Sadly, the game is getting a huge undeserved (!) shitstorm

[Veeshan]

Aw that's sad. Hoped for better this time. Perhaps I'll preorder some dlc, try to counteract it a bit.

[Dumdidum]

I think it is valid for many,

I myself got 7 ctd's so far into about 4 hours of gameplay and for some reason my ui text is constantly disappearing. I probably relogged about 25 times in the first 4 hours to fix it.

Definitely not playable at the moment. Writing a negative review myself

That doesn't mean I stop. I enjoyed every single X game before this and when it is fixed I will enjoy this one too, but Egosoft should be ashamed to deliver a buggy game like this, it is disrespectful to its loyal fans

[ArcherVII]

the shitstorm is absolutely deserved.

• bad performance (16 -26 fps with 1080... no words Star Citizen runs way better)
• bad graphics
• bad & unintuitive controls
• worse tutorials
• boring gameplay

X4 is a punch in the face into every gamer. Just like Fallout 76.

[SteveMill]

Not everything is undeserved, there are some bugs (especially right at the beginning!) that make people give up really fast.
Like clipping through the landing pad - basically every new player trying to figure out how to land is going to experience this.
Or the buggy tutorials in a never ending loop or just breaking or finishing too early.

That makes them basically give up before the 2 hours refund policy runs out as soon as they have to tackle the UI. For me it is not understandable how this wasn't on priority #1(!) for the devs, however I also don't know what was in it's place . It basically makes them missing out an amazing game.

It is a real shame.
Still there are also a lot of undeserved comments, mostly whining about tiny "it's not like I want it to be" problems. It's a shame. The game is stunning.

When a company releases a game with obvious bugs like the landing pad clipping, on a platform with a 2 hour return policy then they are basically on their knees begging for premature bad reviews.

I had that happen once but the rest of the game has been great. When I’ve got a few dozen more hours under the belt i will be writing a review. At the moment it looks like it’ll be pretty positive.

[DaMuncha]

The only bugs I've seen so far are UI/Menu bugs

[shawnburton]

Some of those reviews are so transparent that I believe most people of even a slightly above average intelligence will see through them. The X Universe isn't for everyone, but I wish people would review with context. To say that X4 has bad graphics, or a bad control setup, or lots of bugs is either lies or ignorance.

I gave X4 a 10 on Metacritic. Here's my writeup:

This game easily deserves a 10. You don't score a game in this category by how "complete" it is on day 1. Yes, of course they're going to tweak and expand.. it's a complex universe with the most complex economy and mechanics of any game short of a flight simulator. Egosoft will build upon this foundation, and the foundation gets a 10. What they build upon it is just a bonus in my opinion. I logged in and I was easily and quickly able to map my Warthog HOTAS to a great ship control setup (to include maps and dialogs). My FPS hovered between 80 and 100 with ultra settings and I experienced no crashes in 10 hours of play. I had a blast flying around and learning my new ship. The tutorial was text based, but that's ok.. spend your time on universe mechanics devs, not on complex voice acted tutorials. When I landed back in the station I was given color coded steering queues in my HUD. When I was setting down I watched an aircrewman guide me in with real US Airforce hand signals, then salute on touchdown. WOW! The mechanics and feel are similar to X3.. but this is what I always wished X3 could be. The effort and attention to detail given to X4 really makes up for the X:Rebirth launch... I no longer question the capabilities of this dev team. Amazing work!

[mr.WHO]

My bugs so far:
- glitching trough the station model in space - was commong in X-Rebirth, but here it hapened after 3 hours of play - managed to get free with abusing travel drive
- stuck in elevator - managet to ge free with bunnyhopping while moving the elavator up and down several times.
- NPC and GUI not rendering parts - I think this is due to memory leaks and my GPU beign 2Gb, so it's not game fault.



Considering I'm below minimum requirements I think the game runs well and (relatively) stable.
I think the truth will prevail the drama - steam is now mostly positive at 71%.
I think that with several patches the game will be top quality.

[Len5]

It's very likely that in the first couple of hours after release the most reviews on steam are negative (it wasn't even that, it was about 50-50), because that's the refund time frame.
And you know not to take a review seriously when they say that it's the buggiest game ever made or they played for 10 min and asked for a refund because it's a pos. (And I'm not even making this up as an example, they're actual reviews.)
After a few weeks and major bug fixes, like every single dev has to do, reviews will be more serious ones.

[flightschooldropout]

I got pretty pissed about the clipping through the landing dock. took a deep breath. Un plugged the joy stick and went back to mouse and keyboard. I can manually dock now

[dreamer2008]

@Egosoft @Steam please dont accept any undeserved refund. Its not correct.

It may be underserved, but this only invites a bigger shitstorm. Bethesda did this with Fallout 76 and it was a bad idea. And to be honest not everyone is forced to like it, if people find reasons to get a refund, no matter what, they should get it. 50 euro is not cheap.

[CommanderTM]

Just a friendly reminder... Bugs can and probably will be patched. Bad game mechanics are near impossible to fix. For what i have seen on videos of this game, the bugs are the games biggest issue and the foundation is solid (yeah, i saw what i did here). It will only get better. Like someone else already mentioned, this is a small team making a very complex game. Bugs are almost given at release.

[adeine]

It's very likely that in the first couple of hours after release the most reviews on steam are negative (it wasn't even that, it was about 50-50), because that's the refund time frame.
And you know not to take a review seriously when they say that it's the buggiest game ever made or they played for 10 min and asked for a refund because it's a pos. (And I'm not even making this up as an example, they're actual reviews.)
After a few weeks and major bug fixes, like every single dev has to do, reviews will be more serious ones.

Hopefully the early reviews won't cut into long term success if the game is actually good.

It does seem like the release was more rushed than it should have been; a lot of the bugs I've encountered are baffling as to how they made it through testing and potentially game breaking but at the end of the day, fixable. Not exactly unexpected with the launch of an X game and not the kind of thing that ruins the game when all is said and done.

The real test is to see if the underlying game and universe simulation is any good, and it's way, way too early to tell. That's the kind of thing that can't easily be rectified by a patch and what ultimately makes or breaks this as an X game worthy of its title.

[ero_sk]

While I kind of understand why someone may be unhappy with negative reviews of the game they like, I don't understand the purpose of this thread. Is it not "a bit" contradictory that for some people negative reviews are a problem, wile the positive ones aren't? Both types of reviews were out there few hours after the release! For an X-series game, few hours is barely an introduction to the game. How can people reviews this game so quickly- what about empire building, fleet management etc?

[desiriel]

I have been quite critic of Ego for the well known misadventures of the past but X4 is already another piece of cake, even with its predictable shortcomings and glitches.
Nonetheless those shortcomings, glitches and optimization problems are there and it's legitimate (and even due) to report them and if someone is not able to play the game he/she has the right to ask for a refund of it.
That's not my case and I think X4 is a good product.
Anyway I agree that a "shitstorm" is completely undeserved and a sign of ever growing immaturity. It was for Rebirth, not for this X4.
I'm a bit sad too.

[ArcherVII]

Some of those reviews are so transparent that I believe most people of even a slightly above average intelligence will see through them.

Says the fanboy/white knight.

To say that X4 has bad graphics [..] is either lies or ignorance.

Jup with textures back to 2009 / 2010.

[Kadatherion]

It's the result of three concurrent things: the game releasing with some rough edges (technical especially, which comes from Ego being a smaller developer and thus being unable to thoroughly test the game on a large sample of different setups, all the troubles with Vulkan errors or HOTAS support are a good example of this); the game still inheriting some of Rebirth's design choices and mechanics many of us are not fond of (even if they are indeed implemented way better this time); the steep initial learning curve.

The steep learning curve alone can make the game feel "unplayable" to many kids. Pair this with some technical issues - albeit honestly minor when compared to past launches - and an arguably very unfriendly default keymapping, and you get the scenario you are seeing. The cherry on top is things like the hex map or the station scanning and similar mechanics even many old X veterans have not yet warmed up to, so it's hard to build an equally stronger "pro" voice even from the community who knows what's talking about.

TBH my reception is a bit lukewarm too. While I do definitely recognize a framework that's solid and will surely let the game grow into what I want - via patches, expansions and mods - something that Rebirth honestly never was, still there are a plethora of little things that annoy the hell out of me. Some of which are really amateurish oversights: like AA (both FXAA and MSAA) applying to part of the UI as well, like the text on the map, which makes it fuzzy, for a game like this that's 50% browsing through spreadsheets and ordering things via the map it's going to get annoying in the long run.

If this was a simpler game when you get to have fun going pew pew 5 minutes in, reviews on Steam would be overall way more positive. But the whole first day at least in X games has always been spent on learning the ropes, the controls and the UI, which can't be much fun, and all that's left for the first impressions are the little bugs or annoyances. The numbers will grow to give a more realistic representation of the state of the game in the next few days, but for now the rocky start was pretty much unavoidable.

BTW: Just checked and from yesterday we have already got up to 72% positive, out of the discouraging "mixed" rating and into the "mostly positive" one. Which seems to confirm my (evidently late ) prediction. Dust is going to settle quickly, let's hope the game still holds up in its later stages, when the more complex economic and empire managing mechanics really kick in.

[Denaut]

I am one of those people that left a negative review after about an hour and a half. I would have given the game longer, but I wanted the opportunity for a refund. Keep in mind that I have hundreds of hours in X3 and X:R, so I am not unfamiliar with how X games work. I even like X:R a lot more than most people do because in it I saw them heading in the right direction if they could just execute on their concepts better.

I started off by running through the first set of tutorials. Doing this a few things jumped out to me. First was how poor the controls felt. I tried various combinations of keyboard, mouse, and controller. Nothing feels intuitive or smooth, especially when you are transitioning between modes, combat, or just flying around. After playing with settings for a while I ended up settling on using the controller for most flying, but the keyboard/mouse for combat (more on that later). Neither feel great, but that worked the best for me. This really pulls me out of the game since I am constantly thinking about these devices and can never enter any kind of flow state. The reason the for the awful controls doesn't seem to be entirely due to the controls themselves, but is also the result of other kinds of design decisions.

One is the removal of context menus on objects where you can quickly perform an intended action. The new docking exemplifies this.
In XR you just point at the platform or node you want, select dock, and a very short animation later you are docked inside. In X4 you have to select the ship or station itself, open the comm menu to request permission to dock, then follow the running lights to the docking platform or bay somewhere else on the model, then have to line your ship up exactly correctly in 3 degrees of freedom over the landing pad, and then slowly lower yourself into the docking pad. At this point about 10% of the time I clip through the geometry and get stuck inside, requiring a reload.

For the life of me I can't figure out why they changed it to this. If my intention is to dock somewhere it is because I am trying to accomplish a task and putting a repetitive mini-game between me and my goal is frustratingly pointless. The basically added the small talk mini-game to docking for no reason.

You also have to go into the menu way more than in XR. This might have been ok but it is rather obtrusive and tends to clear targets and/or commands that you had before opening it. I wish I had written more down but I can remember being frustrated many times coming out of the game menu and seeing that something I had set was now canceled.

Anyway, after getting through the tutorials my experience didn't improve. I spent about 30 minutes flying around to try and find a mission. I noticed the stations are much further apart than in XR, so probing stations for missions takes longer (even with the awkward design of travel mode) without actually adding any gameplay. The game felt like it was wasting my time. Flying around a while and through a couple of highways I saw what looked like mission icons on the map. I flew to the station and around it several times looking for the mission icons I saw on the map, and couldn't find them. I then did it again in station scan mode and still couldn't find them. I tried docking on the station, got pushed through the geometry, reloaded, docked, then looked for the missions from one of the NPCs. None of them had any dialogue options except to ask where the faction recruiment guy is, which no one knew (why have the option at all?

Finally I found that you could accept them through the map screen like 3 or 4 levels deep so I took one. It asked me to scan a station somewhere back in the first area so I headed back.

At this point I came across 2 Xenon scouts and decided to give combat a try. Not that the X games have ever really had good core combat, but this felt like an even more turn and lean on the fire button until the bullet sponge dies affair than usual. There isn't even any heat or energy management, it is literally point and click. I don't expect to be blown away by my first combat encounter, but in it I saw no hint as to how it would ever become more than what I was experiencing at that moment.

I hit the highway heading back, open my map, close it to find myself 90,000km away from my guidance way point... some sort of warping bug. I sighed, saved, and went to reload hoping I would warp back. But when I opened the menu I just found myself wondering why I was even bothering. The whole experience was nothing but negative. I was fighting against core things like UI, controls, and combat which were unlikely to change over the course of the game. I could see that even if I put in a lot of effort, all while not enjoying it, I would probably not get to a place where I was having fun because any accomplishments would be hollow ones.

In the past I might have continued out of stubbornness or sunk cost, but I'm old now and maybe I've just lost patience for poorly designed unfinished games. So I exited to desktop and gave the game a negative review.

[Gargog]

Please where is the best place to purchase this game? I have seen some of the latest video's on youtube and this looks to be an excellent game..

[Sentinel-Ghost]

Keep in mind that I have hundreds of hours in X3 and X:R, so I am not unfamiliar with how X games work.
awful controls

In X4 you have to select the ship or station itself, open the comm menu to request permission to dock, then follow the running lights to the docking platform [...]For the life of me I can't figure out why they changed it to this.

You also have to go into the menu way more than in XR. This might have been ok but it is rather obtrusive and tends to clear targets and/or commands that you had before opening it. I wish I had written more down but I can remember being frustrated many times coming out of the game menu and seeing that something I had set was now canceled.

Anyway, after getting through the tutorials my experience didn't improve. I spent about 30 minutes flying around to try and find a mission. I noticed the stations are much further apart than in XR

At this point I came across 2 Xenon scouts and decided to give combat a try. Not that the X games have ever really had good core combat, , it is literally point and click. I

I Respect your Opinion Denaut, BUT things like stations being further apart, manual docking and 'point & click' combat - these were ALL present in previous X titles. [Excluding Rebirth] Many of those things were also requested quite a few times by this community! I also get the impression that the problems with the menus is more down to them being "different" and needing to have patience and L2P than the menu design itself.

Bugs: Bugs and glitches were kinda a given with Egosoft, but unlike certain 'Triple AAA' publishers you can trust the Egosoft Devs to patch the game and polish it off to a shine - There is always (unfortunately) a buggy release followed by few months of critical patches.

So when I encountered CTD's, severe lag and issues that have generally prevented me form playing the game- I haven't raged on forums, I haven't posted angry reviews or asked for refunds, I've posted bug reports and prepared to wait for the inevitable 1.1 patch that should (hopefully) resolve a lot of the issues i'm facing.

I suspect you may kick yourself for so quickly refunding a year down the line when this games had the kinks worked out.

[lankspeed]

i didnt like X-Rebirth coz they removed the terminal and becoz the game was a mess.
When i started X4 it was exactly as X-Rebirth. Compared to the old X-series: the gameplay has change from click & go
to something completly different. You have to stay on the stick. and honestly in combat i prefered the old X2-3-TC/AP style.
The enemy ships are reduced to 1 pixel, there arent enough automated tasks and using an controller is a joke. there arent enough buttons on it.
The graphics..... TC/AP had 4K support but a ****** HUD on those resolutions. if they had spent some weeks devlopping on new HUD for AP, the reviews would have been A M A Z I N G

Requesting an high-end gfx card for high graphix and bad gameplay isnt really worth it, unless you are an hardcore fan, and live with it,

I am so sorry but I have to disagree

I have a 40 " Screen running 4k with Thrustmaster HOTAS throttle and joystick all my buttons and switches are now configured it runs as smooth as you please in the highest possible resolution on this monitor. The Fonts are very readable. The gameplay is excellent, although took a bit of adaption from Elite Dangerous. I was a X3 fan and before. The Xrebirth was a painful JOKE.

Fighting well have already fought off various people trying to get my cargo. Mind you did update the gun to mk2 pulse.