Some nice ideas here. Being a nice read.
Yeah...
- Once upon the time, there was a game called Nexus - The Jupiter Incident. It’s a shame Egosoft was so vain and haven’t used some nice ideas about
camera use while narrating, but also game mechanic during capturing, disabling ships and ship’s subsystems and boarding it. Not to mention other examples/games, I'm aware It’s probably not the best use of those things ever, but, that would be the great start. Damn shame.
That said, I hope someone at the Egosoft will read this because it will be one more futile attempt on my part to “help” with my 2c. So, indeed things that should be important are:
- AI (logistical, combat, pathfinding, dynamic quests and the rest what falls under that category)
- intuitive UI (I'm putting this upfront, because of X history and complex multiple-level menus which are a pain in theass to use)
- ability to mod the game, tools and appropriate libs (maybe this should be the first in the list:) )
- dynamic and (as much as possible) non-scripted universe. So, in the essence a Universe simulation light.
- immersion in the world and the story (damn people, I know you love the whole bookish X story, but, compared to the world’s literature peaks, I think we agree it’s slightly above the sea level tbh. Let it go, use it as a scaffolding, but let the game’s X universe evolve his own story and stories. I’ve seen a lot of stories written by members of this forum, which are far more immersive than those sprites in the main game, so ask people here to send you their stories and the reward could be that they will be put in the game and, I dunno, a T-shirt? Kidding aside, I’m dead sure a lot of people will answer that call).
- As for the story (and side-quest stories, prescripted or procedural) as a glue that binds everything, please don’t invent a lightbulb, use the damn
“The Seven basic plots”. Or, for those with
ADHD here is a short version from YT narrated by
Kurt Vonnegut about the Shapes of Stories
- feel of progression and accomplishment.
- Oh, yes, cockpits should be optional. Don’t hide the universe from me. I don’t care about useless placeholders. At all. Actually, hate them.
- interesting prescripted quest-lines,
- interesting but not overly repetitive mini-games like:
- hacking ship for asteroids, sectors, stations and other data or simply for stealing money.
- capturing ships and/or even stations (in some special cases),
- blueprint R&D,
- R&D technology trees for stations size and its efficiency,
- finding and looting old derelict stations or ships,
- chasing comets and anomalies (solar flares, wormholes, super-novae remnants etc...) for scientific side-quests,
- diplomacy (shifting attitudes of some “races” toward war or peace among each other)
- mining (finding high-yield asteroids with specific ore, specific equipment requirements, booring transporting asteroids to different position might be sub-quests related to the mining itself)
- various treasure hunting, NPC interactions ets...
- Give “explore” the real meaning. For example, a satisfaction of finding "things" in the vastness of the Universe (tuning thingies, strange bases with even stranger unique equipment, unique side-quests). I think that “unfocused jump” in the X3 was totally overlooked uncut gem in the terms of exploration gameplay. That part of the game gives you a chance to play with procedurally generated sectors with crazy realities: places where time and space are different than the “normal” one, i.e. where gravity, inertia, and even laws of physics are different, where some ship’s systems don’t work, popping out near neutron star or in the center of some body. Why not, by using “unfocused jump” all bets are off and you probably gonna die anyway and in most cases you should:) No, really, a shame that part of the game wasn’t been exploited way more... It could be the game in itself tbh because only an imagination is a limit)
Oh, there are so many other small and big things, maybe another time...
