One of my goals with Star Citizen was to create a huge open world that you could adventure in solo, with your friends, mingling with NPCs and other real people.
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The key to all this is to allow player choice ? you want to play alone you can, want your friends to join you in co-op we allow that and if you want to be challenged by other real players you can do that. The special part is that it can all happen in the same holistic universe.
I hope this helps in terms of understanding how we?re balancing the aspects of multiplayer as well as making the game fun.