The big GamesCom interview with Bernd - Comments

[notaterran]

Finally some info on specs. You can find quad-cores under $100 now, but they've been somewhat affordable since at least 2007. It makes sense that such a CPU-limited game has a higher CPU requirement. Considering 1) current prices and 2) how long quad-cores have been available, it's not unreasonable to ask for a CPU requirement that's more in tune with the times.

[rrfarmer]

And a year later we get some good info!

Yay!

Looking forward to September 2013.

But yes I see Bernd is looking for an end too. Also it seems like there is a TON of things in Rebirth. It's gotta be a lot to program.

Also I felt a huge box being formed on Egosoft with a lot of the stuff being put in the game... I mean, a game feature being dictated by a publisher.... that's scary for an X game, also how EA probably kills most games.

I say let the developers and the people with real passion on the game say what features are there, NOT the publisher who is only concerned with money.

Sorry for the rant. But I needed to vent a bit...

oh and, yes thanks for the post! I have transcribed many many recordings before and know that's a ton of work!

[Sibilantae]

Hmm~ I was at first a little discouraged by how player-ship focussed it seemed to be, but as the interview went on it struck me how much of a separate game this will be from previous X titles. It's just a completely new way of looking at it. I'm personally very eager to see how it turns out.

I'm looking forward to seeing how the graphics turn out too. The implementation of HDR made me raise eyebrows (in a good way~), and I really think this would help in immersiveness (And yes, stars don't twinkle in space. Those that "do", like pulsars, probably do not do so visibly).

Cautiously optimistic - maybe less optimistic than before, but just because I'm wanting to be safe =P

[Sibilantae]

And a year later we get some good info!

Yay!

Looking forward to September 2013.

But yes I see Bernd is looking for an end too. Also it seems like there is a TON of things in Rebirth. It's gotta be a lot to program.

Also I felt a huge box being formed on Egosoft with a lot of the stuff being put in the game... I mean, a game feature being dictated by a publisher.... that's scary for an X game, also how EA probably kills most games.

I say let the developers and the people with real passion on the game say what features are there, NOT the publisher who is only concerned with money.

Sorry for the rant. But I needed to vent a bit...

oh and, yes thanks for the post! I have transcribed many many recordings before and know that's a ton of work!

Out of interest, which games have EA, as a publisher, not a developer, killed recently?

[VincentTH]

Thanks Iifrit for the interview. Here taking back all the bad jokes I wrote

[SilentcontrolSXM]

So much time spent for so few informations ... disgusting.

[Sibilantae]

So much time spent for so few informations ... disgusting.

Go away.

[ALien8ed]

Many thanks for the interview, it's very much appreciated.

While i was hoping for some info in relation to a possible release timeframe it's good to hear they are still hard at work and things are coming along.

Time to take a deep breath, sit back and enjoy other games while waiting for Rebirth.

[Jawms]

I just hope that they work the interface well enough that it can manage all this "stuff" that their putting into.. I dont want to have to go through eight menus, and wait twenty minutes, just to tell my "big mining ship with drones" to go buy some more drones..

Overall, Very impressed with the interview.. I am satisfied with the answers.. Nothing surprising..

Good Job Egosoft, and Thanks Iifrit for the translation.

[eldyranx3]

*Random Speculation Alert*

If some design decisions on the interface are still up in the air, I'm not sure how Egosoft can possibly be ready to release X-Rebirth by the end of 2012. If I understood the translation correctly, which I may have not.

Aside from this, I hope they aren't getting too discouraged. Bernd's comment of 'Unfortunately we have to make money' made me laugh out loud. Good luck to Egosoft and here's to X:Rebirth rolling out when they feel it's ready

[Bobucles]

Well! The engines now takes gradual damage and if this damage is going to be to big, your ship is getting slower. That should motivate the player to repair the ship regularly as well, if it is necessary. I mean, you can easily avoid that: if you own shields that case will not take place.

Hmm. I think this could be improved. I think it was a bit weird that ships could have 5% shields and not take damage.

So how about a system like this:
Around 80%+ shields are perfect. No damage at all.
Around 40-80% minor damage is taken. Scratches, light damage, etc. Nothing major, but you are getting shot and it does hurt.
Around 15-40% the armor starts taking full damage. If a component has no armor then shields will still protect them a little.
Around <15% the shields only protect life support, core hull and engines. Components are sacrificed to keep the most important systems working.

This also helps out capital ship combat. So that even if a big ship kills a little ship, it takes some damage, and eventually needs repair. That sort of thing.

I can tell you that it is very helpful to have a Quad-Core-CPU. Doesn’t matter if it is a Core I, i7 or the previous one, as long as it is a CPU with four real Cores.

Hell yes. It's about time that games caught up with the times. I wonder what sort of game world options it will have? Bigger CPUs mean you can do more stuff, after all.

[ThommoHawk]

Thanks for that Iifrit Tambuur-San, now that I've read it, I'll read it again ... Only comments I have atm is hmm,
1) seems Rebirth is not ready for release anytime soon just yet ...
So ... Saying once again ...i'm gonna get back to playin all my other fine X Universe Games. I have started out on TC Poisoned Paranid for the first time ever and ... great stuff ... got a great ship!
2) does this mean the screeshot of the week remains in limbo for now?

[Barbarossa66]

.....

Hmm. I think this could be improved. I think it was a bit weird that ships could have 5% shields and not take damage.

So how about a system like this:
Around 80%+ shields are perfect. No damage at all.
Around 40-80% minor damage is taken. Scratches, light damage, etc. Nothing major, but you are getting shot and it does hurt.
Around 15-40% the armor starts taking full damage. If a component has no armor then shields will still protect them a little.
Around <15% the shields only protect life support, core hull and engines. Components are sacrificed to keep the most important systems working.

This also helps out capital ship combat. So that even if a big ship kills a little ship, it takes some damage, and eventually needs repair. That sort of thing.

I can tell you that it is very helpful to have a Quad-Core-CPU. Doesn’t matter if it is a Core I, i7 or the previous one, as long as it is a CPU with four real Cores.

Hell yes. It's about time that games caught up with the times. I wonder what sort of game world options it will have? Bigger CPUs mean you can do more stuff, after all.

I really like this idea. Star Wars Galaxies used a similar system for the first year of its existence and I loved it. They eventually changed it for a similar but less complex damage mitigation system. I think if this is done right it could make for interesting situations and a new 'think' aspect to combat.

The statement from Bernd stating that there will be no more ammunition based guns bothers me a bit. The energy bolt chaingun, mass drivers, and M/AM launchers were some of my favorite weapons and the required ammo space (especially for the gauss cannon, though somewhat dependant on the ship) forced you to make a sacrifice in some other area. I was really hoping that they wouldn't use a shortcut to get around the ammo supply problem in X. The only problem I ever had with ammo was that it was rather difficult and sometimes hairy to resupply ships that were on duty. I tended to solve this by always assigning patrol ships to a larger vessel that I would occasionally manually dock at an equipment dock. I'd much rather they add a system for automation of this though. Hopefully I'm missing something or it just hasn't been talked about yet.

[Shaevar]

The statement from Bernd stating that there will be no more ammunition based guns bothers me a bit. The energy bolt chaingun, mass drivers, and M/AM launchers were some of my favorite weapons and the required ammo space (especially for the gauss cannon, though somewhat dependant on the ship) forced you to make a sacrifice in some other area. I was really hoping that they wouldn't use a shortcut to get around the ammo supply problem in X. The only problem I ever had with ammo was that it was rather difficult and sometimes hairy to resupply ships that were on duty.

From what I understood, missiles might play a bigger role this time around. There was, I think, mention of a drone whose purpose would be to supply your ship with missiles. And since combat (especially against capitals, with different point of interests to target) seems more varied, hopefully those missiles will be more useful and varied too.

Since we are talking about combat, I liked how easy he said it would be to switch primary weapons during combat. Might makes fights more engaging and immersives.

[Lazerius]

And a year later we get some good info!

Yay!

Looking forward to September 2013.

But yes I see Bernd is looking for an end too. Also it seems like there is a TON of things in Rebirth. It's gotta be a lot to program.

Also I felt a huge box being formed on Egosoft with a lot of the stuff being put in the game... I mean, a game feature being dictated by a publisher.... that's scary for an X game, also how EA probably kills most games.

I say let the developers and the people with real passion on the game say what features are there, NOT the publisher who is only concerned with money.

Sorry for the rant. But I needed to vent a bit...

oh and, yes thanks for the post! I have transcribed many many recordings before and know that's a ton of work!

Out of interest, which games have EA, as a publisher, not a developer, killed recently?

Hellgate London, they forced it out long before it was ready. There were many tilesets that weren't released because they were unfinished, which lead to the 'same ole levels" complaints that the game constantly got. Several of the classes were broken, and balance was far from close to each other. I played this game as my fall back game (From WoW at the time), and was subbed until the day the multiplayer servers went down.

Warhammer Online. They forced it out before it was ready, and forcing them to cut some of the major features, making only 1 major city for each faction (was supposed to be 3). Classes were far from any resemblance of balance. This game was far from ready for release, even as polished as much of the game was.

SWTOR: As soon as the game was done, the Lead designer, along with seeral other higher ups, left the company, as they couldn't work under EA's whip. Notice it's already on the path to go free to play. This one had a massive budget, and several pushbacks on release schedule, so hard to blame EA really on this 1, but when your main Devs leave their very cushy job in charge of a AAA blockbuster MMO, that says a lot.

I'm sure I could keep going, but this thread is not the place for it. Feel free to PM me if you want to discuss this further, or let me know if you want to start a discussion in off topic about it.

[LTerSlash]

So X-Rebirth will not run on a Single Core CPU, and its not like (it will run but too slow, it will not run at all), i think it will be the first game with this requeriment.

[Bill Bones]

So, let's summarize the "one ship" thing...

- the Skunk will be able to multiply its power by ten or fifty (how realistic!)
- this will happen only through the plot in a linear way (freedom is so overstated...)
- the plot will act as a tutorial, so you will have to do it again each time you replay the game (the whole point in having a massive universe is to be to the same places and do the same things over and over again)

So far we don't know wether will be a point to keep playing the game after the plot/tutorial, or why should we replay it just to do the same things with the same ship in the same order before actually being allowed to play.

I guess that they really, really mean that Rebirth it's not going to be like the X-series any more. Ayway they are talking about a game that can't interest me.

(On second thought, it could be worst... I guess the player at least will be allowed to freely roam betweeen chapters in the plot and go back to it only when he needs to get a bigger can opener for the almighty Skunk...)

[supahfly]

Since some of the proofreaders told me that it will be impossible to do a short summary of the interview I'd still like to humbly try it (I'll put only those parts that sounded interesting). So, the key points are:

1. Co-pilot (Yisha) is an adopted by teladi child mentioned in the AP (no idea about that since I personally never got to play it);

2. Some kind of a big UI revamp is mentioned (but very vaguely and kinda contradictory). For example there will be no starmap as we used to have and no virtual screens whatsoever ("we integrated everything in the cockpit") but some stats and info can be seen "in the menus". Not sure what that means and what to make of it. Text size for menus isn't going to be changeable (I really hope it will adapt to the resolution itself though!);

3. The player ship at the end of tutorial/plot will be 10 to 50 times more powerful than at the beginning (it comes down to having better weapons, shields, hull and drones);

4. You will be able to receive ammunition in combat with the help of supply drones. Also only missiles will consume ammo;

5. There are discounts (Bernd heavily suggest that "flying over the stations" is an important way to unlock some kind of discounts) but no penalties for buying stuff;

6. GTA-like system of cop cooldowns. Pretty weird idea if you ask me;

7. Destroying large(st?) capships will be only possible with the help of your capships. Good idea not to let your frigate be able to do it, I think;

8. No mention of release date ("I really hope it will be finished soon");

9. There are plans for DLC's and Rebirth 2;

10. Quad-core is almost a must for the game.

Some stuff I just wasn't able to understand frankly speaking so left it out.

What do you think is it all the new info or were there some pieces I missed?

edit: damn, ninja'ed by Bill! :D

[Rabiator der II.]

The statement from Bernd stating that there will be no more ammunition based guns bothers me a bit. The energy bolt chaingun, mass drivers, and M/AM launchers were some of my favorite weapons and the required ammo space (especially for the gauss cannon, though somewhat dependant on the ship) forced you to make a sacrifice in some other area. I was really hoping that they wouldn't use a shortcut to get around the ammo supply problem in X. The only problem I ever had with ammo was that it was rather difficult and sometimes hairy to resupply ships that were on duty. I tended to solve this by always assigning patrol ships to a larger vessel that I would occasionally manually dock at an equipment dock. I'd much rather they add a system for automation of this though. Hopefully I'm missing something or it just hasn't been talked about yet.

Yes, there seems to be a bit of dumbing down here.

IIRC X2 and Reunion still had the requirement to dock at bases to swap out guns. TC dropped that, now you can swap them in mid-flight. And Rebirth will drop even the cargo space and ammo requirements.

I think the old ways as in Reunion made more sense. At least for fighters. For capships who cannot dock in many places, I think it is a reasonable compromise if the crew can swap the guns in space. But it should take half a minute or so for unmounting the old gun and mounting the new.

Re: cargo space
In general, I think it makes sense if guns that are mounted in a turret or on the hull don't take up cargo space. But when unmounted they should show up as cargo and require space.

[gorkomatic]

9. There are plans for DLC's and Rebirth 2;

That bit ("plans for DLC", not Rebirth2 ) is scary, after seeing what happened to DeepSilver-published Risen 2.

I wonder if that's what caused the delay...
"Nice game you've got there. Now we want you to hack some DLC-sized bits off it".