[RESTARTED] X-TRA POLLS Round #12 | What are your LEAST FAVOURITE activities in the game? (vote multiple options!)

[Tomonor]

Greetings, Members of the X-Community!

We had to restart this poll because some critical features were missing from the options in the previous thread. Please consider voting again, and we are truly sorry for the inconvenience this has caused.



The last poll has concluded and we've received valuable data on your favourite and least favourite weapons.
Thank you for voting, especially if you took the time to voice your opinion and provide us with feedback!

The next poll is: “What are your LEAST FAVOURITE activities in the game?”
Notes: We are interested in which actions you don't like doing in X4 at all. Feel free to comment how your voted points could be improved!





How does the Poll work?
Every two weeks, we’ll be rolling out polls in the forum where you can weigh in on crucial aspects of our games. Your votes will play a key role in helping us gather valuable insights to shape the future of our games!

But hold on, there’s more! Beyond just data collection, we’re keen on fostering discussions and hearing your thoughts. Alongside each poll, there’s a dedicated discussion thread going on where you can share your insights, ideas, and feedback related to the poll topic. It’s not only a great way to engage with fellow gamers but also an opportunity for us to gather additional valuable input.

However, it’s important to note that while we value your input, the results of the polls won’t necessarily guarantee implementation or consideration.
These polls are primarily for fun and data gathering.

So, get ready to have your voice heard in The X-tra Polls! Let’s shape our beloved X-Universe together!



Previous Polls:
Poll #11: Which main weapons do you prefer to use on your player ship(s)?
Poll #10: What are your favourite methods for gaining quick money?
Poll #9: In what way do you modify X4: Foundations?
Poll #8: Which factions do you usually consider your adversary?
Poll #7: Do you leave your game running when you're Away From Keyboard?
Poll #6: Have you played multiple gamestarts?
Poll #5: What type of ship do you primarily use?
Poll #4: Which is your favourite race of the playable races?
Poll #3: How long have you been playing your current savegame?
Poll #2: Which phase do you enjoy the most in X4: Foundations?
Poll #1: In your opinion, which X4: Foundations expansion was the most worthwhile?

[vvvvvvvv]

There are multiple activites I hated, and most of them are not on the list. Goes like this:

* Waiting for stations to finish building.
* Scanning for data leaks trying to make the "Lucrative opportunity" to spawn.
* Placing satellites in every sector by hand. (why is there no command that does this: https://ibb.co/5xMdHNn )
* Boron questline mission where you place beacons. (Reunification plot)
* Boso Ta timeline entries mission and especially "reward" at the end.
* Listening to boron lore dump in the boron questline (got a headache)
* Racing. I enjoyed only one racing mission in the game, and not much.
* Running around every station in the galaxy trying to find NPC with the appearance and clothes you want.
* Finding absolutely random items for plot NPCs (lodestone, spacefly caviasr)

The general idea is that unfun activites are those which rely on random roll, or where t he player has to wait, because in both cases, player has no agency, wastes time and cannot affect the process.

"Random roll" is gacha mechanics, and leak scanning and searching for specific NPC appearanc are form of gacha.

Time-gating build times with no option to accelerate it does not respect player time and wastes it without a good reason.

Searching for things isn't fun, when there's no indication of where they are, when it is rleying on random roll, or when the player sees no actual need for items request. Examples of that are Paranid and Split plots. Split keeps asking for caviar (because reasons) which is annoying to get, and Paranid apparently "decorate" their capital with spacefuel. Similar situation happens when Boso Ta request crystals for his research. Crystals have been nerfed, so this takes a while, and it is not enjoyable.

Inventory crafting also follows the same gacha mechanic. Basically enemy drops stop being a prize and become a chore, when they're necessary for your upgrade, and you can't make them yourself. We have advanced civilization in the game, which can print battleships in minutes. When said civilization cannot craft a micro-motor (or save template for ship paint), that's extremely odd.

P.S. I do not recall EVER hacking anything. Hacking uses consumable, and a fairly expensive one. So I never saw a point.

[Edna]

"Hacking" is a very euphemistic term. You walk up to a terminal and click once, and that's it. X-Rebirth had one step more to it.

Joubarbe and the other scripters of X3 Albion Prelude Litcube's Universe Mayhem 2 & 3: Zero Hour: Renegades & Knuckles had a bunch of interesting approaches on hacking and active boarding/infiltrating. X-Missions Reloaded even had a start where you had a hacking station for semi-active income. All of that is obviously very playful and not necessarily streamlined, but liked the approach for both boarding and hacking, as in X4 right now, both mechanics are rather... functional, but not entertaining. In fact, boarding feels more often than not like cheating.


I must admit, I enjoy the salvaging mechanic. I occasionally take control of a Manticore and tow cubes around. I wish TIMELINES had a mission for people with the TIDES OF AVARICE DLC where you play as a Manticore and have to get a high score for scrap. I'd find that more enjoyable than the mining speedrun missions

[Alan Phipps]

My 'other' is dealing with piracy harassment of my M traders when just fleeing should be sufficient given the stats of my ships (but they flee in precisely the wrong direction or stop too soon and engage again), and then having to deal with the outcomes of any defensive fire or actions against a cloaked ship impacting on the faction it is cloaked as. It always (Murphy's Law) seems to happen in the middle of something critical or complex that I am trying to concentrate on - and no, relying on relevant global or even ship settings doesn't always cut it.

[Lamquin]

I voted on Other and want to add a few activities I find myself being frustrated with as I play X4 -

Promotion missions
The ability to skip the dialogue is an excellent addition, but they still get very annoying when you do multiple playthroughs. First one is neat, tenth one is a chore.

Bailing S/M ships
In stark difference to boarding capital ships, getting enemies to bail from S/M ships feels like it lacks any feedback to how you're doing and what the "progress" is.

Crystal Farming
I know the intention isn't that these should be farmed, but I do wish Egosoft could make them more visible for those that enjoy the activity. There is a popular mod that helps out by adding a "Crystal Glow" to them and would make it easier on these ageing eyes.

Sector specific music
This one is a huge stretch far as activities go, but for me a large part of X4 is the atmosphere the wonderful soundtrack gives. Unfortunately, a lot of the music only play in their designated sectors, so unless I visit and stay in the Terran sectors, I'll never get to hear the Cradle of Humanity OST. The ability to "Randomize" the music or an in-game Jukebox/music player would be an amazing addition. Being forced to keep hearing the same music over and over if you stick to a few sector gets rather annoying.

[Edna]

Oh, another source of tedium: Cloaked pirates making your stations drop wares, without anything you can do about it. Not even Boso Ta was able to give me a solution for this. I just have to pay attention to any destroyer in the system.

[MegaJohnny]

I went for just manual mining and trading - nothing wrong with the way these are implemented, but they're not my cup of tea, and I always have other pilots do them when I can.

[GCU Grey Area]

Thoroughly enjoy almost everything on that list. Was worried I'd have nothing to gripe about/vote for until I spotted 'salvaging personally'. I don't do this primarily because of the ship requirement - only the Manticore tug can do it & it's pretty much useless for almost all of the other activities I enjoy doing. Furthermore it's an M ship & I have a strong distaste for flying most ships large enough to have an M dock (lack the patience to put up with XL steering), so even in the case that I did spot something I might like to salvage it's most unlikely I'll have a tug on hand to do it. There are also no faction missions that I'm aware of which provide an incentive for me to do any personal salvaging.

[Jeraal]

Voted other. I hate creating trade rules, blacklists etc. every time I start a new game. I am a bit of a habitual restarter in most games. We need a way to save rules for importing to new games. Since timelines is a thing I'll add that I dislike time trials and races. You could also say that I don't like doing activities outside of sandbox to get things in sandbox.

[Falcrack]

I would enjoy doing stuff personally much more if we could assign orders to our own piloted ship. We could have yellow guidance markers to the next point in the set of orders, make trade reservations in advance, have guidance markers to specific targets, etc.

[Duncaroos]

I selected Other:

1. Having to manually, one-by-one, manage ship orders as opposed to doing bulk orders, especially order settings located within a primary command (I'm looking at you - Attack mode).
   1. Telling ships NOT to boost during attack (a request featured multiple times by multiple users that could be implemented as a default global order).
   2. Changing Priority/Primary target during attacks.
   3. Default/Behaviour Orders & Settings
2. Needing to take apart a station and reattach modules in a certain way to get the build order correct so that you can take advantage of storage modules being built first and telling the manager to start collecting inputs before your production modules get completed (Would love to be able to move build order up and down freely).
3. Having to run away from friendly factions because you misfired because there is no "apologize for attack"

[Falcrack]

One thing not on this list which I don't particularly like, is applying custom mods to my ships.

[db48x]

* Scanning for data leaks trying to make the "Lucrative opportunity" to spawn.

It’s possible that you aren’t aware that the shady guys are spawned at the beginning of the game, and the Lucrative Opportunity mission only exists on a data leak if the shady guy is present on the station. Also, when the shady guy is present, one of the four yellow data leaks will always be the Lucrative Opportunity mission. Thus once you find all of the yellow mission leaks you know definitively whether there is a shady guy or not. That at least does give the player agency, if they know of it or figure out how it works.

* Finding absolutely random items for plot NPCs (lodestone, spacefly caviasr)

This is random loot, but it’s easier to acquire than most players realize. Just fly to an asteroid field in a fast nimble ship. Instead of blowing up whole asteroids, just shoot the resource nodes on the surface. They show up in a contrasting color when you activate the local scanner. You can get that lodestone you need in under two minutes. Caviar naturally takes a little longer, but you can actually do it in under an hour if you really want to.

The general idea is that unfun activites are those which rely on random roll, or where t he player has to wait, because in both cases, player has no agency, wastes time and cannot affect the process.

I do agree in general. However, some randomness is ok when it is used to simulate a more complex process, or when it is actually the result of a more complex process. For example, if you build a station to sell energy cells (a common activity) then your trade ships end up selling those cells for prices that look random. This makes the profit per hour fluctuate around some average. This is ok though because those “random” prices are actually the result of the economic simulation. It’s hard for the player to affect that simulation in a way that always increases profits, but not technically impossible.

Personally I really hate the random bonuses from ship mods. It killed all interest I had in the system until I found a mod that just gives them all fixed bonuses. In principle it’s trying to simulate a more complex process, but it’s just not a good enough simulation.

I also agree about the player waiting. Mostly the game deals with that by allowing them to delegate the task to an NPC. For example, stationing NPCs in combat areas to collect drops. On the other hand, you can’t really tell an NPC to wait for your megafactory to be built, so it’s better just not to build megafactories.

P.S. I do not recall EVER hacking anything. Hacking uses consumable, and a fairly expensive one. So I never saw a point.

That surprises me as well. The consumable costs ~150k when purchased, but the missions you use them on net you ~550k. That's a pretty clear profit, and if you craft the thing yourself it’s even more. At the beginning of the game that profit is a great way to bootstrap your first miners.

[LameFox]

Trading/Mining/Salvaging Personally — they're just super boring mechanically. Neither the transit, nor the process (such as there is of it), nor the environment is fun. What's more, the game is super limited in terms of ship customization... there's pretty much always a best setup for a task, and you breeze through acquiring it, so as a solo career it's very dull. I'd never bother to have a customized trade/salvage/mining ship, because what would it do differently? The most I'll do is sometimes ride on an AI controlled one, but that usually makes it perform worse and in the case of L miners, can even break it.

A notable extra mention on the personal trade front is that this game managed to make even piracy (of cargo) and smuggling not fun anymore. I usually enjoy these in games but here it neither feels challenging nor rewarding to do.


Hacking stations — I have done this before in one very specific scenario: removing competition for a stimulants plant I had in PIO space. But it's a level of tedium I never saw the point in continuing or expanding. Just go there and press a button now and then. Extremely dull.

Terraforming — this is just an unwanted mini-game to me and it annoys me that things like training were put out of the world into this instead of being handled in stations.

[vvvvvvvv]

It’s possible that you aren’t aware that the shady guys are spawned at the beginning of the game, and the Lucrative Opportunity mission only exists on a data leak if the shady guy is present on the station. Also, when the shady guy is present, one of the four yellow data leaks will always be the Lucrative Opportunity mission. Thus...

There's apparently a bug where black markets do not spawn in Non-DLC sectors. The last game I played are subject to it. After hours of scanning of dozens of leaks there were no black markets. On any station in any ANT/ARG/HAT sectors.

This is random loot, but it’s easier to acquire than most players realize.

The fact that most players do not realize it is easy to acquire implies there's a problem. "Normal" way to acquire spacefly eggs is chasing miners. Which involve a lot of waiting and boredom. Situation is similar with Boso Ta crystals. The only reason I completed that mission is because I played the game before crystal mining nerf and new where they are supposed to be.

Which put it into a question, who even thought that this activity is fun in the first place.
That surprises me as well. The consumable costs ~150k when purchased, but the missions you use them on net you ~550k. That's a pretty clear profit,

The payout is too low and is not worth the hassle of finding the item and them finding a place to sell it. And from the mission description it is unclear whether it involves being shot at or not. Worth keeping in mind that items are illegal, and will result in you being chased by station security when they're detected. While sector police is incompetent, station security detects (right now) those items without any warning.

Basically, you have to first find the parts which either require a lot of exploration or fighting xenon, then you have to find a leak, then it has to randomly decide that this is the mission you get. Not worth it.

It is more efficient to gather money for a small trader, or miner. You might even get comparable payout faster than finding that leak.

Situation would've been different, if security slicers/etc were permanent items, but hacking was a complex minigame. Then it would be worth pursuing. Otherwise it is just looking for random stuff, hoping it'll spawn, which is luck based gacha all over again.

----

Getting back to the topic, I actually found terraforming interesting, because it requires you to shift perspective and think in factorio mode. Unfortunately, it results in stations with unplayable low framerate. And playing it feels like you're playing factorio and not x4.

[db48x]

There's apparently a bug where black markets do not spawn in Non-DLC sectors. The last game I played are subject to it. After hours of scanning of dozens of leaks there were no black markets. On any station in any ANT/ARG/HAT sectors.

Did I just reply to another message from you about the same problem?

Just in case, this has been a reported problem since the very first DLC was released but it appears that nobody has uploaded a save that demonstrates it. There is already a bug report that you can upload one to if you want to try to get it fixed. There is also a tool called shady-search which will show you exactly which sectors have black marketeers; you can use it to confirm that the bug happened in your save. There is also a mod on the Steam Workshop that simplifies the process of finding black marketeers and also happens to fix the bug when it detects it.

This is random loot, but it’s easier to acquire than most players realize.

The fact that most players do not realize it is easy to acquire implies there's a problem. "Normal" way to acquire spacefly eggs is chasing miners. Which involve a lot of waiting and boredom. Situation is similar with Boso Ta crystals. The only reason I completed that mission is because I played the game before crystal mining nerf and new where they are supposed to be.

Yea, there are great places to go when you are chasing miners. If memory serves miners tend to clump up in Saturn 2 over in Terran space. Or Family Zhin in the Split sectors. You can get plenty of goodies by hanging out there for 10 or 15 minutes. While you’re there you can do a little mining yourself and maybe discover the resource nodes. That does appear to reward exploration.

Crystals are still hard though.

Which put it into a question, who even thought that this activity is fun in the first place.
That surprises me as well. The consumable costs ~150k when purchased, but the missions you use them on net you ~550k. That's a pretty clear profit,

The payout is too low and is not worth the hassle of finding the item and them finding a place to sell it. And from the mission description it is unclear whether it involves being shot at or not. Worth keeping in mind that items are illegal, and will result in you being chased by station security when they're detected. While sector police is incompetent, station security detects (right now) those items without any warning.

Basically, you have to first find the parts which either require a lot of exploration or fighting xenon, then you have to find a leak, then it has to randomly decide that this is the mission you get. Not worth it.

It is more efficient to gather money for a small trader, or miner. You might even get comparable payout faster than finding that leak.

I guess I see a lot fewer downsides, but even then no task that earns you money should be entirely without some cost or risk associated with it. These missions can be found all over. The station security only fields XS ships that don’t shoot at you; all they do is call the sector police who may take ages to arrive. Even a new player can dock before that happens. And the cash is perfect for buying your first miner, or even two.

Situation would've been different, if security slicers/etc were permanent items, but hacking was a complex minigame. Then it would be worth pursuing. Otherwise it is just looking for random stuff, hoping it'll spawn, which is luck based gacha all over again.

Now that I simply disagree with. If it were the same minigame over and over you would complain that it was too boring and not worth doing.

[vvvvvvvv]

Did I just reply to another message from you about the same problem?

Depends on your steam username.

Just in case, this has been a reported problem since the very first DLC was released but it appears that nobody has uploaded a save that demonstrates it.

Sure, I could drop a save, probably won't change a thing, though.

Yea, there are great places to go when you are chasing miners. If memory serves miners tend to clump up in Saturn 2 over in Terran space. Or Family Zhin in the Split sectors. You can get plenty of goodies by hanging out there for 10 or 15 minutes.

I beleive it is in ballpark of 45 minutes of doing nothing useful. You have to be IS, and you'll want full satellite coverage.

I guess I see a lot fewer downsides, but even then no task that

It is not fun. This mission does not have any player agency in it, it is entirely random roll. Several of them. You maybe find a thing, maybe find a mission, maybe it'll be right one where the thing is useful. "Are you a lucky one?" kind of thing.

It is not interesting.

Payoff is not good enough to bother with "not interesting" mission. For "first miner" money I'd pick something else, beside you'd probably want more than 500k.

Now that I simply disagree with. If it were the same minigame over and over you would complain that it was too boring and not worth doing.

Could be made skippable after you've solved it bunch of times, but in current situation there's not a whole lot of player input in the situation. It is just random luck roll. In case of minigame you'd need to do at least something. The thing is, I've never done this mission in its current form, and I have no desire to ever do it. With a minigame I'd at least try it a few times.

[db48x]

Did I just reply to another message from you about the same problem?

Depends on your steam username.

That sounds like a yes to me!

Just in case, this has been a reported problem since the very first DLC was released but it appears that nobody has uploaded a save that demonstrates it.

Sure, I could drop a save, probably won't change a thing, though.

Thank you! I really appreciate you doing that, because now surely they have no excuse.

[alexthespaniard]

Build an economic and military empire and destroy enemy factions and the Xenon.
About self mining I think it needs to add depth in that aspect. I think if they do mini activities, variety of minerals... it could be very interesting. Like Recycling, I think there is a niche. As I have expressed on more than one occasion, take advantage of the fact that the world is alive to do military missions in real time.

Defend a Xenon horde from an ally, Attack a specific station or fleet... dynamic missions.

[Nanook]

To some extent, I enjoy all the activities listed in the poll, some more than others. So I voted 'other'.

My least favorite activity is listening to those irritating station announcements over and over and ..... over again. I wish there was a way to toggle them off. In my over 10,000 hours of X4, I've probably heard them each thousands of times. And they're especially jarring when you hear a human announcer on every single station, no matter the race. So I have to mute the sound every time one comes on, and they come on way too frequently.