Proposal Discussion How many players are in an instance etc?

[dale0404]

As the title says, I am very interested in this.

I have read a couple of forum posts and the max amount of players in any one instance is 32. Is this correct? Surely this is a very low number?

How does this work with the economy and all the other features within the game? Does the server update in real time?

What I mean is, if I take the final piece of Aluminium from a particular station, will this update across the server immediately or just over the instance I am playing in?

 

[dale0404]

Nobody want to comment on this?

 

[Rhaedas]

The instance limit is to control the player to player interaction, mainly due to limitation in real life bandwidth demand. Each player added has to know what all the other players are doing, location, etc, so it multiplies quickly. The other stuff, like economy, isn't as demanding, so yes, what you trade goes into the same galactic tally as everyone else, regardless of instances (and solo players contribute as well, even though they don't interact with other players directly).

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

As the title says, I am very interested in this.

I have read a couple of forum posts and the max amount of players in any one instance is 32. Is this correct? Surely this is a very low number?

How does this work with the economy and all the other features within the game? Does the server update in real time?

What I mean is, if I take the final piece of Aluminium from a particular station, will this update across the server immediately or just over the instance I am playing in?

There's lot of miscommunication going around - no, it's not 32 players per instance, there's no such thing as instance. There's concept of 'island' where players who are geographically close to each other are merged in one gaming session. if player leaves your vicinity, you and he/she cease to see each other, in both visual and networking sense.

So in nutshell if system have thousands of players you can meet all of them just flying around. So '32 players per instance' is meaningless phrase, because it doesn't limit players any way or form to meet each other sooner or later.

All player actions are shared between everyone, creating feedback loop in background simulation, including economy.

 

[Rolands]

There's lot of miscommunication going around - no, it's not 32 players per instance, there's no such thing as instance. There's concept of 'island' where players who are geographically close to each other are merged in one gaming session. if player leaves your vicinity, you and he/she cease to see each other, in both visual and networking sense.

So in nutshell if system have thousands of players you can meet all of them just flying around. So '32 players per instance' is meaningless phrase, because it doesn't limit players any way or form to meet each other sooner or later.

All player actions are shared between everyone, creating feedback loop in background simulation, including economy.

but why then after a week of playing i have seen only 1 player in starting area

 

[Elan]

but why then after a week of playing i have seen only 1 player in starting area

If you only started playing in the last week then you'll find that the majority of the population have scattered to the 4 winds... Or more likely to the opposite end of the "bubble". Come launch we may find more of us spawning in the same areas, but this won't last for long, or be the norm unless players try to force interaction. (And they will ie tournaments etc)


They weren't joking when they said most of our interactions would be with NPC's...

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

but why then after a week of playing i have seen only 1 player in starting area

I doubt you have seen only 1 player, you probably have seen tons of them in supercruise. However with 500 systems and no trading going on players are very spread out in this Beta 2.