Same - weekend cant get here fast enough! Oh wait…I am home every damn day these days! I can play today! :-D
This or Bannerlords this weekend. Plus I have a castle that won’t build itself in Conan Exiles. Those Split ships do look mighty nice.
“Both” is the only correct answer. ;)
So far so good. Feels quite smooth and improved. Still adorably janky. Of course, the proof is in the long term stability of the war and economic simulations.
How hard is this game to learn?
The initial WTF factor is high. In other words, you might not have any idea what to do at first. But you can learn the systems incrementally. It’s not that bad. Just be prepared to do a little googling and/or guide watching.
I played a lot of X3 but barely touched X4 at launch when it was clear it needed a lot more time in the oven. I just fired up a new game with one of the Split starts and… yep. WTF factor indeed, haha. I literally had no idea how to really even get going. I have to go through the learning curve all over again.
With how finicky it looks, does it all gel and remain fun, or does part of it end up feeling like you’ve taken on a second job? (I know, it is different for each person)
X3 was way worth the time investment for me. That game was fantastic once I got the hang of it. I’m expecting the same to hold true in X4 for me.
I really like this guy Werit. He deserves a lot more subscribers than he has.
So hard to answer this, as you imply and further might imagine. There are a lot of systems at work in X4 so the potential is there to keep you going for ages. The balance was all out of whack at first however so it wasn’t that fun after a while. For some, it was way too easy to make $. It was never a 2nd job issue with X4. No idea about how that part of it is now.
As far as the streamlining goes, it seems a lot easier to manage large efforts in X4 than it was in X3 and before. So, again, there’s a lot of potential for improvement in the ways you are asking about, but the jury is out.
Heh. I started up a basic game to make sure I could still play it. I saw what some of those initial Split scenarios looked like and lost control of my bladder.
The fun of course is learning the systems. You can’t get that feeling back once you arrive at some level of mastery. It’s a good game that always keeps you searching for something new to master.
Considering jumping in, can any X3 veterans tell me where X4 is in terms of balance and content compared to X3? I’m strictly refering to the mechanics that worked well in X3, the size of the universe etc. Also, how is the modding community? Anything as good as Litcube out there?
It is better balanced than X3 at this point. That’s not really an achievement, but it is. More importantly to me at least, it’s substantially less fake than X3 is. I’ve restarted a few times and the universe ends up in a different state every time and not just because I put factories in different places. Mods make that even more noticeable.
X3 ended up with about 2.5 full games of content, so X4 does not have that and it probably never will. Same with universe size, although in that case personally I think nothing of value was lost.
This is absolutely key for me. X3, as much as I loved it, lost a lot of its appeal once I realized how faked a lot of the simulation was. What originally felt like some vast sandbox ended up being an illusion and I realized I couldn’t really affect much change in the universe state. I know mods tried to do stuff with this, but I never got around to playing with them.
X4, on the other hand, has a fully simulated economy. Enemy factions fight and take over territory. Their economy can stall if they lose key infrastructure. Space stations can be blown up and need to be rebuilt. From what I understand, every item available in the game is actually sourced and produced by factories.
When X4 launched, this where a lot of its problems came from. It was really ambitious but unfortunately such a complex interconnected economy could and would go off the rails. The economy would stall which meant no one was producing ships which meant no one was fighting wars and eventually everything became stagnant. I know 3.0 has been in Beta for a while and I’ve heard a lot of good things about the current state of the game.
Also, something I didn’t know when X4 first launched: The visual effects of X4 were really crap (talking about weapons and explosions and stuff). Like big step back from X: Rebirth kind of crap. Turns out that for X4 they ditched DirectX and retooled for Vulcan but up until 3.0, they hadn’t gotten their new particle system in place. All the particle effects were being run off of CPU instead of GPU which is very inefficient, so they had to really tone everything down. I noticed right way after firing up X4 just now (I played the Combat Tutorial, that is really cool) and was really surprised at how much better the game looks now. Plus, those Split ships are sexy.
Anyway, X4 needed a LOT of work when it released which is why I shelved it for so long. I feel like it’s finally ripe now on 3.0. @Rod_Humble, if you haven’t tried 3.0 yet you need to give it a shot if you have some quarantine free time when not working on your new studio. :)
Giving up, As a life long egosoft fan from the original series and back. I’m out. This is just junk and sadly no way they can save it. I uninstalled after giving it another 6 or 7 hours of playtime. I was bored the whole time.
Too bad you’re bounced off it, I’m having a good time with 3.0 so far. Just started out with one the Split starts and I’m sticking my nose in a capital ship brawl between three Teladi Phoenix sentinels and a Split Rattlesnake raider with its accompanying fighter screen. Spectacle aside, it’s been a huge boost to my start because I’m scavenging some valuable stuff from the wreckage.
Cheers! I will!
By the way, if anyone is having low framerates particularly in places like when walking in stations or flying in certain asteroid fields, it seems to be anti-aliasing that’s murdering my performance. Game ran great except for those few situations where it would just chug and other settings weren’t making much of a difference. Dropped AA down and it was smooth as butter. Kind of caught me off guard, as AA really hasn’t been a performance hit form in a long time.
Also, the VRO mod for this seems great so far.