New X game wishlist!! write here features you need in next X game

[Santi]

I am not a fan of highways, specifically the way they are represented graphically, I would like them to be more low key, may sound like Sonic or a Nintendo game, but using an structure to accelerate your ship in a given direction will work better.

[BigVern]

Whatever structure the new Universe takes, it needs to be more, well, real. Previous X games no matter how brilliant never really convinced me I was in space, more a series of rooms linked by the gates. X-Rebirth, my first impression of Albion was that I was playing an underwater sim, particularly with all the abstract rocks floating everywhere. De-Vries, well it should be physically impossible to live and work that close to a sun and the general brightness of the sector gives me eyestrain - especially when looking for mines against the surface of the sun.

Now HoL and the associated sectors, a bit more like it if still a little abstract. So what should it look like, well there should be a basis in real astral dynamics, a single or binary star system orbited by planets in turn orbited by moons. The core trading locations would also be in orbit around these objects not stuck out in deep space. Freelancer kind of had that idea apart from the scale being all wrong and, while I haven't played the new Frontier yet, Frontier Elite II felt as if you were in space. Now my memory is hazy but am I right in thinking I-War actually had a very good implementation of orbital mechanics, the ship being equipped with dual drives, in simple terms normal propulsion when travelling within rang of a planet or in combat and some sort of hyperdrive for interplanetary travel.

In lore sense the current highways make no real sense, particularly as all the systems were separated both physically and (presumably) communication wise after the great gate shutdown. What are the odds on 5 or 6 systems all developing the same technology for high speed travel within their isolated section of space?

[Ketraar]

In lore sense the current highways make no real sense, particularly as all the systems were separated both physically and (presumably) communication wise after the great gate shutdown. What are the odds on 5 or 6 systems all developing the same technology for high speed travel within their isolated section of space?

They were not developed during isolation, you can see this in X3AP where the technology is being traded/scammed.

MFG

Ketraar

[ezra-r]

Who invented this mess?

Then you (people) wonder why Devs dont post in forum?

MFG

Ketraar

I'd tend to think it is the other way around. I'd rather have them explaining the why's and they sharing their thoughts on the development of these parts rather than me having to wonder why on earth they reached that vicious cycle scheme.

[Nikola515]

@vkerivan

Not really it it is going to bring more life to uneverse. As i said befor, engine already have this so not much effort is needed. As for what would ships do outside it is easy You disable enemy ship and problem solved(like how boarding works now). Also hit and run tactics would work as well as stealthy approach. Nothing is waste as long people want it. Space Engineers and planet landing had same arguments but see how that turned out to be

Edit: Also there is high damand on market for this as well. If you remember SC original idea was single player (squadron 41i think) and people wore so crazy about it that they wore trowing money like crazy. They originally wanted 3 million but now they got over 100 million. Also ED wants to do the same and even Eve wants to do something simular. My point is that they would be crazy not to take advantage of market right now if they can do it. I love space FPS like Hallo(first halo is my favorite and battle of Pilar of Atom) and games like X3.So game hybrid between those two would be dream come true. I know this is selfish by me but as i said market is high damand for games like this right now and im not the only one that thinks this way. Fallout/Skyrim is another example of FPS and Rpg hybrid that is extremely successfu. Egosoft would be crazy not to take advantage of this because market don't have many games like this. Also SC is have high damand on PC(you need super computer to run it) where Egosoft would have advantage again
@Ketaar

Im sorry but regardless what we say (good or bad) it wont change anything.As long as i can remember Egosoft was always distanced from its community when it comes to game development. Also it was their choice not to get involved with player community while XR was in development. Im pretty sure things would be much better with XR if they did( not talking about bugs).

@ ezra-r

Im with you there as well. You are 100% right and it is lack of fate in Egosoft that is main problem for me as well. For example looking what they did with XR lack of faith is teling me that if they try something new they will probably screw up again. So i would want them to improve what they already have. Also i have little fate in them and that we will have same r******* AI in next title because they haven't done anything about it in past 2 years. I personally think XR was just rushed out because they spend more time on engine than building game it self. Also when it comes to AI i think they are just lazy or they dont care (all X games had same problem). But what they lack the most is creativity when it comes to small details. Bring life to uneverse is something they cant do Stations interiors is perfect example....Ading more ships to uneverse (small traffic) ie not going to do anything. But having small stories(mini quests),real exploring,sick/injured people in station from pirate raids,moving NPC'S that they actually do something would help. And best way to understand what players want is to ask them personally

[vkerinav]

@vkerivan

Not really it it is going to bring more life to uneverse. As i said befor, engine already have this so not much effort is needed. As for what would ships do outside it is easy ;) You disable enemy ship and problem solved(like how boarding works now). Also hit and run tactics would work as well as stealthy approach. Nothing is waste as long people want it. Space Engineers and planet landing had same arguments but see how that turned out to be ;)

Edit: Also there is high damand on market for this as well. If you remember SC original idea was single player (squadron 41i think) and people wore so crazy about it that they wore trowing money like crazy. They originally wanted 3 million but now they got over 100 million. Also ED wants to do the same and even Eve wants to do something simular. My point is that they would be crazy not to take advantage of market right now if they can do it. I love space FPS like Hallo(first halo is my favorite and battle of Pilar of Atom) and games like X3.So game hybrid between those two would be dream come true. I know this is selfish by me but as i said market is high damand for games like this right now and im not the only one that thinks this way. Fallout/Skyrim is another example of FPS and Rpg hybrid that is extremely successfu. Egosoft would be crazy not to take advantage of this because market don't have many games like this. Also SC is have high damand on PC(you need super computer to run it) where Egosoft would have advantage again ;)

Actually, I think you answered your own points right here(assuming I didn't mistake your meaning):

... lack of [faith] in Egosoft that is main problem for me as well.

If Egosoft decides to add a FPS boarding minigame, it'll be just like every other example of the minigame genre; shallow, repetitive, and boring. Though one could have all the faith in them imaginable and still reach the same conclusion. It comes down to resources; what you want is two game mushed together, only you can't really have that. It'd take twice as long to develop, and cost twice as much. In the end, it would likely go the Rebirth route, pushed out too-soon on an unsuspecting public, which would not be happy, and twice as much to be unhappy about.

The most obvious example here is Rebirth's station walking. Everyone wanted it, apparently. There was high demand for it. Egosoft added it, in a hasty and limited fashion. People got bored of it quickly, and pretty soon were demanding some way to not have to do it ever again.

So what I'm really trying to say here is not that I'm against combining the space sim/FPS genre. I'm against a hastily designed and developed FPS minigame pushed out in an attempt to cash in. But I also don't want them to divert the necessary resources to do it well. My conclusion is that I'd rather they didn't do it at all.

[PowerPC603]

Since when do players know what they want?

They've been asking for station interiors for years so you can walk around in them.
XR has it and the main playerbase is not happy about it.

They've been asking for NPC's to fill some roles.
XR has it and players find them not good enough either.

People wanted to be able to play the game using a stupid controller with only a few buttons and without browsing through 20 menu's to give an order to a ship.
Now we got a game DESIGNED for such controllers while such a complicated game simply cannot give the amount of control we previously had in previous games, but we still expected the same depth and control, which they added later due to constant complains from players playing with keyboard+mouse.

My point: if you give the players exactly what they want, it still won't be good enough.



Egosoft has a history of releasing games far too soon and with too many game-breaking bugs in all of them.
I joined the X-series when X2: The Threat was released and every game since then had problems at launch.
CTD's, bugged missions, some stuff implemented but completely non-functional, poor performance, lacking content and more.

For their next game, I really hope they don't rush things again or they end up same as when XR was launched (90% of the buyers asking for their money back).
Some new players bought XR as their first game from Egosoft and probably won't buy another ever again, they lose alot of customers that way.



XR was a mess when it came out but now, when playing XR 4.0, I decided to try it again and I like it so far.

Boarding is better than before (compared to X3 and it's predecessors) although they may add some kind of progress bar to it.
When your marines make progress, the bar should fill up.
When they reach a problematic spot which holds them back, the bar should drain again.
When the bar is filled completely, boarding is successful.
When the bar drains totally empty because your marines died, boarding fails.

Yesterday I boarding a ship after all surface elements were destroyed and the hull was at 10%, giving me a boarding resistance of only 9 points (my boarding strength was only 24 at that time).

I had nothing to do but wait because my copilot didn't find any elements to take out and suddenly the ship was mine. But you can't tell how long it will take or how far the marines progressed.
I had to shoot the hull a few times though because the engineer was repairing it and the boarding resistance went up slowly.



About landing on stations and walking around in them:
They could add some action to it.
Some FPS elements probably where sometimes an NPC goes wild (enemy or whatever) and you can kill him.
There may also be missions to find some NPC on a station which you need to kill.

Or plant some bombs on a station at specific spots where guards are patrolling and you have to plant them when they're not looking.
The bombs could be on a timer and when the last bomb has been planted, the timer starts and you have to leave before the timer runs out or you explode along with the station.
In this instance, leaving cannot be done using ENTER - 7 - 2 (return to ship immediately), this would be too easy.

They may also add some missions to take control of a station.
Then you must gather materials to hack some station consoles to transfer ownership to yourself first. When it's under your control, the person who gave the mission can then ask for ownership to be transferred to him, which you can accept for some nice cash or you keep the station under your own control, but you seriously undermine the relationship with the race to which the mission-person belongs.

[Patholos]

I'm playing Distant Worlds

And there's a system which lets you customize the automation of your game.

You can go from managing everything yourself to letting the AI manage "everything" and everything in between.

Something like that would go a long way to please both camps.

[mr.WHO]

I'd like to highlight that ED, even with the expansion is even more boring and repetetive than X-R.

The only thing that ED has better than X-R is space combat and unlimited exploration, but these can be boringvery fast without any other content.

The SC is still lighyears from comletion and it will be mainly high quality multiplayer. Single player, even if they manage to make it decent quality will not be the main course of this game.


X-Rebirth, even if it's mildly r******* still don't have any real competition other than previous Egosoft games.

4.0 patch as all previous big patches move X-R in a good direction, so I'm confident that their next game that will base on X-R engine, but will drop some of it's limitations (like flying one ship only, no real carriers, some better GUI in most areas).

To me it will be "shut up and take my money" situation, but I think we'll have to wait for it 2 or 3 more years.

X-Rebirth was painful, but necesary experiment. It's often best to learn on your failures (and X-R had plenty of these).

[ezra-r]

Since when do players know what they want?
...

This is also quite true, now I know I may sound as contradicting myself to some extent, but it is certain that the we the community shouldn't be taken tooooo much into account or Egosoft will probably produce a monster trying to please everyone.

So that's why I try to stick to a few main and basic points.

They do a space game, that allows you to build an empire and class fleets against enemies, build, fight,trade,think (yeah right).

So I think:

* Space is all about exploration <-- this should be expanded to the fullest to have a worthy space games.

* Fight. I think fighting is one of the most satisying things in Rebirth if you take out the AI behaviour in many cases, so in this side it is clear what needs improvement. Cap ships not manuvering correctly to use their main weapons, taking too long to head to the enemy, fighters aligned with cap ships and glued to them while not fighting, etc... just focus on making battles awesome.

* Building. It's great but... (next point explains the but...) there is a problem with demand/offer.

* Trading is good from my ignorant point of view but I believe Egosoft has made a vicious cycle which is difficult to overcome and enjoy from it. Reinforced Metal Plating anyone? Fusion Reactors? or Weapons/Launchers which have 0 demand? Item needed for building factory that builds item? Total failure in the end.

* Think. Well, basically this could be spared/ignored as it has always been a matter of "are you being ripped off or not".

Next development should focus on doing what Egosoft claims the game is about... to the fullest extent.

Other elements to please community are fine if you avoid making a mess.. as long as the basics they boast about are near perfection?

--

oh and I agree with all mr.WHO points in the previous post.

ED is so damn polished to do 4 things that it becomes the master of grinding, got tired of it too fast, shame. SC if it ever comes out, we'll see.. I doubt it very much.

So maybe that explains why we keep paying attention to what Egosoft does, they really have no competition, I wish they took real advantage of this.

[Nikola515]

@vkerinav

Yes that is true that people wanted interiors on first place but dont blame community because Egosoft didn't know what to do without it. Problem that there is nothing to do there besides smalltalk and pointless hacking. Interiors would more interesting and appealing if players could actually do something about it. It is like asking for car but you get car without engine and all you can do is look at it. Also i have seen games with one or two devs with less money creating good games. And XR is just bad design.

@PowerPC603

I think you are missing point here. You are blaming player for asking something in game. In reality you should blame devs for putting this in game just for show. Interiors are no problem in XR but nothing meaning to do in them is problem. If they can't do something at the moment than they shouldn't and they should wait when time is right. Everything in XR looks somewhat slapy. For example cap. ships use only one AI making 75% ships useless in game. All cap ships when in combat are behaving like destroyers. Balor,Sul or any other ship will head on in battle without chance of winning. Making all support ships completely useless in battle (they should stay and use missiles or drones from distance). Is it wrong for players to ask for better AI too? Or maybe we should just crose our fingers and hope they know what we want in next title?

[UniTrader]

so any wish is Valid here? ok, then my personal wishlist:

1. Custom Hotkeys, perferably using aiscript and md events like
<event_key_down keycode="KEY_X" />
event.param="'KEY_X'"
<event_key_up keycode="KEY_X" minholdtime="100ms" maxholdtime="500ms"/>
event.param="'KEY_X'" event.param2="234ms" (actually held time)

2. some way to show internal Debug Info like the Pathas shown in the Pathing Video from a few years ago

3. multimacro upgrades properly working on any Ship, not just the Player Ship, and better handling of them (like finding all Slots on a component and equipping them directly with a selected upgrade)

4. Few changes to the internal Mod Managment
=> All Mods used in a Savegame are permanently stored there
> they can be optional (not required for loading a Save) or inactive (not used anymore) though - these are just for informational purposes to make Mod Problem Solving easier
=> Same for the content.xml - List all Mods which were used there (not only the ones where the Settins differ from the default) and some info about their State (is Active, Last Version used, author, possibly some kind of Link for more information provided by each Mod)
=> add possibility to provide an uninstall procedure to a Savegame which will be stored there and will be executed on load if the respecitve mod isnt present/active anymore

[vkerinav]

@vkerinav

Yes that is true that people wanted interiors on first place but dont blame community because Egosoft didn't know what to do without it. Problem that there is nothing to do there besides smalltalk and pointless hacking. Interiors would more interesting and appealing if players could actually do something about it. It is like asking for car but you get car without engine and all you can do is look at it. Also i have seen games with one or two devs with less money creating good games. And XR is just bad design.

I don't blame the community. Maybe I think they create absurd threads full of absurd wishes, but sorting the practical from the impractical isn't their job. Like I said, I want rainbows. And a pony.

What I was trying to say is that adding something just because it is popular is one of the more silly things a development team can do. If you don't have the time and ideas necessary to do it, you're not going to please anyone. On the other hand, if you've got a good idea how to make it work, the time to carry it out, and some good beta testers that you're willing to listen to--well, that's different.

My other point is, given your apparent lack of faith in Egosoft's design abilities, what makes you think their shooter elements would be any good?

[Nikola515]

@vkerinav

At this point im pretty sure FPS would be completely mess. Because they don't have any experience with this. Also reason why engine took so long is same reason as well. But if they hire someone with experience outcome would be definitely different. Anyway if they do it right it will only help game....
Anyway game would have much more potential if they add FP or FPS experience. Just adding something to the game is one thing, but adding something and doing it right is a totally different thing. Just because we dont have faith in then doing this that don't mean that they can't hire someone to do it for them

Edit: Anyway it is possible for them to achieve this if they want to. Also they need help in AI department (a lots of help) and they need to hire some who can write text for actors. Things that they say is just stupid and annoying

[spankahontis]

It's what turned me off with Frontier Elite 2, it was great in the day, but in the end it was just, buy cheap, sell high rinse and repeat until you could buy better weapons, do some Bounty hunting missions.

End game is you have the best ship, best weapons, shields, then what do you do for fun after that?
Braben just didn't bloody learn from Elite 2 and Close Encounters.. Trading from Point A to B is repetitive.

Arguing on my review page of X-Rebirth with some Elite Dangerous fanboy.
He's constantly going on about how great it is and how terrible Rebirth is.
I ask him "Can you Empire build in E.D?" he wouldn't answer and kept changing the subject to all the great features E.D had.

He just didn't get it, it's about playability, Rebirth is pants on many levels, but Empire Building and single player was what kept me personally coming back to the game.
They improve the shit pathfinding and AI then great, but you need stuff to do in a game or it becomes a chore.

[Nikola515]

I haven't played any of ED games yet so i can't say much about it.... But unlike X3 games XR have limited economy(sink) so building empire is limited as well. There is so much you can do until you reach that point. Also sectors that are ideal for building player empire have little sink or no sink at all for them. To make things worse there is no uneversal trader for players (there is station Galaxy trader mod ) so all galaxy trading needs to be done manually. Building massive fleets is pointless do to horrible AI and stations being indestructible What im saying empire building is there just for show and nothing else compared to previous titles. Of corse you can build more but what is the point when there is not much use for it

[pref]

Btw there is an idea forum where anyone can post well formatted wishes with a higher chance of getting attention from ES.
Only needs a signup for devnet.

[UniTrader]

But unlike X3 games XR have limited economy(sink)

isnt it more the other way around? the only Product Sink was for weapons and Shields and, unless you use a Trick, is also very limited. far more limited than in XR since its about 2 weapons per Type each hour (or less, not sure about the rate at which they simply disappear - but it was very slow), whareas in XR there are several diffrent products needed to build (sink) ships, and this Sink is also not as limited (basically it sinks products as fast as Ships can be built until there is a shortage somewhere which slows the whole process)

[Nikola515]

Btw there is an idea forum where anyone can post well formatted wishes with a higher chance of getting attention from ES.
Only needs a signup for devnet.

Giving my personal info is not something I do easy

But unlike X3 games XR have limited economy(sink)

isnt it more the other way around? the only Product Sink was for weapons and Shields and, unless you use a Trick, is also very limited. far more limited than in XR since its about 2 weapons per Type each hour (or less, not sure about the rate at which they simply disappear - but it was very slow), whareas in XR there are several diffrent products needed to build (sink) ships, and this Sink is also not as limited (basically it sinks products 2as fast as Ships can be built until there is a shortage somewhere which slows the whole process)

In X3 we wore able to build as many complexes as we wanted. Ships did create out of thin air and disappear as well after buying. But it actually give player reason to build massive empires. XR is missing that so after building number of stations empire building is over because there is no sink for them anymore and nobody will come and buy it. Also if you build all this in OL there is no galaxy traders to sell surplus to other systems(unless you have DLCs and even with HoL they are buggy and don't trade everything ). Personally I think they should add second layer of economy that don't have anything to do with main economy but give player chance to build more stations (like in X3).

For example stations that builds TV monitors, supper computers, Tabaco, vine, small arms, androids, toys, small traffic ships, ship chairs, beds..... Items that are used every day and that are needed all over universe. This would be like luxury items that have unlimited sinks and they are really cheap. But they just need Ore, Silicon ,Ice, E-Cells to produce (not going to effect main economy much).

[pref]

But unlike X3 games XR have limited economy(sink)

isnt it more the other way around? the only Product Sink was for weapons and Shields and, unless you use a Trick, is also very limited. far more limited than in XR since its about 2 weapons per Type each hour (or less, not sure about the rate at which they simply disappear - but it was very slow), whareas in XR there are several diffrent products needed to build (sink) ships, and this Sink is also not as limited (basically it sinks products as fast as Ships can be built until there is a shortage somewhere which slows the whole process)

There were many types of wares both useful and useless for the player that sold well most of the time (fluently, no tricks involved).
Due to X3's much bigger scale (eco entity wise) filling the market was also much harder - for most wares you needed huge complexes to achieve that.
On top of that there were several different types of weapons, that you had to produce to equip your ships and other wares were needed to maintain your empire like satellites, laser towers or ecells.

Its not just the sinks, but it gave purpose to economy - which XR lacks even more then sinks imo.