X3 Online experience coming June 1st, yes it's magic!

[Spitzeuk]

After reading the OP I thought "But I'd have half the universe full of factories in a week". Of course this isn't true as Kor'ah pointed out

I'd love to play multiplayer X3 where I load up my game then friends would connect over LAN (be it 1 or 5 or 10) and we'd either compete as various competing companies, as I'm sure there are some unused races which could just be used for Player 2/3 etc.. The other alternative is all working with shared assets and shared bank account.

Now I know next to nothing about coding and the complexity of making that work, but I do know if it was an option I'd jump at the chance to play or help make it happen. I would not however want to play MMO or any form of online where strangers can completely spoil my game for me. Don't get me wrong most of you are lovely just the internet is full of bastards!

[Infekted]

After reading the OP I thought "But I'd have half the universe full of factories in a week". Of course this isn't true as Kor'ah pointed out

I'd love to play multiplayer X3 where I load up my game then friends would connect over LAN (be it 1 or 5 or 10) and we'd either compete as various competing companies, as I'm sure there are some unused races which could just be used for Player 2/3 etc.. The other alternative is all working with shared assets and shared bank account.

Now I know next to nothing about coding and the complexity of making that work, but I do know if it was an option I'd jump at the chance to play or help make it happen. I would not however want to play MMO or any form of online where strangers can completely spoil my game for me. Don't get me wrong most of you are lovely just the internet is full of bastards!

Quoted for truth! The general internet public would not make the X universe a nice place

[Deleted User]

I don't think I would actually play it, as mentioned before, the issues with gates are too severe, especially the terran ones.

Its not just appearing inside a capital ship thats the problem, a few times now I have jumped into sectors to see my own capitals try to take drastic avoidance action when trying to exit through a different gate, only to get blown up.

The other day I jumped into a sector to see in horror that my boreas was stuck on a complex tube! Fortunately I got out before it went boom.

A noble and well intentioned idea but not for me.

[Ketraar]

Chosen 3 due to lack of "what the frak, another X-Online/Multiplayer topic"

I understand that X would have to give up being X for it to be possible, means its not X, means I don't want it. Simple maths.

And MMO is the only way it would ever happen, due to needed gains, as stated several times.

MFG

Ketraar

[Nanook]

...
My thought is the community might like the idea of a multiplayer universe, ...

And once again, the poll numbers reveal this to be a falsehood. There is a loud minority that do want it, but as your poll is once again showing, it is a minority. Always has been.

[reheat]

My biggest hurdle is that I ditched Steam over a year ago.
They have no concept of customer service for anything other than taking money. They gave away my account 3 times to someone else, and on the third time I told them to soak their heads. They just do not care.

Spend cash, and everything is automated. Ask for support, and it is mating elephants.

As for the non-steam issues, I can't see how this can be reasonably done in a non-EVE way. I see the word free, but then where is the financial model? I would by far prefer resources be spent on the next, single player game. I do not want to see EGOSOFT go under trying to create some sort of on-line model that does not or can not work.

Too many people work there to just do a flyer, with no idea as to how to capture the revenue to make it work. It would be irresponsible.

I have to admit, I played EVE way back when it was just a game on the system. When they went to on-line, I didn't follow. I don't do any on-line games. I play too slow and methodically. (read predictable).

My opinion (and a dollar, still will not buy coffee at the airport) is that the type of player for the X universe, is a rather patient sort. Not the twitchy finger arcade style people expecting instant outcomes. "Free" will likely draw many to the game. Once bandwidth and hardware expenses start to bleed resources long enough, any sort of pay model will chase most of those people away in a heartbeat. Invariably one needs the WOW or EVE Online style of model to sustain the operations.

A single persistant universe for any substantial number of people is a huge investment in servers and bandwidth. If you want to compete with EVE Online, fine. It should be a very calculated business decision. Just don't tube the company doing it. Otherwise stick to what you do that works so well. I really want to play X4...5....and 6. I personally would not prefer to have modders stringing out a long dead graphics engine, from a defunct company, with the source code locked up in some bankruptcy vault because the courts don't know what to do with it.

Yes, I have seen it before.

[JoeVN09]

I would find that, considering I play at a relatively pedestrian pace, I would find myself quickly swamped for resources and places to set up a base of sorts. By the time i got to a point where I could fulfill my more ambitious plans, I would find the market already flooded with the microchips and shields that *I* wanted to sell and the economy in ruins because of too many human brains employing advanced reasoning, leaving the rest of us picking up the low-tech, low-profit remains. The influx of new players would flood the system with the typical assortment of trolls, blowing up people's traders out of malice and generally undermining the spirit of the X community. The way I would do it would be to have several servers limited to say, 8 players per universe, to keep a cap on the inevitable collateral caused by overpopulation.

Aaand looking above, I see all these points have been made already. Oh well

[Rednoahl]

I voted option one. I got involved with the DiD fad quite early on in my X3TC playing career - I never got that good at it, but I did have a lot of fun. Playing DiD I got into a few good habits - checking both sides of a gate before jumping for example, so I would avoid any gate accidents - you adapt. It's rare I do play DiD now, but it is the most satisfying way of playing alone I've found. I imagine the satisfaction I would get from successfully working with or against another player within a persistent universe would be at least the same or better than playing DiD.

We are experimenting in a new SMP game which is a semi-persistent universe (as in when you're not playing, if you lose anything - tough, it's gone forever.) While personally I'm relishing playing in a different style than I have previously, I am incredibly worried that the format won't work since the game wasn't designed to be played in such a manner. ES might find a save game interesting though, all seven of the confirmed players so far have a quite different play-styles.

Bernd has recently stated that ES won't be working on multi-player game-play for a long time (source - facebook, about ten minutes ago) so while your question is a good one, I doubt it will be relevant for some time. Still, I'm glad you're still active on the forum and hope RL gives you an opportunity to entertain us with another DiD in the future, perhaps in the next game or XTC mod.

[dbrowdy]

Dont we already have online space sim in "EVE" ??

have played both, and to be honest i prefer X universe simply due to the fact i dont/didnt have the time or patence for EVE, so gave up a substansual fleet and rep to play X3 when i want not when i have to!

This. I ditched my 40mil+ SP character and my 25m+ SP alt as well as billions in assets and cash because I didn't have the time to put in to a second job type game.

X takes a ton of time investment too, but I can ALWAYS save and walk away, even mid-battle, for as long as I want. Making it online would ruin the appeal and, quite honestly, Eve is a better game. X's main appeal is that it's offline!

[jlehtone]

I understand that X would have to give up being X for it to be possible, means its not X, means I don't want it. Simple maths.

I really like that option 3 math too.

[Da-V-Man]

While I really don't care for a persistent world, what about just a combat based multiplayer? You get to choose your race/ship and then play in modes like CTF, deathmatch, Station Defence (one team attacks, one defends) and Xenon Invasion (survive as many waves as possible)?

[maphys]

I wouldn't play it. I am sure you are all lovely people really but something about online games brings out the worst in most people. Having everything you own wiped out overnight because someone bumped into your station on autopilot and decided to take it out on the rest of your empire would get old fast.

In fact the only use for an online X I can think of would be to stop threads on X-online popping up!

M

[Nanook]

...
In fact the only use for an online X I can think of would be to stop threads on X-online popping up!

M

You really think that would help?

[amtct]

I wouldn't play it. I am sure you are all lovely people really but something about online games brings out the worst in most people. Having everything you own wiped out overnight because someone bumped into your station on autopilot and decided to take it out on the rest of your empire would get old fast.

Wrong!I don't use the autopilot and I'd destroy your emipre even if I don't crash in to it by mistake.The reason for that is LAG.Why to play the game at a low frame rate when I can clean a sector of your frame rate curse complexes ,though I'd destroy your fleet just for fun ,but that's another story

[mrbadger]

I'd never like an mmorpeger X game. I like being GOD in mine, knowing I can leave the game for a month, come back and nothing will have changed.

I wouldn't like, for instance, to find out that some players had decided to take over paranid space, and my ships were being killed just for going there. That would kill my subscription as fast as it did my ships.

Nope, X as it is is what I enjoy, and any online version of that would just go on the list of games to avoid.

On another note, having enjoyed asciiPortal so much I've been toying again with the idea of asciiX3. I'm not certain the idea will survive detailed examination, but it's something I've thought about attempting before.

[Knetter_Gek]

Quoted the really true bits:

I'd love to play multiplayer X3 where I load up my game then friends would connect over LAN (be it 1 or 5 or 10) and we'd either compete as various competing companies, as I'm sure there are some unused races which could just be used for Player 2/3 etc.. The other alternative is all working with shared assets and shared bank account.
...
I would not however want to play MMO or any form of online where strangers can completely spoil my game for me. Don't get me wrong most of you are lovely just the internet is full of bastards!

If there were at some point in the future a multiplayer option that would let the universe run in a seperate thread from the client renderings (like in Quake for instance) and it would let number of LAN clients play in the same universe, with all the saving being done by the server, collision detection on the client side for the active sector of each client, and have the server "be" the universe - it does all the saving, for instance, then I could see where this could be a truly viable option. You could have the players either play competing, as allies, or even share a single race (factories, a common bank account, etc) The important thing though is it would not be able to run unless all four clients are connected and playing. Essentially what you could create this way is, by and large, 4-player co-op. It would be more like an old fashioned multiplayer Dungeons and Dragons type game where you need everyone present and playing or you can't play at all, too... There's no point in missing two games and finding everyone else has gone and bought Shrikes and you're SOL with your Mamba. "Fly to sector Xenon Core 023" anyone?

I do actually think that, properly planned, delicately designed, proficiently programmed, thoroughly tested and superbly supported, such a game could "work" both from a technical as well as from a gameplay perspective.

I also think that it would be utter lunacy to attempt it, since everyone who doesn't know X is going to look at it once, and say "This isn't an MMO? I'm not buying this!" and pretty much everyone who does know X is going to say "Wait, so it's multiplyer X? Sod that, I don't want MMOs, I want my X!" with the exceptions being those who say either "I want to play whenever I want, not just when all my friends can make it."or "Wow, that's cool. Torrent anyone?" That'll pay the bills...

Not to mention the fact I absolutely do not take anyone serious who comes and says this would be something that could be "bolted on" to X3TC or any existing X game. Especially since a lot of posts are about the limitations of the engine compared to modern software: no 64bit, no full support for multi-threading, issues with >2GB memory awareness in 32bit, performance death when exposed to high polygon counts... do you really want to take that engine and "bolt on" network multiplayer?

[rujikin]

If they released a small multiplayer stand alone version of this game I would buy it. Support 1-8 players on it (or 1-4). Play with my friends and take over the universe.

If they released an MMORPG version I would probably become addicted to it for years on end. I used to play UO and when you died you lost EVERYTHING. At least here you can jumpdrive out. In that game you just die and lose it all. I am a survivor.

Either way I want this multiplayer. There may be problems, but thats to be expected. I don't care if multiplayer is released as a stand alone X4 or X4-Multiexpansion I would get it.

[TerrorTrooper]

X wouldnt work as a Multiplayer as too many important aspects of the game would be lost.
I wont go into details as weve all seen them thousands of times over the years.


However...
On the other side of the fence.


I think its fair to say that Egosoft certainly have the imagination and experience to create a fantastic online experience if they had the motive and budget to do so.

[Alex Vanderbilt]

X wouldnt work as a Multiplayer as too many important aspects of the game would be lost.
I wont go into details as weve all seen them thousands of times over the years.


However...
On the other side of the fence.


I think its fair to say that Egosoft certainly have the imagination and experience to create a fantastic online experience if they had the motive and budget to do so.

Which for example? SETA?

I'd like to see a MP, but not via Internet, but rather as a LAN game or Coop-Mode. MMO are too time consuming, but having a nice fight with friends in the evening against some Xenon or doing the one ore another trade convoy would be fun.
So, overall a Single-Player, but with certain MP aspects.

AV

[perkint]

I wouldn't want MMO, but I would like multi-player. And, with the magical new technology mentioned in the OP, this would be possible without needing MMO to fund it

Tim