X-Rebirth, growing fears…

[Kittens David]

First I want to thank Egosoft to bring us a sequel to the praised X : Albion prelude. It was quite a time we had no new space sim game available.

So what are my growing fears about X-Rebirth.

Up to now, we only know there is a nice graphic engine.

BUT…

-The gamescon demo was dumb and useless, only picturing X-rebirth as a space arcade shooting game.

-They advertised X-rebirth like a Build, Trade, Discover and Fight…. Well, we don’t have any information about trade nor on building stations… quite embarrassing for what was in the previous X the main core of the game…

-Then we know we are capped to the Albion Pride…. But it is a small fighter craft… No, no I see you coming fanboys who will tell me it is a M6 corvette but honestly look at the last video when the ship land and we see the hangar… You can see the player near the loading ramp and see the stern of the ship, the engine and landing gear… honestly it is no bigger than CH-53 chopper…. so far from a true corvette. Moreover, we can see the pilot climb a cramped staircase to immediately go down the tiny cargohold…. which betrays how small the Albion Pride is.

-Another fear is the upgrade of the ship… Damn men we are 2 month of the release after seven years of development it is time to wack out some remaining bugs but no more to develop and code features, everything now must be ready and working… It should time for the dev to show us great feature. Like hello folks, this is a picture of the Albion pride at first then this is another of the Albion pride fully upgrade. Showing us this is two different ship , a bit like in darkstar one when the ship at first was more like a pod then ended with extra wings, cargo mudule, engine module making it from a, let say, 20 meters ship into a 80 meters one. You know really increasing its size and armament… but here, one important has never been discussed or shown by the devs…

That’s quite frightening and leaving me with the feeling there is no upgrade to the Albion Pride. The feeling that it will not evolve into something bigger, better…

-Ok you don’t have multi ship but you will be able to dock bigger ships and command them from an observation bridge. Well nothing of that has been shown or explained…and that’s quite frustrating… Once again the devs are leaving us with the feeling nothing of that exist… We should had least have been given a long video of the Albion Pride docking a big ship, of the player moving to the obs bridge and be explained the command menu… but no….

-They showed us in a video how a big ship was plotting its flight route around stations. Well but we weren’t shown any map… and honesly I fear we will still end with a useless 2D map….

-The fight… man.. the fight…. Gamescon left me with the dreadful fear of an arcade game... one shot kill… insane shield on the Albion Pride. The fight with the bigger ship… you destroyed the turrets/shield gen and engine with such an ease… it was pathetic….


All of that put together and the total lack of communication from egosoft on that can only lead to even greater fear to see one nice X3 game turned into a stupid arcade game for smartphone…

I honestly hope this isn’t the case but to relieve those fear the devs will have to communicate and communicate a lot on important point not on see your copilot seat turn around as she sits in…

And I’m not even speaking… well I am about that lack of complete demo which could leave us those fears… I know it is forbidden here to speak about gaining access to the game without paying for it, I’ve seen someone else posts being deleted when he said he would torrent the game to test those features before buying or not the game… but with such clouds on the game I’m thinking there was nothing bad in his way… Who’s ready to throw away 50 bucks… honestly right now, buying X-rebirth is like buying a cat in a box… you don’t know what you are purchasing… Best solutions should be to wait reviews or ask people who will have purchased it. Nevertheless that’s sure I won’t directly purchase it because I don’t want to waste 50 bucks into a game I might uninstall quickly with the bad feeling of having wasted my money into an arcade game that share with the X-serie the name and nothing else.

[Scoob]

Just a quick point you might have missed - though it has been mentioned in numerous posts relating to the demo shown at Gamescom - the ship is in god mode, so cannot be destroyed and has pimped weapons that do LOADS more damage. This gives the player the chance to, well, play without being killed by local forces the moment they piss someone off.

I guess Egosoft / publisher will reveal more features and go into more depth in time. I'd love to see more, but will just have to be patient.

Scoob.

[bblasphemous]

It's been said you're essentially in god mode with beefed up weapons in those demos they show, so there's that.

I hope they show more in depth videos of navigation and trading soon, since they already have a preorder available.

[Scoob]

Yes, the demo was intended to be a "Fight" demo I read, though not much going on in the vids I've watched.

I hope Egosoft can put together a little rolling demo for us before release - though I'd understand if they cannot. However, a rolling demo video, edited together footage of different game aspects, would be great.

Scoob.

[N4N]

I was one of the strongest believers and defenders of rebirth, but I also have to admit im starting to get skeptical, since last information we are getting is not very clear or shady.
To sum up:
-We don't know if we will be able to command capital ships or the whole fleet, from within the ship deck itself. Yes Bern interview say something, but nothing clear, no feature like this as been spoted at videos or information. And EGO staff is here, replying questions and they confirm many information already, why not this one? I think we all know the reply....
-They say they want to make the game more accessible but not less complex and complete than previous games. to be honest, this is not what I have seen so far. Quite simple combat system, simple docking system, simple trading system(you cant even trade yourself) and overall simple game, with less features. I can live with the : one ship thing, but the rest.....
-No news about retail box English release in europe, and we are 3 months due. If they want to produce and ship the retail boxes in english....time is money here, I dont think they will be able to do on time.
-No news about Jump system, or many of the previous X games features, any news about building stations? no videos, no text, nothing.
-No news about comand fleet, how complex will it be....

To sum up, I have the feeling that Deepsilver told Bern:
Deep Silver: -Bern, you have to release this year in NOV 2013
Bern:-But we are not ready we need 1 more year!
DS: -Sorry Bern, you had enought time already and money is flying, release what you have.
B:- OK we will try to put together all peaces we have.....

Because that's the feeling I get, that there are many and expendid good ideas, but seems not finished polished. I think the release date was imposed.

[dougeye]

na I think they had that convo in 2011 lol

[Aesran]

I don't think that - The dev are strong and thinking they dont have finish one aspect of the game they control ..

Yes maybe all of aspect are not finishing yet but we have again two mounth ..

Thinking because lack of info the game may unfinished is not good, because a good developper like Egosoft and a editor know get ou a unfinished game is the best method to lose player / client and sabotage their marketing.

I thin just the marketing was very prudent and show one by one the information.

[Alci]

X:games were so far always "in development". So sure, giving them another year would make it "better" (and more obsolete). But I don't feel "unfinished" is valid here. I think we get what they intended to give. We just cannot be sure what that is.

And even then I hope it works so there will simply be another X with more features. That how it worked before.

I agree with OP completely. That's what I feel. Nothing "interesting" was shown. Just fight and stations. It's good, but it should be one or two video. Not all we have.

Those "Feature explained" videos on youtube are nice as idea. Shame they stopped with how fight works with "controller". That itself is a bit.. insulting as something like this takes priority over core features or even k&m controls.

In the end of day I will be ok even with new freelancer so no regrets. And noone can take X3 from me. But I would really like to see "big" picture of the game. Not just minor local arcade hunts.

[MC707]

Kittens David, are you a wizard? You took the thoughts out of my mind and put them in a neat post. I am very leery about what we've been told so far. Feels like I'm seeing the modern warfare [sic] of space sims. And how dumbed down will the game be? We shall see.

Yes maybe all of aspect are not finishing yet but we have again two mounth ..

The reason we are leery about the "they still have two months" is because this game has been 7 years on development, I highly doubt the Devs will add anything new as opposed to squashing bugs which should be #1 priority.

[Aesran]

Like that, if they have ALREADY seven year for dev, i think they have much time to finish all of feature.

I trust Egosoft because i see they are honest like scssoft or another developper, i thrust if they dont see other aspect of the game they have a good reason and it will soon show.

[giskard]

Egosoft will not reveal much to us this side of release.

The NDA should tell you they love secrets, that goes for all such details. They want you to argue, debate, talk about what you think may be there. Then when the debate dies a news letter with a little more fuel for the fire will appear to kick it all off again.

And on the day v1 is released, this forum will fill up with bug reports which will last about a year until they get a handle on them with the patches. After that Egosoft will add new features in patches and expand the original game.

Trying to get Egosoft to change a nut or a bolt in a game takes about 3 years of argument... So your not going to see massive changes from the older games in Rebirth. You will see massive updates to existing features, old problems solved, requested ideas made in to reality.

But the core X game will feel like the old X game... thats why I stuck with it for so long and only stopped playing it because X3 removed to much.

The thing about Rebirth is, Egosoft have had 7 years to solve the problem of different sized ships in the game and make it all work in a seemlingless fashion. So it should be the best X game yet of it achieves those things.

Personally, I expect multi ship support in X5.

[theeclownbroze]

Egosoft will not reveal much to us this side of release.

The NDA should tell you they love secrets, that goes for all such details. They want you to argue, debate, talk about what you think may be there. Then when the debate dies a news letter with a little more fuel for the fire will appear to kick it all off again.

And on the day v1 is released, this forum will fill up with bug reports which will last about a year until they get a handle on them with the patches. After that Egosoft will add new features in patches and expand the original game.

Trying to get Egosoft to change a nut or a bolt in a game takes about 3 years of argument... So your not going to see massive changes from the older games in Rebirth. You will see massive updates to existing features, old problems solved, requested ideas made in to reality.

But the core X game will feel like the old X game... thats why I stuck with it for so long and only stopped playing it because X3 removed to much.

The thing about Rebirth is, Egosoft have had 7 years to solve the problem of different sized ships in the game and make it all work in a seemlingless fashion. So it should be the best X game yet of it achieves those things.

Personally, I expect multi ship support in X5.

I guess the only reason why you think this is because while egosoft were fixing bugs, had buggy releases, 'took three years to implment ideas' was because more than half of their team were working on X rebirth

When X rebirth comes out i expect not many bugs, egosoft no longer have the constraints of the older x games, they didn't have anything to do with Albion prelude 3.0 maby on 1% in that development, albion prelude was just a minor improvement and probably took 2 months work out of egosoft, now for a solid 2 years they had the time to fix bugs, finish assets , music and voice acting, the other 5 years were put into coding this 100% new engine, all the code is new apart from 1% of some non-critical entity, and after post release it will be different then X3 terran conflicts and Albion preludes release, they no longer have to worry about an 'X rebirth' and can now focus 100% on X rebirth by adding things to the game, and THIS time cool ideas will be implemented into the game. Egosoft no long has to juggle 3 games while they work on a massive project.

[MC707]

But the core X game will feel like the old X game... thats why I stuck with it for so long and only stopped playing it because X3 removed to much.

Why, that's interesting, we are complaining because Egosoft removed so much in Rebirth.[/i]

[The Cuban Nightmare]

Personally, I expect multi ship support in X5.

They say it's not X:4, so would an expansion to Rebirth be called X: Reborn Again? That said, I think people read far too much into the demo and are getting nervous because they are trying to apply old X mechanics to the new framework. Looking to the Skunk, well I am not sure what to make of it yet and so I am reserving judgment. For me, I always preferred to fly an M7, so if I can custom design an M7 to fit my purposes, then I will be satisfied. The series offers so much more than previous games, so we will have to wait to see our fears assuaged.


The fact of the matter is that X:Rebirth took so long because they had to completely rebuild the engine and changed a lot about the game. I think that we will see rolling updates and an expansion relatively quickly because Egosoft has always been good about providing those. We just had gamescom and the release date given to us, so I expect the next several weeks to be quiet and then perhaps a ramp up as we enter November.

[giskard]

theeclownbroze

I was member of the original XBTF forum before XT was even made, they have always worked that way mate. Watch and you will see.

MC707

X3 was a stripped down X2.... so I expect X Rebirth to be the fix for that problem. Though what I want to see removed may be the features you want to keep. But I am old X player, I liked the old sim style over the x3 computer display feel.

[giskard]

Personally, I expect multi ship support in X5.

They say it's not X:4, so would an expansion to Rebirth be called X: Reborn Again? That said, I think people read far too much into the demo and are getting nervous because they are trying to apply old X mechanics to the new framework.

Yup, Egosoft are very good are managing the info they release to us. The NDAs, the way they beta test is all top secret stuff. They take it seriously.

For example, notice that now the beta has started, and it has started, the forum is almost dead. Its because those who signed the NDA cannot reply to much, they are sworn to silence. So, we get to talk about anything and they have to sit there and bite their tongue.

I can speculate wildly about X on my own website or here, no NDA to silence me now.

For example, I made a mod called Ringworld (named after the book containing the idea) for Freelancer, it showed a station that was a ring around a sun, with parts of it where you could see eclipses because I lined up the planets to give that effect. I sent it to Egosoft with screenshots in the X3 days before X3 TC was made.

Notice the cover of X3 TC
Guess they liked the idea

During the same period we talked about the trade lane features of freelancer on devnet openly, no secret, it was just players talking about such things. Egosoft employees liked the idea at the time.

Have you see the X Rebirth Videos showing the trade lanes....
Guess they liked the idea and have improved upon it because each trade lane has more than 1 lane in it:)

Nice touch...

The back story for X says the jump gate system was collapsing.... then we had Albion marking the end of the old universe.

Now, since I have not signed an NDA and am not subject one anymore, I will speculate what this means.

I speculate that Egosoft may be finally getting rid of sectors and may be finally moving on to a system that is not unlike Oblivion where the universe is divided up in to a grid and only the sector your in and the sectors next to each other are actually loaded fully at any given time. the rest are simulated. No graphics or models loaded, just your CPU running trade calculates and combat results.

Such a change would take 7 years to make.

Meaning you move from sector to sector using trade lanes in the freelancer style NOT jump gates like older X games. Of course Freelancer still used jump gates but thats a very old game now.

But that is just me speculating

If the old sector system remains, I would be deeply disappointed and would suggest Egosoft have taken 7 years off if that is the case. The only way to update X was to get rid of those 2d sectors and all indications where they like the idea behind freelancers universe so perhaps they took the idea to the next level and made the whole game that way.

But we will see in november if I am right or not.

[dougeye]

I like it when a game is released and features are new to me and I get to discover things. not be told about them all for 3 months before release so there is nothing left to explore apart from maybe a story.

[theeclownbroze]

Giskard wrote

Have you see the X Rebirth Videos showing the trade lanes.... Smile
Guess they liked the idea and have improved upon it because each trade lane has more than 1 lane in it:)

Nice touch...

The back story for X says the jump gate system was collapsing.... then we had Albion marking the end of the old universe.

Now, since I have not signed an NDA and am not subject one anymore, I will speculate what this means.

I speculate that Egosoft may be finally getting rid of sectors and may be finally moving on to a system that is not unlike Oblivion where the universe is divided up in to a grid and only the sector your in and the sectors next to each other are actually loaded fully at any given time. the rest are simulated. No graphics or models loaded, just your CPU running trade calculates and combat results.

Such a change would take 7 years to make.

Meaning you move from sector to sector using trade lanes in the freelancer style NOT jump gates like older X games. Of course Freelancer still used jump gates but thats a very old game now.

But that is just me speculating Smile

If the old sector system remains, I would be deeply disappointed and would suggest Egosoft have taken 7 years off if that is the case. The only way to update X was to get rid of those 2d sectors and all indications where they like the idea behind freelancers universe so perhaps they took the idea to the next level and made the whole game that way.

But we will see in november if I am right or not.

yeah that's now a known fact, the game is now entire solar systems, lets have our own solar system as an example, low earth orbit would be a zone or a location with some importance like a station or many stations and a very busy space city, a local highway would be able to take you to the other side of earth which is another zone with and a location or importance, these are all zones which are connected via local highway's and they make up a sector, but that doesn't mean you have to jump into a black loadscreen to go to another sector full of Zones, i would call this earth sector but might have many zones in it and you can travel to all of these zones with or without the use of these local highways (now you can actually begin to grasp the true size of the explorable universe )

to go to another sector, like maby low lunar orbit, you use Superhighway and no there is no black loadscreen like a jumpgate would have. the travel is smooth persistant just like a local highway the only difference is that you cannot exit anywhere along a superhighway. (IDK the extent of sectors and local highways may be able to reach the moon)

a superhighway for example may be able to warp you with highspeed all the way to jupiter which opens up a whole can of worms as the local highways may open up the moons of jupiter. but obviously planetary sizes and distances are not to scale.

now this whole network of superhighways and local highways are all called a cluster which is the same as a solar system.
for example a jumpgate to alpha centauri would be the likely means of travel from one solar system or 'cluster' to another one.

if you ever played Independance war 2 that is what i believe egosoft are aiming for except interplanetary distances are dealt with superhighways rather that LDS (linear displacement system I.E warpdrive) and local distances are dealt with local highways.

but interstellar travel is jumpdrives and jumpgates. however from what i gathered the jumpgates don't work now and thats where the plot starts.

disclaimer, all this is a summary from what i have read from official posts from egosoft devs, the "Zone, Sector, Cluster" thing is confirmed by CBJ.
the seamless travel along superhighways is Confirmed by Linolaffet.
all other things are taken from the stickies and various interviews such as this one http://www.games-arena.ro/2013/08/25/in ... nd-lehahn/

[Valadis]

I dislike the old gate system, actually any gate system, very much. Gates are tedious. TEDIOUS. I even hated the system to system jumps in Freespace and I-War 2, while the open world aspect of the individual solar systems are the thing that I miss the most. That openness is the best thing in any space game, the ability to choose a destination, either hit an FTL drive or trade lane and just GO. No tedious "let's jump through 10 gates, which is so tedious you never want to bother ever returning to where you started."
X3 is only bearable because of the jump drive.

I'm so glad all of this has been changed.

[Rabiator der II.]

-Then we know we are capped to the Albion Pride…. But it is a small fighter craft… No, no I see you coming fanboys who will tell me it is a M6 corvette but honestly look at the last video when the ship land and we see the hangar… You can see the player near the loading ramp and see the stern of the ship, the engine and landing gear… honestly it is no bigger than CH-53 chopper…. so far from a true corvette. Moreover, we can see the pilot climb a cramped staircase to immediately go down the tiny cargohold…. which betrays how small the Albion Pride is.

-Another fear is the upgrade of the ship… Damn men we are 2 month of the release after seven years of development it is time to wack out some remaining bugs but no more to develop and code features, everything now must be ready and working… It should time for the dev to show us great feature. Like hello folks, this is a picture of the Albion pride at first then this is another of the Albion pride fully upgrade. Showing us this is two different ship , a bit like in darkstar one when the ship at first was more like a pod then ended with extra wings, cargo mudule, engine module making it from a, let say, 20 meters ship into a 80 meters one. You know really increasing its size and armament… but here, one important has never been discussed or shown by the devs…

That’s quite frightening and leaving me with the feeling there is no upgrade to the Albion Pride. The feeling that it will not evolve into something bigger, better…

Well... I suspect that it will upgrade much like the fighters in Black Prophecy (anyone remember that?)

For those who don't: BP upgrades were only in the stats. A level 10 gun did not look different from a level 1 gun of the same type, it just did more damage.