egosoft.com

X-online could mean a great thing for many people.
-real people to interract with
-going on missions avec your best mate
-setting up joint empires with complete noobs as your underlings
-!Real! Pirates doing real things.
But then there is also the additional prospect of:
-possible heafty bills
-joining late and beings a blade of grass in the garden of the space lanes
-the possibility of running out of space by the time you can afford your very own ore mine.
-being bullied by others who joined earlier or that play it all day every day
-plus!!! No SETA!
-!FINALLY! No scripting!
So what do you guys think,
a question to all the end users,
X-online... Good or Bad?

for lone-wolfers (me), and the inept and unskilled ( also me), having the X-Universe all to myself and my AI is ideal. I can take it at my own pace, burble along, and if I do something stupid - who cares; it is a lesson learned, even if I have to start over. Making it online would change it into something else, and I doubt I would go for it, but lots would, and I guess it would have a great appeal for the folk who are really good strategists and know all the wrinkles...be like playing chess with live pieces.

what would really be cool would be X3 LAN, that way you could hook up with a good mate and the pleasure of playing the game would be double imo

Yeah, I'm a fan of the LAN thing aswell, that would be awesome. My dad and I (the only other guy who I know that plays it, courtesy of me) have talked about it alot. He's not too keen on fighting (he can't, at all), but loves trading, I like both but with a slant towards fighting, so it would be a laugh me trying to protect him while we fly through a pirate sector or something.

This gets brought up regularly. Online is one of Egosoft's long-term goals, however it's extremely expensive and publishers don't like fronting money. If you have a couple of million pounds sterling spare, then I'm sure it'll be done sooner. Otherwise, it'll probably be 2020 at the earliest.

LAN is less likely than an MMO version. Why? Because it'd involve many of the same development expenses and yet bring in no real additional income.

Actually a lan version sounds better to me then a full internet version as the universe wouldnt get to croweded with non AI ships.
And jet you would be able to multiplay with friends even if they are far away as you can set up a sort of lan over the internet ut protect it with a password or such.
I supose it would kinda be like the HALO or Red Faction servers.
And when you feel like continueing ofline it wil be much easyer and save game compatible then the full online version so easyer and cheaper for egosoft to make.

Martin Logan wrote:so easyer and cheaper for egosoft to make.

And how do you come to that conclusion?

A multiplayer protocol would need writing from scratch. Everything would need adjusting, rebalancing, redesigning. Adding multiplayer to X³ (even 2player co-op) could never be easy or cheap - and compared to an MMO it does share many of the same expenses. You have to overcome many of the same issues.

LAN is extremely unlikely. Online's possible, but far away.

And the worlds stupidest idea rears its ugly head yet again!!
I do wish people would read all the previous entrys first before posting a new thread.
Can't happen, won't happen.

the whole game engine would have to be remade to accomadate multiple player objects in the game.

theres quite a few things that are designed with only 1 player in mind, ie the Player race, cant really have every player in the universe all the same race

Isnt it possible to make one race per user ?
Like Race:Martin Logan Race:Cycrow Race: KipperTheFish and so on ?

I think spacesims are ideally suited for MMO. There's no decent MMO spacesim out (actually I think besides X^3 there's no decent spacesim out at all). I believe that this genre is currently in a state RPGs were before Baldur's Gate.

A spacesim could start with a "simple" version, missions granted by ai and featuring only small spacecrafts. This could be enhanced to userbuildable structures, ships and missions. There's no need for a background story everybody can experience the same way (including the same quests for all users regardless of the time they start). The background should evolve in "REAL TIME", backtracking shoudn't be possible. Saving could be done using something like entering hyperspace when logging out. If one dies, this state (in terms of ship and equipment) is automatically reloaded, but the time in the universe has evolved, so one might not be able to fullfill the mission one died on.

Stats for the Avatars are not necessary (besides their look), because everyone is defined by his flight and trade skills and the missions she accepted.

Ships and equipment have to be bought with mission earned money. So high-level characters behaving badly can be punished by freezing their money, confiscating their ships and equipment and finally just pushing them out of the air lock.

Yeh, 'Sector Police' which are infact admins. I think it would be best if you made it so each player only had one ship, and when you take out salvage insurance, it reverts your ship back to how it was at the last save, but with a chance to lose certain items of cargo. You could also have safe sectors with collision with human players turned off and don't damage other players.

The idea about freezing money in one way sounds good as it would prevent real bad piracy but on the other hand it would make things really boring.
Maybe if someone begs for mercy and you kill them then you`ll be punished but if they fight back or atacked you you can be as bad ass as you want.

I think its a good idea but risky.

There are so many cool things that could be done online plus the sense of teamwork etc. But there is the fact that other people can be absolute idiots and ruin it for everyone. Think about those games where a guy cheats himself invulnerability and 100% accuracy, shoot through walls etc.

then theres protecting your income and assets against the same thing, figuring out when and how to save, and maintaining the original feel of the game.

I think if ego get it right then they would have an absolute cracker on their hands, but if they get it wrong they may lose a significant portion of their fanbase... a fanbase that has a large number of people that would already be put off by the internet idea anyway. that would be a shame.

I think its worth exploring but carefully. 2020 is fine by me. Maybe I'll have a computer that can take it by then

DeadlyDarkness wrote:I think it would be best if you made it so each player only had one ship

But then it wouldn't be X. Being limited to one ship is unacceptable, in my opinion.

There is EVE and there is X... and they are different and should remain that way.

This, THIS WHOLE THING, Every 1 to 2 weeks one of these pops up, and i immediatley get the urge to punch the person who started the thread, X-Online wouldnt be X, it wouldnt be X at all, the game would be torn and mangled and mutlilated from what it truly is, because, quite frankly, IF, it was the same way as it is now, then you can expect to be plowed over by TL's , M1's, and M2's all the time, not only that, but you can expect space to be packed, with people having to build stations 7500 KM away from the center, it'd be horrible, thered be limited ore and silicon avaliable, but thered be a nearly unlimeted demand for it, the economy would collapse, the universe would be overflowing with "Pirates" who consider themselves that, but are just actually idiots who just wanna shoot things, attacking whatever they see, and most likley getting killed because of there idiocidy, i dont want someone sending me 500 messages a minute asking me for a free ship or credits, I dont want to have to fly 500 km out to finally get some space, in space, and, to top it all off, think of the LAG, and what about UT's, lets say 80-90% of the players are smart enough, to actually get to a point where they can start setting them up, but what, if 75% of that 90-80% all have around 10 to 20 UT's, its just killer, you'd need a super computer, you try stuffing your univers with about 100000 more ships and 10000 more stations, see how it does!

Its not a good idea, it changes what X is, and it shouldnt be made,
Personally i would love to see LAN, shoot, i'd probably go out and buy 50 extra copies for my friends, no joke!

Whenever somebody posts a question about the XTM mod, the moderators blend all the threads together.
Wouldn't it be nice to do the same everytime someone brings up the (stupid) idea of X-online?

There's no need to be insulting by calling the idea of online play "stupid". Bear in mind that in saying that, you're also insulting Egosoft as they've said time and time again that online is one of their ultimate goals.

And someone getting the urge to punch someone in the face because of a thread? I suggest you stop reading threads then.

If you can't post constructively, don't post at all.

Im sorry if I've caused an uproar by posting here.
I just wanted to have a discussion about the prospect of an X-online. And discuss how X could be adapted to be online. Not cause offence or anything.
Right now back to discussing.
I actually think the idea of an X-online would be bad in it's current state. X-lan however I can see how it would be very appealing.
Quite a while ago somebody wrote on an unofficial X-universe forum that they were working on modding X3 to be Lan compatable, though I believe this was probably just somebody spamming.
What would be good about an X-online is that if you have a decently set up empire(when you get to this stage) and you have traders running around with escorts you could probably leave them and come back and they'd be fine.
Players teaming up would be the whole part of the game, not a bad thing at all. Though I can see how it could get out of hand.