RPS article

[DaddyMonster]

Funny how the interviewer damned the game for the dialogue and voice acting whereas most people are far more concerned with the UI & menus - economy & trading and the like.

[SupraRZ]

Funny how the interviewer damned the game for the dialogue and voice acting whereas most people are far more concerned with the UI & menus - economy & trading and the like.

I think the fan base at least,has got used to the old X dialogue and static characters...so XR is sort of an improvement in that department.....don't laugh ...

The ui however is debatable whether an improvement...it needs that rts interface that was talked about by Bernd pre release ...

[YorrickVander]

And you lot wonder why Bernd keeps quiet? .
LET THE STONNING COMMENCE!!!...
.

I'd imagine the last stonings he got up to May's post has kept him hospitalised for some time... Buy the man a tinfoil crash helmet at once.

[Falcrack]

Work on X Rebirth began way back in 2007, before the release of the major X3 expansions Terran Conflict and Albion Prelude. It was originally conceived as an entirely separate game from the X series, with a new setting, different mechanics, and powered by a fresh graphics engine. “But then throughout the development we figured it would have been stupid to just give up the fiction, the background that we developed over so many years,” Lehahn explains. “The storyline, the books written about it, the factions, which gives us a lot of meat to work with. Therefore we let the game play in the same universe. In retrospect that was maybe a mistake."

I don't think that going with the lore from the previous X games was what most folks were upset about. It wasn't the game universe fiction, but rather gameplay decisions that most folk are complaining about. Even voice acting and dialogue, widely criticized, could have been much better while still using the same X universe lore and background.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

IMO the biggest mistake Egosoft made was with not adequately controlling user expectations about what the game was going to be like and the probability of certain changes being done in response to feedback.

From my perspective, they did ok on what information they did release - what has been delivered is exactly what I expected on the most part (software quality aside). But it is plainly obvious that many users either (a) did not understand what Egosoft's intent was OR (b) knowingly bought it with the impression they could force Egosoft into changing the game to what they wanted it to be rather than accepting Egosoft's vision for the product.

I get the feeling that even if it was not an X-lore game the above would have still applied.

[Thufar]

Rodger,
I totally agree with your last post, with one exception...
"OR" should have been "AND".
Regards,
Thu

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

Roger,
I totally agree with your last post, with one exception...
"OR" should have been "AND".
Regards,
Thu

Perhaps, but not from my perspective - the latter group are presumed to understand Egosoft's intent (albeit a small group perhaps).

[Nanook]

IMO the biggest mistake Egosoft made was with not adequately controlling user expectations about what the game was going to be like and the probability of certain changes being done in response to feedback....

And IMO, their biggest mistake was thinking their fan base wanted a totally different gaming experience. A few did, most didn't. I personally liked the freedom the player had in all the previous games. That freedom is severly limited in Rebirth in comparison. Way too many restrictions, that basically start with the one-playership constraint, not to mention limited, build only where we say, factory placements, etc.

Thing is, their previous style of gameplay was starting to rapidly gain more and more fans as a result of putting it on Steam. I can only think that Bernd and company got tired of producing that style of game, and went for something different despite the apparently large increase in sales of TC and AP.** Oh, well.

(**Judging from the large increase in new users on the forums after the Steam releases of the older games.)

[ragamer]

Sigh... Came in looking for the 2.20RC2B notes and I made the mistake of reading this "interview".

It's true that's a selection of Bernd quotes made by some1 that doesn't like the game which immediatly makes me doubt about a lot of things as even using 100% accurate quotes, cut at the right moment and reordered appropiately may twist the meaning of a lot of them... Context matters but...

...I'm going to assume ES, in principle, agrees with such "interview", well...

...What the point in it? Why the World has to listen to the same arguments that inflamated the Community months back? Why the same subjective arguments... "Testing?" (ie lack of), "Bugs?" (ie missing sections of code), "Not X4" (Why to stamp an "X" at all then?), "Adding substantial lore to a game a mistake?!?!?" (Stamping the "X" was done before or after such "realization"?).

I really don't get it... What's the point into luring the attention to something you can't change without a time machine, to reopen old wounds... All sounds like, I don't know, as if the deep dive XR activity is suffering triggered a kind of "Lets bring the focus on us... BY ANY MEANS POSSIBLE" attitude.

It's very simple in my eyes... What XR has kept is what you have now (mean it active players, modders, testers, whatever)... Accept it, and keep on looking ahead, prepare a "Gold version" relaunch, and then start warning your playerbase about the features the next tittle will have (Some ppl, even on this very same thread, still thinks that on this days we are going to get XR 5.0 for free... It's not viable, the longer you let this stone roll the harder the fall, trace the line at some point)...

...Reading "justifications" of past mistakes, perceiving exhaustion, repeating "safe mantras" that didn't work months back, etc... Doesn't help the future of this game and are totally unnecesary after all this months of good work, the ones paying attention to the game know what ES did, the "new ones" attracted by this interview are like wasps retaliating back after some1 was fool enough to kick their nest, too angry to even check what has changed... Let the past rest.

[birdtable]

At least a lot of players who tried rebirth were indirectly introduced to the vastly superior Terran Conflict / Albion Prelude.

[Darrosquall]

Funny how the interviewer damned the game for the dialogue and voice acting whereas most people are far more concerned with the UI & menus - economy & trading and the like.

this is what I'm saying from the day1. This is why I bashed the reviewer, not only for the low scores, but because who wrote the articles focused on marginal things like voice acting and stuff like that.

Who wrote about X:Rebirth didn't play X3 or X2, they never goes deep in economy, trading, "thinking". They saw ugly models in station, bad graphics, bad voice acting and judged X:Rebirth for that.

[Slashman]

Funny how the interviewer damned the game for the dialogue and voice acting whereas most people are far more concerned with the UI & menus - economy & trading and the like.

this is what I'm saying from the day1. This is why I bashed the reviewer, not only for the low scores, but because who wrote the articles focused on marginal things like voice acting and stuff like that.

Who wrote about X:Rebirth didn't play X3 or X2, they never goes deep in economy, trading, "thinking". They saw ugly models in station, bad graphics, bad voice acting and judged X:Rebirth for that.

Except if you read the actual linked review, it DOESN'T just dwell on voice acting.

"The trading system is agonisingly slow and makes no sense, while seeking out crew-members manually and individually is equally tedious. Not being able to pilot other ships, or even look freely around your own ship, makes this enormous, open ended game feel claustrophobic and restrictive. And the bugs are huge rampaging Xenomorphs that will make your chest burst in sheer frustration."

And considering that this guy gave the game a higher score than the other reviews which stuck to game mechanics, bugs and features, it tends to look even worse for Egosoft.

[wwdragon]

Now that depends on what perspective you take regarding his comment.

If you take the position that highways are slower because you can't insta-jump from one zone to another, I see where you can draw your conclusion.

However, within Rebirth, traveling in highways is much faster than not. Certainly, traffic is focused at the highways (that traffic which uses them), and for missions such as neighborhood watch. It would be painfully long to travel between zones without highways.

Regards,
Thu

I agree.
I like the new highways.

[Nikola515]

And IMO, their biggest mistake was thinking their fan base wanted a totally different gaming experience. A few did, most didn't.

+1

[MegaJohnny]

And IMO, their biggest mistake was thinking their fan base wanted a totally different gaming experience.

My problem with this is that Bernd refuses to admit the new experience is bad. Goofing up a game's design? That's an honest mistake. Thinking the game's design is flawless six months after release? That almost has to be willful ignorance.

[werewolves?]

Pretty understandable, can't imagine many devs apart from Vogel wanting to make the exact same game over and over again for a niche fanbase for the rest of their lives.

Also, apart from the one ship I think the differences between Rebirth and X3 etc are overstated.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Rebirth is rather good now but by giving us [one of] the best combat capitals in the plot with minimal effort and little reason to use multiple combat capitals, a good good trading capital and by encorraging easy capturing of further capitals for prestige or selling, much of the fun and challenge from progression is lost.

For me, Rebirth needs more of a reason to play beyond bug-testing station construction and trading. It needs more more combat challenge and it needs less I-win button ships gifted to the player. E.g. an ability to repair M ships, an M ship in plot instead of Rahanas, the boarding guidance alongside 'Taranis' boarding and Taranis either swapped for a carrier or retained by HOA after the boarding Op.

[Ormac]

Moreover, he desired the trading in Rebirth to be more realistic, getting rid of what he saw as “cheats” in previous games such as cargo compression technology enabling players to fit more goods in their ships, and time-acceleration which made the game run faster.

So is it this more realistic view part of the reason that the Skunk cannot be customised beyond what shields that fit into the universal shield slot and the engines being entirely replaced in the engine cowling??

So for their sandbox Egosoft decided to define the entire internal capacity of the Skunk for the benefit of the player rather than leave a sufficient portion of that the player through pre-fab modules or some other 'realistic' means to adjust the Skunk to their play style or current objective and later remove them if the player wants.

• Able to carry more Marines by 5 or 10
  An extra drone pod
  A ware specific compartment (bulk|liquid|container|energy)
  Extra missile launcher
  A turret

Eg Egosoft starts with defined capacity for 15 Marines + Inventory Cargo + Drones + Missiles in the internal capacity of the Skunk and there is some extra undefined internal space that the player can specify how its utilised and if the player want to utilise more than one of the same pre-fab module then they should be able to.

I understand not wanting to invent something like SETA if there is no longer a need technically to do so through improvements in hardware.

Cargo-Compression which might be advanced enough science to be considered magic (we are some 1000 years from present day) within X-Trilogy gave players a level of customisation through a finite number of them being applicable. So was it the cargo compression that is the "cheat" or was it the ST->XL->L->M->S ware hierarchy?

-- Ormac

[Observe]

Also, apart from the one ship I think the differences between Rebirth and X3 etc are overstated.

Single player ship may soon no longer be a limitation.

[werewolves?]

Also, apart from the one ship I think the differences between Rebirth and X3 etc are overstated.

Single player ship may soon no longer be a limitation.

Haha awesome, you've been on fire with the mods, keep it up _b