100%. I feel they got the early game right, there's a lot to do for a new player that isn't locked behind ranks and stuff like that. But once you got settled in and says "okay,
now I'll start playing X" you bump into so many minor/major things that it gets discouraging. Unfortunately for me, I love this game too much and I keep slugging along. Until I reach some goals I have, that is.
I would recommend most people to give it 1-3 months at least.
Egosoft seems very motivated into making this work, but there's lots that needs looking into.
To end this 2-post sort-of-review in a more positive note, with X:R I modded it to hell and back to make it fun, but I always knew the game had inherent flaws that could never be fixed - I had a huge playthrough and the "busywork" and waiting around was so much that some stations I owned never produced anything
the whole playthrough. It was stupid. And I always looked forward for the next X.
With this, I don't think anything requires a complete redesign/rethinking from the ground up (lemme know if I'm forgetting something). Fixing the enemies, economies, combat AI, fixing the war, rebalancing missiles/CM, adding more content (ship, mission, equipment variety), adding more filters and UI features, adding more automation..all of that is just filling in some blanks and doing some tweaks.
To me, with X:R they proved not only their willingness but also their ability to 180 on things, if required, to making it work post-release. If you play the latest version and compare with youtube videos, some features and menus where very different.
The things that always made me quit a playthrough on previous X games:
- Equipping multiple ships at a time takes dozens of keystrokes, and if EQDs ran out of the stuff you need you'll be in micromanagement hell
- Ordering ships around and getting map awareness later on being tough and requiring typing/tapping keys like a madman
- Building complexes taking hours and being 100% hit-and-miss and trial-and-error (less on X:R, but X:R felt limiting and sluggish)
- Actually getting stations built and running, with assigned ships
Those pretty much came out fixed out of the box. I still have to test the behavior of ships assigned to stations though, because one of my traders got assigned to a patrol
.
TL;DR: We always knew X4 release would be Early Access/Beta. For a second, some got a little hope it wasn't the case..
I gotta stop posting about this game, as I'm very close to start dreaming with all its menus.You know what? I'm going to miss Betty saying "Entering System: Autopilot off." and the constant "Incoming message." alerts.
More Betty is coming though! And I'm happy that she actually does read Encyclopedia Timeline entries! Except when some stupid NPC calls and cuts her off.