egosoft.com

Hi, basically I'm a big fan of elite/privateer/frontier/eve-online - etc. So X sounds brilliant, at least on paper.

Problem is, I heard it was buggy. A quick look through those forums show that many people are still complaining after 3 major patches.

So my question is: is it worth it? Or is it as buggy as they say it is?

beens playing for 3 days now, bought game of the year edition, comes with latest patch.

apart from the odd mistake by the autopilot, havent noticed any major bugs, game runs smoothly.

havent got any big complexes tough, but so far so good

Most of the 'bugs' people complain about now are just features they don't like or don't understand. To my knowledge, the only confirmed bugs left are in the storyline where you can 'break' it if you try.

Mind you, my knowledge is nothing official.

No major bugs for me either.
There are a lot of complains about the interface though - so keep in mind, it's not too simple

So far, the game crashed for me twice, and one of my ships had disappeard while going through the gate.
That's about it - I've been playing (a couple of hours a week on average) since.... early March.
I think it's alright. I save often.

As everyone else is saying, at time of release it was very buggy, but patches have solved them and the games been playable bug free (within reason) for months now.

The game is pretty smooth for me. I haven't had anything odd happening. Off course, like the X2, the game is going to have a steep learning curve and a bit hard to start off, but once you do, it's great.

It was buggy when it was released (like X2), and this lead to some angry reviewers, but I can say at this point, it's pretty stable.

I got it for ~$20 off steam, and I say I would've even payed more. The game runs even smoother than x2 did for me.

Don't buy this game. Save your money for Darkstar One, which is coming out in like 14 days.

u can pick up X3 pretty cheap now, if you in the UK you can get it from play for £15

but like others have said, there isn't really any major bugs and not that many ppl are having problems.

alot of complaints are about lack of features they think should be in the game, which rn't exactly bugs

FlyingBarMitzvah wrote:Don't buy this game. Save your money for Darkstar One, which is coming out in like 14 days.

why choose? buy all!
Personally though, screenshots from Darkstar One look like a disney cartoon.

I bought it when it first came out, cross country, and ended up paying about $65. I figure I got my money's worth, once the patches were out.

I haven't seen any bugs myself. I wouldn't trust the autopilot too far, but that is true in real life too!

The Darkstar One site seems to say that you can only have one ship and no stations. I don't think that is any competition to X3!

In X3 you can have lots of ships, lots of stations, and the sectors are active even when you are not there. The whole universe runs all of the time. In other games things freeze when you go out of the sector.

If the demo is anything to go by, Darkstar one does not even come close to the quality of X3.

Keep in mind however that X3 will tend to find any weaknesses in your hardware, so make sure that your power supply and cooling systems are up to scratch.

I can only think of a couple of bugs still in the game that people might consider serious:

a) Sometimes ships you've captured disappear for no good reason. No destroy message in your pilot log, no nothing!

b) The Boron capital ships still have trouble with their turrets.

I wouldn't describe either as game-breakers, personally.

The tractor beam bug can be annoying too unless you know to rush and buy one at the start of the game before GOD messes things up. Yes, it can be fixed with mods but I still call it a bug. Egosoft did a pretty halfassed job if the game is only ment to be fully playable with community mods.

Other than that and beforementioned stuff, its been pretty bugfree. Only gripe would be some common stupidities, like goner faction and not being able to get transporter devices (mandatory pretty much) in non plot games without mods/cheats.

Speaking of common stupidities, lets talk about borons. Why did their engineers figure how to plant flak artilleries in their TL but suddenly dropped the subject when planning their M2's and M1's?

There was a thread listing the bugs.

The vast majority were dismissed by CBJ.

To my mind, the 2 biggest game killers are the auto-pillok that kills more of my ships than I loose to combat, and the black hole that makes ships disappear for no reason without even a log entry.

Egosoft have all but admitted they cant make the auto-pilot any better.

If anyone wants to see the bugs list, the link is on my HQ off my signature link.

Back to the OP, this is the best game since Privateer 2 in this genre.

Its longevity is considerably longer than the average game, but like all games, the gameplay "issues" eventually put so many frustrations into the game that you will give up on it sometime sooner than the game potentially could keep you interested for.

As far as buying it is concerned, its a definite YES. If you get 3 months out of it before the 'issues' get you, then its still a better game than most for the money.

fiksal wrote:No major bugs for me either.
There are a lot of complains about the interface though - so keep in mind, it's not too simple

So far, the game crashed for me twice, and one of my ships had disappeard while going through the gate.
That's about it - I've been playing (a couple of hours a week on average) since.... early March.
I think it's alright. I save often.

Do you also keep back up saves on disc's in case game files get corrupted and you need to go back to an older save?

fiksal wrote:

FlyingBarMitzvah wrote:Don't buy this game. Save your money for Darkstar One, which is coming out in like 14 days.

why choose? buy all!
Personally though, screenshots from Darkstar One look like a disney cartoon.

I was NOT impressed with the sounds in the Darkstar One Demo... As you say sounded like a Disney cartoon to me.

Black Gryphon wrote: I was NOT impressed with the sounds in the Darkstar One Demo... As you say sounded like a Disney cartoon to me.

funny, I should check it out

Sharktooth wrote:

fiksal wrote:No major bugs for me either.
There are a lot of complains about the interface though - so keep in mind, it's not too simple

So far, the game crashed for me twice, and one of my ships had disappeard while going through the gate.
That's about it - I've been playing (a couple of hours a week on average) since.... early March.
I think it's alright. I save often.

Do you also keep back up saves on disc's in case game files get corrupted and you need to go back to an older save?

are you making fun of me?

Nah, I think it's overkill.
If that ever happens, there's always a much older save, or there are always cheats. I'd be back in no time.

The only game files that got corrupted on my computer were from Warcraft3 - Blizzard had disappointed me

But I do have RAID-mirror set up, in case of a disk failure


Back on topic. This is a great game and will keep me busy for months (or a year). Probably because it's not developing extremely fast, compare to other space sims or action games - but then you'd know that youself if you are a fan of those games


EDIT...I cant type

IMO this game is definatly worth it! Just playing again after a few months break. Latest patch installed and its running amazingly smooth on my laptop! After 2 days of playing, no crash yet. Its great now. There are of course still some minor issues mentioned here before, and I really hope the devs will find the time to correct them in the final patch.

Have anyone seen the original poster lately?
The topic got the life of its own

I,m a frontier/elite/privateer fan too (or I was long, long ago) but things have moved on. if Braben comes out with Elite 4 in 2 yrs time then I will want to buy it.

I have XGold and X2, and if you had stopped the above (Eve-online, I have never played so I cannot say) then I suggest that you buy XGold for £1 or £2 (if you can find it on budget still) and play the whole thing before going on to X2, then X3.

The compilation of the original games, XGold I played all the way, X2 I tried on a rubbish computer that could just about handle it and I got stuck trying to take out a major ship in an invasion sequence - poor flight stick too - but I felt that the game was running as intended despite my having to use sound software emulation.

Sadly I only got onto owning the first rung of cap ship ownership and my comp, hard drive and card were totally flatlined in a flood, but I recon if you enjoy XGold then X2 will be fun.

X3? It is clear it started out with waaay tooo many problems, and it seems that many have been sorted, but I do not approve of companies releasing defective products...

It does look spectacular in the screenies, and it seems that new layers have been added... for a $20 download that includes X2 and X3 - why not if your comp has the specs? But do copy it to your own CD/s or DVD if permitted - I would worry about memory wipe otherwise.

Really the X Universe is very different from the games you mentioned and the flying experience is cool if you enjoy precise control of your craft and no messing with visuals to give the appearance of spped etc...

What X adds is not just the opportunity to trade, but the opportunity to create a trading Empire - and the variety and detail of craft and other property ownership genuinely increases with each new release.

Also the space views etc become more and more spectacular... really comes back to taste... try the earler ones and see if like the exhaustive trading micro-manipulation combined with 1st or 3rd person flight?