Basic question about ED is it MMO or Co-op single player.

[Suvi Anwar]

I loled at that 64 players connected. Well yes i agree and thanks for the details. I now know that even my web page can be called MMO. But i ll bite since you sound very professional and passionate (especially passionate). Give us a link of your helping defining the term and i seriously want more details for this matter.

Jesus woman, you were defining words in gaming in the late 90's? Daoumn, how old are you?

Thats if you are a woman ofc :x

I am, actually! As far as age, My first dev job was at Sierra Online, so guess away! [haha]

 

[Julio Montega]

Sure, i'd like to see better paying erm... pirate missions (i always thought of them differently, more like recovery operations than piracy... maybe its the wording on lawful facitons, not paid much attention to anarchy faction missions). The ones i've seen of those are usually like 6-8 tons. Maybe the anarchy missions have higher requirements? I'm just usually in very bad rep with that faction in my system since i'm always shooting their pirate ships.

And yeah, there are bugs (or at least i consider them bugs), but bugs not equal to intended game mechanics, which i think are ok. Although the reboot mechanism is very frustrating and wish FD would dial that down or introduce a mechanic to demand cargo or get them to submit. Even an Elite NPC once stripped of shields and damaged hull should get the message, submit or die.

I really don't understand where all this focus on credits comes from. Even those low paying missions generally are better than we had back in 1.0, and plain non-mission piracy can pay decently well. I've never lost money on a piracy run yet.

The focus on credits comes from the whole elite world spinning
and revolving around credits.
Sadly nothing else in this game matters as enabling you to
other aspects of the game.
Rank is just a moneysink.

It is way better than what we had in 1.0,
but then again we didn't have so many big ships in 1.0
and IMO the game didn't focus so much on the big ships in 1.0.

 

[Maro-Val]

Actually Elite supports at least 18,039 players connected to the servers, it's probably way more and since their architecture is able to scale there should be no cap at all.

So that number is all that counts? The fact that an instance cant hold more than 5-10 players without problems is a minor detail for this MMO right?

 

[babelfisch]

So that number is all that counts? The fact that an instance cant hold more than 5-10 players without problems is a minor detail for this MMO right?

Right, small instances are nothing new for MMOs, Elite isn't the first game doing that.

PS
Guild Wars for example.

 

[Maro-Val]

I am, actually! As far as age, My first dev job was at Sierra Online, so guess away! [haha]

Me likes your mind. I will accept anything you say woman. Add me in-game and we can fly together

-same as forum name.

 

[krylite]

So what do you think guys - what animal ED is ... ?

ED is more of a hybrid MMO, not exactly a full real-time MMO, but at the same time I wouldn't say it's just a co-op singleplayer either. There's a lot of persistence shared between all of the playerbase activity even in a more boardgame like style. The scale of the world is probably the most massive ever seen where most of the galaxy space still isn't explored.

Imo, ED doesnt quite make it to full MMO because of the instancing limit of 64 players. I would think it should be 1k to 10k concurrent in an instance to be full MMO. Optimistically, I think FDev has laid the base framework for a possible upgrade in the future. Someday if Frontier was willing to invest, they could have a massively parallel server farm or whatever infrastructure that could serve 2k or more players in an instance, or someday supercede the instancing altogether.

compete with each other on a large scale - fail

- so basically PP and BGS decsribed abve.

As for competing on a large scale, there was plenty of activity in a recent cycle. Where up to a billion credits seemed to have been fast-tracked, and hundreds of ships were involved in just one week cycle.

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/7dfudr/for_those_who_think_powerplay_is_dead/

 

[S3B4ST13N]

Fun fact, the first commercial MMO was the GemStone series (late-80s, early-90s) and later, as the first graphical implementation of the genre, Never Winter Nights in 1991.
NWN could hold 50 players per server, by '95 it was 500 (hehe .. think about that for a moment. )

I reiterate though; considering ED "multiplays" using a P2P system and not through a single shared server (such as modern MMO's), I personally don't and can't define it as an MMO in the traditional sense, and again, more reiteration ... what does it matter?

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Fun fact, the first commercial MMO was the GemStone series (late-80s, early-90s) and later, as the first graphical implementation of the genre, Never Winter Nights in 1991.
NWN could hold 50 players per server, by '95 it was 500 (hehe .. think about that for a moment. )

I reiterate though; considering ED "multiplays" using a P2P system and not through a single shared server (such as modern MMO's), I personally don't and can't define it as an MMO in the traditional sense, and again, more reiteration ... what does it matter?

It doesn't just use a P2P system. Its a hybrid.

 

[S3B4ST13N]

It doesn't just use a P2P system. Its a hybrid.

All multiplayer connectivity is via P2P; the only server related work is the match-maker and the BGS.

 

[babelfisch]

Fun fact, the first commercial MMO was the GemStone series (late-80s, early-90s) and later, as the first graphical implementation of the genre, Never Winter Nights in 1991.
NWN could hold 50 players per server, by '95 it was 500 (hehe .. think about that for a moment. )

I reiterate though; considering ED "multiplays" using a P2P system and not through a single shared server (such as modern MMO's), I personally don't and can't define it as an MMO in the traditional sense, and again, more reiteration ... what does it matter?

Everyone is connected to the same servers, Elite can probably handle more players than any other MMO out there...

All multiplayer connectivity is via P2P; the only server related work is the match-maker and the BGS.

And the BGS is a part of multiplayer

 

[Goose4291]

Because I don't regard crafting as player made content. So you craft a sword, how is that content. The crafting mechanic is not player made, even the sword is made from predefined materials and stats. There is nothing player made in it. And the sword you create in my eyes doesn't create content. But if that is what you call content, then engineers are exactly the same. There is no real difference apart from some graphics and the name of who does it. All you need to do is change engineer to you and it is no different to WoW or LOTRO.

Thats the most obtuse argument to win internet debate points I've ever read.

By that reasoning, no game has player made content

 

[CentrumSilver]

"Basic question about ED is it MMO or Co-op single player."

Why you gotta label everything CMDR? Why's it gotta be Blackeyed Peas? Why you gotta order Whitefish? WHY?

 

[Han_Zen]

MMOs also usually have a real bad combat system, a generic utterly ugly hud that looks like a cartoon, bad sound and graphics, a subscription and suck in general. I am happy that Elite redefines the genre

There is a reason that you don't see massive FPS games. Even client/server games have to have a good connection. In an FPS you chose a server with low ping, if you want to do well. ED combat is fortunately more FPS like than MMO like.

 

[Morbad]

Ah, but that's not really a problem of the piracy mechanics themselves, more a wider issue with the economy in general. But there again, when pirating, i don't always go for the LTD ships, sometimes i like to take pot luck and just go after any trader. Sometimes its good, sometimes its bad. Its quite realistic in that manner. Not every haul will have "tasty cargo".

And if you are not making a profit even on a poor pirate run you are doing something badly wrong. I hope you are not comparing piracy payout with some of the more extreme methods of earning. I'm happy if i can get a few hundred k from a non-LTD haul. If i really want credits from piracy, then sure, ill go for LTDs and earn millions from one hit.

Yes, the state of the economy in general is one of the prime reasons piracy sucks and why I haven't seen a serious piracy attempt since mid-2015.

As for profitability, I wasn't speaking of simply making sure gains exceeded cost, but of relative returns. Real piracy, both past and present, has been a high risk, high reward activity...a single good score can make a pirate more money than a lifetime in a safer/more mundane career. Piracy in Elite needs bizarrely contrived missions to be lucrative, because the value of the cargo itself is negligible.

So that number is all that counts? The fact that an instance cant hold more than 5-10 players without problems is a minor detail for this MMO right?

Those players are all simultaneously playing in and influencing the same game. Finding places where more than ten players would congregate is also uncommon outside of a tiny handful of hotspots.

There is a reason that you don't see massive FPS games. Even client/server games have to have a good connection. In an FPS you chose a server with low ping, if you want to do well. ED combat is fortunately more FPS like than MMO like.

I've been in battles in Jumpgate and Planetside 2 with upwards of 300 players on each side (which was especially impressive for Jumpgate as this number would often be two-thirds of logged on players, in a game that wasn't pushed as combat only, and that had more roleplaying than anything I've ever seen), with fewer issues than I typically see in an eight CMDR instance in Elite: Dangerous, cause peer to peer and all that.

 

[S3B4ST13N]

Everyone is connected to the same servers, Elite can probably handle more players than any other MMO out there...

Ya.. and not a single one of those players can see more than 32 (or 64? I forget) players at a time because it's P2P. Hence why I say it's not a traditional MMO.

It's not the same thing as say WoW, for example; Kalimdor, the Eastern Kingdoms and Outland each have their own server. Entering a dungeon forces a new instance to be spawned on the dedicated instance server. All connectivity is handled by the WoW servers.

When I said single shared server I was thinking of Elder Scrolls Online at the time; they have one megaserver per region; all connectivity is handled by that server; so they can have hundreds of players in the same instance at the same time in PvP ... granted their servers are horribad for it and it lags to hell, but hey .. it can do it.

ED does not do that and cannot do that; any form of player connectivity is P2P and the limitation has been played on it because P2P sucks and having too many players will have a negative impact on player experience.

All player to player interaction is handled by your own PC using P2P; initially set up by the match maker so players can find each other and, I think, to receive updates such as player location in the System instance, or friends on the GalMap.
I think there's a mission server as well - seem to recall something like that.

And the BGS is a part of multiplayer

BGS has nothing to do with player to player interaction, which is what I think about when I say multiplayer.

I'm not complaining or anything; I just don't see ED as an MMO as defined by the types of MMO's I grew up with.

 

[Goose4291]

There is a reason that you don't see massive FPS games. Even client/server games have to have a good connection. In an FPS you chose a server with low ping, if you want to do well. ED combat is fortunately more FPS like than MMO like.

.... apart from WWII Online

 

[babelfisch]

Thats the most obtuse argument to win internet debate points I've ever read.

By that reasoning, no game has player made content

Or Elite has player made content, in that case you are both right.

 

[Han_Zen]

.... apart from WWII Online

Never tried it. How do they deal with latency difference? Slowed down game play or though luck if you live in Australia?

 

[babelfisch]

Ya.. and not a single one of those players can see more than 32 (or 64? I forget) players at a time because it's P2P. Hence why I say it's not a traditional MMO.

It's not the same thing as say WoW, for example; Kalimdor, the Eastern Kingdoms and Outland each have their own server. Entering a dungeon forces a new instance to be spawned on the dedicated instance server. All connectivity is handled by the WoW servers.

When I said single shared server I was thinking of Elder Scrolls Online at the time; they have one megaserver per region; all connectivity is handled by that server; so they can have hundreds of players in the same instance at the same time in PvP ... granted their servers are horribad for it and it lags to hell, but hey .. it can do it.

ED does not do that and cannot do that; any form of player connectivity is P2P and the limitation has been played on it because P2P sucks and having too many players will have a negative impact on player experience.

All player to player interaction is handled by your own PC using P2P; initially set up by the match maker so players can find each other and, I think, to receive updates such as player location in the System instance, or friends on the GalMap.
I think there's a mission server as well - seem to recall something like that.


BGS has nothing to do with player to player interaction, which is what I think about when I say multiplayer.

I'm not complaining or anything; I just don't see ED as an MMO as defined by the types of MMO's I grew up with.

As I pointed out earlier WoW doesn't define the genre, MMOs existed long before that and some of the MMOs after that are not like WoW either. Guild Wars 1 for example is nothing like it and yet it won awards for the best MMORPG of the year.

On the BGS:
The complete BGS is based on player interaction.

 

[Morbad]

.... apart from WWII Online

There are others as well.

How do they deal with latency difference?

Probably the same way ED does...gobs of latency compensation that essentially turns it into an asynchronous game. Though it's old enough that they might just let things fall as they may...which can result in some interesting scenarios.