Please, do complex. PC-complex.

[Chris0132]

The other thing is that excessively complex games generally fall into the grognard category, selling to people who are obsessed with the particular thing the game simulates and who are perfectly happy to pay a couple of hundred dollars for their terribly designed simulator game. There is generally no reason to make good controls, because you make money by extorting the fanbase, not by making good games.

Frankly I'm very pleased egosoft is looking to open the series up, as X3 was a bit ridiculous in that aspect.

Aren't you exaggerating things ? If controls were that bad, no one would play it, even the greatest fan of X universe. The perfect example of that is Final Fantasy XIV. Squere Enix released this game way to early, controls were horrible from the very beginning and it had way to many problems with stability, after that what happened ?
They realised their mistake, even their huge fan base didn't help it. They given up on subscription until that game is what it should be. I'm a fan of both, X universe series and final fantasy but there is a limit. X3 is a great game, it has some problems with the AI, but in the controls topic I don't have any negative feelings. They are ok, sure you need to get used to them a little but nothing more.

No, X3 is certainly not as bad as it gets, but it comes close to falling into the trap that games of this genre often do. Take for example stuff like this.

It's overpriced, insanely complicated, has no graphics to speak of, and is not available through general commercial outlets. This is not a game, it's a spreadsheet program with a GUI. Made solely to appeal to people who will pay any money for something which simulates world war two on the russian front is the most excruciating detail possible.

X3 is substantially better than that, but you can see in the playerbase and things like the fact that there was sufficiant demand for a DiD mode that the devs added it in, as well as the fact that it is considered perfectly normal to play it for hundreds of hours in a single game that it bears a similarity to those sorts of games.

While none of those playing habits are bad things, you can't develop solely for the hardcore crowd, or rather, you can, but I really don't think you should. Becase it encourages people to make horrible simulators and overcharge a tiny number of users so they can make enough money to crank out their next horrible simulator which is exactly like the previous one and all the other horrible simulators in that genre, (the site I linked is FULL of them). All this rather than making something original and fun and inclusive and enjoyable to make, not to mention profitable.

[robalexhall]

I've never played the wargame you linked (not my genre of choice) but it certainly looks like a game to me... and the UI (judging by the screenshots) looks elegant enough. I really don't see what point you're trying to make.
The most popular games are, in reality, puzzle and browser games and those sucky graphix wargames are closer to that than the stuff us gamers play... not sure how you manage to look down on them, certainly more 'grown up' than our hobby.

re controllers: I have a gamepad (from a PS) for emulated console titles and grand theft auto etc but I would not want to play Civlization with it, or any strategy game, sim, non japanese-style rpg or fps and that is not because of "bad design".

The thumbstick on a gamepad just cannot give you the fine movement of a mouse (hence why FPS servers segregate PC players) or offer the functionality that makes selecting between options or picking targets etc intuitive point'n'click rather than the console-hell of nested menus.

[madcow]

No, X3 is certainly not as bad as it gets, but it comes close to falling into the trap that games of this genre often do. Take for example stuff like this.

It's overpriced, insanely complicated, has no graphics to speak of, and is not available through general commercial outlets. This is not a game, it's a spreadsheet program with a GUI. Made solely to appeal to people who will pay any money for something which simulates world war two on the russian front is the most excruciating detail possible.

X3 is substantially better than that, but you can see in the playerbase and things like the fact that there was sufficiant demand for a DiD mode that the devs added it in, as well as the fact that it is considered perfectly normal to play it for hundreds of hours in a single game that it bears a similarity to those sorts of games.

While none of those playing habits are bad things, you can't develop solely for the hardcore crowd, or rather, you can, but I really don't think you should. Becase it encourages people to make horrible simulators and overcharge a tiny number of users so they can make enough money to crank out their next horrible simulator which is exactly like the previous one and all the other horrible simulators in that genre, (the site I linked is FULL of them). All this rather than making something original and fun and inclusive and enjoyable to make, not to mention profitable.

While I haven't played the exact game you're pointing to, I have played another of the games they publish, War in the Pacific, and while it is indeed a complex game, it isn't because of its UI, it's because of it's immense depth and attention to detail. While I adore that, I do recognize that not all games should have that level of detail. It is, however, a far cry from not wanting to go full-on neckbeard. I don't get the gripe about its graphics, though. What's the problem with it? From my perspective, it delivers the information you need at a glance.

Actually, I do wish WitP would allow me to use more than 1024x768.

I'm getting confused, however, about what you seem to mean the problem is. You keep talking about how the game should be designed around the gamepad, yet you keep talking about game mechanics being complex. So, what exactly is the problem with X?

Personally, what I've thought of as one of X's major problem is its lack of scalability, where it can only use a single core. I'd prefer it if they managed to make their next edition actually scale up to multiple cores, and once that's done, work on making the UI more optimized for the tasks the normal gamer will perform.

[Chris0132]

I've seen that game played and explained, and I still don't get what most of the info that it displays actually means. It requires you to memorise vast amounts of information in order to be able to play it, essentially you have to be able to read military iconography and also know a detailed history of world war 2.

Which is likely no impediment, if you already know those things, but it isn't good game design. If you can't interpret it at a glance with no prior experience in the genre, you need a better interface. Hell ideally you should be able to play it with no prior experience using a computer, but that's obviously rather more difficult, and most people are somewhat computer literate so it is probably not neccesary.

The point is, if I haven't played an X game, and I look at X3, what I mostly see is a bunch of terminology I don't understand, classifications of ships I don't know what they mean, weapons which all sound like random technobabble with no logic to their naming, ships that all look mostly the same beyond 'big ship, small ship, maybe ship maybe spacestation?' (actually, most of them look like empty red and blue squares because they're hundreds of miles away and I only know they're there because of the computer) and a bunch of pointless fluff like ship ID numbers.

Compare it to say, civilisation five, which I recently bought as my first ever civ game, and understood it pretty much immediately. The squares are clearly marked, the game gives you hints on what to do, prompts you whenever you haven't issued an order to a unit that turn, tells you when your tech is done and makes you select another one before you commit, it essentially prevents you from doing rookie mistakes like wasting turns or forgetting about units. It clearly alerts you to the status of your units, gives you concise trackers for all the important stuff like when your next research is done, how the other civs feel about you, important events that happened recently, marks out valuable terrain clearly from the rest, follows consistent rules for movement (everything moves two squares except for the odd exception), combat is simple but surprisingly deep if you position your units carefully. It also controls very simply, you play most of the game without really using menus, the HUD gives you all the info you generally need, and the only real time you use a menu is when you are selecting a new technology, policy, or construction order, and all of those are one menu in and simply presented, you click on a city, it brings up its city menu with everything that city can do laid out neatly, it's not like an X3 station where it has a dozen or so command menus and each has different commands on it, and most of those commands open maps and sub-menus of entirely unrelated units, and you won't use most of them anyway, and the command to interact with the station as you would with a neutral station is on an entirely different menu, and everything requires a dozen clicks through loads of mostly identical menus to do. This is generally what I mean by control simplicty, menus work badly on a controller and are sort of generally absent in console games, and this is a good thing. Designing for console is almost always designing well, because a lot of the major neckbeard game problems are pretty taboo on consoles, and they improve any game when you get rid of them and find better ways to do things.

Basically civ 5 is a very in depth game compared to most RTS/TBS games, but it is presented exceptionally well, which to me is probably its biggest strength as a game, I love it as a strategy game, but I love it more because of how well designed it is. It's very easy to get into and play, but there's a lot of depth to discover once you play it enough and start to explore the possibilities. This is exactly how games should be in my eyes, and it's why X3 is not as good a game, because it has the depth, but it is presented very poorly.

It's also why I like the emphasis on X:R being accessible, it's easily the biggest problem with X3, and even though I know how to play X3, I don't enjoy playing it a lot of the time because playing super spaceship menu navigator 3 is not a fun way to spend an afternoon. If I can spend more time playing the game and less time wrestling with the controls I'll enjoy the game more, and I can spend more time on strategy and discovering depth, rather than looking on the wiki to see what the hell the stuff I'm looking at means.

It's how games started, and it's how I think games should stay. People throw around the word 'casual' a lot like it's some new plague affecting gaming, but considering the first console I owned was a nifty little box with about 250 atari games on it, and it didn't come with instructions, I think 'casual' gaming has a lot more heritage than the rather clunky and difficult to follow games that result from too much interest in the subject and not enough interest in games as a medium.

It's like the difference between academic scientific writing and popular scientific literature, academic writing is boring and impossible to learn anything from unless you already know it, more or less, and it's written by people who are very good at science. Popular scientific literature is written by people who are very good at science, but also very good at writing, and that means their books spread knowledge effectively and are actually enjoyable to read.

[Mightysword]

Which is likely no impediment, if you already know those things, but it isn't good game design. If you can't interpret it at a glance with no prior experience in the genre, you need a better interface.

Eh ... not really. A line have to be draw somewhere between what is a bad interface and what is a player's competency. What you said is like an action game should be made that even someone who has never played action game before or even have nature bad reflex should still be able to pick up and play the game on first try. Now most mainstream action games are like that, you can look at the God of Wars series for a good example. On the other hand however, there are some games that are meant for certain type of player, don't take your argument up with the Ninja Gaiden Black crowd, since the brutal difficulty is what drawed most of its players, and it's not meant for the faint heart.


The problem with the X interface is universal, it's not just the new players who complain after taking a glance, the majority of players including veterans, even people who had memorized most of the hotkey, even people who made macross for 5-6 keys combo we all agree that X has a pretty bad interface. A counter example is the Civ series. Most of the old fan have no problem with the Civ 4's interface, we think it represented all the info well enough, it just has a lot of info to process and display. Civ 5 "does not simplified" the interface like the dev claim, the reason it looks that way is because there are much less info now, which sent a lot people into rage.


You seem to be mistaken between what the game is trying to do and how well do it. Game like NGB or War on the Pacificm or Pacific storm (which I played) are meant to provide uphill challenge for a certain type of gamers (I think a lot of people who play NGB on Grand master are downright sadistist). On the other hand, I don't think it was the dev's intention for the X's menu system to be a challange to the players, it's just how it ended up.

[robalexhall]

Chris you've got things completely backwards. What sucks with the X UI is that it ALREADY works like a console UI...

That is what Egosoft need to fix (and I'm confident they will). Time consuming nested menus are the bane of console titles (rpgs and etc) not PC games. Call it the ipod menu syndrome... lists and more bleeping lists (however they are presented).

Yeah some games work very well with the contoller. An relevant example would be sid meiers pirates... does that mean you could turn X into Egosofts Space Pirates! without dumbing down and removing gameplay/depth/features?

Think about it.

What the X series needs is an intuitive mouse/keyboard scheme (maybe something like Freelancer).

[Chris0132]

Which is likely no impediment, if you already know those things, but it isn't good game design. If you can't interpret it at a glance with no prior experience in the genre, you need a better interface.

Eh ... not really. A line have to be draw somewhere between what is a bad interface and what is a player's competency. What you said is like an action game should be made that even someone who has never played action game before or even have nature bad reflex should still be able to pick up and play the game on first try. Now most mainstream action games are like that, you can look at the God of Wars series for a good example. On the other hand however, there are some games that are meant for certain type of player, don't take your argument up with the Ninja Gaiden Black crowd, since the brutal difficulty is what drawed most of its players, and it's not meant for the faint heart.


The problem with the X interface is universal, it's not just the new players who complain after taking a glance, the majority of players including veterans, even people who had memorized most of the hotkey, even people who made macross for 5-6 keys combo we all agree that X has a pretty bad interface. A counter example is the Civ series. Most of the old fan have no problem with the Civ 4's interface, we think it represented all the info well enough, it just has a lot of info to process and display. Civ 5 "does not simplified" the interface like the dev claim, the reason it looks that way is because there are much less info now, which sent a lot people into rage.


You seem to be mistaken between what the game is trying to do and how well do it. Game like NGB or War on the Pacificm or Pacific storm (which I played) are meant to provide uphill challenge for a certain type of gamers (I think a lot of people who play NGB on Grand master are downright sadistist). On the other hand, I don't think it was the dev's intention for the X's menu system to be a challange to the players, it's just how it ended up.

I don't think X is trying to be that sort of game, I think that X3 was becoming it whether it wanted to or not, presumably due to feature creep without any decent interface redesign.

Which is why I'm glad X:R is starting over, it's what the series needs.

Chris you've got things completely backwards. What sucks with the X UI is that it ALREADY works like a console UI...

That is what Egosoft need to fix (and I'm confident they will). Time consuming nested menus are the bane of console titles (rpgs and etc) not PC games. Call it the ipod menu syndrome... lists and more bleeping lists (however they are presented).

Yeah some games work very well with the contoller. An relevant example would be sid meiers pirates... does that mean you could turn X into Egosofts Space Pirates! without dumbing down and removing gameplay/depth/features?

Think about it.

What the X series needs is an intuitive mouse/keyboard scheme (maybe something like Freelancer).

Yeah they ruin console games, which is why nowadays any half decent console game will do its utmost to get rid of as many menus as possible.

Good console RPGs use mass effect style menus, as few as possible, bad console RPGs port the oblivion menu directly over to the console.

Stuff like radial menus and onscreen context sensitive prompts and motion based controls are a console thing, they're naturally developed when you try to find ways to make an analog stick substitute for a mouse. Menus are what you get when you try to design a game like an operating system. Sure PC games can have these good controls, but it's consoles that have made them so well developed because you NEED them to make a decent console game with any sort of complexity.

[robalexhall]

They are a poor subsitute for a mouse where you can simply click on any option because "it's just there" TM.

And menus are reduced ... by removing the options that were there in the first place.

A good UI for the X series would let you drag and drop (or right click context menu) upgrades to your ship, guns for turrets etc.

A console game would have one gun. Or no choice at all. They removed the inventory completely in Mass Effect 2 after all...

Seriously if the console controler is better for all types of games (as you seem to be assering) how come the ds has a touch screen, or the ipad... I mean what we want is 10 buttons and a thumb stick that's the ideal configuration for everything right?

Sorry if I'm being combative but you've taken such an absolutist position I can't help but argue.
Do you really think having to memorise 10 buttons is more intuitive than mouse control? I think it works better for some kinds of games but not others... am I being too liberal?

[Chris0132]

They are a poor subsitute for a mouse where you can simply click on any option because "it's just there" TM.

And menus are reduced ... by removing the options that were there in the first place.

A good UI for the X series would let you drag and drop (or right click context menu) upgrades to your ship, guns for turretts etc.

A console game would have one gun. Or none choice at all. They removed the inventory completely in Mass Effect 2 after all...

Which is why I said strip down the interface, AIM to put it on a controller, you can probably find a way to do it if you try. You don't have to remove menu options, you just have to make the menu as easy to navigate as possible.

Using a mouse is quicker than a stick for using a menu, yes, but do you need a menu for that? Can you simply drop some of those separate commands and integrate them into a contextual button? Rather than having 'attack this target, move to this location, follow this object, guard this object, follow me' etc as separate menu options, add a 'command button' which picks the logical one based on what you have selected and what you're looking at. Keeps the functionality, makes it possible to order units around while flying, removes a menu from the list, improves the controls for everyone.

If you need a menu that's fine, menus exsit for a reason, but you should really really think about whether you do, and consider all possible ways to do it better. Menus are not a very elegant solution to most problems. Things like context sensitive buttons, holding down a button and flicking the mouse to select something on a radial menu, automating other things like say, when you dock a freighter at a station, it automatically assigns it to a ware management fleet which buys and sells whatever is appropriate and opportune, rather than having to manually assign every freighter. You could take it further, rather than having to go to a shipyard and deck out freighters, you could simply go to the station and click a button which automatically orders a bunch of appropriately equipped freighters for the station with one click.

Removing menus and menu options is only bad if it's an important feature, however most of the time it isn't, unless the game is simple to begin with, it's usually an improvement.

[robalexhall]

Why would you need radial menus with a decent mouse UI?

You see the ship you want to interact with, you click it. A good mouse based UI can near do away with menus entirely and go for an entirely visual metaphore. Want to send one of your ships to a location or add to a wing, click and drag it.

You cannot do that with a console controller. The only option IS dumbing down... removing options and automation (which you seem to think is a good thing?).

I need a better example of 'good' design than Mass Effect... 'good' design for an RPG means removing all the RPG elements from the game?

[madcow]

I've seen that game played and explained, and I still don't get what most of the info that it displays actually means. It requires you to memorise vast amounts of information in order to be able to play it, essentially you have to be able to read military iconography and also know a detailed history of world war 2.

Which is likely no impediment, if you already know those things, but it isn't good game design. If you can't interpret it at a glance with no prior experience in the genre, you need a better interface. Hell ideally you should be able to play it with no prior experience using a computer, but that's obviously rather more difficult, and most people are somewhat computer literate so it is probably not neccesary.

I don't know why you think you must have a knowledge of WW2 to play those games, though, or why you need to be able to read "military iconography" ... it's just different icons with different shapes. It'll take you a few minutes to start recognizing them instantly, no big deal if you're into those games. vOv.

What we get from that, though, is that those games (i.e. the WitP-level strategy games) isn't for you. That's fine, not everyone the eye for detail required, nor the patience. As you've said earlier, there are people who sink hundreds of hours into one scenario, and they like it. They like it, and the developers who make it like it, and for that reason alone, they are awesome and should be encouraged. Those games are also mostly designed and produced by a small handful of people, maybe even in their spare time, hence the graphics. I much prefer gameplay depth to graphical glitz.

Compare it to say, civilisation five, which I recently bought as my first ever civ game, and understood it pretty much immediately. The squares are clearly marked, the game gives you hints on what to do, prompts you whenever you haven't issued an order to a unit that turn, tells you when your tech is done and makes you select another one before you commit, it essentially prevents you from doing rookie mistakes like wasting turns or forgetting about units. It clearly alerts you to the status of your units, gives you concise trackers for all the important stuff like when your next research is done, how the other civs feel about you, important events that happened recently, marks out valuable terrain clearly from the rest, follows consistent rules for movement (everything moves two squares except for the odd exception), combat is simple but surprisingly deep if you position your units carefully. It also controls very simply, you play most of the game without really using menus, the HUD gives you all the info you generally need, and the only real time you use a menu is when you are selecting a new technology, policy, or construction order, and all of those are one menu in and simply presented, you click on a city, it brings up its city menu with everything that city can do laid out neatly, it's not like an X3 station where it has a dozen or so command menus and each has different commands on it, and most of those commands open maps and sub-menus of entirely unrelated units, and you won't use most of them anyway, and the command to interact with the station as you would with a neutral station is on an entirely different menu, and everything requires a dozen clicks through loads of mostly identical menus to do. This is generally what I mean by control simplicty, menus work badly on a controller and are sort of generally absent in console games, and this is a good thing. Designing for console is almost always designing well, because a lot of the major neckbeard game problems are pretty taboo on consoles, and they improve any game when you get rid of them and find better ways to do things.

You do realize that civilization 5 wasn't designed with consoles in mind, right?

Actually, this is the civilization they came up with for consoles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyrsXzfi3gQ
This is the civilization you're squeeing over: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iWM8BpzLis
This is the civilization which most people call the best civilization: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWAessUDwws

Notice anything in particular?

Basically civ 5 is a very in depth game compared to most RTS/TBS games, but it is presented exceptionally well, which to me is probably its biggest strength as a game, I love it as a strategy game, but I love it more because of how well designed it is. It's very easy to get into and play, but there's a lot of depth to discover once you play it enough and start to explore the possibilities. This is exactly how games should be in my eyes, and it's why X3 is not as good a game, because it has the depth, but it is presented very poorly.

I think it's wrong to say Civ5 is "very in depth game compared to most RTS/TBS games". It has depth, yes, but it isn't exceptionally deep compared to most other strategy games out there.

Look, I've no problems with saying that X3's UI could be better, but I seem to remember how X3: Reunion was supposed to be released for the console (as seen here http://developers.teamxbox.com/company/508/EGOSOFT/). In fact, take the fact that the UI has probably grown organically over the last 10 or so years, add the fact that they've tried to make the game work on an xbox, and there you go. X3's UI.

Time to sit down and redo the whole thing instead of just patching it together as they've been doing the last few years, but preferably without falling into the civilization revolution trap.

[Mightysword]

Compare it to say, civilisation five, which I recently bought as my first ever civ game, and understood it pretty much immediately.

While I admit the interface design is really good in Civ, but part of the reason it achieved that was because it was simplified. For example, the "only" thing you need to look on the city screen is the work slot alocation and food growth. They moved the happiness to the global, they took away religion affect and put it into a global policy. Antoher thing the game is designed to be played with small number of cities, so it's even simplier. The reason you don't see big/complex interface not all entirely because of the good UI, it's because they don't NEED any display to begin with.


Now comparing to what Civ 4 was:

- Religion IS a seperate entity, and it effect your city induvidually. The faction who found the religion has certain benefit over factions that choose that religion. Your cities will also behave differently between whether they have religion or not and what is your policy.

- City happiness is local to each city so you're managed them seperately. You can have one city that's heaven on earth, and another worse than hell. Building a Colloseum in one city doesn;t magically make the whole empire happy civ 5. Decide how each of your city grow is a strategic decision for each city in Civ4, not a global decision like Civ5

And those are some of the many features that were simplified or outright cut out going from Civ 4 to Civ 5 and obviously we're not happy. Civ 5 doesn't have a big summary screen glitting with details about your empires, sure, because it doesn't need one.

[Troglodyteus]

Popular scientific literature is written by people who are very good at science, but also very good at writing, and that means their books spread knowledge effectively and are actually enjoyable to read.

Hmm.,

"Popular scientific literature" is a contradiction in terms.

1. Scientific literature is written with ACCURACY in mind.
2. "Popular" scientific literature is NOT.

Popular writing is popular because it is popular, (not necessarily because it is well-written.)

Often this is because it is accessible by readers with little or no prior knowledge. It is not because it is "superior" in some regard.

It is written for a different (often untrained) audience. And usually by a writer who, ironically, is specially trained in popular writing! Being able to write at all is not an accident or gift. And being able to write well, is an art AND a science, and takes experience.

X-series is a sandbox simulator-type game. it is written for people who:-

THINK
FIGHT
EXPLORE
BUILD

The X-series interface has been developed to expose the COMPLEXITY of the game. X3:TC interface is a Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer (WIMP) interface, and not unlike an early computer OS in look and feel.

More complex interfaces can allow for greater interactivity.

Just as more words allow one to say more, but not necessarily speak well, complex interfaces can let one do more at a cost of performance.

Bill Gates said he spent 5 years and $5,000,000 on Windows 7, the same amount of money the USA spent to land a man on the Moon. The X-series developers do not have these resources, and yet no one would say Windows 7 is perfect despite the investment and time.

I hope X:R will improve upon the interface of X3:TC

They should make it more accessible using good interface design, not by removing any functionality because of the limitations of an X-box controller or its handler.

The X-box (and controller) was designed to allow people with little or no experience of computer operating systems to; play video games, ensure a common reference platform for programming and installation, combat piracy, and reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the games platform.

It is NO SURPRISE many X-box gamers find some PC-games interfaces too complex. There are too few buttons on an x-box controller.

X-box gamers generally are not as computer literate as PC gamers. Bill Gates said this to President Obama. In fact, in the New York Times, Bill Gates said he regretted the X-box now, because he believed it retarded the development of computer literacy via gaming, and has made it more difficult for Microsoft to recruit talented IT professionals (his view not mine.)

It is still not impressive to put "Xbox" on your CV, but it is to put PC.

Many PC-gamers ARE technically literate and easily adapt to new technology, and have no problem programming their video recorder or mobile phone. They actually ENJOY technical challenges and complexity. Even in games.

Precision diagonal actions seem more difficult with the X-box controller. Side-scrolling actions seem preferred. But this is not a problem for PC gamers with a more natural action using the hand-mouse instead of a thumb-joystick.

In summary:-

X-Box user may prefer :-
Move_ ABSOLUTE: (X) THEN (Y)

PC user always prefers:-
Move_RELATIVE: f(x,y)

So please

DO
complex X-series

UNTIL
PC complex

X:Rebirth



PS

Pilots don't like flying with their thumbs, (and are taught not to) which is why there is no X-box controller for primary flight controls, but on most modern flight decks you will find several PC s …

[OdinValhik]

Doesn't look good

http://www.egosoft.com/company/jobs_en.php

*snip*
Specialization in one or more of:
Console graphics experience for work on PS3 / Xbox360
*snip*

[DeepFried]

Doesn't look good

http://www.egosoft.com/company/jobs_en.php

*snip*
Specialization in one or more of:
Console graphics experience for work on PS3 / Xbox360
*snip*

Oh dear god....

and here was me thinking X was one of the last bastions of PC gaming.

I LIKE complicated damn it!!

If X3 was so complex as to be broken then how come me and a friend of mine came into the series at X3TC and loved it? how can it be bad if 2 complete noobs can go from knowing nothing to having trading empires, complexes, fleets etc? (admittedly with lots of wiki and forums trawling... wait that doesnt sound right..... damn.)

[OdinValhik]

I LIKE complicated damn it!!

I presume you really mean complex not complicated (depth vs. difficult to use/learn)..

If X3 was so complex as to be broken then how come me and a friend of mine came into the series at X3TC and loved it?

I suppose we're a dying gamer breed..

[softweir]

Doesn't look good

http://www.egosoft.com/company/jobs_en.php

*snip*
Specialization in one or more of:
Console graphics experience for work on PS3 / Xbox360
*snip*

Oh dear god....

and here was me thinking X was one of the last bastions of PC gaming.

I LIKE complicated damn it!!

If X3 was so complex as to be broken then how come me and a friend of mine came into the series at X3TC and loved it? how can it be bad if 2 complete noobs can go from knowing nothing to having trading empires, complexes, fleets etc? (admittedly with lots of wiki and forums trawling... wait that doesnt sound right..... damn.)

Hasn't that job advert been around for many years?

[OdinValhik]

Hopefully it as expired, but I don't know.. Let's hope at least that *specific* requirement has.

[DeepFried]

I LIKE complicated damn it!!

I presume you really mean complex not complicated (depth vs. difficult to use/learn)..

Nope, I most definately mean complicated. I like esoteric games, it adds both a sense of acheivement and a nice long learning curve, in the case of X3 a learning curve that can span years.

Thats replay value.

Besides, the difference between complex and complicated is really just symantics and marketing. Complex is complicated... otherwise its simply not complex. There is no such thing as complexity though a simple interface... at best all you end up with in that case is a distillation of the complex system into a limited approximation.

Of course its possible for an interface to be complex without being arcane and confusing, and thats somthing that X3TC doesnt really achieve. I would welcome a logical re-thining and organisation of the X3 interface, just so long as nothing was lost in the process.

[OdinValhik]

Well, when I think of the term complicated in this context, as said in the main thread post, hopefully, means they will make it easier for new user to get into the game, but not create a dumped down X-game that focus on: FIGHT and EXERCISE YOUR GAME-PAD FINGERS.

I personally, never felt that the X-series were too much of a challenge to get into, yes, a little thinking is required, but that is even in the slogan of the game . I can understand why it may be for some though..

None of the real good old fans want a "dumbed down" version of a up-coming game. My fear, because of all the limitations the current consoles have, are that they would potentially ruin the game, and the real goal for Egosoft, is that they have a main focus to just reach a market that is *potentially* large, which do contain a lot of people with another gamer-mindset.

I must say, I even felt that X3:[R/TC] did try to simplify the controls (keyboard, mouse), because of their original intention to make this game "game-pad friendly.", which turned the game on the PC with a relative bad sub-optimal user-interface. But the main thing, the game had depth and complexity elsewhere, and that made it easy for me to overlook that.

Most problems, in the beginning, were bugs, that I will call was *complicated* or a challenge to solve without the patches.