Did Egosoft miss what the fans wanted?

[RodentofDoom]

I think the Op needs to learn what Alpha means from a software development standpoint ...

Because it's totally different to the meaning used in social/zooalogical terms.

[Promethium]

I think the Op needs to learn what Alpha means from a software development standpoint ...

Because it's totally different to the meaning used in social/zooalogical terms.

Comments were taken exclusively from up voted comments on the trailer but thanks for your input.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Comments were taken exclusively from up voted comments on the trailer but thanks for your input.

Thank you very much for explaining this.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Highways. I'm ok with that just drop those stupid 'mini game' style mechanics while you are inside.

The highway mechanics were changed in version 2.00 (I think). Now it's just a case of avoiding collisions if travelling fast. Generally speaking, if you move out the central path you don't need to avoid many other ships if any at all.

Edit: The comment about moving out of the central path could just be confirmation bias. It's possible that changing highways lanes has no impact on collisions probability.

[Loltak]

<snip>
Edit: The comment about moving out of the central path could just be confirmation bias. It's possible that changing highways lanes has no impact on collisions probability.

I have the feeling that it is correct, I also do that for the same reason

[caleb]

I'll go with "too soon to tell" and call me cynical, but I'm not believing much of what I hear either. I remember when XR was coming out, and we were promised the moon and stars (literally)... So yeah, I'll judge it when I see it. The hype train crashed, burned with XR for me.

[Wanted Bob]

As far as I can tell, the presentation touched on many of the most common suggestions after Rebirth came out (multiple ships, flying cap ships, destructible stations, overhauled UI and map).

We'll obviously have to wait to see how everything is implemented, and I'm sure there will be some disagreements on certain features (walking around comes to mind), but I think it's fair to say the team recognized a lot of major concerns by the fanbase.

[CommanderTM]

As far as I can tell, the presentation touched on many of the most common suggestions after Rebirth came out (multiple ships, flying cap ships, destructible stations, overhauled UI and map).

We'll obviously have to wait to see how everything is implemented, and I'm sure there will be some disagreements on certain features (walking around comes to mind), but I think it's fair to say the team recognized a lot of major concerns by the fanbase.

Yeah, i agree and i do think they will benefit from EA in this regard a lot. They could get continious feedback throughout developing, instead of releasing the product and then finding out... oops, this does not work as well as we thought it does. This was so with XR, they developed a lot of it behind closed doors and did not reveal much. They said that they know they screwed up a lot in that game and i think it would have been different if XR would have been in EA too.

[Marco Nero]

After watching and re-watching videos i can agree with you about:

1) Highways. "Limited" Egosoft say, but in every video you see a highway, i do not like this for real, highways kills the game and the concept of navigation and explorations, i was really thinking they were not going to put them again, really do not understand why is necessary destroy the gameplay like this in a proper X4 game, is not a Rebirth 2.

2)Using theyr time to develop walking on platform/station and building cockpits? Does a real X fan care about this? Prefear 100 times having more ships types in the game and use that time to develop Boron, Split, Terran.

Are you sure Egosoft you are going in the right way? I feel like you are going in the middleground between X3 and Rebirth, and the most part of peoples who's hated Rebirth will like this game only for half part. This should be a proper X4 game, but i fear it will be not.

[Tomonor]

Please read before voting, thanks!

I've been looking through the comments of the announcement trailer and it seems like a majority of people are really really unhappy and put off by the content shown in the trailer.

I've compiled a list of common/popular complaints:
- We don't need walking around.
- Why does it look so much like Rebirth?
- Graphics style seems off (see above question).
- The menu system looks like it's designed for consoles.
- What was wrong with the map system in X3?
- Poor character animations, again.
- Get rid of highways.
- Flight system looks the same as Rebirth, not as good as X3.

They really emphasized, "Hey guys we brought back multiple ships!!!" and we've yet to hear/see much of a response to all the other complaints about Rebirth. What I will say is that it looks like a low budget indie game more than it does X3: TC/AP.

I'm not taking a position, I just want to make the thread as medium for discussion and maybe a resource for Egosoft.

Sounds like you want to play X3, actually.

-The walking around bit adds to the immersion. X3's engine pretty much disallowed that aspect, but now that the opportunity is here, why not add it in?

-It reminds you of X Rebirth, because that's the new artistic aspect Egosoft is going with the series.

-The graphics style is still being tested and changed what works best as far as I can tell.

-The menu system is also too early to tell, as it is subject to change, but Egosoft did apologize for the mistakes in X Rebirth. So I wouldn't worry about the console-y aspect of X4.

-The issue of the X3's map system was that it was limited, in fact the basis of it was developed for X-BtF, and that same map system was upgraded a bit for every other X game, until Rebirth. Rebirth had a completely different map system, but it was way too confusing to navigate in. This map however seems like the one we actually need. It's almost like a small RTS game, and that's what Egosoft always wanted to aim for. But to directly answer your question, the X3 map engine could be simply incompatible with the Vulcan engine, or would lack serious features due to the said aging limitations of it.

-The character animations are always a slippery-slope. That's basically where a company should hire talented artists to mimic animations as lifelike as possible. But that easily could go overbudget. The end result might not best animations ever, but I don't think they will be comparable to the Mass Effect Andromeda fiasco.

-Highways: now that's probably the only thing I can agree with you on. Especially since they introduce Travel mode, they seem unnecessary now. But it wasn't the highways that seemed faulty in X Rebirth, but the way they pulled it off - "force field tubes in space". That was really immersion breaking. It would have been easier to simply add small accelerator rings. That wouldn't have broken the immersion at all, and it was perfectly implemented in other games.

-Flight system - once again, what? X3 had way too much newtonian physics applied to it. If you think about that it's a thousand years in the future, you would guess that the races already developed some kind of flight correction systems that enables your ships to steer properly. And later they even gave you the option to disable flight assist, which is literally newtonian ship physics on drugs.

After watching and re-watching videos i can agree with you about:

2)Using theyr time to develop walking on platform/station and building cockpits? Does a real X fan care about this? Prefear 100 times having more ships types in the game and use that time to develop Boron, Split, Terran.

Are you sure Egosoft you are going in the right way? I feel like you are going in the middleground between X3 and Rebirth, and the most part of peoples who's hated Rebirth will like this game only for half part. This should be a proper X4 game, but i fear it will be not.

The point of X4 is to add a LOT more detail than X3 was ever capable of. X3 wasn't detailed, it was simply an overhauled X2 with way too many ships, which was ultimately pointless, because you choose one favourite ship, and 10 other ships to fill your fleet with, and you rolled with them. The rest was just there, leaving the universe as lifeless as an empty chunk of polygons could be.

[Marco Nero]

Respectfully this is your opinion, but as you can read the most part of the people continue talking about X3, couse it was a great game for sure. You have the fact in front of your eyes: Rebirth vs X3: people Hated Rebirth couse we were maybe yet completelly immersed in the game without the need to (just) walk on a platform, or stand up from the commands and watching another member using our ship, and? What are you supposed to do when you do that? How much times will you do? You should ask yourself this questions, ok it's a bit "fun", but is it necessary to feel ourself inside the game? I was feeling inside the game perfectly with X3, with great number of ships, very good racialized and designed, with a good opportunity of customization for example. Do not forget Boron are gonna missing for this reason, and i fear Split and Terran too, i prefear do not have a cockpit, but having those 3 race again in a "X4", that gived to me more fun then watching a guy using my ship (personal opinion Bro).

I agree with the Highways, what i hate most, is the fact that if you are in a sector, you will not see a far station and decide "ok let's go there", no, you will always turn arround and searching for that tube to fly in, losing everything of nice that a space game has offer, i am FORCED to fly into a coloured tube, again! No! Especially with the nice travel-mode, which is a beautifull feature on my opinion.

The map seems very nice and easy to understand, X3 map was easy too but this is an other thing totally, very happy on this

[Riccardoman]

The point of X4 is to add a LOT more detail than X3 was ever capable of. X3 wasn't detailed, it was simply an overhauled X2 with way too many ships, which was ultimately pointless, because you choose one favourite ship, and 10 other ships to fill your fleet with, and you rolled with them. The rest was just there, leaving the universe as lifeless as an empty chunk of polygons could be.

Lifeless is exacly what I would call X3. beautiful (as long as the graphics keeped up the pace with the competition) lifeless and uneventful
Empty space, automated voices, ten ships per sector and nine of them merchants, one m4 xenon or khaak here and there and nothing else

[Killjaeden]

Lifeless is exacly what I would call X3. beautiful (as long as the graphics keeped up the pace with the competition) lifeless and uneventful
Empty space, automated voices, ten ships per sector and nine of them merchants, one m4 xenon or khaak here and there and nothing else

You can crank up the amount of persistent ships easily by editing some files for X3. But then even your brand new 2018 Processor would capitulate - or more specifically, the one Core that X3 runs on. So this problem is more owed to the fact of limited processor power at it's inception, but remains, because it never was reworked to operate on multiple cores.

But i agree that - especially in border sectors - X3 vanilla was usually very empty. Which can be a good or bad thing - depending on your perspective of how populated space should be.

[Alan Phipps]

Just be aware that some of you are replying to comments made 6 months ago about the very first X4 stream/announcement.

[Dreez]

All i want is X3:TC with the XR engine and i'll be happy.

I'm not interested in walking around, i didn't miss it in X3, hated it in XR and if i smell even the slightest notion of "consolization", im boycotting.

X4 needs to be PC-platform mainly, with mouse & KB... no ABXO buttons.

The moment you make a game "controller viable", you are taking away a TON of gameplay options
and you are dumbing down and simplifying the game.

A PC mouse alone can have more then twice as many buttons as a controller,
and then add the keybord.. Try playing X3 on a controller.. i dare you.

Also what i HATED about XR was that players were locked in their options on stations,
we couldn't build "closed loops" stations that were selfsustaining.. we couldn't design our own stations.

Pretty much the ONLY thing i liked about XR was the graphics and shipdesigns.
The Arawn and Taranis made me drool - a shame the AI was useless.

[Senar]

I am OK with current state of X Rebirth, they did hell of a job to fix it in last four years. I don't get all of those complains about NPC looks, I mean this is game about space, not about shiny humanoid models at space stations. Only thing I wish for them (NPC models) is more variations, while the quality of existing models is not in first or even second place of significance. Dev team got their priorities lists and mostly done things right, after such rough launch.

Just look at the modification forum section of X Rebirth. If NPC models were important thing - there was a mode or two about better NPC models already. Are there such mods? None, as far as I know (feel free to throw link at me if i am wrong). Only one i remember is about replacing "space grannies" with more attractive female faces, and it is already obsolete because devs fixed aged female faces long time ago. This can tell us that even modders have same (more or less) priorities as dev team, and do what is needed and desired most. Shiny NPC models are not what most X Rebirth pilots want, there are more interesting needs and desires to implement.

Highways is fine too, because they are fully skippable, aside from blue ones, which are no more than simple "teleporters" or "almost-gates" in terms of transporting you from point A to point B. Regular highways can be skipped with ease, leaving you with stunning visuals of empty spaces between zones. As some previous posters said - all is needed to be done is just to drop false traffic in them.

I think it is to early to tell anything about a resulting game (X4) because it doesn't exists yet. I say - be patient, don't hype about anything, listen closely what devs say, ask questions, conduct clear analysys - and you will get more precised view of final product to come. Streams and Q&A sessions are dedicated to this purpose, they got this right this time. If you don't like X Rebith, and transfer your dislike on "X Rebirth-ish" X4 - just don't buy it. Simple action which speaks clearly of your views and thoughts.

[DaMuncha]

All i want is X3:TC with the XR engine and i'll be happy.

this

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

Dreez wrote

All i want is X3:TC with the XR engine and i'll be happy.

NOT this, never this.

I played X3 from Reunion to Albion Prelude, with lots of mods in between.

Several 1000's of hours. I do not want to go back. I don't want to ever play X3 ever again. I have had enough. The developers obviously want to move on and produce a better game. I am a long term fan of the X games. Why do people keep saying that what the "real" fans of X want is an upgraded version of X3. Well I DO NOT.

[Senar]

Well I DO NOT.

this

[Ketraar]

Why do people keep saying that what the "real" fans of X want {insert random feature that applies}

Fixed that for you and the reason is that, by saying this is THE truth, it conveys a sense of finality and gives that opinion the needed weight to discourage any discussion. That none of that makes any sense and is rather pretensions can safely be ignored. Nuances in general died in 2017, keep up with the times man.

MFG

Ketraar

PS.: This post contains sarcasm, side effects from its exposure are not to be considered unhealthy.