X-Rebirth : get the bad news from here !

[Tragos]

You can only fly a single ship + some drones

One of the big changes in X Rebirth when compared to the old X games is that you as a player will only be flying a single ship.

Freelancer like trade-lines

Local highways accelerate all ships by a very high multiplier (different from place to place though) and bring ships with the same destination much closer together. You can leave a local highway at any time and explore the areas between zones. Although a highway boosts your speed permanently as long as you are inside it, you can still influence your speed by skillful steering. This makes it fun to travel as fast as possible, but also possible to intercept other ships or even attack them in the middle of a highway.

Local highways can be entered not just at their endpoints, but also anywhere in the middle.

Super Highways and Gates

Super highways are even faster than local highways and bridge interplanetary distances. Again you can influence your speed and interact with other ships but you can not leave a super highway in the middle.

Gates still exist, but right now.... they do not work. However, there are signs that this may soon change!

Note: you can not extend the highways to reach your fabs!

The game will use steam activation
You will be able to add modules to your ship as you go on with main quest ( suck it pirates !)

This is going to be bad!

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Steam ? Oh, no ! I was so much looking forward to it !

[JDR13]

Seriously?

I'd say Steam is the least of its problems. It sounds like they're streamlining it for a more casual audience.

[dteowner]

Agreed, JDR. Seems to me the end result will be two changes--the focus of the game will move away from being an economic sim and the mechanics will be changed to push the game towards an arcade shooter.

[Tilean]

I for one like that Egosoft is taking the X series into a new direction. The way I see it, the series has been pretty stagnant and all the different iterations are really just graphics and interface updates. That is not necessarily a bad thing, since the gameplay formula works and is a lot of fun if you can get into that style of play.

But I also think that this particular formula has been "maxed out" and pretty much perfected. I replayed the first title a few months ago for a couple of hours and I found it to be surprisingly accessible and enjoyable, still. So I don't really see the need for another game like this when there are already 3 more polished versions around.

[BillSeurer]

What "X Series" is this anyway?

[Motoki]

Steam ? Oh, no ! I was so much looking forward to it !

Oh noes, the sky is falling!

Have you even given it a chance? It's really not that bad. I admit the whole region pricing thing is whacked sometimes, however if a game is Steamworks you don't have to buy it from Steam but can buy it elsewhere at a better price and register it there.

I used to be one of those people who hated Steam with a passion. I got caught up in all the anti-Steam sentiment from all the 'Get off my lawn you damned kids' types who hate change and rant on about it. Then I actually tried it and I like it. It's got a lot of convenience features. I can't tell you how nice it is to never have to worry about updating to the latest version and hoping the patcher works or losing a disc with my saves on it after I reformatted my PC etc.

As far as DRM goes it's definitely one of the more benign and less intrusive options for it, so long as idiotic software companies don't layer their own extra DRM on top of it, that is.

[Fnord]

I am using steam, but I still prefer it when games don't force it upon me. As you said, it does offer its perks (unlike most other forms of DRM), enough for me to not hate it, but I still don't love it either.

As for the new X-game, it feels like they are stepping a bit too far from what made the series popular. While all game series needs to evolve over time (as long as they don't involve sports, it would seem...) there is still often a core that people are drawn to, and which should remain roughly the same.

[Gorath]

Steam ? Oh, no ! I was so much looking forward to it !

Maybe the time has come when the new developments leave you behind. ;)

Why don't you try the following 5 things I think you have avoided until now. It will open your horizon:
1. Order something from Amazon, maybe a couple cheap DVDs as Christmas gifts.
2. Open a PayPal account with 20 EUR.
3. Open a Steam Account (free and anonymous)
4. Attach a retail game to your Steam account (still anonymous)
5. Buy a cheap game on Steam with PayPal (daily deals / weekly deals). Now it's no longer anonymous.

All you risks are maybe 50 bucks combined. It will help you understand that not all new developments, even those from 5 years ago, are bad. Amazon is superb for the customer (not so much for the seller!). Steam is very comfortable, which to a certain degree compensates for the disadvantages. Especially there are no false positives during the disk check.

[tomasp3n]

One ship? ONE SHIP??? Please tell me this is some kind of absurd joke. One of the best parts of the X-series are all the different ships, starting out with a fighter and then upgrading to a corvette…buying a couple of freighters to get your merchandise empire started…stealing a Capital ship to protect "your" systems…but now I get…

One ship. Damn.

[dteowner]

I read that as "one ship at a time" as opposed to a 100 ship fleet. Not quite as bad as "one ship for the whole game" (you can still dump your fighter in favor of a corvette, but the freighters are toast), but still a major step back in my book.

[Thrasher]

Managing a big fleet seems a bit tricky, so I can imagine why they might simplify to get awesome IGN reveiws, for example.

[Tragos]

They say that managing your fleet will be now made easy .
From what i understand this would be like Bridge Commander Star Trek with a bit of Dark Star One.

I am not installing 3rd party software to play a stupid game .

Egosoft are putting all their eggs in one little basket , if this fails they may fail as well ( remember what happen to bigger and older Ascaron ) yet they chose to hammer long time fans and take distance from their previous games .

[bjon045]

I would like it they basically just reworked the galaxy to be more logically structured and made the engine support multiple cpu cores and maybe fixed some of really annoying bugs that have existed since X2 - like when your in a fast ship and you use boost extension too soon after gating and it throws you back through the gate you just cam through....

I would like the border zones to be real border zones - full of smugglers and the place where inter galatic wars take place. Trade between different races factories should be more prevalent and more profitable but also risky i.e. travelling through non-policed border sectors.

[Motoki]

I am not installing 3rd party software to play a stupid game .


It's 2011 and plenty of games have done it both big and small releases. More are coming that do it too. I don't understand why this is such an issue for some people. It's relatively minor and sits in the background. You really don't have to do anything with it if you don't want.

Furthermore, it's far less intrusive than some other types of DRM like securom and tages which have caused some major issues for people. Technically speaking, those are 3rd party software too, they're just more invisible, until they start acting up or hogging cpu cycles, that is.

I think people are more opposed to the idea of Steam than the reality of it.

[Tragos]

bjon045 border worlds in X2 are supposed to be developed by you , free sectors to put factories , patrols and enforce your authority .


It's 2011 and plenty of games have done it both big and small releases. More are coming that do it too. I don't understand why this is such an issue for some people. It's relatively minor and sits in the background. You really don't have to do anything with it if you don't want.

Furthermore, it's far less intrusive than some other types of DRM like securom and tages which have caused some major issues for people. Technically speaking, those are 3rd party software too, they're just more invisible, until they start acting up or hogging cpu cycles, that is.

I think people are more opposed to the idea of Steam than the reality of it.


I am against this kind of DRM , one time activation , dvd checks okay but having silly software in my computer just to check if i am a pirate or not is insulting.
I don't like programs that shit in my background, i don't want to connect to any stupid service and i won't , i even have google analytics and the rest of the internet trash blocked from host.

The idea of Steam is a silly programm using my PC resources to check my status and report back to the shadow masters , no thanks.

[Dhruin]

Honestly, I've been playing the X series since 1999 and although I love them and know every sector by heart, I think it's time to do something different. Will this be good? No idea…but I'm not against the concept.

…Steam…

Awesome - I like keeping all my games together.

[fatBastard()]

I don't like programs that shit in my background, i don't want to connect to any stupid service and i won't , i even have google analytics and the rest of the internet trash blocked from host.

The idea of Steam is a silly programm using my PC resources to check my status and report back to the shadow masters , no thanks.

Well, in that case let me be the first to welcome you to your new life as an ex-gamer (or a filthy pirate if that be your choice) because digital distribution - with subsequent launch/validation platforms like Steam - is here to stay.

Steam is un-intrusive, simple/logical to navigate and is pretty damn stable but there are others popping up all around these days, like EA's Origin system or Ubisofts U-Play for instance. I don't think it will be long until the only boxed version of games are like Deus Ex: Human Revolution or Rage where the DVD merely contains the same contend you would download if you had purchased the game directly from the gaming service.

[dteowner]

Call me a luddite, but I'm still looking forward to the cataclysmic wailing the first time one of these services goes belly up and people lose the ability to play a bunch of their games.

[fatBastard()]

Call me a luddite, but I'm still looking forward to the cataclysmic wailing the first time one of these services goes belly up and people lose the ability to play a bunch of their games.

When I'm taking a look at the collection of games I have standing on my shelves I guessing that about half of them are unplayable straight out of the box anyways due to incompatibility with either current hardware, software or both.

If Steam should go belly up I would either crack my steam games (yes it is indeed possible now and will most certainly be possible if the official Steam should close down) or chances are that I have no interest in playing these old games anyway.

"Progress" is constantly moving forward and the way I see it is that we can either go with the flow or get off and be left behind.

[Zloth]

Way to spread the disinformation Tragos. Luckily, we can get some truth easily enough over on Egosoft's forum. They have a whole series of sticky posts in the Rebirth forum. There you will find the entire paragraph (http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=306576) Tragos is quoting:
One of the big changes in X Rebirth when compared to the old X games is that you as a player will only be flying a single ship. But before you get upset and complain about the lack of freedom to steer other ships, WAIT… that's still possible. Its just packaged in a different way… So please be patient for a moment and read on.
Can you say "quoting out of context" boys and girls?

Yes, you will fly only one ship. DIRECTLY. You will be able to remotely guide several kinds of drones, however. So what's the difference between flying a ship directly and flying it remotely? When a remote ship gets blown away you don't get a 'game over' in your face, you just lose contact.

This also opens up a lot of avenues for the ship you are actually sitting in. You'll be hiring a crew for it now and you'll get a copilot to fly it. (A female co-pilot! I hope she has green eyes. Lots and lots of green eyes. ;))

The crew thing goes beyond your own ship. Factories will be run by one of your employees. Capital ships (which you can't remotely fly) will be run by crews, too, according to your orders.

They are also getting into the modular thing. When you build a factory you aren't just buying a ready made factory from a starbase now, you buy modules and have the factory constructed from them. I think you also get to pick modules for the capital ships, too. The end result being that there will be MORE types of ships and factories, not less.

Then there's the technology end. The X series has recently suffered because it is single threaded even though the game's design really needs multiple CPUs. They couldn't do anything about it, though, because the engine was terribly old. Now they've re-written the entire engine, making many more things possible.

Anyway, just head to the forums at http://forum.egosoft.com/viewforum.php?f=109 and read for yourself what's going on. Or listen to this interview (http://www.gamereactor.eu/news/8936/GRTV%3A+X+Rebirth+interview/). And maybe watch the pretty graphics (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LabrDe4XJo0).

[Tragos]

If my quoting is out of contex can you explain all the bitching in Egosoft's forums ?
Capital ships will be controlled like wingmen in Freespace 2 , the idea behind X games was that you can fly everything you see , this isn't the case in the new one.

[Zloth]

Explain wha? There's your quote. There's the real quote. You very clearly cut out a critical part of what they were saying. Who's bitching about what makes no difference at all.

Anyway, a game forum with no bitching is a game that has no customers. Not that there seems to be all that much going on there, at least in the English section.

[Maylander]

I never really got into the X-series, but I loved Freelancer. This might actually be worth keeping an eye on.

[Dagoneto]

On the one hand I have confidence that they're an amazing development house and will make a great game.. on the other hand, I don't see anybody making X-alikes of even close to the same quality to keep what amounts to a genre in itself evolving.

On the Steam front, I have an unstable internet connection and it's slow at the best of times meaning that it can be days sometimes between purchasing a game and getting it installed only to find out there's another 100, 200 or evena gb or so of patches before i can actually play it. Not to mention bugs like with my Shogun install where it screwed up a patch download twice and forced me thus to redownload and install at an average of 25kb/s. Or stupid features like not installing from dvd by default should you have them.

Or hell, not being able to play your paid for game while a download is in progress. Sure, it's convenient for those for whom it's convenient for - you won't catch people who can't use it talking about it much on fora 'cause their internet access is restricted, no forum, no game, no moany. Steam and pixel shaders are like Thatcher and her lost generation.

Funnily enough i got logged off twice before posting this msg.