Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Will this be a mmo?
rubydragon5
Member UncommonPosts: 693
Just wondering how many players per server the game will support?
Will it have persistant servers at all?
Comments
It's not an MMO in the traditional sense. There is a persistent background simulation for the universe, so in a sense all players are in the same game world. Instances form seamlessly when two or more players are witihn visual range of each other, up to a maximum of 32 players per instance. If more players enter that same area, a new instance is spawned for those.
There's also the option to play single player offline without any connection to the persistent world if one has no interest in multiplayer.
Yes and no....
Yes because technically everyone is connected to the same server. Which handles stuff like economy, stats, money, exploration data, etc. Even stuff you do in solo mode affects the economy for other players.
No because the "physical" game world uses P2P and you can decide if you see other players or not, or play in a private group.
Yes Elite: Dangerous is an MMO.
The official site says so too http://elitedangerous.com/about
Elite: Dangerous is the spectacular new sequel in the Elite series of games.
Head for the stars, take a ship and trade, bounty-hunt, pirate or assassinate your way across the galaxy in this massively multiplayer online space adventure
Elite is as much MMO as any other on this site and maybe even more so, because the instances are not just fixed location as in WoW, but are dynamically created based on proximity.
Only games like EVE are the exception to the rule regarding non-instancing.
I don't like calling Elite an MMO because it will create certain expectations with people such as
- high numbers of players in the same area.
- no instancing in the open world
- client-server multiplayer
- no grouping system allowing for private versions of the game world
Welcome to the brave new world of instanced and phased 'mmo' gameplay. Rather than put everyone in the same world, and load both the server and client, the trend is to auto-instance and phase everyone and everything, to provide the illusion of a unified massive world. IMHO, it's a half ass solution, a rather serious compromise, but for most games the devs cannot find any other way to do it, or the management does not feel like trying.
To be more charitable, it's a design compromise. If you want a detailed, realistic, involved world, the some compromise has to be made, as it gets tough to have 1000+ players in one place. EvE has TiDi, which sux but it does compute the math correctly, ESO, E:D and SC use / will use instancing and/or phasing. I think it works ok, especially for space games. Not so well or so much for ESO, IMHO. Maybe its just the way that ESO does it that bugs me, but a lot bugged me about the beta of that game.
What I do not like are slider bars or player encounter options, to limit how many players you can see or have to deal with. It's one thing to make a single player only version, but that should not affect nor be affected by anyone else at all.