Concerns about the scale...

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Can't get angry over rhetoric. It's rhetoric.

You do get tired of hearing it after the 9th or 10th time though, and start to wish that someone would change the station.

That is a 2 way street though All people are doing is responding to the continued complaints about how the game will fail because it isnt an MMO, or the continues demands that XYZ needs to be changed to make it an MMO......Where as many of us just want the game which we pledged for and are perfectly pleased with how it seems to be panning out.

The game ISNT going to be hundreds of players all milling around together. The game engine simply wont allow it,.

MAYBE if the game was server run - which may mean subs or some other increast costs, which would completely screw up the game for many people (like myself) you could increase the numbers per shard, but even then outside of a few core systems, the nature of the numbers of planets involved in the games means meeting huge numbers of humans would still be rare.

Some have said along the lines of "no problem, make a premium on servers for those who want to pay monthly, and then have the "free to play" p2p mode for the rest" but if you do that imo you will completley screw the game for yourself as you will be diluting the player base even more - not to mention stopping friends playing together if they were in different modes of the game.

So I do not think it is being unreasonable to say ED may not be the game for you. Rather than try to demand making ED something it isnt it may have just been easier to back a game from the off which does what you want if you are not interested in what ED is about.

You dont even have to look far (though will have to wait a little longer). With only (from memory) 120 odd systems, and servers, Star Citizen will be way more human interaction focussed imo..... the number of systems alone point that out.

as for Frontier miss selling what ED is (the definition of MMO which I am still not convinced is set in stone and that ED fails to meet the criteria)
But forgetting everything else on the ED homepage, the 1st big thing I notice is 400 billion star systems.

Now that alone if you think about it should be telling you that the "action" will be spread out. If elite sells really well - lets say 6 million copies (which is very optimistic), that is still a drop in the ocean.

Now I know you are probably about to follow it up by.... but if you read around then you find out that "only" 100,000 of these systems will be inhabited and of those we will probably not end up in all of them either....

But then, are you not then defeating your own argument? because IF you spent the time to learn all that before purchasing, then surely you would also have learned that "actually perhaps this game is not the MMO I am looking for if I want loads of player interactions with random people"

So the way I see it, either you do your homework and know the game you backed and you have your answer....

OR you look at the front page and see 400 billions systems!!?? and surely must think.............. how the hell are we ever going to fill that, its going to be like a deserted wilderness in there!!!?

 

[TPRDroid]

I'm new to the forum, but not new to Elite, having played it for many years in the past. I would add these comments and suggestions as to what I would like to see:

Like other Elite games, it is open-ended and you choose the path you want to follow. Want to pick fights, stay close to highly populated systems and spend all day shooting things up. If you want to go exploring, mining or just touring for the fun of it, once again that is your choice. Elite gives you the freedom to decide where you want to go and what you want to do.

As to the suggestion that the scale is too big. Yes it is, because it is space, which is basically infinite as far as current theories and science can tell. But to have the chance to go and see what is out there, then yes please.

What I would like to see and as a solution to your problem of engine maintenance, well the company running the game is call Frontier. In the Yukon, gold prospectors struck lucky and many people "rushed" there to seek their fortune, "The Gold Rush". Who's to say that at some point it might be possible to set up a mining rig, find gold and then using that wealth build a town/city/spaceport around it, that other players could visit for repairs/trade etc. A Frontier town so to speak. Who wouldn't want to own their own Planet or Moon? I know I would.

Also a bit of left-field thinking. Because of its open-ended nature, in essence the game could be multi-generational in that if I pass on, I could "Will" my account to future generations or friends to carry on my work, or sell it back to Frontier so that they could auction it to someone else. We could even have our own currency like BitCoin to fund this. Like the game, the possibilities are endless and the only limitations are the hardware and the developers ability to create this Universe. Imagine what can be done, not what can't

 

[Sysmon]

There is also the possibility of being able to repair along the way. Maybe with a need for local resources? One could go mine somewhere, maybe scoop some fuel off a sun or gas giant, and get the little repair bots going on the hull and whatever else degrades.

I'm sure that's in the plan somewhere. We'll see what we can do when the game world expands with access to the wastes of unpopulated territory.

S