I read somewhere that you can only see another 32 players at any given point. Did I read an innacurate article or, if 100 people say they'll meet in a system, can you see all 100?
How many players can meet up at once? Was it 32?
- Thread starter stocko1111
- Start date
No this isn't eve. 32 is the maximum
And even 32 is not guaranteed. The matchmaking server will decide based on network performance how many/who you see.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
To recycle a post from another thread:
The P2P/Server-Lite networking model was selected by Frontier from the outset. It has a hard limit of 32 players per instance but a "realistic" soft limit (affected by QoS of the connections) much lower than that. The number of connections varies exponentially with the number of players in an instance with the total number of concurrent connections CC = (N x (N + 1))/2 for N players. So, for N=2, CC=3; N=3, CC=6; N=4, CC=10; N=16, CC=120; N=32, CC=528. To increase the maximum number of players in an instance would probably require Frontier to totally re-write the netcode to use a more conventional Server/Client model - at significantly increased cost as the Servers would be dishing out a whole lot more information to each player.
The P2P/Server-Lite networking model was selected by Frontier from the outset. It has a hard limit of 32 players per instance but a "realistic" soft limit (affected by QoS of the connections) much lower than that. The number of connections varies exponentially with the number of players in an instance with the total number of concurrent connections CC = (N x (N + 1))/2 for N players. So, for N=2, CC=3; N=3, CC=6; N=4, CC=10; N=16, CC=120; N=32, CC=528. To increase the maximum number of players in an instance would probably require Frontier to totally re-write the netcode to use a more conventional Server/Client model - at significantly increased cost as the Servers would be dishing out a whole lot more information to each player.
Not so, you could still use instancing by checking to see who was near a player server side. As an example:
CMDR 1 is in Sol but CMDR 2 is in Barnards star, both dont get any info from the server (apart from messages if they are talking to each other). However if CMDR 1 comes within visual/scanner range of CMDR 2 and is in the same system then the server tells each of them where the other is. This would keep all network traffic to a minimum AND you could have more than 32 players in a area at once.
Its the same system I used in another game I made years ago and we had 128 players in the local area on a IBM XT using Novell networking software ( DOS 3.2 IIRC). Its very wasteful to transmit gigabytes of data all around the server when the only thing players will see is each other when they are in range.
This is wrong because if you go to LaveCon or FantastiCon, you will see a lot more players than that all together - what do you mean that that doesn't count
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
If the instance soft limit is 12 (it may be more, depending on QoS of connections) then we might have anywhere between 8 full instances and another with 4 players to 100 separate instances if everyone's internet connection is shocking.
32 real players + NPC. Enough for a good animation around a station. But digits could evolve later
I was only asking because of the amount of players joining up around Altair, we were all expecting a big thing. Turns out none of us could really find each other, let alone player pirates!
You can increase your chances of getting together significantly by friending each other AND create one player group that everyone belongs to. This will notify the matchmaking server that you put 'togetherness' over playability and loosens the matchmaking up. It's still not 100%...but it's way better than unaffiliated people trying to match up.
Sorry, new to the grouping thing, but can we play as a group AND play in open as normal?
The game is really not designed to find and kill folks.
Another issue is always get people to meet within the no fire zone of the station...even better all around the toaster rack. A lot of times people are in the same instance but outside the range of each others sensors. It's almost impossible to see a ship that is 8 clicks out...and that is further than the best scanner can tell you, in normal space.
Yeah, we did that and then couldn't really find more than one other wing once we'd jumped to Altair. Was nice to meet and greet other commanders though at the start while we figured out who would join which wing. It was almost like a player-community goal, not like a hunt-to-kill for the sake of it mission. Except this time it was PvP. Would be really awesome to see this develop.
Imagine if the devs said, yeah, this is happening, let's turn it into a community goal, and have the players write the script? We start it, go do what needs doing and the devs have worked out the rewards but with us doing the work? I would love to see this.
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By being part of a personal group, even in open, matchmaking takes that into account. It works like this:
1. free play...matchmaking uses best gameplay options. Low latency between players A and B match...high latency no match.
2. Friends....matchmaking looks for friends...but will sometimes not match on latency.
3. Friends and in a Private Group...matchmaking will almost always stick you together...even if latency is real bad. Your private group listing also affects matchmaking in open.
I'm in NC USA, another player is in Ireland. We always had trouble getting into instances when we were unrelated. Once we friended, it got better but there were many times we would drop into a system separately. Now having a private group set up and both are in that...I can't remember the last time we missed an instance. Oh..yeah a Wing will always work. There is no match making there...but for an unaffiliated wing...the above holds true also.
I dont think the matchmaker server cares so much about latency as i've been in open games with both high and low latency players.
On a different note though. There are other options outside of a client server setup like traditional games. When you consider high servers costs and such, you're thinking about client server setups where the server is hosting the shared simulation the connected players are in. All FD's server would need to be is a proxy of sorts. Sure with a 2 person shared instance, having to go through a proxy may be slower (may not as the route would differ) than p2p when you have a group of players, transmitting data to 1 destination and recieving from one destination is much more efficient than sending to 4-8-16+ destinations and receiving from that many. Also such a proxy setup could be optimized to only operate as such for players in shared instances of more than 4 people (with the handoff being transparent), further limiting load while providing significant improvements to large scale group interactions.
I dont think such a setup would require drastic investments ...but still may be more than FD can afford at this time.
On a different note though. There are other options outside of a client server setup like traditional games. When you consider high servers costs and such, you're thinking about client server setups where the server is hosting the shared simulation the connected players are in. All FD's server would need to be is a proxy of sorts. Sure with a 2 person shared instance, having to go through a proxy may be slower (may not as the route would differ) than p2p when you have a group of players, transmitting data to 1 destination and recieving from one destination is much more efficient than sending to 4-8-16+ destinations and receiving from that many. Also such a proxy setup could be optimized to only operate as such for players in shared instances of more than 4 people (with the handoff being transparent), further limiting load while providing significant improvements to large scale group interactions.
I dont think such a setup would require drastic investments ...but still may be more than FD can afford at this time.
It's sad quite frankly.... the Elite universe suffers greatly from the instancing model currently used and hardly seems alive most of the time.
Sincerely hoping more development is put into this aspect of the game.
Lots more chat here on this issue. This is supposed to be a living breathing after all... at the moment it's all rather lifeless... 32 player instancing is hardly 2015 now is it?!
http://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/38atme/massive_pvp_in_leesti_with_5_player_groups/
Sincerely hoping more development is put into this aspect of the game.
Lots more chat here on this issue. This is supposed to be a living breathing after all... at the moment it's all rather lifeless... 32 player instancing is hardly 2015 now is it?!
http://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/38atme/massive_pvp_in_leesti_with_5_player_groups/
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