Let's clear up a few things.
First, I'd lake to take care of the "yours is bigger than mine" game. The fact that I joined these forums five years after you is not indicative of my familiarity with X games and their history. It's only indicative of me gaining confidence in communicating in a non-native language, and finally getting an opportunity to ditch dial-up and actually start frequenting Internet forums. Indeed, those were different times.
The first six games I played roughly at the pace of their release, allowing for delays in availability. The only exception of those was actually Reunion, which I bought only after already playing TC, simply because mid 2000s were a bit busy for me, and by the time I could return to gaming, TC was easier to obtain than Reunion. Rebirth and 4 - by the availability of the Linux version. So about a year after release for the former (and then through the beta up until 4.0), and a few months for the latter.
As far as code is concerned, I've "only" been writing it for 20 years or so (precipitating any further smartass remarks, it's mostly been C/C++). So I'm sorry, but I
do bloody well see the work put into it just fine. I also see the various lazy shortcuts and crutches, as well as smokescreens that devs sometimes put up. So... just don't go there, please.
Now, please don't draw the victim card. I'm not attacking you personally. I'm not even being aggressive, I'm just not being nice for the sake of being nice. We're all adults here (I hope). If there's an issue, I'll bloody well talk about it as it is, not look for ways to sound polite just for the sake of it.
With that out of the way, to the points at hand.
Ratings... I didn't "trash your opinion and then talk about ratings". You
replied to me talking about them. But now you claim your post wasn't even directed at me?! That's getting a bit weird now. Regardless, how can I use the ratings? Well, from the numbers you're looking at, 33% are dissatisfied with X4, and only 11% - with X3. That's
three times more. For each X3 individually, if I recall raw numbers for them correctly, fewer people have rated the games at all than those who've "disliked" X4. Yes, X3's ratings are time-delayed, yes, they're evaluating finalized products after lots of patches. But that's the thing - they're evaluating the games
as they are available at this time. I won't go looking for the first release of Reunion, I'll grab the latest. Same with TC and AP. Because that's what we have
now. With 4, we're
now at 2.5, and it's in objectively worse state than any of X3s we have
now. It would
now take
more than 10 thousand exclusively positive reviews to bring X4 up to the same 11% that X3 has. So it being "not even a year" after release, at this stage, is not scoring any points for X4. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Ego would need to pull some serious miracles to get such feedback. Alternatively, it would take more than 4 thousand people exclusively trashing X3 to bring those down to the current level of X4. Which, if any, do you think is more likely over the coming years?
Would X3s have the numbers they have, had they been rated since release? Maybe, maybe not, hell if I know. What I do know is that they wouldn't have had such positive ratings if the games were shit (which they obviously aren't).
And that is why using vanilla original release of Reunion as the baseline for comparison is just plain wrong. Well, perhaps content-wise, I would agree, though the comparative amount of, well, "stuff" never even was my argument. But in making qualitative comparison - hell no. We should, we simply must use the latest versions of AP and Rebirth as baselines. Because
they are the starting points for a new iteration as far as quality is concerned. New engine is not an excuse for the sheer amount of bugs and inconsistencies dumped on players.
Especially when it's, what, the fourth time now?
Especially when, by Bernd's own admission, they were trying to expand their audience. And
especially not with the amount of people listed in the so-called "testing team" in the credits.
We've been through missions not progressing, and yet they're back. We've been through drones getting stuck, disappearing or teleporting, and yet they're back. We've been through UI not responding, and yet it's back. So many rakes have already been stepped on, and yet it happens over and over again. This doesn't paint a pretty picture, especially for newer audience.
As for not appreciating something due to "lack of understanding of the code", that's simply a non-argument. Customers don't give a flying duck about how clever, complicated, or tricky your code is. They care about results, about your product working as it's supposed to. Sadly, some developers mistake that for a waiver to write crappy code, but that's another matter entirely. You should know this, so I don't understand where that remark even came from.
The "problem"
now is not that the war "just needs to be fixed". That is not a problem, that is a fact. The problem is that it
still needs to be fixed. It needed to be fixed before release, or removed altogether until a later update. Neither was done.
That you rely on mods to fix one of the core game components is only indicative of how poorly it was approached in the first place.
Ships teleporting - no, I'm not talking about encounters. There are at least two instances of this happenning. One: a ship following a wing leader may stop moving, only to suddenly jump to formation across half a sector. This
includes player-owned ships. Two: a capship undocking from a Shipyard/Eq.Dock actually teleports some distance away from the berth (kilometers), and then starts moving back toward it. The latter, I
think is a crutch they made to "fix" the problem of capships hoarding the berths which came about somewhere around 2.0 (maybe 2.20). Of course, it may be something unrelated and entirely new. Strange that you didn't know about these.
Oh wait, there's a third one - playership getting randomly warped. They've patched up the cases of this happening since release, but some are still there.
And I'm sorry, but you're incorrect again. I wasn't nitpicking. As I said, I could've went on and on. Nearly all aspects of the game suffer from some kind of deficiency (in design or in implementation), and in complex they diminish the whole experience.
So, you want specifics on what's better in X3 compared to X4? Ok, let's look at some of those.
- Variety. Yes, 3 achieved it via sheer amount of ships and weapons. But also through combinations. Incidentally, modularity is what's being touted by eMYNOCK in his canned responses to reviews for X4. In reality, X4 totally flunked this. Yes, it's understandable that there are way fewer ships and weapons. But that is not the problem. Or rather, it shouldn't have been. The problem is that the alleged modularity isn't worth a damn. It's quite simply best Paranid engine (Argon for traders), best Teladi shield, and whatever racial weapon you have reputation for (because even for those turrets that do differ between races, difference is negligible), choice only depends on ship size. I.e. it's all just smoke. Not to mention there are clear winners in each ship class. Had the game offered more sensible combinations of ships and equipment, I bet there'd be less noise about "wah so few ships".
- Ships didn't randomly teleport when you entered a sector or got close to them, barring certain story mission. (Again, not talking about encounters).
- Missions. They were more difficult in the beginning (to a point, if we're talking Reunion, that you could've even been declined), and became more rewarding the further you got. In X4, almost any mission can be accessed and completed in a starter ship, providing ridiculous rewards in the beginning, and what seems like pennies later on.
- Mini-plots. These became more of a thing with TC and AP, and they were awesome. X4 has one, and it's horrible. War and guild missions aren't even plots at all, just random non-sensical missions.
- Economy, while faked, made sense. Both logically, and in terms of gameplay. While NPCs were allowed to cheat, you as a player cared about every product, especially the top-tier goods such as weapons. In 4, most everything is readily available, barring occasional hitches in simulated economy (and NPCs are still cheating anyway). Talk about four decades of isolation and an alleged war.
- (Consequence of the above) Prices made sense. 3 million for a fully-fitted corvette? You'd be laughed out of the shipyard! The cheapest M6 hull was like 5M, and you could easily double that with equipment.
- Ships did what you told them to do. Yes, literally. Yes, they'd happily collide with things. Yes, they'd go through enemy territory because it was the shortest path. It was all predictable, and therefore, manageable. With X4, there are so many ways for ships to misbehave. For example, inconsistent queue handling, where sometimes they delete last executed order, sometimes they don't. Or, sometimes they fly in formation, but more often they don't. They'd happily blow up their own carrier (because, surprise, unlike X3, they're allowed to shoot while docked). They'd happily chase an N into enemy sector, even though you told them to stay put. Most recently, fighters would go on lockbox hunt irregardless of standing orders or an explicit order to ignore. Because testing is, apparently, overrated.
- If one of your ships was attacked, it was piss easy to find where it was.
- Capships were scary.
- X3 didn't have "encounters". This is another one where X4 could've shined, but instead only brought frustration.
- Pirates. They had their unique ships and stations (In fact, pirates always had unique ships, from BtF through Rebirth). They weren't a true "faction", but the game faked them well enough that sometimes they appeared to be. X4 doesn't even pretend to try.
- Travel made sense, and was a concern, and a goal for improvement. In 4, everyone always has a travel drive and access to highways, so it could've just as well shrunk the sectors and not given travel drive to anyone.
- The UI, while hard-core clunky legacy, was way, way more consistent and informative than what we have in X4. Yes, there were those layered menus, but at least all actions were grouped logically. With X4, to this day you can't ever be certain if "Information" will show you information or behavior, which is especially aggravating for objects that don't even have any behaviors. Not to mention ship commands being scattered between different menus, or selection having too much context.
- Sectors made sense, economically and thematically.
- Music didn't get interrupted every 5 seconds.
- This shit didn't happen back then.
- Last, but not least. It didn't require mods to make it playable or fun. Still doesn't.
) from a side window, while the X4 Behemoth has actual turrets that spins around and can be destroyed (sadly to easily for my taste).
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