Toastysoul wrote: ↑Wed, 8. May 19, 08:48
Maybe the developers (or at least the game director) are just older and not as enthusiastic about making games like they used to be?
Seems to be that the prevailing attitude at Egosoft is 'we are making the game we want to make, at the speed we want to make it.' Makes me think GRRM used to be an employee there. I can believe that they think they are doing the right thing because in the past that worked well for them. Of course, that was when they had a product to stand on and improve over the course of a decade. That's very clearly not the case any more, and the failure to continue to acknowledge that failure is part of the problem. [cut]
I believe the issue is different. In another thread I simbolically compared X4 to Anthem, because both are games that lack content and have broken CORE mechanics that are fundamental to the game identity itself (Anthem is a looter shooter where one of the main complaints is the broken loot system, X4 is a space/economic sim where most of what is borked is the simulation itself). If you followed the Anthem debacle, the notorious Kotaku article especially, you'll know Anthem ended up like this because of astounding disorganization and miscommunication at Bioware. It was in production for 6 years, but of those 6 years only the last 12-18 months had seen any real work on developing the actual game, the first 5 years never managed to get up from the drawing board. So they had no time to correct what could have looked fine on paper but showed to not work fine when actually in the shape of a real game.
What's happening with X4 looks a bit similar in this department too. Even a lot of the fixes they do, that then uncover even more, fundamental issues, give the impression they really don't have any cohesive vision for the game, but rather progress like a patchwork. As if they only had a very vague idea for the game, a game they put up in a rush without ever really testing if these fundamental mechanics did actually work (spoiler alert: they didn't), and now they are patching it, but still don't really know what direction to take, as some of the issues are conceptual and are now tiying their hands. This isn't new for Egosoft, previous games came out pretty broken too (and I'm not even talking about the Rebirth trainwreck, but about the good ones) and only got really better much after, but this time even some of the fundamentals are all over the place, while the game also lost a lot of content and assets variety and quality (wasn't the point of scrapping the plot to have more resources to dedicate to just that, more content and features for the actual sandbox?). The real difference compared to Anthem, that keeps them afloat, is that in this case X4 doesn't really have any direct competition.
This management fogginess is made clear even by that "learn from the community" argument you mentioned. Egosoft DID learn a lot from the community, DID implement a lot of modders' work: X3-TC and AP were basically Reunion + community made content, that Egosoft "bought", polished to industry standards, streamlined and rebranded as a "new" X game. All of that has been lost in the transition to the new engine with Rebirth first and X4 now. Granted, of course you can't copypaste an asset or a script from an old engine to the new one, but the ideas that had proven to be successful, that Egosoft themselves recognized as such, were forgotten in the process as well.
In the meanwhile, they put up a silly poll asking the community "what you like/dislike about the game? What do you think should be improved and how? How far you went in the game before... shelving it because it sucks (liberal interpretation here, but pretty much this
)"... which is fine and all, but when at the same time you don't show to have a clear, justified plan, and the logic of your set of patching priorities is at the very least open to debate, the feeling I get is you really are grasping at straws.
In my perception, I have the feeling they had much different plans for X4, actual good plans on paper, but what we got is in GREAT part a placeholder, jury rigged to somewhat work before it was too late. That incredibily small weapons variety, for instance? Placeholders, because they couldn't differentiate them like in previous games in time. The samey looking ships? Placeholders, we'll get them working now, we'll think about making them better and more varied later. The usual sub-optimal UI, leveling system, trade AI and orders, etc? Let's put them in as is, they kind-of work, but we don't have time to see if they work
well, we'll think about it later too. Heck, even the whole "dynamic economy and wars", which was promoted as the main idea and selling point of X4 didn't make the game in 1.0, and is being slowly developed and balanced only now. And so on. This kept piling up, and in the end they found themselves with a game so jury rigged that for many things makes it unrealistic to allow that "we'll think about it later", because it would mean basically remake a good chunk of the game from scratch. Thus, now they are split between lingering but impossible ambitions to change a lot, and the need to fix what really is in the game right now and focus on that. And they bounce from one end to the other, incapable of taking a stand. Which, often, as a result makes them seemingly make no sense at all.
The leveling system issues and how they are kind-of "dismissing" it could be such a case: maybe they would like to rework it from scratch, so they aren't much interested in just "fixing" it as it is now. Problem is, whether they'll ever find the chance to revolutionize it or not, in the meantime their playerbase is forced to play with how borked it is now. Exploiting a mechanic to somehow still manage to get "working" pilots: because having to buy 100 scout ships and then resell them just to have a way to find some three stars pilots is just that, an exploit. Necessary, as the game gives you no other choice, but an exploit still. Which, ironically, also makes it moot to have a leveling system at all, as by doing that you are pretty much bypassing it.
