The silence from the devs is making things worse

[Graaf]

Its not about being greedy for information, its about averting future disaster. Seriously what is there to lose here, have we not all agreed that public beta testing worked well... so test the concept of the new game you don't have to make development code public just the vision the game summary the description with a couple of mocked up screenshots photoshopped if necessary to help with visualization.

If I remove the word "public" I can ask: Like that worked so well for Rebirth? Compared to the previous games we had loads of information.

just a comment from me personally:
well, EGO is screwed either way: showing Stuff which might not make it too early (in experimental tage) leads to broken "promises" because everyone expects it will be done this way, showing stuff too late leads to what you refer to. And often there is no middle Ground between both options.

Well, even if everything makes it into the new game, there will be someone complaining it doesn't have multiplayer.

Also i remember a Statement from an EGOsoftie that they added the much dreaded First Person Gameplay just months before release to replace something worse... which must have been far worse than that, or they would have reverted it.

From what I remember it was Bernd himself telling us that in a game magazine interview. Early 2013 they replaced the simple docking pad with the full station interiors we have now.
And tbh, from what he described from then, compared to what I saw in video's and my personal view on First Person gameplay being nothing more than a timesink (we are here to fly spaceships), the original early 2013 build would have been best IMHO.

[ajax34i]

Restricted-movement first person gameplay. Some really old games used to have it, because they couldn't implement free wasd movement. Like trying to move down the road (by double-clicking) in Google Street View.

Anyway, back to the discussion, maybe the trailer is almost ready, but just not quite.

[ADMNtek]

i like the station walking and hope they keep it.

[Santi]

First, apologies, you do not need to tick the box in the profile to access the Public Beta Testing, it is open to everybody.

What you need to tick the box for is the Ideas section, that needs Level 3 to show up.

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewforum.php?f=106

Another addition that could become really useful in case they decide to go for an Early Access type of release and a place where feedback for new features could take place, while not proper functional testing, it is better than nothing. And with the new layout and strict posting rules it is easier to navigate, read and contribute as there is no "noise" derived from open discussion.

Personally I think there should be one game designer, making games by committee is not going to work, it is a sandbox and everybody has their own style of play and priorities, so we are not going to agree in anything. After thousands of posts, the only two things that are clear and where people agree is that they want more flyable ships and Capital ships bridges, and Egosoft are working on it.

[Nikola515]

@Santi

I think they should focus on what made X3 games great at same time what people liked in XR and improve on it. Also expanding lore and storyline would help a lot in this empty space. Hidden data that can be found by exploring that tell us what happened to uneverse and more details about Terran Conflict and How AGI destroyed Terrans fleets and how they survived by opening gate to black hole. I heard X novels are pretty good but too bad it is only in German. Egosoft should be adding more story in uneverse so we have idea what is going on As for L3 not many people want to give their personal information just so they can give their ideas that will probably be ignored

[Graaf]

Personally I think there should be one game designer, making games by committee is not going to work

Maybe we should try that first before ditching the concept on one man's opinion.

it is a sandbox and everybody has their own style of play and priorities, so we are not going to agree in anything.

We don't have to agree on anything. All we need are all the mechanics to let us play in our own style. It still is a singleplayer game, and not using some of the available mechanics is your own free choice.

After thousands of posts, the only two things that are clear and where people agree is that they want more flyable ships and Capital ships bridges, and Egosoft are working on it.

Actually that is just one thing, since flying Capital Ships would provide you with a cockpit aka bridge.

Also I do not agree with the simple statement of "more flyable ships". Just adding more ships to fly with the existing mechanics isn't going to work. The only ships qualified for that are M-class. And those are not the ships some of us want to fly. Some of us want to fly Transports, and to have a T-class as a flyable ship would also mean that some mechanics have to change.

[BigBANGtheory]

just a comment from me personally:
well, EGO is screwed either way: showing Stuff which might not make it too early (in experimental tage) leads to broken "promises" because everyone expects it will be done this way, showing stuff too late leads to what you refer to. And often there is no middle Ground between both options.

Here is how you deal with that... you don't make any promises and your committee (as Santi puts it) isn't there to make game design decisions it serves as a trusted source for level headed players completely aside from functional testers who do get to play with the software.

Functional testers : is <this> working?
Non-functional committee (for lack of a better word) : will <this> work for the player?

Egosoft make all the descisions of course they do, but if they are not aware, blind to, ignorant of, closed minded etc to problems then we all have a much bigger problem than a few broken promises.

After thousands of posts, the only two things that are clear and where people agree is that they want more flyable ships and Capital ships bridges, and Egosoft are working on it.

If ES feel the same way then we are in trouble because whilst that will improve the XR experience in itself it isn't going to deliver. For example once you have bolted on flyable ships and bridges then what, what are you going to do with them how does the gameplay take advantage of these things? Will I be fighting against the UI again etc etc... and if ES have it all under control then there is no reason to fear sharing it. Frontier, LGM or CIG aren't going to run off with the progressive changes to X and add them to their own games are they, there's your tin foil hat scenario right there.

[dfm5000]

@ dfm5000: There never was a shortage of unpaid volunteer Alpha or Beta testers for Rebirth and I doubt that there will be any lack for the next game either, should they need them.

The problems more likely lie in not having the dev team availability or finance to act upon all that the testers find before the various preset project milestones. Still, for Rebirth at least, this is water long gone under the bridge.

NB: this is all my personal opinion.

I don't believe all the problems are the developer, because no one moves without the Director or project managers say so.

But I do know this developing a game like X4 and having to wait 5 years is not something anyone wants to do; and see the game fail again.

Various things can be done to fix Egosoft's financial situation if their is one. Release a remastered version of Albion Prelude on the X-Rebirth engine.

Release an upgrade to Reunion with a menu system like X3 Albion Prelude but keep everything that made it great like BBP and the mini games.

Charge 10.00's for the patch, but explain that it's going to aid in the development of X4; I would personally give 10.00's for that.

Create an Expansion for X-Rebirth, that allows you to exchange the Albion pride for a ship the size of the Normandy from Mass Effect, and is as detailed and cool as the Normandy.
15 Buck price tag!! I'd buy it... A lot of people would argue that why should we pay for something that should have already been in the game lol. They will still buy it.

This already exists but it's very buggy, Egosoft has already jacked a few mods; jacking this one would be the best idea ever but fixing it first would help.
If I were in charge of this operation I would probably develop it into a patch exclusive to home of light.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =561548633
Since No Mans Scam wasn't quite what people were looking for, this would be the perfect alternative if it were working.

[The Q]

I'm afraid but your solution of earning more money to develop the new game is basically having money to develop new games. That is rather nonsensical. Especially as I do not think that any of your suggestions has the potential to break even.

[ajax34i]

I was going to say, the effort required to do that is about the same as developing X4; it amounts to "take the X-Rebirth engine and add some more star systems and plots to it." They're already doing that.

I think less effort might be to try the same as the last X3:AP DLC/patch: assign a couple Egosoft people to liaise with the modder community, let us develop some extra plot missions, maybe add a fix or two that the modders can't do (like, not having status messages cover the radar screen), and call it a DLC. Charge for it, use it as advertisement to the fact that X-Rebirth has gotten to a playable, even "good" state.

Otherwise, if the next game is to be released soon, they can just wait for that. It needs to be good, though, so they need to take the extra time required for a good polish of it, to reduce the bugs, polish the UI, etc. First impressions will matter with X4 and it needs to be good to bring in profit.

i like the station walking and hope they keep it.

Sorry, took a while to find this in the recesses of the internet and drag it back to light here. I won't mind the station walking if they fix it so it looks good and has a purpose besides chatting randomly placed ugly NPCs.

[mr.WHO]

Instead of station walking they should focus on proper GUI - with it we won't have to set our own virtual foot on the stations if we don't want to.

I remember the horror of before 2.5 where we couldn't cotact NPC from space that easily. Hell, we couldn't remote buy ships from shipyard before 4.0.

The station walking is a good concept and very poor execution - the interiors are boring and static - you always visit the same landing pad, same corridors and the same bar and quarters.
What we should have is station specific rooms - e.g. manager office that display station information on screens, production control room, hangar with real placement of docked ships (something like in the old X2 where each station hangar had 6 docking rack and ships docked to that station were put in these racks) - the Bridge mod proved that such dynamic interios are possible within XR engine.

Instead of stations interiors, I'm more interested in ship interiors and bridges - again ships shold have bridges, hangars, engineering and c rew quarters that should play real role, not just look nice. Interiors for corvettes and bigger should be much more immersive than station interiors.

For small ships we already have baseline if form of several cokpits for Skunk - slight remodeling to fit external model and we have huge variety of cokpits with rather low efford.

And for the last the greates sin:
If we have station interiors then why don't we have detailed player HQ station with extensive interior already? Such feature scream for PHQ!
X3R and X3:TC had PHQ addon patch already by the time of patchwork.


Edit:
The Star Citizen show how perfect the ship and station interiors should be, but yeah - I do realize that Egosoft don't have spare 60mil $.
However I wouldn't mind if Egosoft could take a look and try to make low cost imitation.

[ajax34i]

For me one of the more minor sins was: Why the hell would anyone put a terminal that can be hacked to completely disable station security in some random public access corridor?

As far as actual functional offices (bridge, security, engineering, whatever), that sounds good to me, but someone complained that it would be too bland and boring for the explorer in him. So in addition to offices, I think they should also have station interior areas that are representative of the type of station: vegetation for farms, assembly lines for high tech fabs, etc. Although, again, why would they allow public access to these areas is a question.

In any case, seen this in every other game: the decision to add some type of functionality to a game (walk in stations, avatars, etc.) means you HAVE to do a whole lot of extra work to make it look good and have a purpose. Hopefully it's a lesson they've learned.

[mr.WHO]

I think they should also have station interior areas that are representative of the type of station: vegetation for farms, assembly lines for high tech fabs, etc. Although, again, why would they allow public access to these areas is a question.

I thought about it, but in the end - Egosoft don't have resources to put that level of details (unless you want the No Man's Sky level of "variety") - each station would have to have production specific interior that fit station production purpose (and remember we have nearly a hundred of stations).
Something like generic engineering, station management center etc. that is the same for each station would be much better under condition that they provide actual use (e.g. station control panels and information screens) rather than decoration.

[Nikola515]

I still think it would be best if they give player tools to design their own interiors and share them on workshop. Just like designer of capital bridges mod did.... Take whole bunch of rooms together and make bridge (most popular mod) If they can find a way to give player easy way to make new interiors it would be good addition to gameplay. Also it would be boost to moding community as well.

[mr.WHO]

The problem is that Egosoft didn't provide proper moding tools for X-Rebirth.
I thought they did it because they wanted to force us to buy some crappy DLCs.
Yet, they failed as both DLC are...mildly retarted in the area of new models - Teladi Outpost DLC offer full Teladi ship set, but almost no new stations, while HoL DLC offer only a few decoration stations, but no new ships (some Khaak models from X3 doesn't count).

<I still bought HoL anyway >

If modding tools were present, modders would would already fill the holes in X-Rebirth. ANd good modding base would turn in to more purchase of base game and DLC which would bring more $$$ to Egosoft.

[UniTrader]

well, a Conversion Tool to/from EGOs own mesh files from/to dae exists for almost three years now, but there wasnt much that came out of it, and under these conditions i kind of doubt official tools would change much...

[BigBANGtheory]

The problem is that Egosoft didn't provide proper moding tools for X-Rebirth. I thought they did it because they wanted to force us to buy some crappy DLCs.

Modders aren't well placed to fix or address fundamental problems I don't think that stacks up in all honesty, and the DLCs certainly were not pay for fixes. No that is an area where ES integrity stands well imho...

At least we are all having a civilized discussion on the matter, there's progress for you

[mr.WHO]

Well, I have mixed feelings for X-Rebirth DLC content, but price wise Egosoft nailed it perfectly (TO free for early XR customers, HoL offered with discount).

I think it bothers me even more to see good half baked DLC that could be even better (missing Teladi economy, missing HoL ship set), than to see them beign full crap from the start.

[Santi]

This thread is a clear example of doing things by committee, thread touches on modding tools, DLC's, modders, station interiors, SETA, random Universes, procedural systems, financial situation of Egosoft etc etc..., diverging for the main issue that is communication between Egosoft and players, do you think it is easy for the Devs to get feedback from a thread like this as to address the issue? Not really, of course it is a good read on the other hand.

I am not saying people are not raising good points, because they are, but input has to be more focused to make it easier for the Devs to take notice.

How you focus community input, by releasing content and then, asking the community to give you feedback about what you released. No point in saying "we are working on more flyable ships" and ask for feedback, because you are going to get so much and so different feedback as to render it useless.

[Nikola515]

@Santi

Actually people wore trying to do that but devs never get involved in discussing about those points. This makes doing that pointless It is good idea but it will only work if they get involved little more with community. Some of us want to hear their point of view as well