X4 Foundations Poll #3: What did you NOT like?

[lordmuck]

Seeing a number of comments about AI and boosters. Why dont they make boosters use energy cells? The bigger the ship the more amounts are consumed. The more you fill your hull.. the more times you can boost, unless it gets a fixed boost duration which needs to recharge... No cells no boost..

[Alci]

hmm, couldn't check any. While I don't enjoy all of them (only 8 of 10 ), can't say I'm NOT enjoying any of them.

It's just that many, while enjoyable as an activity, contains some brick wall inside that makes them annoying or frustrating. Things that can be "fixed" eventually, but the questions are not well placed to detect those.

For example.. station building.. the process of building is very nice, editor is really good improvement. Stations are nice asset, fun to own, all that. But in the end they don't work. Station manager can't be set right and 4-star one makes completely idiotic decisions of his own. He can't use any trader ship, he can't buy nor sell wares, he has serious problem handle miners. And the worst thing, traders can't be possibly manually set to buy or sell station wares in usable way. The good map and good remote trading comes to help but I need to sell ALL products myself and myself only every few hours (creating 40 orders long list for few freighters). If I can, pretty mindlessly, why can't AI? I really just transfer full cargo, look for first price with nice price/distance (map zoom), sell the rest, sell the rest, transfer full cargo, sell. So two stations were fun. I don't want more.

Boarding itself is not bad. But as long as the crew can't be transferred in bulks, in open space, let alone them using personal transporters (or even teleport!) to deliver themselves to target workplace.. it's unusable. I simply couldn't go through 50 transfers just to get marines back from one boarded ship. It's not problem with boarding. The crew management, how hard they are to get, to store, to transfer between ships where they are needed..

I really need a list of all crew, sorted by pilot skill, visible where they are serving, so I can find "3-star pilot serving as marine on mining ship" and just say "go server on this transporter as captain" with the captain automatically going into service/or switch places.

THAT'S the pain But while it affects more of OP points to the point they are not much "enjoyable", it's not fail of any of those.

[darthraven]

Which areas of the game did you NOT enjoy in particular?
Note that there is another topic where we ask the opposite question of what you did enjoy!
This does of course leave you the option to select any area in neither of these two postings if it is not clearly the one or the other:

Why isn't there an option for releasing the game with so many bugs and basic concepts not working? Because that is what I did NOT like the most!

I'm going to keep saying it until someone acknowledges it (because the mods and developers love to ignore negative threads), just having wingmen that actually fly alongside you in a formation instead of 2 sectors behind because they don't know what travel mode is, would at least be a start, hell even if they didn't work on player lead wings how about just out of system formations protecting other ships? ORRRR how about something that resembles a game AI? ORRRR wait how about a ****** tutorial? I mean a real one, what you have in the game as a "tutorial" is an insult!

I could give you a list but why should I bother you never care anyway, as always you will rely on the fact you don't have competition and we are stuck with you and the fact that the modding community will finish your game as usual. I mean why is it every game you release is released unfinished and takes about 2 years after release to be actually playable with stated features AND still rely on modders to fix most of it?? Can you answer that Bernd?? Instead of going on twitch stream shows to say the game launch was great and pat yourself on the back how about JUST ****** acknowledge all the things wrong and still not working and probably won't be worth the retail price for another 2 years when it's on sale for 75% off the current price???? Any of this getting through to you? NO? yeah, I didn't really think it would anyway, but one can only hope.

Ohh and don't worry you got the deserved thumbs down review on steam long before this poll.

[Stars_InTheirEyes]

All i need is something to play in. I don't care if the game spawns stuff to keep things interesting. I would rather it just spawn something than try to simulate the need for it and not make it. The lack of a genuine storyline.

I guess that's just different styles of playing, and differences in what you want out of the game / place importance on. For me the economy part is the more interesting and awesome thing. Like I could do just fine without the constant annoyance of the odd N and M all the time, the damn pirates scanning for some obscure reason managing to scan my ship as it zips by at 7km a second, demanding me to drop cargo (as if...). It's nice to have the option and occasionally I enjoy doing battle, but for the most part I don't really care and it's more of a nuisance than anything else.

I'm not saying I don't want a simulated economy. I just think in X4 the economy simulation is far too controlling of the universe and is too strict. Take missions; in X3 the game would be able to spawn an entire small fleet for you to fight when you take a high rank combat mission. In X4 combat is severely limited by what the economy simulation allows for. I'd take X3's spawned opponents over X4's simulation any day of the week.

Such as crew being one-time payments and completely disposable (whats the point of humanising ships but dehumanising the crew?), having to land on stations to talk to certain NPCs (there was genuinely nothing wrong with the old coms menu), having to scan stations (I really loath it), teleporting (??? why does this exist???) and the research menu as a whole and the inventory/crafting systems. And now also ventures.

I agree on the scanning bs and the comms menu, but I don't really mind having to land for some things. It's refreshing from time to time to get out of your ship and walk around on a station, especially now that you get to have a view into space. It also adds to immersion for things like picking up people at least.
Not sure what you mean with disposable crew? I mean sure I get to fire people if I hire them. As for having to pay them over and over again, not sure if that would be a great thing, as most crew doesn't really do much most the time. In X3 some of them used to just take a cut of whatever profits they'd earn, which was mostly fine. Currently though, most of my crew I wouldn't pay a single credit since they don't actually do shit most the time. Except the miners, they're mostly doing an okay job.

Stations are okay. But that's what I'm getting it. It feels completely at odds with itself that the player needs to go out on foot to talk to an NPC in a game where universe-wide command and control is always possible. Why can't I get a video message from the NPC? Its like they thought "Hey we can add some RPG elements by making them WALK to their objective!", meanwhile I'm able to instantaneously teleport across an infinite distance to any owned ship just because? It doesn't make sense.
Crew gets in the way of things for me. Want to capture a ship? Better have some crew on hand or jump through additional hoops of piloting the ship yourself to a dock and selecting the first NPC you find standing around. They're just an extra unnecessary step in most cases. Perhaps they could have been implemented differently, or just not at all. Like X3.

[Galinet]

Ship getting stuck inside a station or asteroid (deadly if you cannot teleport yet).

Scout ship's explore command seems to instruct the captain to explore their own ship rather than the sector. There are 2 mods that do a great job of actually exploring the sectors.

Lack of feedback. I sent a miner to gather a specific resource. And hour later I check the logs and do not see anything from the miner; it could not find buyers and never told me about the problem. A station can no longer build because it is missing funds? I guess I can find this out by checking the mission/maintenance entries.

Feedback overload (yeah, quite a contradiction from the previous). The log book needs more filters, such as putting trades in a separate filter. Trade are missing the purchase notification; need to install a mod for that. I made a post about upgrading the log book, by including many more sources of feedback and having a dropdown/combobox with checkboxes so we can determine what WE want to see. Going a step further, let us save these checked list configurations in the same way we can save ship configurations.

Scout weapon is weird when firing at a locked box. The aiming dot goes haywire when nearing the locks, but moves perfectly fine when away from the lock box. Maybe the math is wrong because the target (locked box) is near.

Data signals spawn inside stations and are only accessible by finding a way through the walls.

Scanning for blueprints is more of a chore than something fun. The mod that turns these into missions makes it less frustrating; MY goal is to build a station but I am prevented by the game because I have not found the blueprints. I want to build stations that I need, not just the ones I happen to have the blueprints for. Using an EMP to get blueprints is a neat idea, but it could go much further. Give us a specialized ship for hacking stations to get these blueprints and rebates. I get frustrated when I get a rebate and not a blueprint.

There does not seem to be much lore available, other than by doing vaults. Missions usually provide that lore, often having different wordings/tones for different races/factions. Earth & Beyond had amazing missions for the early part of the game. For example, learning the teleport skill involved multiple mission steps, culminating in a hilarious moment where you were supposed to pick up someone's lunch but ended up picking a bomb on a timer (if I remember correctly) and had about 20 seconds to be taught how to fiddle with your ship's engines/reactor in order to teleport to a station and hopefully disarm the bomb in time! There were 3 races and each had 3 classes and numerous skills. Each skill had a specific story, but also gave information about your class and your race.

The missions seem completely random. I would like a story arc, other than for the HQ.

Satellites show a circle of detection when they are deployed. Would love to view that circle when doing the deployment; could add a new deploy command that works from the map which shows the detection circle. Also the circle does not work well across different zoom levels; at one level 2 stations are inside but at another only 1 is inside.

Do resource markers have a radius of detection? Can't see it so I do not know how many I need to place in an asteroid field.

With 279 hours played, I still fight the game over control (keyboard+mouse) of the ship. The highways are a great source of frustration. I have a terrible time getting onto them and once I am on, I have a terrible time going faster than 300 m/s. Seems I have to always use Q & E to latch on, to get the speed boost. Then there's the loss of control when trying to get into scanning position for a signal and I bump into the station.

[Afterburnerz]

The User Interface is the thing I Dislike the most !
There are many ways it could be improved :-

1) At the top of the window there should be a Navigation icon and beside that a Ships and then a Station Icon/button.

2) There should be a return arrow at the top of the window in Information when opening Info on ship - after pressing Shift + P -- then left clicking on ship name -- then opening Information .
I use this to check the cargo level in miner regularly.

3) When you Left Click on ship name a Best Buy and also a Best Sell Option should be available

4) Setting up traders , either Local or Universe needs to be much easier to use. The Left Click LMB option should be reinstated.


Trading would be improved by :-

a) having a lot more Trading Stations - have to travel half way across the Universe to sell or buy items

b) having Secondary Resource requirement in all stations

c) Silicon and Silicon wafers needs to be used by many more stations - Quantum Tube , Microchip , etc

d) Every Shipyard and Wharf should also buy lots of products - hull plating , silicon wafers , refined metals , quantum tubes , energy cells , food , etc etc

The Universe also needs to be a Lot Larger and the should be more stations in each sector;
Very happy to see that the stations are spread out in each sector.

The game has a very bright Future !
Have a very Happy Christmas !

[Stars_InTheirEyes]

One final thing.

This game should have been/still should be labelled Early Access.

Most of us know what Egosoft games are like at launch. Its buggy, its missing many features that are planned (hello 1.5 and 2.0) and its full-price. The game basically follows the early access model like many other games have done. It helps players give feedback while the development team can react to it and improve their game. Its a win-win situation, the players get a better experience and the devs build good reputation and if changes are well received, can get a fresh wave of revenue at full launch.

X4 is an Early Access game. Its not labelled (or priced) as one, but it is exactly that. This is what I would put in the first line of my Steam review.

[XGamer]

Crew gets in the way of things for me. Want to capture a ship? Better have some crew on hand or jump through additional hoops of piloting the ship yourself to a dock and selecting the first NPC you find standing around. They're just an extra unnecessary step in most cases. Perhaps they could have been implemented differently, or just not at all. Like X3.

Ah yeah true, I didn't bother with capturing ships yet since I usually don't keep people around my ship. At least it's a lot better now than it was in Rebirth, as just about every station has people to hire and they can actually be used as everything you need. Remember Rebirth and searching sector after sector for a damn pilot and by the time you found one you had forgotten where the heck that pilot bailed and left his ship...

[LameFox]

Personal mining + trading:

I mean, I tried this, but I must admit the trade UI makes comparing prices kind of annoying. I'd rather some kind of centralized window for that, than having to scroll all over the map with a ware or two selected.

As for mining, it's not even entirely possible as far as I can tell. Gas mining, how does that even work? And in a large mineral miner, my drones weren't launching until I gave the NPC command of the ship. So I can't really like it because I couldn't do it!

Missions:

Well, again, they seem to break a lot. Can't access black market, and when I tried to repair some stuff on a station it just unintuitively failed because my repair laser touched the station??? Or at least I assume that's what happened to it, it's hard to believe that would fail a mission even having seen it.

Large-Scale Fight:

Very messy with how the AI flies, larger ships aren't worth their actual cost in combat, refitting consumables on lots of little ships is annoying.

[Falcrack]

I killed 2 Xenon K destroyers in my Eclipse Vanguard today. This should absolutely not be possible. The turrets are too easy to destroy, and once destroyed, it just sits there letting me kill it.

Turrets should not be destructible until the shields for the entire ship are all the way down, or at least maybe <10%. Capital ships need turrets that have complete coverage, so that a small fighter cannot simply sit there and pepper it till it dies.

Large capital ships needs more fearsome anti-fighter weaponry.

[Falcrack]

I would like for trading to have a list like in Rebirth which lists good trade deals, and the distance in gates for the deals.

[Juggernaut93]

Going along all the stations when you don't know if there are any blueprints to be found, if yes how many, and finding more than half of the leaks inside the station so you can't even see the blinking light is frustrating.

Use the EMP bombs

[CaptainX4]

Which areas of the game did you NOT enjoy in particular?
Note that there is another topic where we ask the opposite question of what you did enjoy!
This does of course leave you the option to select any area in neither of these two postings if it is not clearly the one or the other:

this can't be answered this simply. I only marked the negative review on steam. I like all of those things being in the game, even the data vaults and wrecks. I dont like how they work, if they work at all. the real problem with the game is what others already mentioned above. the zero achievements in the game
it only takes a few hours and a few missions to have everything... even the ranks are coming like free cookies
make small scouts kinda cheap as they are or even cheaper, make basic mission available only at the beginning that pays 1000-5000 credits each. like satellite/station repairs, find lockboxes (and take the lockbox content on competition, also give only cheap content if the player would rather keep them), give "take me to..." missions for a few credits too and also make a timing requirement etc
then make simple fighter available for a few millions as the player gets some rank, then give higher value missions
then give access to elite fighters like pulsar nova falcon etc and med ships when reaches first main rank, start giving valuable but more difficult fighting and escort mission and higher value complex trading missions
even later with higher rank give access to more powerful weapon systems
and only when the player is a recognised friend, give access to L/XL ships and special weapon systems

same with stations,
make workforce compulsory and give S domes as basic with some basic production/farming
later intermediates production, only at the late game hightech and at the end security and player shipyard, give blueprints for ranks and make buying them cheap while building the bits should be really really expensive

in trading i like that pilots need ranks and i wish you would stick to it, what more, please only give out 0 star crew at the beginning and make it really hard or near impossible (or very expensive) to find one with higher rank (like buy a pilot from the argon navy destroyer for millions of credits with 4 ranks)
make them like fighter pilots earn ranks in flying around and fighting (very little for flying around, more for fighting) while trade pilots should earn (and need) both piloting and management skills but only earning management if he is trading.
-with 0 star management can only work for station manager
-with 1 star sector trading or automining
-with 3 stars universe trading where there is fresh trade deals (by satellite or other ships)
-with 5 stars universe traders everywhere getting trade deals from his personal connections

give back energy stats for the weapon and the old style recharge system for the shields, keep the shield recharge delay for boost (lets say it overcharges the capacitors thats why after boost cant recharge instantly), make the shield meaningful and a total protection against weak fire, make weapons deplete energy so player can run weak weapons for long time, powerful weapons short time. this universal cooldown is kinda crap as a stronger bigger ship can use the guns the same long as a small one which is pretty illogical, ohh, and give back the meaningful damage difference between S M L weapons because they are laughable. with my nova i can shoot down the enemy tradeship quicker than my destroyer do

give back endproducts to give empire building a meaning, after a while credit comes on its own, having stations just to get even more credits is meaningless, producing my weapons and ammunition would give a reason...

-FIX AI AND PATHING!!! this would be the most important.
-GIVE US HOTKEYS AND SEPARATE WINDOWS TO EVERYTHING!!! second most important thing. quick access to commands and information is key, like scanning from menu while maneuvering is stupid, or getting through 30 level of menus in the map view just to check my cargo is also stupid
-give access to ship/station commands through just clicking on the ship/station in the space, like in X3 follow, dock, attack etc
-stop automatically queuing orders, its impossible to give quick commands this way

its not these features are the good or bad, its the way yo do them. you should rather put things like highways, teleport or missing jd into the poll, there would be lots of votes on them i guess

just from the top of my head right now...

[Bellatormonk]

I would like to capture ships except that when I use the Board feature my target is always destroyed before I even ever get to Stage 3 much less Stage 2. I just had a Carrier vs SCA Behemoth battle and boarding attempt and I told Stage 1 to Disable Target Medium, Stage 2 Medium and my Carrier simply pounded the SCA Behemoth to dust w/o ever even launching pods..

Additionally see my post about Large Scale Battles overall:

viewtopic.php?f=146&t=410247

[CaptainX4]

I killed 2 Xenon K destroyers in my Eclipse Vanguard today. This should absolutely not be possible. The turrets are too easy to destroy, and once destroyed, it just sits there letting me kill it.

Turrets should not be destructible until the shields for the entire ship are all the way down, or at least maybe <10%. Capital ships need turrets that have complete coverage, so that a small fighter cannot simply sit there and pepper it till it dies.

Large capital ships needs more fearsome anti-fighter weaponry.

i don't agree with this, turrets have their shield to use it, its shield that should scale with size and role so capital shield should be totally undestroyable for fighter weaponry. the problem is the gravity effect that helps you staying in one place. in very very old X-Wing/TIE fighter games you had to aim modules, go out of weapon range then launch an attack and try to destroy it while dodging fire. also capital ships shouldnt have the agility they have now, even medium sized ships should have far less agility.

[CaptainX4]

I would like to capture ships except that when I use the Board feature my target is always destroyed before I even ever get to Stage 3 much less Stage 2. I just had a Carrier vs SCA Behemoth battle and boarding attempt and I told Stage 1 to Disable Target Medium, Stage 2 Medium and my Carrier simply pounded the SCA Behemoth to dust w/o ever even launching pods..

Additionally see my post about Large Scale Battles overall:

viewtopic.php?f=146&t=410247

its because you do it wrong. set first stage to weak second to medium, go with your fighter destroy weaponry and shield, set capital to keep distance... i can capture any ship with my medium ships

[ADMNtek]

personally i don't think it is that simple so here my opinion on the various points.

• personal trading mining haven't really done that/ mining only some crystal mining and only after installing the crystal finder mod

• remote trading could be better a optional trade offers list would be nice. and autotrader is outride r******* and only uses a fraction of its storage same for station traders. i would also like to see something like trade deals from XR/mining usually works great

• station building is great mostly it would be nice to be able to update the configuration while construction is in progress. at least for modules that aren't under active construction. station management is not. please give us more control. why cant i use my stations cargo drones to transfer wares to my build storage? why cant i give order to its defense drones? why cant i specify what wares i want my station to sell passively via offers and actively via ship.

• finding blueprints is a bit to much about praying to RNGesus and hoping that you get a data leak on the station part you want. and if there is one hoping even harder that it is reachable and not inside the hull. having a guaranteed but more involved system could be interesting where you first have to do some hacking inside the station to generate a mission to Depp scan the part from various position similar to spydrone missions from XR. and this would then enable you to revers engineer the part from your research screen.

• Missions are probably what i like the least and as a result and barely do.

• data vaults are ok. but general exploration needs more interesting things to find other than stations.

• capturing ships is mostly ok except for the whole sabotage on the way out thing that needs to go/ boarding needs work i was able to capture a pirate behemoth with 2 5star marines that just shouldn't be a thing. and the marines riding atop the boarding pod is just silly. either put them inside the pod or give them space suits. it also shouldn't be possible to start boarding if you cant actually board the ship at the time.

• small scale combat generally ok as long as there aren't any missiles involved.

• large scale combat to few opportunities to actually use it

• no but it is also not at the point to recommend it yet

[Lost Captain]

I'm really enjoying the game but here are a few grumbles :


1) Too easy to make money at the start of the game.

2) Automatic spawns as you are travelling through the fog of war. (Xenon,Khaak,pirates)

3) Too few start (character options).Give us a choice of character and ship (within reason) - Unlockables are horrible.

4) Sound balance can be way off depending on the ship. Almost silent boost / ear splitting thruster sounds (Mercury M transporter)

5) Radio chatter - too much pirate / combat chatter. Should be more trader / ambient sounds and chatter / galaxy news.

6) Fog of war - I don't like it.Systems look messy.Much better without as in Albion Prelude etc.

7) Combat music - Should never be in any game. An option to turn it off would be nice.Only by turning off all music can you get rid of it.

Scanning stations and lockboxes - I stopped doing both a long time ago.


Keep up the good work!

[Jeraal]

I need options for:
-- teleporting instead of jumpdrives
-- walking on stations
-- highways

[Shedara]

I like every aspect of X series when they made right and are not bugged. This game AI is too bad. I was shocked when watched how 2 of my M ships exchange wares in a space (they were docked at the same station and both have cargo drones but fly in a space then buged around a station trying to meet each other to drop the cargo in a space. Wtf?)