Yeaaaah... And Guild Wars 2 is doing fine...
The curse of Elite as Online game
- Thread starter ralf_maeder
- Start date
Yeaaaah... And Guild Wars 2 is doing fine...
It seems strange to me that they would cite the universe changes as the reason for multiplayer, then make the game so large and the background simulation so incidental that those changes are meaningless. I have a much easier time believing it was for DRM reasons or just because they were too ambitious with the scale and needed servers to run the back end.
- - - Updated - - -
true but GW2 and this are at opposite ends of the spectrum
(as it deserves to be)
- - - Updated - - -
true but GW2 and this are at opposite ends of the spectrum
(as it deserves to be)
Last edited:
Oh I know it is. I just simply pointing that non subscription based mmo can be achieved and successful. If you make game multiplayer centric and care for players interactions.It seems strange to me that they would cite the universe changes as the reason for multiplayer, then make the game so large and the background simulation so incidental that those changes are meaningless. I have a much easier time believing it was for DRM reasons or just because they were too ambitious with the scale and needed servers to run the back end.
- - - Updated - - -
true but GW2 and this are at opposite ends of the spectrum
Money will be made from DLC and other stuff. The more people that play, the more money they can make.
When people stop playing, they can reduce the number of servers, lowering the cost.
yea, if we were playing the finished product i would agree whit you. but remember they got a 10 year long development plan and we can't see what they are seeing,
we know something things though - planetary landings and fps is coming, and my guess is that they are going to try and bring the multiplayer more into that.
perhaps it would have been wise of them to put an "early access" tag on the game for awhile to remind us that there is more to come.
I agree, Elite: Dangerous is an MMO, technically.
It just doesn't put people together in any sociable way - one would have to make quite an effort to seek others out. I've found FPS like the Battlefield series to be more social. For me, that's the missed opportunity - and probably why the forums are so busy; we want to interact!
For some, sure. And no-one's arguing there shouldn't be multiplayer, or at least I'm not. Even the core 'open' mode that I cannot comprehend why anyone would want, it should still be there. Hell, make it actually 'Dangerous', knock yourselves out - I won't be troubling it one way or another. Things like combat logging, weapon balance, background sim numbers, straight up cheats & hacks. All of that is making life miserable for the people trying to play the game I don't care about, whilst sucking up lots of dev time trying to deal with it.
And I would say that stuff leaves me cold, but can respect the opinion. It's all fluff to me though, slapped on top of a badly written space soap-opera, where very little actually happens. Kudos to people with the right kind of imagination to make up their own stories in that and have fun with it, but that's not everyone's cup of tea. I like systems, mechanics, rules + the discovery & breaking of same. Also, cool spaceships!
Just let the rest of us have Skyrim in space, with Skyrim's most important feature (and the reason it's still top 10ish in Steam's most played list) - great mod support, plus the ability to create/change/cheat/break everything to our heart's content. Obviously nothing from this hypothetical game should ever be allowed anywhere near open online, and should probably encompass private groups too.
If you look at the side of the community that has made things like trade tools, exploration logging/mapping programs, various graphics tweaks, not to mention all the fanfic...there's clearly a ton of people out there who would love to spend time making mods & custom content. It's also clear FD are a bit stretched trying to please all the people, and ending up annoying most of them.
In the meantime, I found this:
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Installing_fs2_open
Yeah, it's Freespace 2! But 'modernised'. And damm, it is rough around the edges, a nightmare to install, graphics are...well, they are certainly improved over the 15 year old original, but...you can mess around with with things freely in what was a great space game. Imagine an E : D version of that
Last edited:
No technicality about it. And I'm glad E:D isn't another 3 lives and a score MMO.
I tend to agree. Freelancer (2003) is a good example of a game that was kept alive by the modding community for many, many years after the publisher (Microsoft) pulled the plug on it. I have played at least four very different flavours of Freelancer (and I believe that some servers are still running for the online version).
I would hope that Elite Dangerous could have a similar future.
I, as a merchant mariner (think of the trading ships in ED, but in real life, and out on the ocean), can hardly wait until there is an offline version, should that day come. I can't get internet while I'm on board my ship, which I am on for three months at a time sometimes, usually at least 6 months out of the year. So I'm limited to while I am home. You have no idea how upset I was when they intially took away the offline mode...
Elite Dangerous is an online game. As such it depends on the servers that provide Frontier. We read a lot of announcements that Frontier has plans for it to grow in certain aspects. Now lets face it, Elite Dangerous depends on sales to be commercially sustainable, so it needs to grow its customer base constantly. But here is the question: Will it be profitable in 5 years, 10 years, you name it? At a given moment Frontier will just pull the plug and we won't play Elite Dangerous ever more. This is the curse of an online-game, whereas the original Elite we can still play long after it was discontinued. Makes me think if Braben/Frontier would provide a offline version before this should happen? I guess not.
There are two options... one is they go bankrupt and sell it to another company, which would change the model to produce income.
The other is they sell an upgrade allowing you to set up your own server.
This was discussed when FD announced that there would be no off line mode.
They said if they had to close down the servers. They would make publicly available, the data and program.
I only read about a static snapshot of the universe state data.
Nothing about the code. I could have miss that though.
Anyway, a static universe at the moment would be a pretty dull game, for the same reason they didn't release an offline version.
I hope this won't happen until it's developed and evolved enough to sustain itself in an offline mode (at least a couple of expansions, and probably tgey should still develop an AI to simulate a dynamic universe to some degree)
I feel this is all just far too premature and just idle speculation.
Oh... wait. Internet. Right.
Oh... wait. Internet. Right.
Last edited:
Even the original GW servers are still open. I could play my old character but I won't because I've moved on so it is effectively dead.
Eventually all the work you put into a game is wasted. The wealth, the experience and the particular skill set that you learned... All pointless once you stop playing.
Also worrying about it is pointless. It's just a bit of fun.
Personally I see this as the one advantage of p2p, the server right now last I checked "only" does, system info, matchmaking and transaction confirmation.
It is very possible because of this, though I think Elite has potential to go on for quite a while because space sims, with great graphics age rather well, look at freelancer, still great looking fun game. But when the time comes for Elite to shut down it will be very easy for them to release a server program and the game can fairly easily be tweaked for private servers, because it basically just needs to know where the main server is located.
It is very possible because of this, though I think Elite has potential to go on for quite a while because space sims, with great graphics age rather well, look at freelancer, still great looking fun game. But when the time comes for Elite to shut down it will be very easy for them to release a server program and the game can fairly easily be tweaked for private servers, because it basically just needs to know where the main server is located.
I'm with you CMDR! If I could, I would rather load-up 1.2 and stick it out there with a modding community. Don't get me wrong, thanks for the game FDev, but we'll take it from here
A 10 year development plan for something that didn't even start well? Maybe if it was primetime blizzard i'd believe in a 10 year plan, for a company like this they'd need to have knocked it out of the park straight away to get even 5 year development.
- - - Updated - - -
SWTOR was a boring WoW clone is why it didn't last, almost every single MMO post world of warcraft was launched too early, cloning somebody elses game then trying to compete with a polished experience provided by the popular option was never going to work. Even WoW is running out of steam now, though that may be because blizzard has transitioned from one of the best game developers in the world to a derivative factory. You can't sell a subscription on something that isn't finished, it needs to be polished, it needs to be good, and that sub needs to go towards new content not finishing what you paid for initially.
Its no surprise that the reboot of FF14 does so well when you look at the content release schedule, it was shaky at first but they absolutely hammered it out after that. Really working for those $$$.
Last edited: