Is it me or does the game becomes boring at early stage?

[The3rdWings]

Got a couple if factories and production hubs
got 10 miners and traders of all sizes
got all the light and heavy fighters and cruisers
I dont need destroyers or carriers because of obvious reasons (slow and useless pretty much)

And i achieved all that in just a couple of days, i can take on anything without much effort due to AI is as smart as a bug

So... what is left for me to do?
It is possible to destroy anything in this game with just a single heavy fighter (2 rail-guns, 1 plasma cannon and 1 torpedo tube)

[Buzz2005]

standing in the deadzone and pressing fire is boring yes

[The3rdWings]

standing in the deadzone and pressing fire is boring yes

a dead zone is part of how the real world is, its not mechanic abuse or cheating.
Its like fighting a Tiger1 german tank with a T34 soviet medium tank, lets just charge it head on so it wont be boring right?
its just lame, there is a point why speed and size are better then armor thickness

[csaba]

Yes the game becomes a 2D economy simulator quite fast. Devs said that large mission improvements are coming with the expansion, hopefully it will fix the problem.

[ScandyNav]

standing in the deadzone and pressing fire is boring yes

there is a point why speed and size are better then armor thickness

Yeah, but you don't use your speed, you just stick to the target engines and placing something heavy on mouse button.
Whole gravity magnet thing is just lame.

[geronimo3]

i understand the point, if you have achieved everything (earned lots of credits, build large fleets, build lots of stations ...) you may have no idea how to progress. With 3.0 and SV i will start a new game. meanwhile i focus on smaller things and let my imperium work for itself, e.g. open all data tresors and complete the history line, fine tune the new 2.6 possible trade stations, simply fly around and observe the fights of the fractions, fight some Xenons in smaller S-ships, redesign my stations to make them look nicer ....
with a new gamestart in 3.0 i will probably avaoid the easy methods on making cr like crystal mining ....

[The3rdWings]

i understand the point, if you have achieved everything (earned lots of credits, build large fleets, build lots of stations ...) you may have no idea how to progress. With 3.0 and SV i will start a new game. meanwhile i focus on smaller things and let my imperium work for itself, e.g. open all data tresors and complete the history line, fine tune the new 2.6 possible trade stations, simply fly around and observe the fights of the fractions, fight some Xenons in smaller S-ships, redesign my stations to make them look nicer ....
with a new gamestart in 3.0 i will probably avaoid the easy methods on making cr like crystal mining ....

Heh you dont even have to mine crystals to become rich fast.
You do 2 missions, buy a miner, mine teladium and in a couple of minutes you will have enough to buy a second miner.
After 15 to 20 minutes you can have 5 miners. By that time teladium is over flooded so you switch to silicon.
After another 30 minutes you buy a few universal traders.
Under 1 hour you can already have your first station up and running
After 2 hours you can already start buying ships for your fleet
After 3 hours you can deal with pretty much anything hostile, with a strong fleet and a strong economy

[linolafett]

Under 1 hour you can already have your first station up and running

Would love to see how you can manage to do that. Seriously. Even with getting seta quickly, one hour for having a station up and running is a seriously short timeframe!

[The3rdWings]

Under 1 hour you can already have your first station up and running

Would love to see how you can manage to do that. Seriously. Even with getting seta quickly, one hour for having a station up and running is a seriously short timeframe!

you get it through a quest....

[-=SiR KiLLaLoT=-]

Under 1 hour you can already have your first station up and running

Would love to see how you can manage to do that. Seriously. Even with getting seta quickly, one hour for having a station up and running is a seriously short timeframe!

This is true! But acquiring credits is TOO simple. You should eliminate "one zero" from the earnings of the random missions, leave the costs of the ships as they are, and triple the costs of the capital making them very powerful but in smaller numbers inside the universe.

EDIT: "Very powerful" as a "Xenon I"

[Raevyan]

Under 1 hour you can already have your first station up and running

Would love to see how you can manage to do that. Seriously. Even with getting seta quickly, one hour for having a station up and running is a seriously short timeframe!

Capture the free Odysseus, sell it for 5-8m, buy buy a plot and build a dock, container storage and solar panel (or anything, may have to do plot for research to get some blueprints). Station done and probably won't take an hour. Alternatively crystal mining for 15min to get some cash fast. While building buy miner and send them to auto mine nividium. All without using seta. If you really try hard you go around and do build missions as they are mostly fire and forget and buy a mining/auto trader fleet and start building multiple stations at once instead of one big self sustaining one.

The only real limiting factor is the time it takes to actually build the station. Before 2.6 you were also able to exploit and get the whole faction money and being able to buy all blueprints, again only limited by the time it takes to get the rep.

As soon as you have around 250m you're able to start building your wharf (buying all materials from npc) and buy 1-2 ship blueprints with equipment. That's it money is no longer a problem.

There is no real endgame. Faction are not really war with each other. Factions won't really respond to enemy activity. Xenons aren't a real threat. Pirates and Khaak pretty much non existent.

[Axeface]

There really isnt any early game (once you know some basic things). Within minutes of starting a new game you can hunt down Minotaur Raiders in the starting ship - the balance in this game means that its not a problem for someone in the starting ship to make them bail. Congrats, you have a good enough ship for both combat and even trading. Try taking on a Centaur in the starting ships in X3, and they dont bail in x3 anyway and have to be boarded.
X3 also manages to make S ship gameplay still enticing even when you have access to larger ships because of balance, M6's just cant move like M3's and offer different weapons. They offer different gameplay. In X4 M ships like the nemesis feel like heavy fighters rather than corvettes, so their core gameplay makes S ships obsolete, for me anyway.

The AMA is very illuminating, and the studios focus is with end-game for 'very rich players' with them only being stubbornly open to 'small changes' to core gameplay such as balance - this means the core game is not going to change much and this is where I think the main problems with the game are. Apparently this is because their stats say many people have 'long play times'? I have over 150 hours but its spread out over many new saved games while waiting for the game to be finished so I hope i'm an outlier and those stats are being correctly interpreted.

Maybe they feel like they have moved the goal-posts and shifted station building and fleet management into the early game in an attempt to make more players reach these stages... the problem is the large fleets dont work and arnt fun, and when they get too large the game crawls to a halt anyway because of performance - station building is great, but without the core gameplay backing it up I just dont want to do it. For me the middle ground is where I want to end up - I want limits not bloat. I'de like to see crew expenses and even ship limit laws or personnel shortages trying to keep my ship and station count down, like a huge corporation that is being confined by governments and factions that dont want any one corp getting too big (the player could break these 'laws' of course, but it should lead to universe wide reputation problems depending on how much you have broken the laws).

[Skeeter]

Yeah i find it a struggle to enjoy x4 compared to xbtf or x2 as they had better early game as in u struggle a bit more to earn money you can do the plot missions too but in x4 u can earn money too quickly especially crystal mining or scanning with the range finder thing for loot which i dont think should have been as easy and no missions to do apart from phq thing which i dont wana finish as thats the only current story mission in the game afaik. X4 is basically a sit on a dock and do most stuff from the map and not bother flying about in a ship which is the point of a space game where u fly ships after u have a little starting capital from crystal mining. Its like why bother flying at all after that which ruins the game. I hope to god theres alot of story missions in 3.0 tho the way bernd was going on in ama recently he said the words generic alot which means just boring missions u dont do unless u want money or a reward which imo is boring if u can just crystal mine instead. Scripted missions with special characters unique rewards u cant get otherwise is what i want and i want to interact with the universe inhabitants like in campaign missions with voice overs etc, ingame cutscenes using the engine not videos premade etc and stuff. He did mention they might come in 3.0 but how many hours will that kill 1 hour for 3 missions maybe and thats it or 20 decent missions that take a hour long each then id be super happy. I also worry for 3.0 as bernd said this is for those that have hunderads of hours in and super rich and its mainly end game content, there better be early game and some mid game content too for those that didnt want to play x4 till it had some more content that isnt to do with fleets, wars or empire building stuff like economy or stations.

[tomchk]

I found the AMA mostly good news, but I agree there were some concerning areas of strong resistance to what so many of us have been saying. They clearly are listening on some points (more goals, more lore, more story, better missions, better fleet control, etc.), but I think they need to reconsider some things like balancing (I agree that's off in many ways), the "warping in" with encounters, etc.

I am not too bothered by how quickly one can build capital, but I also never use SETA or crystal mining or some other quick paths (I also never found that free destroyer somehow...). Perhaps they can add a difficult setting that nerfs some of these quick paths?

[CaptainX4]

no, its not just you. a few times I was able to restart but even now after so many patches there is just no balance, there is no aim, its just too easy and too boring. i've just read the ama and now im sure there is no resurrection to x games and no chance this will ever get even just close to x3. this is a shiny spacecallofduty and fkd up even for that

[tomchk]

no, its not just you. a few times I was able to restart but even now after so many patches there is just no balance, there is no aim, its just too easy and too boring. i've just read the ama and now im sure there is no resurrection to x games and no chance this will ever get even just close to x3. this is a shiny spacecallofduty and fkd up even for that

There's hope here! We have changed their mind before (including very recently), so I'm quite sure we can do so again. How about we see how the 3.0 beta 1 is (sounds like it may arrive within 1 month) and then give lots of useful feedback on that?

[Axeface]

no, its not just you. a few times I was able to restart but even now after so many patches there is just no balance, there is no aim, its just too easy and too boring. i've just read the ama and now im sure there is no resurrection to x games and no chance this will ever get even just close to x3. this is a shiny spacecallofduty and fkd up even for that

There's hope here! We have changed their mind before (including very recently), so I'm quite sure we can do so again. How about we see how the 3.0 beta 1 is (sounds like it may arrive within 1 month) and then give lots of useful feedback on that?

When have they changed their mind out of interest?

[tomchk]

There's hope here! We have changed their mind before (including very recently), so I'm quite sure we can do so again. How about we see how the 3.0 beta 1 is (sounds like it may arrive within 1 month) and then give lots of useful feedback on that?

When have they changed their mind out of interest?

This isn't a huge thing at all, but very recently they changed course on some menu functionality:
viewtopic.php?f=192&t=419236&p=4889654& ... 2#p4889654

In XR, they drastically changed the way highways work (scrapping the minigame, which I never was able to try) and provided ways to get trade agents on stations other than via the repetitive smalltalk (e.g., go blow up a few enemies near a station and they will often offer you an agent as a reward, added after 4.0, and I think some post-release chain missions provide them in bulk).

I know there are many others, including big stuff, but those are what occur to me this second.

[geronimo3]

these are all valid points, but we have to keep in mind that Egosoft is doing X4 not only for the experienced veterans. in order to sell the game the have to make it attractive for a wide audience including the ones which cannot spent so much time with it, or not willing to learn all its possibilities. Also i think there is no competition who is the best and most skillfull X4 player, everone has the choice to play it hard or the more easier way. Most important is to have fun

[The3rdWings]

these are all valid points, but we have to keep in mind that Egosoft is doing X4 not only for the experienced veterans. in order to sell the game the have to make it attractive for a wide audience including the ones which cannot spent so much time with it, or not willing to learn all its possibilities. Also i think there is no competition who is the best and most skillfull X4 player, everone has the choice to play it hard or the more easier way. Most important is to have fun

I agree that fun have to be the prime focus with pretty much any game out there not just X4
but you cant really have fun in a game where you know you can park your light fighter next to an enemy destroyer or carrier and slowly bleed them to death while they cant do anything to stop you. In fact having a large ship in X4 feels really bad.
In X3 my tiny fighter couldnt handle anything, i remember how i struggled to cap a nova while i died over and over because of its damn back-turret. And every time i upgraded to the next tier, i actually felt achievement.
In X4 the only thing i feel when i move up tier is disappointment. Not only that its easy to get massive war ships, but it is also pointless because they suck