Is it unrealistic to imagine a 100% player populated experience?

[baggiez]

So in my 10 hours or so of play until now I've only encountered maybe 2 other player ships, with the rest being NPCs.

Personally I take very little enjoyment from pirating NPC ships or being interdicted by NPCs.

I want to be surrounded by players not NPCs. Is this a likely outcome for Elite Dangerous or am I playing the wrong game?

 

[Jorlin]

We will have to wait and see.

Imagine one million players in ED. Most of them will, at some point, start to go out and explore the galaxy. With 400 Billion systems, it might get a bit lonely there.
Even when everyone stays at the 100.000 core systems there won't be many players/system at the same time.

Maybe there will be some kind of "hubs" where it will be more likely to meet other people...

 

[DraigUK]

The simple answer is no.

The longer answer almost certainly no.

 

[KING5TON]

So in my 10 hours or so of play until now I've only encountered maybe 2 other player ships, with the rest being NPCs.

Personally I take very little enjoyment from pirating NPC ships or being interdicted by NPCs.

I want to be surrounded by players not NPCs. Is this a likely outcome for Elite Dangerous or am I playing the wrong game?

You will probably see more NPCs that players in general.
I think a lot of players will congregate around certain systems and events in the full game though so if you stick to these you will see some more players.
Some players will migrate to explore etc but they will be in the minority IMO so ignore the "Space is big" comments.

If you want to see more players now come over to the LP 98 system. You won't live very long but you will see other players briefly before we blow you out of the sky

 

[RaynMaykr]

Once the background sim is fully functioning there will be places of interest that draw players there. If that works then you should have no problems.

 

[Zireael]

You will probably see more NPCs that players in general.
I think a lot of players will congregate around certain systems and events in the full game though so if you stick to these you will see some more players.
Some players will migrate to explore etc but they will be in the minority IMO so ignore the "Space is big" comments.

Even if there are only 50 systems people congregate in... well, right now we have 55 systems, and we can see how often players see other players.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

So in my 10 hours or so of play until now I've only encountered maybe 2 other player ships, with the rest being NPCs.

Personally I take very little enjoyment from pirating NPC ships or being interdicted by NPCs.

I want to be surrounded by players not NPCs. Is this a likely outcome for Elite Dangerous or am I playing the wrong game?

I think you are playing the wrong game mate.

I would imagine that there will always be human players around certain systems such as sol etc but these will be so well policed imo that piracy there would be suicide.

If beta 1 is not busy enough for you now, when it is locked to 55 systems, I can only see it getting worse for you going forward.

I hope you learn to enjoy it but it does sound like it may not be the best fit for you

 

[Half Giant]

It seems to me they've turned a dial down somewhere so you end up not seeing many people in normal space. It seems you see more people in super cruise so they are out there. My guess is because it is the start of Beta it's on the safe side.

By release the net code will be shiny new so I think we'll potentially see more people. In practice most of space will be sparse - as it should be and certain points of interest will attract more players.

 

[StayFrosty]

Considering the sheer size, a 100% player population would require quite a lot of people. I'm fine with some NPCs, but still, we indeed could use more players.

We'll have to wait until the later beta phases to see how it goes, and hope that some people won't opt out of multiplayer like they already plan to.

 

[1500]

So in my 10 hours or so of play until now I've only encountered maybe 2 other player ships, with the rest being NPCs.

Personally I take very little enjoyment from pirating NPC ships or being interdicted by NPCs.

I want to be surrounded by players not NPCs. Is this a likely outcome for Elite Dangerous or am I playing the wrong game?

you are playing the wrong game.

 

[Cosmo]

There could be Network code issues which too often puts players in different instances while they're in the same area so it seems like you're alone.

 

[Half Giant]

I don't think the opting out will be as big a deal as some people think. I am a risk averse gamer who likes pottering about doing my own thing. So I stay away from PvP, generally. Then I tried World of Tanks on a whim and loved it. If I hadn't played WoT I'd be looking to avoid it in ED. So I think a lot of people are like I was and will enjoy that aspect once they get a taste. They just don't know it yet. Personally I'm going the other way and hoping Ironman is the right balance for me. (Plus I do the odd triathlon so I kind of have to).

 

[Adrpot]

So in my 10 hours or so of play until now I've only encountered maybe 2 other player ships, with the rest being NPCs.

Personally I take very little enjoyment from pirating NPC ships or being interdicted by NPCs.

I want to be surrounded by players not NPCs. Is this a likely outcome for Elite Dangerous or am I playing the wrong game?

Surely if the careers are designed how I would imagine they would be then players would migrate around the universe together. Traders would of course lead the way with pirates following and therefore bounty hunters following? Am I wrong?

 

[Half Giant]

There could be Network code issues which too often puts players in different instances while they're in the same area so it seems like you're alone.

I think you might be right. Either a bug or a deliberate dialing down for the short term. It could be linked to the thing we often see about not getting docking permission. If the pilot isn't removed from the instance cleanly then the pad might be still marked as busy and also be counted towards the instance limit. Obviously pure guess work but you do see more people in SC than at stations so I don't think it is simply people not being in the same location at the same time.

I think we'll start seeing more people in an update or two.

 

[Memnoch]

We will have to wait and see.

Imagine one million players in ED. Most of them will, at some point, start to go out and explore the galaxy. With 400 Billion systems, it might get a bit lonely there.

Something like this often gets quote but let's look at the reality of the sitation. Yes, there are 400 billion systems. But only a tiny fraction of these these are going to have activity in them. Beyond the current frontier you will find nothing to shoot or trade with. So travelling beyond this is really only for the hard core explorers and tourists.

The majority of players will be staying within this area where you have activities to take part in, other than earning exploration tickets/chits/tokens.

 

[Half Giant]

Surely if the careers are designed how I would imagine they would be then players would migrate around the universe together. Traders would of course lead the way with pirates following and therefore bounty hunters following? Am I wrong?

I think a lot of people read into the Pirate and Bounty Hunter professions that the intention is to mainly be PvP. But it, generally, wouldn't work that way, IMHO. I just doubt anyone would be able to find enough players to make a living out of it. Both are asymmetric professions if that is the right term. Traditional combat is something I can see where there would be happenings where players on both sides meet regularly and could be largely PvP. But that would be because both sides want to take part and are drawn together. In Pirating and Bounty Hunting one sides part in that game is to avoid it, which is why I think the PvP part of each will be less common.

 

[streki]

hopefully the founders world will be chock full of players. It would be a shame if it could only host 32 at a time.

Founders world really should host thousands...that would be so cool.

 

[Hamerstein]

Something like this often gets quote but let's look at the reality of the sitation. Yes, there are 400 billion systems. But only a tiny fraction of these these are going to have activity in them. Beyond the current frontier you will find nothing to shoot or trade with. So travelling beyond this is really only for the hard core explorers and tourists.

The majority of players will be staying within this area where you have activities to take part in, other than earning exploration tickets/chits/tokens.

200,000 core systems I think is the number bandied by FD.

But you'd have to admit that 1 million/200,000 will produce a pretty small player to NPC ratio per system.

I don't think ED is ever going to be player centric and meeting them in areas other than natural points of congregation ( ie. stations) is going to be the exception rather than the rule.

 

[Omegahunter]

I think that Frontier will keep on working on the net code even after the release and when possible up the instants limit from the current 16/32 (they haven't given us info on the size).

But would expect it to increase 64, 128 etc as the tech allows. So at some point in the future we could have a game with no instances and everyone in a system visible to everyone else.

Problem with that is by that time the human players could be so spread apart from the home systems that you will never see another one.

 

[Riandor]

The other factor is how many BETA players are online?
How many are or are not in the ALL GROUP?
How many are split out due to Network requirements?

BUT... this will not be a WoW or other MMO where you are running around (in this case flying) with lots of other players just around the corner.

There is also a debate still about turning off the ability to distinguish between players and AI so that people act according to the situation, not according to is someone a player or not.

So with all that information to hand, you do need to think about what it is you are after from a gaming experience.