Can we see actual gameplay?

[ZombiePotatoSalad]

And again, this is a free and open forum. We are allowed to post our opinions, and others are allowed to post theirs, and people don't always agree. However, it's getting to a point where I kinda feel personally attacked for voicing my concerns, and how it makes me feel as a customer. As I said, I don't think Egosoft is withholding information to scam us out of money, and releasing information early can be both a boon and a detriment. It is ultimately their decision, and even if I don't agree with it, I still respect it. I'm not going to refund my pre-order because they don't show any new gameplay. I still believe in this game and want it to succeed. I'm just voicing my opinion.

It is entirely possible to experience bugs, glitches, and features you don't like within the first hour of gameplay. As mentioned, in X Rebirth, you experience the disorienting sliders, often empty air vents, and repetitive minigames within the first hour of gameplay. Within the first hour of No Man's Sky, I was chugging along at 15FPS, and my machine at the time was no slouch. I had pretty much experienced all the game had to offer.

Take a look at the market as well. Fallout 76 is a flaming bag, with bugs aplenty. They're also destroying the lore of the series, just because they can, and the game is 2 weeks away from release. I'd call it late Alpha, at best. Diablo Immortals is also ablaze, with Activision stock plummeting 7 points, and they're currently going through a PR nightmare. Battlefield 5 was incindiary in its own way as well, with its devs shoving in PC agendas and saying "This WAS World War 2, and if you don't like it, you're uneducated."

When I ask people if they ever tried the X series, they often say they either could not get past X3's "learning cliff," or say X Rebirth was an abysmal failure. Gaming has been going horribly this holiday season, with Red Dead Redemption 2 being the only exception so far. I think the timing is perfect for Egosoft to take center stage in time for the holiday season, and give this game and company great success and recognition. The problem is, no one really knows what to expect. Most comments I see are calling this "X Rebirth 2," in a derogatory sense. People say "Star Citizen: Gameplay Edition is looking great," or "Is this Elite: Dangerous?" Most of the posts I see on the forums are people asking genuine, non-spoiler questions, and getting either shot down or told to "just wait." Most of the posts are pure speculation on the Egosoft forums, and on Steam, it's mostly memes.

Egosoft doesn't have to release more information if they don't want to. However, the community today isn't the same as it was 10 years ago. People are more leery of games and developers, especially when they seem silent, even if that silence means they're doubling down on polishing their game. People don't take developers at their word, after hearing "Yes" and "It just works" one too many times.

[LittleBird]

@csaba
I did the highlighting not just for fun.
The most time we saw graphics but not the actual game. Not gameplay. Not the mechanics.
That is what the X-Rebirth videos provided.

[csaba]

@ZombiePotatoSalad

I'm sorry if I ever upset you it was never my intention.

I just don't agree with some of your statements. Egosoft withholding information for one. After over 3 hours of QAs, videos and screenshots it is just wrong to say so. People also pointed out those are mostly a year old, but I'd like to remind all these people that it would be actually a scam if they don't include all those things in the game. I'd also imagine that they would announce something major changed like if they'd withdraw for example the map control feature.

Experiences differ from person to person. I usually take it slow especially with sandbox games like X, if I don't like 1 part of the game I move along and do something else. I guess patience is not a virtue anymore so I accept your and LittleBirds comments on possible refunds connected to unacceptable content.

Your point on triple A titles is iffy in my eyes. Egosoft never seemed to shoot for this position. They actually tried it with XR with AAA style marketing but it backfired on them and I think they learnt from that and so we see more QAs now. They look like more of a small band of friends doing something they like than something faceless these days like Activision. (First time I heard of Immortal, Jesus, left a few dislikes on YT , I grew up on D2 even before knowing about X games existed. ) While we all whish great success for their games it doesn't look like they would suddenly just turn into a large company like Blizz did after WoW if X4 would rack in the money.

What non-regular X playing people say about the learning curve and the XRebirth failure is connected to Egosoft being a small company. They don't have several big hits behind them so people don't talk about them a lot. If you would ask someone who Egosoft is 1 out of 100 gamers might know who they are. This has the effect that they only hear some rumors and bad rumors stick like glue. You wont hear how they fixed XR, what they added, the free TO expansion to preorderers, or the performance fixes they did. Honestly the only good feedback I get from these people is usually X3TC being a decent game and that is also very rarely.

If anything they failed to point out that they already have 3 hours of material on YT when they dropped the release trailer. That's a big mistake. I actually commented under ObsidiAnt's video about X4 where he mentioned station's not being talked about a lot while there is about 30 minutes of it in one of their videos.

@csaba
I did the highlighting not just for fun.
The most time we saw graphics but not the actual game. Not gameplay. Not the mechanics.
That is what the X-Rebirth videos provided.

I listed 2 rows of mechanics that were shown man.... I need to go to sleep but I can timetable and link each one tomorrow night if you like.

[Alci]

We saw the new map, a tiny bit of station building and ship equipment... that's it!

Now check X-Rebirth. Videos that explained the mechanics 2 months before release.

I think that's an illusion.

First I've seen more new features from X4 then you're mentioning. But the thing is those are only new features. When Rebirth was about to be released they've shown many things and ALL of them were new. That's what creates illusion they've shown more.

In X4 videos you see those things too but you take them for granted. You've seen drones loading capitals, but you don't mention it because it's known. You see highways (now without minigame) but again, known so you don't mention it. Sector/zones, minimap, different cargo types, gravity well, separately shielded turrets, capital parts to destroy, "city complexes", scanning station parts, trading ship UI, ship crew ... all those things are on X4 videos as well but you overlook them now as those are not new features. And that was ALL Rebirth videos had (that plus Skunk and Yisha is all Rebirth had on release).

Truly, for people who left Rebirth after release (and still have PTSD until today) the best new feature reading are Steam guides explaining 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 features. To get into what will be in X4 in some form.

And then watch X4 videos showing new map, new station layout planning (as the rest will be the same as in late Rebirth, just go see Rebirth station building tutorials to see complete station building beyond the X4's new planning thing), ship equipment, new traveling modes/SETA, cockpit + in/out walking, capital bridges + capital control, flyable ships (you've somehow forgot about the most important X4 feature ), spacesuit, flight assist off mode. And more new features and changes are known from Q&A/text (not shown on videos). Those are just neat things I care

[LittleBird]

We saw the new map, a tiny bit of station building and ship equipment... that's it!

Now check X-Rebirth. Videos that explained the mechanics 2 months before release.

I think that's an illusion.

First I've seen more new features from X4 then you're mentioning. But the thing is those are only new features. When Rebirth was about to be released they've shown many things and ALL of them were new. That's what creates illusion they've shown more.

And I think you are partly right.
Many things you mentioned I would classify as "graphics" because the game mechanics behind them were not shown.

I wanna see how trading works, I wanna see how fabrics work.
I wanna see how the AI manages evading complex structures.
I wanna see how the reputation system works.

In short. Systems and game mechanics. Crucial parts where X-Rebirth could not deliver.

[Alci]

I wanna see how trading works, I wanna see how fabrics work.
I wanna see how the AI manages evading complex structures.
I wanna see how the reputation system works.

trading was shown, from buy to sell, with Rebirth knowledge about ware types and cap-sized trading what part(s) you are missing?

Factories(?) designing was shown, building is Rebirth's (blueprint, architect, manager, etc...), production modules similar to late Rebirth's (give or take, but that's not important) and production lines based on time cycles, primary resources turned into primary products with several ways to boost cycle time/product amount. What important part is unknown?

AI won't evade complex structures they may try slightly better but they won't.

Reputation bars with different factions giving you maybe better prices and access to special wares at certain levels, like the license to build factories in their sectors without facing unwanted consequences. Rep gaining for missions, trading in faction areas, probably killing faction enemy ships.

I don't see "big parts missing" in any of those. We get the idea, it won't deviate far. Only details seems to be missing.

[DaMuncha]

If you really want a video outlining the Player HQ, maybe you should record a few shots of your computer desk? I know mine is my player HQ...

Well ok then how about this
https://imgur.com/a/GhaXw16

I dont think it counts tho.

Eww, there are used tissues crumpled on your desk (please God stop me from thinking about how they were used!). For crying out loud, there was an empty roll of toilet paper. Muncha, you should probably police that up before you let us view the inner sanctum of your little bachelor pad

I have realy bad allergies this time of year.

[ZombiePotatoSalad]

@csaba No, it wasn't you. It was CBJ saying "here we go again," which I interpreted as making an assumption of what I was saying instead of actually reading my post.

I remember watching this back when it came out, looking forward to X Rebirth. You know, all these posts we're making about wanting to see more? This is all we want to see:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt4B4e3i5_0

[csaba]

I remember watching this back when it came out, looking forward to X Rebirth. You know, all these posts we're making about wanting to see more? This is all we want to see:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt4B4e3i5_0

Yea we just talked about pathing a day or two before in a different thread. This iteration in the video actually broke and was replaced with a much simpler version for a time after release where ships just flown through the station geometry. It eventually got fixed. What I'm trying to get to is that regardless if they show something it could be still broken after release as this example.

So they could show off the new squadron AI which looks awesome on paper and probably in a video like this as well but might break because of reasons the Devs didn't think about yet. For example in the above case I guess the issue was large number of capships piling up on each other breaking their path finding AI logic that is why I assume we saw large piles of traders on each other in the game when the bug came up. Although this is just a guess if this was really the issue then the problem with the video was showing/testing only one ship and not a group of them.

What I mean by this: Would something shown on a Youtube video will actually be working inside the game once released?

Staying with the squadron mechanics (which was only mentioned by a dev in forum post somewhere) as an example. Showing it off in a test environment would get a LOT of people exited, but on release any issue with it would have all these people pissed off.

Just read the comments under the video.

"it flies very deep into the geometry of the station"

Let me fix that for you Egosoft "It flies into the geometry of the station" Nice work. Not.

Same as with NMS randomly generated animals. Lovely and complex on paper, boring and stupid in reality.

This means they have to pick their video topics very carefully. Showing anything that might or could break and getting people exited on it would have serious backlash.
Even showing something that is hard to show in 1 a video, like something as complex as the production tree could have consequences. People would only see 1% of it and make bad assumptions.

This probably limits the number of videos they can put out before release and people's memories are short term when it comes to new franchises they didn't play yet. In marketing terms this means the few videos they can make must be released 2 weeks tops prior to release but likely 1.

So from now 1-2 weeks later I'd look out for new Egosoft videos on YT. Before that we won't get much aside from screenshots every few days.

[Kittens David]

yes you will see actual gameplay... after the 30th

[unknown1]

You will almost never see true gameplay videos longer than a couple of minutes, and even those will be made of tens or hundreds of different clips stitched togheter and heavily edited in order to give the best possible impression.

And there is nothing wrong with this . Everyone wants the best possible profit from the game they release, and that means keeping a low profile when it comes to showing detailed gameplay . Maybe you will notice something that will make you decide you won't buy it or you realize that it's not what you expected in terms of content and mechanics, and again decide not to buy it.

It's simple.

It comes down to the consumer to show some inteligence into not rushing to preorder anything before it is released and tested first.

[csaba]

Going by unknown1's logic they wouldn't want to make too many videos to spoil the game as some movies done recently. Rather have only a few prepeared which is most wise to release shortly before launch to attract customers. Instead of potential buyers saying " I'll think about it in a month" and forgetting it in a week, they think "'Oh preorder bonus and the game launches in a few days, better buy right now"

[ZombiePotatoSalad]

I don't care if they shows some bugs if they specifically say that there could be bugs. Even if it still may change in the final version, it still helps me feel more included than just "money for product." Just like all the trailers say "Alpha footage, may be subject to change." Okay, that's well and good. I know to expect a change in that department. Now, if they promised something up and down, and then didn't deliver on them, that's entirely different.

[nemesis1982]

@csaba No, it wasn't you. It was CBJ saying "here we go again," which I interpreted as making an assumption of what I was saying instead of actually reading my post.

I remember watching this back when it came out, looking forward to X Rebirth. You know, all these posts we're making about wanting to see more? This is all we want to see:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt4B4e3i5_0

Well the thing is many of the opinions are formulated as factual statements. Which make them read as such. Furthermore there are quite a few sentences which might be interpreted as factual statements that Egosoft is doing their job badly.

Now imagine you're doing anything you can (in your own opinion) to please someone, working tirelessly. Then a few guys walk in and keep telling you that it's a fact you're doing a bad job (interpretation). I think his reaction is understandable. Now if it's a good idea is a whole different story. However he's just human so give the guy a break.

@Showing bugs: You do understand how bad of an idea that would be right? If you really want footage of the game just wait till it's out for a week. There'll be sufficient footage by that time. If not PM me with a short list and I'll get back to ya.

@spoiling the game: I think this has become a trend lately. People want to see what they're getting before they commit. The thing is with a creative work that often means spoiling the content. I do understand since there are many cases of promises not fulfilled in recent history.

[VALERIVS]

People want to see what they're getting before they commit. (...) I do understand since there are many cases of promises not fulfilled in recent history.

I do not. People are not patient anymore, and I do not really know when or why that has started (Is it due to all this pre-order BS?)... I, for example, am very sceptical regarding X4 after what has happened with X Rebirth. So this time I just wait until X4 has been released. Maybe just a couple of days, maybe some weeks. And maybe I will never buy X4. That will depend on reviews, actual gameplay videos and whatnot, which I will be there plentifully soon. Egosoft has the chance to convince me with their product -- the moment it arrives or later (when they fixed enough bugs) --, but I have no problem if they are not willing to show off anything before the official release. Time and money are on my side.

[nemesis1982]

People want to see what they're getting before they commit. (...) I do understand since there are many cases of promises not fulfilled in recent history.

I do not.

It was of course a generalization and thus many people will not identify with it.

People are not patient anymore, and I do not really know when or why that has started (Is it due to all this pre-order BS?)...

I think it has to do with the amount of information that is thrown at them now a days. It results in a kind of paranoia from a lack of information. I do not think preorders are the cause though, just a result/abuse of this impatient behavior.

I, for example, am very sceptical regarding X4 after what has happened with X Rebirth. So this time I just wait until X4 has been released. Maybe just a couple of days, maybe some weeks.

It is understandable that you're apprehensive. The only reason I preordered is because I found a good deal (will not have directly available on launch though I think). I am however confident that Egosoft pulls through in the end. They might come out with something that you wouldn't want to call a finished product in anyway or form. However they keep supporting it for years to come! It just takes a year to get it in playable state (my opinion not fact!).

And maybe I will never buy X4. That will depend on reviews, actual gameplay videos and whatnot, which I will be there plentifully soon. Egosoft has the chance to convince me with their product -- the moment it arrives or later (when they fixed enough bugs) --, but I have no problem if they are not willing to show off anything before the official release. Time and money are on my side.

That's sensible! (Time and money are on your side? Where are you can i join, need them to do somethings for me )

[VALERIVS]

It was of course a generalization and thus many people will not identify with it.

...which is a good thing, because it keeps discussions alive.

Yes, Egosoft is not known for letting their games die some weeks after release. I have to say though that X Rebirth indeed was an all-time low point in their company's history, at least in my opinion. And I am not talking about the questionable game design: The bugs were unfathomable plentiful and did kill every attempt on actually liking the game. I seriously hope they do not got this route again with X4.

Well, just 3 more weeks and we will know more. Until then: Time, money... and COOKIES!

[Alci]

@spoiling the game: I think this has become a trend lately. People want to see what they're getting before they commit...

I won't touch the "generic" formulation of that but in X4 case it's not about spoilers really. The so called "spoilers" are all just things you would put in the manual in the "old days". Noone bothers with those anymore, but they were standard issue to EVERY game and they "somehow" managed to provide information without "spoilers". So manuals vs. spoilers, think about it

[Alci]

I do not. People are not patient anymore, and I do not really know when or why that has started (Is it due to all this pre-order BS?)...

now this is extremely shortsighted, so I guess you just don't "remember".

Obvious question would be "when people ever were patient?", but the answer is simple: "never, so far". It's curious the same phrasing (specially the "anymore" part) can be found in 19th century literature, in 18th century newspapers and in fact goes as far as 400BC, and that's not where it "started" that's as far as I've read about it. The only difference is, 21st century internet version starts with "these days...", that's new.

Truth is nature is not patient. Life always takes what it wants by any means necessary. So with the lack of better judgement I would say being patient is unnatural. And people are not far enough to not struggle with their primal instincts.

So now we have internet, didn't changed ANYTHING in people. It's just another "means" to ask for things. The part of "wanting" them NOW, the "people" part, is just the same as it "ever" was.

I, for example, am very sceptical regarding X4 after what has happened with X Rebirth.

if I may, this is very shortsighted either. If someone says "flu" way too many people imagine "fever". While I imagine the virus. Same as way too many people just "pay for a product". ...just something to thing about

[ZaldronTheSage]

@spoiling the game: I think this has become a trend lately. People want to see what they're getting before they commit...

I won't touch the "generic" formulation of that but in X4 case it's not about spoilers really. The so called "spoilers" are all just things you would put in the manual in the "old days". Noone bothers with those anymore, but they were standard issue to EVERY game and they "somehow" managed to provide information without "spoilers". So manuals vs. spoilers, think about it

Oh man, what I would do for a good ol fashioned manual with that fresh printed new box smell.