27 replies to this topic

[PropagandaWar]

So my buddy and I were walkin around and acutally looking at stuff. Yeah stuff. The plants are taller than the cars. Hell shrubs are taller than the cars. Steps would go up to your waist. My cockpit next to a door on the third floor mechs me feel like 'm Zentradi. You need to get a pro in there to look at your guys scale and make adjustments. Heck give me a shot at it ill go in and highlight your models and shrink them or blow them up. Please, this is important. I feel 30 feet off the ground next to some cars and some buildings but your tumbleweeds make me feel like I am human scale.

[Kibble]

I have always had a problem with the scaling of the maps. Wish PGI would listen.

[Rina Fujimoto]

I've always noticed the same thing.

WHY does PGI use mech sized grass?! At first we conspired, that the Atlas and all the mechs were actually human sized and that PGI was simply reusing crytek assets (the grass).

I proved that false, and in the process learned that they could easy scale down the grass...

So next I assumed it was just all the scenery that was out of scale.

Aaand...a few days ago I proved that wrong too, as you can see below, the Atlas is about 3 stories high, and you can see the in-game pilot standing in the doorway of the River city building, with the River City car for reference.





Hell I can put the pilot in the car if I want! Beep beep!


So why do the maps feel so out of scale aside from the grass? Ding ding! You guessed it! PGI just has bad map design! All maps in MWO follow the philosophy of: Earth bowl + Ocean

Basically every map in MWO is just a giant earth bowl with some sort of ocean/water front part, which is why they all feel so...fake, on top of bad city design, I mean I KNOW it has to be balanced for play, but you can have balanced city maps without the layouts being complete {Scrap} and nonsensical! It doesn't take a genius to figure that River City makes no sense, how the hell does the Gazelle even land!? A lot of people tell me that there's debris blocking the rest of the runway but even if you cleared it, it still can't land because there are two huge mountains blocking the whole airport!



Hell if you remove the mountains and use some natural obstructions River City already looks better:


And don't even get me started on the 1000ft tall street lights in Frozen City:


So tl;dr what I'm trying to say is that;

- The maps, and their assets, ARE in scale
- The mechs are in scale with humans
- The reason the maps feel horribly out of scale is because PGI can't into making natural feeling maps, or effective use of map assets to make sensical facility layouts.

I mean seriously, when you measure it in-game, Canyon is a giant 1 mile wide earth bowl (literally it is a bowl), it's the same length across that I walk to the bus stop every day.

[Otto Cannon]

I think they might overhaul the maps when destructible scenery gets added, but it doesn't seem to be a big priority at the moment as long as the maps work but just look a bit wrong.

[80sGlamRockSensation David Bowie]

I've been preaching and ranting for ages that maps like River City, Frozen Shltty, and Forest Colony need drastic redesigns.

Scale of the objects and design are just one of the many reasons why these maps are terrible.

[PropagandaWar]

When they removed the top layer of River City Drop point and put the little bridges that we can "walk" across it made the map that much more silly. The Gazelle needs to be removed and Vtols Need to be added.

Also weapons need to be scaled as well. An AC/20 should be 1 size and 1 size only. Sure the barrel may be a tad thinner but not that much. The PPC is huge. It just is and seeing it shrunk down on mechs is silly. I hope they give this a pass as well.

[Appogee]

Otto Cannon, on 21 October 2013 - 03:00 AM, said:

I think they might overhaul the maps when destructible scenery gets added,

Do you really think they are ever going to add destructible scenery...? Come on, let's be realistic here.

In my view some of the map assets need to be scaled so that they're internally consistent, large barren maps (eg. Canyons) need to have small assets added which give a sense of scale, Mech animations need to be slowed down, and the Assault Mechs need to actually be a lot bigger than the Mediums.

All of that would help the game feel more like giant robots, and less like Halo in robot suits.

[Rina Fujimoto]

PropagandaWar, on 21 October 2013 - 08:17 AM, said:

When they removed the top layer of River City Drop point and put the little bridges that we can "walk" across it made the map that much more silly. The Gazelle needs to be removed and Vtols Need to be added.

Also weapons need to be scaled as well. An AC/20 should be 1 size and 1 size only. Sure the barrel may be a tad thinner but not that much. The PPC is huge. It just is and seeing it shrunk down on mechs is silly. I hope they give this a pass as well.

I hate the weapon resizing, more than anything, MORE THAN ANYTHING, it looks absolutely ******** on smaller mechs, I mean seriously, it doesn't even make sense! If the techs can somehow resize a PPC to fit on something as small as a locust then why the hell doesn't it weight less? Did they discover some sort of magic tech that lets them somehow reduce the weapons volume without reducing it's mass? It looked completely fine before, I have no idea why they changed it now, I hate how it looks on my PPC blackjack, I want the big tubes back!.

Appogee, on 21 October 2013 - 08:24 AM, said:

Do you really think they are ever going to add destructible scenery...? [/size]Come on, let's be realistic here.

In my view some of the map assets need to be scaled so that they're internally consistent, large barren maps (eg. Canyons) need to have small assets added which give a sense of scale, Mech animations need to be slowed down, and the Assault Mechs need to actually be a lot bigger than the Mediums.

All of that would help the game feel more like giant robots, and less like Halo in robot suits.

The biggest problem is the EARTH BOWLS, seriously, the maps wouldn't feel so tiny if all the maps were flanked by giant earth walls, that's not how it works in real life! Either use natural obstructions like debris or something or have no obstructions at all! If players are too stupid to know the difference between out of bounds and in bounds, let them die, every other game this century either has invisible boundary walls or no boundaries at all flanking their OOB areas, and you know what? Those games do fine, people don't quit in droves because they keep walking out of bounds.

The only map I feel that does this right is Alpine but that's only because it's so huge you'll never really even see the giant earth walls as anything more than mountains in the distance.

[Adridos]

haruko, on 21 October 2013 - 09:45 AM, said:

I hate the weapon resizing, more than anything, MORE THAN ANYTHING, it looks absolutely ******** on smaller mechs, I mean seriously, it doesn't even make sense! If the techs can somehow resize a PPC to fit on something as small as a locust then why the hell doesn't it weight less? Did they discover some sort of magic tech that lets them somehow reduce the weapons volume without reducing it's mass? It looked completely fine before, I have no idea why they changed it now, I hate how it looks on my PPC blackjack, I want the big tubes back!.

You and me both, haruko.

The thing is, we're looking at 3 ways this can be:

1st: Static meshes. If every part of a variant is handcrafted, you end up with mechs that look exactly like they should. Currently in effect for Catapult K2, for example.

2nd: Static weapon models on customisable mechs. This solution would practically satisfy the lore group, but the power-gaming block would basically call it all sorts of wrong in sizes.

3rd: As it currently is. Weapon models that are generalist, but re-sized to fit each mech individually to prevent some parts that were never meant to be there in the first place from sticking out. This looks all sorts of wrong, but satisfies the desire of customisable meshes and also prevents the suicide effect of mounting weapons bigger than the chassis was supposed to carry in the first place.

[stinkypuppy]

i agree that earth bowls, over sized camera views, vegetation, vehicles, and sensible map design need to be added to the maps. its annoying when the vegetation on crimson strait can eat a big rig truck whole. or when your camera is up close to a car and notice your entire head is bigger than a common street car. or the massive borders around each map that hold the players in like they think that if they don't give our play pens walls that we will start scattering all over like a pile of mice with a swarm of cats dropped in the middle. or as mentioned above airports placed in such awkward places that even being a experienced pilot i wouldn't even go close to the damn things even in a simulator while flying a VTOL.
also one other thing that annoys me is the only hills around are sized for mechs, there are not even a single hill anywhere that would be properly sized for a human like you would see in real life. these maps are basically scaled for human sized mechs and if you have seen any previews for the moon-base map its only going to get worse (arena style map that looks like the surface of cybertron or the death star)

[Fooooo]

stinkypuppy, on 21 October 2013 - 04:39 PM, said:

i agree that earth bowls, over sized camera views, vegetation, vehicles, and sensible map design need to be added to the maps. its annoying when the vegetation on crimson strait can eat a big rig truck whole. or when your camera is up close to a car and notice your entire head is bigger than a common street car. or the massive borders around each map that hold the players in like they think that if they don't give our play pens walls that we will start scattering all over like a pile of mice with a swarm of cats dropped in the middle. or as mentioned above airports placed in such awkward places that even being a experienced pilot i wouldn't even go close to the damn things even in a simulator while flying a VTOL.
also one other thing that annoys me is the only hills around are sized for mechs, there are not even a single hill anywhere that would be properly sized for a human like you would see in real life. these maps are basically scaled for human sized mechs and if you have seen any previews for the moon-base map its only going to get worse (arena style map that looks like the surface of cybertron or the death star)

To do an open rolling hills plain (like some farmland area all over with treelines etc) would probably not be very good gameplay wise. I admit I'd love to see more "real" terrains, however from a gameplay perspective I don't think these would work well as the game currently is.

Terra therma is..........not big enough for me, however, seeing how its played it makes me cringe of all the un-used spaces. You would need 32vs32 or more for that map to be fully utilized. (even then its arguable the blob would change in pubs) So resizing some of them I would not want to do.

Forest, yup, redo that one. River city , yup. Frozen ? Probably do that too.


On the OP and re-scaling the maps.....thats not as easy as it sounds. The vegetation / objects etc , I'll give you that one, thats easy to rescale inside the SDK without touching any of the models.

The map however to be rescaled basically requires the whole map to be "redone" in a sense. (yes in the sdk you can just click "resize terrain" however its not that simple) Basically most of the map would have to be redone. (objects / vegetation / rocks etc moved to match the new scale terrain). Textures also have to be repainted.......annoying, especially on a large map like terra.

Edited by Fooooo, 22 October 2013 - 04:14 AM.

[Fut]

Somebody in another thread mentioned something that was spot on regarding the scaling of things on the maps.
Take a look at the "City" maps, every roadway and lane is big enough for a Mech to fit through, shouldn't the buildings be closer together? Shouldn't there be lane ways and roads that you can see down, but only the smallest of Mechs could feasibly walk down?

PGI is designing all of the maps to be perfectly sized for Mechs, when they should be designing the maps to be sized for regular humans and have the Mechs dropped in later.

As for this thread here, there have been some great comments regarding the size of things!
I don't think I ever realized the whole "Earth Bowl' map design before you guys pointed it out, but it's 100% right. Hilarious.

Something is definitely up though, because this game feels more like Humans in Suits rather than massive walking Robots.

[Syllogy]

Would you rather have an accurate map that isn't fun to play?

I'm not saying that there aren't certain design flaws, but I'd be more worried about having balanced gameplay instead of a map designed by a city engineer.

[PropagandaWar]

Syllogy, on 22 October 2013 - 07:01 AM, said:

Would you rather have an accurate map that isn't fun to play?

I'm not saying that there aren't certain design flaws, but I'd be more worried about having balanced gameplay instead of a map designed by a city engineer.

I'd like a map where if I step through a house I "step through the house" lol. Still there's no excuse for the vegitation and hills to be somewhat displaced. The post above mentioning streets. The one thing is in the books a lot of areas were made out of ferrocrete and probably designed for construction mechs and the such to walk through. I give them a pass on that. However slums yeah they should be two lanes at best etc., etc. Doing a huge red wood map would maps would be ok. Those things get over a 100 feet and mech would be hard pressed to knock it down.

[Rina Fujimoto]

Fooooo, on 22 October 2013 - 04:13 AM, said:

To do an open rolling hills plain (like some farmland area all over with treelines etc) would probably not be very good gameplay wise. I admit I'd love to see more "real" terrains, however from a gameplay perspective I don't think these would work well as the game currently is.

Terra therma is..........not big enough for me, however, seeing how its played it makes me cringe of all the un-used spaces. You would need 32vs32 or more for that map to be fully utilized. (even then its arguable the blob would change in pubs) So resizing some of them I would not want to do.

Forest, yup, redo that one. River city , yup. Frozen ? Probably do that too.


On the OP and re-scaling the maps.....thats not as easy as it sounds. The vegetation / objects etc , I'll give you that one, thats easy to rescale inside the SDK without touching any of the models.

The map however to be rescaled basically requires the whole map to be "redone" in a sense. (yes in the sdk you can just click "resize terrain" however its not that simple) Basically most of the map would have to be redone. (objects / vegetation / rocks etc moved to match the new scale terrain). Textures also have to be repainted.......annoying, especially on a large map like terra.

Frozen city is one of the only good maps in terms of scale imho, you're fighting on a frozen over SLDF-era city buried under miles of snow with only the very tops of skyscrapers poking out with an advancing glacier, but then of course, someone at PGI got the bright idea to add in street lights...seriously did whoever add them in not read the map concept? It even says it on the website itself that it's a buried city!

[ConstantA]

Oh you cruel forumites...
My immersion now totally ruined!

[Amsro]

ConstantA, on 22 October 2013 - 04:47 PM, said:

Oh you cruel forumites...
My immersion now totally ruined!

Acknowledging the problem is the first step to fixing it.

Little things like this page make the game glow.

[MW Waldorf Statler]

Syllogy, on 22 October 2013 - 07:01 AM, said:

Would you rather have an accurate map that isn't fun to play?

I'm not saying that there aren't certain design flaws, but I'd be more worried about having balanced gameplay instead of a map designed by a city engineer.

These Maps you can seeing in better in MWLL with deep Water and flat rolling Hills ,with Elementars and Tanks and Aerospacefighters...not Maps make Gameplay ,Player make Gameplay

[MW Waldorf Statler]

haruko, on 22 October 2013 - 11:06 AM, said:

Frozen city is one of the only good maps in terms of scale imho, you're fighting on a frozen over SLDF-era city buried under miles of snow with only the very tops of skyscrapers poking out with an advancing glacier, but then of course, someone at PGI got the bright idea to add in street lights...seriously did whoever add them in not read the map concept? It even says it on the website itself that it's a buried city!

why there are actually in Frozen intact buildings were not crushed in the glacier tunnel? why ever not are all buildings intact, not even the Windows have shattered ... there should be only concrete-steel skeletons ????

Edited by CSJ Ranger, 26 October 2013 - 12:58 AM.

[Ghogiel]

Syllogy, on 22 October 2013 - 07:01 AM, said:

Would you rather have an accurate map that isn't fun to play?

I'm not saying that there aren't certain design flaws, but I'd be more worried about having balanced gameplay instead of a map designed by a city engineer.

Why not have both.

But really though... I ain't feeling the top notch gameplay design in most of the levels anyways. So if I felt the maps all played great I'd be with ya. But I'm left uninspired by all but maybe 3 maps.