Housten we have a problem......(NPC's)

Gunnet

G
Did I miss the announcement where Frontier have started growing players in vats? NPCs exist for the same reason they exist in any other multiplayer game with a large open world, because there simply aren't enough players to populate it properly.

If anything there should be far more NPCs in high population systems. But unfortunately that dream is a victim of the limitations of peer to peer instancing.
 

Alb

Alb
Mad Mike said:
if anything we need MORE npcs in an instance.

if you go to a major population centre space would be chock full. of course the engine could not cope so they get cut down somewhat.
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I agree with this. Think though if it was a city station or populated landmass on a planet. The current stations are too basic to accommodate a real npc population, with single entry/ exit, it wouldn't scale.

If in future there are cities on earth like planets, then having many npcs and multiple landing locations, that would be really interesting.
 

777Driver

777Driver
Mad Mike said:
if anything we need MORE npcs in an instance.

.
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I agree in Solo, defintely not in Open. The level of NPC traffic is quite low in solo, head into open and you will often end up in instances that have been running for long periods, the level of NPC traffic can get insane.

You can also replicate this in Solo - Log into a station and leave your ship sitting there for an hour or more, the entire instance becomes cluttered with NPC's, leave it for a few hours and it turns into complete chaos.
 
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Soon(TM)

Soon(TM)
TERMINATRIXXX said:
Thinking about better server performance, less NPC's more ressources available for everyone.
Not talking about Solo players and their problems, the Solo life is already boring....with more or with less NPC's.
When there is no other player in a system....then it is just empty....why we need NPC's? To maintain the perfect illusion?
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This guy is right.

FD Delete ALL NPC's now, we have no ground activity at planetary ports, now we want ZERO activity anywhere else in the game please.

Over 2 million copies of ED have been sold now, and im pretty sure all of those 2 million people are online all the time, surely thats enough human players to populate a galaxy with 400,000,000 systems?

OP is a Genius! [wacko]
 

CmdrChorusLindarr

CmdrChorusLindarr
TERMINATRIXXX said:
Thinking about better server performance, less NPC's more ressources available for everyone.
Not talking about Solo players and their problems, the Solo life is already boring....with more or with less NPC's.
When there is no other player in a system....then it is just empty....why we need NPC's? To maintain the perfect illusion?
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Why stop with NPCs?

Rendering planets and stars also takes alot of computational resources... they're boring... lets throw them out too.

While we're at it, we can probably do without all the BGS and gameplay logic eating up our precious CPU cycles, so get rid of them too.

Better yet, lets just not bother running the game cuz that'll free up RAM and other resources, leaving more server time for other players too :D

In fact, lets chuck our PC out in the trash, because the harware uses too much electricities and you know how there are not enough electricities for dem starving children in Africa.

Tbh, we can do without the house too because that'll make more room on the street for them poor real estate tycoon to build cark parks.

... you see where I'm going with this OP?
 

Hooplah

Hooplah
How about coding where live players take precedence over NPCs? The more players the less NPCs and vice versa. That covers Solo, Group and Open modes.
 

Deleted member 38366

D
Just a thought experiment : nearly remove NPCs and their aggregate Faction Trading from the Game...

T+3 days : Players operating in all Modes opening countless threads : "Why is everything empty??! I'm the only one, I'm all alone! What happened ???!??"

T+7 days : Due to lack of aggregate Trading, just-about all Factions fall apart throughout the Galaxy and drop into a terminal state of Civil Unrest, Famine and Outbreak. Station services and Shipyards begin to deteriorate.
Players attempting to save whatever they can post threads like : "I'm trying to save my home Station & Faction - but in order to do so, I'm expected to Trade in over 85000t of Food,16000t of Medicines, 4800tons of Legal Drugs and over 195000t of Materials... It's impossible!"

T+30 days : 99.9% of the inhabited bubble has entirely deteriorated into chaos, Stations that used to offer full Service now offer a mere Sidewinder and some basic Class 1-3 Equipment.
Famine/Outbreaks are rampant, with many suffering from Lockdown as well.
The Founder's world - while still offering all Ships and Equipment due to its special Status - has been in lockdown since 22 days already.

T+45 days : Frontier Telemetry finds that 80% of Players have either stopped playing or at least massively reduced their average playtime. Public reviews are devastating and all point to a decaying, lonely and entirely lifeless Game not worth playing anymore.
The entire Colonia initiative is pronounced dead by their former participants and Groups.

T+60 days : Due to lack of Revenue, massive Protests of a few remaining large Player Groups and abysmal public Product ratings, Frontier forced to re-evaluate. Rumors of the Game being shutdown soon(tm) are rampant at this point.
 
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Pville_Piper

Pville_Piper
The difference is Battlefield has (depending on the version) what 40 or 50 maps? BF1 has less than a dozen. In Elite every solar system is its' own map and every landable body has it's own map. So you have hundreds of thousands of maps... If not millions. So OP, what do you want to do? Force everyone to play in the same solar system or even a handful of them? Because in essence, that's what you would have to do to populate systems.

The game is about the Milky Way Galaxy... It's really big! There is no comparison to Battlefield.
 

Foxiol Eagle

Foxiol Eagle
Soon(TM) said:
No way.

a LOT of people play in Solo and Private groups, removing NPC's would make the game even more static and lifeless than it already is!

What nonesense to even suggest such a thing!
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+1

I play in Solo and "solo" is still online and in the same world as everyone else, so if they take out NPC's the world will feel lifeless.

What OP is asking is not fault of the amount of NPC's in the game. In a massive open world even if you make all players play in the same instance (imagine 5000 players at once), you won't be able to see them all unless you all join and play in the same couple of systems and at the same time. And then what? What happens in the rest of the world? How transit will be in those stations? Are players going to actual role play and take care of the galaxy?

Just by having in mind how spread we are in the galaxy doing our own thing all around, it makes no sense to reduce the amount of NPC's at all because if you do that most of the systems where a few players play (and solo players included) will feel empty. Imagine less transit/traffic in stations/outposts/supercruise, etc...no please no. I don't want to see a lifeless empty world. NPC's should stay.

Also some players don't role play at all, they just want to make your day a nightmare because they are bored...even if you don't want a fight you will still have to deal with undesired interdictions and whatever crap they want to do with you (like crashing on you for no reason and stuff like that, for the "lols"). Basically a game for you tubers...

Imagine if you take out NPC's completely from the game and make the whole galaxy filled with human players only. I can see how the galaxy would loose "order" and will become a complete mess in less than a week. Not even talking about how the economy will turn out, since the amount of players will not be enough to fill every system, it will generate a major disparity between factions and such. A complete mess of a game basically. You can't let players have total freedom in a game, there should always be some rules.

Give time and see how those other upcoming space games are going to deal with this since they are even more player focused...I play games for a long time and multiplayer games as well...one thing that I learnt is that you can't trust in random players at all. Unless you want to play "Elite Dangerous: Survival Edition". No, thank you very much.
 
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CMDR CPT. Boris

CMDR CPT. Boris
TERMINATRIXXX said:
(harmless NPC's docking and leaving......thought the had no access to engineers, what do they do there?)
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Maybe bringing foods, supplies or any essentials stuff to survive out there, maybe it's just the cleaning company, they come to change the trash.

TERMINATRIXXX said:
Is there anything planned to reduce them?
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pretty sure you can apply the same rules with players, after all you're living a gankers life ...
 

Jex =TE=

Banned
J
sleutelbos said:
Sure, but you dont have the people to fill those instances. There's tens of thousands of systems in the bubble. There are a couple of thousand concurrent players at every moment, including everyone not in the bubble. See the problem?

Battlefield is by the way not even remotely as 'detailed and complex' as ED. Visually sure, but not data-wise.
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Falcon 4 manages 30 players easy as well as thousands of AI all across the battelfield with a fully clickable cockpit and working flight model as well as ATC, a dynamic campaign and dynamic weather. Battelfield 1 has various vehicles to use from ground up to air vehicles as well as things like trains. It has to calculate thousands of bullets, grenades etc from air-air, air-ground, ground-air, ground-ground - All ed has to do is a few lasers and xyz positioning. I'm not sure what network coding is more detailed or complex here?
 
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