Each Custom Landing Zone is Bigger than Skyrim's whole map: the numbers

[Invictus]

For those, who, like me, complained initially that you can't explore landing sites infinitely, here are some numbers to make you feel better:

I ran in one direction from my ship and did not hit a boundary until 4,191 meters, or 4 kilometers. Each landing site has an exploration radius of 4 kilometers or an 8 kilometer circle in diameter, which is 5 miles total.

Using a radius of 4km or 2.5 miles, I used simple math to arrive at the fact that each custom landing zone has a square mileage or area of 19.63 square miles.

Skyrim itself only had an area of 15 square miles.

So each and every landing zone you make in Starfield is bigger than Skyrim's whole map. And you can make thousands of landing sites currently, at 3 to 4 per planet or moon.

Anyone who complains there's not enough exploration here is simply not being fair.

[Jaggid Edje]

In before "But there's nothing to actually do in that massive amount of space".

I know it's coming.

[DeathRow]

whoa, thats like infinite content, and for only 70$!

[GunBoat]

Now do that in the old and venerable Elite Dangerous, which is a real attempt at a real space flight/space sim game. This is just an FPS shooter with a space backdrop. Refunded

[Korgi]

Have you heard the saying "as wide as the ocean, as deep as a puddle"? Thousands of Skyrim-sized areas have no real metric when they have no soul or purpose to them. Not to knock the areas in Starfield manually designed, but comparing a procedurally generated zone to a mostly-hand crafted one is like comparing Skyrim to Minecraft.

[Fireserpent7]

Originally posted by Korgi:

Have you heard the saying "as wide as the ocean, as deep as a puddle"? Thousands of Skyrim-sized areas have no real metric when they have no soul or purpose to them. Not to know the areas in Starfield manually designed, but comparing a procedurally generated zone to a mostly-hand crafted one is like comparing Skyrim to Minecraft.

the amount of curated content is bigger than skyrim, the procedural stuff is just extra stuff to do

[Korgi]

Originally posted by Fireserpent7:

Originally posted by Korgi:

Have you heard the saying "as wide as the ocean, as deep as a puddle"? Thousands of Skyrim-sized areas have no real metric when they have no soul or purpose to them. Not to know the areas in Starfield manually designed, but comparing a procedurally generated zone to a mostly-hand crafted one is like comparing Skyrim to Minecraft.

the amount of curated content is bigger than skyrim, the procedural stuff is just extra stuff to do

And that's fine. My point was its not really fair to compare a randomized zone a la Minecraft or No Mans Sky etc to Skyrim.

[Sythalin]

Originally posted by Jaggid Edje:

In before "But there's nothing to actually do in that massive amount of space".

I know it's coming.

And here it is. If you look at it objectively, 90% of that space is open nothingness.

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by Korgi:

Originally posted by Fireserpent7:

the amount of curated content is bigger than skyrim, the procedural stuff is just extra stuff to do

And that's fine. My point was its not really fair to compare a randomized zone a la Minecraft or No Mans Sky etc to Skyrim.

Not to mention that BGS also already said they made the occurrence of 'finding something cool" when walking about on planet surfaces with intentionally higher distances between them than they did for a game like Skyrim. To give it a specific feeling of more vastness and emptiness of space (or something like that).

POI placement and how far apart they are is a very intentional part of game design, regardless of whether the POI's are being procedurally generated or everything is hand-crafted. Developers are very intentional about placement, density, distance between, etc. regardless of which method is being used.

There's a pretty cool video on youtube that talks about this and how it was applied in the world design of Hogwart's legacy, with different areas having very different placement distance and density, to evoke different 'feelings' in the player, depending on where they are in that world.
It's an interesting video and it shows how the placement of things of interest in Hogwart's Legacy is quite mathematical in its layout.

[Korgi]

Originally posted by Sythalin:

Originally posted by Jaggid Edje:

In before "But there's nothing to actually do in that massive amount of space".

I know it's coming.

And here it is. If you look at it objectively, 90% of that space is open nothingness.

It's like saying the Sahara Desert is larger than New York City. While true, it doesn't speak for the density of its contents.

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by Sythalin:

And here it is. If you look at it objectively, 90% of that space is open nothingness.

And it's entirely intentional, as I explained in my post above.

Love it or hate it, they did it with intent, for reasons they considered good.

[Invictus]

I know guys that space and moons can be barren. But I have found some really beautiful moments hiking on these moons. I landed in a Mountain LZ on a low grav moon, hiked/boost packed to the top of a tall mountain, looked out on a vast scene with deep draw depth, and a ringed gas giant setting on the horizon, and just found it...breathtaking. Almost cried at how beautiful it looked. Took a bazillion photos in photo mode. Great memories to be had in this game. The map may not have as many POI as Skyrim, but there's a similar beauty to panoramic vistas....you just have to see it. Even on barren worlds, there's a lot of beauty....and infinite amounts of such experiences to be had. It's almost a hiking sim to me, where I can hike anywhere in the galaxy. The fact that you can save each LZ as a data file in your game files and come back to it if you like it is nice too. I hope for the ability to name mountain ranges or custom POI map points, naming them for yourself.

To have the ability to save potentially 4,000 Skyrim sized maps as data files with these Landing Zones is a real advance compared to 12 years ago, with just one map that size in Skyrim. What they can do with future games is probably going to be incredible.

[Zalzany]

Originally posted by GunBoat:

Now do that in the old and venerable Elite Dangerous, which is a real attempt at a real space flight/space sim game. This is just an FPS shooter with a space backdrop. Refunded

No ♥♥♥♥ it was advertised as that. Who the hell saw hours of footage of them ON THE GROUND fighting ON FOOT and went "This is a space sim!" I mean I own Elite and other space sims I never once thought this was a space sim lol.

[GunBoat]

Originally posted by Zalzany:

Originally posted by GunBoat:

Now do that in the old and venerable Elite Dangerous, which is a real attempt at a real space flight/space sim game. This is just an FPS shooter with a space backdrop. Refunded

No xxx it was advertised as that. Who the hell saw hours of footage of them ON THE GROUND fighting ON FOOT and went "This is a space sim!" I mean I own Elite and other space sims I never once thought this was a space sim lol.

Yea, they didn't tout space ship customizations and space ship battles because that would be too space gamey/simy and they didn't want us to believe that.