Anyone here taking part in the Distant Worlds expedition? It’s quiet the trek…
If that is really a picture of you I might. 
[quote=“Zen, post:786, topic:227”]
If that is really a picture of you I might.
[/quote]Sadly it is not I (I’d never leave my room if it was)
Search for “Mia Sollis”, preferably while not at work.
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Check this video out: http://youtu.be/OG5rmfq9uZ4
Really shows what awesome things players can accomplish within a sandbox universe.
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Very cool. Never did like the whole land at the sun bit though…gets annoying after awhile.
This is the ‘official’ one circulating the media and Frontier’s site. Very impressive considering how annoying their instancing system is.
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After having flown for days on end into the center of the galaxy veering away from the sun each and every time and finding nothing but empty space - ie no other players, not to mention a severe player cap per instance, it appears frontier is better at making engines than games, in my opinion.
Why would you expect or want to find other players when exploring the unknown? Isn’t the whole point of that to find places no one’s been before?
*Could probably do with a little bit more varied/dynamic content tho.
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He still has a point: even flying in the faction territories you rarely encounter any players. At best you’ll see between 2 and 5 players, with little to no interaction.
One of the reasons is because of the “online single” player mode. You’re not with the players, but your actions still affects them…
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Some more beef from Michael Brookes on the 2.1 update.
Missions will be generated by stricter criteria so that the majority of missions offered will make sense in the location that are offered. A three stage hierarchy will govern how the missions are created.
First by the state of the minor faction, so if they are in famine, or at war, or any other state missions to address that state are generated.
Secondly, the type of market for the port, so that they match the economic activity for that market. An obvious example is creating mining missions from extraction economies.
The third stage is determined by the government type and this reflects the character of the minor factions and the types of operation that they indulge in. For example dictatorships are more likely to indulge in overt assassinations and so send a visible message, while democracies will conduct their wet work through covert operations.
Here is the full dev update.
https://community.elitedangerous.com/node/388
The game could have been a quarter of it’s present size and it would have had the exact same mind numbing effect. It’s not the size that counts but how you use it.
That’s true and all, but then again - Elite is also about simulating a galaxy roughly to scale. They did try to bring more user interaction by releasing that stand alone arena fighter thing. Even if user interaction there is severely limited to shooting enemies.
Yeah, I have to commend them on their efforts but making a galaxy roughly to scale makes no sense in terms of gaming unless you can populate the entire galaxy with NPCs which would pretty well make it a single player. And that is ok if single players are your thing. And I have to admit, I do not like single players which is why I play EVE despite it’s many setbacks. But sure, it is a great engine and looks stunningly beautiful and to date is the best one out there…until I-Novae releases theirs that is. 
You don’t seriously think Jita would empty on eve if the number of nullsec systems went up by a few hundred billion, do you? Only issue would be implementing systems to track people down at a distance and boosting travel times.
This is yet another discussion we had on the old forums.
The absolute size of the game space doesn’t matter. What matters is how large it is in relation to view distance and movement speed. If we’re playing in a galaxy-sized space, and I can see everyone in the galaxy and I can move at up to 1,000 light years per second, it’s a small game space. A galaxy could only hold a few hundred people at a time because that’s all modern game systems seem capable of handling.
In contrast, if we’re playing on 500 square kilometer game space that is perpetually shrouded in fog and we’re all moving on foot, the game space is gigantic. The game software could allow 100 players in a single valley without too much trouble.
Elite:Dangerous apparently has a mismatch between the absolute size of their game space and these two factors. Players can’t find each other.
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The biggest limiting factor in all of Elite, and the sole reason for its isolating nature, is the ability for players to connect in meaningful ways. Right now you can only join with a tiny group of 3 other players. Anything more and you have to figure out which instance the other 50 of you are floating around on. It makes the huge expanse of space even more isolating because you as the player consciously know there is nobody else out there that you should bother to care about…so what’s the point of warping to the next yellowish-red sun?
Without anyone else to share in the exploration or danger or mystery or discovery, there is no satisfaction to gain because you are constantly exposed to the procedural game engine staring you in the face. There is supposedly an entire civilization with BILLIONS OF PEOPLE living on the planet beneath you and on the multitudes of stations dotting the systems, but all of it means jack if it is just implied via a news bulletin or repetitive vehicle animations.
I can only hope that Frontier will eventually bring the capability onboard to allow players to engage en-mass with matchmaking via friends lists and organisations. Even with a galaxy 40,000LY across, that little planet you’ve just exploited for billions of space credits could be the most amazing fun you’ve had in years. All because you were able to collaborate on something without the instance server spitting in your face.
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You just said what I said.
(movement speed)
Well that’s the thing: Up to the current one, Elite was exactly that. A singleplayer game. Many of the initial playerbase played the previous games (I haven’t btw, only fired up the first one for 5 minutes to see how well it aged), so it makes sense to frontier to cater to their established fanbase (especially after they kicked them in the guts by scrapping offline mode completely). I don’t think that Elite isn’t meant to be the game that puts hundreds or thousands of players in a single spot and tell them to duke it out over limited ressource supplies. People got EVE for that. To make this clear, the last thing I want for Elite is to become like EVE,
Was multiplayer even in the original ED design brief? The only thing I remember being talked about about early in the kickstarter was using the online stuff to build a shared-world for changes to the political economic landscape of ‘core’ worlds and systems.
No, I said what I said. We agree, but I described the issues in a way that I thought was more clear, as I found “track people down at a distance” and " boosting travel times" to be rather unclear in meaning.