X4: Foundations - Mount and Blade with space-ships. Now with significant Beta update

[Zarniwoop]

X had 54 sectors
X2 had 132
X3 had 160, increased to over 200 by the time of X3:TC
X4: Potato launched with 47, currently there are 63. So about 31% the size of the previous game, after 2 expansions.

Are X4's sectors the exact same size as previous X games?

Given that infinity=infinity? Yes.

Actually that's another problem, the sectors and in fact even ships and factories look completely different from previous games. And they're in completely different places. At least they try to explain it in universe by some macguffin that reconnects gates in mysterious new ways.

The gate distances vary in between games but previous games had a lot more stuff (factories and traffic) in each one. The universe was much more "alive" especially in X3.

The problem is that the new engine (the Stillbirth one) , while looking prettier, cannot handle anywhere near the complexity of previous ones, despite computers being a lot more powerful.

X4 is basically a big upgrade in the interface but a big downgrade in what made the series great - the living and big universe.

 

[Joggerino]

Nice video on the state of X4.

Think I'm gonna replay it again when the boron dlc is out.

 

[anvi]

That sounded more like an ad for the game. Reviews still say it sucks.

 

[Tweed]

The one thing Egosoft has going for it is the cult.

 

[Joggerino]

That sounded more like an ad for the game. Reviews still say it sucks.

Not really? And I enjoyed the game at launch so I can only enjoy it more after a few years of updates and content releases.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

Not really?

"Mostly Positive" on Steam is basically a 4/10.

 

[Dedicated_Dark]

Not really?

"Mostly Positive" on Steam is basically a 4/10.

No rating on steam is worth anything. All you can take it for is that the game runs. Some great games have mixed ratings while other garbage has overwhelmingly positive.
Decide for yourself.

 

[Jinn]

At this point there's plenty of footage and detailed information out there to make up your own mind about whether the game is for you or not. Having played it at different stages since its release, that video was pretty spot-on from my perspective. He was pretty upfront about the flaws and shortcomings the game has in it too. I'll be jumping into it again sometime after the new dlc releases.

 

[anvi]

I wouldn't pay attention to ratings but the negative reviews on Steam are great. And recent.

Love X3, but ...
Bought the game on release and realized my GCard could not run it. Waited almost 5 years to play it on a new PC Build.

Ryzen 9 3900X (12 core) + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 = 40FPS in space, 20FPS in map mode.


Seems to be horrible code, you can just feel it. In my opinion they just bit off more than they can chew.
6.0 is now in beta and it seems they've fixed hundreds of bugs that they introduced during the Beta..
I tried the Beta until it crashed to desktop. 30 minutes.
As a coder myself I really hate bugs, and never let them live long, let alone produce them as if they made money.
I think i've reached my ropes end when the Terran Empire has decided to steadily hate me and decline into war for no apparent reason. And i'm terran...

The potential of this game, with its various interlocking systems, is utterly ruined by the terrible AI. Why even bother creating a game of this level, only to look at the Ai and go, "Meh." If you want to baby-sit half your fleet because they keep going in circles and refusing to actually, you know, flee from danger, that's not a fun time. It's just tedious.

Fans of the game tend to confuse poor design with "complexity," as though having to work around the systems in place to get anything to work is complex.

What an utterly wasted opportunity.

I'm a gamer that has has been playing games since PONG. I especially love complicated flight simulation such as DCS and games like this. I've played X since its first version and I loved what they tried to do. I've wanted them to succeed from day one. After X3 I wrote the company off as their modus operandi became clear. Years later I decided to see if they atoned for their mistakes and got it right. I can definitely assure they've FAILED again. I spent 100 hours in utter frustration and struggle to enjoy this.

Their MO is to try to do too much in a patchwork fashion. The problems are too numerous to mention. The community is great and helpful and great in making mods to help with the shortcomings of the devs but it is far too little. You'd need to load every mod imaginable to attempt to compensate for the bugs, and poorly written AI.

My overall take on the game is - its trying to do too much and adding things piece by piece instead of looking at the whole, such as the actual user experience. It ignores basic polish and game elements that exist in every other game out there. Extremely bad voice acting, story telling, interactions, and even spelling.

What has shocked me the most is that there are what 5 expansions? They still are selling games that have the same bugs and lack of polish I saw at release. As far along as this game is into development, I can't believe how poorly polished and a buggy mess this game is. I've come to the conclusion the dev "just doesn't get it" at all. They put a great deal of effort into some really cool things but by ignoring the BASICS such as a logical UI.

Even with HOTAS fully programmed doing anything in this game is a hot mess.

Poorly written and ungodly bad AI that requires constant micromanagement.

I spent dozens of hours learning the intricacies of this game in running stations, ships, fleets only to run into bug after bug. I don't think I've ever reloaded a game more times in a life from savegames that take minutes to load. The cons outweigh the pros.

TLDR
My conclusion is the frustrations and losses you'll take will far far far outweigh the good moment and the fun you'll get with this game. It isn't worth it, even if it were free.

I also believe the ones who say players and streamers lie about it. Streamers = whores and the players are probably German.

Seeing all the DLC reminds me of Arma3. That game was complete shit until they put content in there over the next decade, and charged the dipshit players for each piece. That's how all games work now.

 

[Magitex]

Watched the X4 video posted, and now I am playing X3 Mayhem: Zero Hour. Clearly the intended effect of the video.
I'm barely started on it but I don't know why I even think of trying to get into X4 when it just can't seem to compare to this 15 year old game. Modded X3 just feels so cohesive. X4 on the other hand really adds a lot of non-interesting fluff and doesn't seem to actually tackle the problems X3 had.

Can't imagine what would happen if X3 became open source, what could be achieved there.
As for X4, well, the struggle remains real. It's so much harder to mod and prefers to drip feed DLC content without making any substantive strides. It's hard for me to imagine X4 becoming more fun to play than the old veteran X3 at this point.
Frankly, I hope they move to X5 as soon as possible.

 

[Zarniwoop]

I wouldn't pay attention to ratings but the negative reviews on Steam are great. And recent.

Love X3, but ...
Bought the game on release and realized my GCard could not run it. Waited almost 5 years to play it on a new PC Build.

Ryzen 9 3900X (12 core) + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 = 40FPS in space, 20FPS in map mode.


Seems to be horrible code, you can just feel it. In my opinion they just bit off more than they can chew.
6.0 is now in beta and it seems they've fixed hundreds of bugs that they introduced during the Beta..
I tried the Beta until it crashed to desktop. 30 minutes.
As a coder myself I really hate bugs, and never let them live long, let alone produce them as if they made money.
I think i've reached my ropes end when the Terran Empire has decided to steadily hate me and decline into war for no apparent reason. And i'm terran...

The potential of this game, with its various interlocking systems, is utterly ruined by the terrible AI. Why even bother creating a game of this level, only to look at the Ai and go, "Meh." If you want to baby-sit half your fleet because they keep going in circles and refusing to actually, you know, flee from danger, that's not a fun time. It's just tedious.

Fans of the game tend to confuse poor design with "complexity," as though having to work around the systems in place to get anything to work is complex.

What an utterly wasted opportunity.

I'm a gamer that has has been playing games since PONG. I especially love complicated flight simulation such as DCS and games like this. I've played X since its first version and I loved what they tried to do. I've wanted them to succeed from day one. After X3 I wrote the company off as their modus operandi became clear. Years later I decided to see if they atoned for their mistakes and got it right. I can definitely assure they've FAILED again. I spent 100 hours in utter frustration and struggle to enjoy this.

Their MO is to try to do too much in a patchwork fashion. The problems are too numerous to mention. The community is great and helpful and great in making mods to help with the shortcomings of the devs but it is far too little. You'd need to load every mod imaginable to attempt to compensate for the bugs, and poorly written AI.

My overall take on the game is - its trying to do too much and adding things piece by piece instead of looking at the whole, such as the actual user experience. It ignores basic polish and game elements that exist in every other game out there. Extremely bad voice acting, story telling, interactions, and even spelling.

What has shocked me the most is that there are what 5 expansions? They still are selling games that have the same bugs and lack of polish I saw at release. As far along as this game is into development, I can't believe how poorly polished and a buggy mess this game is. I've come to the conclusion the dev "just doesn't get it" at all. They put a great deal of effort into some really cool things but by ignoring the BASICS such as a logical UI.

Even with HOTAS fully programmed doing anything in this game is a hot mess.

Poorly written and ungodly bad AI that requires constant micromanagement.

I spent dozens of hours learning the intricacies of this game in running stations, ships, fleets only to run into bug after bug. I don't think I've ever reloaded a game more times in a life from savegames that take minutes to load. The cons outweigh the pros.

TLDR
My conclusion is the frustrations and losses you'll take will far far far outweigh the good moment and the fun you'll get with this game. It isn't worth it, even if it were free.

I also believe the ones who say players and streamers lie about it. Streamers = whores and the players are probably German.

Seeing all the DLC reminds me of Arma3. That game was complete shit until they put content in there over the next decade, and charged the dipshit players for each piece. That's how all games work now.

That first review is bullshit tho, an RTX 3070 can absolutely run it .

My old GTX 980m laptop ran it fine.

The main performance issue is that it slows down in SETA mode. The game is 100% single threaded. Which seems strange as this seems like the EXACT type of game that would benefit from today's insane amount of CPU cores.

Oh and games being patched over years is Egosoft's trademark. X3 took years to be in an acceptable state and then received 2 "standalone expansions" AKA do-overs.

 

[cw8]

Not really?

"Mostly Positive" on Steam is basically a 4/10.

Most Steam reviews are one liner meme reviews that are funny but tell you nothing about the game.

 

[anvi]

Performance sounds like it tanks as the game goes on and the universe gets busier.

I wouldn't pay attention to ratings but the negative reviews on Steam are great. And recent.

Love X3, but ...
Bought the game on release and realized my GCard could not run it. Waited almost 5 years to play it on a new PC Build.

Ryzen 9 3900X (12 core) + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 = 40FPS in space, 20FPS in map mode.


Seems to be horrible code, you can just feel it. In my opinion they just bit off more than they can chew.
6.0 is now in beta and it seems they've fixed hundreds of bugs that they introduced during the Beta..
I tried the Beta until it crashed to desktop. 30 minutes.
As a coder myself I really hate bugs, and never let them live long, let alone produce them as if they made money.
I think i've reached my ropes end when the Terran Empire has decided to steadily hate me and decline into war for no apparent reason. And i'm terran...

The potential of this game, with its various interlocking systems, is utterly ruined by the terrible AI. Why even bother creating a game of this level, only to look at the Ai and go, "Meh." If you want to baby-sit half your fleet because they keep going in circles and refusing to actually, you know, flee from danger, that's not a fun time. It's just tedious.

Fans of the game tend to confuse poor design with "complexity," as though having to work around the systems in place to get anything to work is complex.

What an utterly wasted opportunity.

I'm a gamer that has has been playing games since PONG. I especially love complicated flight simulation such as DCS and games like this. I've played X since its first version and I loved what they tried to do. I've wanted them to succeed from day one. After X3 I wrote the company off as their modus operandi became clear. Years later I decided to see if they atoned for their mistakes and got it right. I can definitely assure they've FAILED again. I spent 100 hours in utter frustration and struggle to enjoy this.

Their MO is to try to do too much in a patchwork fashion. The problems are too numerous to mention. The community is great and helpful and great in making mods to help with the shortcomings of the devs but it is far too little. You'd need to load every mod imaginable to attempt to compensate for the bugs, and poorly written AI.

My overall take on the game is - its trying to do too much and adding things piece by piece instead of looking at the whole, such as the actual user experience. It ignores basic polish and game elements that exist in every other game out there. Extremely bad voice acting, story telling, interactions, and even spelling.

What has shocked me the most is that there are what 5 expansions? They still are selling games that have the same bugs and lack of polish I saw at release. As far along as this game is into development, I can't believe how poorly polished and a buggy mess this game is. I've come to the conclusion the dev "just doesn't get it" at all. They put a great deal of effort into some really cool things but by ignoring the BASICS such as a logical UI.

Even with HOTAS fully programmed doing anything in this game is a hot mess.

Poorly written and ungodly bad AI that requires constant micromanagement.

I spent dozens of hours learning the intricacies of this game in running stations, ships, fleets only to run into bug after bug. I don't think I've ever reloaded a game more times in a life from savegames that take minutes to load. The cons outweigh the pros.

TLDR
My conclusion is the frustrations and losses you'll take will far far far outweigh the good moment and the fun you'll get with this game. It isn't worth it, even if it were free.

I also believe the ones who say players and streamers lie about it. Streamers = whores and the players are probably German.

Seeing all the DLC reminds me of Arma3. That game was complete shit until they put content in there over the next decade, and charged the dipshit players for each piece. That's how all games work now.

That first review is bullshit tho, an RTX 3070 can absolutely run it .

He didn't say it can't you retarded fucking prick.

 

[Joggerino]

Watched the X4 video posted, and now I am playing X3 Mayhem: Zero Hour. Clearly the intended effect of the video.
I'm barely started on it but I don't know why I even think of trying to get into X4 when it just can't seem to compare to this 15 year old game. Modded X3 just feels so cohesive. X4 on the other hand really adds a lot of non-interesting fluff and doesn't seem to actually tackle the problems X3 had.

Can't imagine what would happen if X3 became open source, what could be achieved there.
As for X4, well, the struggle remains real. It's so much harder to mod and prefers to drip feed DLC content without making any substantive strides. It's hard for me to imagine X4 becoming more fun to play than the old veteran X3 at this point.
Frankly, I hope they move to X5 as soon as possible.

Yeah, X3 is definitely a special game that's worth playing no matter what X4 turns into. Unfortunately the X3 emerging universe is completely scripted. For example, whereas in X4 resources need to be brought into shipyards to build ships, in X3 they just get spawned out of nothing. So X4 is janky but also a completely different kind of sandbox.

Boron DLC soundtrack preview

 

[cw8]

New Fleet Commands and Ship formation AI makes carriers good n fun now hopefully.

 

[Perkel]

Whoa that's huge improvement. I kind of zones out of this update because i thought that was just content pack but it seems to go deep in game mechanics.

They swapped out their physics engine to something called jolt physics + graphical update and this nets you better performance + ships AI being able to finally stick to formations at all times even while traveling with player on head ship. New AI behavior while attacking is also huge improvement.

I wonder if they will announce X5 after boron update or next expansion. With such ready engine, overhauled almost everything from release it would be good for ego to release X5 as fresh start to remove cloud of bad air after X rebirth and 1.0 of X4 which was much better than X rebirth but still normal people would bounce off from bugs etc.

 

[Joggerino]

Almost released (in a few hours)

 

[StrongBelwas]

I wonder if they will announce X5 after boron update or next expansion. With such ready engine, overhauled almost everything from release it would be good for ego to release X5 as fresh start to remove cloud of bad air after X rebirth and 1.0 of X4 which was much better than X rebirth but still normal people would bounce off from bugs etc.

X3 releases, its a disaster and takes years and multiple releases to fix.
X Rebirth releases, its a disaster and takes years and its still a disaster.
X4 releases, its a disaster and take years and multiple expansions to fix.
X5 releases.....

 

[Zarniwoop]

First impressions of the new DLC: meh. As usual they shit all over the established lore and mechanics.

-Finally the game has the same amount of races as X2 on launch, 20 years ago (lul)
-2 Boron factions although their ships are identical, and there's no "Sentinel" or "Vanguard" versions etc.
-Typical for X4, the racial characteristics of ships are almost non-existent. Boron ships were always the slowest but by far the biggest in terms of cargo value. Not anymore.
-Nice to have the Boron music again, although slightly remixed.

Some Reddit-tier cringe:
-Borons are SUPER friendly, annoyingly so. They are supposed to be distrustful of all outsiders except the Argon.
-The Kingdom of Boron is now called the Queendom. This is despite not being a word and the home system is still called KINGDOM END.

Some V6.00 general notes (you get this even without the DLC):
-Performance is much improved, especially on SETA
-Xenon are UBER-buffed. A single K can take out several Osakas. And they're far more intelligent. If they see you building a station or bringing in a large fleet, they will swarm like wasps. Keeping them out of a system is a major pain now.
-You can live-stream views from factories and ships anywhere in the universe. Yay Egosoft, way to bring back a feature from the original game from 1999 . Unlike in X:BTF though, you can't rotate or zoom the camera, it's a CINEMATIKKK view.
-AI is much, much improved. Navigation, combat, everything is way less retarded now (although there are exceptions - such as a lone carrier flying off to engage the Xenon destroyer and leaving its fleet of 3 AssGuards behind). Turrets actually try to hit things now.
-Biggest AI improvement seems to be in station/build storage traders. They actually go more than 2km away now and actually buy the stuff that's most needed (muh advanced electronics).
-Carriers are now even more useless than before, and so are swarms of 200+ fighters. They get instamelted even OOS. The only useful fleet at this point is a bunch of Asgards.
-Massive incline: All those shitty "deliver a fleet" missions now have a preset. Meaning when you go to a shipyard/wharf, there is already a preset for exactly the kind of ship you need to deliver. No more waiting hours, scouring the universe for resources, assembling the fleet, waiting more hours for them to reach the right place, only to discover you missed some tiny detail.
-Xenon still cheat - they don't have to deliver a colossal amount of resources to build their uber-solar power plants, it just magically apears, even if you are blockading all gates.

 

[Psquit]

Just found out this franchise of openworld space sim, how do i engage? Do i jump into x4 with all the dlc, or x3 with all the community fixes?

 

[Perkel]

Just found out this franchise of openworld space sim, how do i engage? Do i jump into x4 with all the dlc, or x3 with all the community fixes?

All DLC because it increase amount of fun as world get's bigger.

As for how to get into it. I think treat it as any other space game play some missions and then boy some extra ships to fly with you. Once you get that you will quickly realize how fun is to build your own empire.

 

[Joggerino]

Just found out this franchise of openworld space sim, how do i engage? Do i jump into x4 with all the dlc, or x3 with all the community fixes?

I'd go with X4 first since it's more accessible for new players (IMO) but after that definitely try modded X3.

 

[Psquit]

What should i expect with this game? How's performance and the bugs? I read a bunch meme words such as living universe, dynamic factions, etc. How true is that?

 

[Zarniwoop]

What should i expect with this game? How's performance and the bugs? I read a bunch meme words such as living universe, dynamic factions, etc. How true is that?

Not very living in X4, more so in previous games. Especially X3. Each faction tries to protect their territory and you can start or influence wars etc but don't expect a grand strategy game. The problem with X4 is everything is scattered, each faction controls only a small number of systems in seemingly random places. In previous games they each had a clear territory and boundaries. They retconned in some nonsense about the gate network collapsing and reconnecting randomly. Long story.

Performance on X4 is much improved with the latest patches, but then adding the Boron DLC drops it down again...
Bugs are mostly gone, now that version 6.00 has dropped.

The universe in X4 is still a lot smaller than X3 in terms of number of sectors and factories, but at least with all the DLC, its big enough to be playable. It should have launched like this and then got more content added via expansions.

 

[Joggerino]

I think the opposite, the x4 universe is more living but the x3 universe is prettier and maybe more immersive. I fucking hate the highway ring in x4 and the duality of all factions. Performance is great considering the scale of the simulation.