Update 18 tease by Senior Designer Tom Kewell "one of the coolest things we have ever done"

[Rubbernuke]

I have never touched PP or taken any notice of the BGS, but yes it does count as basic background to the galaxy and by definition is not "cool", it's just "there", and of course you mean "some people", personally I am quite happy being a single wandering space ship pilot doing what I want, where I want. I don't personally see any point in players being able to make major changes in the powers and superpowers arena, just doesn't fit with the spirit of the game, the devs will do what they want with powers and superpowers and you might think you are having a tangible changes, but it will go the way the devs want it to go in the end.

Your opinion. My opinion is that the BGS is cool because you can adapt it to how you like, and that you can change how you play, what you play while it reacts back...all the time with other players doing the same. Some want order, others disorder, all the time the BGS feeding out missions, POIs, states, wars, situations....thats far beyond just being 'there' and should be celebrated.

When the BGS was pre 2x I'd agree it was 'there' but as time has gone on its gone from background to very much foreground. The problem it has now is that it lacks a final layer of granularity, synergy and control PP has, and that an update to meld PP and the BGS could give ED a fully self contained system that lived up to DBOBEs proposals- very much fitting in with the spirit of having rival superpowers, powers and factions fighting it out and pilots having the deciding hand.

 

[jojon]

The thing that right off the bat felt off to me about Powerplay, is why these individuals are allowed to play pseudo-nation emperors, usually whilst holding office in actual governments or other influential organisations. -Never so much as a peep about conflict of interest, even given Elite's satire-played-straight dog-eat-dog societly.

Anyway, a thorough overhaul of the BGS is my top guess at what the: "major feature rework" could be (EDIT: ...or "been", depending on whether it is still on the cards), including its subsuming PP. :7

The Guardians might well have been superior to the Thargoids millennia ago but since they were wiped out the Guardians have had very little opportunity to develop their technology whereas the Thargoids have had all that time to fix theirs.

I dropped a trio of relics into the Thargoid Device in Delphi last night, and either I had a glitch of some kind, or the device's "allergic reaction" has now learned to actually destroy the relics, rather than let them "record" its convulsions... Would be interesting to see Ram Tah the next Salvation, up against the wall...

(EDIT: Relic conversion worked the next day, so glitch...)

 

[Alien]

Sad to read about Tom leaving.

He might describe it as "one of the coolest things", I will describe it as one of the Kewellest things

 

[William J Smith]

Space legs confirmed!
Whaddya mean we've already got space legs?
Then whose legs are those? and what sort of body are they attatched too?

Bill

"Good luck Tom"
PS and good luck to the rest of us if the bugs have legs........ I'll be at beagle point if you need me

 

[Darth Ender]

the 'i want content that doesn't involve combat ' crowd will forever be at odds with everyone else.

i really doubt update 18 revisits power play. they've ignored it for over half a decade and i doubt they see any reason to stop now.

thargoids are where all their recent investment has been and foot gameplay is the core of odyssey. so it makes sense update 18 involves those things.

the only other thing that would really be exciting is releasing the server side setup so the community can run their own, point clients to them and mod the game. that's the only way things like the bgs, power play, and all the 'no combat content' players are going to see anything new or address their requests.

i really really hope we see that before interest in the game is abandoned by the pb completely. that would be cool and exciting.

but it's almost certainly something foot thargoid related. there's no reason to think they've had any time to work on anything but that.

 

[Darrack]

the only other thing that would really be exciting is releasing the server side setup so the community can run their own, point clients to them and mod the game.

Don't think its ever happened in any MMO, either way i cant see it ever happening here, hopefully not anyway.

O7

 

[jojon]

I'm not so sure the server setup (with documentation, hopefully), handed to the community, would necessarily be much use to us, if it ever came to that, when the game shuts down...

Retaining it full scale, on AWS, or elsewhere, could be forbiddingly expensive and maintenance-heavy, for a bunch of hobbyists, and I'm not sure we have enough people with both the know-how, and the relentless passion, to rework it into something more cut-down and managable, and then have its upkeep as effectively a second, unpaid job.

That said: Frontier do of course have to have their internal test servers, and do keep that separate "copy" for legacy, so it has to be scalable in some way, and sessions with various servers open and close for short moments, on as-needed basis, presumably, so I suppose it does inherently scale, in that way...

 

[OrdinaryMan]

I need to complete my round trip goal to beagle with FC before Update 18 arrives.

Please don't rush.

Also, Tom... See you in new projects.

 

[Shurimal]

could be forbiddingly expensive and maintenance-heavy, for a bunch of hobbyists

Could be, but, on the other hand, FOSS and self-hosting community has been running public servers ever since Internet became a thing. Eg Mastodon, Lemmy and Kbin are doing well and have been growing the userbase significantly ever since certain popular social media sites fell out of grace due to bad decisions made by the C-suite. There are even enthusiast-run video sharing sites trying to offer an alternative to Youtube.

 

[Morbad]

Don't think its ever happened in any MMO, either way i cant see it ever happening here

Plenty of MMOs now have private servers run by independent entities, either via deliberate releases/open sourcing, or leaks. EverQuest is a prime example, which has at least a half dozen decently populated private projects, but there are plenty of others.

hopefully not anyway.

Why would you want to prevent private Elite: Dangerous servers or server emulators that would give people some actual control over the game they wanted to play?

Retaining it full scale, on AWS, or elsewhere, could be forbiddingly expensive and maintenance-heavy, for a bunch of hobbyists, and I'm not sure we have enough people with both the know-how, and the relentless passion, to rework it into something more cut-down and managable, and then have its upkeep as effectively a second, unpaid job.

I don't think so. Elite: Dangerous is still primarily peer-to-peer for most computation and bandwidth needs. Much more demanding projects have been hosted by private hobbyist, free of charge, even back when costs would have been much higher.

With access to the sever software, I'd probably start investigating the possibility of hosting instances server side, because as relatively demanding as this is, I could still afford the hardware and the connection to host several hundred clients simultaneously.

The support work required for a smooth player experience would be the only real barrier, but with no money changing hands and no contracts to worry about, even this could be streamlined significantly.

 

[Darrack]

Plenty of MMOs now have private servers run by independent entities, either via deliberate releases/open sourcing, or leaks. EverQuest is a prime example, which has at least a half dozen decently populated private projects

True but the official servers are still alive and well (been in EQ since the beginning and still play).
When Sony left the game the new companies were never going to continue with all the servers, updates slowed as they concentrated on EQ2 which was amazing until everyone realised it was developed using the wrong engine.
Since then EQ has just plodded along, it was no surprise project 1999 etc showed up.
Just to add 3rd party tools or mods are forbidden in P1999.

Why would you want to prevent private Elite: Dangerous servers or server emulators that would give people some actual control over the game they wanted to play?

No issue as long as it is entirely separate from the current game.

Its really a mute point though, it never going to happen.

O7

 

[jojon]

With access to the sever software, I'd probably start investigating the possibility of hosting instances server side, because as relatively demanding as this is, I could still afford the hardware and the connection to host several hundred clients simultaneously.

Well, then please accept my gratitude for this speculative, and tentative committment... :7
(EDIT: Zero sarcasm, to be clear.)

 

[Morbad]

Just to add 3rd party tools or mods are forbidden in P1999.

Project1999 itself is a 3rd-party mod and is no doubt managed with all kinds of 3rd party tools.

The host, whoever that may be, makes the rules. Anyone can install the EQEmu server and run their own EverQuest game, with whatever mechanisms and rules they care to implement and enforce.

No issue as long as it is entirely separate from the current game.

That's implicit.

it never going to happen.

I don't think the idea is that far fetched.

While I don't expect that the shutdown of Elite: Dangerous is imminent, nor do I necessarily believe that Frontier will go out of their way to allow the game to continue when they finally do cease to support it, the lowest effort way for them to fulfill their expressed desire to enable some kind of an offline mode when they finally close the project, would be to release the server software, more or less as is. Beyond that, leaks are far from inconceivable, and might be probable if the company were to go under or be sold in away that employees took issue with.

Well, then please accept my gratitude for this speculative, and tentative committment... :7
(EDIT: Zero sarcasm, to be clear.)

It's still a pretty unlikely scenario and even if it does come to pass there is no guarantee you'd like what I'd do with my server.

 

[Darth Ender]

Don't think its ever happened in any MMO, either way i cant see it ever happening here, hopefully not anyway.

O7

but this one had that specific thing stipulated by the devs

I'm not so sure the server setup (with documentation, hopefully), handed to the community, would necessarily be much use to us, if it ever came to that, when the game shuts down...

Retaining it full scale, on AWS, or elsewhere, could be forbiddingly expensive and maintenance-heavy, for a bunch of hobbyists, and I'm not sure we have enough people with both the know-how, and the relentless passion, to rework it into something more cut-down and managable, and then have its upkeep as effectively a second, unpaid job.

That said: Frontier do of course have to have their internal test servers, and do keep that separate "copy" for legacy, so it has to be scalable in some way, and sessions with various servers open and close for short moments, on as-needed basis, presumably, so I suppose it does inherently scale, in that way...

i don't think it needs much at all for small groups of players. all the client uses it for is querying databases at the start of instances and assisting with instancing with other players and tracking persistent actions / states.

fdev struggles with server performance because of the number of simultaneous connections and their associated requests. that and mitigating the latency of aws servers.

running systems locally for say, 1-5 players should be trivial in comparison. much smaller data sets to store activity and far fewer simultaneous requests. and single player would be an even more special case that would likely not need a lot of the db tracking overhead.

if someone wanted to go big, they could charge for access to the shared server.

i think it would be certainly doable. provided the whole system isn't full of hardcoded expectations with the aws deployment... which is probably where this hope dies.

 

[LifesAJourney]

Thermal vent for all weapons confirmed!

Nothing can be more cool!

 

[Fizzatron]

updates slowed as they concentrated on EQ2 which was amazing until everyone realised it was developed using the wrong engine.

hmm, sounds like some other game that rhymes with tar carcinogen...

 

[amigacooke {macOS}]

It's still a pretty unlikely scenario and even if it does come to pass there is no guarantee you'd like what I'd do with my server.

I’m not that keen on what Frontier have done with their server(s).

 

[Mr Laber Laber]

All the best and thank U, Tom!

what ship is this figured in Tom's screenshot?

At first I thought it might be the Orbit Shuttle.
It will take you to places you cannot reach alone.
But you can't leave the building before Elite Dangerous Waterworlds.

But now I think it's a Guardian-Human hybrid sentinel in an ammonia atmosphere.

-------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- --------

Two of the best things will be unarmed third-person activity (but it doesn't have to be combat) and building your own settlements.

 

[hems303]

Best wishes for your future! We are all deeply grateful for the epic work you and team have put into EDO, making it the best space simulation ever!
I have 'played' since 2015 and certainly wouldn't have been around still without the sterling efforts of you and all the guys'n'gals!
I always looked forward to you appearances on Frame Shift Live... a real breath of fresh air. Your departure is both FDev's and our loss! o7

 

[Dash]

I suspect there are plenty of IT nerds who play the game who probably already work on far more complex and scaling systems. The big community goals attract like 2k players, so we can probably safely assume that concurrent connections are around a maximum of 5k clients. I mean, that's rookie numbers for anybody who works in enterprise systems. With access to source code, there's a good chance that the community could significantly improve things. I feel like a game like Elite with so many people working on third party tools, there's probably the willingness to do it too. But the chances of FD handing over the reigns when the do finally sunset, that I find highly unlikely.