Egosoft had to release X4 unfinished?

[Baconfortress]

X4 will not become a gem, as Rebirth didnt became a gem. You cant make a pig into a princess by putting lipstick on. (mark my words, I will post a "told you so" in 1 year)
Terran Conflict became a polished gem because Reunion was a troubled gem at release - not a half-finished product.

Werent terran conflict and albion prelude essentially inclusions of community mods into the game more than egosoft developments? Heck X3 was one of my faves but litcubes universe and the mayhem mod were superior to anything in the vanilla series

[Buzz2005]

I think is that they just don't have the means to make a complete new game with the amount of people they have, since x is a sandbox where there are plenty of combinations to play the game

Egosoft makes games for 30 years and X-games for 20 years now.
By all standards they have to be considered as the professionals that they are.
If they mess up it cant be explained by maybe "they dont have the means". Thats just naive. Even a professional project lead is capable to estimate if something can be done or not - its his job.
Even on a very professional level things can "go south", but usually not fully accidentially and never randomly. Egosoft messed up releases twice in a row. Thats not coincidence.

Ok then they don't know how to make the game without our help, and just suck at releases no mater how many times they do it
There support and patch game is super good on the other hand

[DuckSoup]

Is it frustrating that the game is kinda broken? Sure. But I know the devs are working hard to fix this because that care about their product. They want to make something really special.

Its exactly this thinking that helps Egosoft to justify the next half-baked release.
Not even to expecting a proper product, but accepting a broken, mediocre mess.
Egosoft is making a product to sell in the very first place. If enough customers thankfully take the junk theres no need for them to change a running system.
X4 will not become a gem, as Rebirth didnt became a gem. You cant make a pig into a princess by putting lipstick on. (mark my words, I will post a "told you so" in 1 year)
Terran Conflict became a polished gem because Reunion was a troubled gem at release - not a half-finished product.

Accepting mediocrity is what has to change so we can hope for a proper, polished game like Terran Conflict was.

I'd rather Egosoft release a broken game that can be fixed later than to have never released a game because they went under.

Also, weren't you the same bloke that made that <not so constructive> thread "The X4 economy is fake because someone on the internet said so"

I mean, if you don't like the game or the way Egosoft released it, that's fine. But...Maybe take the <not so constructive> threads somewhere else?

[CaptainX4]

Is it frustrating that the game is kinda broken? Sure. But I know the devs are working hard to fix this because that care about their product. They want to make something really special.

Its exactly this thinking that helps Egosoft to justify the next half-baked release.
Not even to expecting a proper product, but accepting a broken, mediocre mess.
Egosoft is making a product to sell in the very first place. If enough customers thankfully take the junk theres no need for them to change a running system.
X4 will not become a gem, as Rebirth didnt became a gem. You cant make a pig into a princess by putting lipstick on. (mark my words, I will post a "told you so" in 1 year)
Terran Conflict became a polished gem because Reunion was a troubled gem at release - not a half-finished product.

Accepting mediocrity is what has to change so we can hope for a proper, polished game like Terran Conflict was.

I'd rather Egosoft release a broken game that can be fixed later than to have never released a game because they went under.

Also, weren't you the same bloke that made that troll thread "The X4 economy is fake because someone on the internet said so"

I mean, if you don't like the game or the way Egosoft released it, that's fine. But...Maybe take the troll threads somewhere else?

maybe dont call others trolls

[Perahoky]

This is my final warning not to get personal. Any kind of baiting or name-calling, from either side, will not be tolerated. Anyone who ignores this warning runs the risk of having their account suspended.

I'm sorry for making too much trouble and leave this discussion for now.

Stay strong and kindly everybody.

[DuckSoup]

Its exactly this thinking that helps Egosoft to justify the next half-baked release.
Not even to expecting a proper product, but accepting a broken, mediocre mess.
Egosoft is making a product to sell in the very first place. If enough customers thankfully take the junk theres no need for them to change a running system.
X4 will not become a gem, as Rebirth didnt became a gem. You cant make a pig into a princess by putting lipstick on. (mark my words, I will post a "told you so" in 1 year)
Terran Conflict became a polished gem because Reunion was a troubled gem at release - not a half-finished product.

Accepting mediocrity is what has to change so we can hope for a proper, polished game like Terran Conflict was.

I'd rather Egosoft release a broken game that can be fixed later than to have never released a game because they went under.

Also, weren't you the same bloke that made that troll thread "The X4 economy is fake because someone on the internet said so"

I mean, if you don't like the game or the way Egosoft released it, that's fine. But...Maybe take the troll threads somewhere else?

maybe dont call others trolls

There fixed. /rolls eyes

[Phoynix]

Thats hard to actually support or disprove...
Bernd Johann Lehahn is still in charge and he is the founder so some continuality obviously exists, the question is how many of the developers are the same and what level of day to day operations does he have. With coders leaving and being replaced one can't expect something they did in a previous title is doable in this one. Just because Egosoft had programmers that did a decent job previously in fixing the problems that existed does not mean the ones there today have the experience or skill to do the same.

Companies are not people, they don't gain skills and then keep them, their skills are directly related to the people at the company during a specific timeframe, something people forget when they have an emotional attachment to games/company.

I think is that they just don't have the means to make a complete new game with the amount of people they have, since x is a sandbox where there are plenty of combinations to play the game

Egosoft makes games for 30 years and X-games for 20 years now.
By all standards they have to be considered as the professionals that they are.
If they mess up it cant be explained by maybe "they dont have the means". Thats just naive. Even a professional project lead is capable to estimate if something can be done or not - its his job.
Even on a very professional level things can "go south", but usually not fully accidentially and never randomly. Egosoft messed up releases twice in a row. Thats not coincidence.

[CloseEnough]

Even if we knew if the Staff has changed or not:
No way to tell if it is good or bad to have a decent amount of flux. I doubt that you could study game design or user experience design 30 years ago. I recently looked at the curriculum for a user experience
course of studies at the univeristy in my home town. Thats a lot of psychology, marketing, user research etc. The most obvious area to see that constant development is necessary is webdesign. Many changes did not only appear because they weren't possible 20 years ago, but also because we know a lot more about how people use websites, what frustrates them, how we can make them stay longer.

Thats hard to actually support or disprove...
Bernd Johann Lehahn is still in charge and he is the founder so some continuality obviously exists, the question is how many of the developers are the same and what level of day to day operations does he have. With coders leaving and being replaced one can't expect something they did in a previous title is doable in this one. Just because Egosoft had programmers that did a decent job previously in fixing the problems that existed does not mean the ones there today have the experience or skill to do the same.

Companies are not people, they don't gain skills and then keep them, their skills are directly related to the people at the company during a specific timeframe, something people forget when they have an emotional attachment to games/company.

[Kadanz]

I'm truely happy I didn't buy this game yet. Fool me once..

[rspider]

Thats hard to actually support or disprove...
Bernd Johann Lehahn is still in charge and he is the founder so some continuality obviously exists, the question is how many of the developers are the same and what level of day to day operations does he have. With coders leaving and being replaced one can't expect something they did in a previous title is doable in this one. Just because Egosoft had programmers that did a decent job previously in fixing the problems that existed does not mean the ones there today have the experience or skill to do the same.

Companies are not people, they don't gain skills and then keep them, their skills are directly related to the people at the company during a specific timeframe, something people forget when they have an emotional attachment to games/company.

I think is that they just don't have the means to make a complete new game with the amount of people they have, since x is a sandbox where there are plenty of combinations to play the game

Egosoft makes games for 30 years and X-games for 20 years now.
By all standards they have to be considered as the professionals that they are.
If they mess up it cant be explained by maybe "they dont have the means". Thats just naive. Even a professional project lead is capable to estimate if something can be done or not - its his job.
Even on a very professional level things can "go south", but usually not fully accidentially and never randomly. Egosoft messed up releases twice in a row. Thats not coincidence.

I think if you hang the success of your company on the skills of your employees only, you will not make it that long. It's called process control, documented process control. The lack thereof is often the down fall of companies. But if you have followed Egosoft over the years, you can tell that the process they have in place are working pretty good. All X-Titles turned in to wonderful games. X4 has a very good start, IMO.

OnTopic: Yes, if you can define unfinished and than No, if it was planned.

[JamesTheClarke]

Since there is a dev active in this thread I got a question for CBJ:

Is there a Roadmap for the upcoming releases with regards to factions yet? Will there be one published down the line?

As I mentioned in several threads my biggest gripe with the current state of the game and why it feels kinda unfinished to me is the lack of Terrans, Split and Borons as well as the somewhat copy-paste nature of the current sub-factions. Will the remaining three major factions become paid DLC in the future or be part of free content updates over time?

The rest of the game I really enjoy and the faction/DLC questions are the only thing that makes me concerned about the X-series atm. Thanks for reading.

[VariousArtist]

Dont worry. You wont see a comment on the forum unless its an offical statement. At least thats how they handled it so far. No comment until there is a comment strategy.

[ezra-r]

imo so far the game is good. Bugs? Aside from one CTD I had, having a hard time to find them.

I'd like to see what my ships do more clearly and perhaps descriptions of the map not getting overlapped so clunkily, but I still think egosoft has made the least buggy release in a decade or more. Anyways, have to play more to find all these things you people are talking about, 21 hours in and still need to find them.

PS: loving the spacesuit!

[PowerPC603]

I'm thinking they deserve to go under.

I paid ~$75 for a bug ridden POS. You can't even use the autopilot because the AI pathing around stations is so amateurishly implemented your ship gets stuck inside after magically passing through station walls etc.

This just happened to me again and I can't get out, even by manually taking over.

This is my first X-Game and I am utterly shocked by how bad it is. Plus the fact they couldn't even be bothered to produce a manual or proper help for a complex game.

It's an early access indie game sold at AAA prices. I can't get a Steam refund as I'm in about 20 hours now.
If I had the time and money I'd sue their ass for false advertising.

If it had been released for $20 as early access I could accept it. But to rip people off like this is fraud, plain and simple.

If you had followed the forum a bit, you would have found lots of topics which explained the history of the X-games at release.
I've been following Egosoft since X2: The Threat and with every release, there were bugs and for some players, the bugs were so huge they couldn't even start the game or they had CTD issues after playing for 5 minutes.
I didn't find that many game-breaking bugs when I played them, but everyone was shouting on the forums weeks before release that you should wait until after release and check the forum to see the feedback from players who bought it.
I couldn't buy the game because my pc's gfx card is far too weak to even get the game started but I see that they did it again, release an unfinished game with some game-breaking bugs in them, as if there were no beta-testers to test the game before launch.

And sueing them would cost you alot more than the 75 euro's or so you paid for the game.
The last few years, with broadband internet, it's become normal for developers to release a game when they think it's playable on their machines and if they get negative feedback from players, some will release patches to fix bugs, others don't.
Egosoft at least WILL fix bugs in their games, you can't say that from every developer.
I know games that are still being upgraded today after 8 years and still the bugs from version 1. aren't fixed.

Back in the days, when there was no internet and games came on floppy discs, those games had to be playable at release because nobody could just download an update due to the lack of internet.
Now, they just release something they hope will run on some player's pc's and release bug-fixes afterwards.

I check game-reviews now before I actually buy a game, this was previously never the case.
I've bought many games that I just couldn't run properly because I didn't checkout reviews first.

[Komuso]

I'm thinking they deserve to go under.

I paid ~$75 for a bug ridden POS. You can't even use the autopilot because the AI pathing around stations is so amateurishly implemented your ship gets stuck inside after magically passing through station walls etc.

This just happened to me again and I can't get out, even by manually taking over.

This is my first X-Game and I am utterly shocked by how bad it is. Plus the fact they couldn't even be bothered to produce a manual or proper help for a complex game.

It's an early access indie game sold at AAA prices. I can't get a Steam refund as I'm in about 20 hours now.
If I had the time and money I'd sue their ass for false advertising.

If it had been released for $20 as early access I could accept it. But to rip people off like this is fraud, plain and simple.

If you had followed the forum a bit, you would have found lots of topics which explained the history of the X-games at release.
I've been following Egosoft since X2: The Threat and with every release, there were bugs and for some players, the bugs were so huge they couldn't even start the game or they had CTD issues after playing for 5 minutes.
I didn't find that many game-breaking bugs when I played them, but everyone was shouting on the forums weeks before release that you should wait until after release and check the forum to see the feedback from players who bought it.
I couldn't buy the game because my pc's gfx card is far too weak to even get the game started but I see that they did it again, release an unfinished game with some game-breaking bugs in them, as if there were no beta-testers to test the game before launch.

And sueing them would cost you alot more than the 75 euro's or so you paid for the game.
The last few years, with broadband internet, it's become normal for developers to release a game when they think it's playable on their machines and if they get negative feedback from players, some will release patches to fix bugs, others don't.
Egosoft at least WILL fix bugs in their games, you can't say that from every developer.
I know games that are still being upgraded today after 8 years and still the bugs from version 1. aren't fixed.

Back in the days, when there was no internet and games came on floppy discs, those games had to be playable at release because nobody could just download an update due to the lack of internet.
Now, they just release something they hope will run on some player's pc's and release bug-fixes afterwards.

I check game-reviews now before I actually buy a game, this was previously never the case.
I've bought many games that I just couldn't run properly because I didn't checkout reviews first.

People obviously don't bother to read the full thread, otherwise you would have seen my later reply:

"The sue comment was hyperbole, obviously it's hardly worth suing over $75.
However, that doesn't absolve EgoSoft from the fact they have released an Early Access game under false advertising as "ready for release" - no matter what YOU say. "
viewtopic.php?f=146&t=405283&start=15#p4773401

However, I see this release as a failure of product strategy and not the developers doing the hard work.

If this had been released as a lower cost Early Access product they would not be getting the blowback they quite rightly deserve.
Even the lack of a manual would be a non-issue if it was early access.

That's just so much bull to say now days you can release a half-baked game and get away with it because "INTERNET".
No. That's a failure of the company to have a customer first strategy.
It's plain ES has learned nothing through the years and stuck to the same strategy because hardcore acolytes have become habituated to their release method.
I'm sorry, that's just unacceptable.

I'm sure over time it will be fixed, but when you sell expectations you better live up to them or find a better way to manage them.

>>I know games that are still being upgraded today after 8 years and still the bugs from version 1. aren't fixed.

I'll counter that with "I know games that are still being upgraded today after 8 years and the bugs from version 1 were fixed years ago. Example: SOASE"

[Alee Enn]

Has it been released in a perfect state? No.
Do I feel I have been lied to by Egosoft? No.
Do I want my money back? No.

Yes there are bugs, and I honestly haven't experienced them, or if I have, I haven't noticed.
It's better than Rebirth was, and I didn't buy Rebirth until about 4 four years after release, and then didn't play it past about 10 minutes in.
I love X4. I think it's better than my previous fave of the series X3TC. I forsee myself playing X4 for years.

Someone above said "people need to stop defending Egosoft" ... maybe, but people also need to stop attacking them as well. Everyone needs to chill.

[Komuso]

Has it been released in a perfect state? No.
Do I feel I have been lied to by Egosoft? No.
Do I want my money back? No.

Yes there are bugs, and I honestly haven't experienced them, or if I have, I haven't noticed.
It's better than Rebirth was, and I didn't buy Rebirth until about 4 four years after release, and then didn't play it past about 10 minutes in.
I love X4. I think it's better than my previous fave of the series X3TC. I forsee myself playing X4 for years.

Someone above said "people need to stop defending Egosoft" ... maybe, but people also need to stop attacking them as well. Everyone needs to chill.

It's an early access game passed off as an official release, which technically qualifies for "false advertising".

Companies need to stop pulling this shit. If the game isn't ready, do it as Early Access and manage expectations properly.
Don't market it as ready then release an early access product and expect people to pat you on the back and lap it up.

That's just a ****** way to bait and switch customers to maximize launch income.

They deserve to get blowback for such a cynical marketing strategy when there was an appropriate alternative path there the whole time.

[shinzah]

It's an early access game passed off as an official release, which technically qualifies for "false advertising".

>Technically "false advertising"

No. But I implore you to sink the money into lawyers chasing a class action for "False advertising" when no promises were directly made that said "this product is going to be exactly what Komuso
and everyone else wants it to be, and it will be bug free and perfect in every way"

False advertising is directly imaging a canvas bag and sending out a cheap alternative. That would 'technically' be false advertising.

This is just a game that doesn't do what you want it to do.

With the 1.30 open beta patch it does what I want it to do, though.

[Notak]

Hey, im totally new to the X scene and franky this seems like a flame post,

Is it buggy: Yes
Does it work: Yes
Are the devs working hard to fix problems: Yes
When was the last game released that didn't have bugs: before the internet (yes kids this actually happened)
Compare this to other games: could name many that flat out didnt work on launch
Are the bugs game breaking: no just frustrating but there are plenty of other things to do

Dont get me wrong, i have many frustrations myself but shit happens, the game works well, yes unfinished but if we made a post for every game what was "unfinished" then we would have a post for every game developed from now to the end of time, such is the internet.

Edit: By the own admission of the author: Yes Egosoft had to launch an unfinished product. wasn't the first company to do it, wont be the last.

[CaptainX4]

Edit: By the own admission of the author: Yes Egosoft had to launch an unfinished product. wasn't the first company to do it, wont be the last.

so you have just admitted its fraud