Lower your Expectations for ED

Regardless of what people want to add, "MMO" is a basic definition that was coined a long time ago. It's actual definition has not changed, people have. Discussions about it's definition are really just discussions about opinions. Heck, this entire thread is mostly about opinions being presented as facts.
 
I think we've reached a point where we can say, without any hesitation, that everything is an mmo. GTA5? mmo, because it has an online mode. Raft? That's an mmo, because people can see other people's rafts at the login screen. Total War games? Totally mmos, because there are multiplayer battles that a lot of people participate in. Uno? That's an mmo. I mean, you can't play it alone. Pogostuck? Another great mmo. I can see all the other players who are playing it at the same time as me.

These are all mmos. I think we can all agree on that.
Elite Dangerous doesn't offer an offline or single player mode and each and every player action will always affect the shared game world no matter if you see them or not. There is no way to escape the influence of other players. In that sense Elite is very much an MMO.
If you just look at the direct player to player interaction you are right, but for very large groups of players the game is about the BGS, Power Play, CGs and fighting Thargoids. Even if you are a lone explorer you are still contributing to a collective effort.
Just because someone doesn't care about these aspects of the game it doesn't mean they aren't there.
 
Excellent. We can now get to the root of the problem.

There is an almost ubiquitous phenomenon within the world of video game players, which is a desperate insistence that their own definitions for categories of games are valid, because "to each their own". Now, attempt to apply this logic to pretty much anything else.

The definition of "fascism" is:


If everyone had their own definition for the word "fascism", the word "fascism" would lose its purpose for existing, because no two people would agree on its meaning. Furthermore, it renders any discussion about fascism impossible, because no one would be able to agree on exactly what was being discussed. This thread is a flawless example of this kind of dissonance, and it eventually reaches a point at which mockery becomes the only logical path forward.


According to you, that's exactly what Solo is - its own instance. And while we share a background simulation, it has no impact on my (or your) activities beyond numerical changes within the background simulation itself.
That's one of the worst examples you could pick because there isn't a definite definition of fascism.

Just quoting Wikipedia here:
What constitutes a definition of fascism and fascist governments has been a complicated and highly disputed subject concerning the exact nature of fascism and its core tenets debated amongst historians, political scientists, and other scholars since Benito Mussolini first used the term in 1915. Historian Ian Kershaw once wrote that "trying to define 'fascism' is like trying to nail jelly to the wall".

 
There is no way to escape the influence of other players
Tell me... in what way do you think your actions affect me if I'm in Solo? Practically speaking. What? You flip some system I'll never visit? You back some PP power I care nothing about? You increase the influence of a faction I don't even know exists and will never encounter?

Practically speaking, the BGS might as well just be code.

That's one of the worst examples you could pick because there isn't a definite definition of fascism.
In the Wiki article you linked, if you click on the word "fascism", you get this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement,[1][2][3] characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
I mean... my god, people...

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No idea. All I know is that people tell me that I can't compare X4 to ED because X4 is not an MMO. Of course as soon as someone does try to compare another MMO to Elite, then the criteria changes to flight model or number of planets or graphics style or some other arbitrary gatekeeper that prevents anyone from comparing any game to Elite, except for some magical reason Star Citizen, which gets a free pass, probably because SC makes ED look good.
If you ask me you can compare Elite to any game you want. It's possible that I will point out differences in the nature of the games though, but I guess that's part of a comparison?

Hypothetically, you could compare Elite to X4 and say that X4 has a savegame feature while Elite doesn't. And I could point out that Elite is a MMO and they usually don't have savegame features.
 
Tell me... in what way do you think your actions affect me if I'm in Solo? Practically speaking. What? You flip some system I'll never visit? You back some PP power I care nothing about? You increase the influence of a faction I don't even know exists and will never encounter?
I already answered that in the post you quoted:
Just because someone doesn't care about these aspects of the game it doesn't mean they aren't there.


Practically speaking, the BGS might as well just be code.
Practically speaking, everything is just code.
In the Wiki article you linked, if you click on the word "fascism", you get this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

I mean... my god, people...

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Do you even read or do you just post?
 
I think the BGS is part of the game... one that doesn't make Solo any less of a single player experience practically speaking.

I think that if I can see the effects of other players on my game, then it is perforce a multiplayer experience.

From my perspective, the distinction between Solo and single-player is at least as profound as the difference between Solo and Open, if not more so.

No idea. All I know is that people tell me that I can't compare X4 to ED because X4 is not an MMO. Of course as soon as someone does try to compare another MMO to Elite, then the criteria changes to flight model or number of planets or graphics style or some other arbitrary gatekeeper that prevents anyone from comparing any game to Elite, except for some magical reason Star Citizen, which gets a free pass, probably because SC makes ED look good.

You can compare ED to whatever you want.

I see the MMO aspects of Elite: Dangerous as a core part of what makes it Elite: Dangerous. Indeed, I never would have given the game a second look if it was not an MMO. So, any comparison between ED and non-MMOs is already apples and oranges, as far as I am concerned.

If you never thought of ED as an MMO, then comparing it to X4 makes a lot more sense.

Tell me... in what way do you think your actions affect me if I'm in Solo? Practically speaking.

Laws in force in a given area, mission availability, types of signal sources, NPC demographics, prices of goods and services, faction names plastered on real estate, etc and so forth.

One of the reasons I'm rather dismissive of all these ganking concerns that crop up from time to time is that there is generally less a player can do to affect my actions if their CMDR is instanced with mine than otherwise.
 
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So basically, it's an mmo I can play as a single player game by using Solo mode. Got it.
But you can’t Play ED like a single player game. That’s the point.

For example, recently I was in the middle of lifting off of a planet in Space Engineers, en route to a space station, when real life interrupted. I saved my game, dealt with the interruption, loaded the game, and resumed exactly where I left off. Not that long ago, I was in the middle of a stealth mission in another single player game when I realized it was getting late. I saved my game in the middle of sneaking up on an enemy, and left it there. Didn’t get back to it for three days. When I did, I resumed playing exactly where I left off.

If I were in the middle of Orbital Cruise on approach to a space station in ED, I wouldn’t be able to log out in to middle, and expect to drop back into the exact same conditions I left them in. I’d be in normal space, and that station would likely be on the far side of the world. If I were to attempt a stealth mission in ED, I wouldn’t be able to log out, and return three days later to resume the mission, already in progress. If I don’t get kicked out of the settlement completely, the guards would be in different places, the mission would’ve failed, and the settlement could be in a completely different state from when I last left it.

As for the definition of “massively multiplayer”…

Single Player < Multi-Player (LAN) <= Multi-Player (WAN) <= MUDs* <= Massively Multi-Player

It’s a relative term, not a quantitative one. It simply means that there are more players in the game than the typical MUD*, private hobby server, or other small-scale multi-player games.
 
I read what you posted, which was a Wiki article claiming that a word is impossible to define... which contains a link to a clear definition for that word. 😄
It contains a definition of the word while also saying that a clear definition is very difficult. Apparently the world isn't as simple as a link to a Wiki article.
 

Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
That's my point. There is no mmo that allows you to completely remove all direct multiplayer interaction. Solo is essentially single player. I honestly don't care about the semantics people use to convince themselves and others that it isn't. For all intents and purposes, it is.
As far as I remember I was able to play WoW completely solo for the most part. It was perhaps some of the more difficult dungeons and raids where you needed other people to help. Much like consensual PvP or Hydras or Medusas and the like in Elite. So 🤷‍♂️
 
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What the actual hell does any of this have to do with space simulation? It's like people aren't happy with a game about cosmic exploration, galactic shipping and interstellar combat if they can't wander through a forest and take a leak on a tree. We need to be able to get poop on our boots and waddle through snow storms and pick up boxes with hyper-realistic box-picking-up animations or else the EMESHUN is not complete.
Personally, I’m equally interested in exploring strange new worlds as I am about traversing the empty void of space. ED has gotten better about this, but it still hasn’t even reached a rough parity with its predecessors. I still can’t believe Frontier removed the requirement to land on worlds to discover their material distribution, rather enhancing the existing gameplay by a third class of exploration data, and new modules to make it easier to acquire. 🤦‍♀️

I just hope that if Frontier opens up non-terraformed worlds to being landed upon, that they aspire to do better than No Man’s Sky “potato head” procedural generation.
 
If I were in the middle of Orbital Cruise on approach to a space station in ED, I wouldn’t be able to log out in to middle, and expect to drop back into the exact same conditions I left them in. I’d be in normal space, and that station would likely be on the far side of the world. If I were to attempt a stealth mission in ED, I wouldn’t be able to log out, and return three days later to resume the mission, already in progress. If I don’t get kicked out of the settlement completely, the guards would be in different places, the mission would’ve failed, and the settlement could be in a completely different state from when I last left it.
But we're wading into very murky water here. If I log out of ED on the surface of a planet in an SRV, or in supercruise, or in space outside of supercruise, when I log back in I'm in exactly the same place I was when I logged out.

It contains a definition of the word while also saying that a clear definition is very difficult.
So the definition is clear, but it's also not clear, because clear definitions are very difficult... despite the presence of a clear definition.

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As far as I remember I was able to play WoW completely solo for the most part.
But you weren't playing it in a solo instance were you? Other people were running around you at all times. They could see you and talk to you. They could steal your mobs or compete directly with you for resource nodes. They were present.

Nobody but you is present in ED's Solo mode. You are completely segregated from the rest of the playerbase. The only effect they can have on your game is a numerical impact on the background simulation.
 
You can compare ED to whatever you want.

I see the MMO aspects of Elite: Dangerous as a core part of what makes it Elite: Dangerous. Indeed, I never would have given the game a second look if it was not an MMO. So, any comparison between ED and non-MMOs is already apples and oranges, as far as I am concerned.

If you never thought of ED as an MMO, then comparing it to X4 makes a lot more sense.
Exactly!! I totally agree with this, though I'm okay with ED being defined as an MMO (albeit a very empty one in my day-to-day gameplay compared to ESO), it's just not my focus when playing Elite. I'll also agree with Northpin many pages back and say that Elite would probably suck as a purely offline single-player game, but that's because its BGS relies on it being an MMO, while in contrast to X4 which does not. So for me it's not that real humans are affecting the BGS that matters, because I find that the simulated humans in X4 do a perfectly fine job at this. But then again, I don't need to hang out on Discord with X4's NPCs as so many people who enjoy Elite do with their mates.

For me X4 has been almost a perfect plug-n-play replacement for Elite, right down to the controller binds, therefore it's completely acceptable to compare the two. Sure, it's not got all the features of Elite, but Elite does not have all the features of X4 either; in fact Elite is missing quite a few! Now obviously if a person's focus in Elite is one of those features missing from X4, like exploring planet surfaces, then the comparison won't work for them, but blanket statements like Star Citizen is the only competitor to Elite are patently wrong, because I uninstalled Elite and am spending my gaming money on X4 instead, specifically as a replacement* to Elite.

* along with Space Engine when I do have a yen to explore planet surfaces.
 
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Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
But you weren't playing it in a solo instance were you? Other people were running around you at all times. They could see you and talk to you. They could steal your mobs or compete directly with you for resource nodes. They were present.

Nobody but you is present in ED's Solo mode. You are completely segregated from the rest of the playerbase. The only effect they can have on your game is a numerical impact on the background simulation.
I do not think that just beeing able to see other players running around in your screen amounts to much of an mmo if you can easily skip any pvp or coop interactions with them altogether tbh. At least in Elite you are forced to fight through the BGS even if you do not see them. And WoW allows to play the game fully solo if you wish, much like you can in Elite.

By that standard not only WoW or ED are not MMOs, but only games such as EVE would be (where there is indeed no way to avoid anyone´s interactions at all).
 
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So the definition is clear, but it's also not clear, because clear definitions are very difficult... despite the presence of a clear definition.
No, the definition isn't clear. That's explained in both Wikipedia articles you didn't read.

PS
Maybe it's a language barrier or something. How can you say that something is clearly defined, when there are many different competing definitions of it? That's what I don't get.
 
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No, the definition isn't clear. That's explained in both Wikipedia articles you didn't read.
I disagree. I think the definition is extremely clear. But maybe you and I have different definitions of the word "clear".

And WoW allows to play the game fully solo if you wish, much like you can in Elite.

Frankly, I prefer the Wiki definition of ED:
Elite Dangerous is a space flight simulation game developed and published by Frontier Developments.

Does anyone disagree with this?
 
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