Both Beta and Live Build - 6 biggest pain-points as a player and wasted dev time as a result

[Manawydn]

Most of these problems have already been addressed or resolved by the modding community, some of which were "fixed" several years ago. Therefore, proof-of-concept has already shown that the solutions provided in the VOD are possible and can be completed with relative ease by an experienced XML coder.

Toward the end of today's Dev Feedback stream, I found myself both talking about and directly experiencing the five biggest pain-points (problems) that players feel with this game, myself included. What's spoken about in this video has already been repeatedly provided to the developers as feedback, often times over the last several years which have yet to be addressed or in some cases improved upon to what myself and many others would consider an acceptable level. These problems are essentially the reason why both new and veteran players turn to mods at best, and outright abandon the game at worst. Most, if not all of these problems have been prevalent since I first picked up the game in 2020 with Split Vendetta 3.0 up until now (7.0 beta 2).

The Mission system - Vague, doesn't tell you what you need to do, where, or what the rewards are in some cases.
The Mission system - Rewards are not considered to be worth the time or effort to complete by the community at large, in part due to the above.

Crew Leveling - Takes way too long, and as a player you're effectively soft-locked at two-star pilots without relying on the mission system or getting lucky with NPC combat. (Two days in-game time, all recorded for you to see, and my first mining ship still has not breached two-stars.)
Crew Leveling - Seminars are too sparse, unable to get two-star or greater seminars without relying on a mission system that is not fun to engage with at best, and frustrating/ignored at worst. This means that all the dev time spent building the system has effectively gone to waste, as there is no real incentive to interact with that mechanic. (see above)

Station Scanning - Immersion breaking at best, forces a game reload at worst (getting stuck in station geometry without teleport-1)
Station Scanning - Same as above, range is too short. Often times requires awkward angles to scan the module. (Build modules are the worst offenders.)

Space-Suit Scanning - (Same as station scanning)
Space-Suit Scanning - Invisible walls that prevent you from scanning data leaks (EMPs)

Player Ship Mods and Paint Jobs - Artificial scarcity means that most of the paint mods that you as developers spent your time working on are almost never experienced by the average player.

Organizing your Assets - Lack of Custom Tabs. // As you'll see right at the end of the VOD, I show you the difference between having customizable tabs vs having literally all of your assets in one tab using an older save in the SWI (Star Wars) mod. This portion is right at the end of the VOD.

4:10 - 5:22 (Watch this portion in entirety, as I go in depth about the problems listed above as well as potential solutions. I Highly recommend that you watch this portion (4:10 until the end of VOD) in it's entirety, as I am speaking about these problems the entire time.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2126519924

[Buzz2005]

why do you scan stations? as in why is that so important?
custom tab yes yes yes f yes

In 5 years of playing this game I really don't scan stations outside of maybe to know what wares some yard holds

[Manawydn]

why do you scan stations? as in why is that so important?
custom tab yes yes yes f yes

In 5 years of playing this game I really don't scan stations outside of maybe to know what wares some yard holds

Because it's a mechanic in the game and I am testing the game for developer feedback. Because it's intended to be something that the player engages with. Because it allows me to see the logistical menu of an NPC station so I can better plan my economy. There are numerous reasons why I scan station modules in the vanilla game. In modded playthroughs, I mod the problem away so that I can see all NPC logistics in menus without the need for scanning.

[Manawydn]

Additionally, you're proving my point that the station scanning mechanic needs serious attention. Most players just outright ignore it.

[Nanook]

... Most players just outright ignore it.

Not sure where you're getting your data from, but it's highly suspect, IMO.

Personally, I use both station and 'suit scanning a lot, and only rarely do I encounter problems with 'suit scanning, and never with what you term 'station' scanning (more accurately, ship-station scanning). You don't really have to get all that close to scan a station from your ship.

[Manawydn]

... Most players just outright ignore it.

Not sure where you're getting your data from, but it's highly suspect, IMO.

Every time I talk about it, people ask me why do I even bother.

[Nanook]

You must talk about it to a lot of people, considering there are probably hundreds of thousands of players. Five or six players that don't like scanning hardly count as "most".

[Manawydn]

You must talk about it to a lot of people, considering there are probably hundreds of thousands of players. Five or six players that don't like scanning hardly count as "most".

There are only several thousand active X4 players, it's a relatively small community. Check Steam Charts. At the time of this response, there are only approx. 3,000 players in the game right now. A farcry from hundreds of thousands.

Skip Station Scan (or just simply ignoring it) are the two most popular solutions to the problem. It doesn't take much to recognize that the mechanic needs an update and is unhealthy for the game and new players. I talk about this extensively in my stream.

The "forum posters are a loud minority" argument is not only counter productive toward improving the game, but also shows a great deal of stubbornness to explore other ideas and solutions when it comes to improving existing mechanics. Your forum posters are your most experienced and passionate players. "Casual" players generally don't go online to express ideas, opinions, and concerns when compared to veterans. This has already been proven across multiple games in the industry over many years. Veterans tend to just ignore the mechanic which is a sign that it's not an enjoyable or engaging gameplay loop.

Because it is a mechanic in the game, it should be viable for whatever said mechanic provides, and should generally provide a return on investment, be it time or effort.

"Just ignore it bro" is illogical, and won't yield any useful feedback/results. This post was originally in the beta feedback forum, and was moved over to X4-general by a developer.

[theincrediblenick]

I've never had a single issue with scanning stations, so have no clue what you are complaining about.

Also, I am one of the many that play on GoG instead of Steam.

[Manawydn]

I've never had a single issue with scanning stations, so have no clue what you are complaining about.

Also, I am one of the many that play on GoG instead of Steam.

The range to scan stations is too close to the module, you'll see in my VODs numerous times throughout probably all of them that I'll often times end up "ramming" the station in order to get close enough to proc the scan in a short amount of time. I've scanned about 50+ stations in that playthrough up to 80%+ in order to reveal the logistical menu, and I talk about this almost every single time I engage with that gameplay loop.

Assuming GOG's community is the same size as X4's, that would mean there are about 12,000 concurrent players in the game. Non-Steam players, if we assume is the same number would bring that up to about 18,000. Still a far cry from hundreds of thousands, even if we recognize that not everyone plays every single day. The X4 community is relatively small. Lethal Company, a far more basic game with fewer gameplay loops by contrast has 20,000 concurrent on Steam alone. Just as a basic example.

[TroubledRabbit]

... Most players just outright ignore it.

Not sure where you're getting your data from, but it's highly suspect, IMO.

Personally, I use both station and 'suit scanning a lot, and only rarely do I encounter problems with 'suit scanning, and never with what you term 'station' scanning (more accurately, ship-station scanning). You don't really have to get all that close to scan a station from your ship.

Seems kinda condescending. I do understand the difficulty with dealing with players, especially when you, willing or not, are 'the face' of the company (on forum in some capacity), 'been there, done that'. Still - 'it works for me' is not an argument.

If there is a 'mod for something' that means
- there is some problem in design or implementation of something
- there is desire for something which had not be fulfilled
- there is particular need expressed by some group of the users (soe they added that into the game making effectively an expansion)
- (or someone has too much free time, 'no gf/bf' and no life at all ).

As a company Egosoft is not obligated by any means to align its own plans or goals with mods, obviously. Mods however, points in some directions and being deaf is not particularly good strategy. E.g. the interface design of the X games is legendary in the department of 'awful design' and lack of proper functionality, taking the controller as an input device just exacerbated existing problems. At least the old 'press numbers to quick access' design was still present in XR, now it's gone and interface became even more complicated and unwieldy. Changing the height (z axis) on orders on the map isnot easy - while you could just plagiarize - there is no reason to reinvent the whell and fire over again - the Homeworld design as other games did. It was just very intuitive.
And I still have not figure out how to change z axis of guidance (the 'yellow line to the point') if it is even possible. I am getting old, but 'senile' not yet.

'Custom tabs' (mod which has been broken as any messing with the UI because of changes in the menu design of 7.x and will be until updated) is quite popular for a reason. Complains about 'scanning' exists since XR introduced this questionable at best mechanics, ships AI, flotilla management, etc. These *are* problems. That does not mean that the company needs to drop everything ASAP and solve them immediately. Besides some may be just not solvable at all without very high and unreasonable investment in time and resources. Some acknowledgement would be sufficient, though.

[gorgofdoom]

Crew experience is a worthy mention; Mainly because it is so very important and simultaneously not addressed at all as an important factor during gameplay. Nowhere at all does the game tell players that their ships reaction time, turning rate, how long it takes to find a trade, etc is affected by crew.

However at this point, having a day+ in beta time, i'd say the rate of experience gain is fine. I've got at least two dozen 3+ star ships in my 24+ hours of beta playthrough. However the root of this problem imo is that how important this is, is not communicated to players except by other players.

Another factor of this issue is rather prevalent throughout x4. We have to constantly play the HR management game of moving crew and pilots between ships so that our new ships are on an even playing field with NPC's. Ie. moving service crew from builder ships to others, moving pilots & marines from training to their intended posting, etc.... and this all has to be done pretty much one ship at a time, 10-15 clicks per ship. In a game where we can eventually have thousands of vessels.... And we don't even have a crew staging area that is large enough to accommodate the largest of ships. This is made more difficult in 7.0 with the rescue mechanic, considering rescues must be preformed with ships that don't have crew, and that we now have to reassign crew after the fact. This limits our ability to effectively have a large number of vessels; since we'll have to spend hours just moving crew around when we get around to ship building.

Why isn't rescued crew automatically sent to a staging location instead of needlessly filling slots, not assigned to any job at all? Why do we have to spend time moving crew out of the way to make room for rescues?

At the end of the day this is not a fun gameplay element. (while i do greatly appreciate the depth) I'd much rather spend my time shooting baddies, setting up trades, and tinkering with ship builds than moving various crew around.... And there simply isn't any solution, modded or otherwise, that reduces this endless paperwork game. Even having all crew at 5 stars doesn't remove the need for shuffling crew around to make rescues possible.

Considering station scanning: I like the mechanic in practice, but it's also quite obfuscated. With a police scanner it is impossible to scan a station to 100% knowledge. Where is this concept explained? How does it work? Has anyone figured it out without reading through the XML's?

[Crovaxo]

Station scanning? lol

Your points might have some merit but by far are not the biggest pain points, not at all. Surely AI is #1 and the way it behaves and the many flaws with its logic.

How long have you even played the game? Have you properly looked at what the factions are doing, their logic in wars etc?

Pardon me, but reading this list and side tracking devs with these points just pisses me off

[Nanook]

... Most players just outright ignore it.

Not sure where you're getting your data from, but it's highly suspect, IMO.

Personally, I use both station and 'suit scanning a lot, and only rarely do I encounter problems with 'suit scanning, and never with what you term 'station' scanning (more accurately, ship-station scanning). You don't really have to get all that close to scan a station from your ship.

Still - 'it works for me' is not an argument....

Actually, it is. It seems the OP has a problem that's mostly a problem for him. Others may not like scanning for many other reasons, but just to come out and say "most players" have his specific problems is highly suspect and I challenged him to provide proof, which I have yet to see. But that's ok, because I'm not a dev, and I doubt the devs are even taking note of this thread. They don't usually take note of threads such as these with a host of issues being presented at one time because they don't have the time to sort through it all. If someone has a specific issue, it's best to present it in a separate thread.

[xrogaan]

As a reply to OP:

Missions: never do them, either. Don't see the point in them beyond access to the black market. I do some destruction missions in faction war in SWI, due to the high reward, and ignore all the rest.
Faction wars missions sometimes want you to scan a station or a ship, in enemy territory, a target that would shoot you on sight. That's a bit silly.

Crew Levelling: I have a mod that increase the speed at which they gain skill. As you said, it's way too slow to grow skills organically. And also way too easy to lose crew/pilots.

Station Scanning: I know it exists. I don't know why it exists. I practically never do it beyond the introduction to the mechanic or that one time I got bored.

Space-Suit Scanning: Learned that was a thing when I couldn't get 100% scan on one station. Didn't learn it from the game though, I had to look it up on the internet. It's at that point I decided to ditch the whole scanning stuff. I'm not floating around in a space suit, slow-boating around a station. And definitively won't repeat that again and again for each different station around.

Paint jobs: I have a mod that make them available in a shop. I grew annoyed that I couldn't put a nice paint on some of my ships. Thus make the in-game reward system obsolete.

Actually, it is. It seems the OP has a problem that's mostly a problem for him. Others may not like scanning for many other reasons, but just to come out and say "most players" have his specific problems is highly suspect and I challenged him to provide proof, which I have yet to see. But that's ok, because I'm not a dev, and I doubt the devs are even taking note of this thread. They don't usually take note of threads such as these with a host of issues being presented at one time because they don't have the time to sort through it all. If someone has a specific issue, it's best to present it in a separate thread.

Oh. Well, why bother, then?

[naisha]

My 2 cents, not that it matters apparently

Missions. I don't do them. Maybe the station building one's because they are lucrative. If I'm playing SWI mod, I do some escort missions early game. Other than that I don't touch that part of the game because it's not worth my time.

Crew leveling. Vanilla is just too slow. Always use a mod. Probably will use mods for 7.0 as well.

Station scanning. Did it once. Never touched that mechanic afterwards. Felt like a dumb mechanic with no reason for it to exist. Like really, why is it in the game? Always use mods for it.

Spacesuit scanning. I MIGHT see a reason for it if I squint hard enough but again, I never do it. It's a waste of time and not fun for me

Paint jobs and skins. Never touched that. I rarely look at my ships from the outside. May change with 3rd person camera In 7.0

Organizing assets. This is a big one. For a game with possibly thousands of ships and hundreds of stations and no real means to organize them.... Idk man, why haven't they implemented something for this in such a long time is baffling to me

[Pares]

Well I just hope they get rid of this silly and immersion breaking crew leveling stuff for X5 or whatever comes next. It is evident that in its current form it's a complete and utter failure with absolutely no redeeming quality. It doesn't make any sense from a believability point of view, it makes the game tedious, it is annoying, and ffs pls don't intentionally dumb down the AI that already acts brainless at it's best...

Ship modding, huge missed opportunity, it's dumbfounding how little attention this feature got. My only hope is for X5 at this point. No random slot machine please!

I always check back after a new DLC to see whether they addressed the above two in any way, only to be disappointed by reading the same exact complaints basically since release...

[Karmaticdamage]

Pilots should gain xp from kills. I have a few patrol craft that are still level 2 in piloting despite having killed hundreds of khaak.

[xrogaan]

Pilots should gain xp from kills. I have a few patrol craft that are still level 2 in piloting despite having killed hundreds of khaak.

And that is why I'll potentially never touch the "verse" thing. Going vanilla would be too painful. Maybe I should start a topic about that one specific issue, instead of howling at the moon. But in reality, I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't quite matter. Egosoft seems to be too small to address this kind of trivial issue. It's not game breaking, after all.

[TroubledRabbit]

Still - 'it works for me' is not an argument....

Actually, it is. It seems the OP has a problem that's mostly a problem for him. [...] If someone has a specific issue, it's best to present it in a separate thread.

nah.. now you've become arrogant
There are (and were when the XR was a novelty) topics regarding that stuff. And were ignored. At best somewhat muted in the X4 (the 'no scan' or 'increase scan range', NESA or 'f*ck the minigames' mods were quite popular for XR), still annoyance,at least ignorable. It's kinda saying something about cmpany's Q&A if after almost 5 (?) years you cannot just skip repetitive dialogues and the shadow on the neck of female reps is atrocious... At least you could explain in Encyclopedia why most of the lizard-people walks naked... Such details sticks out. And then there is a 'serious stuff' which every group of players interested in particular type of gameplay will pick and bitch about.

Anyway - for the game (or any product) with such ambitions and scope which ALWAYS (until technology radically changes) will leave customer with disappointment of some kind - you just cannot be at the same time cosmic Total War, Empire, Capitalism II+, Pioneer/Elite-very-light, kind of Mess-Effect-without para-nudes (thanks o Great Symmetry), ... [#insert_trope]..., and a vista-pics maker, and some Skyrim too. It cannot work no matter how big & rich would be a company.

And TBH - this is a real 'existential crisis' *of* and *in* the game - lack of focus, overreaching, questionable choices and inevitably necessity of that kind of compromises which - as my gradma used to say: 'leaves everybody almost equally pissed off'.

There is no need to introduce an artificial one (and the way it seemingly works is kind of a symptom of disease). 'Guys we really have no idea what to do but spawning some stuff on your complex will make you happy and appreciated, right?'.
At least it may be understood as some kind of stress-test of user's machine

# wanna make crisiss which means something?
Shut the gates. Or at least part of them. Or randomly realign them (randomly: means in each save in random order).
Repeat the process every hour of the game until the player with help of the NPCs will find the fix and convince them all to actually do it. Which would not 'restore' the alignment but stop random changes.
NOW that would be an outrage