Concerns about the scale...

Vaeth

V
Hi there :)

At the beginning, I would like to say: Thank You Frontier!
It looks like I finally found a game I waited all my life long. Im too Young for original Elite games, but in fact, my childhood was filled by FreeSpace, FreeSpace2 or X-series games. And it looks, like Elite: Dangerous, will add everything what is best from all this games I loved and put it straight into MMO formula. I can't wait to finally launch my Sidewinder for a first time. Unfortunately, my holidays with my family forced me to postpone it until next month. But no doubt, in october I'll be already in the space.


The thing I wanted to talk about is the galaxy size. Yes, I agree its impressive. Yes, I have no doubt it is possible to acomplish. But I still don't feel "100 billion" is reasonable thing to aim for.

Let me express my fear in some numbers. And to express them even more, I will refer to most succesfull multiplayer game ever made - World of Warcraft. In it's most succesfull period, the game had 12.000.000 active subscription (so in fact actually playing people). Now let's just assume something which is not really possible to achieve, as many people in the game dev branch will confirm - to have similar number of players in Elite: Dangerous.

12.000.000 active people, could more or less mean, that there would be approx. 4.000.000 players online at a same time.

Now let's imagine, we have 1.000.000 systems, proceduraly generated in ED. And it's already a micro-part of marketing motto "400 billion star system".

Even with limiting star systems to 1.000.000, with 4.000.000 players online, it would more or less mean, that You will have 4 players per average in every system. Going further, lets say that 1 one of them would be docked in the station and trading, one would be approaching to land, one would be super cruising between planets and one more flying somewhere on the other side of this star system. Which in particular mean, You would HARDLY ever meet any other player.

And if we realise, that 12.000.000 people is absolutely not reachable (lets just see on the amount of people who already own the game) and the fact, that this genre is actually quite niche... Well, it just doesn't seem right.

And Yes, devs were talking a lot in the videos, that they will try to gather people around most populated systems via missions, events and so on. But then... Whats the point of generating so many systems, if You want to make 'core' of the galaxy somewhere around the story.
For exploring? Stay real. Even if someone willing just to play the game to explore the unknow this is way too much space! Even if someone would visit and explore lets say 5 star systems every day, after TEN YEARS OF PLAYING DAY BY DAY, he would still not visit even 20.000 systems! 20.000! What about 1.000.000? Or 400.000.000?!
And what about planets and cities that are meant to be visited in upcoming expansions? Then its even much more surreal...

Yes, I totally admire the procedural generation system and so on but... Stay within reasonable size. Whats the point of generating the world, if none player will ever explore and see more than 1% of it...?

Why not focus on lets say for example 10.000? It would still be absolutely amazing number of place to visit, nearly not reachable by anyone, who would like to play and enjoy the game, instead of jumping from one system to another...

It just doesn't feel right at all.


Anyway, I'm looking forward to meet You in the darkness of the cold space next month :)

Greets,
Vaeth
 

Thomas Jefferson Jones

Thomas Jefferson Jones
Vaeth said:
Yes, I totally admire the procedural generation system and so on but... Stay within reasonable size. Whats the point of generating the world, if none player will ever explore and see more than 1% of it...?
Click to expand...

The point is a certain amount of verisimilitude. Because that's what the galaxy is. Its huge, mind bogglingly huge. The point is because its there.

I mean tell me you don't find something cool about the idea that we'll have a simulated galaxy that no one will ever see all of. Its not digestible or even comprehensible, but its the fabric on which the game will be built, and that's really something.

Its like when I boot up space engine and realize I can't see even the tiniest fraction of the content it can generate in my lifetime, I don't come away annoyed, I come away awed with both wonder at the program and at the vision of reality it's interpreting.
 

Aleksej

Aleksej
But why do you need this limit? 400 billion is impressive, realistic and interesting. The space is unlimited like the real one.
 

AtomicHorror

AtomicHorror
Why not have so many? Procedural generation means it's as easy to make 400 billion as it is to make 10 million, and asks no more of your system resources. When you visit a new system, it is created in effect, according to well-defined rules.

Having many times more systems than there are players guarantees that explorers will not only always have new systems to visit, but that they will always have systems to visit that they and they alone have discovered first.
 

Cmdr Andy B

Cmdr Andy B
its not about the number of players in the game, its about the number of stars in our galaxy. ;)

when you take into account the fact that only around 200k of those systems will be populated, it would mean that most payers will stay n the core system.

this leaves an open galaxy for exploration and a chance for everyone to make new discoveries for year to come.
 

ZenSpider

ZenSpider
Welcome aboard Commander! :)

Realistically most people will stick to the inhabited core systems, with the rest of the reachable galaxy a playground for adventurous explorer types. I expect hotspots like Lave, Sol and Achenar to be more or less permanently home to considerable numbers of players.

So relax and enjoy the ride! ;)
 

ianw

I
For me I like the idea that the galaxy will be far to big to visit and tick everywhere off - it just feels right.

And as for meeting other players well you'll stick to the core places where the action is for that, or you can strike out on your own - or with a group to explore.

It makes perfect sense.
 

ZeeWolf

ZeeWolf
Welcome commander.

This isn't quite the plan.

There are only a few thousand systems inhabited by humans. That's where most of the players will probably be. Even in the current Beta players are congregating around the rich planets at the start rather than going off to see the mining facilities.

We only have to look at the previous games in the series which also had expansive models of the galaxy (Frontier & First Encounters) but most people would have spent time hanging around Sol system to visit Earth and the well known trade routes.

There will be events injected by the game's background simulation and Frontier themselves, they should bring players together (a new space station will be constructed and opened and missions/news will see players congregating at that location)

The rest of the galaxy is just a big number of unexplored systems that model the milky way. It's a folly, but also why not? Nobody will ever reach the far end of the galaxy, but it's there anyway just as it is in our own galaxy. It's fun to see how far the explorers will make it out there and how far the factions might extend their reach into the territories - but for the most part it's just a big number we can't comprehend.
 

Reignhardt

R
So I understand what you are saying. I believe that those that want to stay near other players will do so, by choice.
I will be a player that will enjoy having the big empty unknown out there, the frontier (see what i did there? ;) ) , and I will enjoy both exploring it and keeping it free of pirates!
 

Oss133

Oss133
It is great to meet a fellow fan. Welcome. Freespace was awesome, wasn't it? Elite: Dangerous is aiming to avoid the accusation of "rooms in space" though which I think is admirable. Remember that the Elite galaxy is full sized but only minimally colonised so if you stay in the core systems you will meet many people. It could be the best of all possible combinations.
 

Paul_Debrion

P
Part of it is "why not?".

If your star system generator can generate a few thousand star systems then unless you have an artificial cap then it can probably do another few thousand star systems, then another and so on.

Nobody is going through and building 400 billion star systems by hand, that would be absurd. The base layouts of said systems out procedurally generated and costs very little to almost nothing in terms of work-hours.

"Mathematically" the star systems already exist. You'd have to go out of your way stop them from existing, and there's really not much of a positive gain from that.

Hand-made content will no doubt be present of course and that does take work-hours, but most of that would be either centered around more populated and "closer to home" systems or incorporated into the star system generator and thus propagated automatically.


A star system simply existing costs next to nothing, so there's not much reason to not have more than we'll ever need.
 

Celeste

Celeste
ZeeWolf said:
Welcome commander.

This isn't quite the plan.

There are only a few thousand systems inhabited by humans. That's where most of the players will probably be. Even in the current Beta players are congregating around the rich planets at the start rather than going off to see the mining facilities.

We only have to look at the previous games in the series which also had expansive models of the galaxy (Frontier & First Encounters) but most people would have spent time hanging around Sol system to visit Earth and the well known trade routes.

There will be events injected by the game's background simulation and Frontier themselves, they should bring players together (a new space station will be constructed and opened and missions/news will see players congregating at that location)

The rest of the galaxy is just a big number of unexplored systems that model the milky way. It's a folly, but also why not? Nobody will ever reach the far end of the galaxy, but it's there anyway just as it is in our own galaxy. It's fun to see how far the explorers will make it out there and how far the factions might extend their reach into the territories - but for the most part it's just a big number we can't comprehend.
Click to expand...

I'm hoping this isn't entirely true and the dev team has some secrets in development of what could be out there. It would be interesting to find a small civilization on the other side of the galaxy or something that we've never encountered.
 

Jason S

J
Australia is also massive for the number of people living there, but guess what most come together where it makes sense to be.

The same will be for ED :)
 

ZeeWolf

ZeeWolf
Celeste said:
I'm hoping this isn't entirely true and the dev team has some secrets in development of what could be out there. It would be interesting to find a small civilization on the other side of the galaxy or something that we've never encountered.
Click to expand...

There will be secrets and the Thargoids are likely at some point. Also Frontier are going to 'reserve' a section of space for future use.
 

Zvanya

Z
Vaeth said:
Why not focus on lets say for example 10.000? It would still be absolutely amazing number of place to visit,
Click to expand...
This was the part of your post that really jarred me the most. 10,000? That's not an amazing number. That's hardly more than EvE and my biggest objection to EvE was the lack of scale. I have yet to see a firm number from the Devs but I'm guessing the number of settled systems will probably be in excess of 100,000. This makes me very happy.

I've seen the objection "it's too big" before and was confused by it then as well. I've wondered if it might just be the ulterior motive of wanting players to be more crowded, providing a more target rich environment - er, excuse me - "to encourage player interaction". I'm not accusing you of that motive.

Of course no one will ever see even .0001% of 400 billion. It seems unlikely that any one player will even visit every settled system. I don't see that as a problem. I see it as a huge plus. You are perfectly able, if you wish, to focus on however many systems you feel comfortable with. There is no obligation to try to see as many as possible. If you prefer you can hang out in one area and call it home. However when and if you get bored with that - the galaxy awaits!

Finally I hardly think players will be evenly spread out among all available systems. Some places will draw players in for various reasons, other places will rarely see a player.

EDIT: Is there anywhere that the Devs have made a statement on the actual numbers of settled systems planned? All I've really seen is speculations ranging from 70,000 to 200,000.
 
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Vaeth

V
Well, let's hope it will really end this way :)

Maybe it's a bit of my perfectionist nature (always wanted to see 100% of what the game has ;) )

Maybe it's just a bit of fear, that because of the fact how big it will be, it will not be so 'traffic busy' I would love to see it.


I think there is nothing more, but to wait until release and see how many people I will actually meet, while flying my mercenary wing of myself, and friends that are going to play ED with me :)
 
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