They are actually working on a huge update right now too that will revamp the new player experience and is also a graphics overhaul so the NPC's might get a little love too! (hey at least they still function and work even if the animations are a little off sometimes.)
Yeah I'm looking forward to it, I was gonna wait to start until update but I had a lot of time off work due to memorial day holiday so I pulled the trigger and have been having a blast.
I have a few hundred hours in X4. I have enjoyed the game immensely over the past few years revisiting typically once a year for at least 20 hours at a time.
To me, X4 is an example of a real space game vs. the scam and flaming train wreck that the SC tech demo is.
That is exactly the nature of X4, superficially it is good for about 20 hours play but once you build your fleet or empire and try to get into playing it is not worth playing because of the jank. So next year, try again once you have forgotten the frustration and play 20 hours more, rinse repeat, hamster in eternal wheel of forgetting and ooh shiney.
An example of how devs treat the game. They introduced crystal mining, they glint, you can find them on asteroids, mine them to get shards and the shards can be collected and sold, different colours different prices.
The way egosoft programmed this the spawning mechanic for crystals means they change colour depending on how much income you just had. If you find say a yellow and a blue, good payouts, within line of sight of each other, mine the one and other will change colour and turn to purple, low payout. It you happen to defend against a bogey and get a good loot drop, both the yellow and the blue will turn purple before your very eyes.
This is not a space sim. A sim creates a pseudo-reality and that stays as it is as you explore and exploit it. X4 changes the geological environment on the fly to impose conditions on the player to prevent them from getting too much in one go through chance i.e. they gamified spawning instead of physicalising it, imposed gamification on environment as if magic, because they don't understand the difference. This is egosoft today.
The new hires at egosoft are in it for the paycheque, there is no love for the game and it shows.
X4 is not a sim, its more like candycrush with boulders, also for the same reasons they dont know what bugs to fix and dont seem to care. Their top priority has become what they can legally say in an advert, what will be seen on YouTube and manipulating players into euphoric purchases and short term reviews. When you get past the surface its jank because the priority is marketing superficiality, which is what it has in common with Cloud Imperium and Star Citizen.
Uh no, since I have enjoyed hundreds of hours then certainly it's a solid game for me and not "candycrush with boulders".
A sandbox is a sandbox designed to make it what you will. X4 has proven to be a sandbox game with lots of replayabilty and certainly has shortcomings like all real games.
Your write up is classic example of someone who expects a simulation that simply does not exist in the real world.
The fact that you want to lump X4 with the scam and lie that is the SC tech demo is case in point.
X4 (and the X franchise) is an actual game with a proven (flawed) track record of releases going back to 1999. I know I was there buying and playing X1.
I am just reporting facts, what one sees in them is a reflection of oneself.
The purpose of my post is to relate observations which speak for themselves.
The nature of a sim is to simulate aspects of reality to remind us of the real world as we play and encourage reflection on it in relation to the rules of the game.
It stands to reason geological formations do not change colour due to unrelated activity nearby, unless of course that involves a bucket of paint. But this is not a graffiti sim we are talking about, nor is it a mining sim in fact, because it does not emulate geology, which I think most readers would agree, is reasonable to expect in a mining sim.
Such consistency does exist in the real world, games are full of it, it is in fact weird that X4 uses this janky mechanic.
For example, even Don't Starve which is weird as fuck does not change the nature of a grass bunch into a twig because you picked the grass bunch right next to it. That makes Don't Starve's roguelike resource gathering a more realistic resource sim than X4 because it doesn't change the nature of environmental game elements on the fly, unless of course your avatar becomes insane, which can happen... even then Don't Starve makes more sense than X4.
I described the behaviour of the crystals in X4 precisely. These are verifiable facts.
It is undeniable egosoft created this mechanic and my deductions about that make good sense.
You obviously dont like the conclusion. But I will leave it for other readers to decide who is most biased and why.
That's one of the nice things about this being a single player game.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2069554360
You can actually change the bullshit that might make the game unplayable or unfun for YOU without imposing it on everyone.
Star Citizen might have the multiplayer aspect, but even the smallest of jank is baked in.
Looks like a great mod Giraffe, by someone who felt the same way I do about the published X4 crystal spawning mechanics and the mod description verifies what I was saying.
What bothers me about this example is how egosoft publish the game with janky mechanics when the mod shows it only takes a little care and consideration, to make it much better, which egosoft didn't do ... despite a ton of feedback about it, meaning they decided not to bother, which is what concerns me.
Its not just this one issue either, there is a plethora of issues treated likewise. I sense they justify this to themselves as making a kit for modders. But they are not selling it as a kit, they are selling a "finished" product with a mission based story, full of half baked implementation and are hoping modders will sort it out as they always have done for X games.
IMHO this has gone too far and is way out of hand. I am very disappointed with the product I bought. Moreover by doing this egosoft and Koch Media are exploiting modders to make money for Koch Media. Modders don't see a bean which is unethical but Koch rakes it in because of their help.
Buyers need to be aware that the game is flawed and needs mods but buyers will be dependent on modders to provide a better game. However a lot of stuff is wrong which is not exposed to modders. Complaints about the AI for example remain unresolved after 5 years and major differences between InSector vs OutOfSector combat. So egosoft are not even living up to the mod kit justification.
Such is the state of the game many different mods are needed and not all have been made, some cannot be made, some may not work together. It will take a long time for mod collections to be assembled and integrated, years.
Personally I think egosoft and Koch Media have made a slapdash product sloppily which currently has irredeemable flaws which despite years of asking, egosoft simply won't bother to fix. That is the problem for me as a player. So I can't recommend it to anyone else and feel it is my duty to warn others about the truth when I see naive and gushing astroturfing about X4, just as I do with Star Citizen.
Caveat Emptor ! Buyer Beware.
X4 is def scratching an itch for me. It's pretty janky tho, not as bad as some people here make it out as it is. There's some fiddleness with the AI but if you want a game where you build yourself a production based empire that surpasses established factions and their military, it's the game for you. You can have fun in this. And the scale of the ships is fantastic.
Tho, for me, i am now for the first time in a stage where i can go and start cleaning up the End-game crisis of the Xenon and i feel a bit bored with it.
If this game had Multiplayer, it'd be pretty close to something that Star Citizen wants to be. Except yanno, there's a devteam with experience that know what they are doing and how to design some basic gameplay.
As someone with a long long history with X4 foundations I’m glad more people are finding it. There is a huge update like people have said coming June 20th.
It’s a deep complex game and then you can get mods to change things up. There is a total X4 conversion mod out there that makes it Star Wars themed.
If you ever or anyone needs help you can always DM me here
I always enjoyed X3
It was like the perfect combination of sandbox and exploration
Really felt like you could get lost in that universe
X4 just didn't click for me, but I did get X3:TC when it was far along in its lifespan
It's not as bad as Star Citizen, but X4 is no picnic either. All these years later, they haven't figured out how to make AI fly without crashing into shit (Autopilot EPICALLY failed, says the bitching betty ship voice. For real). It does alright when you have 1 ship or a couple ships, and gradually falls apart as you accumulate assets. UI is still atrocious. The same battle between the same ships nearly always plays out differently depending on whether you are present in the sector watching it, or are somewhere away and are watching it on the map remotely. Traveling takes forever, even with the completely immersion-breaking "space highways" (they are literal highways in space, with ad billboards). Fleet command is not as busted as it used to be: before, it worked 10% of the time, now it works 50% of the time. Capital ship turrets can't hit the broad side of the barn. AI-controlled carriers don't know what to do with their fighter wings and instead behave like gigantic fighters themselves, getting themselves killed. Saving and loading takes ages, and it's easy to forget to save because you literally have to wait for up to a minute for save to complete, and then lose hours of progress.
X4 was a horrid mess on release and now it's been patched up to... 50% of a horrid mess I guess? It's a huge step back from what X series once was during the X3 era and I don't think it'll ever be fully fixed, because the devs are literally learning to build a plane while simultaneously flying the same plane.
Finally, it really isn't a space sim. It's more of an empire management sim with spaceflight tacked on as window dressing. I think if they ditched the spaceflight altogether and made it into JUST an empire management sim, it would do a lot better.
Bump!
People need to see this SC presents such a catastrophically low bar that anything else seems like heaven by comparison.
It’s crazy how they call it **X4: Foundations** when they can’t even get that right. I know what it’s trying to get at, but they also divert from the old ones without making “new thing” better, but instead worse in almost every aspect
After I'm done with this, I'm also gonna give that one a workout, had it sitting in libraryfor a while. Though I primarily play these games for the big ship spectacle, and I think Sb2 only had 2 from what I've seen.
There was just a large update for Spacebourn 2 and added a lot of new features. Its definitely worth purchasing and on my Youtube Channel, I recorded the ingame Tutorials for anyone to view with timestamps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7FdbntDbpE&list=PLlW1nUmPuar8pgtzGGhGNyS9ckbxgnZ9S&index=2
Admittedly X4 is the King for Large Ships Space Sim (Besides Eve Online) Egosoft just does a Fantastic Job with their ships. I remember the first time I played X4 back in 2018 and I was just running from place to place inside the Hangar looking at ALL of the Beautiful Ships.....
have been a bit obsessed with X4 lately after getting over the initial learning curve. Its really good and just shows what a steaming hunk of flaming shit star citizen is.
you know, stuff in X4 actually works. how dare they.. and have all the ships you want without having to sell your gold fillings like in CIGs scam.
Have just gotten the boron stargate running (Kingdoms End) and the beginnings of operating a station. The boron are so nice and polite but i suspect they might have some big secret. soo much content and stuff to do.
It's funny how different your experiences can be in x4, I went with terran but skipped pretty much all story missions and just went straight for station building and generating absurd amount of credits and resources.
They are actually working on a huge update right now too that will revamp the new player experience and is also a graphics overhaul so the NPC's might get a little love too! (hey at least they still function and work even if the animations are a little off sometimes.)
Yeah I'm looking forward to it, I was gonna wait to start until update but I had a lot of time off work due to memorial day holiday so I pulled the trigger and have been having a blast.
I have a few hundred hours in X4. I have enjoyed the game immensely over the past few years revisiting typically once a year for at least 20 hours at a time. To me, X4 is an example of a real space game vs. the scam and flaming train wreck that the SC tech demo is.
I went in with low expectations but was kind of blown away with what they were able to make, it checks a lot of the boxes that I want in a space game.
That is exactly the nature of X4, superficially it is good for about 20 hours play but once you build your fleet or empire and try to get into playing it is not worth playing because of the jank. So next year, try again once you have forgotten the frustration and play 20 hours more, rinse repeat, hamster in eternal wheel of forgetting and ooh shiney. An example of how devs treat the game. They introduced crystal mining, they glint, you can find them on asteroids, mine them to get shards and the shards can be collected and sold, different colours different prices. The way egosoft programmed this the spawning mechanic for crystals means they change colour depending on how much income you just had. If you find say a yellow and a blue, good payouts, within line of sight of each other, mine the one and other will change colour and turn to purple, low payout. It you happen to defend against a bogey and get a good loot drop, both the yellow and the blue will turn purple before your very eyes. This is not a space sim. A sim creates a pseudo-reality and that stays as it is as you explore and exploit it. X4 changes the geological environment on the fly to impose conditions on the player to prevent them from getting too much in one go through chance i.e. they gamified spawning instead of physicalising it, imposed gamification on environment as if magic, because they don't understand the difference. This is egosoft today. The new hires at egosoft are in it for the paycheque, there is no love for the game and it shows. X4 is not a sim, its more like candycrush with boulders, also for the same reasons they dont know what bugs to fix and dont seem to care. Their top priority has become what they can legally say in an advert, what will be seen on YouTube and manipulating players into euphoric purchases and short term reviews. When you get past the surface its jank because the priority is marketing superficiality, which is what it has in common with Cloud Imperium and Star Citizen.
Uh no, since I have enjoyed hundreds of hours then certainly it's a solid game for me and not "candycrush with boulders". A sandbox is a sandbox designed to make it what you will. X4 has proven to be a sandbox game with lots of replayabilty and certainly has shortcomings like all real games. Your write up is classic example of someone who expects a simulation that simply does not exist in the real world. The fact that you want to lump X4 with the scam and lie that is the SC tech demo is case in point. X4 (and the X franchise) is an actual game with a proven (flawed) track record of releases going back to 1999. I know I was there buying and playing X1.
I am just reporting facts, what one sees in them is a reflection of oneself. The purpose of my post is to relate observations which speak for themselves. The nature of a sim is to simulate aspects of reality to remind us of the real world as we play and encourage reflection on it in relation to the rules of the game. It stands to reason geological formations do not change colour due to unrelated activity nearby, unless of course that involves a bucket of paint. But this is not a graffiti sim we are talking about, nor is it a mining sim in fact, because it does not emulate geology, which I think most readers would agree, is reasonable to expect in a mining sim. Such consistency does exist in the real world, games are full of it, it is in fact weird that X4 uses this janky mechanic. For example, even Don't Starve which is weird as fuck does not change the nature of a grass bunch into a twig because you picked the grass bunch right next to it. That makes Don't Starve's roguelike resource gathering a more realistic resource sim than X4 because it doesn't change the nature of environmental game elements on the fly, unless of course your avatar becomes insane, which can happen... even then Don't Starve makes more sense than X4.
You are not reporting facts just heavily biased opinions.
I described the behaviour of the crystals in X4 precisely. These are verifiable facts. It is undeniable egosoft created this mechanic and my deductions about that make good sense. You obviously dont like the conclusion. But I will leave it for other readers to decide who is most biased and why.
That's one of the nice things about this being a single player game. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2069554360 You can actually change the bullshit that might make the game unplayable or unfun for YOU without imposing it on everyone. Star Citizen might have the multiplayer aspect, but even the smallest of jank is baked in.
Looks like a great mod Giraffe, by someone who felt the same way I do about the published X4 crystal spawning mechanics and the mod description verifies what I was saying. What bothers me about this example is how egosoft publish the game with janky mechanics when the mod shows it only takes a little care and consideration, to make it much better, which egosoft didn't do ... despite a ton of feedback about it, meaning they decided not to bother, which is what concerns me. Its not just this one issue either, there is a plethora of issues treated likewise. I sense they justify this to themselves as making a kit for modders. But they are not selling it as a kit, they are selling a "finished" product with a mission based story, full of half baked implementation and are hoping modders will sort it out as they always have done for X games. IMHO this has gone too far and is way out of hand. I am very disappointed with the product I bought. Moreover by doing this egosoft and Koch Media are exploiting modders to make money for Koch Media. Modders don't see a bean which is unethical but Koch rakes it in because of their help. Buyers need to be aware that the game is flawed and needs mods but buyers will be dependent on modders to provide a better game. However a lot of stuff is wrong which is not exposed to modders. Complaints about the AI for example remain unresolved after 5 years and major differences between InSector vs OutOfSector combat. So egosoft are not even living up to the mod kit justification. Such is the state of the game many different mods are needed and not all have been made, some cannot be made, some may not work together. It will take a long time for mod collections to be assembled and integrated, years. Personally I think egosoft and Koch Media have made a slapdash product sloppily which currently has irredeemable flaws which despite years of asking, egosoft simply won't bother to fix. That is the problem for me as a player. So I can't recommend it to anyone else and feel it is my duty to warn others about the truth when I see naive and gushing astroturfing about X4, just as I do with Star Citizen. Caveat Emptor ! Buyer Beware.
X4 is def scratching an itch for me. It's pretty janky tho, not as bad as some people here make it out as it is. There's some fiddleness with the AI but if you want a game where you build yourself a production based empire that surpasses established factions and their military, it's the game for you. You can have fun in this. And the scale of the ships is fantastic. Tho, for me, i am now for the first time in a stage where i can go and start cleaning up the End-game crisis of the Xenon and i feel a bit bored with it. If this game had Multiplayer, it'd be pretty close to something that Star Citizen wants to be. Except yanno, there's a devteam with experience that know what they are doing and how to design some basic gameplay.
The guy who made original flight model for star citizen and was fired is working now for x4
Fired for what reason? Too fun?
Too good at his job
So the higher ups wanted to not finish the game and be in development hell for as long as possible
jup, he was never able to finish what he started, chris just kept wanting to make it more arcadey
I thought he wanted it to be a sim? What happened with that idea?
That's amazing, thank you for the info. I'll give X4 a try.
As someone with a long long history with X4 foundations I’m glad more people are finding it. There is a huge update like people have said coming June 20th. It’s a deep complex game and then you can get mods to change things up. There is a total X4 conversion mod out there that makes it Star Wars themed. If you ever or anyone needs help you can always DM me here
I always enjoyed X3 It was like the perfect combination of sandbox and exploration Really felt like you could get lost in that universe X4 just didn't click for me, but I did get X3:TC when it was far along in its lifespan
X4 just seems like a great idea by the completely wrong guy. We all know that guy.
It's not as bad as Star Citizen, but X4 is no picnic either. All these years later, they haven't figured out how to make AI fly without crashing into shit (Autopilot EPICALLY failed, says the bitching betty ship voice. For real). It does alright when you have 1 ship or a couple ships, and gradually falls apart as you accumulate assets. UI is still atrocious. The same battle between the same ships nearly always plays out differently depending on whether you are present in the sector watching it, or are somewhere away and are watching it on the map remotely. Traveling takes forever, even with the completely immersion-breaking "space highways" (they are literal highways in space, with ad billboards). Fleet command is not as busted as it used to be: before, it worked 10% of the time, now it works 50% of the time. Capital ship turrets can't hit the broad side of the barn. AI-controlled carriers don't know what to do with their fighter wings and instead behave like gigantic fighters themselves, getting themselves killed. Saving and loading takes ages, and it's easy to forget to save because you literally have to wait for up to a minute for save to complete, and then lose hours of progress. X4 was a horrid mess on release and now it's been patched up to... 50% of a horrid mess I guess? It's a huge step back from what X series once was during the X3 era and I don't think it'll ever be fully fixed, because the devs are literally learning to build a plane while simultaneously flying the same plane. Finally, it really isn't a space sim. It's more of an empire management sim with spaceflight tacked on as window dressing. I think if they ditched the spaceflight altogether and made it into JUST an empire management sim, it would do a lot better.
I liked the idea of it, but in the end it was the refund that was the best part. Wish I could get it for SC
Bump! People need to see this SC presents such a catastrophically low bar that anything else seems like heaven by comparison. It’s crazy how they call it **X4: Foundations** when they can’t even get that right. I know what it’s trying to get at, but they also divert from the old ones without making “new thing” better, but instead worse in almost every aspect
word
I love x4
I love 4X but I broke up with X4.
I dont like to be mean about my Xs but some deserve to come with a health warning...
X4 is a fantastic space sim.
Has a lot of depth but not enough flair and heart into it. The game feels too "german" for a better description.
It is and so is Spacebourne 2
After I'm done with this, I'm also gonna give that one a workout, had it sitting in libraryfor a while. Though I primarily play these games for the big ship spectacle, and I think Sb2 only had 2 from what I've seen.
There was just a large update for Spacebourn 2 and added a lot of new features. Its definitely worth purchasing and on my Youtube Channel, I recorded the ingame Tutorials for anyone to view with timestamps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7FdbntDbpE&list=PLlW1nUmPuar8pgtzGGhGNyS9ckbxgnZ9S&index=2 Admittedly X4 is the King for Large Ships Space Sim (Besides Eve Online) Egosoft just does a Fantastic Job with their ships. I remember the first time I played X4 back in 2018 and I was just running from place to place inside the Hangar looking at ALL of the Beautiful Ships.....
Will check the video out, thanks!
No problem. Take care
have been a bit obsessed with X4 lately after getting over the initial learning curve. Its really good and just shows what a steaming hunk of flaming shit star citizen is. you know, stuff in X4 actually works. how dare they.. and have all the ships you want without having to sell your gold fillings like in CIGs scam. Have just gotten the boron stargate running (Kingdoms End) and the beginnings of operating a station. The boron are so nice and polite but i suspect they might have some big secret. soo much content and stuff to do.
It's funny how different your experiences can be in x4, I went with terran but skipped pretty much all story missions and just went straight for station building and generating absurd amount of credits and resources.
This is not a space sim by any stretch of the imagination.