Nort The Fragrent wrote: ↑Wed, 6. Feb 19, 18:39
X4 is good, just not that big! The stations are spectacular, the ships are ok but lack that wow look. Particularly the Teladi. Man they cut the budget on those designs!
X3, TC had tons of ships, why not in this game?
Shipyards, Wharfs. To get your ships from, ( I am shaking my head with the limited number of them ).
Yes Egosoft are trying with updates, to fix things but I agree to not paying for more content, when the game is so small in the first place.
Yes small ! The scale has changed giving the elusion of size ! I try not to use the highways as they shrink the game even more.
Rebirth had way better looking sector’s, X4 is for the most part very dull in comparison. Sorry to say it as I was expecting so much more visually….
If this was Egosoft's first venture into space, then I would understand. But they have a massive wealth of sector backdrops, ships, sectors to choose from. So why have such a small Map. (There needs to be thousands of sectors in todays gaming world) gaming has advanced so much yet to give us 50ish. Thats poor planning.
So to have to pay for more content is I think a bit naughty !
I so want this game to grow, as it has such potential.
What would it cost them to add in some Rebirth sectors, they were interesting and diverse. Even if empty, I would fly them.
Egosoft ! You have dun a magnificent job with the stations. Now you need to bring the rest of the game into the modern gaming world.
It has fewer ships because it has more non-content features. This is just the natural trend due to gamer demand for pretty much all titles past 2015.
What it means is for the same dollars spent during development they do not have enough "pie" to spend on physical content over these features as they did before when these features did not exist.
To better help you understand what this means let's look at what a game from 2005 would have to have to meet gamers:
In 2005:
-Lighting effects were simple. Effectively a flashlight and you only had a few of them on screen because processors couldn't handle more.
-Physics barely exists so it was a novelty to add. Even when added it was simple and often buggy.
-Models had effectively a quarter of the physical detail of today's models.
-Textures were limited to 480p or less for the most part. A 1080p texture was considered "high res".
-Animations were expected to be a little janky and they only had to apply to arms, legs, etc. Capes didn't have to move or if they did it was a static animation.
-Hud effects were simple opaque or semi-opaque and usually limited to the sides of the screen. You might have seen "floating" markers for FPS games with very limited information attached to them(such as location or distance)
-Particle effects were very simplistic and very taxing on CPU/GPU.
There is more but that's enough for now to show you a difference.
In 2015+:
-Realism is king. If you don't use realism you have to use semirealism with artsy tricks ala borderlands cel-shading.
-Lighting is complex even entering into reflected light(very expensive performance wise). You now can have dozens of lights per scene and often those lights are all dynamic and capable of casting their own individual shadow.
-Physics is now required. Even how a character walks is passed through a physics engine. Physics is also significantly more advanced than previously. An object can actually have more than one source of "push" at a time now.
-Models are absurdly higher poly than they used to be. The current Final fantasy MMO has models that hit 1 million plus. The age of just using a bump map or a texture to simulate surface detail are long dead.
-Textures are 2k, 4k, even 8k! What's worse is most of the time they have MULTIPLE LAYERS! The file size for textures has SKYROCKETED in the last 10 years.
-Animations for everything! That slide lock on your gun in COD# better actually move properly AND in sync with each bullet discharge or some lore nut is going to rage. That cape better flutter in the wind too! I also better not see those feet ever "float" over the terrain!
-Hud effects are now extremely complex. They float. They attach to objects. They contain WAAAAY more information than ever before. Most people don't know but hud effects actually cost a good chunk of performance. It's a drawcall and its a cpu/gpu drain for each and every one of them. When your "squad" all has floating health bars with distance markers, status effects, and other such "ready at hand" data there is a cost in performance.
Particle effects are massively more complex. Fires are expected to have embers. Explosions are expected to fling debris and produce varied blast smoke.. that floats in the air no less. Heck, even dirt is supposed to happen.
None of these things comes without a time cost but the average market audience demands it now. This is why you THINK you pay more for less game. You don't really. You are just paying for things you cant actually play with. You personally may not agree with this but the majority of buyers today demand this level of detail for what they consider "top tier developers". This means that you will get less content because of it and there is really nothing you can do to change that with current market trends.
