I'm finding it extremely frustrating that I can't interact with a lot of people, especially when in a wing. Nor can I communicate with people whom I know are online, unless I friend them. This method of instancing isn't working. Moreover, there's no need for it. There are billions of stars in the galaxy. The instances should be created by star system, or clusters of star systems. Start people out in different star systems, and they won't conglomerate in one; and if a system becomes too busy, people will leave. Adopt the Eve model. We should all be playing in the same galaxy.
Dweezle
The "EVE model" won't work. In EVE actions are basically dicerolls that are put in a queue on the server for processing when it has time to get to it. Latency is therefore not that big of a problem and IF you still get latency issues you can choose to slow down time (timedilatation) to compensate and give the server more breathingroom. Same thing applies to every other MMO. Roll a dice and add the result to a queue on the server.
In ED actions are instantaneous. Where you aim is where you hit. There is no "queue"
in the same sense to put the actions in since everything happens in real time. Slowing down time to compensate is not an option either due to how the game is played. On top of that a lot more information is sent between players due to more complex movement data and physics calculations that needs to be synced up. Similar restrictions applies to other "twitchbased" games like Star Citizen, CoD, BF, Destiny and so on...that is why many games like this have player limits around 16-32 players. There are exceptions with higher numbers (Planetside for example), but these often cut corners in regards to accuracy and physics.
Matchmaking and breaking things up in instances is therefore needed and it doesn't matter if P2P or dedicated servers are used. Dedicated servers might have some other benefits (and MUCH higher running costs), but it wouldn't solve the player max limit and suddenly let you meet hundreds of other players at the same time. Star Citizen will be using dedicated servers but still matchmaking and instances for the very same reason and they are talking about maybe a 50 theoretical player limit.
As for making the instances bigger (whole star systems) that would only result in you meeting LESS people.
Right now the matchmaking server keeps track of everyone and if several people are located in one location (let's say a station) the server will try to match as many players as possible in that area against each other. If the instance was across an entire system then people would be spread out all over the place. Maybe 6 in the Nav Beacon, 4 in supercruise, 5 in different signal sources, 10 at one of the stations, another 8 spread out across the other stations and so on...if the instance was across multiple star systems it would be even worse. And what would be the benefit of being matched against players you don't know in another star system? You can't meet or interact with them anyway.
Here is a quick sketch to show you what I mean if we for simplicity sake assume a 6 player limit per instance:
Welcome to P2P instancing, where your computer would be in big trouble if there was no player number limitation.
