The shape of Indar

[texico]

After seeing the GDC footage, I have to say that the landscape of Indar does look pretty spectacular - I particularly noted the scene with the Vanguards moving through the rocky terrain, beautiful.

However, did anybody else think Indar's shape was a little... dull? It forms roughly a square and doesn't look very natural either, I don't think I've seen any islands that square shape before and it makes it look kind of man-made.

Most of PS1's continents are noteworthy for having really well-designed shapes, if you think of Hossin, Solsar, Amerish, Esamir and Ceryshen.

Imo if you want feedback, I would suggest cutting some terrain out of some sides and adding some at others to give it a more inspired and natural shape around the edges without having to change most of the bulk of the continent


Btw, because I have a pretty bad perception of scale, how big is this continent compared to PS1's continents? Like, is it the size of Ceryshen for example? j/w.

[Bags]

It doesn't matter.

[Warborn]

Here's Indar: http://i.imgur.com/BpXFp.jpg

Here's Ishundar: http://i.imgur.com/9SImA.jpg

It is a travesty that the vaguely round blob was exchanged for a vaguely square blob. I am writing the President this instant.

On a more serious note, what matters is the terrain overall and how it affects the flow of battle. The edges are not such a big deal. All FPS multiplayer maps are squares or rectangles, but that doesn't say anything about how they actually play, does it?

[DviddLeff]

Its fine; as good as any of the PS ones tbh.

[Arrow]

Well seeing that it is a continent and not a island..

[texico]

Originally Posted by Arrow

Well seeing that it is a continent and not a island..

Originally Posted by texico

around the edges without having to change most of the bulk of the continent


how big is this continent compared to PS1's continents?

I know.

Also, how many continents are square either?

[texico]

Originally Posted by Warborn

Here's Indar: http://i.imgur.com/BpXFp.jpg

Here's Ishundar: http://i.imgur.com/9SImA.jpg

It is a travesty that the vaguely round blob was exchanged for a vaguely square blob. I am writing the President this instant.

On a more serious note, what matters is the terrain overall and how it affects the flow of battle. The edges are not such a big deal. All FPS multiplayer maps are squares or rectangles, but that doesn't say anything about how they actually play, does it?

It's funny you should use Ishundar, which is the map I think has the worst design of the lot (apart from the battle-islands)

But even then, it's not really a "normal" shape. It's not a triangle, square, pentagon etc. or anything like that.


Definitely this doesn't really have anything to do with Battle, but then neither does the design of weapons or armour, but that's still considered important. It's fine for an FPS "map" to be a square because the point is it's usually a self-contained "piece of land" that the particular arena-style battle is taking place in. But when you design an island, you're essentially trying to make the point that it's a real island/continent, which usually means interesting naturally-looking shapes..

Hey, like I said I'm not complaining as such but offering feedback on what my impression was . But it seems like a pretty silly thing to dismiss, why would you want somebody to look at the island and their first impression be something like "this is a pretty much as square, that seems kind of amateurish"?

[Graywolves]

I'm more interested with what is inside the continent than its overall shape.

[Warborn]

Originally Posted by texico

Definitely this doesn't really have anything to do with Battle, but then neither does the design of weapons or armour, but that's still considered important.

Totally ridiculous comparison. Armor and weapons are things you will be constantly looking at and which normal people care about for obvious reasons (aesthetics are important). The outline of a continent on a map is something you'll see briefly and which basically nobody will care about at all as it doesn't mean anything to their actual play experience. What matters is terrain features, not the general shape of the entire continent (barring continents with islands and bridges). You really have picked out something silly to take issue with.

[texico]

Originally Posted by Warborn

Totally ridiculous comparison. Armor and weapons are things you will be constantly looking at and which normal people care about for obvious reasons (aesthetics are important). The outline of a continent on a map is something you'll see briefly and which basically nobody will care about at all as it doesn't mean anything to their actual play experience. What matters is terrain features, not the general shape of the entire continent (barring continents with islands and bridges). You really have picked out something silly to take issue with.

You've got to be joking. Firstly, if you're going to use the amount of exposure to said design as an argument, you're going to be staring at that screen of Indar thousands and thousands of times over the course of your time playing the game, and so are the thousands of other players playing the game, it's probably the most in-your-face picture in PS2. It's hardly some small little thing nobody's ever going to see. I know you don't seem to care, but it hardly reflects well on the game if somebody who appreciates detail and realism looks at that map and their impression is that it's amateurish and uninspired, especially on something so simple and easy to do (so it would seem either un-creative or like the devs didn't care, too).

I hate to keep using PS1 as an example (because that's not the point - it's just the only thing that comes to mind right now) but the design of Amerish looks professional, creative and exotic, like something out of a fantasy novel. Indar, while as I've said has beautiful and well-design environments (which are much better than PS1's), looks amateurish and uninspired.

If it's aesthetically unimportant, why don't they just make all three continents perfect triangles huh? Or perfectly edged puzzle pieces? Give me a break

I was trying to make it clear early on that this wasn't some kind of bash or complaint but easy-going feedback on my first impression of the continent's physical design, why I didn't like it and what other people's opinions were. You gave it a bad tone, not me, by making sarcastic comments and implying that only some sort of weirdo would care, which is absolutely ridiculous. Maps are the way they are for a reason, if they were so unimportant we'd be playing in triangles everywhere.

[texico]

^^^ Yeah, I saw it in the GDC, the continent is pretty much a square.

It's not a big deal/complaint for me, I was just giving feedback. Shape is still nice and important aesthetically - otherwise, you might as well just have three triangles as the continents

[Malorn]

The issue I have with the shape of Indar was that the faction at the north side of it has a lot of territory around its main warp gate, and a lot of open terrain with which they can use.

The lower two factions looked much more cramped. The TR side looked particularly bad as it appeared to be lots of rough terrain and canyons. That doesn't leave a lot of room for them to take alternate routes or spread out and attack different directions. The southwest looked similar with very little land right around the warpgate.

If an empire did get pushed back to the area around its warpgates I think the empires in the lower left and lower right would have a harder time pushing out due to the terrain and lack of territory to expand into. The Northern faction will have the easiest time - lots of territories, lots of terrain to spread out and take.

I'm not all that impressed with the continental layout of Indar from a tactical perspective. Looks like the factions will have clear advantages depending on which position they are in.

Yet another reason why I believe the warpgate bases need to be randomized and moved around once a month or so. That way each empire gets each position so it doesn't really matter if there's some continent imbalances and they can continue making asymmetrical continents. As long as the continent is asymmetrical, certain positions will be better than others.

Mixing up the empire starting locations every now and then fixes the issue. And gives all empires variety. It's a fantastic idea that I'd love to see them commit to doing.

[TheBladeRoden]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Yet another reason why I believe the warpgate bases need to be randomized and moved around once a month or so. That way each empire gets each position so it doesn't really matter if there's some continent imbalances and they can continue making asymmetrical continents. As long as the continent is asymmetrical, certain positions will be better than others.

Mixing up the empire starting locations every now and then fixes the issue. And gives all empires variety. It's a fantastic idea that I'd love to see them commit to doing.

Or they could put in a proper global lattice

[Skitrel]

Originally Posted by Malorn

The issue I have with the shape of Indar was that the faction at the north side of it has a lot of territory around its main warp gate, and a lot of open terrain with which they can use.

The lower two factions looked much more cramped. The TR side looked particularly bad as it appeared to be lots of rough terrain and canyons. That doesn't leave a lot of room for them to take alternate routes or spread out and attack different directions. The southwest looked similar with very little land right around the warpgate.

If an empire did get pushed back to the area around its warpgates I think the empires in the lower left and lower right would have a harder time pushing out due to the terrain and lack of territory to expand into. The Northern faction will have the easiest time - lots of territories, lots of terrain to spread out and take.

I'm not all that impressed with the continental layout of Indar from a tactical perspective. Looks like the factions will have clear advantages depending on which position they are in.

Yet another reason why I believe the warpgate bases need to be randomized and moved around once a month or so. That way each empire gets each position so it doesn't really matter if there's some continent imbalances and they can continue making asymmetrical continents. As long as the continent is asymmetrical, certain positions will be better than others.

Mixing up the empire starting locations every now and then fixes the issue. And gives all empires variety. It's a fantastic idea that I'd love to see them commit to doing.

The problem with asymmetry is that you're going to have to build a continent where 1 faction is in the middle. That means they're going to be perpetually attacked by both other factions, on two fronts.

Now, the idea of rotating monthly does improve this, it doesn't solve it, a lot of people aren't going to enjoy being double teamed for an entire month.

Personally I think doing away with the sanctuaries and having space platforms is the only way this would properly work, it would also make the ground war much more interesting in that teams would regularly change the land they own all over the continent, rather than just owning the same land near their sanctuary the majority of the time.

[Malorn]

Global lattice system won't help here. Having been a huge fan of it before I now see it doing more harm than good. Most of the time an empire could only attack few continents, many were locked, and the lattice links determined the same battles over and over again. If you really liked fighting on a continent and it wasn't one of the ones accessible - too bad. The PS2 system allows you to play on whatever continent you want at any time and not get locked into a losing situation on one place or being funneled into one continent.

Originally Posted by Skitrel

The problem with asymmetry is that you're going to have to build a continent where 1 faction is in the middle. That means they're going to be perpetually attacked by both other factions, on two fronts.

That isn't the case for Indar. No faction is in the middle.

However, I believe due to the typical behavior of humans from PS1 combined with the geography of PS2 will create a tendancy for e NC to get double-teamed by TR & VS.

The reason is what I call the "What's next?" mentality. After a capture, they continue on the path of least resistance to the next nearest objective, along the shortest path. To provide an example, on Cyssor in PS2, Wele linked to an Amp station to the south, and to an interlink further south. Both were capturable objectives, but the zerg always went to the amp station first. Some smarter and organized outfits would go after the interlink, but it was usually a much smaller force.

The way the facilities are laid out on Indar between the 3 empires puts the closest VS facility directly north of the NC facility, with the TR to the east. Since the TR are geographically further away from that VS base they will tend to instead attack west toward the NC. The roads on Indar appear to facilitate more east/west travel between NC and TR than North/south travel between TR and VS. Since the mindless zerg tends to move to the next objective, they'll basically follow the roads and capture the outposts on the way to facilities.

But then one says PS2 isn't all about facilities... True, but they're huge landmarks and obvious objectives and noteworthy achievements. The player who's just looking for the next battle won't stop to look at the map - they'll chase after a retreating enemy along the most efficient paths (roads typically), and capture everything along the way like a tug-of-war. It will be up to outfits to capture the less-direct territories to help with the facility capture. Additionally, facilities are where vehicles/aircraft originate, so you can see armor pushes coming directly out of facilities towards enemy territories. They're easy to predict where the main force will if you just follow the path of least resistance from where the vehicles are being produced. You can trace this all along the outposts.

And then there's resources, which are supposed to make land other than facilities more valuable. Maybe it will, but in order for that to affect the typical mindless capture-and-move-on behavior those resources need to be very important and something the typical player frequently thinks about. They won't care about resources until the feel the sting of not having enough of one resource. Then they might stop and look for the nearest source of that resource and move toward it.

It all depends on the resource system and how important they are. If they're too abundant or not significant then nobody will care and the same "what's next" mentality will rule PS2 as it ruled PS1. If the resources are important enough for the typical zergling to stop and think about it then the pattern could be broken, or at least more organized forces will shift focus to the valuable territory instead of the next territory.

Resources and the resource system, random shifting of those resources, and periodic shifting of the uncaps will all keep things interesting and mixed up on the continents.

In that respect I have some concerns about Indar's layout. If the VS is going to be north of both TR & NC, it needs to be equally accessible to both of them, and I believe those facilities need to be re-balanced so it more or less forms an equalateral triangle in the center of the map betwee the facilities. As it is now it's lopsided and I'd put money on the major battles being on the NC section of the continent more often than not. The nice thing though is that if either VS or TR capture that NC tech plant they're more or less forced to attack each other so the NC won't get backed up too far. Essentially anyone that holds that base gets double-teamed.