Scale of Map compared

[Revanmug]

Yup, I heard a few time during the 3 streams that there will be more capture points and/or different mechanics. There are few structures around the main amp station that I hope will be use. There is also that little camp? (don't remember name they gave) just over the ridge that I remember from the sony office tour.

Meh, smaller or bigger, it doesn't really matter if the map itself isn't useful to it's full potential. I hope they realise that.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by kaffis

Malorn, how did you come by the placement of your boundaries in the square you claim is the demo area? It's larger than I would have eyed it, judging from where we saw spawn points and corpse-indicators on the respawn maps.

Also, who says it was a square?

In any event, I did the counting to back up Higby's 2% math. So unless Higby just meant "the facility they were fighting over controls 2% of the map, and we took out the surrounding structures and included more than just its 7 hexes in the playable area"... I don't think your rectangle has a leg to stand on.

I see aircraft flying by the bridge on the NW side frequently in the demo (which is clearly visible on the continental map), that was a big part of the bounding. Then you can make out the area of the facility itself, and then outskirts are where they set up the staging areas for each empire. The square I placed basically encompasses all of the staging areas and the facility, which is the playable area of the demo.

It's probably not a square but a radius from the central amp station, but a square is easier to measure and easier to draw in paint. The square is the approximation of the circle.

[kaffis]

Originally Posted by Malorn

It's probably not a square but a radius from the central amp station, but a square is easier to measure and easier to draw in paint. The square is the approximation of the circle.

Fair enough. You're probably overestimating the area encompassed by a bit less than 30%, then. (The area of a 1-unit radius circle being pi vs. a 2-unit square's area of 4)

It does also occur to me that my 339 hex count was counting the footholds, so it ought to be 312 contestible hexes, plus some of the foothold hexes being legitimate "play space" when/if adjacent hexes get captured, as the edge of the foothold becomes where the defenders sally forth from.

I still contend that your triangle prediction is way off, because there's no way the TR and NC will let the VS have the northern corners of the map for free.

[cellinaire]

By now, I don't have any complaint about the continent size. Should be fine with me =)

and it's highly possible that the various biome and landscapes within a continent will set PS2 apart from PS1 I'm sure about that. Furthermore, I guess future continents will be larger. They still haven't ruled out Cyssor and even said, eventually all PS1 conts will make a comeback in some form.



(though, I just hope they start releasing some screenshots taken at Amerish and Esamir.)

[Graywolves]

I don't think the measurement is consistent between the two.

[sylphaen]

I'd compare map shapes too. Indar looks blocky. PS1 conts had nicer shapes.

[Synapse]

Originally Posted by sylphaen

I'd compare map shapes too. Indar looks blocky. PS1 conts had nicer shapes.

Just think more like an optimist and you will be happier.

Indar efficiently gives you maximum space to play on!

(I know, i know, I want islands and bays too, indar only has 2 coastline features...peninsulas and big lakes would make for cool features.

[SGTalon]

I don't care how big the maps are. I just want to play the dang thing!!

Even if the maps have only slightly more area than the old ones, it is still going to be a whole lot of fun.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by kaffis

I still contend that your triangle prediction is way off, because there's no way the TR and NC will let the VS have the northern corners of the map for free.

I don't think it's a matter of them having the corners for free so much as it is how the mindless masses will advance. We saw from PS1 that large player movements are highly predictable, and they typically pushed outward along easily traversable roads.

So they will push out from their footholds, moving from major objective to major objective (the facilities), using roads and capturing outposts along the way.

All three empires will do this and each empire will keep the others from over-reaching. The VS are in an incredibly advantageous position because the TR and NC will likely be colliding between the NC tech plant and the Indar Amp station we see so much. There's a giant pit to the north which will inhibit zerg movement, so the triangle is actually the facility to the west of the pit , to the Amp station, to the tech plant in the center. That will be where most battles occur and any deviation from that will largely be due to population imbalances.

And here's why - if the NC were to push against the VS, they could fall back to one of the side bases, but now the NC are exposed to attack from the TR, which some amount of NC forces will go defend, which weakens the VS assault, sot he VS push back out.

The reason the VS will get to keep a lot of their territory in the corners is because it is remote and any serious push by either the TR or the NC will leave them very exposed to the other.

The NC and the TR have the advantage of being in compact locations and the same is true. If the VS take the Indar amp station, they'll have pushed the TR back to either that bio lab or the tech plant to the south, and the VS now have a huge amount of territory exposed to the NC with no real threats from the TR against the NC.

Thus the battle will oscillate between those 3 central facilities. We'll see deviations when populations are noticeably uneven or there's strange behavior like two empires not fighting at all or only very little.

Edit; organized play by outfits will leave outskirts/flank attacks on side territories possible, but that won't be where the main population is.

[kaffis]

Originally Posted by WildVS

312 contestible hexes? You realize all hexes aren't contestible right? They started adopting the term regions instead of hexes. Most contestable regions are multiple hexes.

Yes, I'm aware. However, regions aren't a consistent size. Some are 1 hex, some are 3 hexes, some are 4 hexes, some are 6 hexes, some are 7 hexes... I think I spotted a few 2-hex regions, etc.

I'm using hexes as a unit of area measurement, not a unit of contesting territory.

Though, I think I heard somebody say ~75 contestible regions, which sounds about right to me. Okay, I just pulled up that screenshot I took again, and counted resource markers this time. 73 regions, is what I got.

In the shot I've got, the TR region-boundaries aren't all that clear and have to sort of be inferred by the hex grid and location of the resource marker. But a rough count shows:
9 7-hex facilities
14 6-hex facilities
11 5-hex facilities
10 4-hex facilities
18 3-hex facilities
5 2-hex facilities
6 1-hex facilities

Now, there's some guessing there based on inferred hex location (from my hex-count -- the nice thing about the hexes is that if you're marking them off, you can line up ones where the hex borders aren't clear by the surroundings since hexes stack regularly) and where the resource marker was in a sea of inferred hexes. But it's probably pretty close.

[lawnmower]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Congratulations, you managed to find the central structure in the amp station - but that isn't the demo area. I captured the demo area quite accurately.

Originally Posted by Higby

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

ä

[Bobby Shaftoe]

Indar isn't appreciably larger than any large PS1 cont.

The TR 'area' is canyon terrain forcing short range fights and therefore suited for their vehicles, west is the NC area with a similar mechanic based on lots of tree/rock concentrations allow them to get close and deliver their upfront damage, the northern VS area is barren/featureless desert best suited for their long range.

TB's 'What's it all about video' shows him flying between Zurvan and Rashnu in about 15 seconds (middle of base to middle of base).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptGe-...tailpage#t=30s
Infact he 'tours' most of the TR area on Indar in just under 1:30, not even flying in straight lines, rough flightplan below:



He flies the blue part in roughly 15 seconds, with about 3 seconds of AB'ing, cruise speed appears to be around 230/240kph, AB'ing briefly touched 460kph after extended use but brief bursts wouldn't reach that velocity. Taking a rough 360kph average for the AB'd time gives around 300 metres travelled, with 784 metres travelled at cruise speed (235kph).

A 'total' of 1084 metres if he was flying in a perfectly straight line and being generous with AB speeds.

To compare, it took 35 seconds at a steady 119kph to fly from the edge of the SW BWG on Cyssor to the walls of Leza which was roughly 1150 metres:


So no, the Conts aren't any 'bigger', the base footprints might be but there are also only 3 per side and the terrain is far 'busier' than Cyssor's open plains between bases with forested/mountain boundries.

[Blackwolf]

Originally Posted by 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.

Poke your screen with a thumb tack and call that you. That's big.

You aren't comparing the size of Indar to the size of a single soldier. You are comparing the 2% mentioned to the rest of it. You won't give yourself an accurate comparison between maps using this method.

[Landtank]

Saw this is Malorn's Sig, thought he should see it.

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. ...this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it.

Look at the maps of Cyssor and Forseral etc, they are 40% water. Indar is 10% water. It's really that simple.

[cellinaire]

Originally Posted by Landtank

Saw this is Malorn's Sig, thought he should see it.

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. ...this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it.

Look at the maps of Cyssor and Forseral etc, they are 40% water. Indar is 10% water. It's really that simple.

+ the attention to detail and various biomes within a single cont.

+ more emphasis on urban fight and interior implementation.

And hell, why Skyrim and Just Cause2 are soooo small compared to Daggerfall? I'm disappoint