News Update #7: Dynamic Economy / Missions

[Steve O B Have]

I am really concerned that single player needs to do some kind of online sync.

Single player I am really hoping is compeltely and utterly offline. I want to have multiple saves with different careers testing things out. Every save would be a new stand alone universe.

I should be able to take the DVD out of the box, load it up and play it in the middle of nowhere without ever having any kind of internet connection.

So
1. Single player completely and utterly offline
2. Multiplayer (which will then sync of course to stop you trying to cheat

and a single player game can never go multiplayer.

This is a really important thing for me, as Alien said, the single player should be it's own universe.

If single player needs sync / internet connection then it is a deal breaker at least for me.

I've thought about similar stuff as well, I would be surprised if players alone could generate nearly enough variables to actually drive a galaxy so I'm willing to bet that there will be all sorts of driving mechanics making each of our universes work and they're going to have to be independent to a certain extent otherwise we'd be waiting all day for other players to catch up or for us to catch up. It does make you wonder though, how much effect a single player will be allowed to have over others universes. It's a pretty fine balancing act I bet and I don't think (with my limited understanding) that it can be one or the other, rather a combination.

I dunno how I feel about not being able to start from 'year dot' every time... I guess it's not too much of a biggie, you can still gauge your success based on time since time is still going to be linear and the universe will be so diverse that each story will be unique regardless.

 

[Kipper]

The way I see it based on DB's vision - is that everything will be a cascading chain reaction.

He talked about a system deciding to build a space station, but I bet before that - the system will be thinking about whether it's rich enough to afford it, how good its tech is determining what type of station it can build, does it get enough visitors that it's even warranted?

To my mind, if you're cruising about in your Eagle MkII delivering the occasional 4 tonnes of food to the planet as you jump through on your trade runs, you're not going to have much of an effect on things - especially if you're in a core system like Sol.

If you're in a 2000t clipper though, you can start doing something. If there's 5 of you, that's 10,000t you can transport somewhere which is going to be significant to a local economy. If you happen to be dropping that cargo on a small world on the outskirts of colonised space and there's only a small outpost with a few hundred thousand population then its a significant event.

 

[Susimetsa]

If you're in a 2000t clipper though, you can start doing something. If there's 5 of you, that's 10,000t you can transport somewhere which is going to be significant to a local economy. If you happen to be dropping that cargo on a small world on the outskirts of colonised space and there's only a small outpost with a few hundred thousand population then its a significant event.

Twenty years after that significant event, you'll visit that planet again to meet a wizened old man. He points to a vast area filled with rusted machinery and collapsed cargo containers. "That's where those *******s dumped all their cargo," he says. "None of them bothered to check if we had the manpower to use them all and they never stayed here for long enough to help us out. Spoiled the scenery, they did. Used to be pretty around here before that 10,000t cargo dump..."

 

[Zak Gordon]

I'm not sure if anyone else has realised this yet, but if you take what DB has described logically, it means that a single-player game is going to completely separate from the Free-For-All multi-player and possibly the private multi-player as well.
How can I know this? You can't have a single player game developing systems and influencing the game and then have that sync seamlessly with a multi-player game, esp the FFA multi-player.
So that means the FFA multi-player will be its own separate universe.
The only way a private multi-player could sync with a single player game is if the people you invite play in YOUR universe.
I repeat again : the Free For All multi-player will be its own universe.

Yep. That was my first thought on watching the video, those were all mostly idea's for the multiplayer game (in fact there have been a few subtle hints throughout these video's that the multiplayer game is the one FD are wanting us to play).

I don't mind a 'dumb'(or not especially competent) AI in the single-player game, but i sure hope all these kind of aspects he is talking about will be modeled in the SP game to some extent, even if the AI is not that good at dealing with it all.

What i do mind is other people in my game ruining the immersion and gameworld atmosphere i can conjure in my imagination. That stuff over the years killed off all my desire to play mp on-line (excepting 'hotseat' with close friends that can roleplay), all it takes is an out of context 'tweet'/'voip'/'text message' that is off-topic or not relevant to the game universe (like 'Did you see Big Brother on friday? Lolz!') and it is literally 'game over' for me.

So yeah my desire to play Elite: Dangerous completely in SP is now not looking so sure? I really hope i'm wrong. But other than that, i love the video updates, just wish there was more general and regular feedback from FD (and David) on the game in general.

 

[Steve]

Twenty years after that significant event, you'll visit that planet again to meet a wizened old man. He points to a vast area filled with rusted machinery and collapsed cargo containers. "That's where those *******s dumped all their cargo," he says. "None of them bothered to check if we had the manpower to use them all and they never stayed here for long enough to help us out. Spoiled the scenery, they did. Used to be pretty around here before that 10,000t cargo dump..."

Well, you're always going to get some ungrateful people...

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

What i do mind is other people in my game ruining the immersion and gameworld atmosphere i can conjure in my imagination. That stuff over the years killed off all my desire to play mp on-line (excepting 'hotseat' with close friends that can roleplay), all it takes is an out of context 'tweet'/'voip'/'text message' that is off-topic or not relevant to the game universe (like 'Did you see Big Brother on friday? Lolz!') and it is literally 'game over' for me.

Find like minded people and play with them - there is no need to ever see a "random" if you don't want.

 

[The Space Pirate]

Yep. That was my first thought on watching the video, those were all mostly idea's for the multiplayer game (in fact there have been a few subtle hints throughout these video's that the multiplayer game is the one FD are wanting us to play).

I don't mind a 'dumb'(or not especially competent) AI in the single-player game, but i sure hope all these kind of aspects he is talking about will be modeled in the SP game to some extent, even if the AI is not that good at dealing with it all.

What i do mind is other people in my game ruining the immersion and gameworld atmosphere i can conjure in my imagination. That stuff over the years killed off all my desire to play mp on-line (excepting 'hotseat' with close friends that can roleplay), all it takes is an out of context 'tweet'/'voip'/'text message' that is off-topic or not relevant to the game universe (like 'Did you see Big Brother on friday? Lolz!') and it is literally 'game over' for me.
.

I hate Big Brother with a passion...

I don't agree that I'd be happy with a dumb AI - I want an AI that challenges me, not one that just rolls over.

 

[Styggron]

I dunno how I feel about not being able to start from 'year dot' every time... I guess it's not too much of a biggie, you can still gauge your success based on time since time is still going to be linear and the universe will be so diverse that each story will be unique regardless.

That's why I want single player to be exactly that. I want to test out, experiment, try different careers and then restarting things all over from "year dot" just like I did with the original. I branch off different saves then return to the last "branch" point if I did not like where one was leading too.

This is another reason why I will not MP. Plus being at times with no internet connections and I don't want ELITE to be a big paper weight so this is why I need it to run on SP with NO internet whatsoever.

Yes I certainly understand the single player one will miss out on things, David says the social aspect of it, and of course players will affect the development of the universe. I don't see why NPC's won't affect the universe in a single player one....sure not as great but it should still be ok. This is DAVID we are talking about.

Yes the online one will keep progressing you can restart your career maybe, back to $100 credits etc but the galaxy will evolve and be different. Again this is why I prefer SP, I can go BACK to a previous state.

SP for me as always.

 

[shrapnel]

Find like minded people and play with them - there is no need to ever see a "random" if you don't want.

One would presume there would be servers setup for "role play" as there are in other MMOG's, where people don't talk about Big Brother or Obama's re-election or <insert boring real life boringness here>.

It's important to me, really, I think Elite has always been a bit of an "imaginationland" and a good escape from real life.

Where i am confused is in the potential for a million different "universes" to exist. The universe that I inhabit in SP, presumably won't change at the same rate as "the" MP universe. But then, how many MP universes could there be?

The universe that is just me and my friends? Well, if we didn't take medical supplies to Epsilon Eriyandi did that outbreak of weirdness fever overcome the planet? Or did unseen MP players from the "free for all" universe save the day? Essentially, in this example, the "friends" game could take influence from the "free for all" game and thus replace the players flooding the market with medical supplies with NPC's. I suppose.

All very interesting stuff. I definitely want to avoid an Elite that is not immersive and plays like a space based Team Fortress, but I wouldn't want to miss out too much on the potential for socio-political involvement in the development of the galaxy.

 

[Kipper]

Well, you're always going to get some ungrateful people...

Well, they shouldn't have bought the whole 10,000t if they didn't need it....

As for immersion ruining players - turn of in-game voip if it's there, turn off general/global chat channels if they're there and your contact with other players need only extend to your friends and the 'in game' actions of the rest of the universe.

You will still get the richness without the spam-chat.

 

[Sir.Tj]

Although I will play the Multi player version I think I will spend most of the time in the Single player version.

Not sure why, until I've actually got the game up infront of me and played for a while It's hard to know which I will prefer.

Time as they say will tell :smilie:

 

[Smugallo]

I think moving it into a semi online mode is a good choice, i would rather that than it being a fully fledged mmo. At least the option for single player is still there. Seriously hope this comes out!!

 

[Steve O B Have]

You know over the time I've been slowly gravitating toward an MMO type Persistent universe. What this could do for the depth of the environment is properly mind blowing, especially considering what people get up to within EVE Online, and that is a limited environment to around 7500 systems. Imagine that with a full Galaxy able to be built up and populated by player generated content. The beauty of it would be that the chances of running out of space ('scuse the pun) is absolutely minimal.

If based around the economies of the game and with restrictively high amounts of money required for both populating systems and then building space stations or bases, we could have a growing frontier with discovery and a constant 'wild west' out on the boarders of 'civilisation'. There could be pockets of 'first contact' opportunities and frontier disputes with a whole safe policed area that those that have no interest in fighting can populate.

The dynamic economy thing holds a vast amount of possibility that is entirely scalable to the population of players IMO.

 

[Kipper]

That's how I see it too.

EVE - but set in our galaxy, but with real 'hands-on' flying, and hyperspace.

 

[MischiefFR]

I think where he's going with singleplayer in multiplayer is far more subtle, or at least I hope that's what he's talking about.

Your universe in SP is still your universe - it's going to reflect everything that you've done. Instead of other events being random however they would be drawn from what other players are doing. Tons of people running luxury goods from point A to point B? Value of those goods at point B goes down. Filling in the changes that we've always taken for quiet granted in the background being done procedurally by the AI and replacing it with a sort of average of other players behavior.

This would lead to environments that players in their SP games are flocking to growing more quickly and more organically while the edges of known space are far more fluid. Someone explores and finds an area rich in particular goods? News gets out, people flock to it, slowly the economy changes in that area of space. Maybe it shifts from resource gathering to manufacturing over time as people invest in the facilities to process whatever is there locally. Perhaps someone invades and takes over, perhaps a war starts.

I don't see it as being a 1 for 1 representation across thousands, tens of thousands of individual SP games. I see it as harvesting the 'background data' of all these SP games and using it to fill in for the generic NPC-driven stuff.

That, at least, is my hope. I'm sure there will be a server for a live MP FFA environment. That's great but for the rest of us it would be nice to see something more.

Also, obviously, there needs to be a way to just play it all offline on your own.