Meaningful Meetings

Elite: Dangerous does multiplayer right.  Well, multiplayer for people who usually game solo, anyway.

What do I mean by that?  Well, just this:  Elite: Dangerous offers a type of multiplayer that is both non-threatening as well as more meaningful than in what I have experienced in other online games.  And it does so due to a number of smart design decisions.

The most obvious design decision is this one:

Unlike a lot of other games, Elite gives the player the clear choice to play with others or not right from the opening menu. This choice is not to be underestimated as it makes Elite's multiplayer environment far less threatening to solo players like me because I know that the choice to engage with others is entirely my own, and one I can change at any time.  Compare this open policy with, say, No Man's Sky recent multiplayer expansa-patch where the player is defaulted into an open multiplayer environment. Yeah, Frontier does it better (as it does with most things when it comes to Elite vs. NMS).

Then, of course, there is the matter of the community itself.  Unlike games such as Eve Online where the community prides itself on its toxicity - albeit, I have long suspected, partially based on personal experience, that the Eve Online community's bark is far worse than its bite - Elite's community prides itself on its more helpful and friendly nature.  Sure, when you approach the tug-of-war hotspots that are Community Goals you will stand a good chance of being attacked by players from the other team.  No denying that.  However, most other places in Elite's galaxy are populated by non-aggressive players.  It can be amusing to read forum posts from new players who are startled to find how welcoming the Elite galaxy can be when it comes to interacting with other players.

But I think the biggest reason why I find Elite's multiplayer so enjoyable is that its massive, 400 billion star galaxy does a mighty find job of organically preventing mobs.  Despite there being "hundreds of thousands" of active players, outside of the aforementioned community hotspots such as CGs and engineer bases, your actual odds of coming across another player pilot is rather thin.  This is because of a few reasons besides the mammoth size of the galaxy:

1. Despite a clear majority of players playing in "open," there is a significant number of players who choose to stay solo or in a private group.  This thins the crowd a bit.
2. Despite there being "hundreds of thousands" of active players (not to be confused with concurrent players, albeit the two figures could be same for all we know), that large playerbase is spread across three platforms: the PC, XBOX and PS.  Unfortunately, due to the (tiring) reticence of Microsoft and Sony to allow cross-platform play, the playerbase for each platform remains isolated from each other.  Thus the herd is artificially thinned yet again.
3. Unlike Eve's massive, single shard server that allows all players to inhabit the same galaxy at the same time, Frontier decided to go with a more practical approach: functionally, there is one galaxy for all players - e.g., if a space station in the Pleiades region is attacked by Thargoids and evacuated, it will be attacked by Thargoids and evacuated for all players on all game platforms. In other words, when it comes to galactic events, the galaxy is the same for everyone.  However, because Elite uses a peer-to-peer server architecture, that galaxy of players is greatly "instanced."   So, if, say, a thousand players rush to help that besieged space station, only a certain percentage will find themselves occupying the same area at the same time - up to a limit of 26 players per instance.  Unlike Eve where all one thousand players would be able to wave to each other, Elite players would only being able to greet a small percentage of responding pilots at any given time due to the P2P system.  It's limiting, but a heck of a lot cheaper for Frontier to maintain.  

So, those are three big ancillary reasons why even if you play in "open" you will rarely find yourself swamped by a mob of aggressive players.  But the biggest reason remains the most obvious: the 400 billion star galaxy.  To put this massive gameplay scope into proper perspective, despite Elite now being in existence for four years and, again, enjoying a playerbase of "hundreds of thousands," as of September 5 of this year only a total of 25,586,013 star systems have been explored, which equates to around 0.006397 percent of the total gameplay galaxy that is available.  Incredible!  For comparison purposes, the entirety of Eve's New Eden is comprised of ~5000 star systems.  The known galaxy of Elite is already approximately five thousand times bigger!

Now do you understand why even in an open environment it is not particularly likely that a commander would come across another soul in a single, hour long session?  Like one of those overly large conquest maps in Battlefield 4, the numbers of players online at any given instant in simply swallowed up by the immensity of Frontier's creation.  

I find this to actually be a good thing.  Not only does such a dispersal of the playerbase make it far less likely that a pilot will find himself griefed or ganked by other players, but it also serves to make the occasional encounter with another pilot a special occasion. Why?  Because of this:  if there is one overarching feature of Elite that I find particularly noteworthy, it is how frightening Elite's galaxy is: frightening in size (certainly), in potential danger (it's in the name, after all), and also in...loneliness.  Because Frontier took the incredible pains to birth this massive simulated galaxy, Elite's Milky Way seems to swallow up flesh and blood commanders like a black hole.   So, on the rare occasion when you do see that empty square on your scanner (the telltale of a ship piloted by another player), it is almost a relief to discover you are not all alone in the endless Black.

This realization came to me last night when after spending a week running missions in the area around LTT 5259, I discovered that another human pilot was docked at a space station where I was due to deliver six tons of biowaste (agricultural colonies love that cheap fertilizer!).  Upon docking, I discovered that that human commander was already settled on a landing pad inside the station, just a few hundred meters in front of me (you can see his ship in the header image of this post).  He was driving a heck of a snazzy Imperial Cutter that dwarfed my little Diamondback Scout, so I was impressed.  But I was even more impressed to just see another player!   I was so thrilled by his presence, that I did something I would only very reluctantly do in another online game: I called up my comms panel and sent the other pilot a greeting, Elite: Dangerous's equivalent of knocking on his cockpit door and asking to borrow a cup of sugar.  Unfortunately, the other pilot must have been AFK because he never did respond, nor did his Cutter ever descend into its assigned hangar (maybe he had to run to the station restroom?)  Too bad.  Regardless, I was still thrilled to see another living soul in this galaxy that can feel awfully like an abandoned, spooky mansion at times - and that is a compliment.

I realize that some of the above might strike some gamers as negatives for Elite: Dangerous.  Indeed, the official forums are often full of gamers clamoring for more of an Eve Online massively multiplayer experience while decrying Elite's limitations.  I understand that point of view, but don't necessarily agree.  I think one of the reasons why I have found myself so unexpectedly passionate about Elite: Dangerous is because I have always found it to be a single player game with optional multiplayer content, as opposed to a traditional MMO.  I think this is the genius behind its design.  While staying true to its single player roots, Elite has nonetheless managed to incorporate just enough multiplayer content to keep the game competitive in an age where multiplayer online games are all the rage.  For me, that is the perfect balance, and one that makes those multiplayer interactions all the more memorable. 

It can be lonely to be a spaceman