Scale of Map compared

[Landtank]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Xyn, your incorrect mockup fails to render the indar warpgates to scale. You made them smaller than they actually are to delude yourself.

Simy make the cyssor bwgs twice the diameter and the scale looks about right.

Wild's fly test shows cyssor is 8x8. We know indar is 8x8, and we know the gates on indar are twice the size, which explains why indar appears smaller than cyssor when it is in fact the same size.

It isnt all that difficult to grasp.

The KPH in game is not correct, at all, so you have to take that into account. Cyssor could be 8x8km in planetside 1 scale, but soldiers in planetside 1 were 10 feet tall sooooo

[Malorn]

You are over thinking it. The scale is 8km x 8km. Does 1km in PS1 map to 1 km in PS2? There is no way of knowing that. We have multiple sources showing a consistent cyssor measure of 8km, from a flyover test to early statements.

And extrapolating 2x sized warpgates to 2x sized continents is flawed logic. The warpgates are not directly tied to the size of the continent. And the warpgates on indar are quite large.

If we cared enough we could use the warpgate comparison Tray provided to actually do a direct comparison. When i get home tonight, assuming i still care enough I will do that.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Xyn, your incorrect mockup fails to render the indar warpgates to scale. You made them smaller than they actually are to delude yourself.

Simy make the cyssor bwgs twice the diameter and the scale looks about right.

Dear god. What the fuck are you going on about?

Firstly, in my second (very generous) comparison, the old and new warpgates are closer to being the same size. If I doubled the diameter of the Cyssor warpgate (even on my old comparison), it would make the PS1 warpgates be at least twice as large as the PS2 warpgates.

That would clearly be exactly the opposite of what was said in this post from the very esteemed Mr. Isaac:

Originally Posted by T-Ray

The new warp gates are about 2x bigger than the old ones

Secondly, why the fuck would I double the diameter at all? You double the area if you want to make something twice as large. That's what I did in my first comparison. I doubled the area so that the PS2 warpgate was twice as large as the PS1 warpgate.

If you double the diameter, you get something 4x as large, not 2x.

Originally Posted by Malorn

You are over thinking it. The scale is 8km x 8km. Does 1km in PS1 map to 1 km in PS2? There is no way of knowing that. We have multiple sources showing a consistent cyssor measure of 8km, from a flyover test to early statements.

You are over thinking it. We know PS1 considered humans to be around 3 meters tall, therefore we can throw the entire measurement system out since we don't know which ones are accurate or not. At that point, it doesn't matter if PS2 is accurate or not either, since we are forced to compare them based on relative feature size. That is unless they both are using the same flawed measurement system, which doesn't seem to be the case.

Originally Posted by Malorn

And extrapolating 2x sized warpgates to 2x sized continents is flawed logic. The warpgates are not directly tied to the size of the continent. And the warpgates on indar are quite large.

Warpgates are static features. As long as they remain the same size across all Indar screenshots (they remain pretty close to the same size, I checked a few), then we can use them as a measurement.

We know that all of Planetsides warpgates were the same size. We can use that as a measurement.

So if TRay states that the PS2 warpgates are about twice as large as a PS1 warpgate, then we can compare. I believe my two comparisons give a pretty fair range of how big or small it probably is within that tolerance of his approximation.

Originally Posted by Malorn

If we cared enough we could use the warpgate comparison Tray provided to actually do a direct comparison. When i get home tonight, assuming i still care enough I will do that.

Go for it. But remember those two important points.

1) PS2 warpgates are aproximately twice as large as PS1 warpgates. If you want to refute TRay on this without some very compelling evidence, then you are beyond reason.

2) Remember to compare the area, not the diameter. If you make PS1 warpgates half the diameter of PS2 warpgates, you will end up with an inaccurate result that would actually make Cyssor look even smaller than in my first comparison.

[Saifoda]

Figured this was the best thread to put this in.


I took some rapid screenshots of the map in-game (at E3 presentation, thanks TB) and it gives a pretty good idea of the scale.


The first image (the one without the empire color coded hexes) is the most zoomed in of the 5 images. I'm sure for most of you it won't be difficult to make a visuo-spacial(sp?) connection giving you a general idea of the scale. The images following it are the zoom out, and it should give you a clearer image of how big the maps actually. We all know it's 64km^2, but the real question is what does that LOOK like. Hope this helps!

[SgtMAD]

what ppl need to do is watch the flyover that went on during the TB/Higby interview and watch the horizons as the mossie flies around on the cont.

the bases are a lot closer together and i wonder if you can see all three gates from the center of the map hovering up high with max draw,

I was trying to compare how fast he flew from one base to another with the map to get a feel for how big the map is

another thing i noticed was the altitude of the mossie as he flew over the ground and in the NC sector(sw) he was at 600+ in a few spots, that means you have about 350m to work with over the NC bases while you have an 500m altitude to work with over the north region of the map,it will make AA ground units much more effective for the SW sector.

its crap like this that make rotating footholds desirable,we are going to find that some regions have features that make them much easier to defend

we are going to have the answers to these and a bunch of other questions in "a few weeks"

[Xyntech]

Bases seem relatively closer due to how large they are (and how fast aircraft now fly), but in reality they aren't much closer than in PS1. They are actually further apart on average. See my scale comparison for reference (even if it's not 100% accurate it is damn well close enough for this purpose).

Personally, I hate the idea of rotating footholds, but I love the idea of footholds being capturable. All of the beauty of persistence, none of the downsides of permanent footholds. Not that there wouldn't be some kinks to work out, but I think that breaking a continent up into regions would help make it very possible very easily.

We do need to find out how large a role altitude will play in defensibility of course. Personally, I'd like to see the flight ceiling raised high enough that several hundred meters of difference wouldn't make that big of an impact on defence. But that's not the only defensive concern with differing geography an layouts of course.

As you say Sgt, it will be good to see it hands on in "a few weeks."

[GuyFawkes]

While Ive no doubt 8x8km of ps1 and 8x8km in ps2 will be proportionate , what really matters to me is the amount of content within that 64km2.

The amount of work gone into making almost every inch of map have advantages/disadvantages in ps2 compared to the original is breathtaking .

The new version has much more x,y,z axis type of strategy. Ive looked through all 3 days of the e3 TB footage and Ive seen very few if any points inside or out that haven't some vulnerability.

So, physically , the new maps could be 2-10 times as large as the old ones simply down to total surface area , not just square footage of the map.

The size physically is one thing, the new game has it in droves. Whether or not tactically ( beyond just the fighting area and variety) the new game has more has yet to be seen . We will have to see in a years time whether the game has enough to sustain the more tactical overview players or we just left with a very large cod map.

[Malorn]

The "closeness" of bases is not something you can accurately compare, because closeness is relative to the means of transportation. We know aircraft are much faster in PS2, and Galaxies also appear faster. The bio lab east of the amp station in the PS2 demo area was roughly about 10 seconds of ES aircraft flight away. A galaxy is going to be, what, 15, maybe 20 seconds? The flash looked pretty fast and I don't think these bases are all that far apart except perhaps by vertical geography.

By my entirely non-scientific gut estimate, the time it took to even drive a lightning across the demo area meant that you could likely go from one facility to another in less than a minute of ground travel, assuming relatively straight roads.

Actual distance or not, the higher speed of vehicles certainly doesn't make things feel any farther apart. World seems small to me. Perhaps that's due to larger warpgates and more rapid transit. And perception is reality. It took me a long time to fly across Cyssor, even in a mosquito it took considerable time. At 240kph, a mosquito will take exactly two minutes to cross Indar, which doesn't make it feel any bigger.

[Xyntech]

Perceived scale is important, but it's easier to manipulate and tweak as well. If the devs (or a huge outcry from the community) decided that vehicles were getting around to fast, it may get reduced and the perceived scale would go up.

There is no quick and easy way to tweak actual scale though, which is why I'm glad that the actual scale of the continents is as large as it is.

But I'm not too worried about perceived scale or vehicle speed. I'm most interested in how much territory can be captured. As long as back hacking isn't the end all be all tactic, as long as battle lines are an important fixture of gameplay, I believe that we will see every hex zone on the map get a significant amount of fighting at one time or another, more frequently than not if they add some systems that encourage this (such as regions).

Does the real world seem smaller now that we can fly all over it in a matter of hours? Yes. Has it gotten any smaller, or is there any less amount of contestable land on the earth because of that? No. All that's changed is how quickly we can move around and respond to situations around the globe. I believe that the same will hold true for Auraxis. We'll be able to respond quicker (to match the devs overall intended quicker game pacing), and the continent may even seem smaller, but none of that matters too much as long as there is still a huge amount of important, contestable land.

[Hamma]

One thing that will happen in PlanetSide 2 is combat will be more spread out. Since there are outposts all over the map in addition to bases you are going to see people fighting over little pieces of the map all over the place. It won't be like PlanetSide 1 where a mass of folks move from base to base to tower then to the next.

[Novacane]

Something else that I didn't see anyone mention, which is possible I missed since I skimmed through all 9 pages in the thread in less than 5 minutes, is that the view distance seems to be vastly improved in PS2.
If you can see farther, it appears that things are closer. From the various fly around videos that have been released in the last few weeks, it appears you will be able to see the next base from the previous one if you have line-of-sight on it. The base structures in PS2 also appear to be more spread out compared to PS1 bases again making the relative scale seem smaller even if the actual distance between the centers of each base is the same or even more.

[Pillar of Armor]

For some reason I read through this entire thread and I have a few comments based on what I saw. First, I see a lot of nostalgia for the hot drop spec ops... When people are talking about sneaking behind enemy lines and capturing bases, it sounds cool, but it was often miserably boring... The continents were big but much of the playable space was empty with no activity to be seen. Half the time, hot drops on bases behind the lines involved 30+ people killing 3 people and some afk guys in a base to hack it and wait 10 minutes before a zerg came in and and overwhelmed us, or wait 15 minutes bored to tears... and it usually took 30 mins to an hour just to get gals filled up and plot routes. In an average night you would be staring at trees and consoles for about 4 hours and actually fighting for about 30 minutes. It's easy to remember the 30 minutes of awesome combat... but don't forget all of the drudgery in between.

The continent layout and sheer density of capture points will require different tactics for spec ops teams that will result in more combat time and less downtime. Instead of just flying 4 gals, you are going to need mixed units to punch through enemy lines (because facilities are so close together). Your team might look like 3 gals 6 air interceptors and some libs to take care of ground AA, which to me sounds awesome. More action = more risk = more satisfaction and less time with your head against your desk waiting for your CO to say the magic word (drop).

When it comes down to it, the size of the map doesn't matter. The amount of contestable area matters because that's where the fight is. Most of the space in PS1 continents went unused and it took way to long just to get to a fight. Now it looks like the combat space is huge (that amp station at E3 was massive) and the fight is wherever you want it to be, but it's going to require real strategy (mixed units, heavy use of medics and engineers, careful use of geography and weather) to get there.

Well that's just my 2 cents... In short: YEEEEEAAA BETA

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by Novacane

Something else that I didn't see anyone mention, which is possible I missed since I skimmed through all 9 pages in the thread in less than 5 minutes, is that the view distance seems to be vastly improved in PS2.
If you can see farther, it appears that things are closer. From the various fly around videos that have been released in the last few weeks, it appears you will be able to see the next base from the previous one if you have line-of-sight on it. The base structures in PS2 also appear to be more spread out compared to PS1 bases again making the relative scale seem smaller even if the actual distance between the centers of each base is the same or even more.

Can you imagine if we could have seen Mt Cyssor from the entire continent? I can't wait for Cyssor 2.0. It's going to look amazing. Maybe they can tweak it a little so that it's not such a constant 3 way. The rare 2 way fights on Cyssor were fun as well.

I do hope we eventually get to see some 100% accurate side by side comparisons of things like PS1 vs PS2 bases, towers, warpgates, continents, MBT's, etc. But really, it's more of a curiosity thing at this point. Contestable area is king, and perception of scale is a distant second. Actual scale is still important in some ways, but in most ways it's just a fun bit of trivia

[DOUBLEXBAUGH]

280 Hexes on, they were fighting in 7 Hexes at E3, so 2.5% of Indar.

[kaffis]

Originally Posted by DOUBLEXBAUGH

280 Hexes on, they were fighting in 7 Hexes at E3, so 2.5% of Indar.

There are more hexes than that by my count. I think I got 313 not counting the foothold hexes.