Diplomacy related. Do players want something like the Washington Naval Treaty?

[vvvvvvvv]

If the player choses to react to the reduction they just need to make their empire more efficient (sell military ships for example).

Here's how it can work out in practie:

The player can simply max out reputation to the point where debuff won't matter.
If debuff is uncapped, then all factions will inevitably commit suicide by player and the player will inevitably kill everybody. A death spiral, and a fairly boring one.

The issue here is that X4 is not a turn based game. In turn based games, AI has a chance against humans, because human is controlling a restricted pawn which is very limited in what it can do. But in x4 the player pilots ships directly and it is the best pilot in the galaxy. The player is superior to the NPCs, is capable of ending the world with one powerful ship, and this is not something that can be addressed with debuffs. As such it is reasonable to expect that all attempts to make field level between player and NPCs will fail, and the player will always win.

With that in mind it can be reasonable to focus on sandbox experience instead of trying to replicate total war. Make a reactive world, and let the player wreck it. Which is where diplomacy update is going, in my opinion.

[flywlyx]

An "issue" is that player is not a state, not a faction proper. Neither is player a member of any faction.
I have not seen the beta, but I doubt that that would change.

Not really—players are given god-like power to manipulate relationships between factions, yet they’re still treated like nobodies.

[Axeface]

The player can simply max out reputation to the point where debuff won't matter.

No this would not be the case, there would be a limited amount of deals you can strike, it would be a balancing act.

If debuff is uncapped, then all factions will inevitably commit suicide by player and the player will inevitably kill everybody. A death spiral, and a fairly boring one.

The point is we would be given a reason to make our empires efficient (currently it is performance, with all the immersion breaking impact that has) and a reason to enter into war with the factions other than the xenon. SO few players go to war with the factions because it is immensely inconvenient, they only do it for roleplay reasons. There needs to be a reason imo. The point of my idea for this is to give a reason for both of these things while stacking the odds against them. Can the player 'just build' and make the factions 'death spiral' into us, yes, but we can currently do that by building a couple of defense stations at critical points that the AI literally cannot EVER destroy and then click the declare war button... With the mechanics I'm talking about those defence stations would have a large diplomatic impact and would see more resistance.

Look. Player power cannot be overcome (maybe soon), the point is to make an experience that makes sense. Me having 20 asgards that I stole from the terrans in terran space that they take no issue with is a huge problem. With the mechanics i'm talking about I could set the game to very hard, and the terrans, and everyone else, would take serious issue with some corporation having 20 asgards... and those that want to just play at 4 fps and paint the map green with a fleet of 400 of them can just turn the feature off and go about their business.

But I would like to point out that difficulty options are very popular, people playing 'challenge' runs or 'ironman' and other such things in games with difficulty set high is a common theme in gaming. X just doesnt have this, at all. Please egosoft can you do something.

[flywlyx]

Look. Player power cannot be overcome (maybe soon), the point is to make an experience that makes sense. Me having 20 asgards that I stole from the terrans in terran space that they take no issue with is a huge problem. With the mechanics i'm talking about I could set the game to very hard, and the terrans, and everyone else, would take serious issue with some corporation having 20 asgards... and those that want to just play at 4 fps and paint the map green with a fleet of 400 of them can just turn the feature off and go about their business.

But I would like to point out that difficulty options are very popular, people playing 'challenge' runs or 'ironman' and other such things in games with difficulty set high is a common theme in gaming. X just doesnt have this, at all. Please egosoft can you do something.

What X4 fundamentally lacks is a system where NPCs actively pursue and pressure the player, creating real struggle.
If that’s what you're hoping for, Egosoft has already tried something along those lines with the endgame crisis—which, as we’ve seen, didn’t work particularly well.

[LameFox]

tbh it doesn't sound like it would affect my playstyle at all, which is essentially to set up industry in a small defensible location, buy up all blueprints, then build production chains and fight everybody. It's as if it's designed to make people play like that.

[vvvvvvvv]

No this would not be the case, there would be a limited amount of deals you can strike, it would be a balancing act.

Rep goes up to +30. Are you proposing -60 debuffs?

The point is we would be given a reason to make our empires efficient (currently it is performance, with all the immersion breaking impact that has) and a reason to enter into war with the factions other than the xenon.

I'm not seeing it this way. Instead my impression is that this will railroad the game into all out war with everybody vs me, a war which I'll inevitably win. That kills the fun.

the point is to make an experience that makes sense.

A universe that is primed to inevitably attack me and die does not make much sense.

Also, in my opinion the solution you propose seems to be unrelated to the problem you describe.

The problem you describe is that terrans do not react to stolen asgards. But "factions should attack the player if he/she gets too strong" has nothing to do with this. It is also possible to play the game without ever stealing a single ship. Unlock through reputation, build your own asgards. Then apparently the faction that sold me blueprints would declare "You've built too many! Now you die!". What exactly did they think I'll be doing with blueprints?

runs or 'ironman' and other such things in games with difficulty set high is a common theme in gaming.

The issue here is that once you know how to play, it doesn't matter if it is ironman or challenge run, because you will inevitably win. Consider this: When was t he last time AI managed to kill your avatar? Not blow up a ship, but trigger gameover screen?

[jlehtone]

few players go to war with the factions because it is immensely inconvenient, they only do it for roleplay reasons. There needs to be a reason imo.

Sandbox is all about roleplay, isn't it?

We can wipe factions whenever we want (which can be never). When we want to play that role. We invent reasons, not the game. If we decide that we follow a "Naval Treaty" limit, then we enforce it ourselves (if we can). It is easy when game forces you and less so if we have to force ourselves. We don't want easy, do we?

Most players do prepare before they go to war. You, however want to be forced to go to war when you don't (yet) want to. That is radically different from our familiar sandbox.

The "Crisis" in its beta state was (barely) opt-out, wasn't it? That got feedback and official release has it as opt-in. How can that be? Surely unavoidable rain of fire on you is pure bliss? Perhaps such things are better left for other games ...


I've heard that the X3FL has "dynamic" relationships. That being nice to HOP automatically drops your reputation among enemies of HOP. Such dynamic would be an another way to make the factions "react" to player. However, I've also seen many consider that "terrible".

[spankahontis]

AFAIK, each faction does have "personality". That does not require a leader individual. What a leader would add would be possibility to change the leader. How is that different from the "diplomatic events"?

Well, like the Split for example, we expect them to be constantly agitating their non-split neighbours as their warrior code makes them always going Klingon on people.
But then it wouldn't be a good thing if everyone flying into Split Space to trade gets attacked by Split like they were Xenon. I mean we already have the Fallen Families that sort of react that way to anyone in and out of Split space.
But the Split Patriarchy you would expect to be proper fighting wars for territorial expansion rather than just cowardly raids, be beneath them to act like that.
Put would be interesting for the Zyarth Patriarchy to be constantly in a flux of war and temporary ceasefire with the Argon and Teladi Company, or any faction unfortunate to share a border with them.
Guess you couldn't have a change of leadership that would change that behaviour unless there was a Diplomacy feature that could assassinate a leader and the replacement was either more aggressive or more peaceful/isolationist.

[jlehtone]

Guess you couldn't have a change of leadership that would change that behaviour unless there was a Diplomacy feature that could assassinate a leader and the replacement was either more aggressive or more peaceful/isolationist.

Fluff. GalNet BBS used to have "News items". See them N times and you start to ignore them. The missions have "descriptions". See them N times and you start to ignore them.

"Split now more/less aggressive" is the meat. "... because assassination, golf tournament, Dragon Incident, Boso was bored" is mere fluff.

[Aegir86]

Yeeup not surprised by that poll outcome. People like their cozy sandboxes around here. Thats fine, but for those who choose to continue playing with what the game offers will find a drop off in game design once they hit faction level power.

Starsector has a very interesting solution in the form of colony crisis. Depending on what you are doing in the universe - a faction will notice and take action. So, if you begin to take a majority market share of a resource you get a trade blockade from your competitors. If you start to *illegally* employ the use of AI to run your factories, ships, and colonies you will begin to get inspections on your planets and inevitably military repercussion from "peace keepers" once you are found out. You can solve these in a variety of ways: Bribery, diplomacy, fight, or hell you can sneak a ship to their home system and drop a planet destroyer bomb on their heads.

Once you get to a certain size, everyone in power takes notice and reacts before its too late. That not only makes TOTAL SENSE, but it gives the player something to pool their hard earned resources together to navigate out of. It also delivers player agency in a very effective way.

I'm not saying that X4 needs to be awesome like starsector, but it really does need to be addressed.

Endgame crisis was an absolutely limp wrist solution and everyone knows it. 8.0 doesn't touch this stuff either.

I do like OP's proposal tho. More interesting than ship upkeep.

[vvvvvvvv]

Yeeup not surprised by that poll outcome. People like their cozy sandboxes around here. Thats fine, but

That sounded like an attempt to somewhat demean those who didn't like the idea.

X4 is not a map painter game. As mentioned before, "everyone takes notice" is simply not interesting, because that'll be railroading galaxy to die which is incredibly boring.

[Aegir86]

That sounded like an attempt to somewhat demean those who didn't like the idea.

Not my intention just an acknowledgment. It is a true and somewhat frustrating tendency that Egosoft caters to all the time though.

X4 is not a map painter game. As mentioned before, "everyone takes notice" is simply not interesting, because that'll be railroading galaxy to die which is incredibly boring.

Thats interesting because its basically a game centered around... galactic war? but ok.

Either way not true. Its again - a reaction to the players growth in power. It doesn't have to be a linear toilet swirl into war. If designed thoughtfully will lead to choices that the player will need to make that could provide interesting divergences in gameplay.

A player could... Give into political pressure and join one of the whales of the universe. Stay under the protective cover of a larger union. Pay into a mandatory contribution maybe in the form of resources or ship production and in return you get protection and trade benefits. Basically vassalage. Be argon/boron bros. Be the split's bitch. Teladi coffee intern. Pretty much still status quo X4. Oh no you have overhead now? How will you ever do that with your infinite money printing empire you know you will inevitably have. Now you have some challenge that scales with your economic growth. Feel free to break away at your leisure. If you're ready.

A player could... Flip the game board and declare their own faction. This leaves you out to hang in the wind with every aggressive militaristic race out to get you. IF you persevere and you continue to grow in power the other races exhaust themselves and begin to back off. The threat is still there, but now you have choices in how to proceed: Conquer. Unite. Destroy. Welcome to the top of the layercake. Still essentially well within the confines of vanilla X4 but now with a compelling end game cris- i mean a barrier to entry to that seat of power.

Or you could just stay scaled down enough that nobody bothers you, and you can continue to do whatever you please. Be a pirate. Be a merc. Be a trader. etc. Also just like vanilla X4. Entirely vanilla X4.

Now we have:

*Elevated player agency.
*A difficulty curve that doesn't drop off the deep end the minute you make your first destroyer.
*Something to do end game that doesn't involve Egosoft mini games or grinding out extreme amounts of resources for terraforming.

It doesn't have to be that verbose or nuanced either. Just give us a rudimentary form of this. An interesting way to engage with the universe that doesn't involve us having to pull the puppet strings to make the puppet talk. They have a diplomatic bulletin system built in already for it!

Live a little, friend. I have a feeling it won't be incredibly boring. Other sandbox games are doing it too

[vvvvvvvv]

Not my intention just an acknowledgment. It is a true and somewhat frustrating tendency that Egosoft caters to all the time though.

And that's a reasonable thing to do. If you check the previous discussion and my arguments about it, the key issue is that player is unstoppable, and no matter what you throw at the player at best it'll provide something like 30 minutes of entertainment, before player steamrolls it. Which makes it more sensible to add features that let the player make a mess in the sandbox. Because making a mess adds more gameplay time. For example, station building mechanic has much better longevity than xenon crisis.

Thats interesting because its basically a game centered around... galactic war?

Not really. It is universe in a box, while there are multiple conflicts, it certainly not centered around it. It isn't HOI.

Its again - a reaction to the players growth in power. It doesn't have to be a linear toilet swirl into war. If designed thoughtfully will lead to choices that the player will need to make that could provide interesting divergences in gameplay.

It will be swirl into a war, because the player can simply bulldoze the opposition. And in "IF designed thoughtfully", IF part is a problem. Chances are it won't be, there will be oversights which will take months to fix. Meaning the worst case scenario is most likely.

That will mean every game will inevitably reach the point where everybody declares war on you and then you win and remain alone in the galaxy. Which is boring. So you'll end up in situation similar to Xenon babysitting. Where you have to walk on eggshells just so the world does not commit suicide by trying to attack you.

The root issue is that NPCs do not really have a means to threaten the player. And that is unfixable, because player is stronger due to having higher intellect than AI scripts.

The difference between x4 and map painter, by the way, is that in map painter the player is heavily crippled by turn based mechanics. That prevents the player from obliterating armies with one unit by circle-strafing. That does not work in games with real time combat.

[Aegir86]

I think thats the inevitable game loop of any open world game where the player has a higher degree of freedom. Given enough time, the outcome is always that the player becomes unstoppable. But what can the game do to make this an interesting experience?

I don't necessarily agree that the map becomes a complete wipe. That would still be player dependent. The universe should ultimately remain in the same gridlock as it was before UNTIL the player decides to intervene.
All we are doing in this thread is examining a way to make it more challenging on the player's ascent.

Its mechanism to prevent the player from steamrolling. That is precisely why Starsector implemented colony crisis later on in development because the dev recognized the drop off in engagement - he didnt change the game into HOI he just extended the gameplay loop that was already there. Mount and blade does the same thing. Total war games do the same thing. Its a common gameplay principle that serves to improve the experience.

You can argue that its not what X4 is about, but why bother with player sectors then? If my memory serves me right theres literally narrative in the game when you claim your first sector that all eyes are on your next move. Why bother with contested territories? Hell, why bother with a huge update focused around diplomacy? It seems like the game has a very confused identity. Or maybe we just don't want to acknowledge that its a half baked design.

I think theres enough room here to maintain kosher game vision while improving the difficulty curve and player engagement.

[Raptor34]

Yeeup not surprised by that poll outcome. People like their cozy sandboxes around here. Thats fine, but for those who choose to continue playing with what the game offers will find a drop off in game design once they hit faction level power.

I'll be honest. I actually do like my cozy sandbox, then again I like playing in it rather than building 100s of ships both because performance crashing is boring and I like maintaining the status quo, living in the sim instead of winning as is. My current challenge is keeping the map colors the same as the start of the game for instance.
It's just that once again I saw someone in the beta diplomacy thread talking about... I can't remember what it is now, but it's basically something similar to limiting player power, that and the brain bug bit me so the whole reason I even made a poll instead of just putting my suggestion out there, is to see whether a significant amount of players actually want the game to be more difficult, or if it's just a vocal minority which is what I suspect whenever I see suggestions to make the game more difficult through ways like say upkeep or otherwise slowing down progression instead of making the AI, "smarter" as it were.

Related but not really, what I still want is a way to tell VIG at least, and maybe the Teladi too to disarm a little bit instead of constantly flying their ****** lag fleets all around the place. I'm doing the peacekeeping and Xenon killing, so you go smoke some spaceweed or whatever you do for fun.

[vvvvvvvv]

But what can the game do to make this an interesting experience?

As mentioned before, it can focus on activities that can last past the player's rise to power. Station building is infinite, for example.

> Its mechanism to prevent the player from steamrolling. That is precisely why Starsector implemented

It is impossible to prevent the player from steamrolling, and this game is not Starsector.

> You can argue that its not what X4 is about, but why bother with player sectors then?

Because "why not". It is possible to capture a sector and make it yours. There's not much point in that mechanically, but you can do that. IIRC people want this feature in X3, and they got it. But map painting is still not the game's central point.

> If my memory serves me right theres literally narrative in the game when you claim your first sector that all eyes

Not really. There is Heretic's End, and if you claim that, you'll get an email. This sector is in status quo meaning nobody dared to claim it. When you claim it and RELEASE it, factions begin to fight over it. IIRC currently it leads to ZYA being obliterated by borons. Nobody cares if you claim any other sector.

> Why bother with contested territories? Hell, why bother with a huge update focused around diplomacy?

For fun, of course. It is "messing with the sandbox" feature I outlined before. Diplomacy obviously extends into "postgame" where you've already reached max power. Because you can mess with the universe indefinitely. So diplomacy is a very smart move, because you can continue making a mess for a very long time.

Meanwhile something like xenon crisis will give you a few hours of gameplay at most. Same goes for the "naval treaty".

> It seems like the game has a very confused identity.

Its identity is "universe in a box". It does its role perfectly. There are many things that you can do but don't have to do. To the date there's still no other game that does the same.

---

The key problem here it is impossible to prevent player from becoming overpowered. And if you attempt to do that by adding an extra challenge, you have only two outcomes;

* Player steamrolls the challenge in about 15 minutes.
* The challenge becomes a persistent, annoying and unavoidable chore. Like babysitting xenon so t hey don't die, or playing "whack a hive" with khaak hives which never end.

Neither of those outcomes are fun. If you get lucky and a challenge becomes finite but lengthtier, the player STILL will overcome it in the end, inevitably and then it will become a solved problem that is no longer interesting. Because the player learns and keeps refining strategies, it is impossible to provide challenge that scales with player knowledge, remaining fun forever. As such there's limited incentive to pursue this angle.

The game as is, presents significant learning curve, andovercoming that curve and figuring things out is fun. But the curve is finite in length, and eventually it will end. Then what? The game should remain playable past this point. And features should be interesting past this point.

That's how I see it.

[grapedog]

It took a Pearl harbour event like the Torus Eternal getting bombed to oblivion to trigger a full-scale war.

It was heading towards war regardless because shit-bird Terrans couldn't have their cake and eat it too. The Torus was the excuse they wanted so they could play the victim card... but they had been the aggressors and had been pushing others to the edge before the Torus was bombed.

Let's not try to rewrite history here.

[jlehtone]

The root issue is that NPCs do not really have a means to threaten the player. And that is unfixable, because player is stronger due to having higher intellect than AI scripts.

That and the fact that player (may) have numeric superiority. The OP idea is an approach to slow down reaching that superiority a tiny bit.


There are games that totally focus and revolve around the player and what the player does. Was Space Invaders in that class?
Then there are games where the player is absolute nobody, insignificant, and nothing the player does has any perceivable and lasting effect. The X3s are close to that.

X4 is between those.