Why Timeline has to be a seperate mode?

[flywlyx]

To me, this Timeline mode is essentially a dungeon: you enter a separate scenario, and what happens there doesn't affect the larger game world.
This approach is common in sandboxes, but why does X4 need to make it a separate mode?

I don't think there are any technical issues, as saving the sandbox universe and loading the scenario doesn't seem complex.
I believe players would be much more accepting of this new dungeon mode since it's a common feature in other games.

In my opinion, this is not the proper way to run this mode.
X4 is a sandbox simulation, not an RPG. Using dungeons to tell stories is a total waste; instead, the fleets players build in the sandbox should be sent into these dungeons to face real challenges.

CBJ keeps explaining how they don't know the risk of having a strong Xenon. Well, here's a solution: a separate battlefield that doesn't affect the universe at all.
Imagine this: after passing through a gate, you jump into a separate system not on the map, where you join forces with TER to battle against a massive Xenon fleet that keeps appearing out of nowhere.
Some players might not enjoy this roguelike mode, but I believe this is exactly what X4's end game is lacking.

[chew-ie]

Not sure if you played any missions of the DLC - but the whole point is that those missions play in the known sectors of the universe. They tell a story in a different time frame. Separate battlefields won't do much here.

[flywlyx]

Not sure if you played any missions of the DLC - but the whole point is that those missions play in the known sectors of the universe. They tell a story in a different time frame. Separate battlefields won't do much here.

It doesn't matter if the character is part of the sandbox; the dungeon shouldn't be separated from the sandbox.
X4 isn't an RPG, and the timeline is mostly focused on battlefields anyway.

[mr.WHO]

To me, this Timeline mode is essentially a dungeon: you enter a separate scenario, and what happens there doesn't affect the larger game world.
This approach is common in sandboxes, but why does X4 need to make it a separate mode?

Simply for better performance - you don't have whole galaxy simulation running in background.

[flywlyx]

Simply for better performance - you don't have whole galaxy simulation running in background.

I don't think people will care the universe is running or not in the dungeon.

[burger1]

Probably could have changed the story a bit and integrated it. Large cloaked ship with a time drive, dock, pick mission, time travel, do mission in time appropriate ship, get reward/blueprint, dock at large ship and large ship time travels back. Then can fly away and do normal stuff until you feel like doing another mission. Could even get a unfocused time drive with a chance at some special drops/encounters. Would allow the player more freedom if not just the feeling of more freedom.

[Nerwesta]

To me, this Timeline mode is essentially a dungeon: you enter a separate scenario, and what happens there doesn't affect the larger game world.
This approach is common in sandboxes, but why does X4 need to make it a separate mode?

Simply for better performance - you don't have whole galaxy simulation running in background.

Yeah .. let's not pretend the " battles " we've met are that big to need that encapsulated world.
I mean, I'm not even in that late-late game on my main save, and I probably have more fierce battles on the so called " open-world ", without the end-game crisis of course.
Antigone felt like I was told to believe destroying 3 Xenon E and seeing 3 Xenon Destroyers would lead to a massive event somehow, yeah sure.

[The Q]

To me, this Timeline mode is essentially a dungeon: you enter a separate scenario, and what happens there doesn't affect the larger game world.
This approach is common in sandboxes, but why does X4 need to make it a separate mode?

It's way easier to 'control' the player that way and stop him from doing something else while the game expects them to do a specific task in a specific set of circumstances.
In a game which is designed around the key elements of having a simulated universe and being able to control everything from everywhere, it can often be challenging to keep the player focussed on one thing. And often enough in the past, this has been the reason for plot breaking bugs.

I don't think that stopping the universe simulation and stripping the players of their usual interaction possibilities with the rest of the universe is that easy to accomplish. But even if it is, I also don't see how it's beneficial to do so, as you just have way more explaining to do and still end up with a "separation" from the sandbox.

[mr.WHO]

Yeah .. let's not pretend the " battles " we've met are that big to need that encapsulated world.
I mean, I'm not even in that late-late game on my main save, and I probably have more fierce battles on the so called " open-world ", without the end-game crisis of course.
Antigone felt like I was told to believe destroying 3 Xenon E and seeing 3 Xenon Destroyers would lead to a massive event somehow, yeah sure.

It doesn't matter how big or small Timelines battles are - there is absolutely no point in having the sadbox universe going in the background wasting energy.

Also without my optimzed and tuned fleet/ships, I re-learned that even basic Xenon ships are dangerous to player (It was very long time since I played early game sandbox).
Crappy Xenon M or P are quite powerful, when you're sitting in something like Theseus

[BlackRain]

To me, this Timeline mode is essentially a dungeon: you enter a separate scenario, and what happens there doesn't affect the larger game world.
This approach is common in sandboxes, but why does X4 need to make it a separate mode?

Simply for better performance - you don't have whole galaxy simulation running in background.

Yeah .. let's not pretend the " battles " we've met are that big to need that encapsulated world.
I mean, I'm not even in that late-late game on my main save, and I probably have more fierce battles on the so called " open-world ", without the end-game crisis of course.
Antigone felt like I was told to believe destroying 3 Xenon E and seeing 3 Xenon Destroyers would lead to a massive event somehow, yeah sure.

You aren't in the late game, you said it right there. Late game, when the player has many stations and ships, the frame rate takes a pretty large hit and it is no longer possible to really fight in battles in a fighter anymore. All I can do is sit on my capital ship now and control the battles from the map for the most part.

[Scoob]

You aren't in the late game, you said it right there. Late game, when the player has many stations and ships, the frame rate takes a pretty large hit and it is no longer possible to really fight in battles in a fighter anymore. All I can do is sit on my capital ship now and control the battles from the map for the most part.

That's contrary to my experience. Even in a very heavily modded late-game - think significantly more ships, stations and sectors - where I have dozens are LARGE Stations, a mass of logistics ships (Traders and Miners) as well as a full shipyard and fleets to rival any faction, my performance is generally really good. It's large battles that cause frame dips if anything, if I'm nearby. I'm talking the size of battles that, realistically, that only generally a Player-owned fleet can cause - though some mods get close. That's when I see any noticeable FPS drop - I tend to limit to 60, so only if it drops below that - but only when I'm there. Teleport away and I'm good. Additionally, some of the large station I build can cause my GPU to notice it - but I'm talking multiple large stations clustered together.

So, where I am as the player seems to have more impact. When I DO get an FPS drop due to a large battle, I generally see a slight reduction in both CPU and GPU load, suggesting some sort of Engine bottleneck. Just what I've often observed, a general reduction in overall hardware load when things get busy.

Now, I'm sure some player's late-game is far later than mine. I know many have played the same save since v1.0! I tend to restart with major update. Plus, I make good use of mods which pushes the engine a little harder of course.

Context: I have a 5800X3D, 32GB DDR4 3600, RTX 3070, Fast M.2 SSD's and play at 1440p. I had a 3900X previously and the straight-swap to the 5800X3d DOUBLED my fps in previously CPU-limited scenarios. It far exceeded my expectations. A 7800X3D would be even better of course, and I have high hopes for AMD's next 3D chips.

[BlackRain]

You aren't in the late game, you said it right there. Late game, when the player has many stations and ships, the frame rate takes a pretty large hit and it is no longer possible to really fight in battles in a fighter anymore. All I can do is sit on my capital ship now and control the battles from the map for the most part.

That's contrary to my experience. Even in a very heavily modded late-game - think significantly more ships, stations and sectors - where I have dozens are LARGE Stations, a mass of logistics ships (Traders and Miners) as well as a full shipyard and fleets to rival any faction, my performance is generally really good. It's large battles that cause frame dips if anything, if I'm nearby. I'm talking the size of battles that, realistically, that only generally a Player-owned fleet can cause - though some mods get close. That's when I see any noticeable FPS drop - I tend to limit to 60, so only if it drops below that - but only when I'm there. Teleport away and I'm good. Additionally, some of the large station I build can cause my GPU to notice it - but I'm talking multiple large stations clustered together.

So, where I am as the player seems to have more impact. When I DO get an FPS drop due to a large battle, I generally see a slight reduction in both CPU and GPU load, suggesting some sort of Engine bottleneck. Just what I've often observed, a general reduction in overall hardware load when things get busy.

Now, I'm sure some player's late-game is far later than mine. I know many have played the same save since v1.0! I tend to restart with major update. Plus, I make good use of mods which pushes the engine a little harder of course.

Context: I have a 5800X3D, 32GB DDR4 3600, RTX 3070, Fast M.2 SSD's and play at 1440p. I had a 3900X previously and the straight-swap to the 5800X3d DOUBLED my fps in previously CPU-limited scenarios. It far exceeded my expectations. A 7800X3D would be even better of course, and I have high hopes for AMD's next 3D chips.

I meant that in battles the FPS drops, not generally. Yeah, if I go into a big battle with my fleet, there is no way I can pilot a fighter in the battle. The FPS isn't bad for all that is going on and is probably somewhere around 30 in those cases but you can't fly a nimble ship and be flipping around and going crazy targeting stuff with 30 fps (which also sometimes drops or goes up). The battle just isn't fun like that. If I am chilling on my station or somewhere away from a large battle the FPS is of course fine, less in heavily populated sectors but still decent.

And by the way, I have an i9- 13900k and a RTX 4090 with a samsung m2 ssd and I also play at 1440p.

[Scoob]

I meant that in battles the FPS drops, not generally. Yeah, if I go into a big battle with my fleet, there is no way I can pilot a fighter in the battle. The FPS isn't bad for all that is going on and is probably somewhere around 30 in those cases but you can't fly a nimble ship and be flipping around and going crazy targeting stuff with 30 fps (which also sometimes drops or goes up). The battle just isn't fun like that. If I am chilling on my station or somewhere away from a large battle the FPS is of course fine, less in heavily populated sectors but still decent.

And by the way, I have an i9- 13900k and a RTX 4090 with a samsung m2 ssd and I also play at 1440p.

Ah, that's make sense

Have you noticed that the lower fps in such scenarios also coincides with lower CPU/GPU usage? Your CPU should give slightly better performance than mine on average in X4 I'd expect. However, if you also see the low utilisation issue when things get busy, that'd be interesting. I know my friend with a 12900k does, though I generally see 10-20% higher performance than him, yet he has a 3090.

As I couldn't continue a game in-progress for v7.0 - I started fresh during the beta - I cannot tell if there have been any performance improvements. Of course, Timelines its self is very performant for the most part, the exception being in the larger battles, where it dip below 60fps every so often... need to check if that coincides with lower CPU use too. As it's a "pocket" universe, with just one sector and nothing else going on, it'd be an interesting test... That means I have to play more Timelines though...urgh lol.

[flywlyx]

Probably could have changed the story a bit and integrated it. Large cloaked ship with a time drive, dock, pick mission, time travel, do mission in time appropriate ship, get reward/blueprint, dock at large ship and large ship time travels back. Then can fly away and do normal stuff until you feel like doing another mission. Could even get a unfocused time drive with a chance at some special drops/encounters. Would allow the player more freedom if not just the feeling of more freedom.

I think the dungeon idea is perfectly fine, like a small sector or scenario in the middle of nowhere, allowing the sandbox to pause and save system resources for larger combat.
The issue is that they separate it from the sandbox, making everything players built there suddenly irrelevant. It feels like buying another game when people are actually expecting a DLC.

It's way easier to 'control' the player that way and stop him from doing something else while the game expects them to do a specific task in a specific set of circumstances.
In a game which is designed around the key elements of having a simulated universe and being able to control everything from everywhere, it can often be challenging to keep the player focussed on one thing. And often enough in the past, this has been the reason for plot breaking bugs.

That's exactly how a typical dungeon works, but the issue lies with what X4 is doing now. The Timeline DLC is essentially separating the 120 Shrines from Breath of the Wild, which naturally leads to complaints. I don't know of any other game implementing this kind of game mode, but it's clearly not effective.

I don't think that stopping the universe simulation and stripping the players of their usual interaction possibilities with the rest of the universe is that easy to accomplish.

Simply save the game, run the timeline, and then load the game when you exit the timeline. I don't see any difficulty in doing this.

But even if it is, I also don't see how it's beneficial to do so, as you just have way more explaining to do and still end up with a "separation" from the sandbox.

Have you ever played Breath of the Wild? Can you imagine the feedback from players if Nintendo separated the shrines from the main game? I would say the benefit is very obvious, players won't feel it is separated from the sandbox.

[Nerwesta]

Simply for better performance - you don't have whole galaxy simulation running in background.

Yeah .. let's not pretend the " battles " we've met are that big to need that encapsulated world.
I mean, I'm not even in that late-late game on my main save, and I probably have more fierce battles on the so called " open-world ", without the end-game crisis of course.
Antigone felt like I was told to believe destroying 3 Xenon E and seeing 3 Xenon Destroyers would lead to a massive event somehow, yeah sure.

You aren't in the late game, you said it right there. Late game, when the player has many stations and ships, the frame rate takes a pretty large hit and it is no longer possible to really fight in battles in a fighter anymore. All I can do is sit on my capital ship now and control the battles from the map for the most part.

That's exactly my point, I'm not sure how it's not clear.
Since I'm not even witnessing huge battles on my game, I can't fathom why we are needed to boot a separate instance, on a separate menu, with separate loading and frankly useless catwalking while we could do that in the open universe.
The battles I've seen ( and some are allegedly major ones ... ) are significantly smaller than everything I could witness in my game in Hativkah's choice alone.
I would agree and give you the point right away if it wasn't the case afterall.

Take Kingdom's End alone, the battle in Sanctuary on Darkness was I think even bigger, and it was a nicely scripted quest. I didn't see anything like that on Timelines, i'm sorry.

edit : also, I have witnessed some harsh FPS drop on Timelines, like I was in the open universe, so even this argument doesn't even stand on my particular setting.
So yeah, I'm all for a scripted event if it's done nicely, I didn't have anything close than a regular quest from Kingdom's End, and this DLC offered much much more than scripted events.

[Tharrg]

As far as I am concerned X-Timelines is a new game that uses the X4 game engine. It would be much less confusing if Egosoft marked it as such; Although they might get fewer sales.

[flywlyx]

As far as I am concerned X-Timelines is a new game that uses the X4 game engine. It would be much less confusing if Egosoft marked it as such; Although they might get fewer sales.

That's probably the last thing Egosoft wants players to feel.
I don't think that's their intention, but they should prove it by integrating the timeline back into the sandbox rather than just making a simple claim.

[Witzzard]

Four main ideas as to the why - a) Better AI and general performance when a full universe isn't simulated in the background. b) Less Overhead to the universe if you don't have the full DLC Story loaded in the background to a degree, even if it's not active. c) Loading scenarios up from the sandbox takes ages and so it's much simpler having an almost empty map to load in/out off. d) No potential interference from the universe in a challenge mode.
But in the end, it's speculative, i just think that Egosoft had pretty good reasons to do it they way they did.

[jlehtone]

I can't help but recall how I did approach an Asteroid in X3R story mission. The plot had a high speed chase in small tunnel through the rock. I was in my "personal ship" -- the Raptor. That did not compute. Later, there was cutscene where we did a "victory rolls" in our ships. The camera position was outside of my ship -- would have been, had I had a fighter. Alas, camera inside Raptor was less cinematic.

That is and has always been the issue with "stories on the open" -- it is nigh impossible to make "fun for all" missions when the player might dive in with Pegasus or Asgard. Sure, there could be a holodeck on special Museum Station, where you walk in to "experience" old tales without the baggage of your empire.

Granted, "playing a game" outside the game to get location of easter eggs might be comparable to a visit to Spoilers Forum; on both you find something without "ingame exploration".


Disclaimer: I have not seen the timelines yet.

[flywlyx]

Four main ideas as to the why - a) Better AI and general performance when a full universe isn't simulated in the background. b) Less Overhead to the universe if you don't have the full DLC Story loaded in the background to a degree, even if it's not active. c) Loading scenarios up from the sandbox takes ages and so it's much simpler having an almost empty map to load in/out off. d) No potential interference from the universe in a challenge mode.
But in the end, it's speculative, i just think that Egosoft had pretty good reasons to do it they way they did.

If X4 is that unique, they shouldn't use the same methods as other sandbox games. The current timeline feels like an entirely different game disguised as X4.