I Numbered your complaints for easy responding in below quote:
DeJuan wrote: ↑Sun, 9. Dec 18, 00:49
The Bad:
1. Massive amounts of bugs in almost every area of the game.
2. Extremely small map compared to X3 TC and X Rebirth.
3. Ship variety is lacking in a big way with all factions.
4. Not many factions which makes the game seem small.
5. No real enemies to fight and makes the game really boring.
6. Lack of story line. It is literally just a small sandbox with no clear direction.
7. Events do not really happen at all. Never been attacked by pirates or anything for that matter.
8. Lots of Races and Factions are missing altogether. Example: Boron
9. AI is really really dumb and has no clear purpose in some situations.
10. Weapons do not work properly and capitol ship shields are weak.
11. The ship upgrades are cookie cutter. Upgrades are bland and can found everywhere at the exact same prices.
12. Way to many inactive jump gates.
13. The UI is missing lots of commands such as making turrents stop firing so your marines can board and not get blown up. Or maybe I just did not see that setting.
1. A massive game from a relatively small team is bound to have at least a ton of QOL bugs (such as NPC-movement, strange behavior with good transfer and so on), those are excusable and usual. What is not however, is the current (lack-of)war/AI-shipbuilding bug. That one SHOULDNT be there.
2. It seems you haven't played it much (below 10 hours), the maps are about 5-10 times larger than in X3AP, Its about 25%-45% of the total X3AP "map area" (not taking into account maps had unlimited borders). Ships however are resized and are about 50% as big and travel speeds are about the same as with SETA in AP. If you call it an "extremely" small map, you definitely are misinformed. But lets say you have played enough, please list me all datavaults, if the map is that small, you already found all of them right?
3. Currently there are 70+ ships in the game, each of which has 2 versions (Source:
https://roguey.co.uk/x4/ships/ ), not all ship and part difference are listed ingame however.... its looks like Paranid is superior on all fronts, but there are quite some unlisted drawbacks. In terms of cargo capacity vs speed for traders there is a lot of choice too, although it would be nice to have some weapon lockout on different freighters and having a dedicated TP (which doesnt exist), all in all the per-race amount of ships is the same as X3:TC (v1) but lower than X3:AP.
4. Not taking into account Xenon and Khaak, there are 3 main factions, 2 "Big" subfactions and 3 mini factions. indeed there are less factions than in X3:AP, but they are way more unique than X:Stillbirth.
5. That is a known bug and should be worked out.
6. The X series always where a Lore-grounded sandbox in the first place and the storylines came second. That being said, I agree with you that the current total lack of any significant storyline sucks. I want X3:AP level of storydevelopment.
7. You surely never played more than 10 hours.
8. Actually, they just started the story to reintroduce the Boron and split. I completely understand why they went ahead without boron an split. Its takes development time and lore-wise the boron and split where still disconnected from the rest of the gatenetwork when X:Stillbirth finished afaik. That is an Amazing opportunity to reintroduce them and write stories for it. I'm glad they didn't cheese them into the game without story just to please some reviewers.
9. I personally find the trading AI a huge upgrade from X3:AP, I cant say anything about the combat AI though. I don't get what you mean with "purpose", if you mean that you are amazed by the floating clusters of ships near some gates doing nothing, that is due to afore mentioned bug that prevents the war from continuing.
10. You should EXPLAIN why weapons do not work, they work for me. Although I dislike the more realistic gimbal reactiontime
. Capital ship shields are indeed a bit on the weak side, although I find it a bit weird to nitpick on some small QOL balancing issue you couldn't realistically have encountered in any serieus form yet.
11. Cookie cutter? You know there are 80+ different types of engines with different specifications?
Thats only the engines. I agree that the stat difference should be a bit bigger but thats about it. The pricing didn't annoy me, but should indeed be linked to the resource prices instead of just a hardcoded price. Thats a serieus QOL issue that should be fixed. It might be related to why they postponed the player shipyard...
12. Did you actually understand any of the lore? Those where in use once and after the disconnect they are still there, waiting to be reconnected to the network. To many to be ever used in DLC? Yes I think so, but it's a nice easter egg to reflect the history of the X universe and whats to come.
13. If you fly yourself, its a bar on the top of the HUD. Although that seems to be broken with capitalships, its there with M size. That sounds like you cheesed yourself a capital and started complaining.
DeJuan wrote: ↑Sun, 9. Dec 18, 00:49
Conclusion:
The game has great bones and I know Egosoft will fix most of the problems but to charge $50 for a game in this state in not really fair to the buyer. After 28 hours of playing I got bored. I played X3 for thousands of hours. The major problem with the game is that it is generic with no variety of ships, events, sectors, races/factions, wars, upgrades. The AI is just useless and the game is not really fun because of all the things that are GONE. The first few expansions should be free for anyone who pre ordered the game in this state. At best X4 should have had everything from X3 TC with some of the things from X Rebirth.
Starting a conclussion with a semi-offensive statement isn't really the way to go. "Your mom has great bones", suggest she is ugly as ****.
Even in this state, the amount of content is insanely huge for a niche game. Niche games of this scale tend to be on the more expensive side... It's a bit too much, yeah... but it's not that big of a deal. Its still WAY cheaper than buying one movie per hour.
I don't believe you there, there is SO MUCH to explore and so many hidden gems... Just my datavault hunt (which is about halfway through), WITH the use of spoilers, is already 3-5 hours(!)... I haven't even finished building my first end-product complex, haven't claimed a sector and just got my first destroyer. Bet you didnt even know there was a hidden claimable destroyer somewhere.
The Major problem is you wanting to get every bit of content on a silver plater, thats not X and never was X to begin with. There are no things "gone", there are things that aren't in THIS game. Its a new game, without content updates...
"At best X4 should have had everything from X3 TC", thats retarded... you are saying that you expected a DECADE of game developement to be redone (because X4 Foundations is a complete rewrite and doesn't use much original content) and sold for just 50$. That sounds to me like egoism more than a review.
"Honest Review from Steam"
This title is perfect, because it perfectly describes the shortsighted attitude of Steam reviews. This isnt a product for the masses and never will be.
That being said:
Are there bugs: Yes
Are there QOL tweaks needed? Yes
Is there promised content missing? Yes
Those are the things that should be fixed, because Egosoft should deliver what they promise.
But they never promised most of the things this reviewer complains about.
Comparing a game after YEARS and YEARS of support and content updates (X3, hell even X:R), with a new product and demanding content the developers openly told you wouldn't be in here, IS NOT FAIR nor reasonable. It doesn't give anyone motivation to actually discuss the real problems with you, because they know you will start complaining about content you want to be in it, which wouldn't be in this game to begin with.
