Where are co-ordinates?

[*Warmonger*]

Hi All..

Trying (very trying) to get my head around X4 and am finding the UI a mare to understand.. Nothing feels intuitive yet, is like someone put all the menus from previous X versions into a bucket of dynamite and then chucked it into a volcano..
Am hoping to reach a moment of clarity when it will all start to make sense, that moment looks a long way off at the mo with about 20 mins gameplay and 5 hours of trying to work out how to do the simplest tasks.. Am an X3 veteran but that feels like it is worth nothing with this version of the game..

Which brings me to my question, how to use co-ordinates in X4? How to display them, go to a co-ordinate (autopilot?) or anything co-ordinatey as I cannot find any info from scouring the net..

[*Warmonger*]

Think I have had enough.. What were egosoft thinking when they created this..? There is no sense of building and refining on what came before, just an endless parade of poor examples of re-inventing the wheel, which I think is square..

Still could not find out how to use co-ordinates, but that no longer seems important as the more I learn and discover in X4, the more the growing question in my mind comes the the fore.. why..? I mean really, why? Hours into the game and I get no sense of any acheivement, no sense of going anywhere, no storyline, no satisfaction, unimpressive graphics, gameplay. Feels like all the fun has been sucked out of the game and replaced with grinding vertical learning curves.

Fortunately, I can still get a refund and put this dull experience behind me.. Will take a look at X5 in the future but this one is a complete flop to me and a waste of time and money..

Bye..

[Imperial Good]

X4 is based upon the XR engine. This means there are no "coordinates" in the conventional sense. Instead everything is specified via an offset within a volume of space. Several of these volumes of space are collected positioned together to make a sector. Hence resolving where an object is requires resolving the sector it is in, then the zone within the sector and finally the offset within the zone. Facing of objects is specified via quaternions rather than usual pitch, yaw and roll. For elements attached to objects, e.g. the platforms on space ships, these are specified in coordinates relative to the ship object which are transformed by the rotation of the ship object. Such nesting has no depth limit that I am aware of.

Any sort of reasonable, human friendly, coordinate system would need to be generated for display to the user and user responses translated into internal coordinates for use.

[spankahontis]

Think I have had enough.. What were egosoft thinking when they created this..? There is no sense of building and refining on what came before, just an endless parade of poor examples of re-inventing the wheel, which I think is square..

Still could not find out how to use co-ordinates, but that no longer seems important as the more I learn and discover in X4, the more the growing question in my mind comes the the fore.. why..? I mean really, why? Hours into the game and I get no sense of any acheivement, no sense of going anywhere, no storyline, no satisfaction, unimpressive graphics, gameplay. Feels like all the fun has been sucked out of the game and replaced with grinding vertical learning curves.

Fortunately, I can still get a refund and put this dull experience behind me.. Will take a look at X5 in the future but this one is a complete flop to me and a waste of time and money..

Bye..

LOL, They refined the UI in X:Rebirth, people complained that it was too "Dumbed down", now people complain that it's "too complex". To be fair I don't think there is going to be a middle-ground that everyone can agree with.
Albeit that X4's UI System is allot more complex than X3's as there is more stuff you can do in it. I'm still learning new things about the game that I thought didn't exist.
Apart from finding what you want to be awkward, the Mission manger being a mess that I keep double checking i'm on the right tab like some obsessive compulsive. It's acceptable to me, needs improvements and polish, but i'm cool with it.
I had just as much frustration and hair pulling trying to figure out X3's UI.. Rather than throw a fit, ask questions in here and people will share with you what they've discovered.

[Cdaragorn]

Think I have had enough.. What were egosoft thinking when they created this..? There is no sense of building and refining on what came before, just an endless parade of poor examples of re-inventing the wheel, which I think is square..

I always find myself shaking my head when someone tries to use reinventing the wheel as an example of a bad thing. The wheel gets reinvented all the time and that's a good thing. We can't do something better if we never try reinventing it. And that applies here as well. Yes there's a lot that needs to be improved but that will come. There's a lot that is far better for having been rethought.

Hours into the game and I get no sense of any acheivement, no sense of going anywhere,

I admit that X4 requires the player to define their own direction more than previous games usually did, especially at the start but I still can't quite get how you could feel this way. You claim to be a veteran of X3. You had to make your own goals for achievement there as well. What's so different here?

no storyline,

Definitely a negative many others agree with. Still don't quite understand why this carries that much weight though. None of the games have had that much of a storyline. Usually wasn't much more than hand holding you through the early parts of the game.

no satisfaction,

Don't even know where to go with this. Again you have to take initiative to decide what you want to accomplish. Seems to just be that same issue rehashed again.

unimpressive graphics,

Seems to be a matter of opinion here. I find their graphics extremely impressive. I often find that many people's definition of great graphics relies heavily on things looking shiny rather than looking more real. I feel like Ego has worked to make things look dirtier rather than make them look shiny. I personally prefer that. The only exception I would point to is the character models but then that's not something I care that much about and it has been improved a lot since XR so I can't find a reason to complain about them.

gameplay.

Again we're back to another way of saying you aren't seeing anything you want to make a personal goal in the game. The gameplay is basically the same as it's been since X2. It's just added a lot of new tools to manage things. Yes those need to be improved and built upon but where is the gameplay X3 had that isn't here? The only thing I personally miss is having real challenge with enemies like the Xenon. It does often feel like they're almost nonexistent to me but I expect them to improve upon that.

Feels like all the fun has been sucked out of the game and replaced with grinding vertical learning curves.

I still don't see any learning curve that didn't already exist in previous X titles. This is much more a problem of the complexity of the game than anything on Egosoft's part. And I do think they've improved on this a lot.

I guess I just can't understand the seeming attempt to make this game up as if it's a completely different game then previous titles were. There's a lot of fleshing out of things that definitely needs to be done but the game is still definitely what it was in X3. Biggest things missing are races and more space which we know is coming. While I am mostly waiting for 3.0 I am able to enjoy the game where it is and I know Ego is working hard to fix the issues we've all brought up. They always have in the past and they will this time.

[Techedge]

Think I have had enough.. What were egosoft thinking when they created this..? There is no sense of building and refining on what came before, just an endless parade of poor examples of re-inventing the wheel, which I think is square..

Still could not find out how to use co-ordinates, but that no longer seems important as the more I learn and discover in X4, the more the growing question in my mind comes the the fore.. why..? I mean really, why? Hours into the game and I get no sense of any acheivement, no sense of going anywhere, no storyline, no satisfaction, unimpressive graphics, gameplay. Feels like all the fun has been sucked out of the game and replaced with grinding vertical learning curves.

Fortunately, I can still get a refund and put this dull experience behind me.. Will take a look at X5 in the future but this one is a complete flop to me and a waste of time and money..

Bye..

Those two don't go along together. If you can still get a refund you probably haven't spent a sufficient amount of time to understand the game.

Seriously, if you want to learn something because you don't understand it, just ask and someone will surely help. If you just want to complain, goodbye and go complain somewhere else.

[*Warmonger*]

My last post here, have got my refund and am off doing more interesting things..
Will admit to venting some spleen after several frustrating hours of trying to work out how to navigate the UI, but have just read back through my 'complaint' and I stand by every word.. I could point to other games out there on the market that have little, or pointless evolution to their design and UI, but after many years of the players/customers/users of the X series having to introduce mods/hacks/cheats in order to get the game to be interesting, on a level that is impossible with vanilla versions, I would have thought egosoft would have got the message and focused their efforts on building on the best parts of the game.

The kind of 'defensive/offensive' attitude that has been the response to my comments tells me that nothing is likely to change and that egosoft will continue to trot out X versions that will have to be modded to death in order to produce a playable game.
I guess I have just got fed up of waiting/hoping something would evolve from all the years of paying for (your welcome) and spending huge amounts of time learning each iteration of this game, only to end up relying on more proficient coders to come up with mods that make all the effort and expense worth while. It certainly no longer feels worth while with X4 which just gave me that 'here we go again' feeling.

Other gaming companies have evolved (though not all) and I have found a better place to spend my time and money..

Goodbye and thanks for all the fish..

[Vertigo 7]

You're certainly entitled to an opinion, but I get the sense that you're just looking for someone to agree with you. If you find them, maybe you guys should get together and start a support group? Just a thought to help you move forward.

Is X4 perfect? no, but I challenge you to show me a game that has no flaws. I'm not one to mod up my games and the entire X series has been very playable in vanilla iterations for me, including this one. I'm grateful that there's a developer out there still willing to make space pew pew games, with a unique and interesting IP at that. They are too few and far between, imo. And yeah, maybe the X series of games isn't meant for the casual player. I think, though, if you were to be a little more open minded you would find it to be quite enjoyable, regardless if you get an X, Y, Z indicator of your position or not.

[bmaxa]

The kind of 'defensive/offensive' attitude that has been the response to my comments tells me that nothing is likely to change and that egosoft will continue to trot out X versions that will have to be modded to death in order to produce a playable game.

I disagree. X4 is playable from the start. It' perhaps too much hardcore, but once you figure out how to do things, it is just plain fun.