It is about time Egosoft takes some ideas from other sandbox games

[Warnoise]

I think the 2.0 didn't do much. The lack of late game challenge and ship/weapon variety kills the motivation for many players.

After playing Stellaris and Kenshi, I said to myself "Why didn't Egosoft implement this mechanism in their game?"

The key of sandbox games is to keep the player motivated long enough to enjoy it to the fullest, and X4 horribly fails to do so.

That being said, I think Egosoft should think about implementing the following mechanisms in their game in order to, not only add something really new to the X series, but to also spice up the player experience:

-Diplomacy: This has been mentioned before so I won't develop on it here.

-Mid-game crisis: I enjoyed this in Stellaris. I would think of it as a roaming invasion fleet of pirates with decent size, who make their base in pirate sector. It boosts pirates production which in turn will increase harassment and pirate invasion frequencies so a pirate key station (that spawns with the event and decently protected) needs to be destroyed in order for this event to end.

-Late-game crisis: Also from stellaris. Inactive gates get activated and spawn in hundreds of powerful ships of Xenon or whatever nemesis-type faction and destroy everythin in sight. Player must work together with allies to destroy them.

-Roaming special ships: From kenshi. I liked how in kenshi there are those special bosses that carry special weapons hidden all over the map. Similar thing could be done in X4 where special ships (could refitted trade ships or whatever) roam in hidden areas accross the galaxy and the player has to explore and use long range scan to find them.

-Invasions/tax: From Kenshi. In X4, building a station is too safe. I think building a station in an already owned sector should be expensive and must pay taxes to the owner. If failed to pay tax, the faction will turn red and become and enemy. If build station in an rogue sector, you dont pay taxes but you have to protect it from pirates, xenon and khaak (depending on who is closer) who send fleets actively trying to destroy your station (no matter where you build it)

This is all i can think of now. I just feel that Egosoft need modernize the genre by implementing ideas from other good Sand box games.

[Bozz11]

Diplomacy: yeah definitely should be improved ! maybe make truce between factions, other wars etc...

I'm againsit crisis as X4 has a real economy and all ships are built so I don't want the game to throw in some ships that were magically created out of nowhere... and how would you suggest for the game to know when is mid or late game as some people may not even make a combat fleet and just get destroyed... but Xenons getting a buff in ship production for x hours and invading more actively could be somethin to consider.

Roaming special ships, that would be a nice feature, bring back the Aran xD

Invasions I agree it should be more dangerous not enough threaths in most unowned sectors.

[Socratatus]

I would like to really see is a starting true Sandbox campaign option that allowed you to make a character (how he looks, male, female, alien, human, black, white, etc), with several stock starting reasons (freed prisoner, parents killed, loner old timer going for one last fling in space, received a windfall, left home to explore), a family crest or Logo and allowing the Player to write his own biography of how he started off finally appearing randomly in any major part of the map with a certain amount of starting credits, and a basic cheap ship.

[darrund]

I think the 2.0 didn't do much. The lack of late game challenge and ship/weapon variety kills the motivation for many players.

After playing Stellaris and Kenshi, I said to myself "Why didn't Egosoft implement this mechanism in their game?"

The key of sandbox games is to keep the player motivated long enough to enjoy it to the fullest, and X4 horribly fails to do so.

That being said, I think Egosoft should think about implementing the following mechanisms in their game in order to, not only add something really new to the X series, but to also spice up the player experience:

-Diplomacy: This has been mentioned before so I won't develop on it here.

-Mid-game crisis: I enjoyed this in Stellaris. I would think of it as a roaming invasion fleet of pirates with decent size, who make their base in pirate sector. It boosts pirates production which in turn will increase harassment and pirate invasion frequencies so a pirate key station (that spawns with the event and decently protected) needs to be destroyed in order for this event to end.

-Late-game crisis: Also from stellaris. Inactive gates get activated and spawn in hundreds of powerful ships of Xenon or whatever nemesis-type faction and destroy everythin in sight. Player must work together with allies to destroy them.

-Roaming special ships: From kenshi. I liked how in kenshi there are those special bosses that carry special weapons hidden all over the map. Similar thing could be done in X4 where special ships (could refitted trade ships or whatever) roam in hidden areas accross the galaxy and the player has to explore and use long range scan to find them.

-Invasions/tax: From Kenshi. In X4, building a station is too safe. I think building a station in an already owned sector should be expensive and must pay taxes to the owner. If failed to pay tax, the faction will turn red and become and enemy. If build station in an rogue sector, you dont pay taxes but you have to protect it from pirates, xenon and khaak (depending on who is closer) who send fleets actively trying to destroy your station (no matter where you build it)

This is all i can think of now. I just feel that Egosoft need modernize the genre by implementing ideas from other good Sand box games.

I couldn't disagree more with posts like this.
In my personal view it is posts like this that are moving Egosoft away from what this game needs.I really don't believe that Egosft needs to imitate anyone else.What they need to do is focus to their own game and hold true to their legacy.
Egosoft has a good record all these past few years that,again in my opinion, surpasses most of what the other games are doing.
it is this kind of "fix mah guns" and "make the Xenon harder" attitude that in my mind is currently driving the game towards something that X-games have not done in the past.
Again, and that's strictly my opinion, what they need to do at this point is to fix (address) certain issues.
1. Fix the game engine to work properly (to the point that this can be done)
2. Expand the Universe ASAP since the existing Universe (regardless of what the devs are saying about sector size etc) is SMALL,UNINTERESTING,and offers very little CHALLENGE. hell the way things are right now its not even time consuming.
3. Get rid of the buggy missions and add some content for variety
4. Get rid of some very unimportant stuff that really offer nothing in the game like vaults and lockboxes (who the hell wants to open a box with nothing significant in it except may be a mine, Jesus whoever thought of THAT?)or even these "anomalies" that teleport you to whatever sector (what for really I fail to understand)
5. Add some variety because after a few in-game hours everything is rapidly becoming all too familiar.

I was very reluctant when the player shipyards were announced and I said that the way things were with the game it was TOO EARLY to introduce player shipyards ,cause "they might create more problems than the game needs at this point" and for all I see unfortunately this prediction was correct.
It is obvious to me that the game is rapidly losing pace and momentum.Take a look for instance in the spoilers forum.There is hardly anything worth of mentioning like a true spoiler in weeks.Most of what is even mentioned there with a few exceptions is either simple game mechanics or solutions to known bugs but not really content issues, because THERE ISN'T ANY.
So forgive me for not being very positive to this idea but the way I see things this game needs a lot of other things to be addressed first and definitely there is no need for Egosoft to imitate anyone and if there is a need for something like that they already have a lot of previous experience with their own games to copy from (not that copying even yourself is necessarily a good thing though)

[Shepp]

I couldn't disagree more with posts like this.
In my personal view it is posts like this that are moving Egosoft away from what this game needs.I really don't believe that Egosft needs to imitate anyone else.What they need to do is focus to their own game and hold true to their legacy.
Egosoft has a good record all these past few years that,again in my opinion, surpasses most of what the other games are doing.
it is this kind of "fix mah guns" and "make the Xenon harder" attitude that in my mind is currently driving the game towards something that X-games have not done in the past.

My opinion sort of splits the middle between the OP and this. I think some of the stuff that the OP said is already in the game but its just not working right yet. The crisis scenarios described are already there. The Xenon and the Khaak should be filling these roles. The problem is that their slow production and meandering tactics keep them from really being a significant threat. I also think there should be more direct conflict between the sub-factions.

My all time favorite mods for X3 is Litcube's Universe with the Mayhem submod. In vanilla LU the OCV is this giant steamroller that spreads and becomes a bigger problem the longer it takes you to confront it. In Mayhem the OCV are still there but there is also a greater emphasis on the factions fighting each other. If Egosoft would tweak X4 in that direction I believe there would be a lot more tension, and fun, to be had.

From what I've seen, this is because when Egosoft makes moves to buff up things like wars and xenon. There is an outcry from part of the community that just wants a trading/ station building game. They don't want sectors closed to them because of bad relations and they don't want their stations and ships threatened. I think the only way to make both sides happy is to expand the game setup options. If we were able to edit the production multipliers for Xenon and Khaak folks could set the threat to their liking. There could also be a toggle for inter-faction wars. That way the folks that just want a sandbox to trade and build stations can be left in peace. It also wouldn't hurt if the Xenon tactics were changed a little bit. Right now it looks like they try to move into a sector and establish a foothold by creating defense stations. If they focused on steamrolling through a system first and then built stations after taking over. Then they would be much scarier.

[Yggdrasill]

It is about time Egosoft takes some ideas from other sandbox games

Why? What makes Egosoft incapable of implementing original ideas? X3 was really successful, I'm confident they can build such an experience in X4 in time.

After playing Stellaris and Kenshi, I said to myself "Why didn't Egosoft implement this mechanism in their game?"

Personally don't think Stellaris is a good example of any late-game potential. For the most part the game stagnates and becomes boring for me, despite how many times I've tried to play it. The only thing to really do in the game is to fight wars, which gets boring and tedious after a while, much unlike most other Paradox games. By far the worst Paradox game, imo.

-Diplomacy: This has been mentioned before so I won't develop on it here.

Yeah, that's fair, but I don't think it should have the same approach to diplomacy that other games like Stellaris does. X4's economic and warfare simulation is much deeper than that of Stellaris, and faction relations can easily adjust themselves dynamically based on supplying resources to someone's enemies etc.

-Mid-game crisis: I enjoyed this in Stellaris. I would think of it as a roaming invasion fleet of pirates with decent size, who make their base in pirate sector. It boosts pirates production which in turn will increase harassment and pirate invasion frequencies so a pirate key station (that spawns with the event and decently protected) needs to be destroyed in order for this event to end.

-Late-game crisis: Also from stellaris. Inactive gates get activated and spawn in hundreds of powerful ships of Xenon or whatever nemesis-type faction and destroy everythin in sight. Player must work together with allies to destroy them.

Both of these are just predictable events that ALWAYS happen in Stellaris. They're not any fun when you've experienced them a few times each, it's repetitive and boring. It's not very dynamic at all, just a bunch of bull that spawns. Furthermore, they break the key feature of X4, which is that the economy is fully dynamic, and every ship is built from resources that have been harvested and produced. It would be a shame to break this feature by just spawning in ships. There are also many X players that do not care for warfare whatsoever, and why should you force them into this situation?

-Invasions/tax: From Kenshi. In X4, building a station is too safe. I think building a station in an already owned sector should be expensive and must pay taxes to the owner. If failed to pay tax, the faction will turn red and become and enemy.

This stuff existed as part of mods and stuff in X3, and it was great. Egosoft is giving the player the option to adjust taxes and stuff in 3.x to my understanding, so I'm sure that they'll add that to the universe races too. I most certainly hope they do, but if not, someone will script that.

If build station in an rogue sector, you dont pay taxes but you have to protect it from pirates, xenon and khaak (depending on who is closer) who send fleets actively trying to destroy your station (no matter where you build it)

They're unclaimed sectors, and they have no protection. You have to defend them yourself, and this already exists in the game. That said, the Xenon and Kha'ak shouldn't especially target you just because you're the player, absolutely not, especially if they're so far away from the sector. Both Silent Witness neutral sectors and Nopileos' Fortune are far away from Xenon sectors. There's a Kha'ak station in Silent Witness XII that pumps out ships, and I've taken station damage in Silent Witness XI because of it, and lost some traders while afking, though I noticed and defended it in time. I have actually needed to defend my stations in Nopileos' Fortune from Xenon, and having actually needed to repair a station that got heavily damaged when I left the game running while I was away.

This is all i can think of now. I just feel that Egosoft need modernize the genre by implementing ideas from other good Sand box games.

I think it just needs to implement features from X3, add more sectors, improve fleet management and the interface in general, improve both economic and warfare AI in the game so that it becomes more challenging to fight the races, and bring the atmosphere of the old X games back, because I think X4 lacks a lot of atmosphere.

[abisha1980]

2.0 did not introduce anything interesting for me consider i not exploiting the game so not have billions of credits.
so that leaves basic with nothing to look forward. still i looking forward for 3.0 if they add interesting stuff to the game.

i think they should focus on "unique" stuff more like explorable places, unique ships to be found, special weapons, etc.
stuff to keep the player crave to explore the game.

[radcapricorn]

i think they should focus on "unique" stuff more like explorable places, unique ships to be found, special weapons, etc.
stuff to keep the player crave to explore the game.

Past 3.0, perhaps. Right now what they should focus on is ironing out the existing gameplay. Adding floating equipment docks when already existing stationary ones suffer? That's two things to worry about instead of one. Adding more missions while there are so many issues with already existing ones? Who's to say those new ones won't have issues?..

[Warnoise]

I think the 2.0 didn't do much. The lack of late game challenge and ship/weapon variety kills the motivation for many players.

After playing Stellaris and Kenshi, I said to myself "Why didn't Egosoft implement this mechanism in their game?"

The key of sandbox games is to keep the player motivated long enough to enjoy it to the fullest, and X4 horribly fails to do so.

That being said, I think Egosoft should think about implementing the following mechanisms in their game in order to, not only add something really new to the X series, but to also spice up the player experience:

-Diplomacy: This has been mentioned before so I won't develop on it here.

-Mid-game crisis: I enjoyed this in Stellaris. I would think of it as a roaming invasion fleet of pirates with decent size, who make their base in pirate sector. It boosts pirates production which in turn will increase harassment and pirate invasion frequencies so a pirate key station (that spawns with the event and decently protected) needs to be destroyed in order for this event to end.

-Late-game crisis: Also from stellaris. Inactive gates get activated and spawn in hundreds of powerful ships of Xenon or whatever nemesis-type faction and destroy everythin in sight. Player must work together with allies to destroy them.

-Roaming special ships: From kenshi. I liked how in kenshi there are those special bosses that carry special weapons hidden all over the map. Similar thing could be done in X4 where special ships (could refitted trade ships or whatever) roam in hidden areas accross the galaxy and the player has to explore and use long range scan to find them.

-Invasions/tax: From Kenshi. In X4, building a station is too safe. I think building a station in an already owned sector should be expensive and must pay taxes to the owner. If failed to pay tax, the faction will turn red and become and enemy. If build station in an rogue sector, you dont pay taxes but you have to protect it from pirates, xenon and khaak (depending on who is closer) who send fleets actively trying to destroy your station (no matter where you build it)

This is all i can think of now. I just feel that Egosoft need modernize the genre by implementing ideas from other good Sand box games.

I couldn't disagree more with posts like this.
In my personal view it is posts like this that are moving Egosoft away from what this game needs.I really don't believe that Egosft needs to imitate anyone else.What they need to do is focus to their own game and hold true to their legacy.
Egosoft has a good record all these past few years that,again in my opinion, surpasses most of what the other games are doing.
it is this kind of "fix mah guns" and "make the Xenon harder" attitude that in my mind is currently driving the game towards something that X-games have not done in the past.
Again, and that's strictly my opinion, what they need to do at this point is to fix (address) certain issues.
1. Fix the game engine to work properly (to the point that this can be done)
2. Expand the Universe ASAP since the existing Universe (regardless of what the devs are saying about sector size etc) is SMALL,UNINTERESTING,and offers very little CHALLENGE. hell the way things are right now its not even time consuming.
3. Get rid of the buggy missions and add some content for variety
4. Get rid of some very unimportant stuff that really offer nothing in the game like vaults and lockboxes (who the hell wants to open a box with nothing significant in it except may be a mine, Jesus whoever thought of THAT?)or even these "anomalies" that teleport you to whatever sector (what for really I fail to understand)
5. Add some variety because after a few in-game hours everything is rapidly becoming all too familiar.

I was very reluctant when the player shipyards were announced and I said that the way things were with the game it was TOO EARLY to introduce player shipyards ,cause "they might create more problems than the game needs at this point" and for all I see unfortunately this prediction was correct.
It is obvious to me that the game is rapidly losing pace and momentum.Take a look for instance in the spoilers forum.There is hardly anything worth of mentioning like a true spoiler in weeks.Most of what is even mentioned there with a few exceptions is either simple game mechanics or solutions to known bugs but not really content issues, because THERE ISN'T ANY.
So forgive me for not being very positive to this idea but the way I see things this game needs a lot of other things to be addressed first and definitely there is no need for Egosoft to imitate anyone and if there is a need for something like that they already have a lot of previous experience with their own games to copy from (not that copying even yourself is necessarily a good thing though)

I made those suggestions in my post because X4 is a sandbox game. That's it. It has all elements of a sandbox game+ the economy which is the only touch that Egosoft added to the sandbox genre, other than that, X4 has nothing worth of being called a "good sandbox game".

Their legacy is already buried by X-rebirth and X4. It is obvious they are struggling to modernize the X series. They added complex and dynamic economy which as we can see is not only broken, but is pretty hard to balance.

I think the whole community wants new missions, ships, sectors, etc... because I believe we can all agree that X4 is lacking pretty hard content-wise.

From my side, I want X4 to also improve the sand box part of the game. Adding new ships, new sectors, etc...will only satiate that thirst temporarily before we start making threads about new contents again. Why? Because we will just end up in the same place. SETA your way to the billionaire club.

What this game needs is something that shifts the player's attention. A threat, a real goal, a surprise, a mystery, etc...And imo Stellaris and Kenshi have done this part very well.

Bugs, content, etc...ok we know those are issues that need to be addressed, but currently the sandbox part of Egosoft can be called Trade Simulator 2019.

[kmunoz]

The thing is that most of your suggestions are the exact opposite of sandbox. Sandbox is precisely that: a medium from which the player creates his or her own content. It's a box of sand. You play with the sand.

X4 right now is very precisely a sandbox. There is very little plot, the missions are fairly generic and serve mainly to grind rep and money. And then you're left to your own devices. That's a sandbox.

Mid-game crisis? That's storyline, not sandbox.

"A threat, a real goal, a surprise, a mystery, etc" - these are also the opposite of sandbox.

I generally like the ideas you present and wouldn't mind seeing them implemented, but they are most definitely not sandbox ideas. Not even a little bit.

[kmunoz]

5. Add some variety because after a few in-game hours everything is rapidly becoming all too familiar.

Given that OP is offering suggestions on how to add variety, but you don't want that kind of variety, what exactly do you want?

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

-Diplomacy: This has been mentioned before so I won't develop on it here.

May be addressed in 3.0, but the X-series games are not Civ-type games and as such I think this needs to be addressed with-in reasonable limits. Let mods deal with the more complicated stuff.

-Mid-game crisis: I enjoyed this in Stellaris. I would think of it as a roaming invasion fleet of pirates with decent size, who make their base in pirate sector. It boosts pirates production which in turn will increase harassment and pirate invasion frequencies so a pirate key station (that spawns with the event and decently protected) needs to be destroyed in order for this event to end.

-Late-game crisis: Also from stellaris. Inactive gates get activated and spawn in hundreds of powerful ships of Xenon or whatever nemesis-type faction and destroy everythin in sight. Player must work together with allies to destroy them.

-Invasions/tax: From Kenshi. In X4, building a station is too safe. I think building a station in an already owned sector should be expensive and must pay taxes to the owner. If failed to pay tax, the faction will turn red and become and enemy. If build station in an rogue sector, you dont pay taxes but you have to protect it from pirates, xenon and khaak (depending on who is closer) who send fleets actively trying to destroy your station (no matter where you build it)

Disagree - you want a more dangerous universe, then that is the domain of mods IMO. As for taxes, disagree also - but this is implemented as build plot purchase costs and should remain that way IMO.

-Roaming special ships: From kenshi. I liked how in kenshi there are those special bosses that carry special weapons hidden all over the map. Similar thing could be done in X4 where special ships (could refitted trade ships or whatever) roam in hidden areas accross the galaxy and the player has to explore and use long range scan to find them.

Waste of time and effort IMO - the X-series games have actively supported community developed mods since at least X2 and what you are asking for here is essentially what I would consider clearly in the domain of community developed mods.

[Warnoise]

-Diplomacy: This has been mentioned before so I won't develop on it here.

May be addressed in 3.0, but the X-series games are not Civ-type games and as such I think this needs to be addressed with-in reasonable limits. Let mods deal with the more complicated stuff.

-Mid-game crisis: I enjoyed this in Stellaris. I would think of it as a roaming invasion fleet of pirates with decent size, who make their base in pirate sector. It boosts pirates production which in turn will increase harassment and pirate invasion frequencies so a pirate key station (that spawns with the event and decently protected) needs to be destroyed in order for this event to end.

-Late-game crisis: Also from stellaris. Inactive gates get activated and spawn in hundreds of powerful ships of Xenon or whatever nemesis-type faction and destroy everythin in sight. Player must work together with allies to destroy them.

-Invasions/tax: From Kenshi. In X4, building a station is too safe. I think building a station in an already owned sector should be expensive and must pay taxes to the owner. If failed to pay tax, the faction will turn red and become and enemy. If build station in an rogue sector, you dont pay taxes but you have to protect it from pirates, xenon and khaak (depending on who is closer) who send fleets actively trying to destroy your station (no matter where you build it)

Disagree - you want a more dangerous universe, then that is the domain of mods IMO. As for taxes, disagree also - but this is implemented as build plot purchase costs and should remain that way IMO.

-Roaming special ships: From kenshi. I liked how in kenshi there are those special bosses that carry special weapons hidden all over the map. Similar thing could be done in X4 where special ships (could refitted trade ships or whatever) roam in hidden areas accross the galaxy and the player has to explore and use long range scan to find them.

Waste of time and effort IMO - the X-series games have actively supported community developed mods since at least X2 and what you are asking for here is essentially what I would consider clearly in the domain of community developed mods.

If we are going to leave everything to mods, then Egosoft should just create the engine and let the Community create the game they want. Is this what you want?

Modding community has decreased drastically compared to X3. So they can't rely on them anymore, especially since X4 isn't appreciated by the community as X3 was.

This is wrong behavior. If for example the examples that I mentioned are implemented, community would create mods to adjust them, not to create them from scratch. Like the mods in Kenshi for example.

It is about time Egosoft modernizes the X series by adding new stuff. Not Vaults and other useless stuff.

[ei8htx]

Waste of time and effort IMO - the X-series games have actively supported community developed mods since at least X2 and what you are asking for here is essentially what I would consider clearly in the domain of community developed mods.

Personally, I like playing Vanilla till I've done everything. Then I jump into mods (Litcube's universe for X3 was freaking awesome, but I wouldn't have wanted to do that from the start).

Anyways, by ES adding more variety, it enables modders to take this variety and expand on it further. Even kicking off a lot of these suggestions here partially allows modders to do much more powerful things with it.

[MHDriver]

There appears to be this mindset that ES does not need to provide the content that they pitched because the "modding community" will provide it. Very myopic view considering that ES does not market this game specifically to the modding community, it markets it to the general public and space genre fans with promised features that are either not delivered or not functioning. This is purely anecdotal but I would wager that non modding gamer population exceeds the modding gamer population by a fair margin so in my estimation ES needs to step up it's game and stop using the hype train for cash infusions.

[SumUser]

I would definitely like a algorithm that can look at each faction's total resource \ military power and make decisions to either engage in a faction dispute or have a Xenon or pirate invasion occur. Right now, in vanilla 2.2, my entire economy is frozen with nearly maxed out top tier product items and not enough conflict or decay to keep trading profitable.

Such an algorithm could be the mechanism to determine when certain game events occur since every game and player progresses differently. In X:RB even after 290hrs, trade was hot and hopping at nearly every level of product tier. In my current game only ore, nvidium, SMART chips, and refined metal sell and profit well to good.

While I do prefer trading, mining, and exploring to big fleet battles, I really think the "threat" needs to be dialed up moderately to significantly through both in-game triggered events, smarter enemy AI & tactics, improved faction conflict (which could include a diplomacy mechanic).

Loving the game though. Best space based game out there right now in my opinion.

[pvarn]

The thing is that most of your suggestions are the exact opposite of sandbox. Sandbox is precisely that: a medium from which the player creates his or her own content. It's a box of sand. You play with the sand.

X4 right now is very precisely a sandbox. There is very little plot, the missions are fairly generic and serve mainly to grind rep and money. And then you're left to your own devices. That's a sandbox.

Mid-game crisis? That's storyline, not sandbox.

"A threat, a real goal, a surprise, a mystery, etc" - these are also the opposite of sandbox.

I generally like the ideas you present and wouldn't mind seeing them implemented, but they are most definitely not sandbox ideas. Not even a little bit.

The above expresses my opinion. In addition, I think with almost 40 years of sandbox sci-fi games, EgoSoft has done a good job of creating their own original idea which is not easy to do. They are also getting better at it and staying in business which is not easy to do in the highly competitive genre this game represents. Far from NOT borrowing from other game ideas, I think they have borrowed good from many other games and done what other sci-fi games have promised and failed to provide. I'm not saying this is a perfect game to satisfy everyone. It's not an adventure game. It's a space flight combat economy game and one of those rare games where the economy is a straight forward profit/loss with little objectionable magic involved. Because there is little diplomacy, the artificial factions see the player as a pure mercenary and as such the player can manipulate all the AI factions in any direction simply by trading and shooting. What other game currently does this?
-Pv-

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

Waste of time and effort IMO - the X-series games have actively supported community developed mods since at least X2 and what you are asking for here is essentially what I would consider clearly in the domain of community developed mods.

Personally, I like playing Vanilla till I've done everything. Then I jump into mods (Litcube's universe for X3 was freaking awesome, but I wouldn't have wanted to do that from the start).

Anyways, by ES adding more variety, it enables modders to take this variety and expand on it further. Even kicking off a lot of these suggestions here partially allows modders to do much more powerful things with it.

There are already the base elements for modders to build on no need for ES to do anything extra, ES should not be wasting their valuable time doing the kind of kitsch that the OP is asking for.

There are other areas that ES already have on their roadmap and on top of that there are enough core engine issues and concerns that they would be better concentrating on.

[ei8htx]

Waste of time and effort IMO - the X-series games have actively supported community developed mods since at least X2 and what you are asking for here is essentially what I would consider clearly in the domain of community developed mods.

Personally, I like playing Vanilla till I've done everything. Then I jump into mods (Litcube's universe for X3 was freaking awesome, but I wouldn't have wanted to do that from the start).

Anyways, by ES adding more variety, it enables modders to take this variety and expand on it further. Even kicking off a lot of these suggestions here partially allows modders to do much more powerful things with it.

There are already the base elements for modders to build on no need for ES to do anything extra, ES should not be wasting their valuable time doing the kind of kitsch that the OP is asking for.

There are other areas that ES already have on their roadmap and on top of that there are enough core engine issues and concerns that they would be better concentrating on.

I don't disagree that there are plenty of core issues that need to be resolved/improved upon first. Knock out the bugs, get it to X3TC/AP status, then take on more.

Generally speaking about software development, quality is more important than features.

That said, it's fun to speculate on what would be great to have in X4. No need to be a Debbie Downer

[Sgt Hawker]

After reading all of the comments (Wow that took a while) and briefly analyzing them and using my experience from all of the past Xgames. Here are my 2 creds

1. Allow the player to create their own character and name. The name is not hard Val=Hawk (X=players name) this is simple coding that you could do when the game was a DOS platform.
2. Sliders or check boxes to create a more roboast or war economy footing for all factions. This part would put all factions not aligned together at war with everyone else.
3. Consequences for your actions reach farther. Meaning if you screw over Split every chance you get then they along with their allies lose respect for you until you are an enemy. Diplomacy
A. failed hacking on station
B. attacking friends/allies
C. under cutting them in trade or out supplying and producing them.
4. More Diversity in NPCs. Right now every human is black, no Hispanics, no whites, no Asians etc... I had a white female pilot, saved the game came back the next day and she became a black bald man. Same name though. I could care less of their color but more diverse universe. How about a Tel with an eye patch or one that wears clothes. And for the love of all better voices.

These are only my opinions. Most of these will be filled by mods, Thankfully. Lastly where is the beauty of space? Every sector (not quite but a lot) i am dodging asteroids. Even the stations look bland compared to Prelude. I am running at max everything and the game looks meh. I still remember the excitement for the earlier games and still dream of another X3 where you fight and claw your way up from nothing. When I played X3 Terran Conflict I had 0 mods and didn't even know you could mode the game until later on. I still play it without any mods. But we all have our favorites and visions for the future of the series.

We know have X4 and it is what everyone wanted for a long time a true sandbox. It is up to us to mod it to the way we want. In a few years this game will be the one people talk about as the first true sand box of the X series.

jmho.

Hawk.