They wanted a release on December 16th, probably for a number of reasons. They've always said that this game will never be finished anyway.
Why is there still no REAL multiplayer?
- Thread starter Sideman
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They wanted a release on December 16th, probably for a number of reasons. They've always said that this game will never be finished anyway.
I think that Frontier Developments failed drastically to deliver many basic gameplay elements on Elite Dangerous, elements that are expected in every online game these days.
One of these missing elements being proper multiplayer experience.
I believe that after the honeymoon is over, the game will remain a niche product for a small group of spacesim enthusiast.
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Is this your first online game launch experience? I can tell you that Elite's launch was the smoothest I've experienced in years. Fired up launcher at 12:00 16th, game finished downloading at 14:50, 15:00 after tutorials I was flying around and pew pewing.
Pretty much every game launched in last 5 years wasn't able to provide that for me and most of them are plagued by issues to these days. Heck these days when game launches you DON'T expect to get in or it to be working automatically because that's how it is when companies make games for money not passion. Hence the term zero day patch.
So my answer is: Cut the devs some slack they released pretty polished product compared to competition (who are often multimilion companies like EA Ubisoft and other well known failures).
As for the people leaving, I believe the people that will leave are making the overall community better. This is not the usual MMO game and anyone expecting handholding and grinding associated with such is not gonna find it here.
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You have to remember the sheer size of this game means its a mammoth task. It's in theory the biggest MMO map/level/space wise ever. It has to work properly and function before you add stuff. Compare World of Warcraft now and World of Warcraft then...
Common sense says it will never be finished and constantly evolving like other MMOs. I ask you to compare now to a year later and see how different things are. Frankily I'm please and amazed by the progress in the last month. David Braben and Frontier have done something truely great, for a company of their size its incredible and Valve/Sony/EA or Blizzard would have struggled to do it this well.
Frontier have proven so many time during beta and gamma they have features ready to go they just want to time them right and make them work.
Common sense says it will never be finished and constantly evolving like other MMOs. I ask you to compare now to a year later and see how different things are. Frankily I'm please and amazed by the progress in the last month. David Braben and Frontier have done something truely great, for a company of their size its incredible and Valve/Sony/EA or Blizzard would have struggled to do it this well.
Frontier have proven so many time during beta and gamma they have features ready to go they just want to time them right and make them work.
Frontier are constrained by their budget, there are no monthly subs to pay for server farms hosting a non-instanced environment, nor anything like enough micro transactions to attempt it.
It took CCP nearly 8 years of monthly subscriptions, tens of thousands of lag fests and complaint threads and the heaviest investment in a server farm seen in history. In the end, they had a server farm that set a new world record, yet still bogs down to a crawl in busy systems forcing them to come out with crap called time dilation and they have the benefit of not having to host a game offering twitch based combat.
The reality is, the current system in ED is about as good as it is going to get in terms of numbers in a single instance, the system currently uses peer to peer in the various instances, that means that one of the players in the instance is actually hosting it for everyone else in their group.
Clearly, things like grouping are being worked on and refined, and we will get wings in the New Year that will enable mission and bounty sharing within a group. However, this claim that it is not possible to group is nonsense, I am able to regularly group up with four friends, we fly around in resource extraction sites and at nav points helping one another, and generally having a laugh. It is not always perfect, but it is doable, and it is fun, and we are looking forward to getting involved in the conflict zones together this weekend, trying not to shoot one another as we compete for kill shots.
Frankly, I have to wonder how many people complaining this is not a real mmo or that the current 32 player limit is not good enough have actually been in an instance with as many as 32 players. Conflict zones can become complete chaos, there are not just players on both sides there are ai there too, and the radar is generally a complete mess. Any more ships, and folks would complain about not being able to select targets effectively, radar ranges, shooting one another or whatever else they think an issue.
Folks are just going to have to deal with the fact that in the absence of subscriptions, there will be limitations on what is possible.
It took CCP nearly 8 years of monthly subscriptions, tens of thousands of lag fests and complaint threads and the heaviest investment in a server farm seen in history. In the end, they had a server farm that set a new world record, yet still bogs down to a crawl in busy systems forcing them to come out with crap called time dilation and they have the benefit of not having to host a game offering twitch based combat.
The reality is, the current system in ED is about as good as it is going to get in terms of numbers in a single instance, the system currently uses peer to peer in the various instances, that means that one of the players in the instance is actually hosting it for everyone else in their group.
Clearly, things like grouping are being worked on and refined, and we will get wings in the New Year that will enable mission and bounty sharing within a group. However, this claim that it is not possible to group is nonsense, I am able to regularly group up with four friends, we fly around in resource extraction sites and at nav points helping one another, and generally having a laugh. It is not always perfect, but it is doable, and it is fun, and we are looking forward to getting involved in the conflict zones together this weekend, trying not to shoot one another as we compete for kill shots.
Frankly, I have to wonder how many people complaining this is not a real mmo or that the current 32 player limit is not good enough have actually been in an instance with as many as 32 players. Conflict zones can become complete chaos, there are not just players on both sides there are ai there too, and the radar is generally a complete mess. Any more ships, and folks would complain about not being able to select targets effectively, radar ranges, shooting one another or whatever else they think an issue.
Folks are just going to have to deal with the fact that in the absence of subscriptions, there will be limitations on what is possible.
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If they do introduce more multiplayer features, they will need to up the threat.
a wing of 3 fighting anything less than an elite anaconda would be fairly easy.
I expect NPC groups to match..
a wing of 3 fighting anything less than an elite anaconda would be fairly easy.
I expect NPC groups to match..
Those are the two most important things. This game isn't for everyone and FD shouldn't start to try to appease them by changing the game in ways that betray the original vision
So yeah, shame but if they don't want to play the game, better be gone than a nuisance.We have already quite enough trolls from Beta 2
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I don't think that's true. The game world is procedurally generated (a.k.a random), then it doesn't really matter how big the game world is. Wheter it has 1 star system or 1 billion makes no difference. It would probably be a much bigger task to handcraft 50 star systems, and then we would have more variation and interesting lore in the game.
What really defines a size of a game tho is how deep are the game mechanics. What can we do, what can we manage? If you forget the size of the procedurally generated star map you start to realize that the game is actually very small. There is nothing you can own or manage (besides your own spaceship). Your cause have no actions. There are no decisions to be made. You are going from A to B, from a randomly generated mission to the next to get enough credits to buy an upgrade to your ship. That's the depth of this game. Please don't compare it to any MMOs out there.
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It does matter, the server has to issue and track each and every item in the galaxy with an ID, even those that expire after a period of time in space. You are also misunderstanding what procedurally generated means as it applies to ED; the systems are not random. The systems are predefined stored data, a big serial number, like a 256 bit file hash stored on the server, so our computers do not have to store individual data for 400 billion systems. Instead when you enter a system, the server sends the client the applicable file hash that describes the system you are in, the static objects within it, their relationship to one another, their properties etc then your client recreates the system for you in game using predefined algorithms instead of loading a map of the system from your hard drive.
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They had a lot of time to work on it, and they didn't have to release it unfinished. I don't have my hopes up. I think the gameplay is what it is. Planetary landing and walking around space stations won't change the core mechanics of the game.
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Procedurally generated means that there are rules defined on how things can be created randomly. So it is not chaotic random, but it is still random. Handcrafting systems takes a lot longer. After you've discovered 5 star systems in Elite, you are kind of bored with them. In the end they are all kind the same only slightly different looking.
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ORLY? Didn't all the hard core fanboys yell that the 16. would bring the final, the almighty release, a finished product and not some piece of work in progress?
Now we've got a MMORPG (marketed by FD as such, it is not in my personal opinion) without even fundamental things released. *clapping hands*
There will be read this:
[h=1]Dangerous player wings feature due “early next year”[/h]http://www.incgamers.com/2014/12/elite-dangerous-player-wings-feature-due-early-next-year
NORLY! They Didn't. (and I seed thems not doot)
What do you think star systems actually look like?
The universe is filled with fascinating little details.
When everything is procedurally generated, the look is bare bones. The star systems in Elite are not as detailed as they could be if created by design.
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