move ships from single player to muliplayer?

[wayne nicoll]

unless player stats are held on the server side, then any attempt at hacking would be deemed an attack on the server and the person would get a nice juicy ban hammer! also DB stated that if a person moves from multi online to single online, a transfer back at a later date may not be possible, if this is eventually the case the mechanics would proberly not allow you to start on single online and transfer to multi later on! also with the "help a friend out" post, if you wish to be able to help one of your friends out you would need to start off in the multi online setting, or accept the fact that you would not be able to help out at a later date! kinda makes the multi option more appealing to play in if you ask me!

 

[andyseam]

HI
I sometime play diablo3 and you log in to an online account and all you character stats and progress is saved online...so even if you choose to play single or multiplayer these stats are available to use......Elite Dangerous should do the same....but I really hope they don't go through Steam to do so...

 

[Toebs]

1 universe database / backend server and front-end instancing. If your instance has 1 player or 32 it's still a small footprint on a server, and the number of instances a server can maintain is unknown and I am sure we will find out during stress tests in Alpha / Beta.

I did not mean in terms of hardware resource; I meant in terms of developer time. You have to write the code to do this and support it. It is effort by itself and it complicates all the other code you write, e.g. you write less of it and it has more bugs.

 

[Toebs]

I'm happy to hear that there will be some policing and protection of the starter areas, but I also hope that there will be some kind of policing elsewhere too. The uncharted systems can understandably be hazardous, when PvP is concerned.

I've played EVE Online since launch, seeing as it was as close to Elite I could get at the time. EVE is a great game in many ways, but I'm pretty tired of suicide gankers and such just blowing other people up with little to no repercussions.

Heh. I too played Eve - I was in the beta, then played the game for a few months, before selling my character. I was extremely disappointed by the path taken with the economy and with the hand-outs to players.

Regarding player behaviour : never underestimate just how immature and unpleasent people can be. On-line environments provide a forum for the expression of profoundly anti-social behaviour which cannot so easily be expressed in real-life.

I begin to think though - might it not be possible to have player-led mechanisms, rather than NPC-led, which act to address this issue?

Perhaps an Ebay-like star rating system, where players can provide positive/neutral/negative feedback. Of course, so straightforward a system will not work because it does not differentiate between that which is stupidly anti-social (ganking) and that which is unpleasent but within the bounds of the game (piracy). The rating system itself here is open to abuse.

Though, the it would seem that the players of Elite: Dangerous would be a lot more "mature" than most of the EVE players, age-wise. Hoping to see less "lulz" and "u r bbq" statements

Yes. From the behaviour in this forum, I have hopes in this direction. However, this reflects the population who have acted to fund the game. Once the game is live, Joe Public can jump on-board.

 

[wayne nicoll]

I did not mean in terms of hardware resource; I meant in terms of developer time. You have to write the code to do this and support it. It is effort by itself and it complicates all the other code you write, e.g. you write less of it and it has more bugs.

from what i understand the majority of the networking coding has already been written, though u'll have to ask one of the devs for confirmation!

 

[AbueloNemesis]

I did not mean in terms of hardware resource; I meant in terms of developer time. You have to write the code to do this and support it. It is effort by itself and it complicates all the other code you write, e.g. you write less of it and it has more bugs.

Elite was always a singleplayer experience, you can't kill it just to improve what you want. I'm interested in multiplayer too, but mostly want the singleplayer, I didn't backed for just a MMO.

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

Regarding player behaviour : never underestimate just how immature and unpleasent people can be. On-line environments provide a forum for the expression of profoundly anti-social behaviour which cannot so easily be expressed in real-life.

About the only thing you have said so far that I 100% agree with.

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

I begin to think though - might it not be possible to have player-led mechanisms, rather than NPC-led, which act to address this issue?

You're talking about in-game "policing" of the player base by the players themselves. Unlike EVE this game will have rules of conduct - if you fail to adhere to them other players should have the ability to report you to the admins. With enough reports the admins will take action.

Taking the Ebay example you gave - let's say I don't like you so my corporation of 1000 players and I decide to down grade your reputation. Before you know it your ranking is bad and other players stop responding to you. I have, in effect, just griefed you!

I am sure there will be players who adhere to the rules but become "known" (for good and bad reasons) just like I am sure there will be jerks in game. As long as I can effectively ignore the jerks I am not bothered.

 

[Bromley86]

I really want Toebs' eBay rating system, at least as far as communications go. I quite happy to be taunted a bit, but I would like to be able to turn off comms from a certain type of person.

That said, the corporation mass-vote griefing that you mention is a big problem. Best solved, I suspect, by effectively creating moderators. So everyone can set their comms level to exclude people with less than x stars, but only certain people are invested with the ability to rate players (not that they have to exercise it). Not sure how you choose those people. Probably the Elite; anyone (~2,000 of them) who's spent £150 probably cares about the game enough to be trusted and, for the moment, it's probably worth assuming that anyone who plays the game enough to earn Elite probably cares about it.