Trust, and faith in the developer.

[Honved]

I've got a little bit of faith in the developers, but not enough to buy X4 until I've read three or four reviews by long-time posters here whose opinions I have more trust in.

To me, it's clear that the developers don't want a repeatof XR, and want to build something that brings back more of what made X2 and X3 enjoyable for so many of the franchise's fans. On the other hand, it's also apparent that they aren't really sure of what those things are. Many of the proposed changes look good, a few look extremely questionable, and a few more could go either way, depending on how they're implemented. Whether they're successful at it or not remains to be seen.


I won't rush out to be the first to buy it, but if it looks good and the initial feedback is positive, I'll probably make the purchase.

[spankahontis]

I've got a little bit of faith in the developers, but not enough to buy X4 until I've read three or four reviews by long-time posters here whose opinions I have more trust in.

To me, it's clear that the developers don't want a repeatof XR, and want to build something that brings back more of what made X2 and X3 enjoyable for so many of the franchise's fans. On the other hand, it's also apparent that they aren't really sure of what those things are. Many of the proposed changes look good, a few look extremely questionable, and a few more could go either way, depending on how they're implemented. Whether they're successful at it or not remains to be seen.


I won't rush out to be the first to buy it, but if it looks good and the initial feedback is positive, I'll probably make the purchase.

Wouldn't trust reviews either, most are reactionary, prefer to get 100-200 hours of gameplay under my belt and a few patches before I make a review.
I made a review for Rebirth on 2.0 and updated the review every major patch after that.
By then I had a full picture of Rebirth's strengths and weaknesses.
Too many Haters with their 1 out of 10's and Fanboys with a shinning 9/10 out of 10 to sift through before you get to a reviewer who's gotten to the meat of the games mechanics.

-a general confusion over how to figure out how to do basic stuff, coming from X3 (UI issues)
-walking around stations was not what I wanted in X games, I wanted to fly in space, and build and control a space empire
-Difficulty controlling a fleet of ships

The controls for X Games have always been difficult, it's a complex game.

You can fly around in space, walking around in Stations gives People more choice, I wouldn't deny someone a feature just because I didn't like it.
You can go on Trader Options, buy and sell any item from the comfort of your ship.
Apart from seeing a Mechanic or an Engineer, you really don't need to walk around a Station much, it's blowing things out of proportion.

Never seen an X Game where the Fleet Management wasn't clunky or a mess, that's exclusive to all X Games including Rebirth and X3.

[Fleabum]

Wouldn't trust reviews either, most are reactionary, prefer to get 100-200 hours of gameplay under my belt and a few patches before I make a review.
I made a review for Rebirth on 2.0 and updated the review every major patch after that.
By then I had a full picture of Rebirth's strengths and weaknesses.
Too many Haters with their 1 out of 10's and Fanboys with a shinning 9/10 out of 10 to sift through before you get to a reviewer who's gotten to the meat of the games mechanics.

First impressions make the biggest impression, and perception of what something should be directs one's expectations. If you release a bag'o'shite (thats not released as Beta or EA) then thats the fault of the publisher/developer; you can't blame the people who review what they are given then tell you its 1/10 and crap.

A developer also can't expect people to wait six to twelve months and 8 patches before you say, oh, the games in a fit state now, please go ahead and review it. This is managing expectations, and unless the product is released as beta or EA, then it should be complete (except for minor or hardware related bugs of course).

There has been an alarming trend in the computer industry over the last 25 years, it started with software patching; it is now viewed as acceptable to release incomplete and poorly tested software products, and then expect paying customers to wait until the issues are fixed.

Egosoft dropped the ball with Rebirth, both with stability and poorly implemented technology, and I believe they were forced to release Rebirth before it was ready. Rebirth would have been a more stable and complete game with more time. A good game? depends on your point of view, but it would have been a better game.

Hopefully Egosoft don't have the same "forced to release" schedule this time, so there will be none of the mistakes that come with a rushed project. The one main overriding concern I have is will they recapture the fun and replayability that X3 had or has the Rebirth engine just gone to far arcady (is that even a word? ) for the X3 ideology and will this be Rebirth2 in all but name.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Shame on you and ONLY you. You took advantage of my giving nature and what you thought were unlimited second chances, and even worse tried to make me feel bad about it. But I won't feel bad.

This quote is how I feel about Egosoft now, I was a fool to preorder Rebirth, my perception was based on the information I had available and I was burned. Made to feel bad because I didn't give them enough time to "fix" the issues. I will not be shamed by repeating that mistake; I will wait till X4 is released this time and just hope Egosoft remembered what made X3 such a good game.

Regards
Flea

[spankahontis]

Wouldn't trust reviews either, most are reactionary, prefer to get 100-200 hours of gameplay under my belt and a few patches before I make a review.
I made a review for Rebirth on 2.0 and updated the review every major patch after that.
By then I had a full picture of Rebirth's strengths and weaknesses.
Too many Haters with their 1 out of 10's and Fanboys with a shinning 9/10 out of 10 to sift through before you get to a reviewer who's gotten to the meat of the games mechanics.

First impressions make the biggest impression, and perception of what something should be directs one's expectations. If you release a bag'o'shite (thats not released as Beta or EA) then thats the fault of the publisher/developer; you can't blame the people who review what they are given then tell you its 1/10 and crap.

A developer also can't expect people to wait six to twelve months and 8 patches before you say, oh, the games in a fit state now, please go ahead and review it. This is managing expectations, and unless the product is released as beta or EA, then it should be complete (except for minor or hardware related bugs of course).

There has been an alarming trend in the computer industry over the last 25 years, it started with software patching; it is now viewed as acceptable to release incomplete and poorly tested software products, and then expect paying customers to wait until the issues are fixed.

Egosoft dropped the ball with Rebirth, both with stability and poorly implemented technology, and I believe they were forced to release Rebirth before it was ready. Rebirth would have been a more stable and complete game with more time. A good game? depends on your point of view, but it would have been a better game.

Hopefully Egosoft don't have the same "forced to release" schedule this time, so there will be none of the mistakes that come with a rushed project. The one main overriding concern I have is will they recapture the fun and replayability that X3 had or has the Rebirth engine just gone to far arcady (is that even a word? ) for the X3 ideology and will this be Rebirth2 in all but name.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Shame on you and ONLY you. You took advantage of my giving nature and what you thought were unlimited second chances, and even worse tried to make me feel bad about it. But I won't feel bad.

This quote is how I feel about Egosoft now, I was a fool to preorder Rebirth, my perception was based on the information I had available and I was burned. Made to feel bad because I didn't give them enough time to "fix" the issues. I will not be shamed by repeating that mistake; I will wait till X4 is released this time and just hope Egosoft remembered what made X3 such a good game.

Regards
Flea

It works both ways, that's what i'm saying. Haters and Fanboys will be in abundance for this game on release.
Meta-Critic is renowned for it's "arguments from authority" giving games (That probably subsidise them) a shinning 10/10 review.
Yeah, your right that First Impressions are very important in this regard, but at the same time, most games are bug-riddled with little features, yet still get shinning reviews from both Editors and Consumers.
I don't trust reviews to be wholly accurate, especially on games of great scale and size that require many hours of gameplay to understand.
I hated FF7 when it came out, I wanted a refund, but I played it for a whole weekend non-stop to see if I was being harsh and I found it to be quite addictive come the Monday when I was going to be driven to the shop by my mam to get it refunded, I changed my Mind, it became one of my favourite RPG's of all time.

Then there's the aspect that games are soo big now that seeing bugs in your game is an inevitability, not saying Rebirth didn't deserve it's thrashing in the Steam reviews, just saying had they released X:Rebirth 4.0 on day 1, the Game would of done a whole lot better, again your point that 1st impressions are important; by then the damage is done, all the positive reviews it got after Home of Light was too little, too late.

It's not just Egosoft that's to blame here, Pre-Ordering as a whole is a dodgy practice.. Yet People STILL DON'T LEARN!!!

Only way to stop Pre-Ordering is boycott any Pre-Order, tell them to shove their Day 1 DLC up where the sun don't shine.
People need to rally and get the attention of their said government to ban Pre-Orders, Steam would have to comply after that.
There used to be a time when you could buy a product if you didn't like it, you had a 30 Day guarantee to get a refund, Steam's 2 Hour Repay service is a joke. They threw us a Bone when People started to complain, they should of been held to account allot harsher than this.

[Honved]

I have close to zero trust in professional reviewers; many of them are subsidized by the companies whose work they're reviewing, and the reviews are all positive no matter how many problems the games have. Other reviewers just hate everything, or bash a game just for being in a genre that they personally don't like.

Initial reviews by players with opinions vaguely similar to my own can still be misleading if they don't get far into the game. I recall a lot of Oblivion reviews praising features and gameplay after the first couple of days, and then it later became clear that the one dungeon visible from your starting location was the exception intended for reveiwers to see, not the rule for most of the game.

I'll most likely wait until a few of the regular posters here have tried the game and gotten past the initial impressions to the workings of the game, probably about 2 weeks or so, before I decide to buy or pass. If things look positive, I'll buy; if negative, I'll wait for a patch or two and newer reviews before committing to it or not; if the reviews are mixed or "so-so", I'll probably wait until it goes on sale at a cheaper price.

[Snafu_X3]

I'll most likely wait until a few of the regular posters here have tried the game and gotten past the initial impressions to the workings of the game, probably about 2 weeks or so, before I decide to buy or pass. If things look positive, I'll buy; if negative, I'll wait for a patch or two and newer reviews before committing to it or not; if the reviews are mixed or "so-so", I'll probably wait until it goes on sale at a cheaper price.

Sounds like a good philosophy to me..

[pref]

if the reviews are mixed or "so-so"

I'd expect this regardless. Lot of people don't like if not all things are obvious right from start, but that was something i really liked about x3. Stuff got explained on the way when i saw and understood the situations where they were needed.
Nowdays lots of people play games as seen on youtube.

[Simpelton]

I'll most likely wait until a few of the regular posters here have tried the game and gotten past the initial impressions to the workings of the game, probably about 2 weeks or so, before I decide to buy or pass. If things look positive, I'll buy; if negative, I'll wait for a patch or two and newer reviews before committing to it or not; if the reviews are mixed or "so-so", I'll probably wait until it goes on sale at a cheaper price.

Sounds like a good philosophy to me..

Agreed, with two major flies in the ointment

1: Egosoft games tend to be slow to master. The learning curve might not be as steep at the outset as, say, Elite: Dangerous, but there's so much to know that it was hundreds of hours into my play of X3 before I was prepared to admit that I actually knew something of the game.

Which means that if you wait for people to figure out the game enough to give cogent answers to questions about its functionality, you'll be waiting awhile.

2: Quite frankly, this philosophy runs afoul of the tragedy of the commons. It's smart for one person to do this of themselves, but what if everyone is withholding judgment until someone else puts a toe in the water, and then nobody does? Then we're left with the fanboys and the skeptics trading barbs and no one ever really getting the nitty gritty on how the systems work and whether they're implemented in a way that's both interesting and rewarding, which is the real question.

We know the fanboys are going to jump in with both feet, that's what they're for, so the noise to signal ratio will be very high even without a lot of jaded fans staying on the sidelines. At least a few moderates are going to have to bite the bullet and try the game out sight unseen, in order to give the rest of the fence sitters the data they'd need to make an informed decision. And even at that they might be drowned by the singal imbalance, but it's the only way the rest of them will get off the fence

So in other words, what Honved is proposing is intelligent when thinking just about Honved, but the people who would think to view the game this way are also exactly the people the community needs to get up to their elbows in the new system and find out on behalf of the more timid folk what the game is and whether it's engaging enough. Because they're the ones both engaged enough to take the time to do it, and unbiased enough not to just be dismissed as fanboys if they decide they like what they see.

[Honved]

So in other words, what Honved is proposing is intelligent when thinking just about Honved, but the people who would think to view the game this way are also exactly the people the community needs to get up to their elbows in the new system and find out on behalf of the more timid folk what the game is and whether it's engaging enough. Because they're the ones both engaged enough to take the time to do it, and unbiased enough not to just be dismissed as fanboys if they decide they like what they see.

True, someone has to try it before you get an intelligent review. I'm not in dire need of a new "game fix" at this point, so I'm a bit more willing than most to sit on that fence until I've got a clearer signal from people whose previous posts lead me to trust their judgement more than the average poster. I'm well aware of the fanboys and the haters, and take them into account.

The underlying issue is that the level of trust which a developer commands directly affects how many people are willing to take that initial risk, versus sit on the fence. Egosoft has eroded that trust to some degree with XR, but not broken it completely. I'm willing to jump after a short wait if I get what looks like a "greenish" light, but not trusting enough to do so on release day. Another bad, buggy, or incomplete release by Egosoft could make it really difficult to sell the following game.

[Simpelton]

This is going to be my litmus test:

If the grousers show up en masse to complain about all kinds of different things, I'll buy the game. A game that offends everyone for different reasons is one that's probably got a good balance of features

if they show up en masse to complain all about the same one or two things (specifics, not just general whining about an overall system, for example, a broken travel mechanic or a major issue with the combat), I'll hold off until the whining starts to diverge a bit.

[Snafu_X3]

If the grousers show up en masse to complain about all kinds of different things, I'll buy the game. A game that offends everyone for different reasons is one that's probably got a good balance of features

if they show up en masse to complain all about the same one or two things (specifics, not just general whining about an overall system, for example, a broken travel mechanic or a major issue with the combat), I'll hold off until the whining starts to diverge a bit.

That sounds reasonable. However, going back to your reply to mine, not /all/ first-timers (of the X series in general, or X4 in particular) will be fanbois/haters: some (hopefully many) will play the game on its own merits, discovering certain features they like/dislike & either continue to play, give up, or hope for patch(es). In this way modders & tacticians are born (along with wiki articles)!

I've no problem with ppl liking/disliking the series itself, for any particular reason. What I dislike is reviews based upon incomplete understanding of the game (eg how long it takes to set up even a basic profitable player economy), & irrelevant expectations (eg MP/co-op etc).. especially as reviews are generally & of necessity time-limited, often based upon pre-release copies (hence still buggy) & don't address the MSP of a game such as this: the pure /scope/ of the entire game universe & the capabilities of the <player faction> within!

By all means introduce 'plots' of varying duration to give a player direction (along with a bit of tutorial), but as with TC don't make them mandatory (ie in order to progress to the next 'magic level') to unlock <more stuff>. By all means have a megaproject (eg TC HUB) that requires ludicrous effort & time to complete, with an appropriate reward at the end, but again don't make it the primary focus of <player>: allow it to chug along in the background while <player> does other stuff. At the end of the day (stazura? universe?) this is a sandbox simulation so anyone can do whatever they want within its bounding ruleset, & profit or lose purely thru their playstyle, time & effort put into their individual game

Ego has a long history of releasing 'broken' games at ..err.. release, & then spending years patching the game to exceptional quality for free (notwithstanding content DLC addons). While I & many others hope that this new gamestart won't be as tragic as with X3:R (or even X:R), at least the basic mechanics were in place, allowing for a playable system (if you had the patience!)

With decreased attn span over the last several generations of new players brought up on mostly FPS shooters/mobile platform games I can understand their frustration at complex, time-consuming games such as Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress, X<whichever> etc, but that doesn't mean I agree with it!

[ajime]

If the grousers show up en masse to complain about all kinds of different things, I'll buy the game. A game that offends everyone for different reasons is one that's probably got a good balance of features

if they show up en masse to complain all about the same one or two things (specifics, not just general whining about an overall system, for example, a broken travel mechanic or a major issue with the combat), I'll hold off until the whining starts to diverge a bit.

That sounds reasonable. However, going back to your reply to mine, not /all/ first-timers (of the X series in general, or X4 in particular) will be fanbois/haters: some (hopefully many) will play the game on its own merits, discovering certain features they like/dislike & either continue to play, give up, or hope for patch(es). In this way modders & tacticians are born (along with wiki articles)!

I've no problem with ppl liking/disliking the series itself, for any particular reason. What I dislike is reviews based upon incomplete understanding of the game (eg how long it takes to set up even a basic profitable player economy), & irrelevant expectations (eg MP/co-op etc).. especially as reviews are generally & of necessity time-limited, often based upon pre-release copies (hence still buggy) & don't address the MSP of a game such as this: the pure /scope/ of the entire game universe & the capabilities of the <player faction> within!

By all means introduce 'plots' of varying duration to give a player direction (along with a bit of tutorial), but as with TC don't make them mandatory (ie in order to progress to the next 'magic level') to unlock <more stuff>. By all means have a megaproject (eg TC HUB) that requires ludicrous effort & time to complete, with an appropriate reward at the end, but again don't make it the primary focus of <player>: allow it to chug along in the background while <player> does other stuff. At the end of the day (stazura? universe?) this is a sandbox simulation so anyone can do whatever they want within its bounding ruleset, & profit or lose purely thru their playstyle, time & effort put into their individual game

Ego has a long history of releasing 'broken' games at ..err.. release, & then spending years patching the game to exceptional quality for free (notwithstanding content DLC addons). While I & many others hope that this new gamestart won't be as tragic as with X3:R (or even X:R), at least the basic mechanics were in place, allowing for a playable system (if you had the patience!)

With decreased attn span over the last several generations of new players brought up on mostly FPS shooters/mobile platform games I can understand their frustration at complex, time-consuming games such as Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress, X<whichever> etc, but that doesn't mean I agree with it!

well it goes back to the simulation vs arcade where egosoft have been walking on a thin tightrope since the beginning which most games always start with simulation and gets the mass audience in arcade and turned into the dark lord. eg. Star wars rebellion turned to sweaw, most jet fighter simulation game like Total Air War, EF2000 pretty much died with DiD.