[Poll]Should Existential Crisis be optional?

[geldonyetich]

It seems you can't understand that making a proper survey is the game developers' job? Who you are expecting to create them?

Why yes, I believe all surveys are given to data-hungry developers by statistic-minded gnomes.

Either that or you have no idea what we're talking about anymore and so are asking me questions that no sane person would believe otherwise.

[Removed rest of post]

You know what? No. We're stopping right here. I'm just not enjoying this anymore.

[flywlyx]

Why yes, I believe all surveys are given to data-hungry developers by statistic-minded gnomes.

Either that or you have no idea what we're talking about anymore and so are asking me questions that no sane person would believe otherwise.

[Removed rest of post]

You know what? No. We're stopping right here. I'm just not enjoying this anymore.

You seem to have a strong aversion to end-user surveys, attempting to find all sorts of excuses to shift blame onto them.
Additionally, there appears to be a reluctance to acknowledge that the developer and the game company are primarily responsible for most of the game's failures.
The discussion won't progress if there's a biased attitude present.

[geldonyetich]

I've been going on the Internet forever, and dailup bulletin boards before the Internet went public. It's been my experience people generally never seem to agree with eachother when they argue on message boards. They just dig in and get increasingly more deaf to the other person talking, emotionally invested in being proven right at all costs.

Yet, for all my seasoned experience, in all this time, I've not built an immunity to Cunningham's Law. It makes me sad. It's such a futile endeavor. So much wasted time. I could have done so much more with that. Did I at least get better at refining my critical thinking skills? Did anything good come out of it?

But one thing that has changed is technology. Recently, the availability of competent AI chatbots through generative AI. If you have spoken to these chatbots long enough, you soon learn that they don't truly have awareness of their own (they're usually trained to tell you that if you ask, too). But they have remarkably good reading comprehension most of the time, albeit prone to bouts of "hallucination."

So when I do succumb to the lure of Cunningham's Law and have nothing but regrets and sadness to show for my effort, I used to have no recourse but to just go and cry it off. Now, I like to feed the contents of the messages into chatbots. Using this tool, I can then ask probing questions to try to determine what went wrong and how I could do better.

When I asked ChatGPT 3.5 what it thought of a recent conversation, it's objective to a fault. It thought the other guy was a bastion of player choice and agency. It observed:

Both participants seem to be trying to address each other's points, but their responses appear to talk past each other to some extent. [participant 1] seems to be highlighting what they see as a flaw in [participant 2's]s argument, while [participant 2] seems to be expressing confusion about [participant 1]'s interpretation of their statements.

In terms of who is talking past each other more, it's difficult to say definitively without further context. However, both participants could potentially benefit from clearer communication and a more focused discussion on the specific points being raised.

I like this because it does force me to undergo self-evaluation with a moderately unbiased (if not self-aware) third party.

According to ChatGPT, neither participant is at fault, they're both noble in their own way, but ultimately failing to communicate. Touche'. I could have done better.

That said, I wondered if perhaps this conversation was just too difficult and muddled for GPT 3.5 to untangle, and it might have been making excuses.

When I entered that same conversation into Claude-Sonnet, it suggested:

Overall, [participant 1] appears to be arguing in a way that ignores the substantive points made, fixates on semantic nitpicking, and fails to self-reflect when called out on misattributions or non-sequiturs. This reflects a lack of academic honesty and rigorous engagement with the actual ideas/evidence being presented.
[participant 2], while not perfect, still seems to be operating in relatively good faith - providing thoughtful context, clarity on original sourcing, and knowing when to walk away from an unproductive exchange.

Perhaps I'm vain, but I far more prefer Claude-Sonnet's lesser commitment to objectivity. But I was also correcting misconceptions in its interpretation as I went along, and I wonder if I might have biased it in support of that response.

To remain on topic, I'll say that generative AI might be useful for disseminating future feedback for game developers, and perhaps may even inform some exciting new game features in the future. To some extent, it's far better at maintaining objectivity than the average message board poster, myself included.

[charlie1024]

I read all the posts.

Well, making free from all the opinions from users is not bad selection indeed. Devs may have some intentions for making some features, and we should remember that the public beta is still NOT completed.

However, I think they could make some references from the polls, feedbacks, etc.

As a popular space simluation game, users' opinions should be reviewed carefully. No need to 'just implement' user opinion, because devs will fully understand their games than the users understand, and they do judge their own right way.

By the way, there's any reason to debate about polling? I don't think so. Even, this is just a public poll, all forum members can vote in. This means that as a voter, some 'responsible people' can express their opinion by voting.

Below is my opinion after self-debates.

Some different games have similar system. For them, the crisis is 'the real final' one. So, there's no possibility to see the future. That's the end crisis.

However, for X4, even after the crisis, we (should) play game long, long, (maybe) forever.

A concept of crisis is good anyway, but just doing player asset destroying is somewhat weird. Extensial crisis is for 'whole X-universe space', not just for 'player's space'.

Also, it seems that some players are very professional about X4, but difficulty of X4 should be determined somehow differently.

Crisis is a good event, and 'possibly easy' one if the player is in ready, but for adequate difficulty something different is needed. Because, X4 space should be continued even after the crisis.

[Arisaya]

I had a sudden realization while browsing the forums...

Like the dal-busta plots, the crisis too needs to be made opt-in (rather than pay to opt-out) for a much more concrete reason: because not everyone has a computer that can run the large battles it entails, especially not over 24 hours worth of continuous sector defense battles.
I have a rather high end gaming computer, so the performance hit during the worst battles (mainly when I was spawning the kha'ak on top of NPC-owned systems, or the one time they showed up in one of my actually important systems and didn't immediately give up) wasn't horrible, but it was definitely noticeable

*Specs:
CPU: R9 7950X
RAM: 64GB
GPU: 7900XTX
Drive: Gen4 Nvme SSD

But when I just imagine how bad it would be for someone playing with a min spec computer, I can't imagine that it would be reasonable to force it on them - regardless if (or especially if) the crisis gets reworked to be more fun.
Min specs from the steam page:


Minimum:
Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows 10 (64-bit) or higher
Processor: Intel i5-4590 3.3GHz or AMD equivalent
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GTX 780/970 or AMD equivalent (Vulkan support required)
Storage: 15 GB available space


Meanwhile there is literally a recent thread started by someone who's computer is ... pretty much exactly at the minimum specs (just more ram):
viewtopic.php?f=146&t=462132

[charlie1024]

I had a sudden realization while browsing the forums...

Like the dal-busta plots, the crisis too needs to be made opt-in (rather than pay to opt-out) for a much more concrete reason: because not everyone has a computer that can run the large battles it entails, especially not over 24 hours worth of continuous sector defense battles.
I have a rather high end gaming computer, so the performance hit during the worst battles (mainly when I was spawning the kha'ak on top of NPC-owned systems, or the one time they showed up in one of my actually important systems and didn't immediately give up) wasn't horrible, but it was definitely noticeable

Personally, understandable. Hadn't thought about this.

Practically, in the huge battles, X4 will lose its performance due to its own limitation from being time-based simulation game(not from single-thread. The game do support multi-thread, but being simulation game that's limited).

Well, in past X-series, I revealed some users enjoyed the X-series with slideshow fps.

However, being skyrocketing performance-hungry in modern games, the game feature may be better to 'in user's own will'.

[alt3rn1ty]

I had a sudden realization while browsing the forums...

Like the dal-busta plots, the crisis too needs to be made opt-in (rather than pay to opt-out) for a much more concrete reason: because not everyone has a computer that can run the large battles it entails, especially not over 24 hours worth of continuous sector defense battles.
I have a rather high end gaming computer, so the performance hit during the worst battles (mainly when I was spawning the kha'ak on top of NPC-owned systems, or the one time they showed up in one of my actually important systems and didn't immediately give up) wasn't horrible, but it was definitely noticeable

Spot on.

I dont know about anyone else but I would imagine people may well design their PHQ to be capable of doing terraforming itself with a local supporting cast after you have jumped it to a sector away from your other supporting stations.
I designed a PHQ Wharf for just that scenario, and to be as optimal as possible for my machine spec. With the amount of traders this station attracts, and a fleet of 30 Rays + Erlking in sector guarding my current home sector, my FPS is comfortable even if I am in sector landed on the station.
But add an invasion warping in, and all the bullets/beams start flying in the vicinity and the game goes Pete Tong.

And that is exactly what this crysis does, it warps them in to where your biggest collection of assets is.
I am avoiding triggering it while testing the beta, like the plague.

On a minimum spec machine this scenario would be without a doubt really quite awful.

[Techedge]

I'm tossing it just for the sake of completeness (as I shouldn't have problems with my machine), but making something optional because (even if partially because) someone's machine wouldn't handle it... just no.

[TroubledRabbit]

I'm tossing it just for the sake of completeness (as I shouldn't have problems with my machine), but making something optional because (even if partially because) someone's machine wouldn't handle it... just no.

that is kind of unfair - and not only because of fps (which also is an issue at the level of 'designed to be broken'). Why would you force on anyone your way of playing the game? You want the 'great clash without the point'? Here you go, have fun.
Nobody forces you to do terraforming busy work ( apparently it is the 'economic endgame'... rly?) which is an inconsequential gimmick in the essence but there are ppl loving that stuff. Should that be obligatory, too?

[Techedge]

I'm tossing it just for the sake of completeness (as I shouldn't have problems with my machine), but making something optional because (even if partially because) someone's machine wouldn't handle it... just no.

that is kind of unfair - and not only because of fps (which also is an issue at the level of 'designed to be broken'). Why would you force on anyone your way of playing the game? You want the 'great clash without the point'? Here you go, have fun.
Nobody forces you to do terraforming busy work ( apparently it is the 'economic endgame'... rly?) which is an inconsequential gimmick in the essence but there are ppl loving that stuff. Should that be obligatory, too?

Then why are you attacking me since I've been one of the first to say to make it optional?

Don't you think it to be unfair to make it optional just because someone's machine wouldn't handle it? In essence locking a content to a user because of his machine performance??? THIS is unfair and I'm saying NO at it. It needs to be made optional but, for anything in the world, not because of performance... If we have performance problems (and we have) we have to struggle to address these problems and make any content available to anyone, not put some content behind an option to avoid performance problems (and lock out that content from players who cannot afford a more powerful machine)!

[Ergoswot]

Should perhaps be treated as an extension that can be turned on/off in settings?

Yes, like most other games that has crisis where it is fully customizable in menus.

[LameFox]

Don't you think it to be unfair to make it optional just because someone's machine wouldn't handle it? In essence locking a content to a user because of his machine performance??? THIS is unfair and I'm saying NO at it. It needs to be made optional but, for anything in the world, not because of performance... If we have performance problems (and we have) we have to struggle to address these problems and make any content available to anyone, not put some content behind an option to avoid performance problems (and lock out that content from players who cannot afford a more powerful machine)!

Presumably they mean within the boundaries of the game's system requirements, not worrying about making it playable for literally anyone. And I mean, yeah, you should design your game to be playable to people who meet the hardware requirements you sold it with. I feel like this game has not always done a good job of that, for instance I'm well above minimum requirements and the fights with VIG still become a slideshow that I can't even fix with lower GFX settings. Don't know what they were thinking creating a faction with so many S ships in one place like that.

[Techedge]

I understand what they probably mean but I think that a performance problem (being it within or without the minimum specs) should not be addressed with optional content being avoided by a user for this reason.

I voted for optional and as optional I expect it to be activated by the player as any other mission/plot (and in this regard I hope that CBJ's vote means something...).

What I'm trying to make clear (and I'm sorry if I haven't been clear before) is that I would avoid the "performance" question at all to prevent any misunderstanding about it.

[GCU Grey Area]

I understand what they probably mean but I think that a performance problem (being it within or without the minimum specs) should not be addressed with optional content being avoided by a user for this reason.

It's not simply a matter of game's minimum specs. I have a reasonably good machine, which exceeds the recommended specs by a fair margin. Still have an issue with performance for existential crisis. Problem arises because I like to build BIG, my stations often have 1000s of modules. This presents a problem with a crisis that targets my stuff specifically. Quite simply it's the wrong sort of crisis for the way I like to play X4. If it was an existential threat to the entire universe it would probably be fine - could deal with that sort of crisis well away from my stations. However fighting a battle at <10fps against multiple capital ships that have spawned near one of those stations simply isn't practical. Hence the need to be able to turn it off (unless of course the devs do a major rethink on the nature of the crisis).

[Flippi]

However fighting a battle at <10fps against multiple capital ships that have spawned near one of those stations simply isn't practical.

Wait, is that how the crisis works in the current beta? I haven't played the beta, so I don't know of the details.

If that is true, I can only repeat what I wrote in another thread. People and the devs should look into how StarSector does their Crisis mechanics in vanilla. If that's not enough, you can also look at how certain mods for the game do additional crises and events. And none of them do the obnoxious "spawn stuff for free at the location" type of thing.

[charlie1024]

However fighting a battle at <10fps against multiple capital ships that have spawned near one of those stations simply isn't practical.

Wait, is that how the crisis works in the current beta? I haven't played the beta, so I don't know of the details.

If that is true, I can only repeat what I wrote in another thread. People and the devs should look into how StarSector does their Crisis mechanics in vanilla. If that's not enough, you can also look at how certain mods for the game do additional crises and events. And none of them do the obnoxious "spawn stuff for free at the location" type of thing.

Well, the post he said is just an example, but practically big battle should diminish FPS severely. Because when the crisis works, the player will have very many stations, and this sometimes will make the game like a slideshow if you don't have decent computer.

Actually, if you construct all the modules in the single station, that will be a potential cause of the severe lag. If the user don't do that, the lag will not be kind of the slideshow, but maybe need to navigate long routes so maybe exposed to some threats.

[flywlyx]

However fighting a battle at <10fps against multiple capital ships that have spawned near one of those stations simply isn't practical.

Wait, is that how the crisis works in the current beta? I haven't played the beta, so I don't know of the details.

XEN(1I+3K+P/B/F/M/N/) will spawn relatively far from the station, giving you time to intercept them. However, KHA will spawn directly on top of the station.

[Flippi]

Well, the post he said is just an example, but practically big battle should diminish FPS severely. Because when the crisis works, the player will have very many stations, and this sometimes will make the game like a slideshow if you don't have decent computer.

Actually, if you construct all the modules in the single station, that will be a potential cause of the severe lag. If the user don't do that, the lag will not be kind of the slideshow, but maybe need to navigate long routes so maybe exposed to some threats.

XEN(1I+3K+P/B/F/M/N/) will spawn relatively far from the station, giving you time to intercept them. However, KHA will spawn directly on top of the station.

Thanks for the headsup! I was aware of the fps issue with bigger stations, but the spawning behaviour from what I am reading here, seems to be really aggravating. Especially if there is hardly any early warnings about it.

In that case, I suggest that not only the players, but the devs specifically look into StarSector's Crises mechanics. Because that game does a better job at that, even if it's far from perfect. Simply because fleets have to be built and can be attacked preemptively. Or have to actually travel to you through space. Or alternatively, you can delay or prevent a crisis through other means like diplomacy and stuff. (Apart from the fact there are more crisis events that can trigger under specific circumstances, giving the player quite a bit of variety.)

Here for anyone to read. Also has example pictures of the crisis meter. Just so you can see how early you get warned in that game when something is happening.

[TroubledRabbit]

Then why are you attacking me since I've been one of the first to say to make it optional?

I was directly addressing this:

I'm tossing it just for the sake of completeness (as I shouldn't have problems with my machine), but making something optional because (even if partially because) someone's machine wouldn't handle it... just no.

and this is a miscommunication and that's my fault. So if you have felt that I've been dealing you unfairly, I am sorry.

As I see You guys generally sorted out 'what the poet had in mind' and the issue at hand. My final pennies:

the actual state of the game prohibites most of the players from effectivelly play through the crisis anyway, regardless if they want it or not if they:
(a) do not have particularly powerful machine
(b) they have problematic anyway passion to build large && they do not pass the condition 'a'
(c) they do not live in Arctic or at least Greenland, so they cannot use 'unconventional cooling' [@joke]
(d) they are unable or unwilling to pay bill for running 'a'.

Ofc. you *can* if you either enjoy the slideshow, has got particuarly low expectations (I wiped out as it is possible in the game VIGs twice - once in stupid way: directly, and once in 'smart' way: by spamming anti-S def stations) even on my machine which is far _below_ minimal it is possible. I would not say: it was a pleasant experience. If I would not like so much they 'wrecks-put-together ships' design, I would completely ignore them or just outright uninstall the DLC.

But regardless of different ways of making the stuff optional (by 'switch', quest-lock, particular set of behaviours etc.) the 'fps' argument alone is sound. I have no right to vote in the matter (see my 'specs') but it seems to be more and more similar to the 'Crysis' case (pun half-intended) of sort. But 'Crysis' was a tech demo while the X is (?) not. And that is kind of disturbing because it suggest - or allows to be worried - about the devs state of project sustaining and management ability. Or, indeed, some 'existential crisis' within the dev-team itself

[jlehtone]

I did peek into this thread. That was a mistake. Spoilers -- they kill in-game exploration.

The thread title asks whether "EC" should be optional. From Egosoft pre-marketing I got the impression that something is.
So, is the question whether something is opt-in or opt-out?

Lets say that I am a VIG capo insurance salesman. I do offer "pay or burn" contract. (I would be a fool, if the "pay" choice were a oneshot, rather than frequently repeating. The Price is Right -- all you have and then some to keep you small.) However, such insurance is not "optional"; you either pay or firefight. Your "choice", but not an option. (And I'd naturally sell to every player, for profitsss For good measure, the burn event would repeat as frequently as the pay.)

If the EC (I did skip many parts of the thread) is like the insurance, then the "formal" opt-out and opt-in are whether the burn is the default or not. "Real" opt-in would have no salesman at your door, ever, unless you explicitly say "yes". Is that the "optional" that the OP asks? Optional, as in "buy and enable DLC" is an option that we can skip to keep the amount of game content manageable?