may not be called a bug, like the timing for trading missions, thats why i say "pay attention to players feedback", as some of these issues may not be a bug, but is greatly breaking a big element in a sandbox game.

[Gazz]

in a DiD game is not a small issue those M8 in a assassination mission, you could easily get a tomy in your face if you are not careful

An element of risk is the entire point of DiD games.

And its not only that, leaving assassination mission aside, there should be a reputation hit/gain when a ship is destroyed, and that is not happening if the target is killed by its own missile because you destroyed it as it was launched.

You could, for instance, try being smarter than the M8.
Can't be that hard.

Attack it with some light missiles, encouraging it to fire all it's missiles at you.
Then you can deal with them at a comfortable range and even the Egosoft missile defense turret script can deal with a narrow string of missiles. Nothing but a turkey shoot.

DiD games aren't just about not taking risks. You have to be prepared to deal with them.

I can understand a slow time to fix things, nobody is gona ask for all minor bugs to be fixed in a month, but at this point of time, all those issues should have been fixed long ago, its their responsability to fix them, sooner or later, as is mine to pay every cent for the game.

It is Egosoft's responsibility to fix every single "issue" with the game? Isn't that just a tiny bit naive?
Their responsibility ends with delivering a playable game and they did that long ago.
You may not have realised but even 3 years after release, they've been adding fixes and content to the game. For free. Count your blessings.

I'm definitely not the one to gloss over any game issues. Don't get me started on combat/turret/economy scripts or combat balance or just about anything in this game. That doesn't change the fact that the vanilla game is playable.
It may not have all the features that the ideal game in my head has, but I don't think that a developer on this planet has the resources to create that one. I'm still not sure how to properly implement the bananas. I like bananas.

[dougeye]

Chris0132 sounds like the sort of gamer who buys a game like oblivion for example and just rinses through the main quest and then puts it down, missing the best parts of the game.

there is nothing wrong with that but dont bleat on about what i would term power play and fast pacing because as everyone else has said this series is not about that.

I personnaly play a hell of a lot of games from all genres but i take them for what they are, yes ill play COD but as a fix for a day, but i always come back to X because somethimes i want to just chill out after work and enjoy the slow pacing, X is realy what you make it.

[Gazz]

*shrug* There are plenty of cheat scripts for infinite credits, invincibility, free M2 right off the bat... all you could ever need for a "fast win".

You see, Egosoft doesn't have a problem with that. None whatsoever. If you buy the game, you already did all they could ever ask for. =)

But it's true. It would be child's play for Egosoft to provide one Super Duper Easy game start for those players whose only goal it is to consume a game in the least possible amount of time.
It could have the player start out in an M7M with an auto-respawning missile supply and auto-respawning trained marines.

[thetack]

3 days a long time chris i have games running (not x i admit but a stratagy game) thats run for 3 years with a single input of data per day and 3 hours of paper calcs to work out the next, and i have a x2 game that has run for 6 months and i will get my first osprey soon.
the biggest problem with TC is its too dam easy you can play it while reading a book

[Chris0132]

Chris0132 sounds like the sort of gamer who buys a game like oblivion for example and just rinses through the main quest and then puts it down, missing the best parts of the game.

there is nothing wrong with that but dont bleat on about what i would term power play and fast pacing because as everyone else has said this series is not about that.

I personnaly play a hell of a lot of games from all genres but i take them for what they are, yes ill play COD but as a fix for a day, but i always come back to X because somethimes i want to just chill out after work and enjoy the slow pacing, X is realy what you make it.

Actually I play bethesda games to death, because they're a lot better paced than X3 and I don't get bored.

I like games I can play for a long time, but I don't like games where the only reason for that is because it's a huge grindfest.

There's always something new to do in oblivion, so I keep coming back to it, whereas in X3 if I clock off after a day or so, I know I've got another day or so of grinding before I can afford my M6 with some decent weaponry and upgrades, so that I can open the game up enough to the point where I can always find something different to do. Which usually means I just don't want to play the game for the hours upon hours it takes to get to that point, and I end up never doing so.

That's my main complaint. In oblivion I get all all the weapons, armor, enemies, and gear about an hour into the game, I don't get the really high level versions with the big numbers on them, but I do get the mechanics to play around with, I can play sneaky, magically, or fightery right from the start, and swap between them at will if I pick a somewhat rounded character, and that's why I'll play it for probably hundreds of hours.

Oblivion gives you the option of playing fast or slow, X3 says you WILL play slow and you WILL enjoy it, which is un-sandboxy in the same way call of duty is un-sandboxy, because the game tells you how you should play.

[Geek]

Oblivion is a very bad example, it is all or nothing in that game - either never level up and only get low enemies/items, or level up to get better ones, but then the system is so broken that you do need to powerlevel your character to complete any quest, or fail miserably.

X3 gives challenges of varying difficulty at pretty much any point in the game, including the start. Some tasks are hard at the beginning, true, but not all of them. Choices always exist.

[unknown1]

I wonder if we'll get the next news issue in the last day of this month

[mr.WHO]

Oblivion is a very bad example, it is all or nothing in that game - either never level up and only get low enemies/items, or level up to get better ones, but then the system is so broken that you do need to powerlevel your character to complete any quest, or fail miserably.

It's exactly same in TC - once you'll get a high fight rank the station mission will start spawn multiple M2 despite you still flying your favorite M3. If you don't buy your own M2 then you fail miserably.

[LTerSlash]

in a DiD game is not a small issue those M8 in a assassination mission, you could easily get a tomy in your face if you are not careful

An element of risk is the entire point of DiD games.

And its not only that, leaving assassination mission aside, there should be a reputation hit/gain when a ship is destroyed, and that is not happening if the target is killed by its own missile because you destroyed it as it was launched.

You could, for instance, try being smarter than the M8.
Can't be that hard.

Attack it with some light missiles, encouraging it to fire all it's missiles at you.
Then you can deal with them at a comfortable range and even the Egosoft missile defense turret script can deal with a narrow string of missiles. Nothing but a turkey shoot.

DiD games aren't just about not taking risks. You have to be prepared to deal with them.

I can understand a slow time to fix things, nobody is gona ask for all minor bugs to be fixed in a month, but at this point of time, all those issues should have been fixed long ago, its their responsability to fix them, sooner or later, as is mine to pay every cent for the game.

It is Egosoft's responsibility to fix every single "issue" with the game? Isn't that just a tiny bit naive?
Their responsibility ends with delivering a playable game and they did that long ago.
You may not have realised but even 3 years after release, they've been adding fixes and content to the game. For free. Count your blessings.

I'm definitely not the one to gloss over any game issues. Don't get me started on combat/turret/economy scripts or combat balance or just about anything in this game. That doesn't change the fact that the vanilla game is playable.
It may not have all the features that the ideal game in my head has, but I don't think that a developer on this planet has the resources to create that one. I'm still not sure how to properly implement the bananas. I like bananas.

Trying to let the M8 to run out of missiles is a no go either there is no enoght time, its risk vs nohing at this point, the only way i could finish one it was run over them with my Zephyrus.

Adding content is good, still, and im sure most players will agree with this, fixing problems(they had, but left all the minor bugs out of the consideration) and a completely broken system (trading mission) should have had a higher priority.

I played this game since day 1, you have no idea known it feels to play today and see so many obious issues that should be there anymore.
While there are some mods to fix them, whats the point of adding archivements if i cant done them if im using mods to fix problems thats should have been fixed officially? the least you can do is add those mods to the extra pack, like they did with the CLS.