Scale of Map compared

[p0intman]

SOUNDS LIKE A PROJECT FOR PEOPLE WHO GET INTO BETA!

[Higby]

area shown at E3 comprises about 2% of the total playable space on Indar.

[Landtank]

Originally Posted by Higby

area shown at E3 comprises about 2% of the total playable space on Indar.

<3333

But seriously, have you people ever ran more than 3km? That's far too far already, let alone 8km^2

[Figment]

Originally Posted by Higby

area shown at E3 comprises about 2% of the total playable space on Indar.

Could we get an official continent size comparison between the two?

Otherwise this debate will go on for the next 8 years since nobody will bother to bring measuring tape and we keep getting these fish-stories. And fish smell purple.

[Xaine]

Originally Posted by Higby

area shown at E3 comprises about 2% of the total playable space on Indar.

Bam.

Higby laying down some facts, saving us trying to work it out with some crazy maths, because lets face it. We were going to be here all night. :P

Thank you Matt.

[Xyntech]

A few things are fucking people up.

1) Aircraft speed. If we are to believe the inaccurate distance scale of PS1, the new Mosquito goes twice as fast as the cruising speed of the old Mosquito, four times as fast with afterburners. It could be an even larger difference than that, depending on how inaccurate PS1's KPH was.

2) Everything is bigger. Not only is the continent larger, but the bases are larger as well. So while the continent looks smaller because each base takes up more room on the continent, the real reason is because bases are so much larger now.

The continent is larger in more than just land area as well. The hex system means that instead of just capturing territory by capturing bases, we can capture all of the rest of the territory as well. This means that instead of 10-20ish base capture points on a PS1 map (towers didn't count since they didn't contribute to continent locks), we now have upwards of 70+ capture points.

So please stop assuming that the continent is small because the current aircraft speed allows it to be transversed so quickly. We don't currently have a 100% accurate comparison of a PS1 continent next to a PS2 continent, but Indar is clearly a big place if you look at some actual scale reference points.

I understand that the current aircraft speed makes it feel small, but there is a huge difference between it feeling small and being small. Whether the aircraft speed needs adjustment or not is a question for beta, but whether that gets changed or not, I'm confident that they won't feel small in land vehicles and certainly not on foot.

[Krishtov]

Originally Posted by Higby

area shown at E3 comprises about 2% of the total playable space on Indar.

Good to hear! I thought it was something like that.

Originally Posted by Xyntech

A few things are fucking people up.

1) Aircraft speed. If we are to believe the inaccurate distance scale of PS1, the new Mosquito goes twice as fast as the cruising speed of the old Mosquito, four times as fast with afterburners. It could be an even larger difference than that, depending on how inaccurate PS1's KPH was.

2) Everything is bigger. Not only is the continent larger, but the bases are larger as well. So while the continent looks smaller because each base takes up more room on the continent, the real reason is because bases are so much larger now.

The continent is larger in more than just land area as well. The hex system means that instead of just capturing territory by capturing bases, we can capture all of the rest of the territory as well. This means that instead of 10-20ish base capture points on a PS1 map (towers didn't count since they didn't contribute to continent locks), we now have upwards of 70+ capture points.

So please stop assuming that the continent is small because the current aircraft speed allows it to be transversed so quickly. We don't currently have a 100% accurate comparison of a PS1 continent next to a PS2 continent, but Indar is clearly a big place if you look at some actual scale reference points.

I understand that the current aircraft speed makes it feel small, but there is a huge difference between it feeling small and being small. Whether the aircraft speed needs adjustment or not is a question for beta, but whether that gets changed or not, I'm confident that they won't feel small in land vehicles and certainly not on foot.

Pretty much what I was trying to say. Minus aircraft. All I did was scale old Oshur to the scale the map was from the screen based on road width & gate size... which shows the map is bigger than Oshur...and that bases are HUGE compared to PS1...which is what is throwing people off.

Thats what I was trying to fix.

PS2 maps are huge. I am happy with the current size.

[Nasher]

Planetside origionaly had 3 huge contenents. Though about 80% of the terrain was just empty space.

[Malorn]

With all do respect to Mr. Higby, he's not exactly an unbiased source. PS2 is being sold on "massive combat", so its certainly in his interests to make PS2 seem as large as possible, so he's not going to come here and say "yeah it's really not that big" - he's way smarter than that, and it would be a really dumb PR decision. So his answer above is fully expected and absolutely the correct answer that he should be providing us. I don't expect to convince him otherwise either.

However, I would hope that he reads what I have to say here and take it into consideration and get some understanding as to why I see Indar as being quite small. No comment is required on his part, just eyeballs on the post.

Numbers are easy to play with. If it's 1km x 1km that would be 1 square km out of 64, which is 1.5%, and a little big bigger would bring it to about 2% so Matt certainly wasn't lying. 1 is a special number that has all sorts of fun properties, particularly when multiplying and dividing. Seems reasonable, but it really depends on where you measure the area and it's easy to mislead. If it's 2km x 2km it jumps to 6.25%. If the "playable area" is the full map of indar, including coastlines then that too is misleading. Real combat won't be happening in those areas.

Here's my mockup of Indar. The red outline might be the "real" 8x8 boundary, but that isn't all realistically playable space.

Consider the continents of PS1 - there were lots of parts of those continents where nobody ever really had meaningful combat. A lot of those areas were close to warpgates. When you carved off coastline and warpgates and looked at the actual combat areas of PS1 it was much smaller than the full size of the continent.



The dark red jagged outline is the actual reasonably playable area of indar, which also includes footholds, which while technically playable aren't realistically playable. In fact any area immediately around the foothold isn't really part of a reasonable play area, just as warpgates in PS1 were technically playable area, but not really.

When you take away the coast, and the warpgates, and look at the area which people are playing in (inset in the bright red square) and compare it to the actual realistic playing area of indar, the demo area is actually quite a big chunk of it.

I don't want to hurt PlanetSide 2 here, but c'mon, the main playing area for the continent will be in the triangle between the three warp gates, and within that triangle the demo area is a significant chunk of it.

That's why I say Indar seems small, and that the demo area is actually a big chunk of it. Because when you exclude the plate and cut off the crust, the sandwich isn't all that big.

I want bigger. I hope the other continents are bigger and that feedback of this sort is taken into consideration when creating those continents. Its certainly too late to fundamentally change indar and they don't need to. But later continents should be bigger, or at least have more playable space with warpgates pushed out.

[Raymac]

That's still not even close to 20% even when you chop it down.

Plus, all the fighting isn't going to be just in the middle, just like all the fighting on Cyssor didn't only happen around Gunuku. And PS1 didn't even have resources scattered around to fight for.

I really don't even know why you'd want to split hairs that much anyways. The maps are freaking huge.

[Synnoc]

I may be misremembering, but PS1 continents were 2km x 2km, and Higby said Indar was 8km x 8m. So Indar could hold all 9 PS1 conts and still have about 1/2 of its area uncovered.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Raymac

That's still not even close to 20% even when you chop it down.

Plus, all the fighting isn't going to be just in the middle, just like all the fighting on Cyssor didn't only happen around Gunuku. And PS1 didn't even have resources scattered around to fight for.

I really don't even know why you'd want to split hairs that much anyways. The maps are freaking huge.

When you look at the actual playable area between the warpgates where 80% or more of all combat on Indar will occur, it's about 25% of it.

People move to the next nearest thing, and if one empire extends too far they get flanked by one of the other empires, so combat will oscillate around that area. Looking at geography, I'd say that Amp Station is going to see a lot of fighting daily.

[Krishtov]

19x19 Amp Stations is the general-size...also cliffs & water does count a little. Flanking aircraft etc... thats a map big enough to fit 361 amp stations from yesterday's game. The station is a big area as you can tell, not counting the surrounding terrain. So, imho, the map is huge. Bigger would be better - but by no means is it small.

[Otleaz]

Just to make clear... Size is relative. It is extremely difficult to compare two games in terms of size. Thanks to travel time, a 1x1 area could possibly be "larger" than a 64x64.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Krishtov

19x19 Amp Stations is the general-size...also cliffs & water does count a little. Flanking aircraft etc... thats a map big enough to fit 361 amp stations from yesterday's game. The station is a big area as you can tell, not counting the surrounding terrain. So, imho, the map is huge. Bigger would be better - but by no means is it small.

Amp station is an interesting unit of measure, but one we can relate.

How many Amp Stations was Oshur & Cyssor?

Edit: oh, you're talking about modern amp stations, not PS1 amp stations. Sure I suppose id you carve out all of the surrounding area people were actually playing in yesterday and focus on just the central amp station, sure. But that too is a highly misleading estimate. Numbers are easy to fudge.