I dont get it. Spent hundreds of hours in X3, but X4 is over after 20?

[radcapricorn]

On the other hand, empty subjective praise after just a few hours of play doesn't do any less harm. Bitching about bugs could do with some disappearing, I agree, that energy would be so much better spent in making actual useful reports. But hey, people want their money's worth, and when they're not getting it, they complain and moan. Neither extreme makes the game better. My point is, objectivity is key. Right now the game needs work, a lot of it, and testing, a lot of it. Fanfares, roses and chocolates can wait.

[spankahontis]

I think main reason for me was progression of game it self.... It is way too easy to get money in this game and at the same time ships/stations are cheap and reputations is almost none existent. I had mega complex and fleet of 40 capital ships in only 20h and i didn't even use exploits like crystal/nividum farming.There is lack of missions (especially combat) and sectors are not well balanced. War economy limits you to only trading or just war . For example if you go to war your trade sips or miners will get picked up one by one because they will travel trough enemy sectors. You can still do small scale trading but it will be hard to build huge empire. In my second play i dint go to war and just chose to build stations and sell to both sides and i got bored because there was nothing else to do.... In X3AP war was isolated so you could build empire in Argon Prime and go to war in Heretic's End. I think this game lacks many features as well as horribly planed map that limits gameplay. This is probably why i got so bored after 2 weeks of playing it and i have over 2000h on X3 games and even over 1400h on XR.

Apart from bugs I found the opposite that I spent over 2000 hours in Rebirth and around 400 in X3.. X4 I feel, (Putting aside Lack of Races/Sectors/Weapons/Ships) Even if Egosoft added all these things.. I feel personally fatigued playing X4.
Though aspects of the game I find superior to previous titles and all the features makes me satisfied that it no longer needs to keep competing with X3 on the features front,first time i've seen shipyards and the ability to be a Shipyard mogul which excites me.

And yet.. I still feel like something is missing? That it has slowly drained me of playing. Broken features maybe the reason? But something tells me it's more than that?

[goamanu]

I think all that is missing is basically a persistent main plot!
That would give us a meaning, a scope, a reason to evolve.
There are more ways to enforce a main plot during many hours of gameplay, with mechanics like "do your first 10 million credits, then the pirates will finally want to give you the security key to some enemy station defenses", or "destroy your first khaak shipyard in order to steal their exotic power source".
Making 10.000.000 credits and destroying a shipyard will take a lot of time, time in which we will remain curious about the future story.
Also, there can be objectives like "accomplish 40 missions in order to gain enough credibility for a mysterious businessman".
The main thing is that I am convinced that all the boredom problems could be solved with a longer plot and more difficult plot objectives.
I would painstankingly pave my way to the top, just to see that tiny story development that was promised.

[Kadatherion]

I think all that is missing is basically a persistent main plot!
That would give us a meaning, a scope, a reason to evolve.
There are more ways to enforce a main plot during many hours of gameplay, with mechanics like "do your first 10 million credits, then the pirates will finally want to give you the security key to some enemy station defenses", or "destroy your first khaak shipyard in order to steal their exotic power source".
Making 10.000.000 credits and destroying a shipyard will take a lot of time, time in which we will remain curious about the future story.
Also, there can be objectives like "accomplish 40 missions in order to gain enough credibility for a mysterious businessman".
The main thing is that I am convinced that all the boredom problems could be solved with a longer plot and more difficult plot objectives.
I would painstankingly pave my way to the top, just to see that tiny story development that was promised.

To a certain extent you have a point, but some of the examples you make are more a game of repetition rather than elements that would fuel your long term interest: they sound dangerously similar to the Hub "plot" from X3: an artificial goal given to you to encourage your grinding, with a relatively small payoff in the end compared to the effort required. If you go overboard with it, you risk ending up with a system that further takes away from what little freedom you already have, by focusing menial grinding by trying to put the player on rails even though, on paper, they would just add to the possible goals to work on. Plus, with a too small payoff after asking a lot of work from the player, you are just asking for backlash.

Yes, I meant that: little freedom. X4 is supposed to be even more sandbox than its predecessors due to not having any real story plot to follow, and yet it's the one with the least freedom (well, maybe not less than Rebirth, for obvious reasons, but still): why? Because even though you supposedly could do whatever you want, there's not much to choose from and to do. It all comes down, once again, to the lack of variety in tasks and assets, and overall content: even your suggestions are based on more variety (which would come from the rewards after the grinding). Fact is, it's not necessary to really script self enclosed "plot" rewards tied to a grinding goal, when you could just seamlessly put those rewards in the core sandbox game. Be it rare ships/ship variants, some npcs with special dialogue/tasks, if you simply distribute them evenly in the game, so that the endgame isn't just a menial grind to get 30 more of those destroyers you already seen hundreds of, then you get to pretty much the same result without putting the player on rails.

Speaking of ships as an example, X3 did it just that way: while indeed it still required (that very same) grinding, the much bigger variety of ships (both in number and in how they played), many of which were hard to come by, was spread throughout more factions to work for and interact with, minor factions to work for in a different way and different missions, rare ships to search for in the universe for the "gotta catch 'em all" players, and so on. When you know a couple rare ship variants could spawn on certain mission types, you had an incentive to play those missions other than the monetary reward you would then invest in buying "common" ships at shipyards. Overall, having so much more content made the game feel more immersive simply because there would still be, even after a hundred hours, something new to see: that's what kept you going even while doing unrelated menial tasks.
In X4 instead you've seen everything there is to see after 20 hours tops, the OP is quite right on that: there's still things you can do for much longer than that, of course, but it's all about grinding and playing around with those limited assets. I believe there's no simple solution to the issue at hand other than simply expanding the game A LOT: as it is now it's a framework of a game, not a full game by far, and there's no shortcut to make it feel less so other than actually... well, finishing it.

[reanor]

The praise is not empty. I started X4 the day it was out and I've had a lot of fun even though with all the bugs and moaning on the forums. I've already got 3-4 times worth of fun out of X4 that my CE money paid for. Bugs didn't keep me from enjoying the game and I agree with the one of the above posters that AI was doing a 'reasonable' job in my case as well. It wasn't perfect, but I wasn't influenced by the moaning posts about how bad the AI was. In my case, it was what it was. BUT, that's where the problems start. You may have fun for the first 100 or so hours, and the poster above is only at 30 hours. It's when you get a complete hand on a game, you start noticing that you get too rich too soon, without any threat, subordinates are doing a whacky job, traders steal your money, even though you continue getting rich and lazy. Then you start doing research and find out that there are many things still not working.

So everyone's opinion the first 50-100 hours, will be quite positive, especially if they just gave the game a go without reading the negative posts about bugs. The potential, is what we see during those first 100 or so hours. And then when we cut into the real meat, we start noticing things and want them better. I don't believe it's fair to be negative to people, who enjoyed the game in their vanilla 50 hours. Majority of people here did enjoy the game and already got their moneys worth. But a lot of us had cut into the games meat by now and we want it to be more tasty. Some want it more rare, while others don't want to have any sign of blood.. I mean bugs in it. So that's why some are more tolerant to them, while others keep complaining. Patience is a virtue with X games. Go play something else, people, The Division 2 for example, and come back when V3 or even better V4 is out to try the X4 again. And you'll fall in love once again. Give yourselves some break. ♥ X4 ♥

[goamanu]

Yes, definitely the game needs more content, both in the missions diversity AND the plot.
As far as I observed, there are two kinds of X4 gamers: the hardcore sandbox gamers and the dreamers (plot centered space RPG). I am one of the "dreamers"
The main plot needs to stay with us during the grinding because all the game is about grinding, in fact.
I understand that a main plot requires further developer resources, but also are the different missions small plots.
If the final reward is big (let's say a new secret sector or a super-weapon) the plot justifies its means. I remember, in TC I was lost after completing the main plot, even if I did barely scratch the surface of the game (only one Boron big carrier as a class L ship). I tried collecting many S&M ships and waging war upon Xenon, but I was beaten to death in a matter of seconds, even if I thought I was the master of the galaxy after spending hundreds of hours in the game. The complexity of the game, without a main plot, brought me to a halt.
I couldn't care less about Xenon, as long as I tested the majority of the ships, all the mission types and surveied in detail all the sectors. The game world had no more secrets for me, the lore was consumed, why should I care about an objective made by my own ego? Because that is the name of the company?
Speaking of the incentives, however many mision types we have and ships and so on, they all become repetitive after a while, but a main plot gives you, by definition THAT UNIQUE reason to continue.

[Nort The Fragrent]

Missions, Plots, Ships, Sectors, Factions.
The fundamentals of the game are good, yet the content is small. So small that it isn't long before you have been everywhere, seen everything and had your fun.
Space is large, a place to go and discover!
We need more sectors, (( a lot more ) an awful lot more ) adding sectors would make the game so much more interesting and time consuming to get through them. This ought to be relatively easy to implement. And would not impede the game’s overall performance,!, you can only be in one sector at a time. So performance wise its the same.
Making the effort to get to a remote faraway sector, adds more perspective and gives the feeling of achievement. Wizzing there in an instant down a tube is basically dull, boring and lazy.
I would like to have a whole new area with distant sectors, ones that are awkward to find, hard to navigate, and have interesting nebular to see.
There have been times in X4 when I deliberately travel at slow speed to make the game feel larger. Stupid I know!

We want a lot more please.

[memxcom]

I think main reason for me was progression of game it self.... It is way too easy to get money in this game and at the same time ships/stations are cheap and reputations is almost none existent. I had mega complex and fleet of 40 capital ships in only 20h and i didn't even use exploits like crystal/nividum farming.There is lack of missions (especially combat) and sectors are not well balanced. War economy limits you to only trading or just war . For example if you go to war your trade sips or miners will get picked up one by one because they will travel trough enemy sectors. You can still do small scale trading but it will be hard to build huge empire. In my second play i dint go to war and just chose to build stations and sell to both sides and i got bored because there was nothing else to do.... In X3AP war was isolated so you could build empire in Argon Prime and go to war in Heretic's End. I think this game lacks many features as well as horribly planed map that limits gameplay. This is probably why i got so bored after 2 weeks of playing it and i have over 2000h on X3 games and even over 1400h on XR.

Apart from bugs I found the opposite that I spent over 2000 hours in Rebirth and around 400 in X3.. X4 I feel, (Putting aside Lack of Races/Sectors/Weapons/Ships) Even if Egosoft added all these things.. I feel personally fatigued playing X4.
Though aspects of the game I find superior to previous titles and all the features makes me satisfied that it no longer needs to keep competing with X3 on the features front,first time i've seen shipyards and the ability to be a Shipyard mogul which excites me.

And yet.. I still feel like something is missing? That it has slowly drained me of playing. Broken features maybe the reason? But something tells me it's more than that?

X4 is missing something, I spent thousands of hours in Rebirth and had stations virtually everywhere, with X4 the fun factor fades pretty soon and you don't have the same incentive to build stations in X4 like you do in Rebirth, smaller universe is one thing but it is missing something that holds you like Rebirth did, in many ways Rebirth is superior, size, music, storyline, weapons etc , station building is easier and cheaper. Rebirth you knew it needed certain stations ASAP, with X4 it is not as desperate, those that played Rebirth and was waiting to get fusion reactors know what I mean.

The main issue I have right now in X4 is the game crashes every 10 to 20 seconds on starting since 2.20 patch so X4 as it stands is virtually unplayable for me with latest patch, I don't have the incentive to try and start a whole new game in X4 especially now I'm over 100 million credits, 15 ships with 2 stations, X4 right now there is not a lot to do if you get it working or stable, station building if you have the funds and crystal mining is about it, having autotrade ships out and about is fine for awhile but the game needs more content, X3 took me ages to explore unlike X4. Bottomline X4 needs more missions,content, new sectors etc and that is after I get my X4 game working stable again, all patches 2.0 and before were fine for me ie zero crashes, 2.20 patch is a nightmare for me( ie unplayable in X4).

I consider myself X universe fan and have been playing their games for many years.


UPDATE: I fixed my crash issues got it stable with program cleaners, using CCleaner, System Ninja,Glary's Utilities, Advanced SystemCare 12 Pro, yes used them all but it fixed my issue, must of been a bad invalid file/registry problem.

[Sir Warwick]

X4 is missing something

Indeed - the problem for me is very poor implementations of key features (which I admit were added by mods in X3, but were never this bad in vanilla to start with) which just make a major part of the game not much fun and just a frustrating nescessity - ie fleet/ship control.

Thge UI is just annoying and fiddly - mainly due to everything being buried in some menu that is near impossible to get at in combat (and is often broken in that what the game think you clicked on often isn't what you thought you clicked on) and hot keys for such functions seem impossible. I am also assuming that with the lack of any goto fleet management mod or even good economic management script by now (I know of one valiant effort), people are finding them too hard / buggy to implement and seem to end up getting bogged down in other bugs and quirks and general strangeness and inconsistencies. Certainly reading over the script sub-forums seems very discouraging despite some apparently great efforts against the odds by many.

The major killer for me is also hands-on combat. I really miss having hot keys for wing commands and being able to easily set them up for many other functions even if it meant writing a script on my part (which I was fine with in X3 TC/AP and wrote many). This basically make combat only pratical truly alone without your support ship around you as as such only seems ot make sense in the very early stages of the game. After that it seems you have to abandon flying completly as basically you cant risk strategic control via the map through such fiddly and unreliable ship control if you yourself are in risk of combat. Also not helped by annoying dialog that pop up and block your line of sight when fighting which is completely rediculous in such a game. But even with all that I somehow feel less immersed and more disconnected from the ship than in previous X games despite that now we have full hotas control support, track ir etc.

Trading and mining and base development seems to work OK and while I very much miss the fine grained control (especially over whom I traded what products and ships with), complex building is certainly improved in many ways. I just wish the editor had less transparency (some connecting structures are far too hard to see - 50% transparency would have been fine) and allowed for up/down view control. Trying to edit a max size cube where line of sign is required for selection and manipulation with this is a real pain. Previously getting a big complex up and running was just the start - now I kind of feel it is the end endless I just randomly decide to wipe out some faction for no good reason.

Bugs with defence and war in general are also contributing to killing this for me in its current state and make the process a bit pointless. Why is none actually attacking the enemy defence platforms that get created intheir terrotory - maybe the same reason I have given up with it - too many of them are buggy and cant be destroyed?

The so called combat AI in this is just an embarrasment TBH - articial idiot is the only description that seems apt. In this time and in particularf after all the experince one might expect a game team to have gain over the years, we really have a right to expect so much better. Its doresnt have to be fanyc - just not frustratingly stupid would be a great start - making ships attack appropriate targets when grouped with other classes would be a good start and making them keep together instead of the fastest and most fragile charging off after something big that will shred them while destroyers can get a sniff of a passing fighter and pointlessly go chasing after it with no hope of catching it.

It is just mind numbingly bad. When I read through the discoveries and struggles of people trying to make mods then I can even feel slightly surprised at the poor state of this. This isn't a v0.1 early access alpha (or not labelled as such at least) really - it is supposedly 2.2 nearly 5 months later. I confess I have not looked modding this myself as right now I am not convince of the worth of trying. I will happily spend a lot of effort when I feel it may be rewarded despite how much I hate their questionable script system when there were many other perfectly language around to choose from. (why not lua for everything - why this horrible xml?), but right now I just dread getting bogged down like many other seem to be. I have worked with software in a terrible state before and software that just appears to be in a terrible state and they each show different kinds of issues on the outside. This seems to be very much the former case sadly. Maybe a fresh start again (ugh) on X5 is needed and not to carry over hard to work with crippling systems that just seem to yield very buggy and hard to debug scripts. Stick with one well know and well understood scripting engine - that might be a good start.

Sad state of affairs really.

[spankahontis]

X4 is missing something

Indeed - the problem for me is very poor implementations of key features (which I admit were added by mods in X3, but were never this bad in vanilla to start with) which just make a major part of the game not much fun and just a frustrating nescessity - ie fleet/ship control.

Thge UI is just annoying and fiddly - mainly due to everything being buried in some menu that is near impossible to get at in combat (and is often broken in that what the game think you clicked on often isn't what you thought you clicked on) and hot keys for such functions seem impossible. I am also assuming that with the lack of any goto fleet management mod or even good economic management script by now (I know of one valiant effort), people are finding them too hard / buggy to implement and seem to end up getting bogged down in other bugs and quirks and general strangeness and inconsistencies. Certainly reading over the script sub-forums seems very discouraging despite some apparently great efforts against the odds by many.

The major killer for me is also hands-on combat. I really miss having hot keys for wing commands and being able to easily set them up for many other functions even if it meant writing a script on my part (which I was fine with in X3 TC/AP and wrote many). This basically make combat only pratical truly alone without your support ship around you as as such only seems ot make sense in the very early stages of the game. After that it seems you have to abandon flying completly as basically you cant risk strategic control via the map through such fiddly and unreliable ship control if you yourself are in risk of combat. Also not helped by annoying dialog that pop up and block your line of sight when fighting which is completely rediculous in such a game. But even with all that I somehow feel less immersed and more disconnected from the ship than in previous X games despite that now we have full hotas control support, track ir etc.

Trading and mining and base development seems to work OK and while I very much miss the fine grained control (especially over whom I traded what products and ships with), complex building is certainly improved in many ways. I just wish the editor had less transparency (some connecting structures are far too hard to see - 50% transparency would have been fine) and allowed for up/down view control. Trying to edit a max size cube where line of sign is required for selection and manipulation with this is a real pain. Previously getting a big complex up and running was just the start - now I kind of feel it is the end endless I just randomly decide to wipe out some faction for no good reason.

Bugs with defence and war in general are also contributing to killing this for me in its current state and make the process a bit pointless. Why is none actually attacking the enemy defence platforms that get created intheir terrotory - maybe the same reason I have given up with it - too many of them are buggy and cant be destroyed?

The so called combat AI in this is just an embarrasment TBH - articial idiot is the only description that seems apt. In this time and in particularf after all the experince one might expect a game team to have gain over the years, we really have a right to expect so much better. Its doresnt have to be fanyc - just not frustratingly stupid would be a great start - making ships attack appropriate targets when grouped with other classes would be a good start and making them keep together instead of the fastest and most fragile charging off after something big that will shred them while destroyers can get a sniff of a passing fighter and pointlessly go chasing after it with no hope of catching it.

It is just mind numbingly bad. When I read through the discoveries and struggles of people trying to make mods then I can even feel slightly surprised at the poor state of this. This isn't a v0.1 early access alpha (or not labelled as such at least) really - it is supposedly 2.2 nearly 5 months later. I confess I have not looked modding this myself as right now I am not convince of the worth of trying. I will happily spend a lot of effort when I feel it may be rewarded despite how much I hate their questionable script system when there were many other perfectly language around to choose from. (why not lua for everything - why this horrible xml?), but right now I just dread getting bogged down like many other seem to be. I have worked with software in a terrible state before and software that just appears to be in a terrible state and they each show different kinds of issues on the outside. This seems to be very much the former case sadly. Maybe a fresh start again (ugh) on X5 is needed and not to carry over hard to work with crippling systems that just seem to yield very buggy and hard to debug scripts. Stick with one well know and well understood scripting engine - that might be a good start.

Sad state of affairs really.

I'm personally getting sick of restarting a fresh campaign every time there is a big fix and don't intend to play a new campaign until 3.0; but at the same time, been playing since 2.0 so thinking that i'm not playing a 100% backwards compatible game beta/non-beta.

[Old Drullo321]

While I don't think, X4 is a bad game, I feel no motivation to start another playthrough. I bought the game at release date and played until I got my first Nemesis as player ship. Up until then there was no motivation to continue because in arround ~15-20h:
- I explored everything
- Money making was a non-issue with just hundreds of auto-traders, making millions
- Plot was done in 2-3h

=> Nothing to explore, nothing to gain because of lack ov variation. No need to fly another ship, no goals. Just nothing.

Just based on fun and not comparing technical advantages there was only one gameplay element that really felt alot better then its predeccors is the complex building. That was a real pain in X3. X4 gameplay decisions didn't work for me. While running through real big stations, see ships landing or the ship planer is a technical progress, it does not add any fun when tons of features from its predeccors are missing:

- Ship variety (classes and races, and unique ships)
- Weapon variety
- Plots, Plots, Plots
- Small and intuitive UI which can be quickly navigated with shortcuts,
- Universe felt bigger

Tl;Dr: For me fun gameplay is more important then realism. X3(TC/AP) had more of it then X4. No motivation to play X4 after 20h, nothing to do, work for, etc.

[reanor]

While I don't think, X4 is a bad game, I feel no motivation to start another playthrough. I bought the game at release date and played until I got my first Nemesis as player ship. Up until then there was no motivation to continue because in arround ~15-20h:
- I explored everything
- Money making was a non-issue with just hundreds of auto-traders, making millions
- Plot was done in 2-3h

=> Nothing to explore, nothing to gain because of lack ov variation. No need to fly another ship, no goals. Just nothing.

Just based on fun and not comparing technical advantages there was only one gameplay element that really felt alot better then its predeccors is the complex building. That was a real pain in X3. X4 gameplay decisions didn't work for me. While running through real big stations, see ships landing or the ship planer is a technical progress, it does not add any fun when tons of features from its predeccors are missing:

- Ship variety (classes and races, and unique ships)
- Weapon variety
- Plots, Plots, Plots
- Small and intuitive UI which can be quickly navigated with shortcuts,
- Universe felt bigger

Tl;Dr: For me fun gameplay is more important then realism. X3(TC/AP) had more of it then X4. No motivation to play X4 after 20h, nothing to do, work for, etc.

Maybe Split expak that is out in 6 days, will fill up those gaps for you. I actually never got into X3 as many hours as I had in XR and in X4F. XR was hundreds of hours, and X4F played from the beginning, with all the bugs and what not and had some amazing fun for over 700 hours. Majority of that time was of course running the AI Universe in the background having my factories make millions. I've had 3 starts, modded, vanilla and modded again, then I took about a year break, so I am looking forward to hunt some splint, or to splint some hunt . But I wouldn't expect a lot of plots, split expack will only have a longer deplomatic one, but there will be more missions... My biggest issue in Vanilla X4F was lack of threat and lack of money sink, I had a few billion when I called quits for a long break and hoping that this is now changed. So I am looking forward to starting from scratch.

[Alan Phipps]

@ reanor: That's a nearly year old post that you are replying to. <click>