X4 Foundations Poll #3: What did you NOT like?

[Tristavius]

Hacking/etc

Still don't really understand the point of the hacking after 70+ hours. Needs expensive parts that require combat grinding and are unlikely to actually lead to a lucrative haul. Entire 'justice' system needs overhaul... no way to store illegal parts elsewhere when not in use meaning it's either take the risk or not bother with the entire criminal system. No way of running permanently foul of the law other than bad faction rep, and no way to 'sneak' into territory or stations of red factions via clean/captured ships etc. Illegal items should be stored on ship not player so they can be left behind, or if not ships possibly an option to store on player owned stations. In short, all just seems kinda of pointless.

Remote Trade/Mine

Waaaaaaaaay too easy! One mission, buy a medium miner, send it out and off it goes making a fortune. Should require exploration to be effective (i.e will only mine asteroid areas explored recently or with Survey Beacons, requiring the use of beacons, scouts etc. Same for trading; should only be able to access stations recently player visited or on the satellite network. Nvidium has just become the early game cheat mode - again, one mission, one miner and set to Nvidium and it's a million an hour without the need to even find the stuff.

Exploration

Unclear how far you have/haven't scanned and overall difficult to find things like data vaults due to lack of knowledge of where you have/haven't checked. Very little reward from exploration. Non-player controlled exploration totally broken - can fly off way into the nothingness while areas around central stations still undiscovered!

Loving the majority, not meaning to sound at all negative but things can only improve with feedback!

[Tristavius]

Additional notes to the above:

Plot seems totally bare minimal... 'is that all?!' seems to be the common reaction.

Research just seems 'tacked on'... just a one hour time grind with no real sense of accomplishment.

Ship interiors could use some more areas... the teleport around feels like a bit of a cop out, especially when a couple of ships have a few extra bits. Doesn't need much, and certainly no need to a full interior on a 100+ crew ship, but a little more flavor would be nice.

Docking facilities and interiors are very Argon - additional modelling to match Paranid/Teladi would be nice, and will become even more important for Boron down the road!

Lack of Boron! They were always my favorite, was very sad to realize they were missing on 1.0 day!

[2mitrij]

Just no control of large groups of ships (it seems to have, but in fact it does not).
Formations do not work for capital ships.
The ship leader and his followers get to the point in different ways. lol
Dumb AI ships. The ship cannot track the course of another ship in flight and change its own. Wat? Is this the world of the future?

[Dreez]

I enjoy everything about the game to certain extent, some areas more than others.

The few issues i have, i'm sure will be sorted out eventually.

1) No trade or crewtransfer in space (using teleport)
2) Stationmissions rewards aren't affected by faction standing.
3) Ships balances are haywire, and i find that a frigate that is marginally larger than a fighter... is wrong.

[Duke Flipside]

My thoughts:

• Personal trading + mining: Never been a big draw for me personally, but nothing off with it that I've noticed. I didn't realise mining for crystals was a possibility until I noticed it mentioned online, though.
• Remote trading + mining: Some good elements, some poor; when my L size trader picks up 12 energy cells from my HQ megafactory and travels halfway across the universe to sell them then something is going wrong somewhere... I've also had some issues with automatic miners for stations, only focusing on the nearest available resources rather than prioritising further-away resources actually needed by the station.
• Building stations: generally pretty good; I was quite disappointed by the serious slowdown/logistics view issues from when megafactories went over a certain size, but that seems to be fixed as of 1.5. Aside from that, a more accurate way of moving/rotating station modules in build mode rather than clicking and dragging with the mouse would be appreciated, e.g. the numberpad keys. Same goes for zooming in/out, and the camera control, as it can be really hard to actually see what you want to at times. It would also be good if there was some way to highlight if modules are clipping into one another, as it can be VERY hard to tell sometimes. Also, there's some kind of bug with modifying turret loadouts, if the resources aren't available the resources required then seem to disappear and the build listed as completed, even though they haven't been built.
• Missions (including subscriptions): Generally underwhelming, and the lack of a plotline is pretty disappointing. Most of the time far too fiddly/time-consuming for the rewards on offer, with station building missions the only ones I bother doing anymore.
• Hacking / stealing / finding blueprints: I like the idea/inclusion of the EMP bomb, although I've never done it myself as my character is a Good Boy; however, scanning and finding unforced data leaks doesn't appear to count towards the steam achievements?
• Exploration / Collecting Data Vaults: Another really nice concept, but in practice having to fly your spacesuit around the data vault gets really tiresome after the first couple - I'm really not looking forward to the 20 or so I have left, judging by the timeline dots. Quality of Life updates, they should be much easier to see on the map once discovered (currently you have to zoom in really far and manually search a sector to see if you've already found a vault there), and it should also be much clearer whether you've accessed a vault or not; I know I flew by some earlier, but I can't figure out which one(s) it was, and I don't want to have to fly around them all over again to find out if I've already been there. Lastly, automated exploration should a) work, and b) your owned ships should flag and mark data vaults on your map, much like they do with abandoned ships.
• Capturing (S and M ships) + Boarding (L + XL ships): The requirement to have a pilot in your ships to have them move at all remotely has made this MUCH less fun. In X3 one of my favourite ways of making money was to capture the odd pirate ship, then have it fly to the nearest shipyard and sell itself. Now, when I find an abandoned Osprey I have to manually fly it to the shipyard myself at a mind-bogglingly tedious pace. Whenever I tell a marine to go instead, the boarding pod flies around the ship ad infinitum and never actually boards/captures the ship - After leaving it on SETA for half an hour I eventually executed my incompetent marine and did it myself, again (side-note: there appears to be no penalty for killing crewed ships you own...) I have also yet to figure out how boarding large ships actually works, even after following the tutorial the option to launch is always greyed out for me
• Small scale fight (personally against small groups): MUCH less fun than X3 - the entire way weapons/shielding works in X4 is a massive step backward compared to X3, in my opinion. The different weapons in X3 also felt much more impactful, and in particular the ability to launch missiles without having to sacrifice a hardpoint for your main guns provided a lot of extra options and flexibility (as did the ability to use cargo space for anything, allowing you to make your own tradeoffs about how much space to allocate to missiles, ammunition, etc.). The AI is also so bad there feels like there is very little threat - flying my Nemesis I have never felt myself to be in danger, unless I happen to fly too close to a Xenon defence station.
• Large scale fight (fleets / wars / Attacking a Xenon sector): The AI is so bad this isn't an option. I can't trust a lone M class ship to handle a lone S class ship anymore, whereas a lone M7 would barely bat an eye at a wing of M3s in X3. So, so far I wouldn't risk taking a fleet to a Xenon sector at all, for fear I'd have to babysit every ship.
• Summary: Would you review the game on Steam thumbs down? No, because I'm sure it WILL get better...but it's definitely not there yet. The main things to improve: bug fixes, trade AI, pilot AI, weapons systems, and ship designs - X3 ships were much prettier

[ero_sk]

I voted "Hacking / stealing / finding blueprints" but just wanted to add that I didn't enjoy it not because it's done wrong, but because I think that this kind of mini games don't fit the universe at all. Flying around a station like a fly and hunting for a signal completely takes away the immersion for me so it's a big NO.

[dougeye]

snip...
- Ships should be more expensive, especially combat Ships. Right now there is no sense of accomplishment for getting an L/XL ship.
snip..

So when you spend a few 100 million buy one of these toys, would you feel that they are worth the price in terms of performance as in : turret numbers, weapon types, usability of the ship in question handled by the AI/player, looks, overall feeling and satisfaction of the ship ?

the L / XL ships that can be taken out by a S ship?
nah

that's an issue with the quality of the design of the larger ships and shouldn't stop that basic ships being adjusted.

[wizaerd]

Many things missing from this poll in terms of what I did not or do not like...

Station Scanning - Hated it. There was not one single aspect of this that I liked. From scanning a station in my ship, to getting out and EVA along the surface of the station to scan it. Hate it. Immensely.
Same with those annoying static things that we're supposed to discover merely by sound, then look for the little sparkly thing. Hate it. Immensely.
Shooting locks off of lootboxes/crates in space. Hate it. Immensely.

I imagine this is just my opinion, but in X4, there's too much focus on the player character. X games to me have never been about a single character, they are merely fodder to building an economic empire to fund military conquest. First person combat in a ship, I could care less about. Walking around stations, crafting I could care less about. Give me more fleet command and control. Give me usable menus from X3 back, this monstrosity in X4 is just horrid.

[zakaluka]

I should add on my piece. What I REALLY hope changes eventually is that there's just no depth to progression.

Start out, shoot some crystals on asteroids for 2 hours or so, and you can already skip most of the struggles of a small operation. It's enough to buy a handful of medium miners and build a refinery station.

There used to be some sense of accomplishment and a lot of small steps in between. You'd begin with intermediate objectives and build a squad of small ships, regardless of your angle on the game. In this game, you can skip straight to the end in a couple hours. (don't mention that big ships are mostly pointless right now)

[wizaerd]

I forgot to mention in my first posting, the other thing I just do not like is the huge dependency on the mouse. I could almost play X3AP without touching the mouse. Not completely, because there was a lot of mouse usage, but everything in X4 requires mouse interaction is some fashion or another. It seems as if X4 really wants your hand to be on the mouse at all times. A large part of that is the map. I know a lot of new players complained about the UI in X3AP, it certainly can be a bit overwhelming. But at least it worked. And navigable and used with strictly the keyboard. The map is is Ego's solution to the menus of UI, but I really wish they'd re-think it. I'm not against the concept of the map, it's a good idea. Just so poorly executed/implemented.

[ezra-r]

Don't like:

* Turrets
* AI bumping and not follow a perfect path when docking. I sent a marine to claim a ship, I was too close, it started to spin around the ship for ever. At Some point I could even see the marine riding the boarding pod in space, it was kind of hilarious.
* Seminars and evreything related to them. Why on earth do we have them and we can't give them?
* An easier way to see what your building modules do before they are built in the build plan. For instance, to be able to see what ingredients they need to produce what they do.

[Botschafter Von Den Glück]

I liked the most, but in all the 10 aspects there were also things, that I didnt fully enjoy. its few things everywhere, but the most in 3 aspects I selected, because I wish it was deeper and more refined, in so many areas, I am searching numberless details...
more than one can ever program.

I selected
- exploring: (make it less boring to investigate to the borders of a sector) Because I want to explore the large size of each sector and find useful things in large areas in the off-core of a sector
the game was too much focused on the close-to-highway/gate few kilometers and could be scattered a lot more. yes a LOT!

- the hacking stealing blueprings: I like that its there, but its not refined enough. In the station there are MANY screens, that I want to hack! Every console I was looking in the technic room in each station looking for something to interact... give me SOMETHING to play around with! Blueprints are okay, but too easy to get, and stealing is too easy withotu a punishment. also stealing blueprints is too easy to do without a punishment. you shortcut HUGE amounts of money this way.

- large fleet battle: Well many people say something to it: It doesnt really work right now, because: you build large fleets with huge amount of money AND: You are too scared to loose even ONE small fighter, dare to destroy my L fregates and destroyers! So the battles are ... you dont want to loose anything, and then its not a real fight. If the result is bad: load save game... I want a mode, where I have more challenge with that, and likewise the fleet AI... those fresh pilots... maybe a reason to invest time with training them first. but where? There is potencial, I like it, but Im to scared to screw my fleet in the moment pace and controls and uncontrollables occassions everywhere

[moulbr]

The only thing I really hate is not even on the list. The space suit mechanics really is a PITA. You should have the same mechanics as a regular ship since you have thrusters in all directions.

[Galinet]

Conversations have hotkeys, such as 1 to initiate trade and 6 to exit the conversation.

Would be more polished if other dialogs had hotkeys too, such as the ship and station transporters, or when pressing the F key on a target, such as 1.Comm, 2. Scan, 6.Cancel, without having to click with the mouse and disrupt our flight path

[Dread Quixadhal]

I'm a little loathe to tick any boxes here, because without knowing WHY I dislike things, I'd hate to have any devs think I don't like the concept, or the activity in general.

I love missions, but I wish the mission chains were more cohesive, and that individual missions had a bit more flavor. It's a great start, but we'd like to see not just more variety, but solid writing and plots so we occasionally get a moment of surprise at how something turns out.

I like the small scale combat in general, but the AI isn't very smart (probably good, I'm not very skilled!). I'd like to have a little more feedback in the loadout screen (and equipment fitting screens) to tell me how changing things will affect combat. For example, judging only by the weapon power number, Ion cannons look like great weapons... which they are, but only against shields. I have no clue about the dispersion angle of the shard launchers, nor their range. I can't tell how long I can fire a beam weapon before it overheats. That could all be in tooltips, or in a detailed info popup, without needing to go out to a wiki to look.

I'd like to have some tools to mange remote trading more effectively. Being able to tell my ships not to bother with small cargo loads, or to factor travel time into their equation would help. I'd really like to be able to have table-driven lists of trade goods to complement the map-based ones. it'd be nice to say "show me energy cells" and have a list of every station that will buy or sell them (that I know about).

In general, I think this is a fun game already, and have probably 100 hours into it. I expect it to get nothing but better over time, but I do want to stress the AI issues, as that's a core element that isn't easy to change later. Keep up the great work! It's a million tiny details, but it's going well IMHO.

Also, remember, you're already ahead of a certain other game that shall not be named, and may not release before the sun goes nova.... *ahem*

[ChillAsIce]

I don't like exploration. I find it a required step for doing trading. I don't care to spend time wandering the void. I would pay NPCs for maps.

I don't like capturing s/m ships. Doing so requires that I get out of my ship to do stuff. I haven't had the opportunity to capture any big ships as I try to avoid fighting the major factions.

It feels like that some of the missions pays you too much. Its like the mission givers have too much money. You only need to do a dozen to afford your first batch of trade ships, or your first station. It also pays enough that even though I have a dozen stations yet I'm still doing those missions for money.

I don't like how its difficult to interact with a build storage personally. I can't easily target it. Asking for docking permission is easy once you target it. I can't seem to trade or transfer with it.

I don't like that I can't mine gas. At least, I haven't been able to figure out how to do so. Sometimes the little things matter, and this is one I spent like an hour trying to figure out how to do. I never gave mining asteroids much thought as everything seemed to make sense after I toasted my first asteroid.

I don't like having only 1 crewman on the bridge of my ships. I thought that maybe my ships were understaffed. I tried to increase the staff on my ships with no effect. I also find it annoying that the 1 crewman keep go back and forth between multiple stations. Its like they can't sit still. If it is necessary to keep moving between stations, maybe there should be more crewmen on the bridge so that all stations are manned.

I haven't liked that there are many important things that don't get explained. For instance, I don't know what crew is used for on ships and I was never told that my L ships need cargo drones. I had to follow one of my L ships for about an hour to discover that it used drones for transferring stuff, and that a build storage has none.

I was a good little player who tried to do all of the help tutorials that I could. I don't like that there is plenty of stuff that is not covered.

[hexx_eddi]

There is not really something i don't like. Sure there can be made improvements but in general if I don't like it I ignore it. There are only a few thing you have to do most is optional and this is good. I would like to see more options. For example scanning, if it would be possible to go to the manager and just buy a station scan (useful for stock info) or get the signal missions direct from NPCs on the station. When there is a different way then not all ways have to be "liked". Thats a strength of X (and single player) you can play the game how you want.

[A5PECT]

I'm a combat player, mostly. So my biggest complaint is combat AI: NPC ships and turrets are far less effective than I want them to be, as both player-controlled assets and as AI-controlled opponents. NPC ships and turrets can't shoot accurately enough, and turret weapons deal too little damage. It has the unpleasant result of making AI vs. AI combat inconsistent, and player vs. AI combat trivially easy.

AI pathfinding problems go without saying, though they're a broader issue.

Even as a combat player, I notice issues with the economy. Restructuring the entire economy to funnel into ship construction was a good idea for "closed loop" economic simulation. But it makes the entire economic chain more sensitive to shortages; if any one ware in ship construction isn't being manufactured properly, all ship construction slow down. This can be felt by the player directly when they go buy ships, or indirectly through decreased presence of NPC ships and conflict in the universe.

[Falcrack]

I wish we had more options for giving orders on the y axis on the map.

[wtfdidibuy]

I currently am not feeling large scale fleet battles yeah they looks cool but there inst enough of a command system to make it feel any kind of strategic. Its just like 2 mobs of ships flying at each other