the-danzorz wrote:I have said all i can about steam, so has a lot of people and the counter opinions have been stated as well. This thread has not been productive for pages and pages now. I have already suggested a valid way of getting the steam concern heard. Its up to those it does concern to do it and try to get a change. Otherwise EVERYONE is wasting their time with this thread. Its mostly all none-productive at this point.
The only real way to get the message across is to email or PM Bernd. He is the only one with a hope of changing anything.
Also, bombard Deepsilver with emails.
I've done both. Has anyone else ?
Scoob wrote:In the past Egosoft have given us some pretty decent freebies content-wise. Nice little bonuses if you will.
Now, if they've been prepared to do this for free, imagine what they can achieve if they're getting some money for it!
However the flip side is that, traditionally at least, the modding community has MORE than catered for our "DLC" needs, well it has for me! The "signing" process was originally a way to make scripts (not really mods though) official and released as part of a free bonus pack. This was a good way to give those who don't like modifed a taste of what they're missing.
Purely within the realms of "modding" and "scripting" there's not much that Egosoft can do that player-created mods cannot for TC etc. I assume the same, if not more, control will be given to the modder in XR - well, I certainly hope so.
So, the question is, what sort of DLC could Egosoft offer via Steam (see how I kept this on topic there? lol) that we could not, in theory, get free from the modding community?
I mean, the extra missions etc. that we've had for free with patches have been pretty good, but can you compare that to something like XRM? Or XTC with a NEW universe? As does Transcend II etc. A massive amount of effort went in to creating those...yet we all got them for free.
IF Egosoft are considering paid for DLC (which, like I say, I'm fine with as it's my choice if I buy or not) I'd be interested to see what form it takes and what it can offer the community that some of the talented modders here cannot.
I have mixed thoughts on this.
On the one hand, I've never really paid much attention to the extra plots that came with the patches. None of them were that good, several I didnt bother with at all. None were worth paying for.
On the other hand, I've long said that Egosoft were missing out by not adding paid content to the game. And I've especially said that they are missing out big time by not supporting modders and allowing the mods to be sold, thus returning Egosoft a royalty and giving the modders a modest return on their time.
On the gripping hand, the community here is dead set against paying for anything extra. The few attempts by anyone to get be paid for their hard work has been disasterous, and that includes modders and tool writers, who mainly are not here any more as a result. So paid DLC on X games is a very contentious issue and will get a lot of resistence.
Ideally, I'd like to see Egosoft support the modding and tool making community by embracing the bigger mods and tools, and allowing them to have a small download fee. In dact, if Steam is embraced, then the larger mods could be offered through steam as paid erd party DLC. eg. XTM, is well worth paying $1.99 for. Even my AMS is worth 50c. And as well as that, things like the X3 Handbook should also be downloadable the same way, for a small fee.
This encourages the modding, guiding and tool making community to do much more and keep it supported.
Alas, Egosoft would need to remove their restrictions on "balance", since the vast majority of modding unbalances the game from their perspective.
Food for thought. And probably its own thread.
the-danzorz wrote:They will probably add new major content that can inspire the mod scene, like with X3:R you had the player HQ and that inspired a lot of mods to make a new custom HQ for players.
The player HQ falls firmly into the category of planned for the original game, but they didnt have time to finish it. The original designs for the HQ were in X2. So that being paid DLC would have been the worst thing they could have done.
Shimrod wrote:I believe this could be solved with some upfront design, without ongoing trouble as follows.
The Steam integration code within XR is encapsulated so it can be enabled or disabled through a config setting or registry key. This produces a single build that works both with and without Steam and allows the same patched files to work in all cases.
The DVD version will ask the user whether they want to use the product with Steam, and either install it into a standalone folder using the key as a CD-key, or run the Steam client where the same key is used to register it with Steam.
A CD check can be avoided by following the Sins model, where the game can be installed and played freely, but to download updates requires some level of authentication. This is where the CD-key comes into play. An Update option on the game launcher, appearing if Steam isn't flagged, will use the CD key to authenticate the game with either Steam itself or Egosoft, and download file based on the delta required to meet the version gap from either Steam or a designated patch server.
Authentication can be further strengthened if necessary by requiring the CD key to be registered against an Egosoft account, as is currently required to obtain bonus material. The same patch binaries are then avaialble via Steam and either an egosoft patch server, or Steam itself should it support that type of remote access.
So there's a one-off investment to set up a patch server. This can be leveraged to produce standalone versions of future titles. Besides that, its just a case of encapsulating Steam integration correctly upfront. The benefit of a patch server is the files do not need to be packaged with an installer. Alternatively the auto update mechanism could simply be left out and the patches manually posted for download, at the cost of having to package them into installers and do install tests.
I like your thinking, but its 4 years too late. All that had to be done at the initial design phase. Its not something you bolt on at the last minute, and we are now at the "last minute" as far as the game release is concerned.
epimannn wrote:Some years ago, downloading 1GB of datas was just painfull and took days.
Now, with just a night or two and an average connection, you can get a full TV series...
It still does take days for that big a download.
I would not even consider downloading anything that big. I think twice once it goes over 200mb.
Australia still mainly has copper wires, either as cable, or adsl connection. The adsl is the same wiring they originally refused to guarentee 56k would work on. Alternatively, there is wifi, and its slower ! I can run a webcam off the adsl, but not off the wifi. The adsl is slower than cable, but cable running stopped when it became law for it to be underground. So any housing area less than 15 years old does not have cable, and any less than 10 years old often dont have adsl either and are forced to use wifi.
The high speed fiberoptics may go from Sydney to Melbourne, but for the rest of Australia, its tortoise power we rely on.
The move here is to wifi, not fireoptics. And wifi is flaky and unreliable, and a damn sight slower. Not to mention more expensive.
As for "a night or 2", I dont leave my computer on at night, and I dont download tv, I buy dvd's and now BR.
, dude, Steam does collect information on your software and hardware and sends it into the steam servers. This isn't some conspiracy theory. Read the Steam usage aggreement, they tell you exactly what they collect and how they use it. 
