Egosoft's venerable X series of space sims including X4: Foundations has earned a reputation among fans of the genre for its unparalleled simulation depth, with thousands of ships going about their business throughout the game's universe. The series' latest entry took this sophistication even further by ensuring that every ship in-game is constructed with real resources from the economy, something that wasn't possible in the series' previous PC games. The scale depicted in X4: Foundations is usually something one could only find in massive multiplayer games, which is something Egosoft is understandably proud of achieving.
The Best War Games spoke with Egosoft founder and CEO Bernd Lehahn about how the traditionally single-player game will be reintroducing its Ventures multiplayer component in the near future, and how that change will affect the game moving forward.
Bringing Back X4: Foundation's Ventures System
X4: Foundations' upcoming Ventures system is the second iteration of the multiplayer component which had been taken offline back in 2021. Considered a beta back then, players' experiences with the system gave Egosoft valuable insight into how the studio would like to implement it. Sometime soon after the Kingdom End expansion is released, Ventures will finally be making a comeback.
You will have visitor ships from other players in your universe, and sometimes you have to hunt them down. Maybe sometimes it's just about economic things, where you have to send stuff. Sometimes you have to play Ventures, which means you have to prepare ships with certain things and send them into other universes. And in combination, this progresses a little story. This is not so much different from the normal missions you play in the game, but you are playing now with other real players, and you can communicate with them and you form a little team. So that whole social aspect that is missing from the single-player game that X normally is will be added and that's pretty cool.
The first time around, Ventures were a very passive form of multiplayer where players would send their ships off into the multiverse for a length of time which would eventually return with rewards like cosmetics, resources, and currency. It looks like this has been expanded significantly and will drive more social interaction and communication among players, which is a great addition to a game that boasts such a strong and passionate fanbase. A narrative component could also add an interesting twist to X4's space exploration, potentially making the inter-player multiverse a more active part of the series' lore.
X4: Foundations' Multiplayer Is The Best of Both Worlds
Massive multiplayer space games like EVE Online are undoubtedly inspired by the X series, which has long been a pioneer when it comes to vast universes populated by countless ships. However, X's nature as a single-player game has allowed it to implement a much more satisfying progression curve since players aren't competing for space or resources. Of course, one shortcoming of this design is a lack of in-game community or interaction, something that the Ventures system cleverly addresses.
If you would play this in an MMO -- there are space MMOs that came out after we started with X: Beyond the Frontier -- in an MMO, you can never have this fast progression. You have a much, much slower grind, and you will probably never get a huge fleet of ships because if every player can have a huge fleet, what kind of universe would that be? In this game, you actually develop from the small guy to the huge, powerful faction, and have that in combination with a real simulated economy that feels authentic, where everything actually is simulated and develops differently every time. That, to us, is our biggest unique selling point and the thing that defines the whole series.
Since each player will still be tied to their own universe, this system allows players to interact, communicate, and work toward goals together without interfering in each other's worlds. This also eliminates the chances for bad actors to engage in griefing, something any EVE Online player will be relieved to get away from. Though many X players enjoy these games specifically because they are single-player games, more chances for community involvement may be just what the series needs to shake things up.
X4: Foundations is available on PC.