I really want to love this game, but it is doing all it can to be unloved.
First of all when I bought it from the Oculus store - it would not boot up at all.
This was due to a clash between the Nvidia drivers and the Oculus update. This was 'fixed' - but the game is still unplayable due to issues that others have reported that (to my knowledge) have not been addressed in anyway by the Devs.
Here is the problem.
When you use either menu to bring up any of the side panels, there is a good chance that this freezes the game - you get a static broken image and the loading icon (hourglass). After a while, the game kicks back in - but with no side panel - so you have to reselect from the menu and chance the same glitch all over again.
Furthermore - on some occasions - after the freeze, the game comes back with really weird 'psychedelic' colors - the only way out of this is to reboot the game.
On one occasion, it completely froze my whole system, and I had to effect a hard reboot (not good!).
This glitch happens more often than not on my set up (i7 GTX1060 Windows 10 Oculus HMD). This is not a minor bug, it makes the game completely unplayable. As people who bought a product that does not work, I think we at least deserve a recognition of this bug and some sort of timescale.
I do not want to sound too negative, as I like what I have seen during the times when the game *did* run for a decent amount of time before crashing. It seems far more engrossing space sim and more of a spectacular VR experience than any other I have played. So much so, that I went out and bought X-rebirth 2D version (just so I could play the game).
So I am not bellyaching here, but my experience has been time-consumingly frustrating - this frustration will also be experienced by anyone else who bought the game recently. This is leading to a lot of (what must be) damaging reviews and comments on the Oculus store and other forums.
So, why am I not taking Oculus up on their offer of a refund?
Simply because, I can already tell that X-R is exactly the game I want to play in VR and (even from brief playing sessions) can see its potential.
Also, I am sure that the devs cannot leave things in this broken state - and *must* be working behind the scenes on a final fix that will allow though who bought the game to actually play it.
...a confirmation of this would be timely.
[FIXED] Major gamebreaking bugs that need resolving. Remedial work in progress.
Moderator: Moderators for English X Forum
The Problems you are talking about just came in since the last update (4.21) in correlation with the new 1.18 oculus service and 385.41 nvidia Drivers. Since oculus 1.18 is still beta, there's a good Chance that the issue is to be blamed to oculus - not the devs of this game, but of course we do not know.
It was last tuesday i think, so merely three days ago that the patch was released. None of the Bugs you mentioned where there before and i'm sure devs are working hard to get it back to the state it had before the update. Surely there will be a fix in the next days.
This is an early access title and you should be aware of this when buying a game in this state. There can be Bugs.
It was last tuesday i think, so merely three days ago that the patch was released. None of the Bugs you mentioned where there before and i'm sure devs are working hard to get it back to the state it had before the update. Surely there will be a fix in the next days.
This is an early access title and you should be aware of this when buying a game in this state. There can be Bugs.
Well - I hope I did not sound too negative - but you can guess my frustration, as the game did not work at all when I bought it and now just freezes and crashes. So it is good to hear that a fix is in the pipes.
My stance now is this - if I do not do anything to crash the game (i.e., bring up the panel), it is simply the best experience I have had in VR - period. The immersion and sense of scale is superior to any other game I have played. Without being able to fully play the game (yet) - I can tell the game is both deep and satisfying. After finding Elite boring and underwhelming *this* seems to be the game I am looking for. As I said, it induced me into buying the 2D version - which I love and will be getting X3 next. So - even though my experience with the VR version has not been great, it still managed to make me an X convert. So, after some considerable frustration - I have simmered down and I am 100% behind the game and what you guys are trying to achieve. I really want the game to succeed in VR and for it to get good reviews and feedback, in the hope that you continue to support VR in future titles. At the moment the reviews on the Oculus store (and elsewhere) are very negative - these reviews stopped me buying the game for some time and therefore must be having the same effect on many other potential players/customers. I think it is this aspect that worries me now. Even with what has been not a great experience, I would have hated to have missed what I am sure will be my favorite VR game and it would be tragic if you are missing (substantial?) sales because of these issues.
In gaming, you only get one chance - and many great games died at birth because of issues during the tiny launch window. As someone who wants to see X4 VR
it would be a tragedy of cosmic proportions.
So any issues I have have migrated to concerns over the success of the title.
Everyone gets what 'early assess' means, especially as this is becoming the dominant model for gaming. But the bottom line is that the game should have a playable foundation, or it will be abandoned before it has chance to be developed. The issues of driver incompatibility when systems are upgraded must be a real pain for developers. But surely there must be mechanisms in place to mitigate this (i.e. communication from graphics cards manufacturers and Oculus, so that it does not come as such a surprise)? Furthermore, I would suggest a message board on the loading screen of the game itself to let players know what the current issues are and what fixes are in the pipes. This would mitigate frustration and throw some water on the more incendiary reviews.
In conclusion - for quite selfish reasons - I want this game to do well and get the reviews the (fixed) version deserves - for VR support to prove profitable and viable. So, I am hanging in there waiting to be a 'fan' of the X universe. I hope it get fixed soon and become the VR hit it deserves to be.
My stance now is this - if I do not do anything to crash the game (i.e., bring up the panel), it is simply the best experience I have had in VR - period. The immersion and sense of scale is superior to any other game I have played. Without being able to fully play the game (yet) - I can tell the game is both deep and satisfying. After finding Elite boring and underwhelming *this* seems to be the game I am looking for. As I said, it induced me into buying the 2D version - which I love and will be getting X3 next. So - even though my experience with the VR version has not been great, it still managed to make me an X convert. So, after some considerable frustration - I have simmered down and I am 100% behind the game and what you guys are trying to achieve. I really want the game to succeed in VR and for it to get good reviews and feedback, in the hope that you continue to support VR in future titles. At the moment the reviews on the Oculus store (and elsewhere) are very negative - these reviews stopped me buying the game for some time and therefore must be having the same effect on many other potential players/customers. I think it is this aspect that worries me now. Even with what has been not a great experience, I would have hated to have missed what I am sure will be my favorite VR game and it would be tragic if you are missing (substantial?) sales because of these issues.
In gaming, you only get one chance - and many great games died at birth because of issues during the tiny launch window. As someone who wants to see X4 VR
it would be a tragedy of cosmic proportions. So any issues I have have migrated to concerns over the success of the title.
Everyone gets what 'early assess' means, especially as this is becoming the dominant model for gaming. But the bottom line is that the game should have a playable foundation, or it will be abandoned before it has chance to be developed. The issues of driver incompatibility when systems are upgraded must be a real pain for developers. But surely there must be mechanisms in place to mitigate this (i.e. communication from graphics cards manufacturers and Oculus, so that it does not come as such a surprise)? Furthermore, I would suggest a message board on the loading screen of the game itself to let players know what the current issues are and what fixes are in the pipes. This would mitigate frustration and throw some water on the more incendiary reviews.
In conclusion - for quite selfish reasons - I want this game to do well and get the reviews the (fixed) version deserves - for VR support to prove profitable and viable. So, I am hanging in there waiting to be a 'fan' of the X universe. I hope it get fixed soon and become the VR hit it deserves to be.
Don't worry, I didn't perceive it as negative - but rather as valid criticism, especially because you explained what the issue was in a calm and rational way.
We just can't always have instant solutions and there's usually more things needed to be done which isn't always clear from the outside. But we are working on it for our next patch.
"The issues of driver incompatibility when systems are upgraded must be a real pain for developers. But surely there must be mechanisms in place to mitigate this (i.e. communication from graphics cards manufacturers and Oculus, so that it does not come as such a surprise)? "
That's an understatement, really. The entire situation was far from a surprise - we were on it roughly 2 weeks earlier. As a short background : basically an experimental vulkan extension was required by a 3rd party. Khronos, the group behind Vulkan promoted that extension and that was picked up by NVidia/AMD in their drivers, which cascaded into the Oculus 1.18 SDK which had to change their interface and that in turn cascaded into our game, which needed to do updates to reflect that changed interface.
Now the old graphics drivers didn't support the promoted extension, the new drivers don't support the old extension... And worse, the newer drivers included an old vulkan-runtime, so that gave more problems.
1.18 only works with newer graphics drivers, no way around it. Backward compatibility to Oculus runtime 1.17 wasn't possible due to technical limitations (we tried!). If we updated before the Oculus update, it would break for everyone. If we updated after it would also break for everyone. So we switched when most customers had the 1.18 update to minimize the impact.
So yeah, that's a really nasty situation.
It only went so "well" because we were in contact with Oculus and Graphics card manufacturers - and I have utmost respect from the guys from AMD and Oculus for listening and reacting to our mails, especially - keep in mind - that they were listening to feedback from that tiny german developer. Note that the contact with NVidia went through Oculus, so I didn't have direct contact with them.
From what I see, most negative reviews in the Oculus-store are due to this situation, and while I understand people are disappointed if the game doesn't run instantly - there isn't much we could have done better. If people refuse to upgrade their graphics drivers (because it's the game's fault it doesn't work - it can't be my computer because other games run it) - not realizing that XR-VR is probably one of the few if not the only Vulkan-VR game which is going to have unique problems, then that's where it ends. We do try to answer all customers with problems, but we can't force anyone to make sure their system is up-to-date. This is a shared responsibility and people have to do their part and make sure their machines are updated.
On the positive other side, I got several mails from customers with problems - and with a few mails back and forth everyone(!) got the game to run and they were very happy and excited.
Anyway, too long story
We just can't always have instant solutions and there's usually more things needed to be done which isn't always clear from the outside. But we are working on it for our next patch.
"The issues of driver incompatibility when systems are upgraded must be a real pain for developers. But surely there must be mechanisms in place to mitigate this (i.e. communication from graphics cards manufacturers and Oculus, so that it does not come as such a surprise)? "
That's an understatement, really. The entire situation was far from a surprise - we were on it roughly 2 weeks earlier. As a short background : basically an experimental vulkan extension was required by a 3rd party. Khronos, the group behind Vulkan promoted that extension and that was picked up by NVidia/AMD in their drivers, which cascaded into the Oculus 1.18 SDK which had to change their interface and that in turn cascaded into our game, which needed to do updates to reflect that changed interface.
Now the old graphics drivers didn't support the promoted extension, the new drivers don't support the old extension... And worse, the newer drivers included an old vulkan-runtime, so that gave more problems.
1.18 only works with newer graphics drivers, no way around it. Backward compatibility to Oculus runtime 1.17 wasn't possible due to technical limitations (we tried!). If we updated before the Oculus update, it would break for everyone. If we updated after it would also break for everyone. So we switched when most customers had the 1.18 update to minimize the impact.
So yeah, that's a really nasty situation.
It only went so "well" because we were in contact with Oculus and Graphics card manufacturers - and I have utmost respect from the guys from AMD and Oculus for listening and reacting to our mails, especially - keep in mind - that they were listening to feedback from that tiny german developer. Note that the contact with NVidia went through Oculus, so I didn't have direct contact with them.
From what I see, most negative reviews in the Oculus-store are due to this situation, and while I understand people are disappointed if the game doesn't run instantly - there isn't much we could have done better. If people refuse to upgrade their graphics drivers (because it's the game's fault it doesn't work - it can't be my computer because other games run it) - not realizing that XR-VR is probably one of the few if not the only Vulkan-VR game which is going to have unique problems, then that's where it ends. We do try to answer all customers with problems, but we can't force anyone to make sure their system is up-to-date. This is a shared responsibility and people have to do their part and make sure their machines are updated.
On the positive other side, I got several mails from customers with problems - and with a few mails back and forth everyone(!) got the game to run and they were very happy and excited.
Anyway, too long story
Thanks for the comprehensive reply.
Even with the crashes, I am enjoying the game immensely. I should not put down another game here, but I found Elite bland and boring, it seemed like hours of travelling through a screen saver to see the same two or three space station models. The X universe seems far more diverse and interesting. To be honest, if I was just flying around looking at the often astonishing sites *without* playing the game, it would be money well spent. The gameplay (which I have played many hours in 2D now) is also deep and rewarding. There is a real steep learning curve that may put the more casual gamer off, but for me, working all of this out is part of the journey.
I think you are right, all of those negative reviews are a result of the experiences with bugs. Many will have bought the game when it was on offer on the Oculus store, which unhappily coincided with the incompatibility issues. This is very unfortunate, as reading all those negative reviews gives entirely the wrong impression. It sounds like the game is terrible, when in fact it has the potential to be the deepest and most rewarding VR experience on the market. When everything is fixed up and I have had a chance to play for a few hours uninterrupted, I will post a full review to do some counterbalancing.
This is why I suggested some better form of communication with new purchasers. Most people will boot it up and think - well, this game just does not work. Most wont bother to do a bit of research or seek answers on your forum. Result - they ask for a refund and vocally put the game down. Subnautica is another wonderful VR experience, but has been plagued by bugs and framerate issues for some months. I think the reason this get fewer bad reviews is that the loading screen greets you with news and updates - so you do not get the impression that the game is just broken, but is in early access and that the issues are known and being worked on. I think such a strategy would help here.
At the end of the day all I want to see, is for everything to get fixed and for people to get into the game, post positive reviews, encourage others to buy - with the end game being that Egosoft continue to develop for VR. On the strength of my experience with Rebirth in 2D, I will be buying X4 at launch - man, do I want to see this in VR too.
So, after my initial frustrations (which were real!) - I am now 100% behind the game and wish you guys the very best of luck moving forward.
Even with the crashes, I am enjoying the game immensely. I should not put down another game here, but I found Elite bland and boring, it seemed like hours of travelling through a screen saver to see the same two or three space station models. The X universe seems far more diverse and interesting. To be honest, if I was just flying around looking at the often astonishing sites *without* playing the game, it would be money well spent. The gameplay (which I have played many hours in 2D now) is also deep and rewarding. There is a real steep learning curve that may put the more casual gamer off, but for me, working all of this out is part of the journey.
I think you are right, all of those negative reviews are a result of the experiences with bugs. Many will have bought the game when it was on offer on the Oculus store, which unhappily coincided with the incompatibility issues. This is very unfortunate, as reading all those negative reviews gives entirely the wrong impression. It sounds like the game is terrible, when in fact it has the potential to be the deepest and most rewarding VR experience on the market. When everything is fixed up and I have had a chance to play for a few hours uninterrupted, I will post a full review to do some counterbalancing.
This is why I suggested some better form of communication with new purchasers. Most people will boot it up and think - well, this game just does not work. Most wont bother to do a bit of research or seek answers on your forum. Result - they ask for a refund and vocally put the game down. Subnautica is another wonderful VR experience, but has been plagued by bugs and framerate issues for some months. I think the reason this get fewer bad reviews is that the loading screen greets you with news and updates - so you do not get the impression that the game is just broken, but is in early access and that the issues are known and being worked on. I think such a strategy would help here.
At the end of the day all I want to see, is for everything to get fixed and for people to get into the game, post positive reviews, encourage others to buy - with the end game being that Egosoft continue to develop for VR. On the strength of my experience with Rebirth in 2D, I will be buying X4 at launch - man, do I want to see this in VR too.
So, after my initial frustrations (which were real!) - I am now 100% behind the game and wish you guys the very best of luck moving forward.
First of all: Thx for the update @Ego. Good job, all major bugs that appeared last patch seems to be gone. Ist beautiful to enjoy the game with SS again!
I really like this game and like said, it's one of the - if not THE most complex and in a special way intense VR titles on the market for me right now. Keep up the good work and please make sure that we will be able to enjoy X4 in VR at release !
Cgould wrote a lot of the things i was thinking about in great words. About the reviews and the communication i want to absolutely agree with him and i think some work into letting the people know whats going on will keep your game from a lot of bad reviews.
This game deserves better than 3.3 stars
I really like this game and like said, it's one of the - if not THE most complex and in a special way intense VR titles on the market for me right now. Keep up the good work and please make sure that we will be able to enjoy X4 in VR at release !
Cgould wrote a lot of the things i was thinking about in great words. About the reviews and the communication i want to absolutely agree with him and i think some work into letting the people know whats going on will keep your game from a lot of bad reviews.
This game deserves better than 3.3 stars
Intel Core I9 9900k @ 5GHz
32GB Corsair Dominator @ 3.6GHz CL15
ASUS WS Z390 pro
ASUS ROG Strix 2080ti
Samsung C49RG9 49" 32:9 - 5120x1440
Oculus Rift + Touch 3 Sensor Setup
32GB Corsair Dominator @ 3.6GHz CL15
ASUS WS Z390 pro
ASUS ROG Strix 2080ti
Samsung C49RG9 49" 32:9 - 5120x1440
Oculus Rift + Touch 3 Sensor Setup
