Would be good if the pirates could jam your communications too.
DEVS: Why no social features like chat channels, guilds / corps and parties?
- Thread starter Dejay
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Would be good if the pirates could jam your communications too.
It's a feature not a bug!
You could make whole lot of gameplay around that.
Also silent running could mean actual silent running too. Imagine hunting someone / smuggling stuff in when suddenly your comm array goes hot. Kind of "cell in theatre" thing.
Triangulation of signal to find someone broadcasting in deep space?
Hacking opponents ship computer via open grid comms?
It can easily be made into risk/reward choice
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The instancing system is meant to be completely fluid and depending on distance according to the DDF. So if implemented correctly you could have 100.000 players spread out in one system, fly around and see each one of them on your screen. It's more like a "limit the number of players at once on your screen". Of course we don't know how well it will work eventually, but that was the plan. It is very rarely limiting.
So hopefully it works well and makes things simpler.
I guess then we're back to a local and system(?) wide chat, which many people didn't like. Maybe the chat should just be larger, something like 1000 light seconds. So you can only hear players that you could actually reach in a sensible amount of time.
Maybe "sharing your position" could just be a button on the chat window, like a clickable link in WoW chat.
No, it's much more complex than that. While you are correct that each instance/bubble/island is for all players within a certain distance of each other (typically radar range), you are very likely to get multiple instances at the same/similar location due to issues like:
* Limited number of players per instance.
* Different players having different internet bandwidth.
* Different players being in different parts of the world (you don't want someone in England & Australia to be in the same instance as the lag would be terrible).
There will be MANY instances (bubbles) at popular locations like Resource Extraction Points, Stations, etc.
That's why you can't have a system-wide chat & just expect to be able to meet-up with anyone you speak to. That's why I proposed a "locate transmission source" mechanic to hide this fact in a believable & workable way.
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True I haven't thought about that. I still hope it won't be as common as you say though.
I wish FD would create a sort of "dedicated server" that people can install on any server to help with the P2P network traffic, latency and stability. Kind of like adding "power nodes" to the P2P network to improve performance. Network stability / speed is an important factor also for the whole multiplayer aspect and will also determine how will ED will work as an MMO. I'd gladly pay sponsor a server with something like 10€ per year (not month lol).
Sorry - if you make an MMO then I expect it to be an MMO. In other games I can interact and chat with anyone in the world just fine. ED just seems to be a solo game where you get to shoot at other people and the only real point of the online part is as a DRM.
While I'm having fun playing i'm pretty sure I'd have a lot more fun in a stand-alone game along the lines of the old Frontier and FFE.
But that's gone now so what I want is the features and facilities I expect as standard in any MMO.
Well to be fair in almost all MMO's you have lots of servers that seperate the player base in shards as well. The instancing system imho is the best possible technical way to deal with it. Only dedicated server nodes could help with it but the instancing itself is great.
I understand what you're saying but they chose to implement online in this odd way that apparently precludes both solo offline and MMO modes. So we're back with two variants of solo online with the second one being where you can get shot at by real people. It's reasonably fun but hardly justifies all the trumpet blowing about the awesomely rich online experience. There's little or indeed nothing that couldn't be done with a bit of code.
This is yet another demonstration of how completely out of touch FD are with today's online gaming market - it's utterly bizzare and foolish and will contribute to the bad reputation this game is quickly obtaining day by day.
They do not seem to be aware of how online games work... it's quite stunningly incompetent when you think about it.
They do not seem to be aware of how online games work... it's quite stunningly incompetent when you think about it.
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Please point to an MMO which handle reaction times of a hundred milliseconds or so (i.e. a ping of 0.1 seconds or so). There aren't any that I know of, unless they put you into smaller instances (like Elder Scrolls Online).
E.D. is a new & very different kind of MMO. It has to be different because reaction-based shooter games need low ping to work. Older traditional MMOs, like WoW or Eve Online, get away with large ping times because you just click where you want your character/ship to go or shoot, and then wait while it does it (with little further interaction from you). And Eve cheats even further, by slowing down time when things get busy (a solution which would make Elite Dangerous unplayable).
E.D.'s problem is NOT due it's choice of P2P network. That's more of a consequence of trying to have low-latency, without having to charge huge monthly subscriptions to pay for very expensive servers (much more than traditional MMOs).
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Well the only action multiplayer game I know of is PlanetSide 2 (not an MMO ofc). The huge battle scenes really impressed me. So it's possible technically but only if they have dedicated servers, and they cost maintenance.
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Yes, BUT there is still NOT one single world for everyone. There will be multiple instances (albeit of the whole map). Which was what I was trying to explain in my reply.
And bear in mind that E.D's "map" is the whole galaxy. So it's simply infeasible to put everyone in the same instance, no matter how expensive the servers. Even trying to treat a star system as the shared "map" would be expensive (and probably still require instances anyway due to the sheer number of players that could be in it).
E.D. is unique in being an MMO you can play without a subscription (ala Guild Wars) *without* pushing micro-transactions (in game), and *that also* handles low reaction times. They just need to improve the multiplayer chat (and implement Alliances, and allow missions to share rewards to a group).
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Planetside2 is free to play, so at least with their model microtransactions are enough.
Also, with 2000 players per instance (666/faction) , it does cross MMO line, usually drawn at 100-400 concurent world users . It is also labelled as such.
It's closest match technologically speaking. With chat, outfits, multi-user vehicles and proximity voice chat. What they do should be feasible for ED - ultimately that is. Say in year of initial release (PS2 was totally plagued with bugs in first year .. and client says 0.9 last time I checked)
Of course they are aware how online games work. They have made a deliberate choice to break that old mold and do things differently. As they have repeated so often, they are making the game THEY want to make. We are just invited along for the ride. personally, I'm loving it and I'm glad a lot of the old ways of doing things have been dumped.
And I'm really glad for it. I don't want to play another me-too MMO (there are already too many MMOs that are basically identical apart from different graphics). Being different is Frontier's best chance of standing out. They just need to fix the multiplayer chat/grouping oversight.
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Not played the game yet although I do have a copy waiting being a KS backer. I need a new system as my 10 yr old pal below my desk need to retire.
Tell me you can talk to approaching ships right like in every Sc-fi show out? Hail that ship! Groups will use external voice apps I know just like in DayZ but you need to be able to talk or communicate with the ships around you with people you dont know.
Tell me you can talk to approaching ships right like in every Sc-fi show out? Hail that ship! Groups will use external voice apps I know just like in DayZ but you need to be able to talk or communicate with the ships around you with people you dont know.
Yes you can and there is apparently even a hotkey for it. But when you get a message you don#t get any audio cue (like in wow etc for example) so many people miss them. If you are hailed from someone else, I'm not sure how easy it is to reply actually. I think you have to select the player first, then send a message. So it's there but it's rather clumsy.
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