X-Rebirth

[theSavant]

So the sales say approximately 60K...

Given that Egosoft said the sales were extremely awesome I expected something like 500K... but 50K for 7 years of work a success?

Edit... wait: 60K*50$= 3M / 7 years = 428K/year... and then they have 20 employees or so (says wiki)... yeah it could work. It paid their wages, which was obviously possible due to them making everything themselves, the grandmas, the music etc. and not outsourcing anything else. Not a win-win, but staying out of the red numbers. Respectable, despite the pile of a game.

Now I've also read that they started implementing the station interiors at the beginning of 2013. How dumb, so close to release. Now imagine they had just polished the game instead (without the station interioris, without the XBox menus, without the minigames, without the ... fuck there is too much without). The game could have been adequately bugfree and the game magazines would have given better reviews, probably making even more money.

 

[Infinitron]

vgchartz doesn't track Steam sales. It's worthless for PC games.

 

[theSavant]

I see, omg, then it's certainly dozens of thousands more O___o

 

[hiver]

People got hungry for a bit of "flying" through space and looking at spacey pictures and space effects. Thats all there is to it.
Its not like any of them could even try the game and then decide to buy or not...

 

[Gord]

Did anything come out of it by now? Some awesome mega-patch fixing the worst issues?
Some announcement of a gold-edition? Anything that might make it less of a train wreck?

 

[Azazel]

Nope, it's still a steaming pile of shit and I am eternally jealous of the few people who managed to get a refund off Steam after fighting for months.

 

[Name]

So how come one of the biggest Space Sim Franchise got driven into ground? Will there be any salvation for the genre?

 

[Spectacle]

It's actually looking quite good for the genre with both Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen coming in the near future. The X games were never really all that good to be honest, the main reason for their popularity is that they were the only game in town for a decade.

 

[Raapys]

Neither Elite nor Star Citizen can be said to have single-player as their focus though, to my eternal disappointment. No matter how good they turn out, they'll ultimately be MMO games with grind, lag, etc.

 

[Turjan]

Well, the X series games are not exactly free of grind...

 

[DraQ]

Game development:
Where people pay for development of your future game based on your past game, by buying your present game.

Neither Elite nor Star Citizen can be said to have single-player as their focus though, to my eternal disappointment. No matter how good they turn out, they'll ultimately be MMO games with grind, lag, etc.

Well, you allegedly *will* be able to play E4 offline. It's just that I don't like the direction in which they took their flight model in pursuit of elusive, ill-defined gameplay without strong concept of how it should work.
Maybe Pioneer will see more or less completion at some point. They already started to include gameplay in it.

 

[Raapys]

Well, you'll be able to play both of them offline(SC via that Squadron thing), but my point is more that it's not their focus of design and thus there's no way they'll end up as good in SP as they could have. I don't expect it to be as bad as playing a classic MMORPG offline, but I consider it unlikely that any of the two games will be able to match Freespace2 or IW2 for singleplayer.

 

[DraQ]

IW2

Oh god, Frontier clone with IW2 subtargetting and shields, plus mostly projectile weapons would be glorious.

 

[Trojan_generic]

Patch 1.25 is pushed out. Game is apparently still shit, although I don't have it yet. I told you it in this very thread it would be shit. Doesn't make me feel any better, though.

- Smalltalk used to unlock a random reward if you managed to convince an NPC on a platform that you had something interesting to say about a topic. With 1.25, the smalltalk mini-game still works the same way, but rather than getting a random reward, the NPC will now offer the player a choice. For example, if the NPC is a dealer of some kind, you can ask him to give you a discount, or you can ask him if he knows a qualified NPC for a certain job, and he will tell you where to find the best one in your vicinity. For example, the next time the player needs a good pilot, locating the best pilot on a station will be much easier.

Smalltalk minigame on a space sim?

- Support for Steam Workshop integration: We will soon start releasing a number of tools on Steam to help modders work on X Rebirth. We are also working on full support for the Steam Workshop in order to make it possible for everybody to easily install mods by merely subscribing to them, and by making it easy for mod developers to distribute their work through Steam.

Apparently, it's so bad even mods can't fix it.

To be fair, they have even heard first comments from the fans of the series:

- Highway redesign: We've heard a lot of criticism on the way the highways behaves, so we are experimenting with radically different gameplay inside the highways. It's still too early to provide details, but as soon as we have a prototype, we will probably make this available as a beta. How soon this will then be rolled out for public release will then depend on feedback we receive.

I guess it'll be version 3.0 sometime in 2015 or 2016 then?

 

[Emily]

It's still too early to provide details, but as soon as we have a prototype, we will probably make this available as a beta.

I thought the game was finished?

 

[Trojan_generic]

It's still too early to provide details, but as soon as we have a prototype, we will probably make this available as a beta.

I thought the game was finished?

It looks like they forgot to make the prototype, so they will have to do that now.

 

[Severian Silk]

Ha ha this series was always shit.

 

[theSavant]

Yes, but he means "beta patch".

 

[Severian Silk]

The only space sim I'd score is IWar II.

 

[Raapys]

IWar2 is far from perfect, though I agree it's probably the best one. Along with Freespace 2, which is awesome despite arcade.

I'd argue the X series is less of a space sim and more of an administrative sim though. Frankly, the 'space' part of it has always been mediocre or just plain bad. Same can be said for the administrative part, and the setting, the races, pretty much everything. The only thing it really has going for it is the combination of genres and the relative depth of the production system, which ends up moving it away from potential and superior competitors.

 

[Blaine]

I have an idea that some Codexians have merely heard through the grapevine that I-War 2 and FreeSpace 2 are counted among the most monocled space sims, and parrot said factoids in order to lend an air of legitimacy to their shitty, useless opinions on a genre they're only peripherally familiar with. Happens all the time on the Codex—folks name-dropping old classics they've never played as a way to build a metaphorical flight of stairs up to their soapboxes, etc. Occasionally they get caught, which is pretty funny.

Codex Monocool Brownie Points... because admitting you haven't played every computer game on the planet might take some of the wind out of your rant's sails, and we can't have that, can we?

 

[J_C]

I have an idea that some Codexians have merely heard through the grapevine that I-War 2 and FreeSpace 2 are counted among the most monocled space sims, and parrot said factoids in order to lend an air of legitimacy to their shitty, useless opinions on a genre they're only peripherally familiar with. Happens all the time on the Codex—folks name-dropping old classics they've never played as a way to build a metaphorical flight of stairs up to their soapboxes, etc. Occasionally they get caught, which is pretty funny.

Codex Monocool Brownie Points... because admitting you haven't played every computer game on the planet might take some of the wind out of your rant's sails, and we can't have that, can we?

This probably happens a lot. But Freespace 2 is really up there. I never played Iwar 2 though. Should I?

 

[warpig]

I never played Iwar 2 though. Should I?

Better play IWar 1 first. The sequel is also very good but the combat in the first game is a lot more interesting.

I have an idea that some Codexians have merely heard through the grapevine that I-War 2 and FreeSpace 2 are counted among the most monocled space sims, and parrot said factoids in order to lend an air of legitimacy to their shitty, useless opinions on a genre they're only peripherally familiar with. Happens all the time on the Codex—folks name-dropping old classics they've never played as a way to build a metaphorical flight of stairs up to their soapboxes, etc. Occasionally they get caught, which is pretty funny.

Weird idea. I War 2 and Freespace are top space combat games (personally I like Tie Fighter better than FS), theese games have the stuff that's missing from X which is fun combat and missions.

 

[Severian Silk]

I've played FS1 but not FS2. I enjoyed playing FS1, but IWar2's story was more satisfying, almost like an RPG. FS1 was a bit too "epic".

 

[Blaine]

This probably happens a lot. But Freespace 2 is really up there.

Weird idea. I War 2 and Freespace are top space combat games (personally I like Tie Fighter better than FS), theese games have the stuff that's missing from X which is fun combat and missions.

Perhaps I should clarify: The two games I'm referring to ARE good, at least in my opinion. My point is that they get name-dropped in these sorts of topics in much the same way that Darklands, Wasteland, or RoA get name-dropped in others. I'm insinuating that there are certain Philistines among us who know not of what they speak.

Regardless, X Rebirth is shit and no one should play it, ever. It was cursed from the get-go; EGOSOFT very obviously went over to the decline with sparkling dollar signs cha-chinging in their eyes. The only way X:R could be fixed would be to climb into Doc Brown's DeLorean and perform a series of extremely late-trimester abortions on the entire development team, then burn the vision document to ensure it can never regenerate itself—possibly by being fed chicken after midnight, or if the blood of a virgin were accidentally spilled on it.