How many players will ED be able handle together at once?

[Bob_H]

I think the heavy instancing and 32 player limit truly is the weakest part of the games design, FD seems to have (here comes the dreaded 'i' word) immersion as one of their design goals, yet the instancing fragments everything in the universe. Obviously they felt that this is the best route to take but surely this will hurt gameplay consistency.

For example, imagine tracking a target, another player perhaps. Maybe he engages his super-cruise drive and shoots of to another area of the solar system. Does he just pop out of my instance and into another one? What if the other instance he travels too has 31 players, and he is the 32nd? Where does that leave the guy who is trying to follow him? Very confusing stuff and I'm not sure how it's all going to work, but I am interested to see how they tackle it.

You need to remember that this not an MMO in the current accepted sense of WoW or ESO or STO or Guild Wars 1/2. Elite: Dangerous needs to be able to be played as both a single player and multiplayer game which sort of enforces the lack of any kind of client/server structure that would allow the kind of instance player population those games can indulge in.

The current premis they're working on is that with a peer-to-peer multiplayer set up that is required for working as both a single and multi player game is dictated by the overall bandwidth available into the internet and ping rate any single player's connection will be able to support. these figures are going back to the 90's and the original multiplayer FPS's such as Quake, the first Call of Duty and similar. That limit they're currently working to is 32 combined peer-to-peer connections as a realistic maximum: figures that work well over average, for the late '90s, dial-up connection in to the interwebs.

No doubt FD's working figures will increase past 32 as they get more network useage data from the Alpha backers and start streamlining the peer-to-peer networking code. One thing is for certain though is that instance player populations in ED will never get into the hundreds for the simple design decision above. And also why ED is not an MMO.

 

[Smugallo]

I am aware of the fact that ED is not an MMO, despite some people touting it as such. I just don't see how things like pirating will work if someone can just jump instances.

 

[SzaryWilk]

32 players is not a problem of ED.

32 players in one instance...this is "first version of the instance". FD will work to increase this number.

I remember that the game is in alpha stage !!! and is scheduled for 10+ years of play.

Be patient, this number will grow.

 

[Memnoch]

Hopefully they get the stability sorted long before then. Look at the bandwidth usage we have right now and you often don't see any more than 3 or 4 other players.

 

[Dejay]

You need to remember that this not an MMO in the current accepted sense of WoW or ESO or STO or Guild Wars 1/2

Wrong... All of these games have the exact same limitation. Their clients might be able to show more players at once, but it's the exact same principle. Only ED has higher realtime and bandwidth requirements and wants to keep server costs down. Of course ED is an MMO, it can have a million players simultaneously in a persistent game world without lobbies and such.

Also multicast proxy nodes might be developed that players can use to reduce their upstream and increase the number of players in an instance (and slightly increase lag).

 

[Nauht]

All that matters in the end is how many players are on screen.

32 is just a MP game like BF, CoD, MWO not a MMO like SWTOR, GW, LoTRO etc...

Please. I know people are fans but don't tout the game as something its not. It MAY increase player limits, it may have better servers, netcode, I may sneeze money tomorrow but right now the reality is 32 players and I'm still working 9-5.

32 players makes it a multiplayer game (just as the site advertises) and not a MMO. And that's fine.

 

[SzaryWilk]

I think probably You never've played in a MMO game

Elite Dangerous will be MMO game.

MMO game.......is a game that providing ample opportunities of interaction between players, inter alia:
- extensive communication between players,
- expanded trade and economics,
- the possibility of simple political action,
- more complex fight.

Elite Dangerous this will have and will ensure.

 

[Dejay]

All that matters in the end is how many players are on screen.

No. You could fly from the earth to the moon station and meet thousands of players on the way. You can meet tens of thousands of players in a common shared game universe. That you can only see 32 other players on screen at the same time is just a numerical difference. SWTOR has the same exact system. What number do you think other action based MMO support and where would be the threshold? That classification simply doesn't work.

They avoid the term MMO because it makes people think of level based RPG, monthly subscriptions or free to play annoyances. But ED is one of the few games that will manage all players in one shared galaxy.

 

[Juniper]

I believe the correct term is FPO (Flexible Players Online).

You can have single player offline, single player online, online with your own group, or online with everyone. MMOs are all or nothing. E: D you make the choice on how to play. It's a flexible system - hence FPO.

 

[Memnoch]

32 players makes it a multiplayer game (just as the site advertises) and not a MMO. And that's fine.

When do things get massive for you?

 

[Steve_T]

When do things get massive for you?

Ooh, err, missus.

 

[tooterfish]

No. You could fly from the earth to the moon station and meet thousands of players on the way. You can meet tens of thousands of players in a common shared game universe. That you can only see 32 other players on screen at the same time is just a numerical difference. SWTOR has the same exact system. What number do you think other action based MMO support and where would be the threshold? That classification simply doesn't work.

Exactly.

The real answer to the question "how many players will ED be able handle together at once?" is...

All of them.

 

[Im_Lost]

I think 32 players is more than enough really. Given the size of the game world in ED I think finding 32 players in one place will be uncommon once people branch out. Sol will most likely remain the only "busy" system, look how many stars there are to pick from just within about 20ly of us (a short trip in Elite).

 

[irongut]

I've never seen 100 players actually interacting with anything ever in any MMO. A mmo is rather defined by lots of players inhabiting the same game universe and not having "lobbies" to start a session. The number of players visible on screen is just a numeric difference.

I have seen more than a thousand players on the same grid attacking the same targets in EVE. I can't remember their current maximum but I have personally been in fights where there were over 1,000 players between the two sides fighting.

 

[pompomJuice]

I imagine the way it is going to work is as follows:

Since you are not going to fly between jump points, every jump point you jump to will contain no more than 31 ships.

Players enter and leave your instance as time goes by.

If you jump you get a new instance. You can't follow the player who just griefed you. Unless he is flying empty waypoints because I believe the server will group players together in the same instance if they are the only ones there. When there are more than 32 it becomes 50/50 etc.

Again, I presume you cannot fly between jump points to find the boundary where instances become like tears in fringe division.

Or the entire universe is an instance every time you jump.

13th floor.

 

[Juniper]

I imagine the way it is going to work is as follows:

Since you are not going to fly between jump points, every jump point you jump to will contain no more than 31 ships.

Players enter and leave your instance as time goes by.

If you jump you get a new instance. You can't follow the player who just griefed you. Unless he is flying empty waypoints because I believe the server will group players together in the same instance if they are the only ones there. When there is more than 32 it becomes 50/50 etc.

Again, I presume you cannot fly between jump points to find the boundary where instances become like tears in fringe division.

Or the entire world is an instance every time you jump.

13th floor.

Not exactly.

You are the instance. Imagine a giant bubble around your ship, which is your visible range. When you and another player come close to each other, the instances intersect and you can see each other through that intersection. The maximum number of intersections is 32.

You can follow the guy who griefed you, unless he is lucky enough to run away into areas of space all populated by 31 players for the entire time.

 

[Bob_H]

Wrong... All of these games have the exact same limitation. Their clients might be able to show more players at once, but it's the exact same principle. Only ED has higher realtime and bandwidth requirements and wants to keep server costs down. Of course ED is an MMO, it can have a million players simultaneously in a persistent game world without lobbies and such.

Also multicast proxy nodes might be developed that players can use to reduce their upstream and increase the number of players in an instance (and slightly increase lag).

I think probably You never've played in a MMO game

Elite Dangerous will be MMO game.

MMO game.......is a game that providing ample opportunities of interaction between players, inter alia:
- extensive communication between players,
- expanded trade and economics,
- the possibility of simple political action,
- more complex fight.

Elite Dangerous this will have and will ensure.

When was the last time you played WoW, GW2, SW:TOR, DDO, LOTRO, DOAC, PS or any other MMORPG with you as the only none NPC character in the game without having to log onto either the developers or a private server in order for the game to run?

This is what I mean by ED not being an MMO in the current accepted sense. This is where the Peer-to-Peer networking comes into play and this is where the current instance limitations are coming from.

 

[Nauht]

When was the last time you played WoW, GW2, SW:TOR, DDO, LOTRO, DOAC, PS or any other MMORPG with you as the only none NPC character in the game without having to log onto either the developers or a private server in order for the game to run?

This is what I mean by ED not being an MMO in the current accepted sense. This is where the Peer-to-Peer networking comes into play and this is where the current instance limitations are coming from.

Exactly.

But again who cares about all the technical backend magic or fluff. What's shown on screen to the user? Only 32 players.

I told my gaming buddies about this and I'm the only one that's into Elite or space games for that matter. To the average person this is not a MMO in the traditional sense at all.

When you advertise the game as a MMO the layperson gamer will have certain expectations. One of them being the "massive" part where you could see more than 32 on screen at once.

FD know this and have marketed it just as a "multiplayer" instalment to Elite. There out of the horse's mouth.

Stop trying to hype up the game to something its not. Even some console games have higher player counts, with dedicated servers and they're still not MMO category.

 

[Dejay]

I have seen more than a thousand players on the same grid attacking the same targets in EVE. I can't remember their current maximum but I have personally been in fights where there were over 1,000 players between the two sides fighting.

True. But these kinds of encounters are rare, right? And the game actually slows down to slow mo during such encounters. Still it's just a numerical difference.

When was the last time you played WoW, GW2, SW:TOR, DDO, LOTRO, DOAC, PS or any other MMORPG with you as the only none NPC character in the game without having to log onto either the developers or a private server in order for the game to run?

Sure you can say it's more, but the addition of a server doesn't make it NOT an MMO.

When you advertise the game as a MMO the layperson gamer will have certain expectations. One of them being the "massive" part where you could see more than 32 on screen at once.

It IS massive. A million players in a shared universe!
Every MMO has a limitation on how many players are on screen. So when is a MMO massive enough then? 50? 100? 200? 1000? Besides EVE (that runs in slow motion at those levels) what other games has these numbers? By what kind of logic do you say "it doesn't have more than 50 players on the screen at the same time, thus it is not a MMO?

Look up the wikipedia definition:

A massively multiplayer online game (also called MMO and MMOG) is a multiplayer video game which is capable of supporting large numbers of players simultaneously. By necessity, they are played on the Internet.[1] MMOs usually have at least one persistent world, however some games differ. These games can be found for most network-capable platforms, including the personal computer, video game console, or smartphones and other mobile devices.

MMOGs can enable players to cooperate and compete with each other on a large scale, and sometimes to interact meaningfully with people around the world. They include a variety of gameplay types, representing many video game genres.

Within a majority of the MMOGs created, there is virtual currency where the player can earn and accumulate money. The uses for such virtual currency are numerous and vary from game to game.

MMOGs create a persistent universe where the game milieu continues regardless of interaction

However single player in MMOs is quite viable, especially in what is called 'player vs environment' gameplay.

MMOGs host a large number of players in a single game world, and all of those players can interact with each other at any given time. Popular MMOGs might have thousands of players online at any given time, usually on a company owned servers.

 

[Nauht]

Semantics.

Like I said, you go tell the average gamer that 32 players is an mmo and they'd look at you funny. Then it'd be disbelief and "yeah right".

In fact I dare you to post on Reddit or some other forum arguing that this is an MMO and see the responses you get.

And again, FD are only calling this a multiplayer instalment, not a MMO experience at all. It's just the fans that are trying to make it something its not.