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So the question is, "Why?"
Take a look at the old re-boot trailer, and I think it has the answer:
http://www.youtube.c...e&v=xw5BoRwGiFE
Now, in that video, we have a city scape... and the robot feels big. Why? Is it the movement? No, although it's slowness probably contributes some.
What's the core difference that makes that city seem appropriately "small" compared to the mechs?
Here's a shot from MWO's river city (no idea who the pilot is. It's just some random screenshot from the web).
Here are some pictures from the reboot:
Both have buildings.. Hell, both even have really HUGE buildings.. so the fact that some of the buildings in River City are so huge isn't what screws up the scale.
What makes the reboot trailer seem correctly scaled can all be boiled down to one thing:
DETAILS.
Look around the immediate vicinity of the mech. Not only can you see buildings, but you can clearly see RECOGNIZABLE STRUCTURES on the buildings. Like, "Oh, that's a parking garage. I can see a railing on the side there, which is exactly like railings on the sides of parking garages I park my car in, and I know that if I was standing there I would be a little bit taller than the railing... which means that I'm high up in the sky, in something which is as tall as a whole parking deck!"
See, this is the key... and this is why it's so hard to get right.
The issue isn't actually one of scale. The mechs in MWO are correctly scaled. The problem is that the game does not provide enough visual queues to get us to RECOGNIZE that scale. In many cases, the problem is actually that the environment is TOO SMALL.
For instance, look at that building in the MWO screenshot. If you actually look at it, I mean really examine it, you will see that there actually are tiny little doors down at the bottom level. The environment actually has details in it, and they are correctly scaled... but you don't really NOTICE them. They don't really catch your eye much, and so the whole building just kind of blurs into a big box. It doesn't seem like you're walking next to an actualy building, as much as you are walking next to a wall like in any other game.. Most of the features either aren't clearly recognizable as things you'd see in real life, or are simply so generic as to not really give much sense of scale.
Thus, in order to make the map scale seem correct, we need to add more details which are recognizable as things we see in the real world, of which we already have a good sense of scale.
For instance... things like signs (the parking sign in the reboot trailer), or billboards... or cars... or hell, even people.
There is some desire to make MWO into a super futuristic environment, where things look noticably different from the current world... but without stuff that we are used to seeing in the real world, our brain doesn't really make the connection necessary for a correct sense of scale.
For instance, the dropship on River City, or the DS on Frozen City.
Sure, that dropship is supposed to be a huge thing... much bigger than modern jumbo jets. But no one has ever seen an dropship. We have no inherent sense of scale for that type of thing. Our brain just converts it into an aircraft, like we've seen hundreds of times in real life, and then scales things accordingly. And since a mech's size compared to a dropship is equal to a human's size compared to normal aircraft... it gives the impression that we are human sized.
If you want to create the correct sense of scale, you need to put in a REGULAR AIRCRAFT. Put in something like a 747, so we recognize "Hey, that's a normal 747... which is normally pretty huge... AND I AM BIGGER THAN IT."
Again, it's not that things are too big in the game, and need to be made smaller... it's simply that there need to be things that catch our attention, and are clearly recognizable in terms of scale. This is the key to making our mechs feel big.
