How many players will actually play together?

-SOVEREIGN-

-SOVEREIGN-
Hello everybody! :)

So, maybe I misunderstood something before I bought the game. Or maybe not, I actually wasnt able to find the correct/detailed answer yet. Still looking for it.

I was searching for a new game and after completing the Mass Effect trilogy two times now, reading stuff about stars etc for years it had to be a new space game. So after checking out many tests, opinions, reviews and so on, it finally came down that there is no space rpg atm for me, so it came so space mmo games and Eve Online sounded interesting, but there are some reasons i decided to not play it. i looked forther and found x:rebirth (didnt catch me), star citizen (sounds great! ..in 2 years ^^) and ED.

and maybe you can already guess already my question. is ED actually an mmo? thing is, as far as i understood that we are somehow connected to islands with currently 32 players each. (correct me if needed) i guess its for better server performance, less lag etc. now what i couldnt find out, are these islands somehow connected so we all play together or at least some of them? or something like a transition system so they keep full at least? will they get bigger?

i have a slight feeling that the answer won't exactly be what i want to hear ^^ are there any information i missed to clarify for me? at least for me its hard to imagine to lets say stick to 32 players where the propability to meet tends to zero

dont get me wrong, i like this game and cant wait for more content. my battlefield heli and jet piloting actually helped me a lot to manage the basic controls within hours ^^ but i would love to see thousands of people with good instruments of interaction and big 1000 vs 1000 battles with big capital ships and big gunz blazin :D just try to figure out how good the odds are ;D

cya in space =)


--tl;dr
hi, i wasnt able to find out if these islands were are connected to (which have 32 players atm?) are interacting with each other. can i play with guys on other islands and see them ingame? if not, are there any information about the plans that this will be realized/islands get bigger/whatever for more people interacting? thank you
 

fireFly1000

F
Current networking technology doesn't permit (much) more than 32 players in one instance, because E: D is a twitch game built on peer-to-peer technology.
There will be one universe (not multiple shards) but you won't be able so see more than 32 ppl at one particular moment.
 

natte hond

natte hond
SOVEREIGN said:
Hello everybody! :)

So, maybe I misunderstood something before I bought the game. Or maybe not, I actually wasnt able to find the correct/detailed answer yet. Still looking for it................

i have a slight feeling that the answer won't exactly be what i want to hear ^^ are there any information i missed to clarify for me? at least for me its hard to imagine to lets say stick to 32 players where the propability to meet tends to zero............

but i would love to see thousands of people with good instruments of interaction and big 1000 vs 1000 battles with big capital ships and big gunz blazin :D just try to figure out how good the odds are ;D
Click to expand...

I'm sorry you seem to have the wrong impression.
its more like multi player not massive multiplayer.
where working together against aI is more the thing.
or where player join in the sides of the AI fronts.
not so much that you create your own.
small pirating acts can be done player against player but if that's the game in the end.
don't think so.
 

Alric

A
Yeah it's essentially an instanced MMO.
You won't see thousands of players fighting in the same battle any time soon, but you will be able to run in to thousands of players during the course of your adventures.

The mechanics that underpin it are quite different (see the DDF for details) - but from a practical standpoint it will be like many MMOs where there are thousands of players in the world, but they're not all in the same place, and combat involves numbers in the 10s not thousands.
 

dumbo

D
SOVEREIGN said:
hi, i wasnt able to find out if these islands were are connected to (which have 32 players atm?) are interacting with each other. can i play with guys on other islands and see them ingame? if not, are there any information about the plans that this will be realized/islands get bigger/whatever for more people interacting? thank you
Click to expand...

As I understand it:
- You're at Chango station with (potentially) up to 31 other players.
- There may be another Chango station with another (up to) 32 players.

There's no way for you to see/interact with the players in the other Chango station, that wouldn't make any sense to anyone.

When you leave Chango station, you might choose to enter 'i Bootis' system. In that system are "up to" 31 other players who may have come from your chango, the other chango, or somewhere entirely different.

It's entirely possible that the 32 players will increase or decrease, but I'd imagine it will end up around that number.
 

Commander Debic

Commander Debic
Apparently what happens is you arrive in a system.

If you are the first player there, the 32 player island forms around you and other players entering the same system join the island your now in. when it reaches the limit another island is formed on the 33rd player, or your island numbers are limited if it starts to suffer lag or degradation of service problems, and a new island is started.

I guess if you leave then the island that formed around you now transfers to another player who was in your island.

Eve online is the only space game I know that deals with huge number battles between players but I always found it an awful compromise as they introduced a thing called time dilation.

To see time dilation in action just search in you tube for Eve online alliance battles, you will soon find huge bubbles of slooooow moving craft and weaponry.:rolleyes: But as far as I know nothing like that is ever planned for Elite.
 

nicomak

nicomak
Also dont forget these "32" are for players only, there may be a lot more bots around.
32 players in an instance doenst mean there wont also be bots.
 

mollymawk

mollymawk
I understand why there are limits in space, but I wish we could all get together in one instance while docked up. This would give a much bigger social base and allow temporary alliances between like minded people, rather than just being instanced at random with anonymous pilots.
 

Flak

Flak
mollymawk said:
I understand why there are limits in space, but I wish we could all get together in one instance while docked up. This would give a much bigger social base and allow temporary alliances between like minded people, rather than just being instanced at random with anonymous pilots.
Click to expand...

The grouping and friends lists makes the instancing non-random. If you have players on your friends list and visit the same system, you are more likely (not guaranteed) to be in the same island as them. If you don't have any friends, then yes, it will be random.
 

natte hond

natte hond
Flak said:
The grouping and friends lists makes the instancing non-random. If you have players on your friends list and visit the same system, you are more likely (not guaranteed) to be in the same island as them. If you don't have any friends, then yes, it will be random.
Click to expand...

this is why I see the game more like us against the AI.
I must say , just the way I like it.
if its so grieving wont be so much of a problem.
 

edguy

edguy
32 is currently the limit to a players instance, although the grouping of instances still requires a tad more work which i'm sure we will see in later revisions.

There may be some circumstances when a player who you want to group with is too far away - taking actual months to meet up

With 400B systems these kind of scenarios are possible, whilst some people may moan at this I personally believe it's a good thing and add's to the realism - rather than a fluffy button that teleports you to an individual used in some game mechanics.

ofc maybe your unable to jump to your friend's location because you don't have the jump range on your ship - i.e your in a sidewinder, this could be solved by hitching a ride in a carrier, then maybe you want to get back but you can't because of your limited jump range, then you will have to earn credits to buy a more capable ship, remaining stranded up until.

So many variations and possibilities in this game.. It's fantastic :D
 

Jigsaw

Jigsaw
I'm not much of a multiplayer player. I very much prefer single player experiences. Should I play the full game online at all I'll probably won't notice it much because once I have a fully decked out ship that suits my needs I will head out into the unknown. With 400,000,000 stars in the Galaxy chances of crossing paths with other people will become infinitely small the further I travel from the populated systems.
 

IriathZhul

I
As a person who knows very few people who play video games...the total randomness of the instancing system is depressing. But I suppose I'll find a way to adjust. I just hope the actions of players in other instances still feed into the in-game economy and event system, so that your actions still mean something.

It's going to be very upsetting if you hear about a gold rush at Aulin or whatever and you show up and they're like, "Oh, sorry, it's just in Instance #283."
 

Renideo

R
It isn't random, as said before, the system has a multitude of biases that players can choose to add to the way it determines who goes where.

There was talk of going higher than 32, but it's a difficult thing. Other equivalent games will have equivalent problems, and indeed, SC does have precisely the same issues.

You can't easily have thousands of people zipping around at 300 m/s with ever changing velocity vectors doing their thing in a single instance.
 

Fl3

Fl3
JamesBondage said:
So the most I'll be able to play with at a time is 31 other people? :/ my dreams of galactic conquest are dwindling
Click to expand...

A certain other space game due to come out in the next couple of years has also stated that it will run using an instanced space model (much to the chagrin of a lot of people who have spent a lot of money over there . . .). It's just the practical thing to do unless you want to go the eve route and have a game that runs at a steady 3fps during large battles.

Who knows? as the game develops and technology matures maybe one day we'll have the one server one universe game that a lot of people seem to want.

(Well, we can dream anyway)

The only thing that worries me is that people will form groups/instances depending on their favoured playstyle be that pvp, non-pvp, solo and such. Such self enforced segregation may not be good for the gaming community I fear.
 

kb_Nomad

kb_Nomad
Think about it folks, with 32 max per instance sometimes in on-line mode now you can't get a docking pad, later after there are the huge number of systems with stations folks will be spread out a lot more and friends will be able to find friends if they go to the same area (station).

With the stations having only so many docking pads and with the few systems we have now it forces the game to make more instances and that makes it harder to find your 'friends'

Other than 'core' systems this will fix itself as more systems come on line.
KB
 
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