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I've played enough MMORPG's to know that big is not always better. Usually as more expansions are added the player base spreads out and the world ends up feelin

I've played enough MMORPG's to know that big is not always better. Usually as more expansions are added the player base spreads out and the world ends up feeling empty and boring. The best games tend to stay fairly medium sized so that they can maintain density and contact between players. The vast wastelands of Second Life are a testament to the failure of rapid expansion.

zardo 11y ago
A 1:1 Earth makes sense if you want to make a virtual world compatible with AR. Otherwise, I think it only makes sense for flight simulators and games involving space travel.
- Lambdanaut 11y ago
  Even Kerbal Space Program shrinks planets and space down! It's simply too big.
  - rtkwe 11y ago
    It's also to make the tasks easier. The dV required for launching off the shrunk planet in KSP is less than if it was just scaled up to match Earth like in the Real Solar System mod(s).
  - Crito 11y ago
    The kerbal planets are already so big that there is nothing interesting on 99% of the surface area of them. There are mods to make them "full sized", but they don't make the planets less interesting than they were otherwise. Really the planet size in that game is about game balance.
mojuba 11y ago
I agree, but the Earth-sized world could be used for something interesting too. E.g. imagining the world of the future, where you can teleport, or you can design a bike and copy/paste it to your friends, for real. Or you could model the society of the future, say without money and no borders. Or fully digital money. The fact that the virtual world is like Earth can impose certain atmosphere and directions the game can go.
- BatFastard 11y ago
  The things you mention are unrelated to the size of the planet. I actually talked to a number of bankers from the US Federal Reserve bank 10 years ago about using a virtual world to model money systems. The thing was, they wanted to take a world that I had create, and filled with people, and take over "total control" of the monetary system in that functioning world. My response was no thanks!
codyb 11y ago
This is true. I remember how GTA San Andreas basically just killed the joy of the game for me after spending 20 minutes running to finally find a car to spend ten minutes driving back to an area where there was actually things to do (gee, imagine me wanting to do that while playing video games). In the first games for PS2 you'd just drown if you fell in this water, in this one you could be forced to swim seemingly endlessly to find a place you could actually get out of the water (only to have to run for 20 minutes to find a car). I put that one down and never looked back at the series again (although I hear they're really great games these days the concept was kind of played out for me by San Andreas and I barely play video games at all anymore anyways so it may have been a variety of factors besides the time spent running and swimming for no reason).
tormeh 11y ago
That's usually because, though the shards' areas expand, the number of shards do not decrease. Obviously, area-per-player can be held constant if shards are consolidated as the area per shard increases.
greggarious 11y ago
As opposed to the real world? Try driving through Kansas sometime - it's pretty empty and boring too :P
merb 11y ago
like pokemon. sometimes it's enough, nobody could know all thousands pokemon.. 251 were enough.

zardo 11y ago

A 1:1 Earth makes sense if you want to make a virtual world compatible with AR. Otherwise, I think it only makes sense for flight simulators and games involving space travel.

Lambdanaut 11y ago
Even Kerbal Space Program shrinks planets and space down! It's simply too big.
- rtkwe 11y ago
  It's also to make the tasks easier. The dV required for launching off the shrunk planet in KSP is less than if it was just scaled up to match Earth like in the Real Solar System mod(s).
- Crito 11y ago
  The kerbal planets are already so big that there is nothing interesting on 99% of the surface area of them. There are mods to make them "full sized", but they don't make the planets less interesting than they were otherwise. Really the planet size in that game is about game balance.

mojuba 11y ago

I agree, but the Earth-sized world could be used for something interesting too. E.g. imagining the world of the future, where you can teleport, or you can design a bike and copy/paste it to your friends, for real. Or you could model the society of the future, say without money and no borders. Or fully digital money. The fact that the virtual world is like Earth can impose certain atmosphere and directions the game can go.

BatFastard 11y ago
The things you mention are unrelated to the size of the planet. I actually talked to a number of bankers from the US Federal Reserve bank 10 years ago about using a virtual world to model money systems. The thing was, they wanted to take a world that I had create, and filled with people, and take over "total control" of the monetary system in that functioning world. My response was no thanks!

codyb 11y ago

This is true. I remember how GTA San Andreas basically just killed the joy of the game for me after spending 20 minutes running to finally find a car to spend ten minutes driving back to an area where there was actually things to do (gee, imagine me wanting to do that while playing video games). In the first games for PS2 you'd just drown if you fell in this water, in this one you could be forced to swim seemingly endlessly to find a place you could actually get out of the water (only to have to run for 20 minutes to find a car). I put that one down and never looked back at the series again (although I hear they're really great games these days the concept was kind of played out for me by San Andreas and I barely play video games at all anymore anyways so it may have been a variety of factors besides the time spent running and swimming for no reason).

tormeh 11y ago

That's usually because, though the shards' areas expand, the number of shards do not decrease. Obviously, area-per-player can be held constant if shards are consolidated as the area per shard increases.

greggarious 11y ago

As opposed to the real world? Try driving through Kansas sometime - it's pretty empty and boring too :P

merb 11y ago

like pokemon. sometimes it's enough, nobody could know all thousands pokemon.. 251 were enough.