Introducing the X4: Envoy Pack - Stealth, Deception, and Strategy Await

[vvvvvvvv]

So is every horse armour. By your logic you are defending every one of those as well.

No, that is false.

Both Hyperion and Envoy include content I actually want. Because I want ships with interiors and they provide that. Horse armor to me provides no practical values, does not include content I want, and is significantly cheaper to make. So horse armor is a blatant cashgrab, while Hyperion/Envoy isn't. You could argue about pricing and marketing, but this is not horse armor and it aligns with my interests. An equivalent of horse armor is selling one digital chair for $10. A beautiful chair you can place in your personal office at a single position. No soundtrack, no sectors, just a chair. Only one. THAT is a horse armor DLC.

My main point here is that I am worried about the direction it is going, and trying to warn about it.

You're trying to "warn" so players do... what exactly? There isn't an alternative to x4. Even if the game died, or became paradox cashgrab, players still have nowhere else to go. It is one of the kind title.

[Nerwesta]

So because X4 has no alternatives we shouldn't discuss about what we think about the game ? Huge logic in there, on a forum no less

[vvvvvvvv]

So because X4 has no alternatives

That's a strawman.

[Agrefits]

Plus, what ppl tend to forget. The bulk of the devs work is distributed free in the means of a diplomacy update .. 7 years after release!

This I have already replied to earlier. A free update is by no means a bandaid for bad price to content ratio on the payed parts.

Then be so kind and name me a single gaming Studio that keeps on developing a 7 year old game without ingame microtransactions and whatnot and without having any other Title that creates revenue for them while doing so.

[chew-ie]

Plus, what ppl tend to forget. The bulk of the devs work is distributed free in the means of a diplomacy update .. 7 years after release!

This I have already replied to earlier. A free update is by no means a bandaid for bad price to content ratio on the payed parts.

Then be so kind and name me a single gaming Studio that keeps on developing a 7 year old game without ingame microtransactions and whatnot and without having any other Title that creates revenue for them while doing so.

Indeed. This whole argument about EgOSOfT DoInG CaShGrABs is blown out of proportion - and totally ignoring the fact that those bad actors in the industry are backed by publishers and / or multiple sources of income whereas Egosoft is focusing on _ONE_ game only. People really lost the ability to differentiate. Or never had it, for that matter.

[vvvvvvvv]

Plus, what ppl tend to forget. The bulk of the devs work is distributed free in the means of a diplomacy update .. 7 years after release!

This I have already replied to earlier. A free update is by no means a bandaid for bad price to content ratio on the payed parts.

Then be so kind and name me a single gaming Studio that keeps on developing a 7 year old game without ingame microtransactions and whatnot and without having any other Title that creates revenue for them while doing so.

Hello Games / No Man's Sky.

All updates are free, they launch time-limited events to draw attention to the game and get more sales and more new users. Events are usually tied to a major update, but not always.

[Starmeadow]

Indeed. This whole argument about EgOSOfT DoInG CaShGrABs

I thought I made it abundantly clear that I am worried about the direction this could go. I also made it clear that price to content ratio is changing for the worse in my opinion. Never once did I "flame" this pack for being a cashgrab, so I would appreciate you would realize that.

Then be so kind and name me a single gaming Studio that keeps on developing a 7 year old game without ingame microtransactions and whatnot and without having any other Title that creates revenue for them while doing so.

Please be so kind and read the past posts. Thank you.

That's a strawman.

I assure you this is not a strawman lol. Just because someone backs something up does not mean they are payed to do so. It simply made sense to them.

You're trying to "warn" so players do... what exactly?

I thought this was pretty obvious as well if you read the conversation. But let me lay it out for you nonetheless if you do not get it:


For the developers:
Please think about where you want to go in the future and the potential negative consequences. Because it is very possible those will appear.

EDIT: Again, I am *not* against different kinds of DLCs at all but what I am getting at is this:
Keep the same amount of content but lower the price.
OR: Keep the price, maybe even up it BUT add more content or depth into the packs.

The current balance is just too much money for too little in my opinion, free updates or not, they aren't a bandaid for bad deals. And if a bad balance keeps up, there will likely be more and more people that will start to dislike it.

I believe it would be fitting for them to either return to the bigger dlcs (the safer option), adjust the prices to be more fair to the actual content within the dlc (not safe perhaps, but at least it would give me a bit of a trust boost), or give another reason to belive them that this will not end up like so many other games (which seems like an incredibly risky gamble to take to me).

If any of the above things would happen I would be completely fine with how its developing. But so far I am concerned.


And for the players:
Stop blindly hyping things up and supporting stuff without thinking about the potential consequences. Criticize where it is due for the games own betterment and to avoid another repetition in the long history of painful developments. Critique is not a sin, in fact it can be incredibly helpful.



It seemed like you even agreed with me there a few posts ago.

The concerns are valid, and should be voiced so egosoft gets data to decide their further strategy.

I'm happy about the new ship, or at least about what I imagine it will be, because I always want interiors. However, when I bought hyperion, while the ship was cool, what I got felt a BIT lacking. And that is something absolutely worth pondering. We'll see how it goes with this ship.

"But it is to support the game" is fundamentally not a good argument. Because there are examples where this has gone badly. Those being Space Engineers, Elite Dangerous, or Paradox tiles. So it would be best to let people speak concerns out. As I said - to let Egosoft gather data and make decisions.

[vvvvvvvv]

I thought this was pretty obvious as well if you read the conversation.

People aren't mind readers. If you want to be understood kindly spell out your position explicitly.

It seemed like you even agreed with me

Voicing concerns is valid but "trying to warn" and lecturing comes across as somewhat condescending. And in this case as I said, if you're trying to "warn" makes sense to add what exactly do you propose. Because there isn't an alternative to X4, and the worst possible negative consequence is studio closing down. Which is something both players and developers, I believe, would like to avoid.

I also pointed out before:
* TImelines is not "small". It is comparable in scope to at least avarice.
* Envoy pack is not horse armor because it represent feature I actively want which can be costly to implement.

[Buzz2005]

This I have already replied to earlier. A free update is by no means a bandaid for bad price to content ratio on the payed parts.

Then be so kind and name me a single gaming Studio that keeps on developing a 7 year old game without ingame microtransactions and whatnot and without having any other Title that creates revenue for them while doing so.

Hello Games / No Man's Sky.

All updates are free, they launch time-limited events to draw attention to the game and get more sales and more new users. Events are usually tied to a major update, but not always.

no mans sky sold so well at release that they had money for years of free updates, now they just keep updating that always brings new players, yet it's not infinite so they are making a new game now and with those updates they are developing their own engine at the same time

even though replayability is not even close to x4 i love nms and hello games, Sean has show to be fair guy, he did blatantly lie at release but it was almost all huge pressure from publisher, its funny now how if he didn't there would be no nms that is today

difference here is that huge amount of credits at release vs x4 sales

ego needs funds

[chew-ie]

Then be so kind and name me a single gaming Studio that keeps on developing a 7 year old game without ingame microtransactions and whatnot and without having any other Title that creates revenue for them while doing so.

Hello Games / No Man's Sky.

All updates are free, they launch time-limited events to draw attention to the game and get more sales and more new users. Events are usually tied to a major update, but not always.

no mans sky sold so well at release that they had money for years of free updates, now they just keep updating that always brings new players, yet it's not infinite so they are making a new game now and with those updates they are developing their own engine at the same time

even though replayability is not even close to x4 i love nms and hello games, Sean has show to be fair guy, he did blatantly lie at release but it was almost all huge pressure from publisher, its funny now how if he didn't there would be no nms that is today

difference here is that huge amount of credits at release vs x4 sales

ego needs funds

Agreed. But sadly it seems that not all see it that way - and even selling two small DLCs or one big DLC per year to generate some income is asking "too much" for some. It's borderline ridiculous at times, even more so when considering the small niche X4 is selling in compared to the huge sales numbers of NMS. But people only see "NMS does this for free, so every game needs to do the same" while ignoring the economic background.

[vvvvvvvv]

This is an opinion.

no mans sky sold so well at release that

No man's sky was a disaster at the release time, and it took several years to fix the reputation. Also it is probably best not to ... "invent" explanations why one dev can do a thing, but another cannot. And instead see what can be adapted.

For example... for elite dangerous, ship Interiors, which are implemented in upcoming Envoy update, is a much requested feature people keep asking for years. And when another hopeful requester comes to forums and ask for the feature, some of them start inventing "explanations". The most amazing one I saw so far was that "Egosoft can implement interiors, because it is much smaller studio than FDev and does not need to please shareholders". For the record, FDev has 6 or 7 hundred employees. So, of course, ship interiors are "Utterly impossible". Elite has 46 ships total. X4 has 240. Even with vanguard/sentinel reskins the number of base frames is over 140 ships. The most amusing things that few days after this argument, no man's sky dropped ship interiors update. For Free.

So let's not go there. It would be probably best to see what can be adopted, and not to look for reasons why something is impossible. Because it is always possible to invent those reasons. I.e. best to look for "what can be done", vs "why this is impossible".

[jlehtone]

I thought I made it abundantly clear that I am worried about the direction this could go. I also made it clear that price to content ratio is changing for the worse in my opinion. Never once did I "flame" this pack for being a cashgrab, so I would appreciate you would realize that.

In other words you think you see a trend and that one possible extrapolation from that trend could lead to "cashgrab" in future.

Based on that prediction, what action is appropriate?
(A common trope in fiction is that actions that try to avert from fate actually cement it.)

[Starmeadow]

Voicing concerns is valid but "trying to warn" and lecturing comes across as somewhat condescending. And in this case as I said, if you're trying to "warn" makes sense to add what exactly do you propose. Because there isn't an alternative to X4, and the worst possible negative consequence is studio closing down. Which is something both players and developers, I believe, would like to avoid.

Look, I would rather be viewed as condescending than seeing what I am concerned about develop. As you said both players and developers would not want worst case to happen. This includes all of us, but unfortunately I doubt support alone without critique will stop bad developments from happening.

I do not wish to deep dive into Timelines, but as the conversation regrettably shifted to that at one point I will mention it once. The past releases were Kingdom End -> Timelines -> Hyperion -> and now Envoy.
The quality is evidently dropping, as sad as it is. The sooner constructive criticism appears the better, to hopefully turn this trend around before people start to jump ship. I want Egosoft to continue as much as you do, which is why I am here in the first place. But if the majority just closes their eyes and willingly blinds themselves to this trend it will not change. The future with a continued trend like that would be less and less support, barely any critique, Ego perhaps not being able to turn back or not realizing it due to no critique, a loss in player count and update frequency and at the end a damaged or dead game and (again worst case) even a more toxic community.
No matter the alternatives or nicheness, bad marketing will always end in damage.


As for the actions:

Did I not answer that already?

For the developers:
Please think about where you want to go in the future and the potential negative consequences. Because it is very possible those will appear.

EDIT: Again, I am *not* against different kinds of DLCs at all but what I am getting at is this:
Keep the same amount of content but lower the price.
OR: Keep the price, maybe even up it BUT add more content or depth into the packs.

The current balance is just too much money for too little in my opinion, free updates or not, they aren't a bandaid for bad deals. And if a bad balance keeps up, there will likely be more and more people that will start to dislike it.

I believe it would be fitting for them to either return to the bigger dlcs (the safer option), adjust the prices to be more fair to the actual content within the dlc (not safe perhaps, but at least it would give me a bit of a trust boost), or give another reason to belive them that this will not end up like so many other games (which seems like an incredibly risky gamble to take to me).

If any of the above things would happen I would be completely fine with how its developing. But so far I am concerned.


And for the players:
Stop blindly hyping things up and supporting stuff without thinking about the potential consequences. Criticize where it is due for the games own betterment and to avoid another repetition in the long history of painful developments. Critique is not a sin, in fact it can be incredibly helpful.

[vvvvvvvv]

Look, I would rather be viewed as condescending than seeing what I am concerned about develop.

Bluntly speaking right now you cannot see what you're being concerned about, and only imagine that. You have no foresight powers. Otherwise you'd buy a lottery and fund egosoft with jackpot or something.
So your foresight is not a real situation. I do hope you are not seeing yourself as a savior or sole voice of reason.

Your opinion, however, represents a datapoint for the developer to investigate.

I do not wish to deep dive into Timelines, but as the conversation regrettably shifted to that at one point I will mention it once. The past releases were Kingdom End -> Timelines -> Hyperion -> and now Envoy.

Timelines is of high quality. There's a lot of work that went into station, those small cinematic intros, interiors, etc, and configuration of scenarios. The issue with it is that it offered things most people didn't want. Also do keep in mind that half the things Egosoft works on are released for free. Timelines came with F/B/H/PE/SE ships. Though you'd need to double check on PE/SE, as I'm unsure when exactly they arrived.

But if the majority just closes their eyes and willingly blinds themselves

People are not stupid and are not dumber than you.

> Did I not answer that already?

Developers already think of future and consequences, and have keen interest in keeping the studio running. I also think it is probably more useful when people say "I like/dislike XYZ because of this and that" than call for actions. I.e. it is like when you go to a doctor you list symptoms and not try to guess diagnosis. But that's an opinion.

Fomr outsider perspective, however the situation is quite interesting. At the beginning of this year Egosoft took an unusual decision to change flight model, which is one of the best thing that happened to this game. There were also more adverts to it (I actually saw X4 advertised on youtube), and attempt to keep community engaged. There were also positive changes win bug tracking, now I can finally see that someone read my report even though I still don't have a notification. Those are all good things.

In practice, it appears that the game has a lot of "inherited" code which is not necessarily easy to change. A good chunk of it is from rebirth. Technical debt. So it seems that flight model change was a risky attempt to tackle technical debt, attract more people, and address some long term complaints. It was a significant work which lasted 3 months. But for that amount of time studio would need to continue to receive funding. So they took a gamble with Hyperion.

Whether it is true or not, only studio insider would know, but it gives such impression from outside.

But the situation is interesting is that you can't resolve situation like flight model swap easily. You can't swap engines, because that's few years of work and no funding. You can't divert people to make big DLCs, because this work still needs to be done. So they need to keep releasing something that costs brings money and at the same time they need to keep patching issues. Hyperion is a compromise. Hyperion SLIGHTLY missed the mark, and was not a total disaster like Timelines. It was just imperfect.

That's how I see it.

[jlehtone]

Timelines came with F/B/H/PE/SE ships. Though you'd need to double check on PE/SE, as I'm unsure when exactly they arrived.

Game version 7.00 did add the PE and SE, as well as "Terraformer ships" (F/B/H). None of those needs Timelines.

Timelines was released at same time as 7.00. It adds some other ships to "open universe" (once you unlock them in Timelines missions).

[vvvvvvvv]

Timelines was released at same time as 7.00.

Which means content was developer in the same batch. Free ships everybody got and ships that are part of timelines.

Quality of those ships is not low.

[Starmeadow]

Bluntly speaking right now you cannot see what you're being concerned about, and only imagine that. You have no foresight powers. Otherwise you'd buy a lottery and fund egosoft with jackpot or something.

I naturally do not have a guaranteed foresight. However I can see at past history and take an educated guess. And to be clear, I do not say this will happen without a doubt, but I do think it could be possible. And IF it were to happen, literally nobody would like that. Better be early than too late.

I do hope you are not seeing yourself as a savior or sole voice of reason.

As for this, what do you even think I am? I simply do not care about how I am viewed. However I do care about the game.

People are not stupid and are not dumber than you.

I literally never said that.

However factually, there has been barely any critique of this pack. And I did see a lot of hyping up without many arguments behind it. Sure support is great to see, but I felt like this forum could also use my 2 cents in the form of said critique with my personal view and some arguments behind it. Judging by how long this was discussed now it seems that was not such a bad idea either.

> Did I not answer that already?

Developers already think of future and consequences, and have keen interest in keeping the studio running. I also think it is probably more useful when people say "I like/dislike XYZ because of this and that" than call for actions. I.e. it is like when you go to a doctor you list symptoms and not try to guess diagnosis. But that's an opinion.

I believe I did pretty much that. I listed my concerns, gave reasons for it and then asked for actions and gave 3 suggestions I came up with of the top of my head. I'd think the "doctor" now has the data they require. The only thing I additionally did was to emphasize this further because of how important it is in my opinion. I believe this "cold" is at risk of becoming a full blown fever if not watched carefully and continuously.

But the situation is interesting is that you can't resolve situation like flight model swap easily. You can't swap engines, because that's few years of work and no funding. You can't divert people to make big DLCs, because this work still needs to be done. So they need to keep releasing something that costs brings money and at the same time they need to keep patching issues. Hyperion is a compromise. Hyperion SLIGHTLY missed the mark, and was not a total disaster like Timelines. It was just imperfect.

That's how I see it.

You can divert your time and focus however to concentrate on one thing (eg. the dlc) for a while and put a higher price tag on it once it is done. That way the money may take a bit longer to come in but it would be more and you would get an additional support bonus on top. Also remember egosoft is able to sell soundtracks for these dlcs as well, which would even give an additional bonus if the content/soundtrack of the dlc is good enough.

Even if you do not want to do that for reason x or y, I already mentioned that adjusting the prices downwards would be somewhat okay in my opinion as well.

Lastly, there could also be other ways to reinforce trust into the Studio if they end up to continue releasing these "packs". This however will require a decent amount of creativity.

One thing that may be possible and help with trust might be to try to respond and add/deny more suggestions, being more frequent with suggestion handling in general.
At this point I am somewhat guessing though. Just some food for thought perhaps.

Sidenote: A flight model update is admittedly a big thing but it still does not take years. As much work as it may still be you are overselling the amount.

[vvvvvvvv]

I literally never said that.

The idea here is that when Alice thinks Bob needs something explained, she assumes Bob couldn't think of it himself.

Regarding "I literally do not care about how I'm viewed". Delivery of information matters. If information is perceived as hostile/condescending/etc, people are much more likely to ignore it completely, even if the speaker has a point. For that reason it is a good idea to speak without snark, sarcasm, jabs, adhominems and so on, in civil and even poilite manner. It is an unfortunate side effect of us not being machines.

However factually, there has been barely any critique of this pack.

Because it contains things people want. I want ship interiors. The demo showed interior with everything I wanted. Why would I criticize it? Screenshots literally make me drool. Although I'm positive my character still will be unable to lie down on that bed.

Ship with interior is also not a quick work, you could contact some 3d studio and ask them for a quote.

Sidenote: A flight model update is admittedly a big thing but it still does not take years. As much work as it may still be you are overselling the amount.

Erm it does. Ever worked with a legacy codebase?

Or at least it easily can take this amount of time. It is a deeply entrenched thing that spreads tentacles across a good chunk of engine and affect everything. Replacing it is a significant effort. A comparable thing would be ... if Egosoft ripped out their xml scripting language and put something like lua inside. I'd love to see them do it, but that's unlikely to happen.

So it is a big deal absolutely. And aside from code change there's a matter of number of ships. X4 has 200+ ships to playtest.

[alt3rn1ty]

Is this quote fest helping anything?. I think the whole world online is a bit trigger with defensive conversations (is that an insecurity thing?, idk).
Economically Egosoft knows already they walk a thin line of balancing what the fans will like to keep the series profitable. Its just one among many similar conversations we have seen on this forum over many years.
Get a room or PM

[chew-ie]

Aye, time to light a