Wont Refund! Confusing Buggy "Game" - Worse tutorials ever!

[Mark the Mysterious]

As a happy player of Elite Dangerous, I bought this "game" as it's similar and I love space sims. However, I... (now bare in mind, I got Elite Dangerous to work and started playing within an hour, and have not looked back 100+ hours in).... but in this game I spent hours trying to work out what the hell they are even talking about in the terrible tutorials. "Click THIS THERE" but they don't tell you what the "THIS" is or where it is... so over to another Google search "where is the "THIS" in x4 game", then wade through another forum to just simply do a "click here" in a tutorial.

Then the tutorial would just stop functioning and the "Abort Tutorial" button would stop functioning. So would have to start a "New Game" AGAIN. After this about 3 hours of absolute frustration, I finally said; "Lets just try and play this thing",

So I started with a Young Cadet start... Accepted a mission and this is when the crappy flying mechanics, odd ship behaviour, and the so called "right click to scan" feature also failed to function. "Right click the ship to scan it" Sure... right clicks....nothing.... right clicks.... nothing.... right click faster than an auto clicker still nothing. Left clicks, then right clicks... ah there it is, scan... Typical of the frustration this "Game" causes.

Then for no apparent reason I'm in "Travel Mode", then a ship starts to attack me, and despite doing the targetting tutorial and binding a key on my HOTUS 30 minutes earlier, and clicking that key, no targetting would work. So after 15 minutes of dogfighting with terrible flying mechanics, no targetting, and stuck in the middle of nowhere due to a travel mode trip I never even asked for, I was DONE!

So I actually played the game for about 45 minutes to an hour (Which was buggy and frustrating), but spent 3 hours just trying to do the "tutorials" which also were buggy and confusing. I for the FIRST TIME EVER asked for a refund. I explained all the above... REFUSED BECAUSE YOU HAVE PLAYED FOR 4 HOURS! Yeh right "PLAYED".

So I asked again explaining the above differently.... REFUSED again...

So I asked again explaining the Buggy elements in more detail... Waiting for the verdict on that one...

[SigmaSquadron]

Are we playing the same game? There is nothing attacking you in the flight school tutorial. X4 is a difficult game to get into - don't expect perfection. The controls might not feel very intuitive now (e.g. right-clicking to open a ship's context menu to scan them), but if you give the game a chance, you'll be effortlessly using keyboard shortcuts.

Try starting as a Terran Cadet if you have Cradle of Humanity, as that gamestart guides you through a not insignificant portion of the game.

Also, refunds are automatically rejected by Steam after 119 minutes of playtime. I don't know how you managed to waste 3 hours in two 10 minute tutorials, but you can't get a refund anymore.

[ZeroAffex]

One of those post where I am not sure I even want to bother but here goes; Sounds like you were taking on too much at once. This is not Elite Dangerous, or Fornite, or Apex or some other game that can be mastered in a matter of minutes by a 5 yr old. There's a lot to learn when it comes to X4 and if you go into the game expecting to be a space god within an hour of playtime, that's on you.

I am not sure why you feel like you need to rush to learn everything so fast and even skipped on finishing the remaining learning scenarios throwing yourself into the game without being ready. That only hurt your experience further and upset you more which is what lead you to this post am sure.

X4 is a sandbox with a simulated universe that offers you complete freedom to play how you want to play. It does require learning though, 90% of which can be done just playing the game and taking things slow and really absorbing what's going on around you.

What you perceive as 'bugs' are more than likely just misunderstanding what to do. It happens. This game does have bugs from time to time but at this stage in development, they're more uncommon than not. What is more likely going on is your not slowing down to fully read what is being told to you or skipping crucial pieces of information that causing kinks into everything else.

I am not sure what you're hoping to gain from this thread though other than to blow off some steam? If you'd like some assistance in getting going into the beautiful world of X4 and to start unlocking all the amazing potential it has, let us know and many of the awesome folks in this community would be willing to extend a hand to you. There is a lot to learn but if you stick with it, it will be well worth it. You say you're a 100 hours into ED? Well, congrats, you've literally probably seen and done everything that game has to offer. I capped at out a 200 hours with ED and that last 75 or so was just mindllessly mining for credits as I already bought everything in the game and did everything I could do.

I am nearing 900 hours with X4 and still only scratched the surface. It's very deep and the replay value is off the chart. It's nothing like ED, or NMS or any other space sim out there. There's always so much to do and even after all these hours, am still learning new things. But this is not the type of game that's going to give you instant gratification. If you need that in your games, you chose the wrong one.

Anyways. If you just needed to vent. Totally understand. Sorry you had a rough go of it and I hope you don't give up on this game. Being your a fan of ED, I think you'd really like this game if you give it a fair shake. You just need to unlearn all the bad habits mainstream games gave you and go into X4 with a more open mindset. Don't beat yourself up if something doesn't make sense. Take it slow. Do what you want to do. There's no punishment for taking too long or time constraints. You'll never mess up too bad to have to restart either. It's your universe out there. Just need to find what makes you happy and learn stuff at your own pace.

If you'd like some advise on stuff or what not. Hit us up! If not, that's fine too. Take care!

[uni790]

Steam refunds are only good to 2 hours, or 2 weeks, you're s.o.l. otherwise.

Despite all that, I ran the tutorials without issue, and can play just fine, since picking it up I've seen actual bugs in the game twice.

Travel drive is something you activate yourself, on KB/M it's shift+1(I believe, been a while) no idea what you may have mapped it to on your controller.

Scanning a target means you must have them targeted, that bit makes perfect sense, you also need to be really close, User error here.

Does seem like a lot of your problems are stemming from a controller that may not be entirely supported, if it's losing/forgetting keybinds, or things regarding controls aren't working quite right. Remember there are a huge number of different kinds of flight sticks out there, they won't all function properly in every game. Plus I'm not entirely sure where you'd find space on one to map all the buttons you'll need here.

Also, I feel I must point out, the only thing in common the X series has with elite dangerous, is that it's set in space, X here is closer to a 4x genre game(empire building and everything), where elite is basically just a dogfighter.

[ZeroAffex]

Oh yeah. I'd recommend not using HOTAS until you master kb+m gameplay and know all the shortcuts. You're just adding extra confusion to yourself going into X4 with a stick. Most of the game can be played without even flying and some don't fly barely at all and some fly all the time. It's up to you at the end of the day but yeah, just remembered I forgot to mention that I'd strongly advise just learning the game the oldschool way then when you have a good grasp on the mechanics and feel comfortable with the keybindings, add back your flight stick.

[ZeroAffex]

Originally posted by uni790:

the only thing in common the X series has with elite dangerous, is that it's set in space, X here is closer to a 4x genre game(empire building and everything), where elite is basically just a dogfighter.

Exactly, my thoughts as well. ED vs. X4 is apples to oranges.

[Mark the Mysterious]

To ZeroAffex: Thanks and I did read your whole post. To be clear, I was looking for something more in depth. Yes, I like ED, but there is a lot of grind in ED. It was the fact that I could see (in perhaps a month or two) ED would get a bit "same-old" that I looked around for something deeper. I did a LOT of research. Rejected No Mans Sky, Star Citizen has promise, but there is something wrong with a half a billion dollar game not being completed after 10 years (bad management who knows?).

It's a common complaint about ED that it's; "a massive game only an inch deep". So I looked for something with a bit more depth, because I'm enjoying ED so much, i did not want that to end and figured I should put my time into something that remains interesting. I only really bring up ED to make the point that I worked out the flying, I have done deep core mining, laser mining, Discovery missions and worked up to 250 million, upgraded 3 ships, bought new ships, set up the HOTAS etc etc, oh and done combat and done pretty well for an old guy! I mentioned ED to make the point that I can and will persevere on a game.

Now maybe it's my age, but those tutorials. They are really frustrating. They would just assume too much. I have seen lots of complaints about those tutorials. I even thought to myself, if I get into this game I could do these way better. IMO, it's unfair to count tutorials as "Game Play", but I get that they are in game so they count towards the counter. Still think it's unfair.

To SigmaSquadron: No after working through about 4 or 5? tutorials and having them just stop working, then clicking "Abort Tutorial" and have nothing happen. and being stuck midway through a tutorial, I cannot "abort" out of, or complete, I would keep starting a "New Game". After this happening over and over, I just decided to try the game and just see if I can work-it-out-as-I-go. So I went into the "The Young Gun" which was recommended as a good start. In that start, I accepted a mission, which was "Scan ships for power cells". I did that on about 5 ships, after working out you don't right click as the tutorial says, you left click then right click. Then when you do scan the ship, this mass of information appears. No idea is that ship info will show "power cells". So I kept going. Then I realise that I'm flying really fast, like in "Travel Mode", No idea how that even happened. My HOTAS slider was low (bound to acceleration) etc. So I stopped, was trying to look around and see what happened? where am I now? How to get back? I start to get attacked. So I was flying around counter attacking and trying to use the target feature, it would not target. ESC, look at key bindings... yep bound OK... back to game, no target. So I flew around with this ship in circles for 15 minutes trying to shoot without targetting. It was at this point after (surprising to me 4 hours) of "Play" I was so frustrated with EVERY aspect of this game that I just figured, "I'm DONE". I WANTED it to be a good game, I REALLY wanted it to be good.... still do... And, had Steam just refunded me, I would have gone quietly into the night. Instead, here I am.

To uni790: I have a Thrustmaster HOTAS, I did check the bindings in game, when the targetting was not working. I was close enough to see the ships details. Maybe it's me but had no problems elsewhere so I'm basing this on the fact that I have purchased and played 30 or so games (not all on Steam) and never refunded once. Never felt the need to. Yeh some games turn out to be boring or whatever, but not frustrating and IMO buggy like this. I know you could think; I'm labelling my mistakes as bugs, perhaps in some cases, but when I try again and again to target, esc, check the bindings, try again, think I'm too far, get closer, try again and again. I don't know what to think.

[bloodymonarch]

Originally posted by Mark the Mysterious:

To ZeroAffex: Thanks and I did read your whole post. To be clear, I was looking for something more in depth. Yes, I like ED, but there is a lot of grind in ED. It was the fact that I could see (in perhaps a month or two) ED would get a bit "same-old" that I looked around for something deeper. I did a LOT of research. Rejected No Mans Sky, Star Citizen has promise, but there is something wrong with a half a billion dollar game not being completed after 10 years (bad management who knows?).

It's a common complaint about ED that it's; "a massive game only an inch deep". So I looked for something with a bit more depth, because I'm enjoying ED so much, i did not want that to end and figured I should put my time into something that remains interesting. I only really bring up ED to make the point that I worked out the flying, I have done deep core mining, laser mining, Discovery missions and worked up to 250 million, upgraded 3 ships, bought new ships, set up the HOTAS etc etc, oh and done combat and done pretty well for an old guy! I mentioned ED to make the point that I can and will persevere on a game.

Now maybe it's my age, but those tutorials. They are really frustrating. They would just assume too much. I have seen lots of complaints about those tutorials. I even thought to myself, if I get into this game I could do these way better. IMO, it's unfair to count tutorials as "Game Play", but I get that they are in game so they count towards the counter. Still think it's unfair.

To SigmaSquadron: No after working through about 4 or 5? tutorials and having them just stop working, then clicking "Abort Tutorial" and have nothing happen. and being stuck midway through a tutorial, I cannot "abort" out of, or complete, I would keep starting a "New Game". After this happening over and over, I just decided to try the game and just see if I can work-it-out-as-I-go. So I went into the "The Young Gun" which was recommended as a good start. In that start, I accepted a mission, which was "Scan ships for power cells". I did that on about 5 ships, after working out you don't right click as the tutorial says, you left click then right click. Then when you do scan the ship, this mass of information appears. No idea is that ship info will show "power cells". So I kept going. Then I realise that I'm flying really fast, like in "Travel Mode", No idea how that even happened. My HOTAS slider was low (bound to acceleration) etc. So I stopped, was trying to look around and see what happened? where am I now? How to get back? I start to get attacked. So I was flying around counter attacking and trying to use the target feature, it would not target. ESC, look at key bindings... yep bound OK... back to game, no target. So I flew around with this ship in circles for 15 minutes trying to shoot without targetting. It was at this point after (surprising to me 4 hours) of "Play" I was so frustrated with EVERY aspect of this game that I just figured, "I'm DONE". I WANTED it to be a good game, I REALLY wanted it to be good.... still do... And, had Steam just refunded me, I would have gone quietly into the night. Instead, here I am.

To uni790: I have a Thrustmaster HOTAS, I did check the bindings in game, when the targetting was not working. I was close enough to see the ships details. Maybe it's me but had no problems elsewhere so I'm basing this on the fact that I have purchased and played 30 or so games (not all on Steam) and never refunded once. Never felt the need to. Yeh some games turn out to be boring or whatever, but not frustrating and IMO buggy like this. I know you could think; I'm labelling my mistakes as bugs, perhaps in some cases, but when I try again and again to target, esc, check the bindings, try again, think I'm too far, get closer, try again and again. I don't know what to think.

There are great youtube video tutorials on this game. Try the Captain Collins channel.

[eMYNOCK]

@OP
you had a hell of a start... thats for sure... i won't blame you for getting frustrated and resorting to vent it out.. good thing you decided to vent and not just suck it up though.

ok... first... welcome to the community... yes.. you are stuck with us now... at least i hope so.

next.. don't look at my tag.. thats just a shiny trinket... i am just a normal player like everyone else here.

third... i highly recommend that you revert your settings back to default, unplug your hotas and resort to keyboard and mouse for now... don't worry.. you can bring the hotas back at any time later down the road.... to learn the game however you won't need it.

imagine the first few hours, days... an eternity of suffering... in X as the Cave of Evil... *clears throat* your weapon, you won't need.

ok, now with that out of the way... familarize your self with the game... either in one of the tutorials that should now show the bindings they are intended to show... or through live play.

i'd suggest live play as your hands on tutorial... all the important things will be covered the first time you actually need them.

that all said.. if you have questions about how to do this or that or what ever might bug you... just ask.. the forum is "staffed" by fellow traders, moguls and admirals almost 24/7.


oh.. and to cheer you up... rumors say that i was an intern who was sealed in the old HQ Basement, forced to hack my way into the WiFi, surviving on Pizza leftovers...
still haven't seen any Pizza down here...

[Mark the Mysterious]

Originally posted by eMYNOCK:

@OP
you had a hell of a start... thats for sure... i won't blame you for getting frustrated and resorting to vent it out.. good thing you decided to vent and not just suck it up though.

ok... first... welcome to the community... yes.. you are stuck with us now... at least i hope so.

next.. don't look at my tag.. thats just a shiny trinket... i am just a normal player like everyone else here.

third... i highly recommend that you revert your settings back to default, unplug your hotas and resort to keyboard and mouse for now... don't worry.. you can bring the hotas back at any time later down the road.... to learn the game however you won't need it.

imagine the first few hours, days... an eternity of suffering... in X as the Cave of Evil... *clears throat* your weapon, you won't need.

ok, now with that out of the way... familarize your self with the game... either in one of the tutorials that should now show the bindings they are intended to show... or through live play.

i'd suggest live play as your hands on tutorial... all the important things will be covered the first time you actually need them.

that all said.. if you have questions about how to do this or that or what ever might bug you... just ask.. the forum is "staffed" by fellow traders, moguls and admirals almost 24/7.


oh.. and to cheer you up... rumors say that i was an intern who was sealed in the old HQ Basement, forced to hack my way into the WiFi, surviving on Pizza leftovers...
still haven't seen any Pizza down here...

Thanks. I appreciate the reply. Yep, I got REALLY frustrated. One could argue it's valid, but still best not to. :-) (personal growth wise) . I think the biggest thing that lead me to VENT is the absolute rejection of a refund, with no opportunity to even appeal/discuss/debate... Just NOPE! And I'm a fighter, So I could not get to steam to listen, so it overflowed here.

in the next few days, I will consider removing my bad review IF I realise I'm more pissed at Steam than the Game creators... it does bring up a point however IMO, 2 hours may be plenty for most games, but as everyone admits, this game is slow to get into and master, 2 hours is not enough for such a deep game.

And I since had a conversation with a 14 year old heavy gamer who writes mod packs for games etc... I told him one incident in the tutorials where it told me to look in the "Ticker"... and he had no idea what that was. I assumed it was just me not knowing what a "ticker" is in a game. As an old stock trader, a "ticker" has a different meaning. Well... there I am, in a tutorial, being told to look in the "Ticker" which I can even find... Searching through all the ship menus, looking on Google for info on where the "ticker" is in x4 etc etc. Then after all this, I realize they mean the info box in the bottom left of the screen. "Ticker" why call it that? Then when I do finally realize, I look at the info and it's so unhelpful that it's useless, and why I did not even clue in that was the "Ticker". To me, this is really frustrating, yeh one little thing, but being stuck middle of a "tutorial" confused about what they are telling me, was so unnecessary.

So IMO, the game creators REALLY need to work on those. One thing I know from my years of programming and interface design is you NEVER let programmers do tutorials, because they can't even fathom what the student may not understand. In fact, you want somebody as close to being a beginner as possible writing the tutorials, as they are still in the struggling to understand phase and will zero in on things that don't make sense. Maybe they should hire me, I'll get that product whipped into shape (Spent 4 years teaching "interface design and programming" at a collage so I know how to do tutorials).

[eMYNOCK]

ye, that happens when an artists or programmer has to do interfaces and it somehow is still better than the old interface ever was...

don't get me wrong here.. the older games still have a place in my collection... but by todays gameplay... i they are not really comparable anymore.

[Myztkl©-Kev]

the tutorials should highlight every single menu option it's directing you to, it also usually correctly tells you the keyboard shortcut (even if you changed the keys). I had to recently re-do all the tutorials because I haven't played the game since launch and I didn't have problems finding anything, but I've also played X3 and like I said previously played X4 so maybe I had an advantage there? I don't know, but the game is basically unplayable without the tutorials and I never got confused by them personally. You definitely need to be patient with the game when first learning it though, but the game is great once you figure it out. Since you're stuck with the game now, I hope you give it a second chance. I also recommend changing the mouse click mode in the settings, personally I need it. The game does have wonky flying and combat controls but once you get used to it, you'll appreciate the being able to click everything to interact/select/target aspect of it.

[winslm]

Sounds a lot like my review... The tutorials are junk. Youtube does a much better job.. I think current game publishers just want a youtuber to do it for free.

I hate that this game has always been 90% finished ... 10% buggy junk... 50% wonderful amazing stuff... 40% tedium...

[Hanalyd]

Originally posted by Mark the Mysterious:

As a happy player of Elite Dangerous, I bought this "game" as it's similar and I love space sims. However, I... (now bare in mind, I got Elite Dangerous to work and started playing within an hour, and have not looked back 100+ hours in).... but in this game I spent hours trying to work out what the hell they are even talking about in the terrible tutorials. "Click THIS THERE" but they don't tell you what the "THIS" is or where it is... so over to another Google search "where is the "THIS" in x4 game", then wade through another forum to just simply do a "click here" in a tutorial.

Then the tutorial would just stop functioning and the "Abort Tutorial" button would stop functioning. So would have to start a "New Game" AGAIN. After this about 3 hours of absolute frustration, I finally said; "Lets just try and play this thing",

So I started with a Young Cadet start... Accepted a mission and this is when the crappy flying mechanics, odd ship behaviour, and the so called "right click to scan" feature also failed to function. "Right click the ship to scan it" Sure... right clicks....nothing.... right clicks.... nothing.... right click faster than an auto clicker still nothing. Left clicks, then right clicks... ah there it is, scan... Typical of the frustration this "Game" causes.

Then for no apparent reason I'm in "Travel Mode", then a ship starts to attack me, and despite doing the targetting tutorial and binding a key on my HOTUS 30 minutes earlier, and clicking that key, no targetting would work. So after 15 minutes of dogfighting with terrible flying mechanics, no targetting, and stuck in the middle of nowhere due to a travel mode trip I never even asked for, I was DONE!

So I actually played the game for about 45 minutes to an hour (Which was buggy and frustrating), but spent 3 hours just trying to do the "tutorials" which also were buggy and confusing. I for the FIRST TIME EVER asked for a refund. I explained all the above... REFUSED BECAUSE YOU HAVE PLAYED FOR 4 HOURS! Yeh right "PLAYED".

So I asked again explaining the above differently.... REFUSED again...

So I asked again explaining the Buggy elements in more detail... Waiting for the verdict on that one...

Sorry but this was just pure amusement and brought me laughter.
Thanks!

But next to that you play this with Elite! in mind where you compare it when both games are not similar at all.
The only similar thing is space and space ships.
Plus you are one of the rare flowers that use a HOTAS with X4 whilst the majority uses mouse and keyboard.

If you would have seen several gameplay videos (which I recommend anyone doing before they tend to buy a game and then complain about it) you could have seen that this game is nothing like Elite!.

The most similar to Elite! at this moment is basically Star Citizen.
But since you call this game buggy then don't even bother buying Star Citizen.
Maybe in 20+ years when it is "almost" released.

As for the non refundable...
Welcome to the club.
I once bought a game for 90 bucks and started it then went to go to the toilet and then the wife told me to come help cook.
After dinner I went to play the game for 50 minutes and didn't like it...
Bye bye refund because it said I had been playing for 5 hours...
I should have quit the game before I went away.
So it was my own damn fault.

[Chico Rodriguez]

So confused, OP. This game is great. I never tried any of the tutorials though, and I've played almost 400 hours now...

[ZeroAffex]

Hooray! Sounds like you're sticking around OP? If so, AWESOME stuff and welcome to the fold gentle pilot! There's been a lot of good tips in here already. I think maybe what your issue could of been is the tutorials not being designed around flightsticks like eMYNOCK said. That's not to say the game doesn't support them, just that those scenarios were more for kb+m (think maybe xbox controller too? not sure).

Main thing, is just take it slow. There's no rush here. The slower you go and just immerse yourself in the world, the better. It will seem very unintuitive, foreign and even broken at times but once you start getting things down, you'll see why things are designed the way they are and how much freedom you actually have in this game. You can really do things down to the smallest detail and micromanage your guts out (like me!) or automate most things and focus on what makes you happy. You can play in first person, 3rd person or solely from the map. It really caters to you and what you like in your games.

You don't have to be a trader. You can be all sorts of things. There's no 'class' per say. It's more like if you were to step outside your house and suddenly have all the tools and weapons at your disposal to do whatever whether go into bounty hunting, law enforcement, trading, pirating, salvaging and anything else you can dream up.

Like for instance, you can ignore building stuff and just get a fleet of ships to go steal ships by boarding them with marines. Then take those ships to either retrofit and adopt into your fleet or sell for serious amounts of creds.

You can pick up missions and quest and if you're not enjoying them, drop them at any point in time or simply stop midway through and do something else. You can help factions grow by supplying their needs, in time watching them expand and their prices for selling you stuff decrease or you can wipe them out--sometimes without directly engaging them. It's a lot of fun to fight factions in proxy wars, supplying their enemies with ships and keeping them well supplied to watch them get trampled without them even knowing you had planned out their demise the entire time. Some real Emperor Palpatine type stuff.

Anyways, I think if you give this game some time and stick with it. You're going to look back and realize you almost made a HUGE mistake refunding it and might even feel a bit sad for giving it a thumbs down but who knows! I do know that X4 is an incredibly underrated space game gem that doesn't get enough love. The scope of what you can do in these games is unreal. If you ever wanted a game that keeps you up at night laying in your bed thinking about what you plan to do next next time you sit down to play, this is the game. It takes a little time, mainly just getting over the learning hump but once you do, you'll see why many of us think it's the best space game ever. I'd argue it's the best game in general I've ever played. I just love it and can't get enough.

I digress. If you or any other newer players need help, don't forget to reach out! Don't let yourself get upset if you can't figure something out. It's totally natural. Most of everything can be figured out in game but sometimes it's just easier to reach out to someone which is what I suggest. Hit us up here on the forums or head over to the discord/official website. As I said before, there's lots of awesome people here always willing to help out. All anyone has to do is ask!

Welcome to X4 though. May you find prosperity, serenity and as a good Teladi would say, "many profitsss".

PS: Here's a few links I got for you you may appreciate.

Every important link you'll ever need to stay in touch with Egosoft

[linktr.ee]

5.0 guide for beginners by RuggedGamer (little out of date now but still great for basics)

X4 Wiki

[www.egosoft.com]

Station module calculator

[x4-game.com]

Resource map (a little outdated now but still good!)

[www.qsna.eu]

Ultimate Guide for dealing with Kha'ak (you'll appreciate this later)