X:Rebirth
- Thread starter Denaut
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Watch the video that was posted.
If that kind of interface doesn't piss you off, I don't want to play the kinds of games you'd think are good.
If that kind of interface doesn't piss you off, I don't want to play the kinds of games you'd think are good.
Denaut
Trump's Staff
- 2,739
- 1,279
So, I've now spent pretty much the entire weekend playing, a total of 32 hours according to steam. My conclusion, the core game under all the layers of bugs and frustrations is excellent, and it is well within Egosoft's reach to fix the game.
Most of the bugs, especially some of the more serious ones have workarounds. I am not saying this is good, BUT if you really like and want to play the game, are willing to put in the effort, it is playable and enjoyable. First I'll write up where I think they went wrong and then I'll cover the most important workarounds I've learned from playing and reading the forums if there is someone out there that wants to give it a go like I did.
Where they screwed up huge was in a non-obvious but ridiculously important place...
Campaign Design
It took me a while but I have reached a conclusion...the campaign design and structure is by far the largest flaw with the game. Although players themselves might not realize it, the bulk of their feelings of frustration can be attributed to it. That sad part is how completely unforced the error is. This may sound a bit strange strange, but bear with me while I explain.
I noticed the game screams what I call "coder design", where the design isn't done by a dedicated professional designer who thinks and tests from a player perspective. The results completely ruin the experience for the player in a way that has nothing to do with bugs or features. I assume everyone on the team is either a programmer or artist and that Bernd acts as lead designer. If so, this is a huge mistake that lead totonsof unforced errors in the campaign.
I'll start with the first, but not the worst, mistake. For some reason, the first trading ship you are given is a large, slow, and cumbersome capital style freighter. Now, these ships are great, but what they excel at is large bulk purchases and sales. To make those kinds of trades you need lots of money. which you don't have. They should have just given you a small, fast generic or energy trader you could zip around the area to make some money while you ran missions. This was a bad idea.
The second mistake they did what not have the campaign lead you to do "X-Style" things, like trading and running missions for a while before throwing the more advanced stuff at you. What I mean is you are given a big complex ship that is most useful with lots of money and infrastructure at your disposal. The campaign then proceeds to teach you how to use it even though you can't really do much with it. I can only assume they really wanted to show off the new advanced features, but this is a bad idea, you really need to think like a new player or an X fan playing Rebirth for the first time.
A better second part of the campaign (after teaching you to trade with a small fast trader) would have been to have you run some missions for a little while. Whether that be by having you do some small trade runs or some station defense missions or whatever. Something simple for new players and familiar for old fans that let them get used to the new ways of doing things. The requirement could have been to earn a certain amount of credits or something equally semi-open ended.
The third and by far the worst mistake was to cleave the starting area in half and forcing half of the known galaxy to be your enemy. This ends up being catastrophic, compounding the earlier mistakes. And, not only does half of the game hate you, but they live and work right alongside the ones that don't.
It might have been alright if the halves were segregated from one another but from this point on it is nearly impossible to do anything in the entire sector whether that be trading or just running missions. Your trader will die if you don't babysit it, all the while being a very slow trader. With half of each zone red it also becomes very difficult to just run some missions for cash. There is no longer a safe place to just play the game and the "new" safe sector you are allowed access to is far too empty to make up for it.
This happens so early in the game the player never has a chance to get their feet wet. Players are lost, confused, and overwhelmed in a now very dangerous world. Even "old timers" don't have a chance to settle into the new groove. You can't really trade, you can't really run missions... the game is made very difficult to play at a basic level extremely early on.
This emotional reaction is palpable just by reading player reactions. The bugs and UI issues, while a problem are being magnified by the existing and underpinning feelings of frustration and helplessness. The worst part is this problem can't be worked around like the other ones.
Most of the bugs, especially some of the more serious ones have workarounds. I am not saying this is good, BUT if you really like and want to play the game, are willing to put in the effort, it is playable and enjoyable. First I'll write up where I think they went wrong and then I'll cover the most important workarounds I've learned from playing and reading the forums if there is someone out there that wants to give it a go like I did.
Where they screwed up huge was in a non-obvious but ridiculously important place...
Campaign Design
It took me a while but I have reached a conclusion...the campaign design and structure is by far the largest flaw with the game. Although players themselves might not realize it, the bulk of their feelings of frustration can be attributed to it. That sad part is how completely unforced the error is. This may sound a bit strange strange, but bear with me while I explain.
I noticed the game screams what I call "coder design", where the design isn't done by a dedicated professional designer who thinks and tests from a player perspective. The results completely ruin the experience for the player in a way that has nothing to do with bugs or features. I assume everyone on the team is either a programmer or artist and that Bernd acts as lead designer. If so, this is a huge mistake that lead totonsof unforced errors in the campaign.
I'll start with the first, but not the worst, mistake. For some reason, the first trading ship you are given is a large, slow, and cumbersome capital style freighter. Now, these ships are great, but what they excel at is large bulk purchases and sales. To make those kinds of trades you need lots of money. which you don't have. They should have just given you a small, fast generic or energy trader you could zip around the area to make some money while you ran missions. This was a bad idea.
The second mistake they did what not have the campaign lead you to do "X-Style" things, like trading and running missions for a while before throwing the more advanced stuff at you. What I mean is you are given a big complex ship that is most useful with lots of money and infrastructure at your disposal. The campaign then proceeds to teach you how to use it even though you can't really do much with it. I can only assume they really wanted to show off the new advanced features, but this is a bad idea, you really need to think like a new player or an X fan playing Rebirth for the first time.
A better second part of the campaign (after teaching you to trade with a small fast trader) would have been to have you run some missions for a little while. Whether that be by having you do some small trade runs or some station defense missions or whatever. Something simple for new players and familiar for old fans that let them get used to the new ways of doing things. The requirement could have been to earn a certain amount of credits or something equally semi-open ended.
The third and by far the worst mistake was to cleave the starting area in half and forcing half of the known galaxy to be your enemy. This ends up being catastrophic, compounding the earlier mistakes. And, not only does half of the game hate you, but they live and work right alongside the ones that don't.
It might have been alright if the halves were segregated from one another but from this point on it is nearly impossible to do anything in the entire sector whether that be trading or just running missions. Your trader will die if you don't babysit it, all the while being a very slow trader. With half of each zone red it also becomes very difficult to just run some missions for cash. There is no longer a safe place to just play the game and the "new" safe sector you are allowed access to is far too empty to make up for it.
This happens so early in the game the player never has a chance to get their feet wet. Players are lost, confused, and overwhelmed in a now very dangerous world. Even "old timers" don't have a chance to settle into the new groove. You can't really trade, you can't really run missions... the game is made very difficult to play at a basic level extremely early on.
This emotional reaction is palpable just by reading player reactions. The bugs and UI issues, while a problem are being magnified by the existing and underpinning feelings of frustration and helplessness. The worst part is this problem can't be worked around like the other ones.
Denaut
Trump's Staff
- 2,739
- 1,279
Believe it or not, this is another symptom of the campaign structure that has you run around on stations talking to people constantly. Trading as most people are familiar with from the other x games where you buy and sell large quantities of goods to generate a profit is very well implemented (bugs aside) and done from this screen:
Unfortunately the campaign has you running around like a ninny making what should be a relatively minor part of the game (and one that I like in doses) seem ridiculously important. They should just let you play the game for a while.
Denaut
Trump's Staff
- 2,739
- 1,279
On to the workarounds.
I narrowed down my earlier save game issue to have something to do with stations. I don't know what exactly caused it or how, but I stopped saving while on stations and have not had the issues since. So my first bit of advice is to never save on a station, only while in your ship.
Trading Bugs
Ok, now these are bad but there are workarounds.
Firstly, if your ship bugs out through trading you can clear its trade orders by editing the save game file. It is a a pain in the ass but it works.Here are the instructions.
Trade ships seem to bug out because of 3 simple but incredibly annoying reasons.
1. The most common cause of the bug is by queuing a sell order for more wares than arecurrently on your ship. This means, for example, if you follow the energy trader campaign instructions and queue the 100 energy units sell order before your ship physically has the goods on board it will become bugged. I accidentally avoided this by watching the freighter take delivery before heading out to sell.
So, never execute a sell order before or for more wares than are physically on the ship. This will save you many headaches I promise.
2. If a ship has no cargo drones it won't complete a trade. This is most noticeable on the sell food mission because you are given a construction ship that is technically able to complete trade orders, but it doesn't have any drones on it. So it just flies to the station and sits there. If you like you can buy drones for it at a shipyard.
3. If a ship doesn't have enough cargo drones to make the delivery in one trip. I haven't tested this myself, saw it on a forum post. If you buy cargo drones for a cap ship just make sure you buy enough.
More tips:
* If a ship runs out of Fuel Cells it can travel without them but it will take a VERY long time. It also doesn't seem very capable of finding any on its own. I top off my traders whenever they get down to about half. There is a station in Canterra in f-something that sells them. It is next to the station with the terran leader NPC guy on it.
* Buy a trade computer ASAP. Seriously, this thing is great, if gives you every trade on a station when you buzz it, very handy.
* Use an Xbox controller if you have one. Told 2 of my friends this already and they reported back it was a much better experience.
I'll post more tips if I run across any.
I narrowed down my earlier save game issue to have something to do with stations. I don't know what exactly caused it or how, but I stopped saving while on stations and have not had the issues since. So my first bit of advice is to never save on a station, only while in your ship.
Trading Bugs
Ok, now these are bad but there are workarounds.
Firstly, if your ship bugs out through trading you can clear its trade orders by editing the save game file. It is a a pain in the ass but it works.Here are the instructions.
Trade ships seem to bug out because of 3 simple but incredibly annoying reasons.
1. The most common cause of the bug is by queuing a sell order for more wares than arecurrently on your ship. This means, for example, if you follow the energy trader campaign instructions and queue the 100 energy units sell order before your ship physically has the goods on board it will become bugged. I accidentally avoided this by watching the freighter take delivery before heading out to sell.
So, never execute a sell order before or for more wares than are physically on the ship. This will save you many headaches I promise.
2. If a ship has no cargo drones it won't complete a trade. This is most noticeable on the sell food mission because you are given a construction ship that is technically able to complete trade orders, but it doesn't have any drones on it. So it just flies to the station and sits there. If you like you can buy drones for it at a shipyard.
3. If a ship doesn't have enough cargo drones to make the delivery in one trip. I haven't tested this myself, saw it on a forum post. If you buy cargo drones for a cap ship just make sure you buy enough.
More tips:
* If a ship runs out of Fuel Cells it can travel without them but it will take a VERY long time. It also doesn't seem very capable of finding any on its own. I top off my traders whenever they get down to about half. There is a station in Canterra in f-something that sells them. It is next to the station with the terran leader NPC guy on it.
* Buy a trade computer ASAP. Seriously, this thing is great, if gives you every trade on a station when you buzz it, very handy.
* Use an Xbox controller if you have one. Told 2 of my friends this already and they reported back it was a much better experience.
I'll post more tips if I run across any.
bytes
Molten Core Raider
- 957
- 638
This still sounds like an enormous clusterfuck to be honest. Can't your ships trade on their own anymore, what has been happened to sector/universe traders? What about the trade interface you posted, I was under the impression you can't actually complete a trade from that screen alone; is it possible to skip the whole station interior aspect?
Also, and this is fairly important to me, is the universe as small as people make it sound? There used to be something like 100+ zones, filled with active "capital" stations, military hubs, the lawless areas full of pirates, mines and asteroids, dead-end sectors where there's nothing but hostile aliens; is this all gone? And if yes, where the hell do I build my own stations and industry, if that is even possible any longer.
God, I should just stop thinking about this game, I was REALLY looking forward to this and now it's such a mess.
Also, and this is fairly important to me, is the universe as small as people make it sound? There used to be something like 100+ zones, filled with active "capital" stations, military hubs, the lawless areas full of pirates, mines and asteroids, dead-end sectors where there's nothing but hostile aliens; is this all gone? And if yes, where the hell do I build my own stations and industry, if that is even possible any longer.
God, I should just stop thinking about this game, I was REALLY looking forward to this and now it's such a mess.
Denaut
Trump's Staff
- 2,739
- 1,279
Oh, it totally is a clusterfuck but they really screwed themselves over with the campaign. I don't think I could design a campaign that would work against a game this much even if I tried.
No sector/universe traders... BUT you can assign them to a station and the station will treat them as such essentially. Right now I am working on getting a station finalized so I can hopefully assign my Rahanas to it and not babysit it anymore. In order to get the parts for the station the ship needs to fly through some seriously hostile territory. The station management AI may be broken, I don't really know yet as I keep losing my freighter and having to reload
Well, it is a bit of a quantity/quality issue. The old X had a ton of sectors yes but with ridiculous amounts of pointless duplication and I honestlty only ever used like 5% of them. There is lots of highway in between space to explore, if you just follow them from endpoint to endpoint I can see how it might feeltoosmall. Overall I prefer the structure and style of Rebirth's content even if it means less of it, because it is more interesting. That isn't to say I wouldn't like to see more sectors, because I very much would.
The game has potential, but after playing it I'd definitely recommend waiting until they release a pretty big patch to fix all the glaring issues.
The campaign itself is just awful. Really, I don't know if that's fixable. What were they thinking with this?
I don't regret buying it, as they will fix the core game and I'm a fan of their previous titles. I think a lot of the complaints in the video Bayr posted are valid. I'm not sure why Ego released the title with so many glaring issues, except they might have had no choice financially.
The campaign itself is just awful. Really, I don't know if that's fixable. What were they thinking with this?
I don't regret buying it, as they will fix the core game and I'm a fan of their previous titles. I think a lot of the complaints in the video Bayr posted are valid. I'm not sure why Ego released the title with so many glaring issues, except they might have had no choice financially.
Tauro
Bronze Knight of the Realm
- 371
- 26
First mods start to appear....
X: Rebirth Nexus - X: Rebirth Nexus mods, skins and community
the "NESA"-mod seems really useful
edit:
and the official mod-forum (a little slow atm.):egosoft.com :: View Forum - X Rebirth - Scripts and Modding
X: Rebirth Nexus - X: Rebirth Nexus mods, skins and community
the "NESA"-mod seems really useful
edit:
and the official mod-forum (a little slow atm.):egosoft.com :: View Forum - X Rebirth - Scripts and Modding
Jalynfane
Phank 2002
- 719
- 563
Never Enter Stations Again - NESA mod
NESA - Never Enter Stations Again at X: Rebirth Nexus - X: Rebirth Nexus mods, skins and community
NESA - Never Enter Stations Again at X: Rebirth Nexus - X: Rebirth Nexus mods, skins and community
Alexzander
Golden Knight of the Realm
- 520
- 39
I guess I should post a more proper review in the hopes of keeping Rerolled users from wasting their money. Here goes.
Combat and Flight
Combat in X Rebirth is highly lacking, both compared to other games in the genre and the other games in the X series. Combat has so many problems I'm not actually sure where to start with this. I guess the first thing I should point out is that X Rebirth shipped without support for flight sticks. That's right, a flight sim with no flight stick support. Although if you fight with button mappings long enough you can sort of get sticks to work (I had to invert both the vertical axis and throttle as well as use my stick's software to bind a bunch of buttons to keystrokes/mouse buttons), the entire combat engine was build using a gamepad in mind. Your weapons are mounted on turrets which fire not straight ahead, but at the location of the mouse cursor. So if you want to use a flight stick for combat, you need to first move the cursor to the center of the targeting reticle. This is especially annoying as since there are no keyboard targeting commands, if you want to target another ship, you have to use your mouse. On top of that, somehow using flight sticks to fire seems to interfere with aim assist; I found it very difficult to hit anything while using stick, while using the mouse to target was much easier. So firstly, sorry, you can't use your flight stick to play this space flight sim game currently.
Moving on, your ship lacks even the most basic tools of the genre with which to do battle. Target next/previous, target next/previous hostile, and match speed of target commands simply do not exist. If another ship stays in your target reticle for too long, you lose your last target with no way of going back to it without manually finding it in space. This is rather difficult as your ship does not have a radar/tracking HUD. Although you get little markers in your view window for hostiles, you have no way of knowing how far off they are or where they are positioned in relation to your ship.
To make matters worse, your ship's combat systems are ridiculously elementary. The standard of having multiple cannon control groups and cannon customization is not present in X Rebirth. Instead, you may equip one of each of the four types of cannons and missiles, for a total of four each. Your only upgrade path is the mk2 versions of the same weapons. Generally in space sim games where you have to make real choices about your load out and energy management. X Rebirth takes all of this away. In combination with the complete lack of radar and targeting turns combat in to nothing more than an shallow, arcadey experience.
It's also terribly unbalanced. Many users have reporting taking down the most powerful capital ships in the game with your stock, un-upgraded newbie ship. If you can already destroy capital ships without upgrading, what's the point of upgrading?
Also, there is no autopilot. At all. Everything from docking to traveling to different systems requires a combination of clicking and manual steering as there are no keyboard commands for... well, anything. Speaking of traveling to different stations, there is a bizarre tail-gating mini game you play every time you get in a space highway. None of the ships in the mini game are actually ships in the universe despite the claims of the developer; they are disappear when they arrive in a system.
The cockpit, which was advertised as something amazingly awesome, doesn't really give you much useful information. Instead you get these 3-5 second cut scenes whenever you want to dock/depart, use the map, etc. It's remarkably slow and inefficient. Also, your co-pilot won't shut up, which is ironic as she's constantly telling the computer to shut up. I wish I could throw them both out the airlock.
Economy
Currently mining, missions, and most other early game money making strategies are a total waste of time compared to scanning. There are systems where--again, a totally un-upgraded ship--can make millions an hour (many times more than you would make for other activities) just scanning and looting space junk that respawns infinitely. Talk about borking the early game economy.
I can't speak for anything late game as I'll can't tolerate the game long enough to get there.
Exploration/Building
Not only is the game world much smaller than X3, but you are limited to where you can build. Unlike X3 where you can choose to set up your illegal bootlegging and space weed empire up more or less anywhere provided you have the firepower, you are limited to certain locations for station building. You also can't build a lot of things in the economy, unlike X3.
Trading is reported to be a buggy mess currently, though I should state clearly I didn't mess with it as I was too busy fighting with flight stick configs and failing to figure out how to mine. The removal of SETA for earlier games mean that all ships move in real time, which means you better like long AFKs if you're setting up a trade empire.
Stations
Although there might be some merit to letting people walk around on stations, they are horribly implemented in X Rebirth. Not only are NPCs modeled in a comically poor fashion, all the stations in the game are a cookie cutter 4-5 stations. There are also loot boxes all over the place that you are encouraged to steal from for no reason, with no consequence. I'm the captain of a space ship... why am I exploring air ducts for random loot? You are also forced to endure a tedious mini game with terribly voice acted NPCs for discounts. The whole station experience is superfluous and annoying.
Conclusion
All in all, this game does absolutely nothing better than it's predecessors. It is mechanically a less sound game than X3 in every way it could be. They even managed to make the UI worse and less intuitive, something that most vets of the X series believed to be impossible. If that isn't enough, it's still a buggy mess. I averaged about a crash to desktop per thirty minutes of play. When it's not crashing, it's horribly buggy and optimized.
Even if you are a diehard fan of the genre, X Rebirth should be avoided like the plague. Although previous X games have had rocky launches, they at least launched as really buggy good games. X Rebirth is a really buggy bad game at the core. It manages to suffer from one of the worst cases of console-itis I've ever seen, which is especially perplexing as it isn't currently announced for any consoles. I don't think even modders will be able to rescue it.
Bottom line: Do not buy.
Combat and Flight
Combat in X Rebirth is highly lacking, both compared to other games in the genre and the other games in the X series. Combat has so many problems I'm not actually sure where to start with this. I guess the first thing I should point out is that X Rebirth shipped without support for flight sticks. That's right, a flight sim with no flight stick support. Although if you fight with button mappings long enough you can sort of get sticks to work (I had to invert both the vertical axis and throttle as well as use my stick's software to bind a bunch of buttons to keystrokes/mouse buttons), the entire combat engine was build using a gamepad in mind. Your weapons are mounted on turrets which fire not straight ahead, but at the location of the mouse cursor. So if you want to use a flight stick for combat, you need to first move the cursor to the center of the targeting reticle. This is especially annoying as since there are no keyboard targeting commands, if you want to target another ship, you have to use your mouse. On top of that, somehow using flight sticks to fire seems to interfere with aim assist; I found it very difficult to hit anything while using stick, while using the mouse to target was much easier. So firstly, sorry, you can't use your flight stick to play this space flight sim game currently.
Moving on, your ship lacks even the most basic tools of the genre with which to do battle. Target next/previous, target next/previous hostile, and match speed of target commands simply do not exist. If another ship stays in your target reticle for too long, you lose your last target with no way of going back to it without manually finding it in space. This is rather difficult as your ship does not have a radar/tracking HUD. Although you get little markers in your view window for hostiles, you have no way of knowing how far off they are or where they are positioned in relation to your ship.
To make matters worse, your ship's combat systems are ridiculously elementary. The standard of having multiple cannon control groups and cannon customization is not present in X Rebirth. Instead, you may equip one of each of the four types of cannons and missiles, for a total of four each. Your only upgrade path is the mk2 versions of the same weapons. Generally in space sim games where you have to make real choices about your load out and energy management. X Rebirth takes all of this away. In combination with the complete lack of radar and targeting turns combat in to nothing more than an shallow, arcadey experience.
It's also terribly unbalanced. Many users have reporting taking down the most powerful capital ships in the game with your stock, un-upgraded newbie ship. If you can already destroy capital ships without upgrading, what's the point of upgrading?
Also, there is no autopilot. At all. Everything from docking to traveling to different systems requires a combination of clicking and manual steering as there are no keyboard commands for... well, anything. Speaking of traveling to different stations, there is a bizarre tail-gating mini game you play every time you get in a space highway. None of the ships in the mini game are actually ships in the universe despite the claims of the developer; they are disappear when they arrive in a system.
The cockpit, which was advertised as something amazingly awesome, doesn't really give you much useful information. Instead you get these 3-5 second cut scenes whenever you want to dock/depart, use the map, etc. It's remarkably slow and inefficient. Also, your co-pilot won't shut up, which is ironic as she's constantly telling the computer to shut up. I wish I could throw them both out the airlock.
Economy
Currently mining, missions, and most other early game money making strategies are a total waste of time compared to scanning. There are systems where--again, a totally un-upgraded ship--can make millions an hour (many times more than you would make for other activities) just scanning and looting space junk that respawns infinitely. Talk about borking the early game economy.
I can't speak for anything late game as I'll can't tolerate the game long enough to get there.
Exploration/Building
Not only is the game world much smaller than X3, but you are limited to where you can build. Unlike X3 where you can choose to set up your illegal bootlegging and space weed empire up more or less anywhere provided you have the firepower, you are limited to certain locations for station building. You also can't build a lot of things in the economy, unlike X3.
Trading is reported to be a buggy mess currently, though I should state clearly I didn't mess with it as I was too busy fighting with flight stick configs and failing to figure out how to mine. The removal of SETA for earlier games mean that all ships move in real time, which means you better like long AFKs if you're setting up a trade empire.
Stations
Although there might be some merit to letting people walk around on stations, they are horribly implemented in X Rebirth. Not only are NPCs modeled in a comically poor fashion, all the stations in the game are a cookie cutter 4-5 stations. There are also loot boxes all over the place that you are encouraged to steal from for no reason, with no consequence. I'm the captain of a space ship... why am I exploring air ducts for random loot? You are also forced to endure a tedious mini game with terribly voice acted NPCs for discounts. The whole station experience is superfluous and annoying.
Conclusion
All in all, this game does absolutely nothing better than it's predecessors. It is mechanically a less sound game than X3 in every way it could be. They even managed to make the UI worse and less intuitive, something that most vets of the X series believed to be impossible. If that isn't enough, it's still a buggy mess. I averaged about a crash to desktop per thirty minutes of play. When it's not crashing, it's horribly buggy and optimized.
Even if you are a diehard fan of the genre, X Rebirth should be avoided like the plague. Although previous X games have had rocky launches, they at least launched as really buggy good games. X Rebirth is a really buggy bad game at the core. It manages to suffer from one of the worst cases of console-itis I've ever seen, which is especially perplexing as it isn't currently announced for any consoles. I don't think even modders will be able to rescue it.
Bottom line: Do not buy.
Furry
🌭🍔🇺🇦✌️SLAVA UKRAINI!✌️🇺🇦🍔🌭
- 21,879
- 28,595
I want to put in a note about the ships disappearing. What eventually made me throw my hands up in disgust and toss this game to the trash bin was the fact that all the ships in this game feel fake.
Theres tons of ships everywhere, but I cant fathom just exactly what they are doing. Theres these space traffic jams, tons of ships in these highways, but it all seems artificial compared to previous games. The ships in a way feel like the people of sim city, they are drones that are there as a visual addition, they don't actually serve a game purpose. Its a huge step back from previous versions of the game, where I'm sure not everything was simulated, but there certainly was stuff that was. Every ship you saw in place had a starting point, a destination. They all had cargo that would be missed or needed at their destinations. There was a life behind the economy that made it more real. It's really depressing to see a space sim game where I'm not sure that anything at all is simulated.
I dont know how denaut can say that the problems with this game are limited to the campaign. I have a bad case of fan-boyitis when it comes to space sim games and have played ALL of them, including every last X game in their buggy glory, and even I cant help but dump over just how bad this game is. Sadly, it looks like I'm gonna have to go back to albion prelude to get my fix.
Theres tons of ships everywhere, but I cant fathom just exactly what they are doing. Theres these space traffic jams, tons of ships in these highways, but it all seems artificial compared to previous games. The ships in a way feel like the people of sim city, they are drones that are there as a visual addition, they don't actually serve a game purpose. Its a huge step back from previous versions of the game, where I'm sure not everything was simulated, but there certainly was stuff that was. Every ship you saw in place had a starting point, a destination. They all had cargo that would be missed or needed at their destinations. There was a life behind the economy that made it more real. It's really depressing to see a space sim game where I'm not sure that anything at all is simulated.
I dont know how denaut can say that the problems with this game are limited to the campaign. I have a bad case of fan-boyitis when it comes to space sim games and have played ALL of them, including every last X game in their buggy glory, and even I cant help but dump over just how bad this game is. Sadly, it looks like I'm gonna have to go back to albion prelude to get my fix.
A lot of what Alex said is accurate, but I don't think its unsalvageable. Combat suffers from balance issues and some weak AI along with a lack of depth. Tweaks and changes can be made, but the player ship is just too powerful at the moment and there is a lack of weapon varieties. This can almost all (besides the AI maybe) be changed with modding. The economy isn't really better or worse than its predecessors at the moment. Making millions in a hour or two of work is something you can do, easily, in X3. If not Nividium ore in the start of the game in TC, Downright broken in X3AP due to stock market. Right now the hotness is ship boarding in X:Rebirth for making money. It takes a stupid amount of money to build ships and fund station building operations, so collecting space junk isn't really the way to go.
The trading is probably one of the worst problems in terms of mechanics/bugginess in this game since it suffers from multiple bugs and some stupid implementation (that can be changed): Like canceling your ship trading queues, the fact that trading ships have to be in your squad, or the list of bugs that'll cause your ship to stop trading and just follow you.
I never used a flight stick with my x games, so I can't say much there. But station experience is tedious and can already be avoided totally by mods. The repeatable cut scenes, as well. From what I've hear, free play is a vastly better experience without having to deal with the troubles of the campaign.
As far as building stations go, I don't really care about placement. It was tedious in X3:TC and have no problems allowing stations to have a static locations. With the exception of a couple issues, its much more friendly than it was in the past.
Would I recommend a buy right now? Lord No, if not for the frustration of having to deal with the bugs. X3 has had 7 years of dev time after its initial release date to continually improve upon the problems it has/had (along with a dedicated mod community). I'd check back in a year.
The trading is probably one of the worst problems in terms of mechanics/bugginess in this game since it suffers from multiple bugs and some stupid implementation (that can be changed): Like canceling your ship trading queues, the fact that trading ships have to be in your squad, or the list of bugs that'll cause your ship to stop trading and just follow you.
I never used a flight stick with my x games, so I can't say much there. But station experience is tedious and can already be avoided totally by mods. The repeatable cut scenes, as well. From what I've hear, free play is a vastly better experience without having to deal with the troubles of the campaign.
As far as building stations go, I don't really care about placement. It was tedious in X3:TC and have no problems allowing stations to have a static locations. With the exception of a couple issues, its much more friendly than it was in the past.
Would I recommend a buy right now? Lord No, if not for the frustration of having to deal with the bugs. X3 has had 7 years of dev time after its initial release date to continually improve upon the problems it has/had (along with a dedicated mod community). I'd check back in a year.
Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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It almost seems like Denaut says the problems are limited to the campaign because that's the only thing he's tried!
Denaut
Trump's Staff
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I didn't say they were LIMITED to the campaign, I said that the campaign was the worst problem because it magnifies everything else. Like a bad manager screwing up a project worse than having no manager at all. I've played the game for 40 hours at this point, so I've played more than just the campaign.
I'd say other than the bugs/stability, the rest of the game is really no WORSE than X3 (except maybe the size), it suffers from many of the same problems X3 did but hopefully with the new engine in place they can be fixed. Plenty of things things are better like the highways, modifiable player ship, and no SETA.
I agree, the game needs about a year to finish. It has plenty of bugs and mostly just lacks content. I don't think they have any designers at all at the company, many of the problems are just a lack of basic balance and lack of easily added vertical content.
There are plenty of traders around that are ferrying cargo, that actually swap goods with stations. The highway system is probably the worst, since it has both real NPCS traveling between areas and fake ones that try to make the highways more numerous than it really is. Instead of pointless NPCs cluttered about in and out of busy sectors, they've congregated all the 'traffic' into station areas though you can still see the real traders going about their business.