Some people like to say that the X franchise has a steep learning curve but I prefer to say that it has a teaching problem.
It's great that the devs are thinking about making the game easier to pick up. Some work has been done to improve the tutorials and add information prompts to the game which is terrific but inadequate.
Imagine you're playing World of Warcraft and you try to cast a spell but you are too far away to cast it.
The game will:
- Display the skill in red
- Play error audio (optionally spoken)
- Display text "You are too far away"
In a simple X scenario a player is trying to issue a ship to mine but the mining option in the menu is greyed out.
The problem could be a great many different things including but not limited to:
- The ship does not have a pilot
- the ship is not a mining class ship
- the ships cargo bay is full
- the ship doesn't have any mining lasers
This forces the player to have to alt+tab the game and go to a search engine or youtube video to try and decipher what the problem is. This shouldn't be necessary. The game should tell the player what the problem is within the confines of the game itself.
The answer is for the game to have the conditions for a command to be listed in a UI element.
This shouldn't be difficult to implement either. The code is already there. The game has to figure out if the option is clickable or greyed out. Parsing this function for the conditions and then printing them to a UI element should be easy enough. They can even be color coded by which conditions have been met.
In the previous example with the greyed out mining option the player would be able to check the command conditions and see that the mining laser is printed in red. They get the ship to go buy mining lasers and successfully use the mine command. The problem would be solved in seconds without any internet sleuthing on the players behalf.
This one simple change would drastically improve the game. I've wanted to see it implemented since I entered the franchise in X3 and am saddened to not see it after all these years.
While I've only talked about greyed out menu options there are other elements of the game where the same principle can be applied.
For example, at the start of the game I am experimenting with the different modes. I try SETA mode and the game just gives a tiny error noise. That's it, just a beep. The game should definitely say something along the lines of "You need to use a crafting stations to craft a SETA before this option unlocks".
If someone asked me what one thing I could change about the X games is, this would be it. I get so exhausted trying to figure out why I can't do the thing I'm trying to do. If only the game would throw me a bone.
Utilizing the Verbose Ship Computer
There is so much fantastic item and ship descriptions in the encyclopedia. There are immersive and fun sector descriptions in the universe map.
There is no way to tell betty to read these to me.
Having the AI read me things was one of my favourite features from X3 and as far as I can tell it isn't in X4 at all.
One of the annoyances of space games like this are the large periods of time where you're just traveling through space. There are several other games where you find audio files and have them read to you while you play the game.
There should be a button you can press in either the encyclopedia or the world map that has the AI read the descriptions to you. You shouldn't have to keep these menus open either.
I would love it if I could scan a station while the AI tells me how the Xenos twisted the Argy's nips really hard in this sector and they're chaffed about it.
There should even be a button you can hotkey to "read this sectors description to me".
Menu icons could use some variance.
They're all white circles.
Sure, there is minor differences with what's in those circles but nobody looks at that.
If you want the property menu the player is probably thinking "It's the second white circle from the top on the left"
Which is kinda silly to me.
There are more white circles in this UI than the audience at a Depeche Mode concert.
Different shapes and colors would make these icons less intimidating. I remember opening the UI for the first time and lamenting that I was going to have to memorize what each of these white circles did and then have to think of a way to remember which one I want based off their positions relative to each other.
I ordered these 3 gripes in order of importance. The error handling is really bad and would make the game massively better if implemented. The other two are obviously just minor ways the game could be better.
Thank you very much for your time. Lots of love.
~Devin.