XRebirth vs X4 Foundations

[Ant006]

I must say I am extremely disappointed with X4 Foundations. I have every X game in the series, and fondly remember playing X Beyond the Frontier. The onboard A.I used to make me smile, as she announced "No Aim". I struggled for ages to unlock the secrets of the game, and find the needle in the haystack story through trial and error and exploration. It was a really immersive experience, and pretty revolutionary for it's time, and seemed to appear from nowhere by an unknown developer.

Fast forward to X3, which was probably the next big evolutionary step, this game was and still is a fantastic game. Then we had XRebirth. Obviously I had to purchase it, I thought egosoft would eventually change the game to what, we the loyal dedicated fanbase wanted!! But alas it never happened. I played it for a while, but there was so much I disliked, the stupidly big stations that needed to be scanned in minute detail. The fact that there was only one ship, you could pilot. The complicated highways, and super highways. It was just such a big disappointment.

However as bad and all as it was, it did manage to do a lot of things right, and graphically is far superior to X4 Foundations in my opinion. Will X4 Foundations ever succeed? Will it ever become the game we want it to be??? Would it not be better to bite the bullet, and concentrate efforts on producing X5 The Final Frontier!!!!! The game we all want!! Preferably with the XRebirth engine or at least graphically superior than what we currently have!!!

What do you guys think? What does Egosoft think?

[Gavrushka]

I think your post presupposes X4 is a game that's failed. - I accept there are plenty who feel it has and, in the main, they gave a shrug of their shoulders and left to play something they did enjoy, perhaps revisiting the game after major updates.

Thing is, I *love* the game now. I love standing on the bridge of a huge freighter as it goes on its way. I'll administer my empire, maybe even read a chapter of a book as I play. I found *my way* to enjoy the game, and others have found an alternative way to get a buzz out of it.

And others, such as you, haven't. I hope X5 works for you, but Egosoft are never going to abandon X4 until they've taken it as far as they can. It's what they do, and it's why I stick with them. - They listen, they adapt, they change and they improve. - Of course, that still won't make the game work for everyone.

I hope you drop back on occasion, maybe try again after 3.0 drops, but I'm sure you'll find an alternative game to play in the interim. - Enjoy whatever it is you settle on, and I hope you can see there are plenty of other people enjoying X4.

[tomchk]

However as bad and all as it was, it did manage to do a lot of things right, and graphically is far superior to X4 Foundations in my opinion. Will X4 Foundations ever succeed? Will it ever become the game we want it to be??? Would it not be better to bite the bullet, and concentrate efforts on producing X5 The Final Frontier!!!!! The game we all want!! Preferably with the XRebirth engine or at least graphically superior than what we currently have!!!

A lot of us agree that X:R was graphically superior to X4. I still don't understand why so much was removed or not ported graphically. I would love some answer from Egosoft!
I think X4 has enormous potential, though, and I think Egosoft really needs to keep investing in it.
On that note, there's a new "wishlist" being compiled here in case you want to add some wishes to improve X4: https://www.reddit.com/r/X4Foundations/ ... _wishlist/

[nickolaiproblem]

However as bad and all as it was, it did manage to do a lot of things right, and graphically is far superior to X4 Foundations in my opinion. Will X4 Foundations ever succeed? Will it ever become the game we want it to be??? Would it not be better to bite the bullet, and concentrate efforts on producing X5 The Final Frontier!!!!! The game we all want!! Preferably with the XRebirth engine or at least graphically superior than what we currently have!!!

A lot of us agree that X:R was graphically superior to X4. I still don't understand why so much was removed or not ported graphically. I would love some answer from Egosoft!
I think X4 has enormous potential, though, and I think Egosoft really needs to keep investing in it.
On that note, there's a new "wishlist" being compiled here in case you want to add some wishes to improve X4: https://www.reddit.com/r/X4Foundations/ ... _wishlist/

Somethings have been addressed try 2.6 beta or 3.0 with dlc.

[Warnoise]

I think your post presupposes X4 is a game that's failed. - I accept there are plenty who feel it has and, in the main, they gave a shrug of their shoulders and left to play something they did enjoy, perhaps revisiting the game after major updates.

Thing is, I *love* the game now. I love standing on the bridge of a huge freighter as it goes on its way. I'll administer my empire, maybe even read a chapter of a book as I play. I found *my way* to enjoy the game, and others have found an alternative way to get a buzz out of it.

And others, such as you, haven't. I hope X5 works for you, but Egosoft are never going to abandon X4 until they've taken it as far as they can. It's what they do, and it's why I stick with them. - They listen, they adapt, they change and they improve. - Of course, that still won't make the game work for everyone.

I hope you drop back on occasion, maybe try again after 3.0 drops, but I'm sure you'll find an alternative game to play in the interim. - Enjoy whatever it is you settle on, and I hope you can see there are plenty of other people enjoying X4.

I think you are confused here. You are enjoying the book, not the game. If you really enjoyed the game you wouldn't even think about reading a book while playing it.

[Gavrushka]

I think you are confused here. You are enjoying the book, not the game. If you really enjoyed the game you wouldn't even think about reading a book while playing it.

LOL, I think you tripped over your social gaff bodyguard, and made him dead, Waghnoise!

I've played many of the X games the same way.

I'd not dream of suggesting you weren't enjoying coitus in the room of love because you pulled a vinegar face on the final chapter, but thank you for assuming the role of omniscient narrator. It gave this confused old man quite a chuckle...

[Buzz2005]

I think you are confused here. You are enjoying the book, not the game. If you really enjoyed the game you wouldn't even think about reading a book while playing it.

You actually never played a X game

[Harrison_rus]

A lot of us agree that X:R was graphically superior to X4. I still don't understand why so much was removed or not ported graphically. I would love some answer from Egosoft!

I guess it was because they switched on Vulkan instead DirectX and they need an time to learn this system.

[Max Bain]

A lot of us agree that X:R was graphically superior to X4. I still don't understand why so much was removed or not ported graphically. I would love some answer from Egosoft!

I guess it was because they switched on Vulkan instead DirectX and they need an time to learn this system.

This has nothing to do with ship design what a lot people are complaining about.
Maybe with graphics effects but even this is doubtful because ships and effects are often made in external software like 3DSMAX or Maya, Blender.

[Tomonor]

Oh, I thought this was going to be a full-blown thread getting into tiny detail differences between the two games.

But now, as the title has implied it, I will do just that:
X Rebirth pros:
-An interesting universe with overly detailed [lore] clusters/sectors, factions, station modules, and other secrets
-Visually more appealing sectors (better lighting with darker, grittier tones) and models (more detailed ships and station modules)
-Interesting take on weapons
-Lovely station designs with the "futuristic space city" feeling
-They have nailed the semi-dystopian futuristic atmosphere
-Atmospheric station interriors
-Breath taking visual effects

X Rebirth cons:
-Although nice looking, they did oversize the stations a bit
-The game decieves you about the relative distances with the draw distance by fading everything beyond your actual zone (that being said it did render the universe to feel larger)
-The single pilotable ship was a big con
-Especially if we take into consideration that the playership wasn't modifiable visually/role-wise, similarly to Darkstar One's playership. If it was modifiable to that degree I think XRebirth could have succeeded on the single pilotable ship front.
-Station construction and Trading was a nightmare.
-L and XL ships not having bridges. They could have done that relatively easily imo. Yes, I know that a mod exists for that. Still.
-An overly complicated cargo system (Solid, Bulk, Energy, Container, Fuel)
-Confusing map layout
-Lame docking system, especially for the fact that only you can dock.
-Highways limiting the gameplay flow
-Annoying minigames that stops the gameplay flow
-Annoying capship engine and boosting sound
-Annoying bugs that took years to fix

X4 pros:
-A generalised gameplay once again (which also slips into cons category since its a matter of preferance which one you prefer)
-A render engine that's more capable (but not yet used to its full potential)
-An insanely great new map system
-Station building and trading never been this easy
-Many-many ships to fly and they all have cockpits/bridges
-Creative repurposing of previous X Rebirth features/assets (such as station scanning, hacking, etc)
-For the very first time, no actual hard cuts in gameplay (except for the teleport-turbolift)
-Factions at actual war
-Radio chatter!

X4 cons:
-A generalised gameplay
-Economy is only dependant on war/battles, no residential-based/commercial-based consumerism-supply and demand
-As ground breaking the new dock system is, it's way too limiting for gameplay (for example: every carrier-type ship is now required to have its docks on its top instead of inside it since ships can only approach the platform from above)
-Weapons are way too generalised, especially if we take into consideration that the type of weapons are repeating on different size scales, not to mention no racial weapon differences (except for the xenon laser of course)
-The plot system is a bit weird. Taxation would have made more sense, but that's just my opinion.
-I'm not very fond of how the universe layout system is set up (with the nerfing of the superhighways and introduction of the accelerators/clusters)
-The Highway Ring is also disappointing (no way to affect its traffic thus any ship can fly through a sector without interference and may exit anywhere)
-I was kind of expecting planets getting some sort of role by now (maybe adding to the exploration aspect at least)
-The workforce system is oddly disappointing to me for the fact that it's just numbers and not actual NPCs moving around in their civilian crafts/TPs
-The universe is a bit bland compared to Rebirth's ultra-moody environments
-The loss of many station types (Crystal fabs, Mining colonies, etc)
-The loss of jumpdrive and recharge cell fabs
-NPC integration is off and they require more roles (such as selling/buying random items, giving quests, etc)
-The way the ingame music is handled is really bad right now.

[mr.WHO]

X4 cons:
1-A generalised gameplay
2-Economy is only dependant on war/battles, no residential-based/commercial-based consumerism-supply and demand
3-As ground breaking the new dock system is, it's way too limiting for gameplay (for example: every carrier-type ship is now required to have its docks on its top instead of inside it since ships can only approach the platform from above)
4-Weapons are way too generalised, especially if we take into consideration that the type of weapons are repeating on different size scales, not to mention no racial weapon differences (except for the xenon laser of course)
5-The plot system is a bit weird. Taxation would have made more sense, but that's just my opinion.
6-I'm not very fond of how the universe layout system is set up (with the nerfing of the superhighways and introduction of the accelerators/clusters)
7-The Highway Ring is also disappointing (no way to affect its traffic thus any ship can fly through a sector without interference and may exit anywhere)
8-I was kind of expecting planets getting some sort of role by now (maybe adding to the exploration aspect at least)
9-The workforce system is oddly disappointing to me for the fact that it's just numbers and not actual NPCs moving around in their civilian crafts/TPs
10-The universe is a bit bland compared to Rebirth's ultra-moody environments
11-The loss of many station types (Crystal fabs, Mining colonies, etc)
12-The loss of jumpdrive and recharge cell fabs
13-NPC integration is off and they require more roles (such as selling/buying random items, giving quests, etc)
14-The way the ingame music is handled is really bad right now.

1- please elaborate with comparison to X-Rebirth?
2 - there are consumables like food, pharmaceuticals and drugs that do not rely on war, but on station populace. Also why do you think this is any worse than in X-R where there was minimal war?
3 - I might be wrong, but I technically docking point don't have to be on top - if I recall correctly Condor has some of it's docking points on the side-bottom (only one of 3 doking points is on the top). I think this is just lack of imagination of Egosoft side, rather than engine limitation.
4 - true, the game would benefit from racialised version of weapons - they already have racialized turrets models, so we would just need racialized stats and possibly FX/sound differences.
5 - what do you mean by taxation? You pay one-time tax when you buy plot. If you mean recurring taxes then I think this is general Egosoft design principle to avoid recurring costs (e.g. taxes, crew wages).
6 - still this system is much better than X-R with it's rollecoaster spagethi stype highways. It is also very logical - highways (Short range in sector), superhighways (mid range in same region, only slight backround movement liek from planet orbit to planet rings in Hatikwa), Accelerators (long range within same system, e.g. from oen planet to another), Gates (galaxy range, from one system to another).
7 - the "great highway loop" makes very big practical and economic sense, but the problem is that it makes X4 universe feel very small as entire region is build around it. Hopefully Split DLC and second DLC will introduce regions not connected to this loop.
8 - they were very clear from day 1 when they announced X4 that there will be no planetary interaction.
9 - I share you opinion, but my biggest pain is that we cannot menually hire/ferry workforce - this in one thing that makes me want dedicated TP class ships back.
10 - I agree, there are only 3-4 memorable sectors with nice background in X4. This is one of the things XR did very well.
11 - it was the same in X-Rebirth.
12 - I don't like unlimited XR player jumpdrives, but I very like NPC/capship jumpdrives that used beacons and recharge fabs. I was hoping for them in X4 as I'm not a big fan of cruise mode.
13 - Not much different than in XR, at least X4 NPC models are not plain ugly. I also like to walk to traders corner and especially to ship dealer office. Unlike in XR, where I never walked on the station, ever since the update allowed remote interactions.
14 - I agree, I also would add that X4 ambient soundtrack is much weaker than XR (I recently started to listen to XR OST in work) and X3. Too many "generic quiet horror tracks" that usually woudl play when you explore Xenon space. There are only a few nice ambient tracks like Winterblossom. To have full picture, I think X4 soundtrack has bets combat tracks in entire series. Except one or two that are sensory overload I like every single one of them.

[Tomonor]

1- please elaborate with comparison to X-Rebirth?
2 - there are consumables like food, pharmaceuticals and drugs that do not rely on war, but on station populace. Also why do you think this is any worse than in X-R where there was minimal war?
3 - I might be wrong, but I technically docking point don't have to be on top - if I recall correctly Condor has some of it's docking points on the side-bottom (only one of 3 doking points is on the top). I think this is just lack of imagination of Egosoft side, rather than engine limitation.
4 - true, the game would benefit from racialised version of weapons - they already have racialized turrets models, so we would just need racialized stats and possibly FX/sound differences.
5 - what do you mean by taxation? You pay one-time tax when you buy plot. If you mean recurring taxes then I think this is general Egosoft design principle to avoid recurring costs (e.g. taxes, crew wages).
6 - still this system is much better than X-R with it's rollecoaster spagethi stype highways. It is also very logical - highways (Short range in sector), superhighways (mid range in same region, only slight backround movement liek from planet orbit to planet rings in Hatikwa), Accelerators (long range within same system, e.g. from oen planet to another), Gates (galaxy range, from one system to another).
13 - Not much different than in XR, at least X4 NPC models are not plain ugly. I also like to walk to traders corner and especially to ship dealer office. Unlike in XR, where I never walked on the station, ever since the update allowed remote interactions.

1. This is a generalised statement, as silly as it sounds. Just as I told as in Pros: "X4 pros: -A generalised gameplay once again (which also slips into cons category since its a matter of preferance which one you prefer)"
2. I know vanilla XRebirth was devoid of wars which was a con by itself and was made without a true economy, but that's besides the point. Right now in this universe, people only go to "work" to feed the war effort. They don't go "off" to enjoy themselves, they don't buy general commodities... Actually in fact, there are no 'regular' NPCs at all, only mindless robots who work for their governing factions. I imagine the X universe something like how it was attempted to be portrayed in XRebirth: giant space cities full of life, bars, casinos, flashy holo commercials burning out your retinas to remind you to pay a visit to your favourite lap dancer. And NPCs (CCC traffic) seemingly are quite busy in these areas, even though they are just "cheated" there. Although it can be said that Egosoft really tried not to overcomplicate things this time around, especially since the wars are so fragile.
3. Okay, I will rephrase this one because I get what you are saying, but my concern is a bit more complicated. Previous X games had such docking ports that would support ships flying directly at them. I do understand that this elevator-type docking was always a favourite with Egosoft, dating back to X-BtF however they only existed in cutscenes or without actual functionality (X3 trading docks).
Right now, if you wanted to create a ship with internal docking bays, it would be required to be quite tall, so that NPC ships don't clip into the hull. So that means that no narrow docks we had earlier. Here's this remake of the X2 Centaur corvette. It even has an S-class docking port in its belly where it was intended to be in the original vision. Guess where ships approach it to land in it? Well, not from the back, I can tell you that.
So again, it's not that it would be impossible to pull off internal hangars for ships. It's just that the current docking approach doesn't support any direction, other than "from above".
4. Although Split Vendetta will introduce a new weapon and turret(s), and the fact that an unused Paranid railgun weapon also exists in the files, shamely it won't happen. This is a direct result of the "generalised gameplay/content" I was talking about in the very first point.
5. Yeah, I mean recurring taxes. My main problem with the plot system is that it's beyond unrealistic, even for a game such as X. You just don't pinpoint a plot in space. Hell, it would even work better if you paid for a licensing depending on the size of your station and its relative size to the main grid/highway.
6. I just wish we still had those sweet, intergalactic superhighway animations, curving around planets and such. It was satisfying to watch and made a little more sense than what we have now. That one brought us straight to the points of interests. This system just brings us to another random part of space.
13. I just want them to have a function other than directing me to the desired location. I know, I have to be careful what I wish for, especially in a sandbox game. Still.

[mr.WHO]

3. Okay, I will rephrase this one because I get what you are saying, but my concern is a bit more complicated. Previous X games had such docking ports that would support ships flying directly at them. I do understand that this elevator-type docking was always a favourite with Egosoft, dating back to X-BtF however they only existed in cutscenes or without actual functionality (X3 trading docks).
Right now, if you wanted to create a ship with internal docking bays, it would be required to be quite tall, so that NPC ships don't clip into the hull. So that means that no narrow docks we had earlier. Here's this remake of the X2 Centaur corvette. It even has an S-class docking port in its belly where it was intended to be in the original vision. Guess where ships approach it to land in it? Well, not from the back, I can tell you that.
So again, it's not that it would be impossible to pull off internal hangars for ships. It's just that the current docking approach doesn't support any direction, other than "from above".

I haven't tried that Centaur mod, but I was wonder how AI approach to dock to that ship. I wonder how much of it it's hardcoded, or can it be that you also need to mod custom docking path for such ships?
I mean look at wharf covered hangar - ships approach from side instead of the top - I assume it is possible to have something like this also for ships.

Also do you know how "elavator" work on that centaur - I mean internal storage elevator - does it clik trough the floor or does that Centaur has no interal storage, thus elevator is not working?

[Tomonor]

3. Okay, I will rephrase this one because I get what you are saying, but my concern is a bit more complicated. Previous X games had such docking ports that would support ships flying directly at them. I do understand that this elevator-type docking was always a favourite with Egosoft, dating back to X-BtF however they only existed in cutscenes or without actual functionality (X3 trading docks).
Right now, if you wanted to create a ship with internal docking bays, it would be required to be quite tall, so that NPC ships don't clip into the hull. So that means that no narrow docks we had earlier. Here's this remake of the X2 Centaur corvette. It even has an S-class docking port in its belly where it was intended to be in the original vision. Guess where ships approach it to land in it? Well, not from the back, I can tell you that.
So again, it's not that it would be impossible to pull off internal hangars for ships. It's just that the current docking approach doesn't support any direction, other than "from above".

I haven't tried that Centaur mod, but I was wonder how AI approach to dock to that ship. I wonder how much of it it's hardcoded, or can it be that you also need to mod custom docking path for such ships?
I mean look at wharf covered hangar - ships approach from side instead of the top - I assume it is possible to have something like this also for ships.

Also do you know how "elavator" work on that centaur - I mean internal storage elevator - does it clik trough the floor or does that Centaur has no interal storage, thus elevator is not working?

The ship clips through the top of the centaur while landing, shamely. Yeah, it's surely hardcoded. Theres a ship mod simply called shipmod that adds the Arawn to the game with functioning (really tall) internal hangar.

Ship elevator on centaur: it doesn't do that since the internal storage is limited to 1 ship which means that it won't let you have another ship landing there to send it in.

[bignick217]

I'm a long time X player, with the first game that introduced me to the series being X2 The Threat. Ho boy, that game gave me nightmares of trawling through menus. Seriously, I'm not kidding. While learning to play that game, I had actual nightmares of being lost in it's menus lol. It was the steepest learning curve I had ever experienced in any game. But I absolutely loved that game. With that said, X2 and x3 (which just an evolution of the X2's menu system, but was mostly the same), menus were actually extremely competent. There were a few options that were needlessly buried and could only be accessed in a very specific way (such as accessing the ships auto-aiming setting only being accessible by interfacing with the ships settings via the map and couldn't be accessed directly like a lot of other settings), but for the most part, the menus were very competent and easy to use. While there was a lot to take on when learning to play, everything was laid out mostly in an easy to understand and intuitive manner. On top of that, the tutorial system in X2 actually did a very good job of explaining how to play the game and navigate the menus and those lessons were "mostly" translatable through the proceeding X3 games.

XRebirth on the other hand. Changed almost everything and it's "tutorial" or introduction system was absolutely terrible. I get what they were trying to do. They were trying to reduce the sheer amount of menus that were traditionally needed in order to play the game. But the way they went about it was terrible. XRebirth (as much as there were a few aspects of it that I actually really liked) got so many things wrong. I loved the new stations, but the fact that you were forced to individually scan every fricken module on every fricken station just so you could see what they sold and what their stock levels were (which only lasted so long as you were in range) was so mind numbingly tedious, monotonous, time consuming and boring that I got to a point where I would dread, actually dread finding a new station. Seriously, I had literally just finished scanning down every station in Omicron Lyrae and then just jumped into to Maelstrom for the first time and saw that absolutely massive food station and my first thought was not "oooh wow, that's beautiful!". Nope, it was actually "Oh crap... Am I going to have to scan that?". I'm not kidding, I actually said that out loud and my partner laughed at me. Yeah, thanks for the sympathy hun.

When you make a feature so tedious, so integral to the gameplay that it eventually triggers the depression response in players, you've screwed up. Don't get me wrong. I had no problem with the concept of scanning down stations. I actually liked the idea...at first. But they just ran way too far with it and never questioned whether the fun factor of that mechanic would ever fade. Almost like they never actually played the game themselves. And I mean literally ask the question, hey this is pretty fun, let's keep it. But do you think players will still find it fun when we require players to scan literally thousands of modules just to play the game the way it's meant to played? By the time I finished the main storyline and the DLC opened up, the mere thought of having to scan anything in the new DLC's was so soul destroying at that point that I literally just turned off the game. Just threw my hands up in the air and said F*** this! I'm done! Which is a real shame, because I loved the new stations. I thought they were beautiful. Not much variation between them because they were all essentially Argon, but they were gorgeous.

But another shame came in the form of the station scan mode. I never really got to truly appreciate the beauty of these new stations, because I spent most of my time stuck in station scanning mode just to make it a little easier to scan down stations. So I spent most of my time looking at stations with these White, Blue, Green and Orange overlays. So you put station scanning in to kind of promote people to appreciate the depth and detail of your stations. But then you make it so tedious that you have to put a station scanner in just to make the process "bearable" (only for so long), then you ruin that depth and detail by covering all those beautiful modules in nasty color overlays just so you can see what you've already scanned and haven't scanned yet. Way to go! I F'n hated it!

Tutorials in XRebirth were virtually non-existent. I'll give you an example. The speechcraft mini game. I went more than half of my playthrough having never done it, and never knowing how to actually do it. Why? Because XRebirth's idea of a tutorial for that gameplay mechanic was nothing more than a passing comment by your crew mate. "Hey, you can talk to them to find out more about them." That's it. I talked to so many people in that game, never playing this so-called mini game, because the game never bothered to tell me to wait for a random NPC to speak out as if they're already in a conversation and then try to talk to them in order to trigger the small talk option. It never said that. Do you have any idea how many YouTube videos I had to go through all with people going, yeah it's easy just do this and all of them leaving that one F'n detail out? It was only after I found out about Trading Agents and found a video of someone explaining how to get them I found a video where he actually left in the part where he was waiting for someone to speak in order to trigger the small talk. Finally, someone finally left that bit in and I was finally able to figure out not only how to do small talk, but also get trade agents on stations! Why was this not explained in the game? Why did so many people making videos about how to play this aspect of the game leave or cut out this critical detail. I was pissed that it took so long to find out such a small and apparently critical detail. But even with that, the small talk mechanic became just about as tedious as the whole station scanning mechanic because I ended up having to do it on every single station just so I could continual live trading updates for each station. So now my workload was already bad enough because I had to scan literally every module on every station, but now I also have to small talk someone on literally every station just so I keep getting active reading of their stock levels. I can not describe to you just how mind numbingly and frustratingly bored I became of this whole process. Believe me when I tell you that I gave XRebirth more than its fair shake at proving itself to me.

Shall we talk about boarding. How about the games idea of teaching boarding is to do one with only 8 marines. Doesn't bother to tell you that in a real boarding, you'll need a lot more than just 8 marines and even with a full load of marine you'll still need to take out the weapons and hardpoints in order to reduce it's defense value (doesn't even tell you that there's defense value at all), doesn't tell you how to look up your own marine boarding value. Nope, just makes you go through a story scripted event doing a boarding in a way that would never work with any other boarding anywhere else in the game. Another 20 websites and 7 or 8 YouTube videos to find out how to do boardings properly because all my boarding attempts were constantly failing and I couldn't understand why. Most of them told you about the defense value, but only 1 of them actually showed how to see your own attack value so you could use it to judge your chances of a successful boarding.

These kinds of scenarios were constant in XRebirth tutorials and explanations. Important information completely neglected from being communicated to the player. Told something is there, but never being told how to actually do it. And most of the time, in nothing more than a "passing" comment that you would easily missed if you blinked or weren't paying full uncompromising attention to every word spoken and still not understand because "context" was a word that was completely alien to XRebirth's tutorial system. I'm not saying I need my hand held for every little thing, but if you want to tell me about something or tell me to do something, you should at least give me the context I need to understand what you're asking of me and how I can apply that information to practical use. A passing comment and nothing else is not good enough.

How about station building. Oh I loved this one. How about you select a station to build from the architect. It tells you everything you need to "build" the station, but doesn't tell you what you need to "operate" the station. No, you can only find out what you need to operate a station after you've actually built it. Seriously, on the station in the production area, you can click the little button next to a produced wares that tells you all the resources you need to make any given ware. But when you are talking to the architect deciding which station to build, it tells you what those stations make, but if you click that same button that you would click on real station to find out what you need to make said resource, on the architect it only gives you an encyclopedia description of the produced product itself. It will not tell you what you need to make said resource. Meaning, it's nearly impossible to plan ahead if you want to build all the links in a chain to producing a particular resource. Or identify hard to acquire resources that you may need to build additional stations to supply so you don't end up with a station that can't actually produce anything because you can't get the resources you need to get the production going. Who the hell missed that important piece of information to relay to the player. Even all the way in version 4.30 that information is amazingly, still not available in the game.

How about not being able to assign crew to ships or stations directly. No, you had to land on every single ship or station every time and manually assign every crew member one by one. You could call them "back" without having to land, but you had to land to make any assignment. There was no way to just hire someone and tell them to go to a ship or station directly. Literally virtually everything in XRebirth was 100% manual. I get that they wanted to reduce the amount of menus in the game, but the sheer amount of micromanagement required in XRebirth compared to all the other games was mind boggling. It took so long to get anything done simply because of how many things had to be done manually from start to finish. Between the manual assignment of crew. The manual moving of resources via trade ships that all had limits to how many individual trades they could have queued. How you couldn't amend any orders on the fly, no you had to cancel all orders and start from scratch if you made a mistake.

And I'm sorry, but I have to ask. Who's bright idea was it that in order for me to transfer wares I've produced or I already own automatically between my own player owned stations via my trading ships, that I have to give those stations my money so they can buy my own wares from me off my stations and sell my own wares to my own stations that need them? Why can't I just set up transfer ships like in previous games? Why am I buying my own wares from myself? Why am I selling my own wares to myself? Who the hell thought this was a good idea? Has the person who came up with this never heard of the concept of a colander being held over a bucket and pouring water into the colander? I spent way too much of my time just shifting money from the lower links of the chain back to the top links of the chain because the money just kept moving down the chain, wasting my time for something I shouldn't have to do in the first place. This was one aspect of XRebirth that just flat out dumbfounded me. I haven't built any stations yet in X4, but this is one thing I really hope is fixed in X4. Such a stupid oversight for a game so heavily reliant on the economic gameplay. Quite frankly, this particular issue was down right asinine.

Then there was ship refueling.... OK, I can understand an issue like this in version 1.0. I could even understand it in a couple versions after release. But for this issue to still be present in version 4.30, I just can't let that one go. I've lost several ships (capital ships) due to them all trying to refuel at the same time and them all fighting for the same spot. How was this never fixed? Did no one ever think to put a queue system in place for refueling stations to force ships to wait in line if another ship was already in the process of refueling?

XRebirth was chalk full of things like these. Issues on top of issues on top of issues. Lack of proper communication with the player. Lack of appropriate context given to the player. Extremely tedious mechanics forced on the player that more often than not hurt the gameplay rather than improving it. Excessive micromanagement that put even X3 Terran Conflict (or Albion Prelude) in very late games to absolute shame. And these are just the ones I remember intensely. It would not be a stretch by any means for me to say XRebirth was by far the worst X experience I've every played.

With that said, XRebirth is not without some positives. For one, as mentioned before, I absolutely loved the design of the new stations. They were beautiful, fun to build (although some stages took far too long to build), they were interesting and it was incredible to see them fire up for the first time and watch all the machinations and animations in full swing. I loved them. XRebirth's ship controls were among the best of any X game prior. Particularly it's mouse controls once you switched W and S to Full Forward and Full Reverse, kept A and D to strafe left and right, and changed SPACE to strafe up and CTRL to strafe down. I still wish I could map my control key to strafe down in X4. But I guess I'll just have to make due with the auto-hotkey program I'm using to remap/swap the Control and Alt keys on my keyboard.

One thing I will disagree with you on, is the graphics in XRebirth were nowhere near as good as X4 or even any of the X3 games in a lot of regards. For one XRebirth was way too cartoonish in a lot of regards. Particularly on stations and inside the Skunk and even in space barring one or two locations. The stations external texturing was good though, but not as good as X4 or X3#. But X4, blows XRebirth out of the water when it comes to the graphics in space. Bear in mind that XRebirth gives a bit of false impression of scale because the play spaces in XRebirth were a lot smaller compared to X4. X4's play spaces are massive in comparison and as such can give the impression of everything being smaller by comparison. Although the station modules do seem a little smaller. I would argue however, that there are too many systems that are too similar to one another. I love that there are a lot more systems than in rebirth, but I really want to see a lot more variation between the overall look of systems and the backdrops/scene scapes like in the X3 series. Most of the systems in X4 are pretty, but I wouldn't call them particularly "memorable" like you would feel about systems in the X3 games. Such as that first time you entered the Home of Light system in X3 Terran Conflict. Or Kingdoms End. Or there was another system I can't remember the name of that had a particular nebula formation that was "rainbowish" in it's presentation. In contrast, X4 tends to reuse or segment the same systems a little too much resulting in a lot of systems looking or feeling too similar to one another. I'd like to see more variation between systems. Hell the sheer amount of variation between systems and the beauty of the various backdrops was one of the big things that attracted me to the X games in the first place. I remember I often used to just get in my ship and go exploring and take in the sights in the X3 games as a result. I'd really like to see Egosoft get a lot more creative on this front. I'd also like to see a lot more variation in the music in X4 as well.

The one area that XRebirth did extremely well on and I wish X4 would follow suit is the weapon animations. The XRebirth weapon animations were outstanding. And I absolutely loved the designs of the cap ships in XRebirth. The S and M size ship designs were terrible compared any other X game, but the Caps were gorgeous. Particularly the Taranis and Arwan. I like many, do think X4's cap ships are little underwhelming compared to XRebirth and especially compared to the X3 games. You just don't get the same sense of scale with cap ships in X4 that you got in any of the previous X games. As far as station interiors, sorry, but X4's got the win there. XRebirth's station interiors were really boring because they were all virtually identical barring a few minor variations here and there. And while X4 is similar in that regard, X4's stations feel far more "alive" in comparison due to how active they are. Which more than makes up for that small shortfall.

With that said, while I am still pretty new and early on in X4, I have to say that I'm finding it a lot easier to get into X4. It's not perfect. I'm still wrapping my head around certain changes (such as how to give my ships specific orders / only just figured out that I have to go to the end point and make my orders there rather than directly on the ship from the map... Can't say I necessarily like this change). But I'm really glad to see that station scanning has been heavily reigned in. It's no longer required in order to see what a station sells or their stock levels. I'm no longer forced to fully scan a station down then play the smalltalk game just to get live stock updates. Scanning now has more useful benefits like finding blueprints for building your own stations, but in no way requires you to scan everything everywhere every time you find a new station. Just get in range and you know what it is and what it sells like in the X3 series. I like that if I want a subscription, I only have to buy it once (even if it is a little on the expensive side) per faction instead of having to do a small talk game on every single station. But you could do an EMP bomb on every station via scanning (only if you want to) and get a permanent trade offer subscription on the desired stations without needing to buy a subscription. Could be tedious, but I like that it's there and that it's an "optional" mechanic and the EMP bomb mechanic is more fun than the small talk mechanic. I like that I no longer have to constantly scan or search stations to find missions, apart from a few that you get from data leaks, which are pretty easy to spot both visually and audibly (especially while in scan mode) I can mostly spot and accept most missions on stations from the map. But I can also see them appear on my radar, so I'm not constantly having to check my map. It's a lot of these little things that have gone a long way to make the quality of life in X4 so much better than XRebirth.

XRebirth did have "some" good things about it. But almost all of that "good" was hampered by "a lot" of really awful mechanics and design decisions that just brought the whole game and experience down. I know that memory can often play tricks and you can sometimes remember things with more rose tinted glasses than you actually experienced, but I'm sorry, I just can't ever say that XRebirth was a good game. It had some good aspects to it. But there was a lot more wrong with it than ever was right with it. Based on the week I've been playing so far, I'm enjoying X4 a hell of a lot more than I ever did with XRebirth. Is X4 perfect? No, not by a long shot. It still has a lot of growing up to do. But based on what I seen so far, X4 has fixed a lot of what was wrong with XRebirth and has already exceeded XRebirth and I think could maybe, possibly, almost catch up to the golden age that X3 was.

Some of the things I'd like to see come out of X4's future updates/DLC:

More Systems and system variation

More music from the X3 series

I'd like to see a proper reintroduction of the Boron along with some of their systems, stations and ships.

I'd like to see a proper campaign added to the game. (maybe I'm alone on this one, but I actually loved the campaigns and lore of the X universe)

Proper tutorials added to the game. Even if those tutorials are simply encyclopedia entries. I don't necessarily need a bunch of scripted scenarios that a gameplay tutorial would normally entail. I just need a proper source of information to answer any questions I may have about the game or aspects of the game. The online manual is terrible, missing tons of information and actually seems to be written mostly by the community (too many entries using terms like "it seems" like they don't know). I'm not saying the community is has done badly, please don't misunderstand. I'm saying that there's too much incomplete information or information that is completely non-existent (such as what specifically is unlocked at the various reputation levels with factions). The community should be relied upon to expand on information already present about a game. Not be the only source of information about a game.

You know what, I'll say it. I'd like to see better weapon effects like that found in XRebirth. The weapon effects in X4 are pretty bad.
And if I'm completely honest, I would like to see bigger cap ships.

I'd like to see a bigger variety of weapons and other modules (including new "Types" of weapons).

I'd like to see the stats sections of the ship customization screen expanded to properly outline the effects various modules have on a ships performance. Currently there is no stat for strafing speed. Weapon damage is only outlined as a MW increase, but doesn't tell you what that means. It doesn't tell you that different weapons will have different effects based whether it's hitting Hull or Shields. This information really needs to be added to those stats screen because right now, it is virtually impossible to understand how any one weapon will affect our ships combat performance. (Yet another example where I had to rely on community entries just to find out that even though the Ion gun had a high output, it was only effective against shields. I should be able to see this information "In Game". I should not have to exit the game and go to a Wiki to find things like this out.

Could we please have more paintjobs added to the game or give us an in-game tool to create and buy our own. I have the collectors edition and right now I only have the four basic settings in the player info screen and the x50 of the "Foundation X" special paintjob you get when you register the game. I can't seem to find anywhere that gives me the ability to buy more. I've only seen the occasional high-level mission reward offer one. All of this seems to make this feature currently throwaway because it never seems to be used, either by us (because we have none to use) or by the game (no where to buy/no way to create/rarely ever offered). Please revamp this to make it more useful and worthwhile.

Currently I am enjoying X4 Foundations a hell of a lot more than I ever did of XRebirth. I'm sorry, but I could never agree that XRebirth was a better game than X4. X4's not perfect, but it's already a hell of a lot better than XRebirth ever was.

[Falcrack]

Currently I am enjoying X4 Foundations a hell of a lot more than I ever did of XRebirth. I'm sorry, but I could never agree that XRebirth was a better game than X4. X4's not perfect, but it's already a hell of a lot better than XRebirth ever was.

I managed 86 total hours in X:Rebirth. So far, I have 540 hours in X4, and it is #4 on my most hours played (X3:TC is #3 at 690 hours, X3AP is #5 at 505 hours). I could not for the life of me get myself excited to play Rebirth, though I wanted to like it. So far, I am happy with the way X4 turned out. I would change a few things about X4 if I could, but overall, it is a better experience.

[radcapricorn]

You know, every time I see someone saying how you "needed" to scan stations in Rebirth, I know I can safely dismiss anything else the person might be saying about that game.

[Buzz2005]

Cut......

Didn't read all but mods? Scan the whole station was a must have

[bignick217]

You know, every time I see someone saying how you "needed" to scan stations in Rebirth, I know I can safely dismiss anything else the person might be saying about that game.

Good to know. Posts like these tell me it's wise to return the favor for anything you might say going forward.

Cut......

Didn't read all but mods? Scan the whole station was a must have

I was giving my opinion of the game for how it was released and what it became as made by the developers. Not for what the community potentially could've turned it into. But I'm sure there are some great community mods out there for XRebirth. Hell, I've used some mods for the X3 games. But by the time I got to a point where I would've considered using mods (I like to give games as much of a chance as possible in vanilla form before ever considering using mods), I was so fed up with XRebirth that I just quit and moved on to X4.

[Buzz2005]

big mistakes IMHO, what makes every X game great is mods and people should use them

I consider them integral part of the game

The charm of X games is versatile gameplay and that versatility increases even more with mods

and btw you didn't need to scan stations