If you were the developer, what scale would you make the map?

If you were the developer, what scale would you make the map?

1:35
4
2%
1:20
47
22%
1:15
40
19%
1:10
89
42%
1:5
16
8%
1:1
16
8%
 
Total votes: 212

User avatar
Sora
Posts: 2183
Joined: 22 Feb 2017 18:47

Re: If you were the developer, what scale would you make the map?

#111 Post by Sora » 09 Aug 2022 08:58

This depends. Am I a filthy rich developer armed with thousands of disposable employees I can pay next-to-nothing for? Or am I a D-list indie developer absentmindedly making a random project to make ends meet, not knowing that it would influence products sold over a decade later?

The current map scale isn't a result of SCS going into a room, twiddling their mustaches, and going "hmmm how can we put as little work into our products as possible." It's a result of them creating German Truck Simulator as a random project to make ends meet, porting it into ETS2 expecting it to flop, and accidentally making a game so iconic that it's still receiving updates 10 years later. ETS2 was never planned to be a long-term project, but it ended up being the foundation for basically everything SCS has done since then, and SCS is basically stuck with the decisions they made for it. And as its sibling, ATS is broadly consistent with it.

When they sat down and made ATS, they considered 1:35 for a very simple reason: people were going to want the contiguous 48 as soon as humanly possible, and would pan the game until it happened. Anyone who was around for the first few states should recall that this was a completely legitimate concern: people wanted the lower 48 now, not in 15 years! They ultimately changed course for parity with ETS2, but in doing so, they dramatically extended the time it would take for the lower 48 to finish... which, for many people, is still too long. And when people aren't complaining about how long it's taking, they're complaining about how expensive the final product will be, which is presumably something also impacted by the rescale.

How much more time do you think people would realistically be willing to wait? How much more money do you think people would realistically be willing to pay? I would love a 1:10 map, but the fact is, there's a realistic chance I wouldn't even live to see it And that's with me probably being one of the younger users here. 1:20 is probably the best compromise between passable quality and actually finishing the product at a remotely acceptable pace. 1:15 is probably the hard upper limit on what is actually possible, given a developer and an audience of the size that ATS has. Anything beyond that is fantasy at best and delusion at worst. (A rescale at this point, by the way, is similarly unreasonable. The ATS map is too interconnected for something like "parts of it are 1:15, parts of it are 1:20" to be feasible, so you'd need to change it all at once. This would take several DLCs worth of effort and not even directly make money. And even then, with how clear the difference is between pre-rescale and post-rescale roads, you might as well be committing to redoing half these states from the ground up.)

And for the extra-funny clowns voting 1:1 or 1:5, there are only two situations where this can be done.
  • AI-generated mapping capability that far exceeds what's currently possible
  • Complete abandonment of the coast-to-coast format (in ATS) or the international-oriented format (ETS2) in exchange for a laser focus on specific mega-cities (at 1:1) or states (at 1:5).
Even a much, much larger company than SCS would struggle to create a satisfactory product covering as wide of a range of ATS or ETS2 at these scales. SCS? Forget about it, even 1:10 is really pushing your luck.

There's probably a market for something like Los Angeles Truck Simulator, mind... but it'd be a completely different product from ATS, and frankly, it would require much more in-depth gameplay, as well. It's... probably better to leave that for someone else.

One last thing: America isn't special. There are small states in the northeast, yes. But Europe has small countries - even smaller, in fact. And some of them aren't even in ETS2. I can pretty much guarantee that ATS will never suffer an omission on that scale. If anyone should be begging for a rescale, it's the ETS2 board - not us.
User avatar
flight50
Posts: 30163
Joined: 20 May 2017 03:33
Location: Dallas/Ft. Worth, Tx - USA

Re: If you were the developer, what scale would you make the map?

#112 Post by flight50 » 09 Aug 2022 09:14

I can agree with all that @Sora. It makes sense. If you are on the younger side of this forum, imagine what SCS is like. Most of them won't be around either. Pavel surely won't be. So if he's to see things out, a larger scale won't work for him. I want to see all of North America in ATS, not just a completed US. By time all NA is done I'd easily be beyond my video gaming days. I might even be capable of playing in 20+ years from now.
User avatar
VTXcnME
Posts: 1243
Joined: 04 Jun 2021 12:53

Re: If you were the developer, what scale would you make the map?

#113 Post by VTXcnME » 09 Aug 2022 12:18

@Sora agree with all points.

There has to be compromise between scale and dev time. Or we're gonna be stuck paying $49.99 per state like each state is it's own game. People griping about the $11.99 price tag can usually be placed in the exact center of a Venn Diagram with the other options being "This map is too small" and "The DLC is taking too long"

My only concerns with the current scale, impact how my home state of Maine is going to represented in game. It's going to have to leave a lot out or butcher what's here for it to make the scale requirements. But at the end of the day, there is nothing to be done about it, aside from realize this is a fan fiction map of the US to begin with and it'll be what it'll be.

Honestly, I enjoy playing ATS right now, and even the marathon drives from Seattle to Hobbs on occasion. Those drives at a 1:20 scale still take over an hour and a half to do (if you follow speed limits). I'm all set on that trip taking LONGER. Especially as the country swells eastward. At current scale, if you pick up a load in Washington State and drive it to say, South Carolina (once all these states are developed) you are looking at an easy 3-3.5 HOURS IRL sitting on one load driving. There is nothing wrong with the scale. As the map gets bigger, the folks who want those long marathons will have their wish. I don't have the time to sit for 3.5 hours to deliver one load. Honestly, I wouldn't want the scale bigger as we move east, just because I'd never see any of the map outside of the 2hr (IRL) range circle I occupied.

And at this point, there is no way SCS goes back and redoes the scale again. So, while I appreciate the academic portion of the conversation, it's really moot to bother pondering it.
angrybirdseller
Posts: 3303
Joined: 05 Feb 2013 05:16
Location: Minnesota

Re: If you were the developer, what scale would you make the map?

#114 Post by angrybirdseller » 09 Aug 2022 12:31

Yuma AZ to Lewiston MT took me ~2 hours that was rolling stop signs and speeding in smaller towns.

Sure Los Angeles to Jacksonville will take 3.5 to 4 hour range. I am 44 want them to finish it whole map before age 60.
Meteor197
Posts: 35
Joined: 31 Oct 2021 17:23
Location: Fort Wayne, Indiana

Re: If you were the developer, what scale would you make the map?

#115 Post by Meteor197 » 09 Aug 2022 15:00

Los Angeles to Jacksonville will take about 2.5 hours. It makes a huge difference, if the route consists of a lot of two lane roads and/or towns to drive through, as opposed to being motorway the whole way, which Los Angeles to Jacksonville is. At ~2400 miles, and I figured that I usually cover about 1000 miles per real life hour in the game when on motorway, you're looking at a drive that would take comparable time to Seattle-Hobbs, which is maybe ~1800 miles, but once you exit I-15 to US-6 in Provo, UT, it's all pretty slow going from there. There are a couple stoplights to get through in Provo, then when you get to I-70 you barely have time to get up to speed before you have to exit again, then the towns of Moab and Monticello, UT, Cortez, CO, and Farmington, Roswell, and Artesia in NM make the route take long for sure. I personally love the long drives, and for the exceptionally long ones like Seattle-Hobbs, it's no big deal for me to just drive half of it on one IRL day, and the other half on another day. The only downside being that the long drives take you on the same roads all the time.

As for map scale, my pick would be 1:15. I don't think we want the dev time to drastically increase, plus any larger and some players may get frustrated at how long it takes to see the whole map. But I think, especially for when the game reaches the denser areas east of the Mississippi, it would be nice to have the extra room between cities but not necessarily increase the size or frequency of cities themselves. Otherwise I'm afraid it's going to feel like the eastern part of the map is just going to fly by. I don't think it's feasible though for SCS to do another rescale; but since this thread isn't really about that, if I had my pick it would be 1:15.
User avatar
VTXcnME
Posts: 1243
Joined: 04 Jun 2021 12:53

Re: If you were the developer, what scale would you make the map?

#116 Post by VTXcnME » 09 Aug 2022 15:16

angrybirdseller wrote: 09 Aug 2022 12:31 Yuma AZ to Lewiston MT took me ~2 hours that was rolling stop signs and speeding in smaller towns.

Sure Los Angeles to Jacksonville will take 3.5 to 4 hour range. I am 44 want them to finish it whole map before age 60.
Yeah. You're right. I was thinking of the Seattle to Arizona run I did. It was around 1200 miles. It clocked in around 1hr long ride. My point stands though: At the game scale, a 3,000 mile trip (roughly what it would be to cross the US diagonally) is going to take the better part of 2.5 or so depending on the route that's available. And that's if you don't have to stop at lights/cities/or crashes. For a run that long, 3 hours is probably conservative. I don't have that kind of time to sit and play a game for that long. Those that want the long marathon runs, will love it once the US is more complete.

I figured out (very crudely with a phone stopwatch and my driving and trying to activate everything at once) it takes about 5 minutes per 100 game miles at 65mph. Appx 4:30 per 100 in game miles at 75mph.

And agree: at 40, I'm hoping SCS carries on until the lower 48 is done... but I figure I'll be 55-60 by the time that happens (at the current rate of DLC release). If it happens. SCS could go bankrupt by then, or move on to something else.
User avatar
flight50
Posts: 30163
Joined: 20 May 2017 03:33
Location: Dallas/Ft. Worth, Tx - USA

Re: If you were the developer, what scale would you make the map?

#117 Post by flight50 » 09 Aug 2022 15:32

I agree. I don't have 3hrs in one sitting to play. Having the entire US will be enough for a large chuck of people I bet that want long game sessions. Yet alone have Canada and Mexico in the mix adding even more to the road network. I don't think people fully understand the time it will take not only to develop a larger scale, but how long it actually takes to complete a 3k+ long trip. One can play ETS2 now and do some driving like that and its a complete chore. I never complete the job because I loose interest. Not everyone has the attention span to play so long. Me personally, I have life to deal with. If I was retired and had nothing to do, perhaps I'd think differently. But with family and a household to tend too, I like to complete jobs within 1.5-2 hr window. I like to come back and do another run later in the day after a morning drive.

Breaks should be taken in between long gaming hrs. So for me, I'd rather make 2 delivers at 1.5 hrs each rather than one big long one.
User avatar
AlexxxF1
Posts: 555
Joined: 20 Oct 2020 04:50
Location: Belarus
Contact:

Re: If you were the developer, what scale would you make the map?

#118 Post by AlexxxF1 » 09 Aug 2022 16:13

I think the larger ATS becomes, receiving new states, the fewer requests to change the scale will be, and the smaller the scale will be less noticeable.
I'm looking forward to the day the big guy comes - Texas.

Just looking at this full ATS concept map, just imagine how much real time it would take you to go around all these roads at least once, even at a scale of 1:20. :D
yes it will be a long journey ))
(click to enlarge) https://i.ibb.co/vzDYpdg/ats-concept-map-col.png
Just create a new profile and try to make at least one delivery from each city, to the maximum distance).
when you complete the last one, you will forget what the first one looked like) and the trip will start again :D )

I hope that SCS will support ATS for a very long time and manage to release at least 90% of this concept map.(I will pray for 100%)
Last edited by AlexxxF1 on 09 Aug 2022 16:38, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
flight50
Posts: 30163
Joined: 20 May 2017 03:33
Location: Dallas/Ft. Worth, Tx - USA

Re: If you were the developer, what scale would you make the map?

#119 Post by flight50 » 09 Aug 2022 16:31

Yessss it is that map that is always in my head when I think about scale. Ads678 did an awesome job with that. I remember when he was building that thing out. His map is what got me so hyped about the future. What he laid out is quite realistic in terms of potential roads we get. SCS tends to add a tad bit more density than what his map shows. So yes, the larger ATS grows, the less noticeable scale is. Ads678 got a lot of roads in East of the Mississippi River. So I'm not concerned at all with the East coast like many think at current scale. Everything simple can't and won't fit. The only trouble area is DC, Baltimore, Philly, Newark and NYC imho. All that is pretty much the I-95 corridor. Get off that stretch and things will be fine.

That map is pretty much interstates, US and State hwys. It doesn't account for surface streets that SCS will include in towns. Then you go into Canada and then Mexico and that is a lot of road to drive for ATS. Its just gonna take time. For those long drive people, Prudhoe Bay to Panama is what you seek if you want long. If I did that trip, it would take me 2-3 weekends to drive it.
User avatar
gaillard
Posts: 725
Joined: 28 Jul 2020 19:15
Location: 97 Sambre-et-Meuse

Re: If you were the developer, what scale would you make the map?

#120 Post by gaillard » 09 Aug 2022 18:35

I hear you talking, and I wonder WHY you absolutely want to finish a delivery in one session?
Game saves are a feature, truckers DO sometimes sleep, so why for Pete's don't you just do one part of the job and finish tomorrow?

If you think 1:15 is TOO much, just take a job in the UK and tell me if it's unbearable, unrealistic, undoable.

To me, it's the perfect balance between space/time and possibilities. Granted, they weren''t used in the UK at the time, but now, after Austria and Montana...
Post Reply

Return to “General discussion about the game”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: FierbetoN and 16 guests