Do you mean during the Kickstarter campaign. Perhaps you could quote the bit you are referring to so as to remove all doubt.
Elite Dangerous no longer an MMO?
- Thread starter Ghostickles
- Start date
Your definition of MMO seems to be: "two random users with hacks within game client to connect to same instance"
You're conflating two different things. Your conflating how good ED is at delivering the MMO experience, with whether it constitutes an MMO or not.
Elite Dangerous
Online - check
Multiplayer - check
Massively Multiplayer - check
How well does it does these things.
Online - Yes
Multiplayer - not great
Massively Multiplayer - not very well.
ED isn't very good at being an MMO, fine. Just say that. Anything more than that just smacks of petulence, where your displeasure is manifesting as "wah wah, I'm so unhappy with ED that it doesn't deserve to be called an MMO."
- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -
And you're conflating "what makes a good MMO" with "what defines whether a game is an MMO or not."
Do learn the difference.
A far more accurate analogy would be this.
The "this game is obviously an MMO crowd" are saying that what drives the Tesla Model S is an engine because engines are what make cars go.
I'm saying "Well actually no. It's a motor that drives that particular vehicle. Just because it moves a car doesn't make it an engine. The mistake you are making is based on the fact that you are not thinking of it in terms of the correct wording. What actually moves a petrol car is an Internal Combustion Engine which has, over time, been lazily contracted by those who know no better to "engine". However, because there is absolutely zero internal combustion taking place, by virtue of the fact it's a motor not an I.C.E., you cannot call it an engine even if it does make your car go forward."
Definition rather than opinion.
Edit: I have since looked up numerous definitions of massively, being the adverb form of massive, and do you know what. Never once was 32 a definition. By NO stretch of the imagination can 32 be considered Massive. THAT is the crux of the issue. It has nothing at all to do with elves, guilds, crafting or dancing in Stormwind in your underpants. It's about knowing what words mean.
Last edited:
I guess its pretty pointless debating on whether or not its an mmo, if they removed the tag they obviously realized that its not, at least not on par with other games that have that tag. so if you do think it is an mmo by all accounts, ask your self, why did they remove that specific tag? surly logically speaking if it was an mmo they'd have not removed it? case and point of the OP.
Running the following query in Google:
elite AND dangerous AND MMO site:frontier.co.uk
It shows nothing outside of the forums as far as I can see.
A similar query for Kickstarter yields nothing outside of the comments section. Try as I might I haven't found anywhere that shows that Frontier described their game in an MMO. Perhaps I'm just not searching hard enough.
elite AND dangerous AND MMO site:frontier.co.uk
It shows nothing outside of the forums as far as I can see.
A similar query for Kickstarter yields nothing outside of the comments section. Try as I might I haven't found anywhere that shows that Frontier described their game in an MMO. Perhaps I'm just not searching hard enough.
Just check back through the thread. There are links to pages where they are still saying ED is "massively multiplayer online".
Edit: Saved you the trouble.
"The Official Elite: Dangerous Online Store
Elite: Dangerous is the spectacular new sequel in the Elite series of games. Head for the stars, take a ship and trade, bounty-hunt, pirate or assassinate your way across the galaxy in this massively multiplayer online space adventure.
It's an awe inspiring, beautiful, vast place; with 400 billion star systems, planets, moons and asteroid fields just waiting to be explored and exploited.
Trade: Buy low, cross dangerous space lanes, evade or destroy pirates en route, then sell high, if you make the journey!
Fight: Take on the pirates or be one yourself.
Progress: Get your pilot rating all the way from "Harmless" to "Elite".
Explore: Head out to the far reaches of space and discover amazing sights.
Multiplayer: Do all this online with your friends, other "Elite" pilots, or even alone."
https://store.elitedangerous.com/
Last edited:
So what does "massive" means when regular multiplayer games are just as big, if not bigger?
Please...
The number of players is by no means large, many multiplayer games have higher player counts than that. I've seen Flash games with more players, and there's nothing "massive" about it. As for playing and interacting, oh well, players struggle to even talk together, and the only worthwhile group activity is to shoot each other: the online is pretty much worthless, and while it is online, it's not really multiplayer, it's closer to people playing a singleplayer game in the same universe.
As for being persistent, it's never really been part of the definition of a MMO. And then, people tend to be confused about its meaning: it means things keep happening even when you're not playing, and these days, it's the case for pretty much every multiplayer game, considering persistence starts as soon as there are three players who can join and leave the game at any time and pick up right where they left. The game sure has plenty persistent elements, but their depth is lower than that of your average FPS.
What you define isn't a "MMO", only a mere multiplayer game, and that's what Elite: Dangerous is. Unless all online games are MMOs, after all, many caught up with MMOs of the past, but then that's what a MMO strives to be: bigger than common online games, and with mechanics fitting of that massiveness, but I'm seeing neither.
Last edited:
You want this game to be MMO so badly, that you actually believe it is
This is an MMO.
What people want is for this to be a good MMO.
Currently it is not a good MMO.
This does not mean that it is not an MMO.
People are confusing "not good" with "not an MMO."
Hear, hear.
Caveat; saying FD removed the tag may not be entirely accurate, and goes without official confirmation. It does still say on the store page in plain English that it is a massively multiplayer online experience, this goes back to the root query, and I have found no official remarks. Hence the post, wasn't trying to start arguments, just find answers. I did find the notion upsetting, hopefully you understand.
No we're not. We're just using a definition of MMO that doesn't make practically everything in existence an MMO.
By your rationale, any MMO post WoW is not an MMO, if their player numbers are smaller than those of WoW at its peak? That would suddenly make a lot of MMOs, "not" MMOs.
Market share is not what defines an MMO.
This is irrelevant. An MMO with a playerbase of 10k is still an MMO, irrespective of the existence of MMOs with playerbase in excess of 10million.
A persistent world is at the very core of what constitutes an MMO. If you've no persistent world, then any online game with a large playerbase, becomes an MMO. World of Tanks is considered to be an MMO, but it isn't really much different from BF4, in that a limited number of players can fight each other on randomly selected maps.
If you remove the persistent world from the equation, then you very much broaden the definition of what constitutes an MMO and Elite Dangerous would still fall within that definition.
People may also be saying that it is not an MMO because it does not have feature X or it is because it has feature Y. Neither or both could be true!
The label 'MMO' and 'Massively Multiplayer Online space adventure' was all over the official promotional marketing on their website last year when I joined beta in June.
Those denying it are simply trying to re-write history.
It was removed from the official website and marketing material as it became obvious ED wasn't going to deliver a MMO experience worthy of that name. Even the basic tenets of a MMO barely work or are truly ill thought out such as player communications !
Except that all the action takes place in one massively multiplayer galaxy.
This thread, and all those like it, are due to the difficulty of shoehorning E|D into any category, as it is kind of a new category. You see this in the interviews, where DB will call it an MMO only 'technically', and in the language on the site, where they do use 'massively multiplayer online', which it is, but not 'MMO', which has connotations they don't want.
It's hard to fit into another category because they know the game they are making, and they don't want to change it to fit other games, which is fine for a small indie game, but not fine when you're talking tens/hundreds of thousands of customers all with their own preconceptions and expectations. People are going to get upset. And that's all this is. And, from past performance, it's the way it's going to stay, because FD are not in the business of changing their game to suit the punters. And _that_ is how you make history, instead of another grey shapeless pointless undifferentiable-from-its-peers game.
I fully understand your concerns and while I have no interest in playing Elite Dangerous the MMO, that doesn't mean to say that I want to see FD veer suddenly away from trying to develop a better realised MMO experience for all of you who do want that.
If they've quietly dropped the MMO tag because they no longer want to develop in that direction (given that only 2months previous they dropped offline mode), then it does raise interesting and worrying questions about what direction they do want to take the game in, in the future.
Whether it is or not, whether its labeled as so or not doesn't matter so long as Frontier puts in the ability to group and play with my friends is what matters. As long as the instancing allows for 32 players in a zone and supports multiplayer play with appropriate features, is what ultimately matters.
After the removal of offline play a change in marketing strategy carries the slight implication that the 'massive' part, which matters to some players like myself, may not make it into the game. It was billed for 32 players at a time, and if that is still the case then I can rest my fears. Easy.
That was the expectation set at time of purchase.
Having had a night to sleep on it; if FD did change tactics that is a good thing, because MMO players have a certain expectations which Elite Dangerous may not aspire to, and adjusting marketing would be fair to prospective players. This is respectable, reasonable and probably in the games best interest.
As it sits you are going to have to wait, like me, for the new content to see where it is heading.
So long as there are massive improvements to the multiplayer functionality of the game its going to be fine.
My hopes are we get it with Wings.
Again; MMO or not doesn't matter so much as meeting set expectations, being fair to prospects and putting out a really great game. None of which has anything to do with all the semantics being argued.
After the removal of offline play a change in marketing strategy carries the slight implication that the 'massive' part, which matters to some players like myself, may not make it into the game. It was billed for 32 players at a time, and if that is still the case then I can rest my fears. Easy.
That was the expectation set at time of purchase.
Having had a night to sleep on it; if FD did change tactics that is a good thing, because MMO players have a certain expectations which Elite Dangerous may not aspire to, and adjusting marketing would be fair to prospective players. This is respectable, reasonable and probably in the games best interest.
As it sits you are going to have to wait, like me, for the new content to see where it is heading.
So long as there are massive improvements to the multiplayer functionality of the game its going to be fine.
My hopes are we get it with Wings.
Again; MMO or not doesn't matter so much as meeting set expectations, being fair to prospects and putting out a really great game. None of which has anything to do with all the semantics being argued.