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The economy isn't nearly as simulated (fake) as it was back in the X3s, but it leads to all kinds of issues. It still collapses, stalls to a halt, and brings any wars the engine was trying to produce to a halt as well.
Many features aren't working correctly. AI is still dumb as a bag of rocks. Carriers are about as useful as a bucket without a bottom. Wings and formations are useless. The list goes on.
The game is probably enjoyable for the first ten hours, as long as you stay in a single ship and don't try to use the economy or AI ships for any serious task. Or, if you hunt around and install some bug-fixing mods to try to get around other issues, you might make it to 20 or 30 hours before calling it quits.
Many people (myself included) have simply shelved the game until it's truly done. That won't be for 6-12 months post-release, similar to Rebirth, just a slightly truncated schedule. The unfortunate news is that assets at Egosoft are being diverted to new features (small and otherwise) instead of placed directly on the affected buggy/broken game systems.
2) The economy is based on war, which requires resources. There are no other "sinks" in the game. As said above, currently the war mechanic does not work, so the economy and the universe are pretty stale.
3) The is very immersive and enjoyable, in my opinion better than X3 and Rebirth, but I have stopped playing until the war and economy are fixed.
In my opinion X4 holds true to the X series and Egosoft is continuing their great work and support of their product. Yes X:Rebirth took time to fix but Egosoft did not just give up on a title that had bad reviews. Instead they listened to people and what they wanted and fixed it as much as they were able based on the concept they had for a series reboot.
Anyhow I continue to support Egosoft in the series and enjoy the game.
+1
400 hours in here. Happy to start again when the time comes. Not without its issue, but still enjoyable - and more so with every patch.
The economy does easily collapse without player intervention. Unlike the earlier games with the ware sinks, X4:F doesn't have those. If you can't build a ship because of missing wares, you can wait and hope the AI supplies them, or you can supply them yourself. If you have storage full of teladianium and no buyers, you have to wait for buyers. There may be nividium available to mine, but if there are no buyers, you just tied up a miner or two holding it.
Trading is still a bit of a mystery. I've seen too many runs of a small fraction of the cargo space used. I'd love to see players have more influence on the trades, or if that influence is already built into the game how to make it work.
As stated, trading is mysterious. Fleet managment is much less the desired, especially if you've played with CODEA in the X3 games. Main guns and turrets leave a lot to be desired; MARS from the X3 games comes to mind. Balances between the ships sizes need to be made. I mean, large ships that can fly faster than small ships? Ships with docks and hangers only able to launch one ship at a time?
As far as is it enjoyable? Over 600 hours and still playing it.
The economy is what really holds the game back mid-late game. That can be fixed with 2-3 mods.
This is my first X game. Never played before. For the first 20 hrs it was enjoyable to learn the mechanics, see how things worked and enjoy the view. After that you start to realize what a mess things really are.
If I knew then what I know now, I would have waited 6+ months or waited for it to be on sale for like -50% - 75% off. It's not worth full price, not even close.
The core of this game is very good, and you'll see that, but it's not even close to being finished.
The economy works better than some give it credit for, but its not a booming economy at game start and it will sometimes mean you actually have to wait for something. Statements that ship building is the only resource sink in the game are incorrect. The biggest sink in the game is station building which now takes both a lot of time and a HUGE amount of resources (particularly when you get into building large defense stations and mega plexes and you need 60k turret components and you realize that in the entire jump network there isn't 60k of turret components in stock so you'll have to wait for them to be produced and share that with other stations being built that are demanding them too, welcome to the reality of economics).
That said, some play thrus seem to do better than others. I think that's in part due to random variables and in part due to player actions or lack there of. I've got just over 380 hours in my current game and it has a thriving economy, lots of ship traffic, new stations constantly being built somewhere (by NPCs, thats not counting my own projects) and there's even three (now four if you count one I'm engaged in) shooting wars going. But when I played, if I saw a shortage in the economy I did something about it. First 200 hours of my game was mostly about trading and building things up. Now I've got a fleet and I'm taking over sectors.
X4 does not hold your hand and tell you what to do. It will not point out shortages for you. It will not tell you when, where and how to build your empire. Its a sandbox game, what you do and what your goals are are entirely up to you. But if you don't take the initiative on that, then you've got nothing. This isn't Skyrim with its main story line pestering you to death to go do some stupid quest and telling you exactly what to do step by step (whether you want to or not... as in, "oh golly ANOTHER plague victim reminding me to go do that stupid quest that I don't want to do" X games never do that, do what you want the game isn't going to bother you about it). In X4 you have to figure it all out. Granted, you currently have to figure out more than you should (like production on stations) because the encyclopedia and other things are incomplete and it makes figuring some things out harder than they should be because finding the info you need is harder than it should be.
But then like every X game, it seriously needs better tutorials. I should probably go write some.
Oh god no! Half the game is missing to be perfectly honest and judging from the amount of stuff that looks unfinished. For example, there's a short quest line to get a big station and then start doing some research. You get the station, you can do the research. The Boron mentions the research will cost something, but it actually cost you nothing currently. The quest line ends abruptly there. Even how the last bit of dialog you get from the Boron ends feels abrupt and unfinished, like a half written paragraph. Some have found unused dialog in the game files indicating the quest line is intended to go further. Then there's the SCA, a pirate faction, you can join them but its clearly not finished and you can't rank up with them. Currently you're better off not joining them IMO. So there's a lot that needs to be finished or improved as well as a lot of bugs that need to be fixed. That said, there's also a lot that is working so... its pretty much like every other X game at release. Do I wish EgoSoft would maybe set a higher bar for themself and try releasing an X game that was more finished and polished... maybe just for a change of pace and to shock all of us... sure. Not holding my breath waiting for it though.
The up side is EgoSoft is working at a steady pace to fix and finish things and we have a road map for the next patches and what to expect they will be working to fix or complete. So it is clear the game is going to get more polishing up, just like X3 did. Do you want to play now or wait til 2033... up to you.
4) Finally, a less objective question: is the game enjoyable regardless of everything else? Or does playing it feel like a chore?
Just over 380 hours in and yes and sometimes yes. The game is fun if you focus on what's there and enjoy the stuff that works. IMO station building in X4 is more fun and has more options than any other X game and if they continue to improve that and add to it it can only get better. It has more options, more aesthetics, and its more immersive. I'm hoping they'll add more structure / connector components and maybe some more station modules (I've got a wish list I posted) in the future that would make it even more fun and a more creative experience. Unlike X3 where you just bought a prebuilt station module, in X4 you plan your station, hire a builder, watch freighters bring in the large stockpile of materials needed to build it and if you hang around for the anywhere from 30 min to several hours to couple of DAYS it takes in real time for the construction to be completed you can actually watch it being built. That might be interesting to you or it might be like watching paint dry... that part is subjective. You don't have to wait for the whole build to finish for the completed parts to be useable, a docking bay can be landed on as soon as its finished. Factory modules try to start production as soon as they are completed (assuming they have the raw materials and storage space, you start learning this and planning large builds accordingly).
So, if you build stations (especially big ones) it helps drive the economy. But that also makes the economy more player-centric than perhaps it should have been. It does seem like if the player isn't doing things to drive the economy it tends to stagnate and not do much for a LONG time. If you want to do nothing but fly around in a fighter shooting at stuff, don't expect much else to happen in your game, it probably won't. This is very clearly a trading game and you are expected to be an intergral part of the economy, at least for now (I'm kind of hoping they change that in the future).
I don't disagree with some of the complaints, ships need rebalancing. Large freighters need more cargo space because they're way slower (yes their travel drive is much faster but they spend 5-6 min at every jump gate making the turn through the gate, do the math, a M freighter can be 3 sectors away in that same time and that's not counting using highways). Capital ships are disappointngly lightly armed and can be kind of weak especially once you figure out how to take them on (example from my War Reports from the Xenon Front thread. I took on a Behemoth class destroyer while I was in a Nemesis corvette, I made two passes, first one I just sprayed and scanned. Second pass I opened up on the destroyer and CRIPPLED it in just one pass. Most of the crew bailed and it had only 6 crew left only 2 of which were marines, I brought in my troop carrier, boarded with 44 marines and captured the ship with no losses an no damage to my ship... thats... disappointing. Kind of hilarious, but disappointing. Then there was that fight with a Xenon I and 6 Ks and I slaughtered them all because once you figure them out crippling them isn't all that hard and then its just a matter of pounding on them until they blow up.)
To sum up, there are parts of the game that are very enjoyable. Other things not so much. There's still a lot that needs a LOT of work. But some of the complaints are from people who I think want something from X4 that no X game has ever been, so not all the criticisms are fair IMO. Is X3 more polished, you betcha, but its had 14 years of polishing, if you want an apple to apple comparison come back to X4 in 2033 and see how polished it is then. But if you'd rather not wait, there is stuff you can enjoy now and other stuff that will frustrate you. If you are mainly interested in the war stuff, you'll likely be disappointed. The factions don't seem very good at waging war yet (I have seen two stations actually destroyed in my game by an NPC faction and far as I know I'm the only one to report seeing that.) The games economy is sluggish at first and there's not much going on. You won't see any big battles. I think that was deliberate on the part of EgoSoft to give players a chance to earn some cash and build up a mining and trade fleet, maybe build a station, before all heck breaks loose; but that's just a guess on my part. If you want to do trading and station building, that's working much better and is more enjoyable IMO (note: You'll want to learn how to work around the docking bug though).
Some things work, but its not intuitive as to how they work and that leads to people thinking some things are broken when they actually aren't they're just annoyingly implemented (again no surprise, EgoSoft is bad for non-intuitive stuff in all their games and in that regard X4 is no worse... but we all wish it had been better). Example, if you order your ships to attack a station, they'll attack but then they'll stop and they don't keep attacking until its destroyed. Well, that's because when you issue the attack order the ships target a specific part of the station not the entire station (remember its made of modules), when that part is destroyed, they wait for new orders rather than acquiring a new target. Not intuitive and its annoying and requires extra steps we all wish it didn't. But, if you take those ships and issue them a stack of 10 attack orders (group select, right click on the target station icon, select attack, do that 10 times... takes maybe 2 min at most), when their first target is destroyed they then acquire a new target and continue attacking without further intervention from you until either the station is destroyed or all 10 attack orders are "used up". If you have a small fleet, 10 attack orders generally is enough for me and you can mass issue the attack order to the entire group of ships (whether they are in "fleet" or not, just group select them and then tell them all to attack a target, be that a station, ship or whatever). It does work, its just not intuitive as to how it works.
On the other hand if you always wanted to enjoy boarding capital ships in X3 but hated the clunky system then you're probably going to love X4. The new boarding system is much better done, requires no micromanagement on your part. You tell the ships in your squadron what their marching orders are, when to launch boarding pods (what conditions) and even what to target on the enemy ship (engines, turrets, disable the ship, or just keep their distance and don't engage it). Then you start the attack and they generally do what they're supposed to with no further intervention from you. It's much more enjoyable than the X3 experience. But its also got its non-intuitive quirks and sometimes things glitch up and don't work the way they should. Example, when you add ships to your squadron (which you have to do for them to participate in the boarding action) they automatically get the defend your ship order. But this order means if you take fire during the attack phase to disable the target ship they may get issued an automatic attack order to attack and destroy the ship that supercedes the boarding orders. You can prevent this by either checking the ships and removing any attack orders that get issued (tedious) or when you add them to your squadron change that defend behavior to simply follow your ship, at which point boarding usually works fine with the other ships doing their job as expected. There's a couple of other things about boarding that need polishing up but overall the new system is a vast improvement over the old IMO.
There's that sort of problem with a lot of things, but its been that way in every X game so again, not really a surprise but doesn't stop us all from wishing that maybe it wasn't that way... just for once.
So, if you've bought the game, go play it and find out for yourself what you think. If you haven't bought it, wait or don't wait, that's up to you but consider this game an Early Access game with a Full Game price cause that's exactly what it is. To be honest if I gave this game a review currently it would be negative. But I've given every X game a negative review when I got it because all of them have been unfinished and full of bugs when released and I just can't give any game like that a positive review. That said, EgoSoft does have a track record of fixing things and polishing them up and it probably won't take them 14 years to fix this one up. Its got good bones already.
One last point, this game is far more modable than previous X games, so expect a lot more in the way of options, fixes and content from the modding community for this one as well. Put that in the Pro column I guess.
Anyway, hope you found that wall of text useful. Good luck out there and don't get stuck in any asteroids (but if you do you can shoot your way out, not kidding, it can and has happened).
As far as X3 games, X3:AP was far more buggy at release for me then X4 was. X4 has been playable (for me) since the release of the first patch. It was several months (4 I think?) before I was even able to play X3:AP because they didn't support my very new nVIDIA graphics card, and then after fixing that in the second patch, they broke DirectX. So X3:AP was unplayable for me during it's first 4 months or so. X3:TC was also buggy (maybe at the same level as X4 in my experience) but as others have said, it's harder to compare X3 games to X4 due to the massive amount of updates that have been released since the birth of the X3 line. If X4 was as old as X3, it would work just as good as those.