3 continents at start, or... 9-12-15?

[capiqu]

I got on a mossy and crossed cyssor from north to south and from east to west at a steady 119 kph. I cant remember the exact calculations but i got something roughly to 8x8 and if not mistaking a little bigger I did it for several conts and wrote it down, but looks like i miss placed it. But yeah indar is roughly the size of Cyssor.

[kaffis]

Originally Posted by Warborn

Having fewer continents means big fights constantly. No more people being spread over many separate continents. I imagine they will be very sparing in adding new continents, maybe even resorting to a sort of cycle, where as one continent becomes active, another closes. Either way, spreading people over wider and wider areas doesn't seem like it will do much to encourage big battles.

"Having fewer continents means big fights constantly" is only true if the per-server population remains static when comparing fewer and more continents.

We all know additional continents will be designed and added post-launch. Higby's said this time and again in dozens of different ways.

So what duplicating the initial 3 continents (and replacing them later) is about is *preventing* the situation you describe. If you have the target number of continents (with copy/paste substitutes for the ones to come later), then you design the server-count -- and thus the per-server population -- with those future continents already built-into the mix.

Otherwise, adding that post-launch content does exactly what you're describing -- spread a (relatively) fixed per-server population across more continents, reducing the population density and thus the level of action per continent.

Originally Posted by Raymac

Frankly that is one of my concerns too. I'd like to see the footholds be somewhat dynamic, perhaps rotating empires every few weeks, just to keep it fresh. In Planetside, we saw the routine you mentioned and it did make it a bit stale. So I think making the footholds dynamic will reach the same result for that issue without creating a new issue of having copies of the same continent.

But having non-foothold warpgates that link back and forth between continents is an alternative to rotating footholds. Since neither are the current design decision, one isn't more right or simpler than the other. They're two avenues of accomplishing the same goal -- adding variables that can spice up the metagame.

However, warpgates between continents kind of work better with more continents. Which is why it's entered into this discussion of a way to artificially inflate the continent-count at launch. Adding the warpgates aren't the primary reason to copy and paste continents. Making them work better is a happy side effect.


I do tend to agree that I don't want Amerish 1, Amerish 2, Amerish 3, etc.

So why not name the multiple copies differently? Instead of Amerish 1, Amerish 2, Indar 1, Indar 2, Esamir 1 (it *is* Esamir they said the third one would be, right?), Esamir 2, etc.; have Amerish, Indar, Esamir, Oshur (starts out looking like Indar; gets replaced by a real Oshur later), Hossin (starts out looking like Amerish), Ceryshen (starts out looking like Esamir), etc.

This way, it's much easier to communicate to newbies/outsiders that it's not really instancing in the normal sense, and there's more content coming to fix the duplication. It's also easier to communicate "Need help on Indar" vs. "Need help on Oshur."

[kaffis]

Originally Posted by capiqu

I got on a mossy and crossed cyssor from north to south and from east to west at a steady 119 kph. I cant remember the exact calculations but i got something roughly to 8x8 and if not mistaking a little bigger I did it for several conts and wrote it down, but looks like i miss placed it. But yeah indar is roughly the size of Cyssor.

You're making the assumption that the reported speeds correspond to other elements of scale.

It's entirely possible, for instance, that your 119 kph covers 119,000 "game units," but player models are 10 "game units" tall. This means that while your spedometer test measures the dimensions of the island as roughly 8x8km, by any true test of scale relative to a human-sized character model, the island would be less than 2x2km.

Not that I've done any tests to contradict your assumption, but it's worth pointing out that you've made that assumption so we all know how big a grain of salt to take your data with.

[capiqu]

Well I know its not 100% accurate. But that and kinda remembering Higby say that Planetside 2 continents would be roughly the size of the biggest Planetside continents. Leads me to believe this. Yes I could be wrong but so far thats what I have to go by.

[Mechzz]

A good way to measure it surely simply how many seconds it takes to cross the largest part of the continent? That gives the "feel" of the size to the player.

For what it's worth Indar "felt" very small on TB's video, but that may be misleading due to the much higher concentration of interesting features in the new maps.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by kaffis

You're making the assumption that the reported speeds correspond to other elements of scale.

It's entirely possible, for instance, that your 119 kph covers 119,000 "game units," but player models are 10 "game units" tall. This means that while your spedometer test measures the dimensions of the island as roughly 8x8km, by any true test of scale relative to a human-sized character model, the island would be less than 2x2km.

Not that I've done any tests to contradict your assumption, but it's worth pointing out that you've made that assumption so we all know how big a grain of salt to take your data with.

My assumption is that I don't entirely trust the numbers that PS2 is giving us, and I certainly don't believe the numbers that PS1 gave us. The original Planetside simply did not have an accurate meter scale compared to real life.

So I'm going to disregard any information that is based on how large the in game data claims Cyssor to be, or how fast a PS1 aircraft claims to travel.

We already know that the Mosquito in TB's video reported traveling at significantly faster speeds than PS1 Mosquitos could fly at. This would be further compounded if PS2 were closer to accurate in scale than PS1 was. A PS1 Mossie flying at 100 KPH in a scale where 100 kilometers was actually 66 real world kilometers would end up making the real world flight speed be a third slower than reported.

Indar only looked as small as it did in that video because the aircraft are so fucking fast. Pause a moment in those videos and look at how large the bases and landmarks truly are.

This is why I'm only interested in comparisons of known scale between the two games. We know how big bases and towers were compared to infantry in PS1. We now know how big buildings and bases are compared to infantry in PS2. We can compare those, and then look at their scale on the continental maps, and estimate how large they are in comparison to each other.

[capiqu]

Originally Posted by Mechzz

A good way to measure it surely simply how many seconds it takes to cross the largest part of the continent? That gives the "feel" of the size to the player.

For what it's worth Indar "felt" very small on TB's video, but that may be misleading due to the much higher concentration of interesting features in the new maps.

The Mosquito speed on PS2 is much faster. While in PS regular Mosquito speed is 119kph and over 200 kph with after burners, i noticed the ps2 mossey travelling easy at over 200 kph and around 360 kph with after burners. He was able to get around the map much quicker.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by Mechzz

AFor what it's worth Indar "felt" very small on TB's video, but that may be misleading due to the much higher concentration of interesting features in the new maps.

Don't forget that the Mosquito in TB's video was going at least twice as fast as a PS1 Mosquito. That right there will instantly make the map feel half as large.

It may be an even bigger gap than that, if PS1 meters are shorter than PS2 meters (PS1 being wrong and PS2 being closer to real life). It may very well be that TB was traveling at 3 times the speed of a PS1 Mosquito or more.

Again, compare the map features. Don't forget how unbelievably huge we know those bases are, despite the fact that they can still look tiny when zipping around quickly through the air.

The PS2 AMP station (and surrounding buildings and walls) looks to be about 4 times the size of a PS1 AMP station (thus the size comparison I made). It doesn't matter how it "feels," or what scale the game says. All that matters is how large they are compared to a standard unit of comparable measurement, such as the height of an infantryman. By this measurement, Indar is at least the size of Cyssor, if not quite a bit larger.

[Mechzz]

Originally Posted by Xyntech

Don't forget that the Mosquito in TB's video was going at least twice as fast as a PS1 Mosquito. That right there will instantly make the map feel half as large.

That's my point. If a mozzie can cross the same size of map in half the time then the map will "feel" only half as big as all other aircraft will get to you and kill you in half the time. The planes can reach any part of the continent in half the time, so it feels smaller.

It would only feel bigger to someone on foot travelling at the same relative speed that we ran at in PS1.

Time, elapsed seconds, to get from point A to point B is what defines the feeling of size to the player.

[Zekeen]

Eventually, I think we're going to need to return to the lockout system when more maps get added. When a map was locked out, you then had fewer maps to fight, but there were always more ways of hitting that map. Generally, there were 2 or 3 maps fought on at a time in PS1, and the fun of lockouts is you had a different experience in combat each week as the battle shifted. I don't see a 3 way battle on 6 maps ever happening without killing the scale of combat.

[capiqu]

Originally Posted by Xyntech

My assumption is that I don't entirely trust the numbers that PS2 is giving us, and I certainly don't believe the numbers that PS1 gave us. The original Planetside simply did not have an accurate meter scale compared to real life.

So I'm going to disregard any information that is based on how large the in game data claims Cyssor to be, or how fast a PS1 aircraft claims to travel.

We already know that the Mosquito in TB's video reported traveling at significantly faster speeds than PS1 Mosquitos could fly at. This would be further compounded if PS2 were closer to accurate in scale than PS1 was. A PS1 Mossie flying at 100 KPH in a scale where 100 kilometers was actually 66 real world kilometers would end up making the real world flight speed be a third slower than reported.

Indar only looked as small as it did in that video because the aircraft are so fucking fast. Pause a moment in those videos and look at how large the bases and landmarks truly are.

This is why I'm only interested in comparisons of known scale between the two games. We know how big bases and towers were compared to infantry in PS1. We now know how big buildings and bases are compared to infantry in PS2. We can compare those, and then look at their scale on the continental maps, and estimate how large they are in comparison to each other.

Exactly

[Mechzz]

Originally Posted by Xyntech

My assumption is that I don't entirely trust the numbers that PS2 is giving us, and I certainly don't believe the numbers that PS1 gave us. The original Planetside simply did not have an accurate meter scale compared to real life.

So I'm going to disregard any information that is based on how large the in game data claims Cyssor to be, or how fast a PS1 aircraft claims to travel.

We already know that the Mosquito in TB's video reported traveling at significantly faster speeds than PS1 Mosquitos could fly at. This would be further compounded if PS2 were closer to accurate in scale than PS1 was. A PS1 Mossie flying at 100 KPH in a scale where 100 kilometers was actually 66 real world kilometers would end up making the real world flight speed be a third slower than reported.

Indar only looked as small as it did in that video because the aircraft are so fucking fast. Pause a moment in those videos and look at how large the bases and landmarks truly are.

This is why I'm only interested in comparisons of known scale between the two games. We know how big bases and towers were compared to infantry in PS1. We now know how big buildings and bases are compared to infantry in PS2. We can compare those, and then look at their scale on the continental maps, and estimate how large they are in comparison to each other.

It's not the "distance" between the points that counts, it's the time it takes a player in a given form of transport to get from point A to point B. If a mozzie in PS2 has twice the relative speed as a mozzie in PS1, the PS2 continent will only feel half as big even if it is the same size. If a grunt runs at half the relative speed in PS2 as PS1, then a continent the same size will feel twice as big.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by Mechzz

That's my point. If a mozzie can cross the same size of map in half the time then the map will "feel" only half as big as all other aircraft will get to you and kill you in half the time. The planes can reach any part of the continent in half the time, so it feels smaller.

It would only feel bigger to someone on foot travelling at the same relative speed that we ran at in PS1.

Time, elapsed seconds, to get from point A to point B is what defines the feeling of size to the player.

Right, but the speed of aircraft (and the speed of every other unit) can be tweaked. But they can't just scale the continents and bases up or down with a slider, not without it looking stupid.

So my point is that Indar is technically big. At least as big as the biggest PS1 maps, if not bigger. How it feels is important, but not as important as the fact that there is factually more land mass in a PS2 continent. Moreover, with the hex system, there is factually more capture points to fight over. 17 bases on Cyssor vs 70 hex zones on Indar.

So we can't keep thinking of it like we're getting 3 PS1 continents at launch.

As I said, it's not the same as 3 PS1 continents, nor is it the same as 9 or 12 PS1 continents. The fact that it's more contestable area smashed together into one continuous zone means that it will play very different than PS1 in a lot of ways, and we really don't have much meaningful data to compare that to as far as guessing how it will play out. We will need beta data to see for sure.

I don't doubt that there may be some problems with the new system and/or having only 3 continents, but I also have little doubt that a single PS2 continent has the possibility to sustain multiple large and small 2 way fights even if there is a 3 way clusterfuck going on at the same time on another part of the continent. There won't be a 3 way convergence of territory at every spot on the map, and in places where only 2 empires territory butts up against each other, I strongly suspect there will mostly be 2 ways. There just won't be enough incentive for the third empire to constantly barge in on the other empires 2 way, especially when that empire has several of their own 2 ways and the clusterfuck 3 way to deal with.

[Figment]

Would anyone feel for trying multiple setups in the beta?

So one server with multiple continents inter-connected and a couple servers with just three continents? Then they can see what's more popular for launch.

[kaffis]

Originally Posted by Zekeen

Eventually, I think we're going to need to return to the lockout system when more maps get added. When a map was locked out, you then had fewer maps to fight, but there were always more ways of hitting that map. Generally, there were 2 or 3 maps fought on at a time in PS1, and the fun of lockouts is you had a different experience in combat each week as the battle shifted. I don't see a 3 way battle on 6 maps ever happening without killing the scale of combat.

But you don't need lockouts if you have bigger server populations.

How do you launch with bigger server populations, when only 3 continents are done?

You copy and paste continents, so you can have fewer, bigger servers. Thus, this thread.

Copy/paste is a way to add new content (new handcrafted continents) without diluting the server's density, because the new handcrafted stuff would replace copied material.

3-way battles over 6 maps (continents) will happen *all the time* if the server-count relative to the playerbase is correctly calculated. The problem is, the only way to increase the server size after you've launched live servers is with merges. So it's better, IMO, to create dummy content by copy/pasting than releasing new content that requires merges or lockouts to retain the desired player density.