Elite Dangerous - Multiplayer vs. Singleplayer

[OLLI_S]

Hello,

I have a common question about Elite Dangerous:
will the game be mainly Multiplayer or Singleplayer?

I started with Elite on my Commodore64 and later on with Elite+ on my PC.
On my C64 I became after many months "Elite" and I like to play in Singleplayer.
Will that also be possible in Elite Dangerous?
Or will Elite Dangerous be mainly Multiplayer?

Greetings

OLLI

 

[ianw]

Welcome Olli!

You will have;

Single player offline
Single player online - your actions will affect the galaxy and you will be updated by the Galaxy with current events
Online - All group
Online private groups

I think that's about it - sure someone else will be along shortly if I've missed anything...

There's a ton of info here if you want to read up on stuff;

http://forums.frontier.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=36

 

[OLLI_S]

Hello,

If I don't like to fight against other players I should select "Single player offline" and "Single player online", right?

Greetings

OLLI

 

[Razorwire]

Hello,

If I don't like to fight against other players I should select "Single player offline" and "Single player online", right?

Greetings

OLLI

Right.
Although... It's a big galaxy, we'll be pretty spread out; even in all-group-multiplayer, human interactions will be rarer than NPC interactions.

 

[OLLI_S]

Hello,

I fear that I launch from a space station with a beginners ship, beginners equipment and outside there are player-killers with highly equipped ships that hunt newbies like me.
I have seen that in other games, so I want to avoid that.

Greetings

OLLI

 

[Bromley86]

If I don't like to fight against other players I should select "Single player offline" and "Single player online", right?

There's also another possible option.

There's been some discussion about whether or not players should be distinguishable from NPCs. One of the suggestions is that they should, but that you should be able to opt out of that so that you appear to be an NPC (and all other ships appear to be NPC to you too).

That might provide enough of a block to the sort of PvP fighting that you don't like.

EDIT: I see; you're trying to avoid griefing. There will likely be plenty of in-game controls to prevent this (e.g. bounties, griefers being removed from the All group and put in a griefers/cheaters group, etc.). So you might still want to play in All, especially if that opt out feature I mentioned is included.

 

[KING5TON]

Hello,

If I don't like to fight against other players I should select "Single player offline" OR"Single player online", right?

Greetings

OLLI

Single player online.
You should only really play offline if you don't have an internet connection or for some reason don't like cool things.

 

[Erimus Kamzel]

Hello,

I fear that I launch from a space station with a beginners ship, beginners equipment and outside there are player-killers with highly equipped ships that hunt newbies like me.
I have seen that in other games, so I want to avoid that.

Greetings

OLLI

I don't think that will be a common occurance (if at all) in Elite Dangerous for several reasons. The main one being the size of the gameworld - its enormous - exponentially bigger than any multiplayer game you will have played or heard about in the past. Once the game settles down after release your chances of actually meeting other players may be minimal, and the encounters you do have will most likely be around busy spacestations that will have lots of security and police ships around.

And as Bromley mentioned, there may be an optional transponder ID feature implemented that makes it difficult for other players to tell whether you're a real player or NPC.

With its game mechanics and sheer size, you can't really compare Elite Dangerous to any other game that has come before it in terms of what may happen as far as rampant pk'ing and grief play is concerned. If you do try the 'all group' there are safety nets for you to use to filter out the anti-social types, and plenty of space to play in that you may forget you're even in a multiplayer environment at times.