Ship is too small?

[JestersGhost]

That's a surprisingly long time to be running and doing nothing else Remember, most of the actual missions will take place in instances accessed via the various doors, so you don't want something so huge it will take ten or more minutes just to get to your mission.

Sure, it'll be the area you hang out in, and have costume contests, etc. and the occasional street sweep, but it's not where the core gameplay will actually be happening.

[Manchine]

That's a surprisingly long time to be running and doing nothing else Remember, most of the actual missions will take place in instances accessed via the various doors, so you don't want something so huge it will take ten or more minutes just to get to your mission.

Sure, it'll be the area you hang out in, and have costume contests, etc. and the occasional street sweep, but it's not where the core gameplay will actually be happening.

With only one zone thats not enough. Part of the fun is getting to a new zone and exploring it. This will be equal to Champions Online Millennial City. Just being in that zone is not enough. That takes part of the fun away.

Don't get me wrong everything else I like just this part has me bummed.

[Weylor]

That's a surprisingly long time to be running and doing nothing else Remember, most of the actual missions will take place in instances accessed via the various doors, so you don't want something so huge it will take ten or more minutes just to get to your mission.

Sure, it'll be the area you hang out in, and have costume contests, etc. and the occasional street sweep, but it's not where the core gameplay will actually be happening.

With only one zone thats not enough. Part of the fun is getting to a new zone and exploring it. This will be equal to Champions Online Millennial City. Just being in that zone is not enough. That takes part of the fun away.

Don't get me wrong everything else I like just this part has me bummed.

To be fair there are like 20 other levels of the ship, all at least as big as this first one. Granted, they won't all be live at launch, but we won't be confined to just this level.

[Manchine]

That's a surprisingly long time to be running and doing nothing else Remember, most of the actual missions will take place in instances accessed via the various doors, so you don't want something so huge it will take ten or more minutes just to get to your mission.

Sure, it'll be the area you hang out in, and have costume contests, etc. and the occasional street sweep, but it's not where the core gameplay will actually be happening.

With only one zone thats not enough. Part of the fun is getting to a new zone and exploring it. This will be equal to Champions Online Millennial City. Just being in that zone is not enough. That takes part of the fun away.

Don't get me wrong everything else I like just this part has me bummed.

To be fair there are like 20 other levels of the ship, all at least as big as this first one. Granted, they won't all be live at launch, but we won't be confined to just this level.

If they were gonna come out with one every 3 months this wouldn't be that much of a problem. It will take a lot longer then that to come out with one. If they are the same size it will probable take more then a year for them to come out with one. Thats why new areas in City of Heroes was such a big deal.

[AxerJ]

If they were gonna come out with one every 3 months this wouldn't be that much of a problem. It will take a lot longer then that to come out with one. If they are the same size it will probable take more then a year for them to come out with one. Thats why new areas in City of Heroes was such a big deal.

A very valid concern, I think. Heroic Games should be receiving more money once the game ships, though, and if they plan to expand (which they've said they do), they'll most likely hire more developers. In my understanding, though, it comes down to being realistic about what our developers can create - it'll be a smaller game than a huge-studio MMO at first, for sure. But I'm confident Mr. McGeever, the CEO, da Ambassador, would like to see the game grow as quickly as possible with quality content. Thankfully, CoH looks like a fun game to me already, as we've seen some awesome creative ability going into the lore, mechanics, and visuals.

So good point, and you're right, I think, and it's good to know what we're going to have. They're trying to make really fun content within this limited map, which actually looks impressive and interesting to me, hoping to add to it as soon as they can.

Reality of this team and game. Seems like it's going to be fun, though!

[Red5]

I was just looking at the width of the zone 1 1/4 miles approximately. :/ that's the distance from the Washington monument to the capital. it's not all that large.

maybe in game it will seem different but for now it seems kind of small. :/...

I have to agree, it does seem small. I recently watched an interview and the character went from one side to the other rather quickly and it did not look like they was flying as super speeds either.

In a question of travel powers now or later I knee jerk thought to say later as we could fairly quickly walk end to end, but I love flying lol.

It could be optical illusion of sorts...we are used to many, nay blocks of larger building in city and starter zone the build seem sparse because they are so large?

I thought to suggest maybe a zone where the city is built along the walls, where if you looked up you'd see the sky scrappers from the other side pointing at you....that would be a large city zone. But IDK if there physics could manage that or not.

I saw in later post you did have comparison...so strange lol...it still seems small lol And there is a certain (for me) feeling or realization it will never be x zone because it does have known size (I am thinking like Talos Island or Boomtwon...which both might easily fit the diameter for all I know lol).

Guess it comes down to how they fill them really.

[Consultant]

One thing to realize is that for every team of developers, in every game, the first zone is the biggest effort. The layout, the materials, the props, the buildings, the roads, the textures...so many pieces and they are all built for the first time. It's a huge effort. But for subsequent zones, many items get re-used. And I don't just mean the props, but the materials, the textures, and most especially the process for making a building or a street or a a city section. We've gone through about five iterations of this in the background.

So we do not have a situation where if it takes X time to make level 1, it also takes X time for each subsequent level. It takes some fraction of X. Even when we make the next levels look completely different (and that's the goal), the way we organize to create the future levels is going to be the same as for the first, because we think we have created a process and a set of standards that is highly efficient. And this applies to level optimization as well. We've worked a bunch of stuff out, that is kind of advanced, and now that we have it, we don't need to do that again.

For an MMO in Unreal, it's not wise to just buy assets and plonk them down in the a level. We've worked out a lot of stuff related to process. And that stuff is the real time commitment.

For those who played COH think about this: the COH devs were brilliant, and they created many levels with many different sizes, and some of that was them experimenting with what gave the best player experience. Then, at the end when they knew the most, they created the goldside levels. Which were, incidentally about the size of our levels and featured above ground and below ground settings in each level.

We'll be fine.

[Red5]

...We'll be fine.

Of that I have no doubt

After some thinking on topic, I asked myself even if it was in fact small or smaller would I mind that and the answer was no lol. I could actually see some benefits to it infact.

I recall the times I randomly passed by characters and went whoa cool costume or looked into their bio after having seeing them. Like QWERTY, who looked like something out of a Doctor Suess. A short conversation later went spent hours playing follow the leader through city scapes flying taking turns at the lead. I mean I think I was on my way to street sweep and spent all my game time for the day with a stranger out of combat. I honestly believe it made me a better flier too.

One might chuckle at that notion but seriously I learned how to avoid evil stop signs that mean not only stop but YOU SHALL NOT PASS!!!! lol. how to bomb dive and pull out of it in time, etc.

More importantly, I could have gone on for years and never saw QWERTY or others because zones were so large. So I am actually ok with the ideal of a small zone.


...long as there is content muahahahahaha<--which I can't actually say because I am nearly positive most of my alts will spend a lot of time running player made missions lol.