Elite Dangerous no longer an MMO?

tresch

tresch
Actually, I would say if there was one defining thing about MMOs, it's the idea of a "persistent, online world"

That is do say, you can't save, reload, go back in time. The world on your machine isn't different from the world on another person's machine. When you log in, you're back where you were when you logged out, and the world has changed when you left.

This is the fundamental thing that has defines these games going all the way back to the text-based MUDs of old.

YOU are the one limiting the genre, not them. You want it to be like WOW, but it's not. It's okay that it's not. Could it do more, within it's particular style? Yeah totally. But it's not about levelling up, and it's not about doing group raids.

It's Elite. But online.
 

Stavro Mueller

S
CMDR Bansidhe said:
Because I know what words mean, I have spent over 20 years of my life studying language and how it is formed and used. What are your credentials, out of curiosity?

I can't help it if you are insisting on arguing from a standpoint based on ignorance.
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The game is Massively Multiplayer. One world, thousands of players. And it is Online. Unfortunately, the mere fact that this is technically true doesn't mean it adheres to what is conventionally accepted to be an Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game.

But, unfortunately for your credentials (argument from authority? Why? And _wrong_, too? Ouch..) it is, technically, true.

..maybe you should ask for your money back.

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CMDR Bansidhe said:
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If you think I am siding with that argument then you are even more mistaken than you first appear.

Again - this is nothing to do with people's opinion of what an MMO should be it's about what MMO means.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. If it isn't Online, and Massively Multiplayer then it can't qualify as an MMO.

Online - check
Multiplayer - check
Massively Multiplayer - fail.

So what can we see from this? The correct term is an Online Multiplayer game.



What is happening here is that people are treating "MMO" almost as a word in itself rather than as the acronym that it is.

Consider the term UFO.

If somebody says UFO you can pretty much guarantee that somebody will picture a flying saucer piloted by extraterrestrial entities when they hear that acronym. They don't even realise that they have, by doing so, removed the possibility of it being a UFO by definition. You get that, right? You can see how that is? Or are you one of those people who thinks UFO means Alien Spaceship?

If you immediately decide it's an alien spaceship then how in the world can it be Unidentified? You just identified it as an alien spaceship.

To be a UFO it has to be:

a) an Object
b) Flying
c) Unidentified.

If I say UFO I will mean Unidentified. Flying. Object. - If you hear UFO and picture an alien spaceship it is you that has the error, not me.

ED may share aspects in common with other games that also call themselves MMOs but it does not meet ALL of the criteria required for that definition.

It really is quite simple.
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..ah, forget it.
 

Soulstain

Soulstain
Stavro Mueller said:
The game is Massively Multiplayer. One world, thousands of players. And it is Online. Unfortunately, the mere fact that this is technically true doesn't mean it adheres to what is conventionally accepted to be an Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game.

But, unfortunately for your credentials (argument from authority? Why? And _wrong_, too? Ouch..) it is, technically, true.

..maybe you should ask for your money back.

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..ah, forget it.
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The game is not even close to Massively Multiplayer Online! It is not One world. It is a bunch of small instances played by small groups of people in 3 different modes solo/group/open with very limited interaction. It is online and a certain amount of multiplayer can be achieved but that is as far as it goes. Hence why it is no longer front and centre on the web site. Wrong message was being sent.
 

HippyHop

H
When I was involved with the Planetside 2 forums and community this same thing was actually discussed. A lot of people had it in their head that having a large amount of people just shooting each other was enough to constitute it as an MMO. So I would always ask if player count is all it took for a game to be a MMO, does that mean a MMO's greatness is measured by the number of players online or able to be online (since that's the only criteria to be an MMO)? Of course not.

I always thought MMO's were measured by their player interactivity. WoW with raids, pvp and EVE with corporations, taking over systems and just the ability to get a large group of people to meet up to trade and just talk. Doesn't mean ever MMO needs these specific features, but every MMO should have some elements of player interactivity. It forms ingame communities and keeps players playing.

So while many would argue whether Elite: Dangerous is suppose to be an MMO, I think most of us can agree there should be some deeper form of player interactivity.
 

Stavro Mueller

S
CMDR Bansidhe said:
That were all formed in 1922? Interesting, I didn't realise they all were. Why are you now trying to rewrite history?
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Conveniently edited out the part where I included the 1922 bit in my quote, I see. I am done with this.

Your argument (and, to be fair, everyone else's, including mine), boils down to definitions. At that point, everyone is redefining things to suit themselves, or, at least, feels like everyone else is. No joy can come of this. Sorry for snarkiness about credentials.

Edit: But, just before I am done with this:

Your point was about the acronym and the phrase being synonymous. The example above - your chosen example - shows that this is not always the case. The 1922 thing is a red herring.
 
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Gully Foyle

Gully Foyle
Could someone please explain to me why this nomenclature thing is important?

We are all obviously enjoying playing, we all know its not completely finished nor perfect yet...
I cannot get out of my chair when I sit down to play.
Its as good as Psygnosis' Deep Space was back in the day IMHO

MMO OOM OMO MOM who cares jeesh.
 

Dethmunk

Dethmunk
LOL. This entire thread is exactly why they've probably changed the front page and descriptions, because of people moaning about the MMO tag. I've never expected or wanted the "crafting", "empire building" of MMORPGs. I took the Massively Multiplayer Online as exactly that, lots of people playing online in the same galaxy. I hope to never see the MMORPG rubbish in ED. So they remove it to try stop the people moaning and you moan even more!!! for godsake people. I can't even believe people getting all paranoid and saying "oh they've been deceiving us, FD are so corrupt and they're just out to scam us all"...... really? Have you heard yourselves?
.
People man up. Stop whinging and play the game. When FD have more to give us we'll get it, jeez. Chillax, enjoy a classic game given a new reboot and with great things on the horizon. :)
 
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Dortmunder

Dortmunder
Pretty much every MMO I have played in the past that "featured" instancing, did so separately.

Players should still gather in large numbers in areas.

Examples:
WoW, anywhere in the persistent world, Orgrimmar, Stormwind, Crossroads.
Dark Age of Camelot, Realm vs Realm battles with 3 factions all fighting each other, sometimes in the hundreds. Players of the same faction could all meet up, at any time, in their own lands. This game actually never had instancing until later, with battlegrounds etc. The world was the world.
Guild Wars 2, players could meet up in mass groups in cities or in WvWvW zones.

Instancing is supposed to be a sub-feature of an MMO, not the defining feature. ED has no "non-instanced" areas where players can meet up. Sol should be non instanced, where everyone could go in a mass group and hang out/chat etc.

Not only can you not group up in large groups in this game, you can't even text chat with people properly. Every part of this game is instanced, there's no "persistent" area that people can go into at any time and see all the other people in the area as well.

So, MMO, no. Hopefully someday it could be, but as it is now, barely even multiplayer, since it can be hard as hell to meet people ON PURPOSE.
 
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Dethmunk

Dethmunk
Has any of you stopped complaining long enough to get the 1.04 patch, reports are that they are seeing a lot more Cmdrs in peoples games now. So can we stop moaning about it? ;)
 

Dortmunder

Dortmunder
AlexRyder said:
Just... what are you smoking?
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He's correct though.

If you and I go to Sol, we are in separate "worlds". There's multiple copies of everything. Stations, Systems etc.
There isn't one of anything, no persistent world. If you're the last one there, and leave, it's deleted until a new one is created for another player or multiple players together.
 

Daeron

Daeron
Soulstain said:
Yes, please explain it to me because I'm apparently confused.
I have been playing MMO's since they were created, and I've never seen a game referred to as an MMO just because it was:
a) online
b) multiplayer
c) massive/instanced world

It has always referred to a MASSSIVE amount of people interacting with each other within the game world. Not a small amount of people ABLE to possibly interact. Not a massive amount of people affecting a hidden mechanic behind the scene.
A Massive amount of people interacting together affecting each other and the world they play in. That is why other multiplayer games are NOT referred to as MMO's. This is a multiplayer game at best and should have been marketed as such, no different from COD or League of Legends. MMO, definitely not! But hey, maybe you can explain it to me better.
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The avatar giveth thee slightly away.

If your sole criteria for an MMO is that of bunching them all up in a town, or on some plain, or in a finite area of space, then this is indeed not it.

On the other side you got a fair selection of games calling themselves "Massively Multiplayer" without a persistent backdrop, and only very selectively allowing people to congregate. And then mostly as a way to spam chat channels and do emotes. ;)

Planetside 1 & 2 should be the MMO archetype, by your definition. DAoC and Warhammer as well possibly. UO, yes. Oh yes. Star Wars Galaxies. At least you got out a bit. Still, a lot of them seem to go for instances with 8 or so players, and doing things that does not connect to a larger backdrop at all. You can technically meet and interact with people, but the game channels you into certain activities and smaller areas. There are potentially ways to meet and greet, but not as an "active" feature promoting anything meaningful. Like building a town in Star Wars Galaxies. That was a pretty meaningful way to do it.

As I have said, the backdrop for this game is persistent, it allows for multiuser activities at all times, and indeed gives you a rather massive amount of players that stays "online" at all times. Contact is overlapping, but limited by the P2P solution. So no more than the networking allows, but from a pool of thousands "active" all the same. The user base is massive, the "online" presence is massive, the world is super masssive, the real question is, how many times must the word massive be used? And how effectively do you think most games truly actually bunch up people like you say they must? It is not an experience I recall have been overused in MMORPGs, where instancing have been getting the upper hand of late. Raids in small groups. Teaming in small groups, with hubs abandoned in favour of instantaneous warp-me-fast-to-the-action shenanigans. Sure, I have played a little too many Cryptic offerings. They know how to instance the instanced instances. ;)

What you might not observe so easily, is that in this game there is small bubbles interacting with other small bubbles, interacting with more of them, until they form an organism. You see, from the perspective of the user, it is quite finite. But from the perspective of the user group, it becomes more of an entanglement. Almost like cells form an entire body. Do you consider a Whale to not be massive, is it not made up of tiny bits interacting with each other, swimming in oceans seemingly forever? Can you honestly say that most MMORPGs with their shards scattered and isolated interact in such a meaningful way, to create a universe that is not separated by birth, not spread out like hidden gems? ( Shard = servers for you young people. )

The real question is how your singular definition of what an MMO actually is, can be used to define the nature of what you effectively can do in an MMO. If half of them use the congregation of players in a meaningful way, then I have not been playing as many as I should, to put it that way. Maybe you have. I have avoided some of them for sure. But by the merit of putting it all together, this game does a better job of it by the hybrid method, than most of them can pull off even by dedication. This is an entire Galaxy in one place, but you cannot meet all the inhabitants at once. It is still something somewhat more complex than some here will have it to be. THe perspective needs to be adjusted slightly. To that of the organism. Abandon thyself! float! :)
 
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