For the future, can we please not lock important features behind plots?

[Axeface]

I am currently playing a new Spear of the Patriarch game for 7.50 beta to test, and something that became immediately evident to me was how destructive it is for me to have core game features locked behind the HQ plot. I want to really get into the head of my character to form my aims and goals for this save, as I always do, so it is strange to put it lightly, as a split zealot, to feel forced to do Boso's bidding in order to unlock teleportation and even ship modding. These 2 features alone are albeit essential to play the game effectively at all.

For future games (although this getting fixed for X4 in a future patch would be VERY welcomed), could you please give us other options to unlock core game features outside of things like the HQ? I want to be able to experience the sandbox as characters other than world changing megalomaniacs. Perhaps I want to play, well, a spear of the patriarch? Or an argon fighter pilot? Or a teladi trader? All of these become something else when we are forced to do the HQ plot for core features.


Lastly, I wrote this post in a far more eloquent way but when I clicked Submit I was greeted with the login screen... lost 30 minutes of typing. This isnt the first time its happened, so I thought ide mention it.

[LameFox]

Yeah, I have never liked this. IIRC it's their way to provide options because they don't like having actual settings or something, but surely that can be done without locking the player into a specific implied personality in a sandbox game. I mean, you have a whole DLC faction now where that is pushed on players to enable it in the game. We have sandbox gameplay with important mechanics stuck behind an on-rails RPG.

[Socratatus]

I am currently playing a new Spear of the Patriarch game for 7.50 beta to test, and something that became immediately evident to me was how destructive it is for me to have core game features locked behind the HQ plot. I want to really get into the head of my character to form my aims and goals for this save, as I always do, so it is strange to put it lightly, as a split zealot, to feel forced to do Boso's bidding in order to unlock teleportation and even ship modding. These 2 features alone are albeit essential to play the game effectively at all.

For future games (although this getting fixed for X4 in a future patch would be VERY welcomed), could you please give us other options to unlock core game features outside of things like the HQ? I want to be able to experience the sandbox as characters other than world changing megalomaniacs. Perhaps I want to play, well, a spear of the patriarch? Or an argon fighter pilot? Or a teladi trader? All of these become something else when we are forced to do the HQ plot for core features.


Lastly, I wrote this post in a far more eloquent way but when I clicked Submit I was greeted with the login screen... lost 30 minutes of typing. This isnt the first time its happened, so I thought ide mention it.

i think this is a very good point. I also like to just go out there and make my own way, and it is irksome that some things you can't progress on if you don't follow a linear HQ Bosa Ta direction. Although that said, I don't use Teleportation at all, but there are other useful things I like (ship modding as you say) you'll be locked out of if you don't use the HQ.

[GCU Grey Area]

I am currently playing a new Spear of the Patriarch game for 7.50 beta to test, and something that became immediately evident to me was how destructive it is for me to have core game features locked behind the HQ plot. I want to really get into the head of my character to form my aims and goals for this save, as I always do, so it is strange to put it lightly, as a split zealot, to feel forced to do Boso's bidding in order to unlock teleportation and even ship modding.

During my Split games Boso was considered very much my slave (potential sushi if he was insufficiently prompt about researching my ship mods etc). He may not have realised this, or the true nature of his captivity, however as an ignorant, compliant slave he was quite productive. Didn't mind fetching the research materials. Certainly had no intention of letting my slave out of his tank to fetch them himself - another Split might steal him.

In general terms I'm fine with having to do stuff to unlock these features & don't think they should all just be there right from the start. Also happy that they didn't waste dev time & resources by having different dialogue for every single start. Latter would obviously have been nice (e.g. threatening if playing as a Split, preachy if a Paranid, resorting to bribes as a Teladi, etc) however there are far more important things for that dev time to be spent on.

Lastly, I wrote this post in a far more eloquent way but when I clicked Submit I was greeted with the login screen... lost 30 minutes of typing. This isnt the first time its happened, so I thought ide mention it.

Happens to me all the time too. I often like to consider my words at great length, changing them, adjusting grammar & punctuation several times over, before clicking on Submit. If/when that happens again try clicking on the back arrow in your browser, to return to the page with your text. Copy & paste it into e.g. Notepad. Then login again & copy/paste it back. Periodically clicking on Preview can also reset the timer (as long as I remember to do that).

[LameFox]

In general terms I'm fine with having to do stuff to unlock these features & don't think they should all just be there right from the start. Also happy that they didn't waste dev time & resources by having different dialogue for every single start. Latter would obviously have been nice (e.g. threatening if playing as a Split, preachy if a Paranid, resorting to bribes as a Teladi, etc) however there are far more important things for that dev time to be spent on.

They wouldn't need to go that far. Research as a mechanic is fine. It doesn't need to be tied to a particular story character to exist, though. Story missions themselves also don't need to account for every character—that only becomes a problem when they're used to gate things like research, ship upgrades, whether or not an entire faction is present in the game, etc.

[GCU Grey Area]

They wouldn't need to go that far. Research as a mechanic is fine. It doesn't need to be tied to a particular story character to exist, though. Story missions themselves also don't need to account for every character—that only becomes a problem when they're used to gate things like research, ship upgrades, whether or not an entire faction is present in the game, etc.

Obviously doesn't need to be tied to a particular character, however I am glad that they did. Tend to treat X4 more as an RPG than anything else & for that NPCs to interact with are pretty much essential. Boiling it all down to just a research screen without an excitable Boron scientist to interact with, would have been less satisfying, for me at least.

[Poacher886]

This is one of my Major gripes. I have never been able to mod ships ever, because i do not want a stupid HQ. And now it seem ill never be able to use diplomacy when it arrives aswell,'
Terrible design, to force you down a path in whats meant to be a sandbox game.

[Tharrg]

I don't mind the current setup. However, I can see it might be an idea to be able to set up plot-free sandbox games with pot rewards togglable on in the game startup manager.

[Raptor34]

I don't mind the current setup. However, I can see it might be an idea to be able to set up plot-free sandbox games with pot rewards togglable on in the game startup manager.

To a certain extent we already have that. It's called creative customs.
But scary modified tag. Nevermind that it's essentially irrelevant.

[Duncaroos]

I can't recall, but doesn't the budget game start allow this? Just activate the Bosa/HQ plot (heck, you can even enable all the research options before starting).

Is the issue that you can't select the "spear of the patriarch" start from the custom start?

[LameFox]

Sort of but not really. Using a custom start lets you skip things, but it can't decouple progress from plots and plot characters, it just puts you on the far side of both.

Realistically I doubt this is a thing they can undo in this game—not unless they're willing to invent parallel systems for things like PHQ acquisition and research in something like a story-free gamestart (probably not). But for future games I would definitely prefer to have the storylines exist separately from mechanics like teleportation and accessing ship upgrades, so that when I encounter the story content I can engage with it in a way that feels natural for how I'm playing, rather than doing it because I know there are very basic gameplay things I want that are gated by this story.

[Raptor34]

Sort of but not really. Using a custom start lets you skip things, but it can't decouple progress from plots and plot characters, it just puts you on the far side of both.

Realistically I doubt this is a thing they can undo in this game—not unless they're willing to invent parallel systems for things like PHQ acquisition and research in something like a story-free gamestart (probably not). But for future games I would definitely prefer to have the storylines exist separately from mechanics like teleportation and accessing ship upgrades, so that when I encounter the story content I can engage with it in a way that feels natural for how I'm playing, rather than doing it because I know there are very basic gameplay things I want that are gated by this story.

I also realistically doubt they can do it, because anyway it's done would just be putting you on the far side. While I guess things like ship upgrades can just be thrown to the factions, just make it a simple menu, you don't really need anything much to tinker with your ships lore wise, stuff like research would require you to have a storyline of how you access it. Like the hub and PHQ back in X3.
And before you say getting it from someone else or whatever, anyway it's done would either be duplicating efforts, or people would complain anyway.

[LameFox]

Sort of but not really. Using a custom start lets you skip things, but it can't decouple progress from plots and plot characters, it just puts you on the far side of both.

Realistically I doubt this is a thing they can undo in this game—not unless they're willing to invent parallel systems for things like PHQ acquisition and research in something like a story-free gamestart (probably not). But for future games I would definitely prefer to have the storylines exist separately from mechanics like teleportation and accessing ship upgrades, so that when I encounter the story content I can engage with it in a way that feels natural for how I'm playing, rather than doing it because I know there are very basic gameplay things I want that are gated by this story.

I also realistically doubt they can do it, because anyway it's done would just be putting you on the far side. While I guess things like ship upgrades can just be thrown to the factions, just make it a simple menu, you don't really need anything much to tinker with your ships lore wise, stuff like research would require you to have a storyline of how you access it. Like the hub and PHQ back in X3.
And before you say getting it from someone else or whatever, anyway it's done would either be duplicating efforts, or people would complain anyway.

A storyline is definitely not required to explain research, games manage to have that as a fundamental mechanic all the time. The funny thing is, most of the stories to get stuff like the PHQ/research are ridiculously shallow now. I strongly suspect it's precisely because they chose to use them as a barrier to fundamental mechanics, and now they don't want to create a barrier to players having those mechanics, so you just get a PHQ dropped on your head.

[Raptor34]

Sort of but not really. Using a custom start lets you skip things, but it can't decouple progress from plots and plot characters, it just puts you on the far side of both.

Realistically I doubt this is a thing they can undo in this game—not unless they're willing to invent parallel systems for things like PHQ acquisition and research in something like a story-free gamestart (probably not). But for future games I would definitely prefer to have the storylines exist separately from mechanics like teleportation and accessing ship upgrades, so that when I encounter the story content I can engage with it in a way that feels natural for how I'm playing, rather than doing it because I know there are very basic gameplay things I want that are gated by this story.

I also realistically doubt they can do it, because anyway it's done would just be putting you on the far side. While I guess things like ship upgrades can just be thrown to the factions, just make it a simple menu, you don't really need anything much to tinker with your ships lore wise, stuff like research would require you to have a storyline of how you access it. Like the hub and PHQ back in X3.
And before you say getting it from someone else or whatever, anyway it's done would either be duplicating efforts, or people would complain anyway.

A storyline is definitely not required to explain research, games manage to have that as a fundamental mechanic all the time. The funny thing is, most of the stories to get stuff like the PHQ/research are ridiculously shallow now. I strongly suspect it's precisely because they chose to use them as a barrier to fundamental mechanics, and now they don't want to create a barrier to players having those mechanics, so you just get a PHQ dropped on your head.

Most other games also have simpler research. And research isn't actually fundamental to X4 btw. The only big one is the tenacity mod to deal with hazardous regions, everything else is basically just win more.
And teleportation QoL I guess, but even that isn't something I consider fundamental.

Also they made getting the PHQ easier because it blocks a lot of plots, the very thing you don't want.

[LameFox]

Most other games also have simpler research. And research isn't actually fundamental to X4 btw. The only big one is the tenacity mod to deal with hazardous regions, everything else is basically just win more.
And teleportation QoL I guess, but even that isn't something I consider fundamental.

I mean they mostly require only one specialized resource so I guess in that sense they are "simpler", but in terms of actual content to research I don't think so, there's very little of it here and even games that don't lean heavily on it frequently have a more complex set of things to research.

As far as the definition of 'fundamental' goes, nothing is really 'fundamental' if you take that to mean things that are strictly needed to play the game. You could play without the PHQ, sure, you could even play without ever hiring any crew or building any stations. You could spend all your time hitchhiking around the gate network without owning a ship, if you felt like it. However you quickly find that no single thing to do in this game is very deep, so I'd rather not be in a position where there's incentive not to unlock them.

Also, you still need the PHQ to actually access most other storylines, which I'd argue are a fundamental part of how they expect the game to be played. The thing is like a physical manifestation of your quest journal. If you start doing any other story it almost always puts you on hold at some point until you have the PHQ, and I think for that reason the actual effort of getting a PHQ had to be low and has gotten even lower over time.

[Raptor34]

Most other games also have simpler research. And research isn't actually fundamental to X4 btw. The only big one is the tenacity mod to deal with hazardous regions, everything else is basically just win more.
And teleportation QoL I guess, but even that isn't something I consider fundamental.

I mean they mostly require only one specialized resource so I guess in that sense they are "simpler", but in terms of actual content to research I don't think so, there's very little of it here and even games that don't lean heavily on it frequently have a more complex set of things to research.

As far as the definition of 'fundamental' goes, nothing is really 'fundamental' if you take that to mean things that are strictly needed to play the game. You could play without the PHQ, sure, you could even play without ever hiring any crew or building any stations. You could spend all your time hitchhiking around the gate network without owning a ship, if you felt like it. However you quickly find that no single thing to do in this game is very deep, so I'd rather not be in a position where there's incentive not to unlock them.

Also, you still need the PHQ to actually access most other storylines, which I'd argue are a fundamental part of how they expect the game to be played. The thing is like a physical manifestation of your quest journal. If you start doing any other story it almost always puts you on hold at some point until you have the PHQ, and I think for that reason the actual effort of getting a PHQ had to be low and has gotten even lower over time.

I mean they are not fundamental in the sense that they don't really lock you out of anything. I guess it locks you out of stealing blueprints. But there are also alternate ways to acquire those. Teleportation? Take a ship. It practically speaking doesn't lock you out of anything in the game. And it's funny you talk about depth when teleportation makes it shallower too. Needing to ensure your taxi is available and that there is an appropriate place to land at the destination is depth. I'll always remember that time I took an M around and then they suddenly wanted me to land on a Phoenix. Like ffs.
As for plots I disagree that they are fundamental, otherwise this whole complaint about needing plot to unlock the PHQ starts feeling disingenuous. Personally I've avoided them for a long time and didn't see a big issue. Even after completing them some of them frankly feels like it just made things worse. I'll give you the nice ships you can pickup though, and agree that locking those behind sucks. Though I think only the Astrid is the big one, the ships with cover, well, we'll need to see how they are, but I don't see anything they can do that a fast scout can't, not anything else unique too like models or whatever. And of course I guess the X shuttle and Dart from Timelines.
The issue here I think is not PHQ blocking plots per se, but writing the plots so it requires the PHQ. Dal Busta doesn't have to be there after all. It'll probably be cooler too to give him his own special station with a command center, his own crew and all that. And even then, you can also decouple some of those other plots from him. Like okay, the Split and Paranid ones are more political so he's our political analyst. But there is no reason the Boron plot needs him. Does it actually need him? All I know is he yaps a lot.

[LameFox]

I mean they are not fundamental in the sense that they don't really lock you out of anything. I guess it locks you out of stealing blueprints. But there are also alternate ways to acquire those. Teleportation? Take a ship. It practically speaking doesn't lock you out of anything in the game. And it's funny you talk about depth when teleportation makes it shallower too. Needing to ensure your taxi is available and that there is an appropriate place to land at the destination is depth. I'll always remember that time I took an M around and then they suddenly wanted me to land on a Phoenix. Like ffs.
As for plots I disagree that they are fundamental, otherwise this whole complaint about needing plot to unlock the PHQ starts feeling disingenuous. Personally I've avoided them for a long time and didn't see a big issue. Even after completing them some of them frankly feels like it just made things worse. I'll give you the nice ships you can pickup though, and agree that locking those behind sucks. Though I think only the Astrid is the big one, the ships with cover, well, we'll need to see how they are, but I don't see anything they can do that a fast scout can't, not anything else unique too like models or whatever. And of course I guess the X shuttle and Dart from Timelines.
The issue here I think is not PHQ blocking plots per se, but writing the plots so it requires the PHQ. Dal Busta doesn't have to be there after all. It'll probably be cooler too to give him his own special station with a command center, his own crew and all that. And even then, you can also decouple some of those other plots from him. Like okay, the Split and Paranid ones are more political so he's our political analyst. But there is no reason the Boron plot needs him. Does it actually need him? All I know is he yaps a lot.

The same issue with mechanics does also apply to other storylines though. You may be playing a character who would not be Boso's assistant, or put up with him at all, but maybe you *would* work with Dal to worsen the Paranid civil war or something. But you need one to access the other. tbh I'm not really sure what difference you see between the PHQ blocking plots and plots being written to require the PHQ. Aren't those essentially the same thing...?

So I think my ideal scenario would have you meeting and interacting with the character who makes sense for the current story/choice, and they're somewhere out in the world, so you don't need the characters for the paths you wouldn't take on this run. Basically how most open world games handle quests, I guess. And the PHQ and research just being their own thing.

[Raptor34]

I mean they are not fundamental in the sense that they don't really lock you out of anything. I guess it locks you out of stealing blueprints. But there are also alternate ways to acquire those. Teleportation? Take a ship. It practically speaking doesn't lock you out of anything in the game. And it's funny you talk about depth when teleportation makes it shallower too. Needing to ensure your taxi is available and that there is an appropriate place to land at the destination is depth. I'll always remember that time I took an M around and then they suddenly wanted me to land on a Phoenix. Like ffs.
As for plots I disagree that they are fundamental, otherwise this whole complaint about needing plot to unlock the PHQ starts feeling disingenuous. Personally I've avoided them for a long time and didn't see a big issue. Even after completing them some of them frankly feels like it just made things worse. I'll give you the nice ships you can pickup though, and agree that locking those behind sucks. Though I think only the Astrid is the big one, the ships with cover, well, we'll need to see how they are, but I don't see anything they can do that a fast scout can't, not anything else unique too like models or whatever. And of course I guess the X shuttle and Dart from Timelines.
The issue here I think is not PHQ blocking plots per se, but writing the plots so it requires the PHQ. Dal Busta doesn't have to be there after all. It'll probably be cooler too to give him his own special station with a command center, his own crew and all that. And even then, you can also decouple some of those other plots from him. Like okay, the Split and Paranid ones are more political so he's our political analyst. But there is no reason the Boron plot needs him. Does it actually need him? All I know is he yaps a lot.

The same issue with mechanics does also apply to other storylines though. You may be playing a character who would not be Boso's assistant, or put up with him at all, but maybe you *would* work with Dal to worsen the Paranid civil war or something. But you need one to access the other. tbh I'm not really sure what difference you see between the PHQ blocking plots and plots being written to require the PHQ. Aren't those essentially the same thing...?

So I think my ideal scenario would have you meeting and interacting with the character who makes sense for the current story/choice, and they're somewhere out in the world, so you don't need the characters for the paths you wouldn't take on this run. Basically how most open world games handle quests, I guess. And the PHQ and research just being their own thing.

Well, that probably made more sense in my head tbf. But to be specific, it's basically what you said in this post, Egosoft wrote the stories in such a way that they all require Dal Busta, and Dal Busta is always on the PHQ. And as you noted they made it easier to get the PHQ because they did kinda wrote themselves into a hole. Timelines end game also required the PHQ, but there at least the way it's written requires it, in the sense of who originally owned the asteroid, not so much the other stories as again you've noted, we don't need Dal Busta, or to be precise, Dal Busta doesn't need to be on the PHQ. I suggested earlier just moving him to his own station somewhere away. It'll also make more sense than him just constantly standing around Boso lol.

I would also decouple the plots from the PHQ, though I'll keep the sciency things connected to it, where it makes sense. The political plots if they want Dal to be the central figure, that's okay, but I'll put him somewhere else. And maybe since we already have politics and science, maybe add on a trade/economy character too for future plots. But depending on what the things are like, also let them contact you directly too.
So I guess I envision it like this, to start the plots you can either have made a name for yourself with certain requirements, then you will be contacted directly by the lets call it, plot faction. Or you can have the hub character, which is like Dal and Boso in this case introduce you to the plot, basically rather than you being famous for your achievements, they give you a letter of recommendation.

Otoh, though, having played through the plots, I don't really feel like they are that critical anyway. Split one literally just **** up my universe for no gain. Paranid one is more interesting, and going TEM gives you buyable Prometheus blueprints. ToA gives Astrid so that's cool. Terran one gives you... nothing I guess. And if you go status quo for the later Secret Service plot that also gives you nothing. But well, that's the way I like it, I think plots should be for giving you a story and stuff to use your empire on, and maybe cool paintjobs, but I've always hated that they locked the Astrid behind that plot, not with how I need to go build a fleet to deal with that shit. And suffer attacks in the meantime. And there is the Hydra Regal I guess, but lack of cool interiors means that despite always wanting it, after getting it I basically modded it and threw it into the garage... While the Astrid I at least use it as somewhere nice to hang out in.

[azaghal]

What if the HQ was instead a station module that player can build to gain the research capability etc?

What if there were NPCs for hire in each faction that would effectively provide the player with what Boso and Dal Busta do? They could be either gated behind credits (I don't think this would be such a good thing - I personally really hated most of the big plot's "give me millions of credits" plots), or maybe a couple of missions (even alternative missions to cover different play-styles - fighting vs trading etc).

Some of the "mundane" features (like ship mods) could be also turned into purchasable or discoverable blueprints of their own - although a tickbox outside of custom start would be nice as well. The first time I was playing to unlock the ship mods was kinda fun (since everything feels new), but on subsequent runs it felt like a plain chore.

Best regards,
Branko

[Axeface]

Regarding custom gamestart it doesnt solve the issue because you still need to have the HQ to pick the options. Having to own the HQ to set plot world states is especially egregious because thats the most interesting part of custom game, the idea of playing as a TRI fighter pilot against literally everyone would be awesome, but makes little sense as we are forced to have the HQ and cant destroy it.
I understand of course why its all set up this way, I just ask that in future it doesnt get designed from the ground up like this.

And as someone else said, ship modding and blueprint stealing could not be tied to the HQ at all. Teleportation makes no sense to have without the HQ, which is why it would be great if an alternative was available for that too.

PS Vaguely related as we are talking about freedom in the sandbox, more custom gamestart options like 'shuffle freebies' and 'no player shipyards' would be awesome.