I am very dissapointed by 4.0 beta

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Alan Phipps
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Re: I am very dissapointed by 4.0 beta

Post by Alan Phipps » Thu, 26. Nov 20, 18:46

"I meant the Terraforming effect/impact/benefit on the universe." Isn't that more about gameplay balance for the feature rather than the purpose of the feature? Of course you would need the feature to be available before the devs can try to balance it in-game, whether internally or via public beta.

There would be similar pre-testing balance concerns and unpredictabilities about the introduction of a new powerful warship too, but I think that everyone would probably know the purpose of a new big warship.
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Re: I am very dissapointed by 4.0 beta

Post by Buzz2005 » Thu, 26. Nov 20, 18:47

Tamina wrote:
Thu, 26. Nov 20, 18:40
with nearly no value return to the player"
as I remember it was financial value that was talked about, might be wrong, but I doubt this is just texture change
Fixed ships getting spawned away from ship configuration menu at resupply ships from automatically getting deployables.

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Re: I am very dissapointed by 4.0 beta

Post by mr.WHO » Thu, 26. Nov 20, 18:50

Tamina wrote:
Thu, 26. Nov 20, 18:40
I saw no relevance in volumetric fog and here I am... starring at those beautiful blue nebulas with my glistering eyes in amazement.
Still there is a performance impact (thank god you can switch it off).
I'm big Empire + big Fleets player, so every single FPS counts for me.
It's sad, but for me, the best fog/nebula was in Freespace 2 - this game is over 20 years old, but even today the nebula missions looks great (despite the fact that "nebula" effect was 2D instead of volumetric) and didn't hurt FPS even back then.
I remember that Freelancer also had decent nebulas that didn't affected the performance.

Best looking isn't automatically the best, especially for any X-series game where both CPU and GPU already have plenty of other things to do.

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Re: I am very dissapointed by 4.0 beta

Post by Raevyan » Thu, 26. Nov 20, 19:01

I highly doubt that there will be an awful lot of new things coming with 4.0 that’s not currently in the beta. Some of the new feature in the beta also look pretty early and far from finished.
I mean they announced Cradle in their written announcement it would come this year, yet Bernd pretty much said in the interview they are far away from being able to release it. Looking back at Split DLC there were a lot of things that weren’t working.

For me, personally, I somewhat share the OP‘s feelings. Reading through the patch notes there are a lot of fixes, which after 2 years, is somewhat questionable. Don’t get me wrong it’s great that they are supporting the game this much and I do appreciated that with my >1.100hrs/played. Personally I had hoped for more changes to traders, much needed AI improvements (traders, factions, fleet), proper fleet management, more challenges etc. I don’t care about 10 new features if they would finally address the major flaws we have in the game since 1.0 and polish the features that are already there.

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Re: I am very dissapointed by 4.0 beta

Post by Falcrack » Thu, 26. Nov 20, 19:04

Tamina wrote:
Thu, 26. Nov 20, 18:40
I have to agree with Mr.Who in that Terraforming, from what I have seen being said by Egosoft so far, is nothing I am waiting for at all. What has been communicated to me as a player is "It is a massive ressource sink in form of pre-set missions, with nearly no value return to the player". Maybe I am wrong and have overseen something then please tell me so.

And since it is going to be pre-set missions for pre-set planets, it is not even like players can change the appearance of their universe to their liking as a pride-thing or something. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe there is more to it. I am just not waiting for it because I see absolutly no relevance 😅 Then again, I saw no relevance in volumetric fog and here I am... starring at those beautiful blue nebulas with my glistening eyes in amazement. 😄
From what I can gather, terraforming will increase the sector population. One of the changes with 4.0 is that workforce accumulation rate now appears to be tied to local sector population. So stations built in unpopulated sectors will have next to no chance to accumulate workforce.

This may not have much of an impact in a game where stations operate at 100% efficiency even with no workforce, and only ~125% efficiency with full workforce. But if there were changes also made which made workforce far more important, for example making production speed dependent on workers (0% workforce = 0% production speed, 50% workforce = 50% production speed, etc), then terraforming would indeed have a massive impact on gameplay.

I would want to take it one step further, and make it so that the total amount of available workforce per sector is capped at a certain level, dependent upon the sector population, which could be increased by terraforming. But that is just my own preference, which may not be shared by others. Hopefully even if Egosoft does not want such a change, a modder would be able to do so. I lack any sort of modding skills to make it happen!

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Re: I am very dissapointed by 4.0 beta

Post by warjager » Thu, 26. Nov 20, 19:07

I really, REALLY hope that, for the 4.0, egosoft will work on the broken wing/fleet system!!! For me (and im sure for a lots of lads too), its a big issue,that break the immersion big time, and should have been taken care of WAYYY before thinking about releasing a DLC in the first place!

Why , after a lots of patch released (AND a dlc!), that:

- Formation cant kick the travel drive at the exact same time as the leader.
- Formation dont fly at the speed of the slowest ship in the formation instead of trying to match the leader speed.
- Formation dont go at the same travel drive speed of the slowest ship in the formation.

Egosoft, if you want to repair the formation/fleet, just let them run at the same speed instead of a chaotic mess of each individual ship of the group! Just treat the formation a ONE unit, based on the data of the slowest ship, normal speed and travel drive speed.

Speaking of combat.... why we still dont have specific dedicated combat order yet?? half of the game is based on combat, and still, a year and a half later, we are stuck with basic boring command for managing our combat fleet!!

Command like:

-Adding waypoint for patroling or other use and being able to define what to do a this waypoint (with a set of variable possible for each waypoint)
-Being able to define patrol zone or protect zone better like defining X,Y,Z axis (did you forget that we are in space!?)
-Formation or individual ship setting like engage or let go at X distance, keep X distance of the target, witch type of target engaging, retreat to X place if too much damage, engage target if X (fill a lot of variable condition), Target capital gun, shield or engine , etc...
- Being able to define for our ship, what faction to attack on sight or not to. its alot of micromanaging to do it by hand. we should be able to define who WE decide is the ennemy.

I could go like this and fill an entire book of suggestion for quality of life contend for our ship command and managing.

What i find sad is that ubisoft cant do it on their own. You guys push the majority of your ressource to releasing more content, and nearly dont care for QoL content or adding what really matters: a strong base that work like a good oiled machine, that can support all your future add on Dlc.

I know my post sound like a rant, but i had hope for the future telling myself "they didnt develop the solid base yet, but give them time, they will!", but after that we are nearly close to the 4.0 patch and all you do is pumping out contend like ship, more sector and race , and dont work (or at least not really full time) on the basic of a solid space game and much needed quality of life for the player, i've lost hope for the future.

I dont even know why modder didnt release this kind of content yet. Is it because its not possible with this X game yet or that its too early in this game history?

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Re: I am very dissapointed by 4.0 beta

Post by Wehrwolf_10 » Thu, 26. Nov 20, 19:35

Sell ​​me an atomic bomb for 100 million credits and I'll terraform these xenons into a bunch of wires! :roll:
Orbital bombardment and landing in drop pods on the heads of enemies!
You stand on a command ship in orbit of the planet and listen to vox communications as your troops are advancing on the enemy.
A military operation on the planet can last more than one week and will require completing missions to replenish troops and gain air superiority... :pirat:

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Re: I am very dissapointed by 4.0 beta

Post by mr.WHO » Thu, 26. Nov 20, 21:40

Falcrack wrote:
Thu, 26. Nov 20, 19:04
This may not have much of an impact in a game where stations operate at 100% efficiency even with no workforce, and only ~125% efficiency with full workforce. But if there were changes also made which made workforce far more important, for example making production speed dependent on workers (0% workforce = 0% production speed, 50% workforce = 50% production speed, etc), then terraforming would indeed have a massive impact on gameplay.
Except that Terraforming is suppose to be end-game activity and only limited to some sectors and not every sector with a planet.
This means that counting on terraforming for workforce boost will be questionable because when you need it you will be far from terraforming and when you terrform stuff you'll not need it anymore (my home sector already have 100k station population).

Personally I'd rather like if they make workforce as material resources that grown at some stations (e.g. transfer port between plant and orbit, or dedicated space cities) and you have to buy & ferry it (would make useful to return of TP class).

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Re: I am very dissapointed by 4.0 beta

Post by zakaluka » Thu, 26. Nov 20, 22:05

mr.WHO wrote:
Thu, 26. Nov 20, 21:40
counting on terraforming for workforce boost will be questionable because when you need it you will be far from terraforming and when you terrform stuff you'll not need it anymore
This seems very speculative and you are also begging the question.
I will personally wait until we have concrete information about the mechanics to make judgments.

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Re: I am very dissapointed by 4.0 beta

Post by Artean » Thu, 26. Nov 20, 22:34

zakaluka wrote:
Thu, 26. Nov 20, 22:05
This seems very speculative and you are also begging the question.
I will personally wait until we have concrete information about the mechanics to make judgments.
What's this? Are you bringing logic and reason to an internet space game forum? Tread carefully.
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Re: I am very dissapointed by 4.0 beta

Post by Matthew94 » Thu, 26. Nov 20, 23:01

Wehrwolf_10 wrote:
Thu, 26. Nov 20, 19:35
Sell ​​me an atomic bomb for 100 million credits and I'll terraform these xenons into a bunch of wires! :roll:
I too would love some WMDs. I don't care how much they would cost as long as they go BOOM.

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Re: I am very dissapointed by 4.0 beta

Post by Warnoise » Fri, 27. Nov 20, 02:20

if they dont add bomber role for squadron, no matter what else they do 4.0 will be a disappointment for me. Well since they claim they improved the overall AI in 4.0 so it is already less of a disappointment than 3.0 though.

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Re: I am very dissapointed by 4.0 beta

Post by Skeeter » Fri, 27. Nov 20, 02:47

mr.WHO wrote:
Thu, 26. Nov 20, 18:50
Tamina wrote:
Thu, 26. Nov 20, 18:40
I saw no relevance in volumetric fog and here I am... starring at those beautiful blue nebulas with my glistering eyes in amazement.
Still there is a performance impact (thank god you can switch it off).
I'm big Empire + big Fleets player, so every single FPS counts for me.
It's sad, but for me, the best fog/nebula was in Freespace 2 - this game is over 20 years old, but even today the nebula missions looks great (despite the fact that "nebula" effect was 2D instead of volumetric) and didn't hurt FPS even back then.
I remember that Freelancer also had decent nebulas that didn't affected the performance.

Best looking isn't automatically the best, especially for any X-series game where both CPU and GPU already have plenty of other things to do.
:) :) :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_XmWqH74io
freespace was great indeed especially the nebula area, it felt thick, it was hard to find things in and it had flashing lighting and color changing clouds. Bliss, all without fancy fps draining effects. Why modern games cant match that quality of feeling like in space i dunno.
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Re: I am very dissapointed by 4.0 beta

Post by Warnoise » Fri, 27. Nov 20, 03:26

Skeeter wrote:
Fri, 27. Nov 20, 02:47
mr.WHO wrote:
Thu, 26. Nov 20, 18:50
Tamina wrote:
Thu, 26. Nov 20, 18:40
I saw no relevance in volumetric fog and here I am... starring at those beautiful blue nebulas with my glistering eyes in amazement.
Still there is a performance impact (thank god you can switch it off).
I'm big Empire + big Fleets player, so every single FPS counts for me.
It's sad, but for me, the best fog/nebula was in Freespace 2 - this game is over 20 years old, but even today the nebula missions looks great (despite the fact that "nebula" effect was 2D instead of volumetric) and didn't hurt FPS even back then.
I remember that Freelancer also had decent nebulas that didn't affected the performance.

Best looking isn't automatically the best, especially for any X-series game where both CPU and GPU already have plenty of other things to do.
:) :) :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_XmWqH74io
freespace was great indeed especially the nebula area, it felt thick, it was hard to find things in and it had flashing lighting and color changing clouds. Bliss, all without fancy fps draining effects. Why modern games cant match that quality of feeling like in space i dunno.
I just got hit right in the feels by a barrage of nostalgia when i saw this video. Man, games back in the day had soul.

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Re: I am very dissapointed by 4.0 beta

Post by Axeface » Fri, 27. Nov 20, 03:41

Warnoise wrote:
Fri, 27. Nov 20, 03:26
I just got hit right in the feels by a barrage of nostalgia when i saw this video. Man, games back in the day had soul.
Soul?
People say that, looking at footage of ships traveling at 100m/s and say how great it is and then complain about X4 ships being slow or stations and sectors in X4 feeling 'small' completely oblivious to the fact that is just that 100m/s slowness in the old footage that makes things feel better.
Games still have soul, devs are just polluted and lack confidence in their own designs because people constantly complain and those complaints are so accessible, when in reality people dont know what they want. Its artists and game designers that should control creative design not plebs. Game designers still have soul, they are just scared to work freely for backlash from the kneejerk reactionary masses.
I guess what im trying to say is that people think games are losing soul because devs tend to no longer make games for themselves but attempt to please everyone, diluting their vision, thats how I see it.
Van Gogh would not have painted starry night if he had had the internet watching him paint it and complain that its not realistic.

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Re: I am very dissapointed by 4.0 beta

Post by Waltz99 » Fri, 27. Nov 20, 12:18

I don't get it why you complain about a beta.
I'm already happy they allow us to do beta testing.
Ive seen so many games where devs just do their own stuff and don't care about the community input.
Something thats so much better with egosoft.
Ok not much stuff got added this time but thats a good thing.
As a programmer myself I know its best to test every new thing bit by bit because if you add to much at once it will be very hard to find the cause of a problem and you may have to do some rollbacks to see if the problem then still exist. Can be a pain and it will be more time consuming.
Here they even have a big community willing to do the beta testing. More beta's coming soon, I'm sure of it.

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Re: I am very dissapointed by 4.0 beta

Post by dholmstr » Fri, 27. Nov 20, 12:50

I'm not so disapointed at it, many fixes that will help with stability and efficiency of the game. This lets me have a little bigger game without my crappy computer die in a puff of smoke. But that said I wish there would be a balancing/rolecheck/functional pass on all ships, given that we already have so many ships. I don't really see the point in adding a bunch again, when it is more work than old X3 ships. Also the old ships could get a little love in the looks department, the split have really nice details to them while the Nova looks like a plank of wood. I like the design, but needs polish :)

I actually want so see more improvements to the code so that it runs smoother with more detail, if that's even possible.

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Re: I am very dissapointed by 4.0 beta

Post by Slashman » Fri, 27. Nov 20, 13:43

Axeface wrote:
Fri, 27. Nov 20, 03:41
Warnoise wrote:
Fri, 27. Nov 20, 03:26
I just got hit right in the feels by a barrage of nostalgia when i saw this video. Man, games back in the day had soul.
Soul?
People say that, looking at footage of ships traveling at 100m/s and say how great it is and then complain about X4 ships being slow or stations and sectors in X4 feeling 'small' completely oblivious to the fact that is just that 100m/s slowness in the old footage that makes things feel better.
Games still have soul, devs are just polluted and lack confidence in their own designs because people constantly complain and those complaints are so accessible, when in reality people dont know what they want. Its artists and game designers that should control creative design not plebs. Game designers still have soul, they are just scared to work freely for backlash from the kneejerk reactionary masses.
I guess what im trying to say is that people think games are losing soul because devs tend to no longer make games for themselves but attempt to please everyone, diluting their vision, thats how I see it.
Van Gogh would not have painted starry night if he had had the internet watching him paint it and complain that its not realistic.
I could not agree more. We don't like to let designers design anymore. Everyone knows whats best and what works better than X or Y. And we insultingly tell the designers and game makers this in a loud chorus. It should be embarrassing but I don't think we have the ability to get embarrassed on the internet nowadays.
If you want a different perspective, stand on your head.

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Re: I am very dissapointed by 4.0 beta

Post by zakaluka » Fri, 27. Nov 20, 16:06

Even the diablo 3 launch is a great example of what listening too much to community feedback can do.

"What do you mean?" - "Blizzard doesn't listen to community at all." Well, from launch onwards, that was mostly true, but they were recovering from their mistakes. The state of the game *on launch* was driven greatly by feedback from the community during their closed beta period.

Jay Wilson engaged far too much with the closed beta testers, took way too much to heart from community feedback. What they got was a hot mess that didn't last nearly as long as they were hoping.

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Re: I am very dissapointed by 4.0 beta

Post by Warnoise » Sat, 28. Nov 20, 02:51

Axeface wrote:
Fri, 27. Nov 20, 03:41
Warnoise wrote:
Fri, 27. Nov 20, 03:26
I just got hit right in the feels by a barrage of nostalgia when i saw this video. Man, games back in the day had soul.
Soul?
People say that, looking at footage of ships traveling at 100m/s and say how great it is and then complain about X4 ships being slow or stations and sectors in X4 feeling 'small' completely oblivious to the fact that is just that 100m/s slowness in the old footage that makes things feel better.
Games still have soul, devs are just polluted and lack confidence in their own designs because people constantly complain and those complaints are so accessible, when in reality people dont know what they want. Its artists and game designers that should control creative design not plebs. Game designers still have soul, they are just scared to work freely for backlash from the kneejerk reactionary masses.
I guess what im trying to say is that people think games are losing soul because devs tend to no longer make games for themselves but attempt to please everyone, diluting their vision, thats how I see it.
Van Gogh would not have painted starry night if he had had the internet watching him paint it and complain that its not realistic.
Dude I don't know why my statement triggered you this much but let me tell you one thing.

While you are right about current Devs trying to please everyone but that is not because of the community. Devs now in general now think more in business than in pure game entertainment. Look at the amount of games that try to add multiple genres, why? Because they think that will attract players from both markets, thus more revenue. Whereas back in the day, video game market wasn't as big, so it was just "let's preserve our community and make it bigger".

Now let's talk about X. Nobody from the community asked Egosoft about a game like X-rebirth. Yet they released it. Are you going to blame the community?
Yet, some members from the community bought without even playing it more than a dozen of hours just to support Egosoft.

X3 which in my opinion was a true labor of love, had a huge positive support from the community, yet the same positive support can't be seen in X4. We are talking here about the same fiercely loyal community which used to sink thousands of hours making insane mods that add tons of contents. Yet that same community is gone now.

Whether you like it or not, the community is what makes a game successful or not. The Devs listen to the community because it is them who will give them money for their product before anyone else. The Devs want money over anything else. Especially now in the current aggressive video game market, profit maximisation schemes are above anything else.

So yeah, this is why I said back in the days games had soul. Again, this is my subjective point of view.

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