About our ongoing work - Patches, Updates, Bugfixing on X Rebirth

[RWolf]

The answer to this is complicated: Of course we do not intentionally alienate old fans. But X Rebirth is not X4 for a reason. I know many of you would have preferred a true X4 where we just take X3 and make it better, add more on top.

Actually you can believe me that I wished many times in the past 7 years we would have done just that. Not because I lost faith in the different design goals of X Rebirth, but because of the financial risk in developing this huge monster over 7 years.

Can you answer us honestly, who did you/egosoft envision as being the target audience for X:R? Naturally this is what will reflect on the design choices.

If possible, can you give or share with us some additional info outlined in your game design doc, or rather a summary of where you originally planned on taking this new line of development? I mean its pretty obvious you might not have achieved your milestones, but this doesnt mean such design elements were forgotten in the long run.

Finally, IF big IF, you do receive enough revenue from this release, are you guys up for hiring dedicated and experienced character artist/level designers? Once you start going in the direction of walking around ships and stations with NPCs, level designers and character artist become more important, something you guys might not really have needed in past games.

Finally, just a bit of advice, mini games rarely if never work well (outside of crafting and diplomacy systems) in sand box type of games. They are a double edged sword. Whats in X:R right now is a mixture of arbitrary redundancy and alienation (container looting/theft and fake ships appearing in highway).

[Greyhawk1]

This is a corporate forum so its likely Bernd can only say so much.

The game needs a lot more work than the list he gave to be honest.

[bendead]

this thread is for those who will continue to support the game, not for those who give up.

Well if you don't give up than try to ask things that makes sense, no disrespect but who cares now about if it's CPU or GPU optimization ? Or even the AA mode... A lot of people just try to get more than 20 fps on a 2-3000$ config, or even start the game...

"As for new content/functionalities?"

Well most of the post here are requesting the exact same thing, if you read the OP, it will happen, but after everything else is fixed, so don't wait for it now

[Hippotastic]

Once you add a ship to another captains command hierarchy for example, you have no direct control over that ship anymore. The player only interacts with the top level commanders and they should deal with the ones bellow. Maybe we will add more micro management options e.g allowing you to tell the captain how to group his subordinates into squads etc. but you will not have a long list of AI modes for every ship in every squad.

That being said, my long term goal for giving you more control also over fights would be a more strategic interface. One where you can plan a battle more than just instructing individual ships. But this is definitely one of the bigger tasks and not part of these immediate things we are now working on.

So i have lots of captains, that control lots of ships. What is it the players are supposed to do? My trade ships trade for me, but only after i have wiped their arse. And then it might or might not do what you want. you have to fly about near i icons to find out anything. So i can get this goods cheap... But i have no idea if i can sell it untill i have scanned another 200 i icons.

Fighting is a mess at 15 fps. Think? Been removed for kiddies on consoles.

I am at a loss where the game is here. I cant see the game i am supposed to enjoy.

What do i do for fun? You have hidden it well.

[squicker]

Hello

Secondly, I would like to say how amazed we all are here by the huge success of the game. Number one on Steam for several days in a row at
-Bernd

Not half as amazed as I am that you could call this a success. This is one of the worst game launches I have ever witnessed in over 30 years of gaming (since the days of the ZX Spectrum). The boards are awash with unhappy customers, there's a large group petitioning Steam for a refund, and Egosoft have issued a formal apology.

Even for the people defending this game, their entire argument hinges upon saying, "but we know Egosoft will patch this game and it will be good". So even the customer 'success stories' actually only become a success at the point you patch the game and make it work as they believe it should.

I own two successful technology companies, one of which is a solution architecture practise. When we mess up, which is rare, we don't try to use corporate speak to further insult an already pissed off customer by claiming the project is a success, we fix it. We are accountable for cost and refund money and time spent on useless endeavours if they are our fault. We are successful in the true sense of the word due to this, and also because we analyse our customer's requirements and make sure we hit them, every time.

I would suggest Egosoft did not think about what the customer wanted. Egosoft tried to cash in on the console market but found that the entry bar is actually pretty high and that console gamers (I am also one) are pretty demanding people. They expect great graphics (the ones in Rebirth look like they came from 2005) and they expect intuitive gaming (the interface in Rebirth is awful and the tutorial explains a handful of random things but doesn't tell me anything meaningful), and they expect great performance from very limited hardware. Egosoft realised their game would not enter that market, or if it did it would be laughed at, and they fobbed off their loyal PC fanbase.

Anyway, I am not going to spend more of my time listing bugs for you, your beta-testers should have done this. It's an insult that I spend £40 on an unfinished game let alone that I now spend more time on the process you own and should have run. If you genuinely start to test the game, you will see the problems. I am simply ending this painful experience by deleting the game and claiming a refund.

I was a big X fan since XBTF and the Threat, and whilst I have not played in recent years due to work commitments (I own all games but have played the last one rarely), I was really looking forward to this game. Of course I am very disappointed at this 'success' and am one of those people asking my retailer for a refund. I hope that refund comes directly from the Egosoft bank account, because that is the only way publishers will learn that they must deliver good products ON RELEASE DAY, not in 3 months when the paying beta-testers do their jobs for them.

Farewell from a once X fan to an ex-fan.

[Outbreak]

i cant say i am impressed with this game ive got all the x games including this 1, I will give it time for you to get some major improvements out but 7 years on this god what were you all thinking.

[rferrett]

Had a chance to sleep on my anger.

First of all I think that the reason I am angry is disappointment. I wanted to love Rebirth, I wanted a game that fills the niche only X games fill these days. This is exacerbated by the stuff that is right about the game. If it was total bunkum I would probably shrug and put it down to experience but the space engine is great. Looks beautiful.

But....

The flaws are massive and game breaking (at least for me, if others love it then good for them). I was bored of walking around stations after the second time. I'm not being funny but this is hundreds of years in the future. Don't they have quantum iPhone 93S and Nexus 78 phones yet??!?!?!? Is there no "Space Yellow Pages™" to find people??!?!?! You actually have to walk up to people to initiate trade with them. God damn it is annoying. Hopefully this can be fixed with a BBS system!

Secondly the lack of radar. I mean for a game in which space combat is a major part this is fundamental. And given the skunk has computer screen built in surely there should have been a gravdar option as one of the modes?

Guns, now I'm not opposed entirely to the "one ship" thing but I really expected to be able to upgrade the skunk on a "Rock/Paper/SCissors" basis. Seems though you can only have one gun soley so they can have a nice graphical picture of the gun in the cockpit. WTF?

Everything that needs to be said about the Map and the broken Trading has been said a million times before. But Jeez what were they thinking?I could live with the clunky UI if they sorted out the Radar and an alternative to the interior bits.

I'm mostly just gutted that the game is broken. I don't mind a different direction but at least make that direction work.

Honest question for the defenders, are you really *really* enjoying the walking around interiors looking for traders? Really?

[bendead]

Hello

Secondly, I would like to say how amazed we all are here by the huge success of the game. Number one on Steam for several days in a row at
-Bernd

Not half as amazed as I am that you could call this a success. This is one of the worst game launches I have ever witnessed in over 30 years of gaming (since the days of the ZX Spectrum). The boards are awash with unhappy customers, there's a large group petitioning Steam for a refund, and Egosoft have issued a formal apology.

Even for the people defending this game, their entire argument hinges upon saying, "but we know Egosoft will patch this game and it will be good". So even the customer 'success stories' actually only become a success at the point you patch the game and make it work as they believe it should.

I own two successful technology companies, one of which is a solution architecture practise. When we mess up, which is rare, we don't try to use corporate speak to further insult an already pissed off customer by claiming the project is a success, we fix it. We are accountable for cost and refund money and time spent on useless endeavours if they are our fault. We are successful in the true sense of the word due to this, and also because we analyse our customer's requirements and make sure we hit them, every time.

I would suggest Egosoft did not think about what the customer wanted. Egosoft tried to cash in on the console market but found that the entry bar is actually pretty high and that console gamers (I am also one) are pretty demanding people. They expect great graphics (the ones in Rebirth look like they came from 2005) and they expect intuitive gaming (the interface in Rebirth is awful and the tutorial explains a handful of random things but doesn't tell me anything meaningful), and they expect great performance from very limited hardware. Egosoft realised their game would not enter that market, or if it did it would be laughed at, and they fobbed off their loyal PC fanbase.

Anyway, I am not going to spend more of my time listing bugs for you, your beta-testers should have done this. It's an insult that I spend £40 on an unfinished game let alone that I now spend more time on the process you own and should have run. If you genuinely start to test the game, you will see the problems. I am simply ending this painful experience by deleting the game and claiming a refund.

I was a big X fan since XBTF and the Threat, and whilst I have not played in recent years due to work commitments (I own all games but have played the last one rarely), I was really looking forward to this game. Of course I am very disappointed at this 'success' and am one of those people asking my retailer for a refund. I hope that refund comes directly from the Egosoft bank account, because that is the only way publishers will learn that they must deliver good products ON RELEASE DAY, not in 3 months when the paying beta-testers do their jobs for them.

Farewell from a once X fan to an ex-fan.

You, sir, won the speech mini game challenge

[Dr2i]

I find this game quite fun. Had an open mind about it which seem to pay off.

This is a perfect X game. And I see good potential in it.

Thumb up egosoft

[mononom]

While i can appreciate your efforts to fix bugs and all that stuff, it isn't the bugs why i don't want to play this game anymore. I'm angry, i felt cheated and being lied to, also personal offended, not because of the state the game is in, nor about Rebirth in and of itself.

I'm angry [at Egosoft/whoever is responsible for this launch] for trying to sell Rebirth as a game at all, and for not communicating enough about the state that it will be in at launch and what features and mechanics it will have or won't have.

It is 'not $4' and all that, i can clearly see that. But what is it then? One of the core game play menchanic, as i have experienced it, consists of trying to get icons of various designs into the middle of my HUD or screen space and to maneuver my avatar to them. I couldn't do much else, because bugs. But I got this feeling that this mechanic will continue to be core for a foreseeable future because game play reasons and i got srsly bored of it after about 2 hours in.

[Brachra]

I must once again state I feel we need some sort of comment regarding game design, whether you expected to alienate so many old fans, whether things will change in the future to accommodate more of the previous series style, whether this was always intended, whether it's not/was never intended, etc.

Comment on the fighter/trader commands/menus will be appreciated too.

The answer to this is complicated: Of course we do not intentionally alienate old fans. But X Rebirth is not X4 for a reason. I know many of you would have preferred a true X4 where we just take X3 and make it better, add more on top.

Actually you can believe me that I wished many times in the past 7 years we would have done just that. Not because I lost faith in the different design goals of X Rebirth, but because of the financial risk in developing this huge monster over 7 years.

Anyway... Of course we will also improve the AI and add more possibilities to control your ships. However the goal is to not achieve this with just adding more and more command options.

Once you add a ship to another captains command hierarchy for example, you have no direct control over that ship anymore. The player only interacts with the top level commanders and they should deal with the ones bellow. Maybe we will add more micro management options e.g allowing you to tell the captain how to group his subordinates into squads etc. but you will not have a long list of AI modes for every ship in every squad.

That being said, my long term goal for giving you more control also over fights would be a more strategic interface. One where you can plan a battle more than just instructing individual ships. But this is definitely one of the bigger tasks and not part of these immediate things we are now working on.

Bernd, First off let me say thank you for you and your teams hard work through all of the X games. that being said.

We aren't asking for "More and more" commands. We are simply asking for ANY commands. As it stands? You cannot do a single thing with fleets, they just mindlessly follow you. I mean, Attack/defend/go here.. anything...

Anyway.. my 2 cents.

[bendead]

This is a perfect X game. And I see good potential in it.

Perfect game ??? "j’espère juste que ne bosse pas dans l'industrie française...

Seriously, if you find perfect the game at release, than I will recommend you to stay away from people selling volcano or bird invasion or laser head sharks insurance.

[Rednoahl]

Hi Bernd,

I've been wary of posting here given the sheer amount of negative feedback coming from X Rebirth consumers, and I don't really want to add to that but sadly I have to.

For me, X Rebirth lacks clarity - I'm not getting enough feedback from the game to know for sure whether I've done something right or wrong.

"Have I bought a better shield than he last one?" I don't know.
"Is that freighter following me?" I don't know.
"What is a squad and what is the point of one?" I don't know.

The longer I play, the longer the list of questions that I don't know the answer to gets. EYE Divine Cybermancy did the same thing - potentially a great game but lacks the clarity to keep new players interested.

I'm going to soldier on with X Rebirth for now because so far I like the game universe, but I am struggling to find the joy of interacting with that universe as I did in the old X games because there isn't the commands to interact or there isn't enough clear information to make a decision about what to do.

[Tranzdog]

Edited to Get to some POINTS in the "speech"

I would like to say how amazed we all are here by the huge success of the game.

How can you say this? You know there a loads of people that LOVE your games do not try that "O dear me we did not think it would be so big" that's a load of BS.

Great though it is to see that the game is so successful and that many people are having a lot of fun with it, it pains me to see every case where the game causes problems. Sorry folks, I can only apologise for that.

Bugs and hardware issue are understandable- you guys have done this before and "we fans" know that a game will not be perfect at the start but the problem is this game seems like it was put together by people that have never done this before- you have YEARS of people giving you feed back on games, what they liked what they did not like- you have gone through what works and what does not work. Fine you got a new engine and wanted to make a DIFFERENT game that's all fine and good GREAT even but you did not need to toss 25 YEARS of experience out the window to do it.


1) Language bugs -

3) AI bugs with trade ship

4) Performance improvements:

These 3 are nothing more then POOR TESTING and lack of care- Did anyone play this game. did you not take a few hours a week to at least PLAY with what you where making? I HOPE you did not PAY "tester"


- Improved joystick support -

This is more BS how could this have been missed? it is a SPACE FLYING GAME ****** people are going to use a joystick. the key binds in game are ONLY set for the controller, the section for setting the key binds is called Joystick/controller.
you know very well NO ONE on your team had a joystick plugged in to there computer.

If you and the other Devs read this then I HOPE you all take a few minutes and be honest with your self; really stop and think - did you really put your heart, your blood, sweet and tears into making this game OR was it nothing more then a way to keep a pay check coming in and try out some new programming tricks?

If your answer is the first option then I look forward to a long and hard climb out of the hole you have dug and I hope you are active on the forum getting feed back from your fans. If your answer is the last part then tell us now! don't be shy come out and say it- "The game is what we wanted to be, we want to clean it up but dang gum it we like they way it plays right now."

Just tell us now, no more BS.

[SkunkedAussie]

You guys should stop all the hate and start with useful constructive criticism. I've posted on this thread too with what should be done. But my argument was put in clear what they should do terms instead of:

oooo they stole my money for a pos game *ragemore*

You really think thats going to see it improve? I highly doubt it, chances are they won't even get to make X4 if you all rage so hard. Everyone should be demanding to have the features in that they want or requesting refunds not having a friggin hissy fit like a spoilt child.

[Deleted User]

You guys should stop all the hate and start with useful constructive criticism. I've posted on this thread too with what should be done. But my argument was put in clear what they should do terms instead of:

oooo they stole my money for a pos game *ragemore*

You really think thats going to see it improve? I highly doubt it, chances are they won't even get to make X4 if you all rage so hard. Everyone should be demanding to have the features in that they want or requesting refunds not having a friggin hissy fit like a spoilt child.

someone who speaks my language. thank you.

[mononom]

oooo they stole my money for a pos game *ragemore*

Actually, if something like this would happen, in my world this would be a perfect reason to express concerns, or even disgust about the whole process. It implies 'stealing' and it implies i got a piece of software that i would barely call a game. The amount of people who are using terms like 'pos' in a uncontrollable hate tour are fairly low, tbf.

[Veluz]

Secondly, I would like to say how amazed we all are here by the huge success of the game.
-Bernd

X-Rebirth currently holds a 3.9 out of 10 on Metacritic ( http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/x-rebirth ) and both the Steam and Egosoft forums are filled with dissatisfied, irate customers condemning X:R as Egosoft's worst game in the series...

and you are here singing praises of Rebirth's success?

There's probably one of two things happening here; one: this is some kind of propaganda tactic; if you just talk about how successful the game is maybe you can keep up sales for a little while longer, and maybe some people will think "hey, I guess the game's not so bad, Bernd says its successful, I guess its just not for me." Well, good luck with that. It might work.

Or two: you simply measure "success" based on how much money you make, and not how satisfied your customers are. Eh, I bet its this one. It's the way of the world now.

I literally lol'ed; all these people talking about how they feel robbed and your official response is to talk about how many copies you sold. Hah.

Bad reviews everywhere, unhappy customers abound... but hey, you sold a lot... success!

[Avaton]

While I appreciate the update I absolutely hate that you guys are not willing to fix the big picture issues with the game (for example: TRADING MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE NOW!!!!) and find it laughable that you think that you have a successful title here. This list of your priorities that you posted in the OP shows me that you aren't really interested in the very real design problems with the game.

I currently have an open ticket with Steam for a refund or Steam credit. Maybe I'll get it, maybe I won't. Whatever. At any rate I am not comfortable supporting developers that appear to have never even played their own games and refuse to listen to legitimate complaints from their customers.

Thank you and have a nice day.

[squicker]

I currently have an open ticket with Steam for a refund or Steam credit. Maybe I'll get it, maybe I won't.

I'm like you, whilst I won't lose sleep over 40 quid and I acknowledge that Steam can be a tricky retailer to get a refund from, I believe if enough people are asking for refunds, Steam will see there are genuine problems with this game and it's not just a handful of people who simply don't like it.

The more Steam see that is the case, the harder it will be for them to deny refunds. They have in the past granted refunds for genuinely shoddy games and it's my personal view that Rebirth falls into that camp.

Also, by actively communicating these issues to friends and other gamers, I have been able to dissuade a few other 'X-heads' from buying this game and I think that in itself is a worthy activity.