Should X Rebirth's meta-critic score be re-reviewed?

[plynak]

@Graaf: Errm... the old X engine was broken in a round about sense. But this is an OLD argument and not really worth debating further as both sides of the argument have valid points and debating them further will achieve nothing.

If the sole major gripe is the single player ship limitation, my guess is that it will be addressed in X4/XR2 and not in any update to X-Rebirth - although someone is looking at the possibility of modding in multiple flyable ships (Observer IIRC).

Umm, how exactly was the old engine broken? I can start up TC or heavy modified TC with Extended MOD without any problems. I have high fps even in the most heated battles. I can issue commands to hundrets of ships. I can have a fleet of traders earning me money. I can have huge station complexes. Oh and I almost forgot. Imagine that I can actually get killed when I ram into something! So please, enlighten me on what is broken?
On the other hand I have Rebirth with a new engine that barely crawls over 30 fps on high end machines, I dare to go to heated battles as it drops to 10 fps or lower, I can have a fleet of ships but can not command them in any meaningful way, I can have a huge station that is not capable of making any profit and god forbid if I want to send my ships to do something automaticaly. Oh and by the way my ship is invincible, I can not get killed by ramming into anything. Great new engine indeed...
And I still find it funny that some still believe there will be any other X game. Yet no one has answered my question "Who will pay for it?" It is not a secret Rebirth was released as a money grab as they were facing bankrupcy. That worked, for a while. It did not work so well with 2.0 as people are not that stupid to fall for the same trick twice.

[pjknibbs]

It is not a secret Rebirth was released as a money grab as they were facing bankrupcy.

OK, how about you provide one single shred of evidence that this is true? And by evidence, I mean actual solid evidence, not hearsay on an internet forum.

[plynak]

It is not a secret Rebirth was released as a money grab as they were facing bankrupcy.

OK, how about you provide one single shred of evidence that this is true? And by evidence, I mean actual solid evidence, not hearsay on an internet forum.

How about you provide evidence I am wrong? And how about tell us where are you going to get money for another X games?

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

If memory serves me correctly, pjk is a volunteer administrator rather than an Egosoft employee. If that's the case, you may have misunderstood his ability to answer your questions. If that's not the case then I apologise in advance for creating confusion.

[ThommoHawk]

One thing no amount of review will ever fix, or change, regardless of how improved the game plays now, or in the future.

It is this;

X Rebirth Worst Game Of The Year 2013

It was among the 4 worst games of 2013, and received justified negative press for being so.

But hey,

....shhhhh, don't tell anyone and they may not notice ...

[pref]

@pref: There is a significant difference between designing an engine for a capability and implementing said capability - the latter requires significantly more work. This I (and I think others) have tried to explain on multiple occasions but for one last time...

There is no reasonable reason to believe that the perceived limitations (lack of certain capability implemented in the latter X games) were never intended to be addressed at some point in the new engine's on-going development path. The indications pre-release was that X-Rebirth was going to be the engine for all X-games for the foreseeable future.

There is however, obvious (at least to me) justification to first implement any unique and new fundamental functionality from the outset to some extent (e.g. the FP mode and modular ships/stations). These features have been indicated as problematic to implement with the old engine and thus as requiring core engine features would reasonably be designed in and implemented from the beginning.

Features such as AI, C&C, and Multiple Flyable Ship capability are almost certainly seen as relatively easy to "add on" or "improve" later (c/f the progression from X-BTF to X-Tension - the latter adding multiple-flyable ships to the former).

The decision about what features get implemented first is typically not about what is most desirable necessarily but rather what carries the most technical implications and/or risk. Having worked on projects where delivery of staged capability is required it is a planning approach I know pretty well.

This is not about having inner knowledge of the workings of Egosoft, nor having any significant insight into their inner workings or the design of the product. It is however about drawing reasonable conclusions from past history and what public information has been available since pre-release (and before) - some of which seem to get overlooked.

If you truly cannot understand the logic of the above then I am wasting both my time and yours - I can not really put it much clearer than that (I have tried already on several occasions to no avail).

First about your 'percieved limitations' - do not belittle other's problems with the game just because you cannot comprehend it/are not willing to accept their view. Its not a good approach honestly.
There are factual limitations that make XR almost impossible to enjoy for a lot of players.
As long as ES's intentions go - you have no more info then i do in this regard. As CEO's only clear statement was that it won't be X4, i must assume that many issues i have with the game will not be fixed (but i don't think we need to reiterate this).

Furthermore im not sure if the engine needs much of a change anyway, we are not talking about engine level issues with asset control, eco part being unplayable, faction AI, pathing etc... This is all a result of the game being unfinished, not the engine (hopefully at least).

The decision about what gets implemented should not be technical related one either. They should have given the planned initial set of features a second (first?) thought - and figure out what is really needed to have a functional and enjoyable game, and work with such priorities, not spend enormous dev time on features that look good but are not integral part of the gameplay.

Having the most difficult issues solved with highest prio is for hobby coding again.. noone cares what seems harder to do for the dev. What is important is how the features add up to create a real game.
If a hard-to-do item is lower prio in this sense, that's rather good luck for the devs since they have more time to polish a more complex feature (as with station interiors for ex).

And just a reminder - my point was that the issues are not at engine level, and that a good engine does not mean a better game.
The issues are with the general logic that describes the game world and it's rules - not with how the engine realizes this.
I'm still wondering how is it possible to misinterpret other's posts to this extent.

[vukica]

It is not a secret Rebirth was released as a money grab as they were facing bankrupcy.

OK, how about you provide one single shred of evidence that this is true? And by evidence, I mean actual solid evidence, not hearsay on an internet forum.

How about you provide evidence I am wrong? And how about tell us where are you going to get money for another X games?

There's public evidence online that you're wrong.
Financial information is published up to 31.12.2012 and it looks healthy.

i'm guessing, 2013 is still not processed.

[DaddyMonster]

How about you provide evidence I am wrong?

It's generally accepted that the burden of proof/evidence should fall on the person making a claim.

The philosopher Russell addressed this very point by giving the example of a claim that "there is a teapot orbiting Mars". The person receiving this claim asks for evidence of this but the person making the claim says that it is up to the other person to prove that it is not there. So the other person builds an enormous telescope and looks for the teapot and does not find one. The person making the claim then says that the telescope is not powerful enough to spot such a tiny object and rests his case as he cannot be disproved.

Russell felt that that the logic of the person making the claim was intrinsically faulty. Do you disagree?

[ravage_za]

So if Egosoft is financially in a good place, that does seem to indicate that Rebirth is what they actually intended to release. That thought both horrifies and saddens me. Doesn't say much for future releases.

This is all pretty much conjecture though. It would be awesome if some (recent) facts were injected into these forums by Egosoft.

[Slashman]

So if Egosoft is financially in a good place, that does seem to indicate that Rebirth is what they actually intended to release. That thought both horrifies and saddens me. Doesn't say much for future releases.

This is all pretty much conjecture though. It would be awesome if some (recent) facts were injected into these forums by Egosoft.

They're not going to discuss financial information in an open forum most likely.

As to game related things, I expect silence will continue. Communicating isn't, apparently, what Egosoft wants to prioritize.

Of course that means we never know what they're prioritizing.

[pref]

So if Egosoft is financially in a good place, that does seem to indicate that Rebirth is what they actually intended to release. That thought both horrifies and saddens me. Doesn't say much for future releases.

This is all pretty much conjecture though. It would be awesome if some (recent) facts were injected into these forums by Egosoft.

You can approach it this way: ES has enough cash now to make a proper game.
Though they intended to release rebirth this way (at least i got this impression from interviews), if you consider player numbers and reviews as well it's obvious that the cash they made at release only represents the level of trust people had for ES based on X3 and earlier games.
Meaning X3 was so good that it sold XR to this extent. This could be a reason to return to the roots asap as well...
Of course the general hype for spacesims (SC, Elite, ...) also could increase XR sales, still they needed X3 for this result.

[Graaf]

It is not a secret Rebirth was released as a money grab as they were facing bankrupcy.

OK, how about you provide one single shred of evidence that this is true? And by evidence, I mean actual solid evidence, not hearsay on an internet forum.

Because Roger keeps telling us that Egosoft was in a bad financial situation? You didn't question his claim, so he must then be right.

[Nanook]

@Nanook: You SHOULD know being a moderator, but for the sake of clarity - discussing people's posts as opposed to the matter at hand.

Good grief! The whole idea of the forum is to discuss what others say. My turn to Just to clarify, the rules pertain to discussing the poster, not the post.

But to further support my usage of the term broken I believe it is covered by at least one dictionary definition of the term.

Care to point out the definition you're referring to? I saw nothing in that link that said anything about "not fit for purpose" meaning "broken".

[Nanook]

If memory serves me correctly, pjk is a volunteer administrator rather than an Egosoft employee. If that's the case, you may have misunderstood his ability to answer your questions. If that's not the case then I apologise in advance for creating confusion.

You are correct. pjknibbs is a volunteer, the same as virtually all the moderators, btw. plynak is way out of line here. I suggest he gets his facts straight before making any more accusations.

[Graaf]

If I'm not mistaken Plynak was a moderator himself not too long ago, so he should know the relationships.

But its probably an honest mistake considering that both CBJ and PJKnibbs have "Egosoft" displayed, not "Moderator" like Nanook.

[khartsh]

It is not a secret Rebirth was released as a money grab as they were facing bankrupcy.

OK, how about you provide one single shred of evidence that this is true? And by evidence, I mean actual solid evidence, not hearsay on an internet forum.

How about you provide evidence I am wrong? And how about tell us where are you going to get money for another X games?

There's public evidence online that you're wrong.
Financial information is published up to 31.12.2012 and it looks healthy.

i'm guessing, 2013 is still not processed.

As an accountant I would have to severely disagree. They were in terrible financial shape. What you are seeing in that report is massive reliance on non-tangible assets for leverage to acquire advance funding and loans.

Also the cash on hand is abysmal for any company, let alone one in the middle of a huge project. And lastly that would be all the cash they had left and a sizable amount of receivables unrealized from the sale of X3:AP

So while off-topic, Plynak would be correct, their financial situation (as confirmed by Bernd in two interviews now) was not one that would lend itself to wait another year for release.

[VincentTH]

As an accountant I would have to severely disagree. They were in terrible financial shape. What you are seeing in that report is massive reliance on non-tangible assets for leverage to acquire advance funding and loans.

Also the cash on hand is abysmal for any company, let alone one in the middle of a huge project. And lastly that would be all the cash they had left and a sizable amount of receivables unrealized from the sale of X3:AP

So while off-topic, Plynak would be correct, their financial situation (as confirmed by Bernd in two interviews now) was not one that would lend itself to wait another year for release.

That would explain the premature release of XR. I don't blame Bernd for that, he had to do what he had to do to survive.

[Slashman]

That would explain the premature release of XR. I don't blame Bernd for that, he had to do what he had to do to survive.

The blame I place is for at first acting like the game's issues were only being experienced by a few people and then not truly coming out and explaining the situation fully.

People shouldn't have had to wait for interviews to find out how things stood and the reasons behind the obviously dishonest hype behind Rebirth.

Nothing in those pre-release videos indicated things were anything but peachy. GTA in space and all that.

[Graaf]

As an accountant I would have to severely disagree. They were in terrible financial shape. What you are seeing in that report is massive reliance on non-tangible assets for leverage to acquire advance funding and loans.

Also the cash on hand is abysmal for any company, let alone one in the middle of a huge project. And lastly that would be all the cash they had left and a sizable amount of receivables unrealized from the sale of X3:AP

So while off-topic, Plynak would be correct, their financial situation (as confirmed by Bernd in two interviews now) was not one that would lend itself to wait another year for release.

That would explain the premature release of XR. I don't blame Bernd for that, he had to do what he had to do to survive.

But he could have informed us about it. At least then he would had received some sympathy.

[ravage_za]

I think that is the part that has most ghasted my flabber. Egosoft had an extremely loyal and supportive (sometimes loud and shouty) fanbase, many of whom would have been willing to jump in and get dirty if only they had known. The choice to back-off, act cool and professional, and spin-doctor this whole debacle is the absolute opposite of what they should have done.

Most developers would kill for that loyalty, and they could not have done more damage to their own fan-base if they had planned it.