When, and whom with?

[Ugleb]

So I'm a kickstarter backer, regular reader of newsletters but not in the beta. I have a couple of questions that I can't seem to get very good answers on.

1) Release date. I know its 'Q4 2014', and has been since day 1 pretty much. I'd love to get some sort of clue if we're talking October-ish or December 31st-ish.

And now the complicated question:

2) How does Elite's online mode(s) actually work? I haven't seen a decent description from Frontier on this that I can recall and the player responses I've read have been weirdly vague and unhelpful. I'd like to hear a more defined explanation of how players are able to interact on a server level. I had hoped Frontier would be talking more about this by now. So, I ask you:

a) Is it a sharded MMO server setup like say Star Wars The Old Republic or Planetside 2 where I must play on the same server as a specific player in order to meet them? Only players on the same server shard can meet, if you are on separate servers you cannot.

b) Is it a single-shard server like EVE-Online's Tranquility where all players inhabit the same server? Every player could go to the same location at once and interact freely (assuming the server can handle it ofc).

c) Is it some sort of hybrid? If so, how would the game respond to 3,000 random players converging on the same location at the same time? What would I see?

Thanks in advance, I look forwards to being enlightened.

 

[ZeeWolf]

1) It's slated for the end of this year. There is no more information than that as I'm sure Frontier just aren't ready to commit to a specific release date yet.

2) It's a hybrid system. The background simulation, political/economical information is on a server while the instancing with other players is handled P2P.

 

[Roi Danton]

The game chooses the server for you. If you have friends in your list the game tries to login you on the same server and in the same instance (if too many ppl are in one region at the same time several instances exists - at least thats how I understood it).

 

[huwthomas]

3000 players into the same location would be split into multiple P2P "sessions", based on match-making rules that e.g. try to keep friends together. I believe the maximum session size is 32, but I reckon all 32 peers would need a fast internet connection for that to happen smoothly.

 

[trekman]

So I'm a kickstarter backer, regular reader of newsletters but not in the beta. I have a couple of questions that I can't seem to get very good answers on.

1) Release date. I know its 'Q4 2014', and has been since day 1 pretty much. I'd love to get some sort of clue if we're talking October-ish or December 31st-ish.

There's been lots of guesses on the forum about this. A lot of people think that they will release the game or at least the gamma in September since this is the 30th anniversary of the release of the original game. Unfortunately they won't confirm or deny this speculation outright so I guess we'll just have to be patient and wait and see.

 

[Dante80]

Welcome to the game Ugleb, glad to see the Jotunn Risi CEO aboard..XD

1. The game is scheduled for release by the end of the year. We don't know more than that.

2. Its exactly like EvE online, with a caveat.

In EvE online, you have many servers (nodes) that get assigned to different star systems, but play and affect the same universe. The 2 biggest nodes (Jita and Apocalypse) are used for a single star system (Jita for Jita, Apocalypse for on demand node reinforcing in huge battles) When the amount of players reach the server limit (after TD), the server crashes taking everything down with it or starts to reject packets thus destroying the gameplay (you push a button, nothing happens for 30 minutes).

In Elite Dangerous, you play and affect the same universe, but the amount of people you see in the game depends on two things.

a. Player instances/bubbles. When the amount of players in a single location (much shorter than a star system) reach the server limit, the game adds another instance instead of crashing the game. The player instances/bubbles also use a hybrid P2P system, which means that players in the same bubble share packets regarding high level of accuracy networking.

b. Matchmaking options. In this game, you have the opportunity to manage the number of players you can see at any time. You can play alone, have a whitelist of players, block certain players and play with everyone. Your personal options thus change the number and size of instances/bubbles that can exist in the same location.

Now here is the important part. The two EvE online supernodes can handle up to 4000 players before crashing, since the game is very simplified (point and click 1 second server ticks), and CCP have some monster servers. The plan for ED is to have a bubble size that can accommodate up to 32 players at the same time (along with hundreds of NPCs). Its patently impossible to have hundreds of players at the same time, due to the amount of precision and network packets needed for actually flying your spaceship instead of just ordering it around.

 

[Ugleb]

Some great responses there! Thanks for those, it sounds like my mental image isn't too far off the reality. From my vague knowledge of Star Citizen, this sounds like the two games are taking a similar approach with on-the-fly instancing and matchmaking. Sound accurate?

Any idea if that 32 player limit might be increased at some point down the road? I get that packet transfer across the internets is a big deal, but there are games such as Planetside2 out there delivering twitch-based gaming on a larger scale.

Also, vaguely surprised to be recognised so precisely so fast!