100 Million to 1 Billion Credits, How?

[Falcrack]

I guess I'll also agree on the fact that it's not a "real economy", it IS a video game economy. What are you expecting from a video game? I've yet to see another game that handles an economy as well as the X series does in general, while also allowing the player to take such an active role in it, or no role at all. All/most video games have infinite cash, because to put limits on it would be silly and un-fun. Very very few games though allow the player so much hands on control of an economy, if they want it.

Any good 4X RTS worth its salt has resource limits (such as cash) which affect both the player AND the AI. In X4 and every other previous X title, credits are limited to the player only. I know X4 is not a 4X RTS, and not everyone would want that. But personally, I would prefer if it had more of a 4X RTS feel, where players and AI factions/NPC were operating by the same set of rules, which includes limited funds. As long as it was balanced by some source of unlimited funds, as in income from taxes which go to the sector owners.

[Kazuma]

...

When I was talking about ROI though, I was talking about pure cash investment and not the time it took you to build it. But as you said, you didn't really build your complexes as profit generators - at least for now. That's what makes the X games fun: you set your own goals have fun dude!

...
As for enjoying the game and challenge - there is an element of challenge in the game as it stands, not everything is about combat and personally I find those complaining about "lack of challenge" irritating. There are certain things I agree need to be addressed but the weapon and shield aspect of combat balance is not part of that - nor are Xenon/Kha'ak aggression levels.

Nothing to be irritated about. The game just isn't all that challenging (to me at any rate). That said, the word "challenge" is a rather ubiquitous term. I think we can all rationally agree that what different people find rewarding and by that token the reward of dopamine triggered by what a person perceives as a "triumphing over a challenge" is going to vary quite dramatically between people.

What I found most "enjoyable" about X, and the previous titles was working through its systems and pushing them till they break. As I tinker with it, making notes... I'll engage in a dialectic to determine if I will do any mods or rework the material to something more suitable for my taste, but that will have to wait until they "finish" their game.

Now I could say that a lot of the challenge I did experience was in wading through the waste deep jank of the game... but I am a bit of a masochist.

If I just want to get "worked over", I'll go play Star Trader Frontiers, Endless Space 2, or Dirt Rally 2 on the 25th (weeeee) on the harder difficulty modes.

... on the topic of the X4 'economy' if we are calling it that... I have noticed a trend in this thread that seems to be station centric... while I have a dozen or so station / complexes... I also have around 100 or so ATs... which is very likely contributing the behavior I experience in my game... I just didn't want to make some credits... I wanted to see what the maximum credit income achievable was... or at least an obtainable approximation. The stations all have more than enough ships to capture any lingering business using the hook and anchor method for all neighboring sectors.

The only way I see going any further is to begin eliminating, at regular intervals, the NPC trade ships replacing them with my own... or sabotaging production chains...

So to circle back to the word challenge. I don't feel that X4 presents me with any particular problems for which I am having to adjust a strategy to. There is very little in the way of skill based game play. So once one explores all the sectors and underlying systems I guess it gets boring. Or that awful time you purchase your first L trade ship and realize just how underwhelming they are in the context of the game your playing.

I guess there is 'some challenge' to be had in trying to make it work, but it is also (at least fair) to say that sort of challenge isn't from intentional design but rather the lack of it.

Heck my most 'memorable' moment in X4 was capturing a player venture XL, which to my knowledge, makes me the only person outside of the development circle to do so.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

...

When I was talking about ROI though, I was talking about pure cash investment and not the time it took you to build it. But as you said, you didn't really build your complexes as profit generators - at least for now. That's what makes the X games fun: you set your own goals have fun dude!

...
As for enjoying the game and challenge - there is an element of challenge in the game as it stands, not everything is about combat and personally I find those complaining about "lack of challenge" irritating. There are certain things I agree need to be addressed but the weapon and shield aspect of combat balance is not part of that - nor are Xenon/Kha'ak aggression levels.

Nothing to be irritated about.

There is when it results in Egosoft (in this case) engaging in change strategies for the baseline experience that more appropriately would be the purview of community developed mods.

Heck my most 'memorable' moment in X4 was capturing a player venture XL, which to my knowledge, makes me the only person outside of the development circle to do so.

Since the largest ship a player can send on a venture is M-sized ships without some form of modding or hacking it sounds like Egosoft need to tighten up on their venture code. Personally, I deplore Egosoft's X-Online initiative in general, I think X-games are a poor fit for the MMO ambitions that Egosoft have held for so long.

But back on topic...

The fundamental reason for the focus on stations for income potential is because essentially (once set up) they generate income passively and without user interaction.

[Kazuma]

...
As for enjoying the game and challenge - there is an element of challenge in the game as it stands, not everything is about combat and personally I find those complaining about "lack of challenge" irritating. There are certain things I agree need to be addressed but the weapon and shield aspect of combat balance is not part of that - nor are Xenon/Kha'ak aggression levels.

Nothing to be irritated about.

There is when it results in Egosoft (in this case) engaging in change strategies for the baseline experience that more appropriately would be the purview of community developed mods.

We can certainly agree on this point. Case in point, I mentioned the power creep that is inevitable with the economy changes. Which is certain to impact future content and DLC. That being said, I suppose where we are going to differ is that I have no reason to believe that the game is in any way shape or form "done", other than it was sold as a "released" product.

I have had this discussion with folks both here and on Steam, that X4 may have been in a better bargaining position with the user base if it had gone into early access as opposed to a full release. Mind you the X fan base are a resilient and patient lot, and the devs dropping some roadmap videos did a lot for brokering customer good will.

Be that as it may, I find the problem here being that the game is simply not done, so much so that it is hard for me to discern the place holders from the actual pillars of the mechanics. So you may say that you like 'thus and such', I may say, 'I am not even sure that was how it was ever supposed to be'.

As one poster once asked... "Does Egosoft even play their own game?!", and I responded, "well no, of course not, at least not in the sense of a fresh start through an entire campaign, when some fundamental mechanic is changed which has permutations and ramifications throughout an entire play through."

So with this "agile" release (very common nowadays), I believe it to be entirely reasonable to expect ES to adapt their product to the whims and caprices of data mined from the player base. Hence why I won't bother sitting down trying to mod it until 3.0.

Heck my most 'memorable' moment in X4 was capturing a player venture XL, which to my knowledge, makes me the only person outside of the development circle to do so.

Since the largest ship a player can send on a venture is M-sized ships without some form of modding or hacking it sounds like Egosoft need to tighten up on their venture code. Personally, I deplore Egosoft's X-Online initiative in general, I think X-games are a poor fit for the MMO ambitions that Egosoft have held for so long.

But back on topic...

The fundamental reason for the focus on stations for income potential is because essentially (once set up) they generate income passively and without user interaction.

Well, it is their IP to do with as they please. As cliche as it sounds, all one can really ever do is vote with their wallet. I didn't buy X-Rebirth as I wasn't interested in being locked to a single ship. Game may of been made with unicorn farts and wrapped in gold dust, but I'll never know, because 1 - ship. I mean... in my X3 game I'm hauling around in a Narn Heavy Cruiser, escorted by Last Starfighter Gunstars / Star Furies and A - Wings. 1 - Ship just isn't going to cut it.

The micro-transaction economy has set massive profit records and I can't blame any developer for devising some revenue stream along those lines to get their cup into the seemingly endless cash flow.

I mean at the end of the day, I'm not going to begrudge someone for trying to make as much money as they can. Like anything though, burning down the player base is a part of that gamble. That is ES's risk to take.

There are a LOT of amazing games out their to play, (Just recently starting playing Kingdom Come Deliverance), and X competes with all that. It competes because it is sold in the same vending machine with all the other games. Steam / Epic / GOG / Origin... just to name a few.

I think a lot of this negative blow back (personally) comes from that old "game are art" garbage that was being pushed by Bioware and EA. While game studios certainly exploit the talents of many wonderful people, they are not art works... they are wealth extraction devices sold as entertainment.

If you get something out of the experience great, if you never even installed it, that's great too; because they got your money either way.

Heck one of the best things I can say about X4 is that it is, for all practical purposes, remarkably stable; until you push it... even then it is still relatively stable, as the end user experience crumbles along an inverse log scale before the stability monster really comes out.

On the topic of stations... to me... I dunno, there was clearly a lot of work put into creating stations from X3... which was a poop-show to say the least without external software to align the dern things.

Stations are certainly the way to go to get into power trading. Of course my issues with stations and trading remain the same, there just isn't enough underlying rules / mechanics / risk of loss to tickle my brain pan.

I found myself compensating for the downright weird mechanics of the game, rather than doing what I wanted to do (or rather what I 'would of thought') would of been the optimal setups.

I absolutely despise the super-highways existence. All sectors are 100 percent light... so energy trading is pointless other than with the NPC stations. There is the old 'nod' mission to track down a Xenon with space weed in it's holds... I am not even sure that mission is doable, unless the mission spawns in the Xenon...

Don't want to turn it into a rant... like I said before, got my monies worth... expect a year or better before the game really resembles anything that is on the white board in the offices.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

...

Agile and game design have no place outside of pre-release, adapting a live product to the whims of whining entitled kiddies is the worst practice that has become common amongst some parts of the modern gaming industry. At least a few games have been ruined for me personally because of certain developers adopting this practice. Not all change is good and Agile is the worst thing to happen to the software industry in general - IME often it is applied poorly, for the wrong reasons, and/or used as excuse to not do certain things properly (if at all) that should be done regardless of the process you use.

Egosoft have always worked their product after release, but the released weapon/shield/ship balance has typically been mostly unchanged after release - rebalancing of such things have typically been left to the modding community. They should have stuck with this policy and ignored those complaining.

As for placeholders, X4 has none as such the game is actually complete in terms of being a product bar actual-non-subjective-bug-fixing/QA which is in the worst state I have seen with any prior Egosoft product. There are natuirally some things that will improve over time such as command and control but the fundamental mechanics and general approach are likely to be unchanged - at least in terms of not being replaced, just built on.

I don't disagree that X4 was released too early for it's own good but that does not mean that Early Access would have been the right thing for Egosoft to do either. Egosoft have their DevNet community to make use of pre-release should they choose to. Early access like agile, are not necessarily good vehicles for product development.

As for doing as they please with their IP, there are limits to that once a product has been released - imposing certain changes on the consumer can be seen as changing the form, fit, and/or function of the product and thus at least technically breach trading standards (or similar regulations).

As for content levels and DLC, the vast majority of complaints about it are totally unjustified but not unexpected given the rise of entitlement in modern society as a whole.

This is all on the most part irrelevant to the matter at hand though.