X-Rebirth

[Raapys]

highways with their minigames are just plainly bad. Fortunately there is a mod to switch them off (may break the economy to some extent).

Good one! Implying that there's an economy in the game, quite clever.

It's strange though. You expect lots of smaller bugs and a few big ones in a game of this(dumbed down) scale. Yet they've somehow achieved making a game where practically nothing works. Only reliable things in the game are the minigames.

 

[mikaelis]

Good one! Implying that there's an economy in the game, quite clever.

It's strange though. You expect lots of smaller bugs and a few big ones in a game of this(dumbed down) scale. Yet they've somehow achieved making a game where practically nothing works. Only reliable things in the game are the minigames.

Can't comment on that one either. But I wouldn't be surprised if there is none of the economy to speak about. As I said, I rage-quit and applied uninstall.exe mod far earlier to actually test it.

Oh, I forgot to mention: Hunting those small icons around the stations and employing radial menu with your XBAWX controller to respond to them is also something that will haunt me till my death for sure. Even if I was only exposed for 10 minutes or so... Because pressing ctrl-D for docking or communicating with stations/ships with one key (forgot now which one) in X3:TC was sooooooooooo fucking complicated....

My butt hurts and my head is exploding with stars

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i wish you could understand italian: there's this guy on a forum saying the impossible and beyond in the attempt to defend this game.
in his last message he said that people who pirated the game (implying that was me, but actually i don't want to touch this game even with a 3 foot long spiked mace) are not allowed to have an opinion.
hilarious!

 

[mikaelis]

he said that people who pirated the game

If only bro, if only....

Alas, I did not, and so I fully deserve this tag:

http://www.cretin-derhamhall.org/63_50th_reunion.aspx

 

[Xi]

Based on my own experience, of probably 8-10 hours of play, the game has potential. I don't think we'll see this potential realized until an expansion (or two) has been released. There are a shitload of really easy UI fixes that could be done. Seriously. Not to mention, some of the constant dialog repeats "Show me your wares" could be removed. Or likewise, when I go into a UI screen in the cockpit, I don't need both my co-pilot and the computer AI saying essentially the same thing twice, EVERYTIME I do it.

The cockpit isn't a bad idea, but locking the player to the cockpit and forcing the use of gimmickly in game monitors and shit is stupid. It's difficult to read and slow (I mean how many hours will be wasted waiting for the character to turn and look at a screen, or get up and walk to the back of the ship?). ALL of this stuff needs to go. There's no saving it. Give us a straight forward interface, with ALL the info in a single menu. Allow us to choose within this menu, ALL options. I don't want to talk to my other ship captains, I want to issue them orders. If they respond with some spoken dialog afterwards, that's fine, but I do not need to see a short video of them saying the same thing over and over.

Currently, the gameplay mechanics need a LOT of refactoring. Using the Long range scanner, for instance, is a chore because you have to reuse it several times over and over as you fly toward tiny objects in space. Why not keep those things marked until you turn away from them? There's no reason to keep spamming the same thing over and over, I mean my advanced ship computers should be able to remember the locations. Poorly implemented.

Docking at a station is pointless because it only serves as a walking simulator. There is nothing interesting inside the stations. Just show me a list of the specific people present in the station at that time. This is the type of thing I can see coming in an expansion where ALL the expansion content focuses on station gameplay. I mean, why have all the lootable containers? It's a pointless mechanic. The station guards don't even care if you run around and steal shit in front of them. Just cut the mechanic out of the game and refine it in an expac.

There do not seem to be a lot of ship upgrades (though I admit I may not have found everything). If I can only pilot one ship, it needs a LOT more depth than it currently has. The list of upgrades I've seen a tiny. The list of purchasable ships is small, and the upgrade lists for those seems similarly small.

Exploring space is fucking difficult. It's so hard to find relevant information about locations that I don;t know what to expect. I find myself just randomly roaming about hoping that I stumble on trade deals, or story elements. The map system utterly blows. You need to ditch ALL the numbered name references and switch to pure naming systems. No one can remember the numbered systems. Also, you need to allow information about the systems to be easily readable. They should include a menu option that lists everything that the player has uncovered about them. This way we can make intelligent decisions about where to go. I would rather have a 2D map if this is the shit I have to deal with.

Anyway, I could go on and on. There's so much wrong with the game. I retract my previous statement that it was looking good. The game feels like it's in an alpha state. This is no beta. The potential is there, but there's no easy fix. This is gonna require a lot of developer time to refactor many of the design choices.

Here's what the Long Range scanning gameplay is like:



Gather Port info, Talking to NPCs, Randomness:

 

[Xi]

This guy on the Egosoft forum nails it IMHO (Kruniac):

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=349976

Welp. I usually don't make threads like this on any game forum, no matter how bad the game is (X-COM anyone?), but oh boy...

Oh. Boy.

You folks really did it this time. You've taken a visually impressive game and filled it with so much garbage that it's absolutely worthless.

Let's forget about the fact that you've stated that this isn't "An X sequel". Okay. That just makes you an idiot, as that would sell extremely well, but let's put that aside. Let's cater to the numb minded folks out there (this is just a generalization, mind you) in console land and make something with a little more hand holding, which looks nicer.

Alright. I'll accept that.

So let's forget about the one ship thing, too. Alright, we'll streamline that. Can't have people getting confused by what ship is best for what, etc. No problem. You aren't capable of modelling and coding piloting so many ships. I understand that - I'm a game dev, I get it. Budgets, deadlines, etc. Alrighty.

So you showcase your visually stunning universe. Hey, modular station-cities! That's pretty nice. Blowing the guns off of ships. Woo! A nice improvement.

Here's where we get into the territory of "Hey. This is a REALLY bad game."

You let us walk around in stations/ships. Except we can't walk around in ships. We get a fenced in area to play in.

Your UI is godshitawful. I mean AWFUL. Not only that, but you can't even speak to an NPC unless you are in precisely the right position. This isn't a feature, this is sloppy dev work. You should know better than this. I understand you guys haven't had to work with positional selection activation of menus - you just had to be within 5km of something for a UI menu to pop up. But seriously. Google that shit. You should have been fired for this mistake alone. Moving on.

HEY. I WANNA COLLECT CRATES! YEAH! SPACE EXPLORATION/SIMULATION/BLAHBLAH! YEAH! CRATES!

Yet another autist feature. Did you REALLY, and I mean REAAAAAALLY think that this was a good idea? Who do you people have for your game design? Fire him. Now. Like literally right now.

Collecting totally random lewts from crates (and ESPECIALLY in FRONT of SECURITY OFFICERS) is idiotic. It's a pointless feature. If this falls in the category of "rewarding you for exploring the universe" - stahp. Gooby pls. Stahp. This isn't rewarding us for exploring the universe. It's handing out random crap like this is a platform game for the NES. (The irony is that NES platformers are better than X-Rebirth.). You spent a lot of effort achieving some sense of immersion - and the game IS visually beautiful. Yet you ruin this immersion with lewt crates in air ducts. It's idiotic. IDIOTIC.

Moving on. I appreciate the slow and steady pace the campaign has. It teaches you various game features one at a time, letting you learn as you go (because frankly, there's a lot to absorb. Drones, boarding, missiles, trading, etc. A brand new consumer might be blown away). The only problem is that the campaign doesn't work.

Let me rephrase that. Your game doesn't work. Your game is broken. You don't have half of the commands implemented (and if I'm wrong, then you're all once again absolute idiots who should be fired for streamlining a system to the point of it not functioning), AFAIK trade ships can and will bug out regularly, boarding is borked, and there are a multitude of crashings/problems people are having.

Now I don't know about all of these game shattering technical bugs. My system runs the game fine. Sometimes I hit the map or Shift+T for the trade menu and the menu doesn't appear. Then I leave my cockpit, have to watch the animation of leaving the cockpit, enter the cockpit, have to watch THE ANIMATION OF ENTERING THE COCKPIT (seriously. Fire whoever came up with that idea. Fire them.) AGAIN, then my map/trade menu/whatever works just fine. Until it bugs out again.

Sometimes my trade ship gets clogged with orders. I'm sure you guys will patch that problem. I can't complete the 100 energy cell mission, as my trade ship will not move even after clearing it's orders (by the way - whoever was responsible for excluding the ability to clear orders - fire them. Now. Give them notice, and release them from the company.). I'm sure this will be patched as well, since it's an obvious progression bug.

Combat is a little clunky. The graphics are outstanding, but the cockpit and size of the view screen makes combat icky looking, to put it mildly. Also, the control of the Skunk is dog shit. Moving the mouse wheel even slightly jumps to half throttle. I'm either too fast or not moving. Using the keyboard to adjust speed is a lot more accurate, but again, you weren't thinking at all when you designed this.

I'd like to also say that I'm not some troll. I defended this game (more or less) from haters before it's release, and I absolutely LOVE X3 TC and AP. I've put so many hours into those games it's not even funny. And that's with my pet peeve of an "artificial" economy (Again, whatever lazy developer pitched the idea of working around an actually functioning economy, fire him. It's sheer laziness. That's not programming, it's a hack. A poor man's way out to compensate for lack of talent and/or innovation.)

Moving on. I got a crash when Alt+Tabbing back into the game after searching for solutions to some bugs. No big deal. Skyrim will crash 100% of the time when doing this, so it's a rendering problem, more than likely. That's fine.

The clubs in stations are static and boring. It's so close to being thematic, until you realize that there are no people around making that stock background chatter. Every NPC is sitting there waiting to be recruited, instead of doing anything at all. Bland and lazy.

I THINK you dumbed down missiles. We went from 324908723984 missiles in X3 to <insert low number here> in Rebirth. Lazy developers or another example of streamlining for the numb masses of consolemania? Either way, you deserve to lose your job, and possibly your career. Seriously. Stay out of the gaming industry, whoever did your game design. We don't want or need you.

Now the game isn't 100% crap. I can't say it enough - I LOVE how the space areas look. It's simply beautiful. The ships moving around, the hydrogen, etc. You basically ruined this visual orgasm with annoying I icons to denote a module of a station. I do not want to play a crappy minigame in order to enjoy X Rebirth. Lose the Seek and Find "information" system, lose the HORRID "Smalltalk" system (which is fine if it were varied, but it's excessively repetitive.", lose the "slipstream" system from the Highways. Seriously. We aren't playing a 16 bit console. We are playing X: Rebirth. Lose the gimmicks. This isn't Japan. We hate this crap.

I'm still pumped from the alien races actually having proper models. Hearing your Split and Teladi voice actors make me smile. However (and I'm a HUGE nazi when it comes to voice acting), you totally screwed the pooch on your script and voice actors.

The female character (I don't care about her name) is literally reading from a script in the sound booth. They are called voice ACTORS. Not voice READERS. Make sure she never works again. Fire her if she wasn't on contract.

The main character (again, I don't care about a character I can't design myself) also suffers from a bit of crappy voice acting, which is a surprise because I know him from somewhere. Again, your script is either borked, or your voice actors are so horrid that they are mistakenly putting emphasis on the wrong words in their lines. Play the tutorial if you want a fine example of this. Also here's a little tidbit for ya....

"Subtitles say "I know about a special offer on this station". Voice actor said "I know about a specialing offer..."

I sent this to a friend of mine to emphasize how horrid the voice acting is. I'm REALLY hoping that this is an X Universe style of speech/slang, and I'm being too picky here. Otherwise - fire this guy. ZERO talent. The voice acting in X3 wasn't exactly Tony Jay, but it was ZOUNDS better than this catastrophe.

I don't even want to know what kind of a budget you people had for this game. You basically wasted it. No one will buy this on console. It's garbage. You've alienated your PC customers with this watered down pile of aborted, long-awaited, greed induced, garbage. You've basically released Sword Of The Stars 2, except you had a budget. Congrats.

Anyways. All of this is my opinion as an avid (or rabid) fanboy of the X series, a gamer, a game designer, and a marginally competent programmer. This release has taken the turn that so many "shouldhavebeenamazing" games has taken, and that's a turn into the highway (seewutididthur) leading to the Crap system. You people (and this time I mean ALL developers) keep releasing brain numbing, console catering, streamlined, watered down, spoon fed crap, and go bankrupt.

Or you could leave the crap industry to AAA game companies that, you know, make money with it, and make QUALITY titles that have an almost cult following. Either way, we (the gamers) will win in the end. You make crap, you go bankrupt, we laugh at you, and the indie industry becomes stronger (which is a double plus for me). You learn your lesson, you release a GOOD game, and we love you for it and praise your name.

In summation -

Your game is broken.

Fire your design team.

Fire your quality testing team.

Patch your bad game.

Release some DLCs or whatever horrid ideas you have that add GOOD content to the game.

Lynch whatever management staff approved most of the things I've listed here.

Make X4.

???

Profit.

I'm out.

I will be shocked if Egosoft doesn't go out of business. I think this will be a fatal mistake.

 

[Crispy]

That guy sounds like a retard himself but that's a very damning "review" of his. Egosoft really did screw themselves it seems.

 

[Branm]

Sounds more like a really pissed of customer....ehh they really screwed themselves. I suppose they could recover if they don't have a shit ton of debt stacked up.

But alienating your core customers is never a good thing so they are basically starting from nothing if they intend to develop a another game.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Apparently it's selling better than any previous X game, so they can either buckle down and fix this mess to the extent that it can be fixed, and hope everyone forgets or forgives them in time for X4; or pocket the money and transition to develping for iOS.

 

[Raapys]

Do you have any actual numbers to back that up? I know they sold a lot based on preorders and the first day or two, but surely it's fallen to near zero after that?

 

[Azazel]

I would imagine that the instant backlash has reduced sales to a trickle, and there is no way in hell they made enough to pay off the debts incurred during the 7 year development cycle.

Granted I've heard many people say they went out and paid money for Albion Prelude after Rebirth burned them, which just serves to demonstrate how fucking stupid gamers are I suppose.

 

[Echo Mirage]

Its possible that X3 terran conflict and Albion prelude, which both came out when X rebirth was still in development and are still being sold at near full price on steam, put them into profit and covered X rebirths production costs. If it did, and Deep Silver doesn't drop them like a Brick then I expect Egosoft will just weather the storm. Bugs will be fixed and if they play it smart they can make some bolt on DLC with a marketable name. Something like "X rebirth 2.0: Heart of Albion" and add back in the content that meets the expectations of the fans bottom line. This is the smartest and wisest thing they can do and stay in business. But in my experience so far video game developers very rarely act smart and take the most intelligent course of action.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Not just possible. I seem to remember that they admitted that AP was just released to get some more cash in for development of Rebirth. Fuck knows what they spent it all on though, because it certainly wasn't good voice actors, QA testers, AI programmers, UI designers, writers or engine coders.

 

[Echo Mirage]

I get a sense when looking at X rebirth that it isn't the product of 7 years worth of work or budget at all. I get the very strong feeling is that it is the product of only a scant few years worth of work on a limited budget that attempted to sew mothballed content from a failed much earlier version of the game that was put aside when development of Terran conflict got under way into a much newer engine. I refuse to believe that a game that has supposedly been in development for 7 years is more buggy then the last 2 games made by the same company in almost the same time frame.

 

[Raapys]

The game engine itself might have taken a couple of years I suppose. But yeah, the gameplay as it stands today... I don't know, either it's taken them a year or two, or their team is a lot smaller than I imagined. Not sure one can find a single feature which isn't bugged beyond belief, poor design decisions aside.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Do you have any actual numbers to back that up? I know they sold a lot based on preorders and the first day or two, but surely it's fallen to near zero after that?

It's still in Steam's Top5 sellers. I also recall reading a developer post on the Steam forums on how it was a huge success. Make of that what you will, but unless they've incurred some truly massive debt, I'd imagine they're doing well right now.

 

[Raapys]

Hmm, but is Steam's Top5 based on daily sales? If it is, then yeah, that's a bit odd. I'd have thought people would've been scared away by now. But if it's based on 'sales this week' or something, that might explain it.

You're right about the developer post though, but from what I remember he actually made that one on release day. And I've no doubt their release-day figures + preorders were bigger than ever before, thus the 'huge success'.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

Disappointed - really was looking forward to this game killing time after exams are over.

 

[DefJam101]

Short term success is not going to help them come Rebirth 2, or X4, when their previously dedicated small niche fanbase still hates their guts for shipping a fucking awful console port. By then there will likely be plenty of popamole space sims on the market and Egosoft's original fanbase of autists space trade sim enthusiasts won't be around in force to carry the game, as they always have.

 

[Raapys]

Yah, they'll have tough times no doubt.

Except for the bugs, this is all highly uncharacteristic for Egosoft though. One has to wonder just how much the publisher's been involved here.

 

[MetalCraze]

So which Evil Publisher fucked up this Poor Dev's awesome game?

 

[titus]

So which Evil Publisher fucked up this Poor Dev's awesome game?

Fuck that shit. They're not getting out that easy.

 

[Raapys]

So which Evil Publisher fucked up this Poor Dev's awesome game?

Deep Silver is the evil publisher this time.

You can see the clear change in focus if you look at their release history on wikipedia. From 2002->2008 they released ~30 titles, 28 of which were exclusively for PC/Linux/OSX. But starting with Sacred 2 in 2008, they released another 28 titles of which only 5 were PC/Linux/OSX exclusives; two X games, two 'Emergency' games and Lost Horizon. Makes sense that they would push for their few remaining PC-exclusive series to enter the console arena too.

 

[Zarniwoop]

So which Evil Publisher fucked up this Poor Dev's awesome game?

Deep Silver is the evil publisher this time.

Deep Silver has been the publisher of all the X games apart from the original. They weren't that evil then.

 

[Raapys]

So which Evil Publisher fucked up this Poor Dev's awesome game?

Deep Silver is the evil publisher this time.

Deep Silver has been the publisher of all the X games apart from the original. They weren't that evil then.

Yeah, like I said, their first 30 games(they started in 2002) included 28 PC exclusives. Their last 28 included 5 PC exclusives, two of which were X games. Though they started out heavily invested in PC games, they've obviously abandoned that now.