The most important thing for you in an X game

[SirNukes]

Clean visual feedback is the top of my list. I had a lot of trouble getting into Rebirth due to all of the visual clutter making it bothersome to figure out what was going on. Things to avoid include small fonts, low contrast (light blue text on dark blue background or similar), excessive sun glare, cockpit models blocking a huge portion of the screen, menus not scaling with the screen size, not enough bracketing of objects, etc. These problems were all run into when trying out v4 of Rebirth, so I don't have much trust in them getting fixed by patches, and would like X4 to have high quality visual feedback at release.

Secondary to that would be good audio feedback. Bring back Betty announcing targeted ship names, and giving descriptions with a little lore when I ask for it.

[26072013]

Aside from Linux support the most important thing for me in X4 will be the User Interface.

I love the idea of the X games, a fully simulated singleplayer universe - awesome, but the UI in X3 broke me. At some point I quit the game and never started it again. (well, I did start again several times a few months and years later, but I never stayed because it was impossible to control the game without being a masochist).

[KRM398]

in Rebirth I was TOLD to build a station. I was TOLD what kind it was going to be and through that, what it would cost me. I was TOLD to keep the copilot, no matter what, but in reality she could have gone back and it wouldn't have hurt the game a bit, since she basically did NOTHING, not even defend the ship when you were out.

You had no options in Rebirth, they laid out a game story and you were forced to follow it. Not my idea of a game. I really would have dropped her off and left, but that wasn't allowed. If she stayed then she needed to work, run defenses or fire weapons or pilot the ship while I fired weapons, but NOOO. The whole one ship fits all thing bit too, one ship does not fit all, sorry, like the Easter Bunny that's BS.

So more decisions for me to make and let me make them. If I want I'll mine for days and make money to buy weapons to load a fleet to destroy a station...or not...but don't lay out a single storyline that must be followed, that's 70's stuff and it's not the 70's anymore, games are running 40+ gig, and have multiple possible endings, THATS a AAA game no, lets see if they can bring one out that is equal to others already on the market.

[spankahontis]

Pancakes!

[rulerofallcheese]

Doing something like making the player do quicktime events to either boost or hurt their chances would go a long way in giving the player a sense of immersion.

https://i.imgur.com/EZ3giKy.jpg

NOPE NOPE NOPE

Quicktime events were the worst things to happen to gaming before microtransactions became a thing.

[Rei Ayanami]

ships should not pop up out of nowhere on predetermined spawnpoints, but be built at a shipyard.

Then, your most important thing in X games is not in X games... hmm...
Why do you play ?

I'm not sure what you mean or what you want to tell me.
In X:Rebirth many ships don't get constructed/spawned at the shipyards but pop up out of nowhere, which is a thing i don't like and hope will get changed in X4.

Or do you mean that no X game had ships being constructed at shipyards? If that's the case, that's wrong. In X-Tension for example, if i remember correctly, pretty much all ships were constructed at shipyards and had to fly to their target sectors.

[Nanook]

... In X-Tension for example, if i remember correctly, pretty much all ships were constructed at shipyards and had to fly to their target sectors.

And in X2, as well. For example, blowing up a pirate base eliminated most pirates in that area until the pirate base respawned. Then there's the Xenon, who all came from shipyards in Xenon sectors and migrated to Xenon sectors with no shipyards. And finally, all the race ships were generated at shipyards and flew to their designated stations or patrol areas. Mission-related ships were the only exceptions.

Perhaps Kitty never played those older games.

[mr.WHO]

Ahh Xenon migration alley in X2 was cool. I wish we would have Xenon migration and Xenon invasions in X4.

[Cabrelbeuk]

Management and automation, with limitless of progression. Starting from nothing to an empire.

Indeed the IA does matter as it is solo game. Already knowing that diplomacy will not be included in this opus, but still hoping that relations between factions will be a bit dynamic.

Since factions are not race related, still hoping for being able to create your own faction (you can settle this when you create your own shipyard) and yes, bring the diplomatic dimension and dynamic relations to X games.

But well, once your the last remaining in the galaxy, no need to say you are a faction


Talking about it, do we got any information about station destructibility ?
Was an aberration in Rebirth i never really understood.

[Crimsonraziel]

Management and automation, with limitless of progression. Starting from nothing to an empire.

Indeed the IA does matter as it is solo game. Already knowing that diplomacy will not be included in this opus, but still hoping that relations between factions will be a bit dynamic.

Since factions are not race related, still hoping for being able to create your own faction (you can settle this when you create your own shipyard) and yes, bring the diplomatic dimension and dynamic relations to X games.

But well, once your the last remaining in the galaxy, no need to say you are a faction


Talking about it, do we got any information about station destructibility ?
Was an aberration in Rebirth i never really understood.

You are your own faction right from the start.
NPC stations kann be destroyed completely according to Bernd.

[Cabrelbeuk]

You are your own faction right from the start.
NPC stations kann be destroyed completely according to Bernd.

Thanks a lot.

You are your own faction but you can not conquer sector/system (not confirmed but was mentioned in video) sooo...
Question is : is any faction able to conquer another sector ?

[Crimsonraziel]

You are your own faction right from the start.
NPC stations kann be destroyed completely according to Bernd.

Thanks a lot.

You are your own faction but you can not conquer sector/system (not confirmed but was mentioned in video) sooo...
Question is : is any faction able to conquer another sector ?

Again, according to Bernd, factions (including you) can conquer sectors, but as of now you can't "declare" any sector your own. NPC factions can.
He said, it's possible to add this for the player too, but he doesn't want to promise anything that is not in yet.

[ubuntufreakdragon]

First AI: it should at least get it's job done, in XR there were many AI bugs I had to fix on my own before my fix were integrated into the main game(maybe I should ask Egosoft to be mentioned in the credits) e.g. the tradeships not buying the most needed ware but the most unneeded, trade ships of warehouse not selling above average price, mining ship moving to resource field not big enough to sufficiently supply their station because it was 1cm closer than the big one. The player need some command for long range logistics and one for short range supply. I not even mention the combat AI.

UI: First point here is scalability: Handling 1000ships should be as easy as handling 10, this means first no forced micromanagement, most decisions are the same as the previous ones so allow to store presets for all kind of settings, crew(if present) should automatically hire...
Second shortcuts, e.g. skip dialogue, page up/down for max/min amount...
Third no loss of progress do to a needed rapid reaction, e.g. a pirate spawning and firing at you while buing a new ship. (a solution would be a button to hide a menus and later restore them)

Economy: Player should be able to become independent of NPC factions, shipyard, equipment...
Economy should be really dynamic not bound by stations/JOB lists as in XR or older.
Especially demand must be able to grow and for each ware independent other wares, this leads to XR's sink problem were all wares finally ended into a npc shipyard being consumed in the same ration together.
I had some ideas for this e.g. a life-support that is still running while the primary production is not, consuming food and so on outputing some credits(with loss e.g.1/4 of the wares value)

Combat: ships AI should know the role of a ship in the fleet without this there wont be a good ai possible.

And borons of cause
drown the split

Edit:

I've got bad news for you!

I know but still I want Egosoft to know that I'm unhappy without them.

[Crimsonraziel]

And borons of cause

I've got bad news for you!

[apogee]

I've never played rebirth, but I believe you were stuck in only one ship, that would be a major problem if x4 did the same.

please no real world physics flight model, I hate trying to fly a shopping trolley in 3d.

cockpits should be optional.

[HaradaTaro]

Fly everything is to me the most important fact of an X serie Game.

And I hope to see somekind of ship builder allowing player to design their own model and share it on the workshop.

[gbjbaanb]

I've never played rebirth, but I believe you were stuck in only one ship, that would be a major problem if x4 did the same.

please no real world physics flight model, I hate trying to fly a shopping trolley in 3d.

cockpits should be optional.

I agree that cockpits should be optional too - when I played, the cockpit always got in the way of immersion, but then I was playing a game based around the "out there" rather than pretending to be actually flying a spaceship.

[patient zero]

Egosoft seems to already be doing everything I hoped for. If they can eliminate all the video stuttering & freezing, I probably won't have any complaints with x4.

[Antaran]

Just one thing really currently, available on gog.com - Well minimum, free of 3rd party clients like steam.

[Tolmos]

For me, it's the AI and the ability to fly my own capitals.


Flying my own capitals is not for fun, but rather for utility. I tried many times to get interested in X-Rebirth, but every time I ended up quitting after I got to the point that I owned a large ship of my own. Once you order a ship to move from point A to point B, and time is of the essence, it can become VERY frustrating to watch that ship do a little wiggle-dance as it tries to figure out how to navigate around some tiny little rock in its path.

In X3 and below, this was handled by simply docking with the ship, taking control yourself, and flying past the rock. If you needed to make a quick delivery of massive amounts of goods to somewhere, flying the capital yourself got the job done quickly.

And no, jumpdrives don't help, because most of the issues are not caused by inter-sector travel; it's always intra-sector asteroids that cause the most time loss.


A second thing for me, that ultimately caused me to put down X3:AP after years of playing, is the flight AI of fighters. I am a huge fan of carrier-style gameplay. 1 giant carrier, lots of fights and some small transports, and off I go. There is nothing more frustrating than spending a ton of time and effort to build up the money necessary to get a fighter, only to watch that fighter blow up against the side of your own ship (or an asteroid). Some big space battle takes place, and at the end of the battle you check the combat log to see how many fighters you lost, only to realize the only losses you incurred were to crappy flying.

Besides those 2 things, the X games have always been pretty perfect as they are to me. I don't need a lot more than that.